Strake/delta wing interactions at high angles of attack

The method of vortex discretization is used to analyze the interaction of the vorticity generated by a strake, with the flow over a delta wing. The validity of the approach is first established by making comparisons with established methods for dealing with delta wings, after which compound delta planforms are discussed. An understanding of the favorable interference effects normally associated with this type of configuration is obtained and results are presented to quantify the expected lift increments resulting from the strake interaction

Elementary Forms of the Metaphorical Life : Tropes at Work in Durkheim’s Theory of the Religious

Peer reviewedPostprin

Marxism and science studies: a sweep through the decades

This paper outlines the distinctive contribution of marxism to science studies. It traces the trajectory of marxist ideas through the decades from the origins of marxism to the present conjuncture. It looks at certain key episodes, such as the arrival of a Soviet delegation at the International History of Science Congress in London in 1931 as well as subsequent interactions between marxists and exponents of other positions at later international congresses. It focuses on the impact of several generations of marxists who have engaged with science in different ways. It examines the influence of marxism on contemporary trends in science studies. It concludes that marxism survives in circuitous and complex ways. It argues not only for a positive interpretation of its contribution in the past but for its explanatory and ethical power in the present and future

Sensory sociological phenomenology, somatic learning and 'lived' temperature in competitive pool swimming

In this article, we address an existing lacuna in the sociology of the senses, by employing sociological phenomenology to illuminate the under-researched sense of temperature, as lived by a social group for whom water temperature is particularly salient: competitive pool swimmers. The research contributes to a developing ‘sensory sociology’ that highlights the importance of the socio-cultural framing of the senses and ‘sensory work’, but where there remains a dearth of sociological exploration into senses extending beyond the ‘classic five’ sensorium. Drawing on data from a three-year ethnographic study of competitive swimmers in the UK, our analysis explores the rich sensuousities of swimming, and highlights the role of temperature as fundamentally affecting the affordances offered by the aquatic environment. The article contributes original theoretical perspectives to the sociology of the senses and of sport in addressing the ways in which social actors in the aquatic environment interact, both intersubjectively and intercorporeally, as thermal beings

Live to cheat another day: bacterial dormancy facilitates the social exploitation of beta-lactamases

The breakdown of antibiotics by β-lactamases may be cooperative, since resistant cells can detoxify their environment and facilitate the growth of susceptible neighbours. However, previous studies of this phenomenon have used artificial bacterial vectors or engineered bacteria to increase the secretion of β-lactamases from cells. Here, we investigated whether a broad-spectrum β-lactamase gene carried by a naturally occurring plasmid (pCT) is cooperative under a range of conditions. In ordinary batch culture on solid media, there was little or no evidence that resistant bacteria could protect susceptible cells from ampicillin, although resistant colonies could locally detoxify this growth medium. However, when susceptible cells were inoculated at high densities, late-appearing phenotypically susceptible bacteria grew in the vicinity of resistant colonies. We infer that persisters, cells that have survived antibiotics by undergoing a period of dormancy, founded these satellite colonies. The number of persister colonies was positively correlated with the density of resistant colonies and increased as antibiotic concentrations decreased. We argue that detoxification can be cooperative under a limited range of conditions: if the toxins are bacteriostatic rather than bacteridical; or if susceptible cells invade communities after resistant bacteria; or if dormancy allows susceptible cells to avoid bactericides. Resistance and tolerance were previously thought to be independent solutions for surviving antibiotics. Here, we show that these are interacting strategies: the presence of bacteria adopting one solution can have substantial effects on the fitness of their neighbours

Self-Dual Bending Theory for Vesicles

We present a self-dual bending theory that may enable a better understanding of highly nonlinear global behavior observed in biological vesicles. Adopting this topological approach for spherical vesicles of revolution allows us to describe them as frustrated sine-Gordon kinks. Finally, to illustrate an application of our results, we consider a spherical vesicle globally distorted by two polar latex beads.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, LaTeX2e+IOPar

Cyclic animation using Partial differential Equations

YesThis work presents an efficient and fast method for achieving cyclic animation using Partial Differential Equations (PDEs). The boundary-value nature associ- ated with elliptic PDEs offers a fast analytic solution technique for setting up a framework for this type of animation. The surface of a given character is thus cre- ated from a set of pre-determined curves, which are used as boundary conditions so that a number of PDEs can be solved. Two different approaches to cyclic ani- mation are presented here. The first consists of using attaching the set of curves to a skeletal system hold- ing the animation for cyclic motions linked to a set mathematical expressions, the second one exploits the spine associated with the analytic solution of the PDE as a driving mechanism to achieve cyclic animation, which is also manipulated mathematically. The first of these approaches is implemented within a framework related to cyclic motions inherent to human-like char- acters, whereas the spine-based approach is focused on modelling the undulatory movement observed in fish when swimming. The proposed method is fast and ac- curate. Additionally, the animation can be either used in the PDE-based surface representation of the model or transferred to the original mesh model by means of a point to point map. Thus, the user is offered with the choice of using either of these two animation repre- sentations of the same object, the selection depends on the computing resources such as storage and memory capacity associated with each particular application

CD44 Expression in Oro-Pharyngeal Carcinoma Tissues and Cell Lines

Expression of CD44, a transmembrane hyaluronan-binding glycoprotein, is variably considered to have prognostic significance for different cancers, including oral squamous cell carcinoma. Although unclear at present, tissue-specific expression of particular isoforms of CD44 might underlie the different outcomes in currently available studies. We mined public transcriptomics databases for gene expression data on CD44, and analyzed normal, immortalized and tumour-derived human cell lines for splice variants of CD44 at both the transcript and protein levels. Bioinformatics readouts, from a total of more than 15,000 analyses, implied an increased CD44 expression in head and neck cancer, including increased expression levels relative to many normal and tumor tissue types. Also, meta-analysis of over 260 cell lines and over 4,000 tissue specimens of diverse origins indicated lower CD44 expression levels in cell lines compared to tissue. With minor exceptions, reverse transcribed polymerase chain reaction identified expression of the four main isoforms of CD44 in normal oral keratinocytes, transformed lines termed DT and HaCaT, and a series of paired primary and metastasis-derived cell lines from oral or pharyngeal carcinomas termed HN4/HN12, HN22/HN8 and HN30/HN31. Immunocytochemistry, Western blotting and flow cytometric assessments all confirmed the isoform expression pattern at the protein level. Overall, bioinformatic processing of large numbers of global gene expression analyses demonstrated elevated CD44 expression in head and neck cancer relative to other cancer types, and that the application of standard cell culture protocols might decrease CD44 expression. Additionally, the results show that the many variant CD44 exons are not fundamentally deregulated in a diverse range of cultured normal and transformed keratinocyte lines