Potassium metasomatism of volcanic and sedimentary rocks in rift basins, calderas and detachment terranes

The chemical, mineralogical, and oxygen-isotopic changes accompanying K-metasomatism are described. The similarities with diagenetic reactions in both deep marine and alkaline, saline-lake environments are noted. The common occurrence of K-metasomatism in upper-plate rocks of detachment terranes indicates that the early stage of severe regional extension causes crustal downwarping and, in arid to semi-arid regions, development of closed hydrographic basins

Considering Standing, Sincerity, and Antidiscrimination

This Article will establish that an unrecognized norm, the “norm of sincerity,” is an implicit factor in the standing analysis in a certain class of equal protection cases. That class of cases includes equal protection claims where 1) courts have applied the “able and ready to compete” test to determine a plaintiff’s injury in fact, and where 2) the plaintiff has complained about discriminatory access to limited government resources. In those cases, a plaintiff cannot demonstrate injury in fact sufficient to meet Article III standing unless she shows that she sincerely intends to use the benefits at stake in the litigation. Further, in these cases, the sincerity judgment is observable when a clear competitive process governs the competition for the resources. No commentator has recognized this developing trend. This Article will also establish that sincerity should play an increasingly visible role in what is sure to be a coming focus of this class of equal protection cases, which is the context of equal protection challenges to racial or ethnic minority preference programs outside of admissions in higher education. This context, referred to herein as the “tempting targets context,” includes, for example, programs such as minority-only or minority-preferred summer orientation and academic preparation programs, scholarships, fellowships, internships, and mentoring programs. The validity of any one of these programs has yet to be resolved by litigation on the merits in court, but those tests are surely coming. No commentator has yet considered the potential standing implications presented by these challenges. Finally, the Article concludes by identifying a proposed model for applying the able and ready standard and its inherent norm of sincerity to this specific and anticipated class of equal protection cases

ARBAC Policy for a Large Multi-National Bank

Administrative role-based access control (ARBAC) is the first comprehensive administrative model proposed for role-based access control (RBAC). ARBAC has several features for designing highly expressive policies, but current work has not highlighted the utility of these expressive policies. In this report, we present a case study of designing an ARBAC policy for a bank comprising 18 branches. Using this case study we provide an assessment about the features of ARBAC that are likely to be used in realistic policies

The SNARE machinery is involved in apical plasma membrane trafficking in MDCK cells.

We have investigated the controversial involvement of components of the SNARE (soluble N-ethyl maleimide-sensitive factor [NSF] attachment protein [SNAP] receptor) machinery in membrane traffic to the apical plasma membrane of polarized epithelial (MDCK) cells. Overexpression of syntaxin 3, but not of syntaxins 2 or 4, caused an inhibition of TGN to apical transport and apical recycling, and leads to an accumulation of small vesicles underneath the apical plasma membrane. All other tested transport steps were unaffected by syntaxin 3 overexpression. Botulinum neurotoxin E, which cleaves SNAP-23, and antibodies against alpha-SNAP inhibit both TGN to apical and basolateral transport in a reconstituted in vitro system. In contrast, we find no evidence for an involvement of N-ethyl maleimide-sensitive factor in TGN to apical transport, whereas basolateral transport is NSF-dependent. We conclude that syntaxin 3, SNAP-23, and alpha-SNAP are involved in apical membrane fusion. These results demonstrate that vesicle fusion with the apical plasma membrane does not use a mechanism that is entirely unrelated to other cellular membrane fusion events, but uses isoforms of components of the SNARE machinery, which suggests that they play a role in providing specificity to polarized membrane traffic

Geologic analysis of ERTS-1 imagery for the State of New Mexico

There are no author-identified significant results in this report

Mathematical modeling of the dynamic mechanical behavior of neighboring sarcomeres in actin stress fibers

pre-printActin stress fibers (SFs) in live cells consist of series of dynamic individual sarcomeric units. Within a group of consecutive SF sarcomeres, individual sarcomeres can spontaneously shorten or lengthen without changing the overall length of this group, but the underlying mechanism is unclear. We used a computational model to test our hypothesis that this dynamic behavior is inherent to the heterogeneous mechanical properties of the sarcomeres and the cytoplasmic viscosity. Each sarcomere was modeled as a discrete element consisting of an elastic spring, a viscous dashpot and an active contractile unit all connected in parallel, and experiences forces as a result of actin filament elastic stiffness, myosin II contractility, internal viscoelasticity, or cytoplasmic drag. When all four types of forces are considered, the simulated dynamic behavior closely resembles the experimental observations, which include a low-frequency fluctuation in individual sarcomere length and compensatory lengthening and shortening of adjacent sarcomeres. Our results suggest that heterogeneous stiffness and viscoelasticity of actin fibers, heterogeneous myosin II contractility, and the cytoplasmic drag are sufficient to cause spontaneous fluctuations in SF sarcomere length. Our results shed new light to the dynamic behavior of SF and help design experiments to further our understanding of SF dynamics