Laser interferometer micrometer system

Laser micrometer measures dimensions of precision gyro and gas bearing parts using the principle of measuring light phase changes rather than a direct fringe count. The system uses light beams to eliminate errors due to deformations and surface irregularities, and three interferometers

Geffen Faculty Highlight Concerns Linking CAIM and Conventional Researchers at UCLA Symposium

David Geffen School of Medicine faculty, representing a wide range of disciplines, engaged speakers nationally known for their expertise on complementary, alternative and integrative medicine (CAIM) and its investigation at a January, 2008 symposium on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles. The forum was created to educate the UCLA Institutional Review Board (IRB), and lively participation by School of Medicine faculty helped bring IRB members up to speed on controversies surrounding CAIM research. The symposium demonstrated that academics who are neither proponents nor detractors of CAIM can facilitate cross talk between opposing camps, elucidating questions important to its evaluation by those charged with protecting research subjects. It also brought attention to the universality of quandaries facing CAIM investigators and to the ingenuity with which they have addressed many of them

Does woman + a network = career progression?

Question: I am an ambitious and talented junior manager who has recently been hired by FAB plc, a large multinational company. I am also a woman and, as part of my induction pack, have received an invitation to join FABFemmes - the in-company women's network. I don't think my gender has been an obstacle to my success thus far and so I don't really feel the need to join. But on the other hand I don't want to turn my back on something that might offer me a useful source of contacts to help me advance up the career ladder. What would be the best thing to do? - Ms Ambitious, UK

The Influence of Signaling Conspecific and Heterospecific Neighbors on Eavesdropper Pressure

The study of tradeoffs between the attraction of mates and the attraction of eavesdropping predators and parasites has generally focused on a single species of prey, signaling in isolation. In nature, however, animals often signal from mixed-species aggregations, where interactions with heterospecific group members may be an important mechanism modulating tradeoffs between sexual and natural selection, and thus driving signal evolution. Although studies have shown that conspecific signalers can influence eavesdropper pressure on mating signals, the effects of signaling heterospecifics on eavesdropper pressure, and on the balance between natural and sexual selection, are likely to be different. Here, we review the role of neighboring signalers in mediating changes in eavesdropper pressure, and present a simple model that explores how selection imposed by eavesdropping enemies varies as a function of a signaling aggregation\u27s species composition, the attractiveness of aggregation members to eavesdroppers, and the eavesdroppers\u27 preferences for different member types. This approach can be used to model mixed-species signaling aggregations, as well as same-species aggregations, including those with non-signaling individuals, such as satellites or females. We discuss the implications of our model for the evolution of signal structure, signaling behavior, mixed-species aggregations, and community dynamics

‘The Science of CAIM: What's Next for Complementary, Alternative and Integrative Medical Research?’

symposium on the future of complementary, alternative and integrative medical research featuring nationally recognized speakers. The symposium took place on the UCLA campus in late January and was targeted to the Geffen School of Medicine’s Institutional Review Board (IRB). Its purpose was to address the finding by th

Impacts of Scale on Geographic Analysis of Health Data: An Example of Obesity Prevalence

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Chromosomal G + C Content Evolution in Yeasts: Systematic Interspecies Differences, and GC-Poor Troughs at Centromeres

The G + C content at synonymous codon positions (GC3s) in genes varies along chromosomes in most eukaryotes. In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, regions of high GC3s are correlated with recombination hot spots, probably due to biased gene conversion. Here we examined how GC3s differs among groups of related yeast species in the Saccharomyces and Candida clades. The chromosomal locations of GC3s peaks and troughs are conserved among four Saccharomyces species, but we find that there have been highly consistent small shifts in their GC3s values. For instance, 84% of all S. cerevisiae genes have a lower GC3s value than their S. bayanus orthologs. There are extensive interspecies differences in the Candida clade both in the median value of GC3s (ranging from 22% to 49%) and in the variance of GC3s among genes. In three species—Candida lusitaniae, Pichia stipitis, and Yarrowia lipolytica—there is one region on each chromosome in which GC3s is markedly reduced. We propose that these GC-poor troughs indicate the positions of centromeres because in Y. lipolytica they coincide with the five experimentally identified centromeres. In P. stipitis, the troughs contain clusters of the retrotransposon Tps5. Likewise, in Debaryomyces hansenii, there is one cluster of the retrotransposon Tdh5 per chromosome, and all these clusters are located in GC-poor troughs. Locally reduced G + C content around centromeres is consistent with a model in which G + C content correlates with recombination rate, and recombination is suppressed around centromeres, although the troughs are unexpectedly wide (100–300 kb)