The APS Control System Network Upgrade

When it was installed,the Advanced Photon Source (APS) control system network was at the state-of-the-art. Different aspects of the system have been reported at previous meetings [1,2]. As loads on the controls network have increased due to newer and faster workstations and front-end computers, we have found performance of the system declining and have implemented an upgraded network. There have been dramatic advances in networking hardware in the last several years. The upgraded APS controls network replaces the original FDDI backbone and shared Ethernet hubs with redundant gigabit uplinks and fully switched 10/100 Ethernet switches with backplane fabrics in excess of 20 Gbits/s (Gbps). The central collapsed backbone FDDI concentrator has been replaced with a Gigabit Ethernet switch with greater than 30 Gbps backplane fabric. Full redundancy of the system has been maintained. This paper will discuss this upgrade and include performance data and performance comparisons with the original network

Decision-making: initiating insulin therapy for adults with diabetes

<b>AIM:</b> This paper is a report of a study to describe nurses' perceptions of decision-making and the evidence base for the initiation of insulin therapy. <b>BACKGROUND:</b> Several theoretical perspectives and professional's attributes underpin decision-making to commence insulin therapy. The management of type 2 diabetes is moving from secondary to primary care and this affects how clinical decisions are made, by whom and the evidence base for these decisions. <b>METHOD:</b> A postal survey was conducted with a stratified sample of 3478 Diabetes Specialist Nurses and Practice Nurses with a special interest in diabetes across the four countries of the United Kingdom. A total of 1310 valid responses were returned, giving a response rate of 37.7%. The questionnaire was designed for the study and pilot-tested before use. Responses were given using Likert-type scales. Data were collected during 2005 and 2006, and one reminder was sent. <b>RESULTS:</b> People with diabetes are seen as having little influence in decision-making. Consultant physicians appear to be influential in most decisions, and the nursing groups held varying perceptions of who made clinical decisions. Nurses' identified different responsibilities for those working solely in secondary care from those working in both community and secondary care. Practice nurses were not as involved as anticipated. <b>CONCLUSION:</b> Nurses working with people with diabetes need to encourage them to become more active partners in care. Clinical guidelines can assist in decision-making where nurses are least experienced in initiating insulin therapy

Why the idea of framework propositions cannot contribute to an understanding of delusions

One of the tasks that recent philosophy of psychiatry has taken upon itself is to extend the range of understanding to some of those aspects of psychopathology that Jaspers deemed beyond its limits. Given the fundamental difficulties of offering a literal interpretation of the contents of primary delusions, a number of alternative strategies have been put forward including regarding them as abnormal versions of framework propositions described by Wittgenstein in On Certainty. But although framework propositions share some of the apparent epistemic features of primary delusions, their role in partially constituting the sense of inquiry rules out their role in helping to understand delusions

Factors affecting ammonium uptake in streams - an inter-biome perspective

The Lotic Intersite Nitrogen experiment (LINX) was a coordinated study of the relationships between North American biomes and factors governing ammonium uptake in streams. Our objective was to relate inter-biome variability of ammonium uptake to physical, chemical and biological processes. 2. Data were collected from 11 streams ranging from arctic to tropical and from desert to rainforest. Measurements at each site included physical, hydraulic and chemical characteristics, biological parameters, whole-stream metabolism and ammonium uptake. Ammonium uptake was measured by injection of \u275~-ammonium and downstream measurements of 15N-ammonium concentration. 3. We found no general, statistically significant relationships that explained the variability in ammonium uptake among sites. However, this approach does not account for the multiple mechanisms of ammonium uptake in streams. When we estimated biological demand for inorganic nitrogen based on our measurements of in-stream metabolism, we found good correspondence between calculated nitrogen demand and measured assimilative nitrogen uptake. 4. Nitrogen uptake varied little among sites, reflecting metabolic compensation in streams in a variety of distinctly different biomes (autotrophic production is high where allochthonous inputs are relatively low and vice versa). 5. Both autotrophic and heterotrophic metabolism require nitrogen and these biotic processes dominate inorganic nitrogen retention in streams. Factors that affect the relative balance of autotrophic and heterotrophic metabolism indirectly control inorganic nitrogen uptake

Standing in a Garden of Forking Paths

According to the Path Principle, it is permissible to expand your set of beliefs iff (and because) the evidence you possess provides adequate support for such beliefs. If there is no path from here to there, you cannot add a belief to your belief set. If some thinker with the same type of evidential support has a path that they can take, so do you. The paths exist because of the evidence you possess and the support it provides. Evidential support grounds propositional justification. The principle is mistaken. There are permissible steps you may take that others may not even if you have the very same evidence. There are permissible steps that you cannot take that others can even if your beliefs receive the same type of evidential support. Because we have to assume almost nothing about the nature of evidential support to establish these results, we should reject evidentialism

Macrosystems ecology: Understanding ecological patterns and processes at continental scales

Macrosystems ecology is the study of diverse ecological phenomena at the scale of regions to continents and their interactions with phenomena at other scales. This emerging subdiscipline addresses ecological questions and environmental problems at these broad scales. Here, we describe this new field, show how it relates to modern ecological study, and highlight opportunities that stem from taking a macrosystems perspective. We present a hierarchical framework for investigating macrosystems at any level of ecological organization and in relation to broader and finer scales. Building on well-established theory and concepts from other subdisciplines of ecology, we identify feedbacks, linkages among distant regions, and interactions that cross scales of space and time as the most likely sources of unexpected and novel behaviors in macrosystems. We present three examples that highlight the importance of this multiscaled systems perspective for understanding the ecology of regions to continents

Net neutrality discourses: comparing advocacy and regulatory arguments in the United States and the United Kingdom

Telecommunications policy issues rarely make news, much less mobilize thousands of people. Yet this has been occurring in the United States around efforts to introduce "Net neutrality" regulation. A similar grassroots mobilization has not developed in the United Kingdom or elsewhere in Europe. We develop a comparative analysis of U.S. and UK Net neutrality debates with an eye toward identifying the arguments for and against regulation, how those arguments differ between the countries, and what the implications of those differences are for the Internet. Drawing on mass media, advocacy, and regulatory discourses, we find that local regulatory precedents as well as cultural factors contribute to both agenda setting and framing of Net neutrality. The differences between national discourses provide a way to understand both the structural differences between regulatory cultures and the substantive differences between policy interpretations, both of which must be reconciled for the Internet to continue to thrive as a global medium

Net neutrality discourses: comparing advocacy and regulatory arguments in the United States and the United Kingdom

Telecommunications policy issues rarely make news, much less mobilize thousands of people. Yet this has been occurring in the United States around efforts to introduce "Net neutrality" regulation. A similar grassroots mobilization has not developed in the United Kingdom or elsewhere in Europe. We develop a comparative analysis of U.S. and UK Net neutrality debates with an eye toward identifying the arguments for and against regulation, how those arguments differ between the countries, and what the implications of those differences are for the Internet. Drawing on mass media, advocacy, and regulatory discourses, we find that local regulatory precedents as well as cultural factors contribute to both agenda setting and framing of Net neutrality. The differences between national discourses provide a way to understand both the structural differences between regulatory cultures and the substantive differences between policy interpretations, both of which must be reconciled for the Internet to continue to thrive as a global medium

The Opportunistic Pathogen Propionibacterium acnes: Insights into Typing, Human Disease, Clonal Diversification and CAMP Factor Evolution

We previously described a Multilocus Sequence Typing (MLST) scheme based on eight genes that facilitates population genetic and evolutionary analysis of P. acnes. While MLST is a portable method for unambiguous typing of bacteria, it is expensive and labour intensive. Against this background, we now describe a refined version of this scheme based on two housekeeping (aroE; guaA) and two putative virulence (tly; camp2) genes (MLST4) that correctly predicted the phylogroup (IA1, IA2, IB, IC, II, III), clonal complex (CC) and sequence type (ST) (novel or described) status for 91% isolates (n = 372) via cross-referencing of the four gene allelic profiles to the full eight gene versions available in the MLST database (http:// pubmlst.org/pacnes/). Even in the small number of cases where specific STs were not completely resolved, the MLST4 method still correctly determined phylogroup and CC membership. Examination of nucleotide changes within all the MLST loci provides evidence that point mutations generate new alleles approximately 1.5 times as frequently as recombination; although the latter still plays an important role in the bacterium’s evolution. The secreted/cell-associated ‘virulence’ factors tly and camp2 show no clear evidence of episodic or pervasive positive selection and have diversified at a rate similar to housekeeping loci. The co-evolution of these genes with the core genome might also indicate a role in commensal/normal existence constraining their diversity and preventing their loss from the P. acnes population. The possibility that members of the expanded CAMP factor protein family, including camp2, may have been lost from other propionibacteria, but not P. acnes, would further argue for a possible role in niche/host adaption leading to their retention within the genome. These evolutionary insights may prove important for discussions surrounding camp2 as an immunotherapy target for acne, and the effect such treatments may have on commensal lineages