Project characteristics for design and build procurement in Malaysian construction industry

Design & Build procurement approach is one of the procurement methods which is known to be widely gaining popularity in order to serve the modern day construction clients desire of having a constructed facility. To effectively service the market-driven expansion of this project delivery strategy in the construction community, a fundamental understanding of the characteristics of the Design & Build procurement approach is necessary. This study is aimed at appraising the Design & Build procurement approach in the Malaysian construction industry based on current practice through identifying the characteristics of the procurement approach. For this purpose, a detailed literature review of the Design & Build characteristics was conducted and data was collected from a two round Delphi questionnaire survey conducted with experienced professionals that have vast experience in the Design & Build procurement practice. The relative importance of these characteristics were quantified by the relative importance index method demonstrating their level of priority. The key findings in the study showed that the practice of the procurement approach in Malaysia is most importantly characterized by the fact that it is most suitable for projects that are complex in nature, while ‘effective client representation’ is the least important characteristic of the Design & Build procurement approach with regard to the Malaysian construction industry. It is expected that with the consideration of these characteristics of the D&B procurement approach, it will consequently result in the overall improvement in the performance of the Malaysian construction industry in relation to project delivery

Ending civil war: constrains for state reconstitution in post-war Sri Lanka

After 26 years of devastating civil war between the Government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Sri Lanka’s government defeated the LTTE in May 2009. It was in this context the LTTE’s defeat is viewed as a decisive turning point in the history of the island’s ethnic conflict. As a result of the absence of LTTE caused to give up the demand of separate state which was the threat of last three decades for political solution. This situation has provided opportunity to consider political solution for national ethnic question of Sri Lanka by political elites of all community through the way of state reconstitution. This post-war backdrop provides a new prospect to re-explore in the deadlock and challenges of state reconstitution in Sri Lanka by following question: has the ending of the war between the Sri Lankan State and the LTTE provided new motivation for state reconstitution in Sri Lanka, in the direction of addressing the demand of the ethnic minorities for power-sharing? This study is based on a critical and interpretative case study of post-war state of Sri Lanka. It is formed on text analysis, qualitative interviews and supplement with observation. Data have gathered in August to October 2014. The study reveals that no considerable progress was geared up in the direction of a political solution with minorities who were affected by the conflict, and peace talk has been deadlocked between the Government and the TNA (Tamil National Alliance) caused by misperceptions and centralization of state power

UNRAVELLING THE ESSENTIAL ROLE OF TGPA IN THE VIABILITY OF PSEUDOMONAS AERUGINOSA: A PUTATIVE TARGET FOR NOVEL ANTIMICROBIAL AGENTS

The opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a common agent of infectious disease in immunocompromised individuals, and a dominant pathogen in late-stage of cystic fibrosis disease. P. aeruginosa represents a prototype of multidrug resistant \u201csuperbug\u201d due to intrinsic and acquired resistance to antimicrobials agents, for which effective therapeutic options are very limited. In order to overcome the current resistance mechanisms, the identification and characterization of new cellular functions that are essential for P. aeruginosa viability could drive the development of new antibacterial compounds with novel mechanisms of action. The present PhD thesis is focused on the functional and structural characterization of the Transglutaminase protein A, TgpA, an inner membrane protein predicted to belong to the Transglutaminase-like family which contains a functional TG domain (TG180\u2013544), localized in the periplasmic side, suggested to take part in an essential function involved in envelope structure. The protein was recently described as essential for the viability of P. aeruginosa, and a promising candidate for the design of new specific antimicrobial compounds. In Part I, the state of the art and main results are presented. First, the in vivo evaluation of the modulation of TgpA expression levels on the P. aeruginosa growth showed that, the increase of TgpA cellular levels dramatically affects the P. aeruginosa growth. On the other hand, the partial suppression of the chromosomal copy of the tgpA gene showed to compromised the envelope organization of the cells. The subsequent structural characterization of the functional TG domain allowed confirming that TgpA belongs to the poorly characterized Transglutaminase-like family, in which many of the prokaryotic members are proteases. Also, the presence of a carbohydrate-binding domain at the N-terminal portion of the protein, suggests that the binding to polysaccharides present in the cell wall might constitute a mechanism of regulation of the enzymatic activity of TgpA. Moreover, the active site of the protein shares homology with cysteine proteases and endopeptidases with described action in the maintenance/biosinthesys of the bacterial peptidoglycan, suggesting that TgpA might be involved in the cell wall metabolism. The transglutaminase and proteolytic activity of the TG domain were evaluated in vitro, showing residual activity over generic substrates. A manuscript in preparation, presented in Part II, describes in detail the characteristics found in the structure of the TG domain that are the foundations for the TgpA enzymatic activity. Finally, in the search for possible inhibitory molecules of the activity of TgpA, the results of a preliminary in silico docking analysis with in vivo results are presented in Part III

Румунський етнографічний aтлас

In Romania, the crisis of the popular culture and the necessity to preserve its characteristic elements by publishing a Romanian Ethnographic Atlas was realized later. The Romanian ethnographers had the possibility to make major methodological innovation for this type of works, such as the replacement of the explicative texts of the maps with the integral publishing of the ethnographic documents, exactly as they were recorded on the field. These two works – thesaurus which shelter the registered for the XX century ethnographic data will have, when finished, 30 toms: 25 with document of oral history and five with maps and images regarding their territorial distribution.În România criza culturii populare şi necesitatea de a păstra elementele ei caracteristice prin publicarea Atlasului Etnografic Român s-a constatat mai târziu. Etnografii români au avut mai apoi posibilitatea de a folosi inovaţii metodologice majore pentru asemenea gen de lucrări, cum ar fi înlocuirea textelor explicative ale hărţilor cu publicarea integrală a documentelor etnografice în felul în care au fost înregistrare pe teren. Aceste două tipuri de lucrări cu caracter de tezaur care acoperă toate datele etnografice înregistrate în secolul al XX-lea vor avea, cînd se vor încheia, 30 de volume: 25 cu documente de istorie orală şi cinci cu hărţi şi imagini referitoare la distribuţia lor teritorială

<i>Vibrio neptunius</i> sp. nov., <i>Vibrio brasiliensis</i> sp. nov. and <i>Vibrio xuii</i> sp. nov., isolated from the marine aquaculture environment (bivalves, fish, rotifers and shrimps)

The fluorescent amplified fragment length polymorphism (FAFLP) groups A5 (21 isolates), A8 (6 isolates) and A23 (3 isolates) distinguished in an earlier paper (Thompson et al., Syst Appl Microbiol 24, 520-538, 2001) were examined in more depth. These three groups were phylogenetically related to Vibrio tubiashii, but DNA-DNA hybridization experiments proved that the three AFLP groups are in fact novel species. Chemotaxonomic and phenotypic analyses further revealed several differences among the 30 isolates and known Vibrio species. It is proposed to accommodate these isolates in three novel species, namely Vibrio neptunius (type strain LMG 20536T; EMBL accession no. AJ316171; G + C content of the type strain 46·0 mol%), Vibrio brasiliensis (type strain LMG 20546T; EMBL accession no. AJ316172; G + C content of the type strain 45·9 mol%) and Vibrio xuii (type strain LMG 21346T; EMBL accession no. AJ316181; G + C content of the type strain 46·6 mol%). These species can be differentiated on the basis of phenotypic features, including fatty acid composition (particularly 14 : 0 iso, 14 : 0 iso 3-OH, 16 : 0 iso, 16 : 0, 17 : 0 and 17 : 1?8c), enzyme activities and utilization and fermentation of various carbon sources

Oncolytic viruses as therapeutic tools for pediatric brain tumors

In recent years, we have seen an important progress in our comprehension of the molecular basis of pediatric brain tumors (PBTs). However, they still represent the main cause of death by disease in children. Due to the poor prognosis of some types of PBTs and the long-term adverse effects associated with the traditional treatments, oncolytic viruses (OVs) have emerged as an interesting therapeutic option since they displayed safety and high tolerability in pre-clinical and clinical levels. In this review, we summarize the OVs evaluated in different types of PBTs, mostly in pre-clinical studies, and we discuss the possible future direction of research in this field. In this sense, one important aspect of OVs antitumoral effect is the stimulation of an immune response against the tumor which is necessary for a complete response in preclinical immunocompetent models and in the clinic. The role of the immune system in the response of OVs needs to be evaluated in PBTs and represents an experimental challenge due to the limited immunocompetent models of these diseases available for pre-clinical research

GraXe, graphene and xenon for neutrinoless double beta decay searches

We propose a new detector concept, GraXe (to be pronounced as grace), to search for neutrinoless double beta decay in Xe-136. GraXe combines a popular detection medium in rare-event searches, liquid xenon, with a new, background-free material, graphene. In our baseline design of GraXe, a sphere made of graphene-coated titanium mesh and filled with liquid xenon (LXe) enriched in the Xe-136 isotope is immersed in a large volume of natural LXe instrumented with photodetectors. Liquid xenon is an excellent scintillator, reasonably transparent to its own light. Graphene is transparent over a large frequency range, and impermeable to the xenon. Event position could be deduced from the light pattern detected in the photosensors. External backgrounds would be shielded by the buffer of natural LXe, leaving the ultra-radiopure internal volume virtually free of background. Industrial graphene can be manufactured at a competitive cost to produce the sphere. Enriching xenon in the isotope Xe-136 is easy and relatively cheap, and there is already near one ton of enriched xenon available in the world (currently being used by the EXO, KamLAND-Zen and NEXT experiments). All the cryogenic know-how is readily available from the numerous experiments using liquid xenon. An experiment using the GraXe concept appears realistic and affordable in a short time scale, and its physics potential is enormous.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables. Several typos and a reference corrected. Version accepted for publication in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (JCAP

Requirements on collider data to match the precision of WMAP on supersymmetric dark matter

If future colliders discover supersymmetric particles and probe their properties, one could predict the dark matter density of the Universe and would constrain cosmology with the help of precision data provided by WMAP and PLANCK. We investigate how well the relic density can be predicted in minimal supergravity (mSUGRA), with and without the assumption of mSUGRA when analysing data. We determine the parameters to which the relic density is most sensitive, and quantify the collider accuracy needed. Theoretical errors in the prediction are investigated in some detail.Comment: 42 pages, 16 figures. v2 incorporates referee's comments: minor corrections/clarifications with additional figures to show regions of m12-m0 plane considere

The Library of Babel: On the origin of gravitational thermodynamics

We show that heavy pure states of gravity can appear to be mixed states to almost all probes. For AdS_5 Schwarzschild black holes, our arguments are made using the field theory dual to string theory in such spacetimes. Our results follow from applying information theoretic notions to field theory operators capable of describing very heavy states in gravity. For half-BPS states of the theory which are incipient black holes, our account is exact: typical microstates are described in gravity by a spacetime ``foam'', the precise details of which are almost invisible to almost all probes. We show that universal low-energy effective description of a foam of given global charges is via certain singular spacetime geometries. When one of the specified charges is the number of D-branes, the effective singular geometry is the half-BPS ``superstar''. We propose this as the general mechanism by which the effective thermodynamic character of gravity emerges.Comment: LaTeX, 6 eps figures, uses young.sty and wick.sty; Version 2: typos corrected, minor rewordings and clarifications, references adde