Silvered and Gilded Copper Metalwork from Loma Negra: Manufacture and Aesthetics

Los Moche, pobladores de la costa norte del Perú durante el período Intermedio Temprano, tuvieron una rica producción metalúrgica para la cual emplearon principalmente láminas martilladas de varios metales que unieron por medios mecánicos. Los artesanos que produjeron los bienes metálicos depositados en los entierros Moche de Loma Negra, usaron un procedimiento de plateado por reemplazo electroquímico para aplicar capas de metal precioso a superficies de cobre. Este método es único para el de Piura donde se localiza el sitio de Loma Negra, lejos del corazón de la tierra Moche, al otro lado del formidable desierto Sechura. Aquí se consideran dos tipos de objetos del corpus de Loma Negra - ornamentos en forma de discos y adornos para la cabeza con forma de cabezas zorros-, ensamblados a partir de láminas de cobre plateadas por medio de este notable método, que permitió la depositación de niveles muy delgados de oro y plata de cualquier composición. Además de considerar el método de manufactura y tratamiento superficial de los artefactos este trabajo tiene en cuenta cómo el colorido y animación de estos ornamentos tri -dimensionales, pudieron ser percibidos por el antiguo observador

Self-adjustment mechanisms and their application for orthosis design

Medical orthoses aim at guiding anatomical joints along their natural trajectories while preventing pathological movements, especially in case of trauma or injuries. The motions that take place between bone surfaces have complex kinematics. These so-called arthrokinematic motions exhibit axes that move both in translation and rotation. Traditionally, orthoses are carefully adjusted and positioned such that their kinematics approximate the arthrokinematic movements as closely as possible in order to protect the joint. Adjustment procedures are typically long and tedious. We suggest in this paper another approach. We propose mechanisms having intrinsic self-aligning properties. They are designed such that their main axis self-adjusts with respect to the joint’s physiological axis during motion. When connected to a limb, their movement becomes homokinetic and they have the property of automatically minimizing internal stresses. The study is performed here in the planar case focusing on the most important component of the arthrokinematic motions of a knee joint

Sensitivity analysis and reduction of a dynamic model of a bioproduction of fructo-oligosaccharides

Starting from a relatively detailed model of a bioprocess producing fructo-oligosaccharides, a set of experimental data collected in batch and fed-batch experiments is exploited to estimate the unknown model parameters. The original model includes the growth of the fungus Aureobasidium pullulans which produces the enzymes responsible for the hydrolysis and transfructosylation reactions, and as such contains 25 kinetic parameters and 16 pseudo-stoichiometric coefficients, which are not uniquely identifiable with the data at hand. The aim of this study is, therefore, to show how sensitivity analysis and quantitative indicators based on the Fisher information matrix can be used to reduce the detailed model to a practically identifiable model. Parametric sensitivity analysis can indeed be used to progressively simplify the model to a representation involving 15 kinetic parameters and 8 pseudo-stoichiometric coefficients. The reduced model provides satisfactory prediction and can be convincingly cross validated.The authors thank the financial support from the F.R.S.-FNRS, the Belgium National Fund for the Scientific Research (Research Project 24643.08). C. Nobre thanks the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia for the strategic funding of UID/BIO/04469 /2013 unit.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A Genome-Scale DNA Repair RNAi Screen Identifies SPG48 as a Novel Gene Associated with Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia

We have identified a novel gene in a genome-wide, double-strand break DNA repair RNAi screen and show that is involved in the neurological disease hereditary spastic paraplegia

GMOs in animal agriculture: time to consider both costs and benefits in regulatory evaluations

In 2012, genetically engineered (GE) crops were grown by 17.3 million farmers on over 170 million hectares. Over 70% of harvested GE biomass is fed to food producing animals, making them the major consumers of GE crops for the past 15 plus years. Prior to commercialization, GE crops go through an extensive regulatory evaluation. Over one hundred regulatory submissions have shown compositional equivalence, and comparable levels of safety, between GE crops and their conventional counterparts. One component of regulatory compliance is whole GE food/feed animal feeding studies. Both regulatory studies and independent peer-reviewed studies have shown that GE crops can be safely used in animal feed, and rDNA fragments have never been detected in products (e.g. milk, meat, eggs) derived from animals that consumed GE feed. Despite the fact that the scientific weight of evidence from these hundreds of studies have not revealed unique risks associated with GE feed, some groups are calling for more animal feeding studies, including long-term rodent studies and studies in target livestock species for the approval of GE crops. It is an opportune time to review the results of such studies as have been done to date to evaluate the value of the additional information obtained. Requiring long-term and target animal feeding studies would sharply increase regulatory compliance costs and prolong the regulatory process associated with the commercialization of GE crops. Such costs may impede the development of feed crops with enhanced nutritional characteristics and durability, particularly in the local varieties in small and poor developing countries. More generally it is time for regulatory evaluations to more explicitly consider both the reasonable and unique risks and benefits associated with the use of both GE plants and animals in agricultural systems, and weigh them against those associated with existing systems, and those of regulatory inaction. This would represent a shift away from a GE evaluation process that currently focuses only on risk assessment and identifying ever diminishing marginal hazards, to a regulatory approach that more objectively evaluates and communicates the likely impact of approving a new GE plant or animal on agricultural production systems

Ismar Schorsch Collection 1990

Correspondence (2 items) with Hans George Hirsch ; copy of a speech, 'The Legacy of Martin Buber'.Rabbi, historian, 1935-Processed for digitizationBuber, Martin.digitize