The behaviour of tobacco varieties in Western Australia

With the advent of a number of new varieties into the district, several problems have arisen, and this article is being written in an endeavour to set down just what is known of the varieties being tested. In order to make definite recommendations regarding a certain variety of tobacco, it requires to be tested under a wide range of soil and climatic conditions. To cover as wide a range of weather conditions as possible, the variety needs to be grown for three years before any real recommendation is warranted. To cover a wide range of soil types, trials have been conducted in several areas over the past two years and results are being accumulated

New approaches for estimating risk from exposure to diethylstilbestrol.

A subgroup from a National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, workshop concerned with characterizing the effects of endocrine disruptors on human health at environmental exposure levels considered the question, If diethylstilbestrol (DES) were introduced into the market for human use today and likely to result in low-dose exposure of the human fetus, what would be required to assess risk? On the basis of an analysis of the quality of data on human DES exposure, the critical times and doses for inducing genital tract malformations and cancer must be determined. This would be facilitated through analysis of the ontogeny of estrogen receptor expression in the developing human genital tract. Models of low-dose estrogenic effects will have to be developed for human and rodent genital tract development. Mouse models offer many advantages over other potential animal models because of the wealth of the earlier literature, the availability of sensitive end points, the availability of mutant lines, and the possibility of generating genetically engineered model systems. Through multidisciplinary approaches, it should be possible to elucidate the cellular and molecular mechanisms of endocrine disruption elicited by estrogens during development and facilitate an assessment of risk to humans

Demand-side Management Strategies and the Residential Sector: Lessons from International Experience

This paper explores demand side management (DSM) strategies, including both demand response and energy efficiency policies. The aim is to uncover what features might strengthen DSM effectiveness. We first look at key features of residential energy demand and the limits to energy indicators. We then turn to historical energy intensity trends in the sector which uncover its large untapped potential. A range of barriers to energy efficiency accounting for this gap are surveyed as well as a number of potential policy responses. This reveals the necessity of a portfolio approach with bundled strategies that simultaneously impact different parts of the market, enhance the strengths of individual measures while compensating for their weaknesses through the use of complementary policies. Evidence from the international experience, in Denmark, Germany, Japan, and US is reviewed. This helps us to contrast and shed some light on the UK experience. We conclude with an emphasis on the need for a holistic underpinning approach and the indentification of a number of attributes that reinforce DSM strategies.residential secto

Control of Silica Dust in Slate Milling Operations

The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) conducted a study to assess the present state of technology used for controlling employees\u27 respirable silica-bearing dust exposures during dimension slate milling operations. For this study, twelve slate milling operations were visited and various measurements were taken and observations made. These measurements and observations included exhaust and room airflow, types of enclosures, water usage, and building volumes for each of the milling processes. These mills usually employed between five and twenty people. From the study, general guidelines were developed from the best practices observed and can be used at the various sawing, splitting, trimming, and drilling operations throughout the industry

The quality of political information

The article conceptualizes the quality of political information and shows how the concept can be used for empirical research. I distinguish three aspects of quality (intelligibility, relevance, validity) and use them to judge the constituent foundations of political information, that is component claims (statements of alleged facts) and connection claims (argumentative statements created by causally linking two component claims). The resulting conceptual map thus entails six manifestations of information quality (component claimintelligibility, connection claim intelligibility, component claimrelevance, connection claim relevance, component claim validity, and connection claim validity). I explain how the conceptual map can be used to make sense of the eclectic variety of existing research, and how it can advance new empirical research, as a guide for determining variation in information quality, as a conceptual template for the analysis of different types of political messages and their common quality deficiencies, and as a generator of new research questions and theoretical expectations

A Single Antibody based ELISA for the N-terminal sequence of BAG-75, a New Biomarker for Bone Formation [abstract]

Biomedical Tissue Engineering, Biomaterials, & Medical Devices Poster SessionBone acidic glycoprotein-75 (BAG-75) is a secreted product of osteoblastic cells localized predominantly to areas of new bone formation. We have identified the N-terminal sequence of BAG-75 as LPVARYQNTEEEE and shown that anti-peptide antibodies against residues #3-13 only recognize the 75 kDa precursor and apparent 50 kDa fragment in serum and in osteoblastic cultures. Formation of the 50 kDa fragment is blocked by AEBSF, a serine protease inhibitor which we also showed blocks mineralization in osteoblastic cultures. Measurement of BAG-75 and its fragment concentration in serum represents a new method to estimate the rate of new bone formation in vivo. Our purpose was to establish an anti-VARYQNTEEEE peptide antibody based ELISA test to measure cross-reactive proteins released from bone into blood. Western blotting was performed using young rat serum from different ages, rats subjected to ovariectomy (OVX) or sham surgery, and normal human serum. Immunoreactive 50 kDa fragment peaked at 18 days after birth which parallels bone formation. Ovariectomized rats displayed a peak of 50 kDa immunoreactivty at 21 days after surgery which corresponds to a spike in bone formation in this model (~2.5-fold above controls). Comparable assays for osteocalcin showed only a 39% increase. Also, human serum contains a 50 kDa protein which cross-reacts with anti-VARYQNTEEEE antibodies. We then established a competitive 96-well ELISA using anti-peptide antibody and new sera at 21 days from ovariectomized or sham rats, a model for stimulated bone formation. VARYQNTEEEE peptide conjugated to keyhole limpet hemocyanin (KLH) was used as the bound antigen. KLH-peptide amount, primary antibody concentration, secondary antibody concentration, and blocking agent were optimized in a series of experiments. Optimal conditions were determined to be 2 µg input KLH-peptide per well, 1/5,000 dilution of primary anti-VARYQNTEEEE antibody, 1/10,000 dilution of secondary antibody, and gelatin as a blocking agent. Sera from OVX rats and sham-operated controls were compared to the standard curve (r = 0.9923) created with free KLH-peptide as competitor to determine the equivalent amount of KLH-peptide present. OVX sera (n=3) contained an average 2.6 x 10-4 (+/- 1.4 x 10-4) µg peptide equivalent versus 1.05 x 10-4 (+/- 0.68 x 10-4) µg for sham sera (n=3). The difference was not significant (t-test, p=0.157), however, doubling the sample size is predicted to yield significance. Conclusions: A. Cross-reactive 75 kDa and 50 kDa proteins are present in human and rat serum and increase in concentration when bone formation is stimulated. B. A new, single antibody based ELISA assay was established to quantitate antigen released from bone into blood. C. In contrast to other commercial bone formation assays (collagen peptides and osteocalcin), the size of cross-reactive protein (>50 kDa) should preclude kidney filtration and facilitate measurement. D. This serum biomarker undergoes a 2-3 fold average increase within 3 weeks after simulation of bone. This test may be useful to monitor the early response to stimulatory therapy in osteoporosis patients or to repressive glucocorticoid therapy in sarcoidosis patients. Currently, a 1% change in bone mineral density requires 12-18 months to detect by x-ray methods

Senior men's pacing profiles at the IAAF World Cross Country Championships.

The aim of this study was to describe pacing profiles used by senior men competing in the World Cross Country Championships. Lap times were collated for 1273 competitors across 10 races. Each individual's lap times were expressed as a percentage of the eventual winner's lap times, and athletes were grouped according to finishing position. Most athletes started the race by following the pace set by the leaders but slowed relative to the winner with each successive lap. The gold medallists were faster than the other medallists only after the final lap (P < 0.001). Most athletes who dropped out (61%) had completed the first lap within 105% of the winner's lap time. The medallists used a strategy of running close to the front from an early stage, but did not separate themselves from other top 15 finishers until halfway, with the eventual medal positions decided even closer to the finish. Athletes finishing further down had positive pacing profiles relative to the winner, possibly because of early fatigue caused by a relatively quick first lap. Athletes should note that a patient approach during the early stages can benefit not only the mass field but also those who aim to win a medal

Rubber friction: role of the flash temperature

When a rubber block is sliding on a hard rough substrate, the substrate asperities will exert time-dependent deformations of the rubber surface resulting in viscoelastic energy dissipation in the rubber, which gives a contribution to the sliding friction. Most surfaces of solids have roughness on many different length scales, and when calculating the friction force it is necessary to include the viscoelastic deformations on all length scales. The energy dissipation will result in local heating of the rubber. Since the viscoelastic properties of rubber-like materials are extremely strongly temperature dependent, it is necessary to include the local temperature increase in the analysis. At very low sliding velocity the temperature increase is negligible because of heat diffusion, but already for velocities of order 0.01 m/s the local heating may be very important. Here I study the influence of the local heating on the rubber friction, and I show that in a typical case the temperature increase results in a decrease in rubber friction with increasing sliding velocity for v > 0.01 m/s. This may result in stick-slip instabilities, and is of crucial importance in many practical applications, e.g., for the tire-road friction, and in particular for ABS-breaking systems.Comment: 22 pages, 27 figure

Source Mechanism of Small Long-Period Events at Mount St. Helens in July 2005 Using Template Matching, Phase-Weighted Stacking, and Full-Waveform Inversion

Long-period (LP, 0.5-5 Hz) seismicity, observed at volcanoes worldwide, is a recognized signature of unrest and eruption. Cyclic LP “drumbeating” was the characteristic seismicity accompanying the sustained dome-building phase of the 2004–2008 eruption of Mount St. Helens (MSH), WA. However, together with the LP drumbeating was a near-continuous, randomly occurring series of tiny LP seismic events (LP “subevents”), which may hold important additional information on the mechanism of seismogenesis at restless volcanoes. We employ template matching, phase-weighted stacking, and full-waveform inversion to image the source mechanism of one multiplet of these LP subevents at MSH in July 2005. The signal-to-noise ratios of the individual events are too low to produce reliable waveform inversion results, but the events are repetitive and can be stacked. We apply network-based template matching to 8 days of continuous velocity waveform data from 29 June to 7 July 2005 using a master event to detect 822 network triggers. We stack waveforms for 359 high-quality triggers at each station and component, using a combination of linear and phase-weighted stacking to produce clean stacks for use in waveform inversion. The derived source mechanism points to the volumetric oscillation (∼10 m3) of a subhorizontal crack located at shallow depth (∼30 m) in an area to the south of Crater Glacier in the southern portion of the breached MSH crater. A possible excitation mechanism is the sudden condensation of metastable steam from a shallow pressurized hydrothermal system as it encounters cool meteoric water in the outer parts of the edifice, perhaps supplied from snow melt

Wave functions and properties of massive states in three-dimensional supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory

We apply supersymmetric discrete light-cone quantization (SDLCQ) to the study of supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory on R x S^1 x S^1. One of the compact directions is chosen to be light-like and the other to be space-like. Since the SDLCQ regularization explicitly preserves supersymmetry, this theory is totally finite, and thus we can solve for bound-state wave functions and masses numerically without renormalizing. We present an overview of all the massive states of this theory, and we see that the spectrum divides into two distinct and disjoint sectors. In one sector the SDLCQ approximation is only valid up to intermediate coupling. There we find a well defined and well behaved set of states, and we present a detailed analysis of these states and their properties. In the other sector, which contains a completely different set of states, we present a much more limited analysis for strong coupling only. We find that, while these state have a well defined spectrum, their masses grow with the transverse momentum cutoff. We present an overview of these states and their properties.Comment: RevTeX, 25 pages, 16 figure