Is Small Beautiful? The Position of Independent Scholarly Publishers in an Environment of Rapid Industry Consolidation

The publishing industry continues to consolidate, with large multinational publishers acquiring journals and other content from academic societies and independent publishers. This panel provided candid insights into the challenges facing smaller publishers, including how/why they continue to exist in a business environment increasingly dominated by large companies. The discussion examined the advantages that smaller, independent publishers enjoy and addressed their adaptation strategies, business planning (including open versus paid access models), strategic partnerships, technical infrastructure, production procedures, relationships with libraries, and the work needed to meet the evolving needs of library end users. The impact of industry consolidation on libraries, including that of the intermediaries between publishers and libraries, was also discussed. The panel included speakers from humanities, social science, and science publishers who provided a range of perspectives from across the disciplines

STB-White

The final design of a hypersonic, SCRAMjet research aircraft, which is to be dropped from a carrier plane, is considered. Topics such as propulsion systems, aerodynamics, component weight analysis, and aircraft design with waverider analyses are stressed with smaller emphasis placed on aircraft systems such as cockpit design and landing gear configurations. Propulsion systems include analysis of the turbofanramjet for acceleration to low hypersonic speed (Mach 6.0) and analysis of the SCRAMjets themselves to carry the aircraft to Mach 10.0. Both analyses include the use of liquid hydrogen as fuel. Inlet design for both propulsion systems is analyzed as well. Aerodynamic properties are found using empirical and theoretical formulas for lift and drag on delta-wing aircraft. The aircraft design involves the integration of all preliminary studies into a modified waverider configuration

Precision cancer monitoring using a novel, fully integrated, microfluidic array partitioning digital PCR platform.

A novel digital PCR (dPCR) platform combining off-the-shelf reagents, a micro-molded plastic microfluidic consumable with a fully integrated single dPCR instrument was developed to address the needs for routine clinical diagnostics. This new platform offers a simplified workflow that enables: rapid time-to-answer; low potential for cross contamination; minimal sample waste; all within a single integrated instrument. Here we showcase the capability of this fully integrated platform to detect and quantify non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) rare genetic mutants (EGFR T790M) with precision cell-free DNA (cfDNA) standards. Next, we validated the platform with an established chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) fusion gene (BCR-ABL1) assay down to 0.01% mutant allele frequency to highlight the platform's utility for precision cancer monitoring. Thirdly, using a juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia (JMML) patient-specific assay we demonstrate the ability to precisely track an individual cancer patient's response to therapy and show the patient's achievement of complete molecular remission. These three applications highlight the flexibility and utility of this novel fully integrated dPCR platform that has the potential to transform personalized medicine for cancer recurrence monitoring

Estimating nearshore bedform amplitudes with altimeters

Author Posting. © The Authors, 2005. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Elsevier B. V. for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Marine Geology 216 (2005): 51-57, doi:10.1016/j.margeo.2005.01.005.Estimates of the heights of large (0.1-0.4 m heights and 1-10 m horizontal lengths) migrating bedforms on a sandy beach made with fixed, single-point altimeters are similar to heights estimated from profiles across the bedforms made with altimeters mounted on an amphibious vehicle that traversed the surf zone. Unlike many profiling systems, the robust, fixed altimeters can measure bedforms in bubbly, sediment-laden surfzone waters nearly continuously, including during storms, thus allowing investigation of the relationships between bedform heights and near-bottom velocities to be extended to a wide range of wave conditions. The fixed-altimeter observations of migrating bedforms suggest a sandy surfzone seafloor is not always smooth during energetic conditions with strong mean currents and large wave-orbital velocities.Funding was provided by the Office of Naval Research, the Army Research Office, the National Research Council, and the National Science Foundation

Ground-truthing AVIRIS mineral mapping at Cuprite, Nevada

Mineral abundance maps of 18 minerals were made of the Cuprite Mining District using 1990 AVIRIS data and the Multiple Spectral Feature Mapping Algorithm (MSFMA) as discussed in Clark et al. This technique uses least-squares fitting between a scaled laboratory reference spectrum and ground calibrated AVIRIS data for each pixel. Multiple spectral features can be fitted for each mineral and an unlimited number of minerals can be mapped simultaneously. Quality of fit and depth from continuum numbers for each mineral are calculated for each pixel and the results displayed as a multicolor image

Hydrogen peroxide generation by mitochondria isolated from regionally ischemic and nonischemic dog myocardium

We occluded the left anterior descending coronary artery of anesthetized, open-chest dogs, for 1 or 2 h. Some hearts were reperfused for 1 h after 1 h of ischemia. We isolated mitochondria from the central ischemic zone (CIZ) and a surrounding nonischemic zone (NIZ) of the left ventricle, and assayed H 2 O 2 production using a horseradish peroxidase-dual wavelength spectrophotometric technique. Mitochondria, studied in the absence of exogenous respiratory chain inhibitors, generated H 2 O 2 during State 4 respiration with succinate as the substrate. NIZ mitochondria in all groups produced ca. 1.5 nmols H 2 O 2 /min/mg protein (no significant differences between groups). The State 4 O 2 consumption rates of NIZ mitochondria from hearts subjected to 1 h ischemia plus reperfusion, or 2 h of ischemia (ca. 30 nmols/min/mg) were significantly higher than that of NIZ mitochondria of hearts subjected to only 1 h of ischemia (23 nmols/min/mg). Thus, the ratio between H 2 O 2 produced and State 4 O 2 consumption fell from 6.5% to 5%. Mitochondria from all CIZ samples had State 4 O 2 consumption rates that were not different from corresponding NIZ values. However CIZ mitochondria of hearts subjected to 1 h ischemia without reperfusion produced less H 2 O 2 (1.1±0.1 nmols/min/mg), and had a slightly reduced H 2 O 2 /O 2 ratio (4.4±0.7%), compared with their NIZ samples (1.5±0.1 nmols/min/mg; 5.3%). Reperfusion after 1 h of ischemia abolished these regional differences. The CIZ mitochondria from hearts subjected to 2 h ischemia produced only 0.75±0.22 nmols H 2 O 2 /min/mg (2.5% of State 4 O 2 consumption). These values were 50% of corresponding NIZ values, and were significantly less than for any other group or tissue region. If similar phenomena occur in conscious animals subjected to incomplete regional ischemia, especially of relatively brief duration or if accompanied by reduced intracellular defenses against oxidants such as H 2 O 2 , they suggest that mitochondria persist as H 2 O 2 sources and so may contribute to the oxidant load and myocardial dysfunction.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/41749/1/395_2005_Article_BF01907125.pd

The GENIE Neutrino Monte Carlo Generator: Physics and User Manual

GENIE is a suite of products for the experimental neutrino physics community. This suite includes i) a modern software framework for implementing neutrino event generators, a state-of-the-art comprehensive physics model and tools to support neutrino interaction simulation for realistic experimental setups (the Generator product), ii) extensive archives of neutrino, charged-lepton and hadron scattering data and software to produce a comprehensive set of data/MC comparisons (the Comparisons product), and iii) a generator tuning framework and fitting applications (the Tuning product). This book provides the definite guide for the GENIE Generator: It presents the software architecture and a detailed description of its physics model and official tunes. In addition, it provides a rich set of data/MC comparisons that characterise the physics performance of GENIE. Detailed step-by-step instructions on how to install and configure the Generator, run its applications and analyze its outputs are also included

“Be patient, dear mother … wait for me”: the neo-infirmity film, female illness and contemporary cinema

In social reality, illness and death occur in myriad ways, yet Hollywood films have historically preferred spectacular, violent death over realist depictions of the terminal stages of life. Yet an ever-growing number of popular films, which I term neo-infirmity films, incorporate episodes of women characters debilitated by illness or injury. Operating at the intersection of melodrama and realism, the scenes are instrumental in staging contemporary cinema's gender politics. I argue that women's deathbed and hospital-bed scenes in contemporary cinema validate anew the maternal role and the figure of the mother, transporting the woman-centered discursive space of melodrama into narrative terrain often hostile to women's presence. Through this relocation, the films emphasize her importance to sons in particular (and less often to daughters, husbands, and the larger family unit). Many such scenes simultaneously undermine women's agency, reducing mothers to principally symbolic, literally immobile roles. Ailing women can become catalysts for male psychological transformation occurring through grief, action, or both in combination. In all, such scenes speak to continued ambivalence surrounding women's representation in popular cinema, and to continued patrolling of the boundaries of female power. This essay compares selected texts from contemporary Hollywood cinema, alongside three parallel discourses that also deploy melodramatic modes of articulation: nonfiction amateur video as relayed via television news programs, international art cinema, and US independent cinema. Arguing for homologies across multiple fields of textual production, I seek through this comparison to generate insights into the cultural work done by filmic representation

High-redshift clusters from NVSS: The TexOx Cluster (TOC) Survey

The TexOx Cluster (TOC) Survey uses overdensities of radiosources in the NVSS to trace clusters of galaxies. The links between radiosources and rich environments make this a powerful way to find clusters which may potentially be overlooked by other selection techniques. By including constraints from optical surveys, TOC is an extremely efficient way to find clusters at high redshift. One such field, TOC J0233.3+3021, contains at least one galaxy cluster (at z ~ 1.4) and has been detected using the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect. Even in targetted deep optical observations, however, distinguishing the cluster galaxies from the background is difficult, especially given the tendency of TOC to select fields containing multiple structures at different redshifts.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures. To appear in the proceedings of the conference "Radio Galaxies: Past, present and future", Leiden, 11-15 Nov 2002, eds. M. Jarvis et a