1,457 research outputs found
Enterovirus and Bacterial Evaluation of Mississippi Oysters
The numbers of enteric viruses and fecal coliform bacteria in oysters and water samples collected along the Mississippi Gulf coast during 1979 were determined. Ten viral isolates, representing members of the poliovirus group, were identified from an approved oyster harvesting site. The number of virus isolations increased to 51 when oysters were collected from a prohibited harvesting location. The majority of isolates were identified as poliovirus type 1 or 2, coxsackievirus B3 and B4, and echovirus type 24. Fecal coliforms in water samples collected at approved and prohibited locations confirmed the classification assigned to each area by the Mississippi State Board of Health. The numbers of fecal coliforms in oyster samples collected at the identical sites did not reflect the levels observed in water samples. There was no positive correlation between indicator bacteria in the water column and the number of viruses in the shellfish examined. These results imply that viral analyses of shellfish may be needed as an adjunct to bacteriological analyses so that shellfish safety is verified
Learning from the wood samples in ICS, TIRI, FIRI, VIRI and SIRI
Each of the laboratory inter-comparisons (from ICS onwards) has included wood samples, many of them dendrochronologically dated. In the early years, as a result of the majority of laboratories being radiometric, these samples were typically blocks of 20-40 rings, but more recently (SIRI), they have been single ring samples. The sample ages have spanned background through to modern. In some inter-comparisons, we have examined different wood pre-treatment effects, in others the focus has been on background samples. In this paper, we illustrate what we have learnt from these extensive inter-comparisons involving wood samples and how the results contribute to the global IntCal effort
Enterovirus and Bacterial Evaluation of Mississippi Oysters
The numbers of enteric viruses and fecal coliform bacteria in oysters and water samples collected along the Mississippi Gulf coast during 1979 were determined. Ten viral isolates, representing members of the poliovirus group, were identified from an approved oyster harvesting site. The number of virus isolations increased to 51 when oysters were collected from a prohibited harvesting location. The majority of isolates were identified as poliovirus type 1 or 2, coxsackievirus B3 and B4, and echovirus type 24. Fecal coliforms in water samples collected at approved and prohibited locations confirmed the classification assigned to each area by the Mississippi State Board of Health. The numbers of fecal coliforms in oyster samples collected at the identical sites did not reflect the levels observed in water samples. There was no positive correlation between indicator bacteria in the water column and the number of viruses in the shellfish examined. These results imply that viral analyses of shellfish may be needed as an adjunct to bacteriological analyses so that shellfish safety is verified
Public sector reforms, privatisation and regimes of control in a Chinese enterprise
The Chinese economic reform has recently become a major focus of attention around the world. The underlying rationale for the Chinese government's privatisation and public sector reforms is the view that reformed state enterprises and privately managed firms will demonstrate superior management control and better performance, and hence encourage economic growth and employment. There are very few intensive case studies published in English journals studying whether firms privatised in China have reversed previous losses and introduced better management controls, leading to increased investment, productivity, and overall organizational effectiveness and efficiency. The researchers do not seek to deny the control problems of Chinese SOEs, but question the consequences of the new controls installed during the post-privatisation period. The paper also reveals a declining tendency in employment; altered distributions of wealth ? especially to the state ? and labour, and a lack of improvements in the accountability of privatised companies. Overall, the paper argues, the aims of reform policies in China, including better control, increased profitability and an improved working life for Chinese people, have not materialized. The paper calls for more research on the above issues in the Chinese context
Close limit evolution of Kerr-Schild type initial data for binary black holes
We evolve the binary black hole initial data family proposed by Bishop {\em
et al.} in the limit in which the black holes are close to each other. We
present an exact solution of the linearized initial value problem based on
their proposal and make use of a recently introduced generalized formalism for
studying perturbations of Schwarzschild black holes in arbitrary coordinates to
perform the evolution. We clarify the meaning of the free parameters of the
initial data family through the results for the radiated energy and waveforms
from the black hole collision.Comment: 8 pages, RevTex, four eps figure
Comparing initial-data sets for binary black holes
We compare the results of constructing binary black hole initial data with
three different decompositions of the constraint equations of general
relativity. For each decomposition we compute the initial data using a
superposition of two Kerr-Schild black holes to fix the freely specifiable
data. We find that these initial-data sets differ significantly, with the ADM
energy varying by as much as 5% of the total mass. We find that all
initial-data sets currently used for evolutions might contain unphysical
gravitational radiation of the order of several percent of the total mass. This
is comparable to the amount of gravitational-wave energy observed during the
evolved collision. More astrophysically realistic initial data will require
more careful choices of the freely specifiable data and boundary conditions for
both the metric and extrinsic curvature. However, we find that the choice of
extrinsic curvature affects the resulting data sets more strongly than the
choice of conformal metric.Comment: 18 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
Approximate Analytical Solutions to the Initial Data Problem of Black Hole Binary Systems
We present approximate analytical solutions to the Hamiltonian and momentum
constraint equations, corresponding to systems composed of two black holes with
arbitrary linear and angular momentum. The analytical nature of these initial
data solutions makes them easier to implement in numerical evolutions than the
traditional numerical approach of solving the elliptic equations derived from
the Einstein constraints. Although in general the problem of setting up initial
conditions for black hole binary simulations is complicated by the presence of
singularities, we show that the methods presented in this work provide initial
data with and norms of violation of the constraint equations
falling below those of the truncation error (residual error due to
discretization) present in finite difference codes for the range of grid
resolutions currently used. Thus, these data sets are suitable for use in
evolution codes. Detailed results are presented for the case of a head-on
collision of two equal-mass M black holes with specific angular momentum 0.5M
at an initial separation of 10M. A straightforward superposition method yields
data adequate for resolutions of , and an "attenuated" superposition
yields data usable to resolutions at least as fine as . In addition, the
attenuated approximate data may be more tractable in a full (computational)
exact solution to the initial value problem.Comment: 6 pages, 5 postscript figures. Minor changes and some points
clarified. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
Corotating and irrotational binary black holes in quasi-circular orbits
A complete formalism for constructing initial data representing black-hole
binaries in quasi-equilibrium is developed. Radiation reaction prohibits, in
general, true equilibrium binary configurations. However, when the timescale
for orbital decay is much longer than the orbital period, a binary can be
considered to be in quasi-equilibrium. If each black hole is assumed to be in
quasi-equilibrium, then a complete set of boundary conditions for all initial
data variables can be developed. These boundary conditions are applied on the
apparent horizon of each black hole, and in fact force a specified surface to
be an apparent horizon. A global assumption of quasi-equilibrium is also used
to fix some of the freely specifiable pieces of the initial data and to
uniquely fix the asymptotic boundary conditions. This formalism should allow
for the construction of completely general quasi-equilibrium black hole binary
initial data.Comment: 13 pages, no figures, revtex4; Content changed slightly to reflect
fact that regularized shift solutions do satisfy the isometry boundary
condition
Sharing data to build a medical information commons: from Bermuda to the Global Alliance
The Human Genome Project modeled its open science ethos on nematode biology, most famously through daily release of DNA sequence data based on the 1996 Bermuda Principles. That open science philosophy persists, but daily, unfettered release of data has had to adapt to constraints occasioned by the use of data from individual people, broader use of data not only by scientists but also by clinicians and individuals, the global reach of genomic applications and diverse national privacy and research ethics laws, and the rising prominence of a diverse commercial genomics sector. The Global Alliance for Genomics and Health was established to enable the data sharing that is essential for making meaning of genomic variation. Data-sharing policies and practices will continue to evolve as researchers, health professionals, and individuals strive to construct a global medical and scientific information commons.Robert Cook-Deegan, Rachel A. Ankeny, and Kathryn Maxson Jone
Gravitational waves from quasi-spherical black holes
A quasi-spherical approximation scheme, intended to apply to coalescing black
holes, allows the waveforms of gravitational radiation to be computed by
integrating ordinary differential equations.Comment: 4 revtex pages, 2 eps figure
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