NEW JERSEY'S EXPERIENCE WITH TRANSFER OF DEVELOPMENT RIGHTS

Community/Rural/Urban Development,

A multimedia information exchange of the industrial heritage of the Lower Lee Valley.

The Lee Valley Industrial Heritage Electronic Archive (LVIHEA) is a model record of industrial buildings composed as a composite of multimedia data files relevant to the interpretation of the region's dynamic industrial environment. The design criteria concerning natural, human and artificial resources are applicable to education and heritage management strategies. The prototype model was evaluated in terms of its efficacy and effectiveness with designated user groups. The developed model will enable qualitative and quantitative analyses concerning the economic, social and industrial history of the region. It can be used as a pedagogic tool for instruction in the principles of structured data design, construction, storage and retrieval, and for techniques of data collection. Furthermore the data sets can be closely analysed and manipulated for interpretative purposes. Chapter one attempts to define the Lee Valley in terms of its geographic, historical, economic and societal context. The aims and resources of the project are outlined and the study is placed in the bibliographic context of similar studies. Thereafter it addresses the processes leading to and a description of the structure of the prototype model. A paper model is presented and the data structures conforming lo or compatible with established planning, archiving and management protocols and strategies are described and evaluated. Chapter two is a detailed description and rationale of the archive's data files and teaching and learning package. It outlines procedures of multimedia data collection and digitisation and provides an evaluative analysis. Chapter three looks at the completed prototype and reviews the soft systems methodology approach to problem analysis used throughout the project. Sections examining the LVIHEA in use and the practical issues of disseminating it follow. The chapter concludes by reviewing the significance of the research and indicates possible directions for further research. The survey is artifact rather than document led and begins with the contemporary landscape before "excavating" to reveal first the recent and then the more distant past. However, many choices for inclusion are necessarily reactive rather than proactive in response to the regular "crises" where conservation is just one consideration in a complex development. Progressive strategies are sometimes sacrificed for the immediate opportunity to record information concerning an artifact under imminent threat of destruction. It is acknowledge that the artefact (building) would usually disappear before its associated documentation and that therefore it was imperative to obtain as much basic detail as possible about as many sites as possible. It is hoped that greater depth can be achieved by tracking down the documentation to its repositories when time permits. Amenity groups had already focussed their attention on many of the more "interesting" sites and every opportunity was taken to incorporate their findings into the LVIHEA. This study provides an insight into the cycle of development and decline of an internationally important industrial landscape. It does so in a structured environment incorporating modem digital technology while providing a framework for continuing study

The Value-Relevance Of Internet Web Traffic And Revenue On Top Arab Banks Comparative Efficiency Performances

The comparative efficiency performances of the top Middle East Arab banks are measured using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Principal Components Factor Analysis (PCFA).  Cross-sectional data are used from Bankscope and the recently constructed and publically available web metrics, Alex.com, for 2008.   This paper identifies the ‘best practices’ of banks associated with measures of internet web traffic and revenue outputs.  Results identify large disparities between Arab banks’ comparative efficiency performances.  The highest technically efficient scoring banks were not necessarily the larger banks and banks that were efficient were not necessarily profitable.  No significant relationship was detected between large banks that are efficient at generating website visits and those that are efficient at generating revenues.  Smaller banks revealed more evidence of comparative efficiency performance towards generating website traffic output.  From a policy perspective, this study highlights the importance of encouraging increased efficiency throughout the banking industry in the Arab world, particularly in the area of internet banking.  It further reveals the state of some electronic data availability and transparency in the MENA region

Arc Phenomena in low-voltage current limiting circuit breakers

Circuit breakers are an important safety feature in most electrical circuits, and they act to prevent excessive currents caused by short circuits, for example. Low-voltage current limiting circuit breakers are activated by a trip solenoid when a critical current is exceeded. The solenoid moves two contacts apart to break the circuit. However, as soon as the contacts are separated an electric arc forms between them, ionising the air in the gap, increasing the electrical conductivity of air to that of the hot plasma that forms, and current continues to flow. The currents involved may be as large as 80,000 amperes. Critical to the success of the circuit breaker is that it is designed to cause the arc to move away from the contacts, into a widening wedge-shaped region. This lengthens the arc, and then moves it onto a series of separator plates called an arc divider or splitter. The arc divider raises the voltage required to sustain the arcs across it, above the voltage that is provided across the breaker, so that the circuit is broken and the arcing dies away. This entire process occurs in milliseconds, and is usually associated with a sound like an explosion and a bright ash from the arc. Parts of the contacts and the arc divider may melt and/or vapourise. The question to be addressed by the Study Group was to mathematically model the arc motion and extinction, with the overall aim of an improved understanding that would help the design of a better circuit breaker. Further discussion indicated that two key mechanisms are believed to contribute to the movement of the arc away from the contacts, one being self-magnetism (where the magnetic field associated with the arc and surrounding circuitry acts to push it towards the arc divider), and the other being air flow (where expansion of air combined with the design of the chamber enclosing the arc causes gas flow towards the arc divider). Further discussion also indicated that a key aspect of circuit breaker design was that it is desirable to have as fast a quenching of the arc as possible, that is, the faster the circuit breaker can act to stop current flow, the better. The relative importance of magnetic and air pressure effects on quenching speed is of central interest to circuit design

Interplay of Mre11 Nuclease with Dna2 plus Sgs1 in Rad51-Dependent Recombinational Repair

The Mre11/Rad50/Xrs2 complex initiates IR repair by binding to the end of a double-strand break, resulting in 5′ to 3′ exonuclease degradation creating a single-stranded 3′ overhang competent for strand invasion into the unbroken chromosome. The nuclease(s) involved are not well understood. Mre11 encodes a nuclease, but it has 3′ to 5′, rather than 5′ to 3′ activity. Furthermore, mutations that inactivate only the nuclease activity of Mre11 but not its other repair functions, mre11-D56N and mre11-H125N, are resistant to IR. This suggests that another nuclease can catalyze 5′ to 3′ degradation. One candidate nuclease that has not been tested to date because it is encoded by an essential gene is the Dna2 helicase/nuclease. We recently reported the ability to suppress the lethality of a dna2Δ with a pif1Δ. The dna2Δ pif1Δ mutant is IR-resistant. We have determined that dna2Δ pif1Δ mre11-D56N and dna2Δ pif1Δ mre11-H125N strains are equally as sensitive to IR as mre11Δ strains, suggesting that in the absence of Dna2, Mre11 nuclease carries out repair. The dna2Δ pif1Δ mre11-D56N triple mutant is complemented by plasmids expressing Mre11, Dna2 or dna2K1080E, a mutant with defective helicase and functional nuclease, demonstrating that the nuclease of Dna2 compensates for the absence of Mre11 nuclease in IR repair, presumably in 5′ to 3′ degradation at DSB ends. We further show that sgs1Δ mre11-H125N, but not sgs1Δ, is very sensitive to IR, implicating the Sgs1 helicase in the Dna2-mediated pathway

Laser Chemosensor with Rapid Responsivity and Inherent Memory Based on a Polymer of Intrinsic Microporosity

This work explores the use of a polymer of intrinsic microporosity (PIM-1) as the active layer within a laser sensor to detect nitroaromatic-based explosive vapors. We show successful detection of dinitrobenzene (DNB) by monitoring the real-time photoluminescence. We also show that PIM-1 has an inherent memory, so that it accumulates the analyte during exposure. In addition, the optical gain and refractive index of the polymer were studied by amplified spontaneous emission and variable-angle ellipsometry, respectively. A second-order distributed feedback PIM-1 laser sensor was fabricated and found to show an increase in laser threshold of 2.5 times and a reduction of the laser slope efficiency by 4.4 times after a 5-min exposure to the DNB vapor. For pumping at 2 times threshold, the lasing action was stopped within 30 s indicating that PIM-1 has a very fast responsivity and as such has a potential sensing ability for ultra-low-concentration explosives

Inviability of a DNA2 deletion mutant is due to the DNA damage checkpoint

Dna2 is a dual polarity exo/endonuclease, and 5' to 3' DNA helicase involved in Okazaki Fragment Processing (OFP) and Double-Strand Break (DSB) Repair. In yeast, DNA2 is an essential gene, as expected for a DNA replication protein. Suppression of the lethality of dna2Δ mutants has been found to occur by two mechanisms: overexpression of RAD27^(scFEN1), encoding a 5' to 3' exo/endo nuclease that processes Okazaki fragments (OFs) for ligation, or deletion of PIF1, a 5' to 3' helicase involved in mitochondrial recombination, telomerase inhibition and OFP. Mapping of a novel, spontaneously arising suppressor of dna2Δ now reveals that mutation of rad9 and double mutation of rad9 mrc1 can also suppress the lethality of dna2Δ mutants. Interaction of dna2Δ and DNA damage checkpoint mutations provides insight as to why dna2Δ is lethal but rad27Δ is not, even though evidence shows that Rad27^(ScFEN1) processes most of the Okazaki fragments, while Dna2 processes only a subset