The Katz-Francis scale of attitude toward Judaism : internal consistency reliability and construct validity among female undergraduate students in Israel

The Katz-Francis Scale of Attitude toward Judaism was developed to extend to the Jewish community a growing body of international research concerned to map the correlates, antecedents, and consequences of individual differences in attitude toward religion as assessed by the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity. The internal consistency reliability and construct validity of the Katz-Francis Scale of Attitude toward Judaism were supported by data provided by 284 Hebrew-speaking female undergraduate students attending Bar-Ilan University. This instrument is commended for application in further research

Ontogenetic trait variation influences tree community assembly across environmental gradients

Intraspecific trait variation is hypothesized to influence the relative importance of community assembly mechanisms. However, few studies have explicitly considered how intraspecific trait variation among ontogenetic stages influences community assembly across environmental gradients. Because the relative importance of abiotic and biotic assembly mechanisms can differ among ontogenetic stages within and across environments, ontogenetic trait variation may have an important influence on patterns of functional diversity and inferred assembly mechanisms. We tested the hypothesis that variation in functional diversity across a topo-edaphic gradient differs among ontogenetic stages and that these patterns reflect a shift in the relative importance of different assembly mechanisms. In a temperate forest in the Missouri Ozarks, USA, we compared functional diversity of leaf size and specific leaf area (SLA) of 34 woody plant species at two ontogenetic stages (adults and saplings) to test predictions about how the relative importance of abiotic and biotic filtering changes among adult and sapling communities. Local communities of adults had lower mean SLA and lower functional dispersion of SLA than expected by chance, particularly at the resource-limited end of the topo-edaphic gradient, suggesting an important role for abiotic filtering among co-occurring adults. In contrast, local communities of saplings often had higher functional dispersion of leaf size and SLA than expected by chance regardless of their location along the topo-edaphic gradient, suggesting an important role for biotic filtering among co-occurring saplings. Moreover, the overall strength of trait-environment relationships varied between saplings and adults for both leaf traits, generally resulting in stronger environmental shifts in mean trait values and trait dispersion for adults relative to saplings. Our results illustrate how community assembly mechanisms may shift in their relative importance during ontogeny, leading to variable patterns of functional diversity across environmental gradients. Moreover, our results highlight the importance of integrating ontogeny, an important axis of intraspecific trait variability, into approaches that use plant functional traits to understand community assembly and species coexistence

Surface nanoscale axial photonics: Robust fabrication of high quality factor microresonators

Recently introduced Surface Nanoscale Axial Photonics (SNAP) makes it possible to fabricate high Q-factor microresonators and other photonic microdevices by dramatically small deformation of the optical fiber surface. To become a practical and robust technology, the SNAP platform requires methods enabling reproducible modification of the optical fiber radius at nanoscale. In this Letter, we demonstrate super-accurate fabrication of high Q-factor microresonators by nanoscale modification of the optical fiber radius and refractive index using the CO2 laser and the UV excimer laser beam exposures. The achieved fabrication accuracy is better than 2 angstroms in variation of the effective fiber radius

A 100 mW monolithic Yb waveguide laser fabricated using the femtosecond laser direct-write technique

A femtosecond laser-written monolithic waveguide laser (WGL) oscillator based on a distributed feedback (DFB) architecture and fabricated in ytterbium doped phosphate glass is reported. The device lased at 1033 nm with an output power of 102 mW and a bandwidth less than 2 pm when bidirectionally pumped at 976 nm. The WGL device was stable and operated for 50 hours without degradation. This demonstration of a high performance WGL opens the possibility for creating a variety of narrow-linewidth laser designs in bulk glasses.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, submitted journal manuscrip

A Directly-Written Monolithic Waveguide-Laser Incorporating a DFB Waveguide-Bragg Grating

We report the fabrication and performance of the first C-band directly-written monolithic waveguide-laser. The waveguide-laser device was created in an Erbium and Ytterbium doped phosphate glass host and consisted of an optical waveguide that included a distributed feedback Bragg grating structure. The femtosecond laser direct-write technique was used to create both the waveguide and the waveguide-Bragg grating simultaneously and in a single processing step. The waveguide-laser was optically pumped at approximately 980 nm and lased at 1537nm with a bandwidth of less than 4 pm.Comment: 6 pages, 13 references, 4 figure

Nodular Fasciitis

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/135180/1/jum2014334565.pd

Sonography of Cat Scratch Disease

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/135329/1/jum2015343387.pd

Environmental significance of biocatalytic conversion of low grade oils

Studies dealing with the interactions between extremophilic microorganisms and crude oils have led to the identification of biocatalysts which through multiple biochemical reactions catalyze desulfurization, denitrogenation, and demetalation reactions in oils. Concurrently, the oils are also converted to lighter oils. These complex biochemical reactions have served as models in the development of the crude oil bioconversion technology to be applied prior to the treatment of oils by conventional chemical processes. In practical terms, this means that the efficiency of the existing technology is being enhanced. For example, the recently introduced additional regulation for the emission of nitrogen oxides in some states restricts further the kinds of oils that may be used in burners. The biocatalysts being developed in this laboratory selectively interact with nitrogen compounds, i.e. basic and neutral types present in the oil and, hence, affect the fuel NOx production. This, in turn, has a cost-efficient influence on the processed oils and their consumption. In this paper, these cost-efficient and beneficial effects will be discussed in terms of produced oils, the lowering of sulfur and nitrogen contents, and the effect on products, as well as the longevity of catalysts due to the removal of heteroatoms and metal containing compounds found in crudes

Implications For The Origin Of GRB 051103 From LIGO Observations

We present the results of a LIGO search for gravitational waves (GWs) associated with GRB 051103, a short-duration hard-spectrum gamma-ray burst (GRB) whose electromagnetically determined sky position is coincident with the spiral galaxy M81, which is 3.6 Mpc from Earth. Possible progenitors for short-hard GRBs include compact object mergers and soft gamma repeater (SGR) giant flares. A merger progenitor would produce a characteristic GW signal that should be detectable at the distance of M81, while GW emission from an SGR is not expected to be detectable at that distance. We found no evidence of a GW signal associated with GRB 051103. Assuming weakly beamed gamma-ray emission with a jet semi-angle of 30 deg we exclude a binary neutron star merger in M81 as the progenitor with a confidence of 98%. Neutron star-black hole mergers are excluded with > 99% confidence. If the event occurred in M81 our findings support the the hypothesis that GRB 051103 was due to an SGR giant flare, making it the most distant extragalactic magnetar observed to date.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures. For a repository of data used in the publication, go to: https://dcc.ligo.org/cgi-bin/DocDB/ShowDocument?docid=15166 . Also see the announcement for this paper on ligo.org at: http://www.ligo.org/science/Publication-GRB051103/index.ph

Swift follow-up observations of candidate gravitational-wave transient events

We present the first multi-wavelength follow-up observations of two candidate gravitational-wave (GW) transient events recorded by LIGO and Virgo in their 2009-2010 science run. The events were selected with low latency by the network of GW detectors and their candidate sky locations were observed by the Swift observatory. Image transient detection was used to analyze the collected electromagnetic data, which were found to be consistent with background. Off-line analysis of the GW data alone has also established that the selected GW events show no evidence of an astrophysical origin; one of them is consistent with background and the other one was a test, part of a "blind injection challenge". With this work we demonstrate the feasibility of rapid follow-ups of GW transients and establish the sensitivity improvement joint electromagnetic and GW observations could bring. This is a first step toward an electromagnetic follow-up program in the regime of routine detections with the advanced GW instruments expected within this decade. In that regime multi-wavelength observations will play a significant role in completing the astrophysical identification of GW sources. We present the methods and results from this first combined analysis and discuss its implications in terms of sensitivity for the present and future instruments.Comment: Submitted for publication 2012 May 25, accepted 2012 October 25, published 2012 November 21, in ApJS, 203, 28 ( http://stacks.iop.org/0067-0049/203/28 ); 14 pages, 3 figures, 6 tables; LIGO-P1100038; Science summary at http://www.ligo.org/science/Publication-S6LVSwift/index.php ; Public access area to figures, tables at https://dcc.ligo.org/cgi-bin/DocDB/ShowDocument?docid=p110003