E-democracy: exploring the current stage of e-government

Governments around the world have been pressured to implement e-Government programs in order to improve the government-citizen dialogue. The authors of this article review prior literature on such efforts to find if they lead to increased democratic participation ("e-Democracy") for the affected citizens, with a focus on the key concepts of transparency, openness, and engagement. The authors find that such efforts are a starting point toward e-Democracy, but the journey is far from complete

Spin-orbital Kondo decoherence by environmental effects in capacitively coupled quantum dot devices

Strong correlation effects in a capacitively coupled double quantum-dot setup were previously shown to provide the possibility of both entangling spin-charge degrees of freedom and realizing efficient spin-filtering operations by static gate-voltage manipulations. Motivated by the use of such a device for quantum computing, we study the influence of electromagnetic noise on a general spin-orbital Kondo model, and investigate the conditions for observing coherent, unitary transport, crucial to warrant efficient spin manipulations. We find a rich phase diagram, where low-energy properties sensitively depend on the impedance of the external environment and geometric parameters of the system. Relevant energy scales related to the Kondo temperature are also computed in a renormalization-group treatment, allowing to assess the robustness of the device against environmental effects.Comment: 13 pages, 13 figures. Minor modifications in V

Detection of nepoviruses in ligneous grapevine material by using IC/PCR

Research Not

Cleaved intracellular SNARE peptides are implicated in a novel cytotoxicity mechanism of botulinum serotype C

Recent advances in intracellular protein delivery have enabled more in-depth analyses of cellular functions. A specialized family of SNARE proteases, known as Botulinum Neurotoxins, blocks neurotransmitter exocytosis, which leads to systemic toxicity caused by flaccid paralysis. These pharmaceutically valuable enzymes have also been helpful in the study of SNARE functions. As can be seen in Figure 1A, SNARE bundle formation causes vesicle docking at the presynapse. Although these toxins are systemically toxic, no known cytotoxic effects have been reported with the curious exception of the Botulinum serotype C [1]. This enzyme cleaves intracellular SNAP25, as does serotype A and E, but also, exceptionally, cleaves Syntaxin 1. Using an array of lipid and polymer transfection reagents we were able to deliver different combinations of Botulinum holoenzymes into the normally unaffected, Neuro2A, SH-SY5Y, PC12, and Min6 cells to analyze the individual contribution of each SNARE protein and their cleaved peptide products

Caryophyllales 2015 in Berlin and the Global Caryophyllales Initiative

Fil: Arias, Salvador. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; MéxicoFil: Berendsohn, Walter G.. Freie Universität Berlin; AlemaniaFil: Borsch, Thomas. Freie Universität Berlin; AlemaniaFil: Flores Olvera, Hilda. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; MéxicoFil: Ochoterena, Helga. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; MéxicoFil: von Mering, Sabine. Freie Universität Berlin; AlemaniaFil: Zuloaga, Fernando Omar. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Botánica Darwinion. Academia Nacional de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales. Instituto de Botánica Darwinion; Argentin

Probing CP-violating Higgs contributions in gamma-gamma -> f anti-f through fermion polarization

We discuss the use of fermion polarization for studying neutral Higgs bosons at a photon collider. To this aim we construct polarization asymmetries which can isolate the contribution of a Higgs boson $\phi$ in $\gamma\gamma\to f \bar f$, $f=\tau/t$, from that of the QED continuum. This can help in getting information on the $\gamma\gamma\phi$ coupling in case $\phi$ is a CP eigenstate. We also construct CP-violating asymmetries which can probe CP mixing in case $\phi$ has indeterminate CP. Furthermore, we take the MSSM with CP violation as an example to demonstrate the potential of these asymmetries in a numerical analysis. We find that these asymmetries are sensitive to the presence of a Higgs boson as well as its CP properties over a wide range of MSSM parameters. In particular, the method suggested can cover the region where a light Higgs boson may have been missed by LEP due to CP violation in the Higgs sector, and may be missed as well at the LHC.Comment: 14 pages, 14 figures, typeset in revtex4. Version which has appeared in Physical Review D; typos in two references correcte

Detection of somaclonal variation in grapevine regenerants from protoplasts by RAPD-PCR

Research Not