Henrik Ibsen and Thomas Hardy : a sociological comparison

Although much has been written about the plays of Henrik Ibsen and the novels of Thomas Hardy, there have been no notable comparisons of the works of the two men, perhaps because they wrote in the two different media. Another possible explanation is the fact that Ibsen is universally regarded as the father of modern drama, but Hardy\u27s status-whether he is the last Victorian novelist or the first modern one-is disputed. It is the purpose of this paper to demonstrate, by comparison, that Hardy should very definitely be classed with the modern, realistic writers. The final Chapter of this paper will draw together the ideas which may be logically concluded from the comparison of Ibsen and Hardy from a sociological point of view. The view was chosen because it provided the best way of demonstrating the modernity of Thomas Hardy, who should be considered not only as a great novelist but also as one of the leaders in the movement away from hypocrisy and toward realism in literature

Infrared and Raman spectroscopic studies of structural variations in minerals from Apollo 11, 12, 14 and 15 samples, volume 3

Infrared and Raman vibrational spectroscopic data, yielding direct information on molecular structure, were obtained for single grains ( 150 microns) of minerals, basalts, and glasses isolated from Apollo 11, 12, 14, and 15 rock and dust samples, and for grains in Apollo 14 polished butt samples. From the vibrational data, specification substitutions were determined for the predominant silicate minerals of plagioclase, pyroxene, and olivine. Unique spectral variations for grains of K-feldspar, orthopyroxene, pyroxenoid, and ilmenite were observed to exceed the ranges of terrestrial samples, and these variations may be correlatable with formation histories. Alpha-quartz was isolated as pure single grains, in granitic grains composited with sanidine, and in unique grains that were intimately mixed with varying amounts of glass. Accessory minerals of chromite and ulvospinel were isolated as pure grains and structurally characterized from their distinctive infrared spectra. Fundamental vibrations of the SiO4 tetrahedra in silicate minerals were used to classify bulk compositions in dust sieved fractions, basalt grains and glass particles, and to compare modal characteristics for maria, highland and rille samples. No hydrated minerals were found in any of the samples studied, indicating anhydrous formation conditions

Evaluation of rate law approximations in bottom-up kinetic models of metabolism.

BackgroundThe mechanistic description of enzyme kinetics in a dynamic model of metabolism requires specifying the numerical values of a large number of kinetic parameters. The parameterization challenge is often addressed through the use of simplifying approximations to form reaction rate laws with reduced numbers of parameters. Whether such simplified models can reproduce dynamic characteristics of the full system is an important question.ResultsIn this work, we compared the local transient response properties of dynamic models constructed using rate laws with varying levels of approximation. These approximate rate laws were: 1) a Michaelis-Menten rate law with measured enzyme parameters, 2) a Michaelis-Menten rate law with approximated parameters, using the convenience kinetics convention, 3) a thermodynamic rate law resulting from a metabolite saturation assumption, and 4) a pure chemical reaction mass action rate law that removes the role of the enzyme from the reaction kinetics. We utilized in vivo data for the human red blood cell to compare the effect of rate law choices against the backdrop of physiological flux and concentration differences. We found that the Michaelis-Menten rate law with measured enzyme parameters yields an excellent approximation of the full system dynamics, while other assumptions cause greater discrepancies in system dynamic behavior. However, iteratively replacing mechanistic rate laws with approximations resulted in a model that retains a high correlation with the true model behavior. Investigating this consistency, we determined that the order of magnitude differences among fluxes and concentrations in the network were greatly influential on the network dynamics. We further identified reaction features such as thermodynamic reversibility, high substrate concentration, and lack of allosteric regulation, which make certain reactions more suitable for rate law approximations.ConclusionsOverall, our work generally supports the use of approximate rate laws when building large scale kinetic models, due to the key role that physiologically meaningful flux and concentration ranges play in determining network dynamics. However, we also showed that detailed mechanistic models show a clear benefit in prediction accuracy when data is available. The work here should help to provide guidance to future kinetic modeling efforts on the choice of rate law and parameterization approaches

Structural identifiability of dynamic systems biology models

22 páginas, 5 figuras, 2 tablas.-- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.A powerful way of gaining insight into biological systems is by creating a nonlinear differential equation model, which usually contains many unknown parameters. Such a model is called structurally identifiable if it is possible to determine the values of its parameters from measurements of the model outputs. Structural identifiability is a prerequisite for parameter estimation, and should be assessed before exploiting a model. However, this analysis is seldom performed due to the high computational cost involved in the necessary symbolic calculations, which quickly becomes prohibitive as the problem size increases. In this paper we show how to analyse the structural identifiability of a very general class of nonlinear models by extending methods originally developed for studying observability. We present results about models whose identifiability had not been previously determined, report unidentifiabilities that had not been found before, and show how to modify those unidentifiable models to make them identifiable. This method helps prevent problems caused by lack of identifiability analysis, which can compromise the success of tasks such as experiment design, parameter estimation, and model-based optimization. The procedure is called STRIKE-GOLDD (STRuctural Identifiability taKen as Extended-Generalized Observability with Lie Derivatives and Decomposition), and it is implemented in a MATLAB toolbox which is available as open source software. The broad applicability of this approach facilitates the analysis of the increasingly complex models used in systems biology and other areasAFV acknowledges funding from the Galician government (Xunta de Galiza, Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Ordenación Universitaria http://www.edu.xunta.es/portal/taxonomy/term/206) through the I2C postdoctoral program, fellowship ED481B2014/133-0. AB and AFV were partially supported by grant DPI2013-47100-C2-2-P from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO). AFV acknowledges additional funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 686282 (CanPathPro). AP was partially supported through EPSRC projects EP/M002454/1 and EP/J012041/1.Peer reviewe

Headwater Influences on Downstream Water Quality

We investigated the influence of riparian and whole watershed land use as a function of stream size on surface water chemistry and assessed regional variation in these relationships. Sixty-eight watersheds in four level III U.S. EPA ecoregions in eastern Kansas were selected as study sites. Riparian land cover and watershed land use were quantified for the entire watershed, and by Strahler order. Multiple regression analyses using riparian land cover classifications as independent variables explained among-site variation in water chemistry parameters, particularly total nitrogen (41%), nitrate (61%), and total phosphorus (63%) concentrations. Whole watershed land use explained slightly less variance, but riparian and whole watershed land use were so tightly correlated that it was difficult to separate their effects. Water chemistry parameters sampled in downstream reaches were most closely correlated with riparian land cover adjacent to the smallest (first-order) streams of watersheds or land use in the entire watershed, with riparian zones immediately upstream of sampling sites offering less explanatory power as stream size increased. Interestingly, headwater effects were evident even at times when these small streams were unlikely to be flowing. Relationships were similar among ecoregions, indicating that land use characteristics were most responsible for water quality variation among watersheds. These findings suggest that nonpoint pollution control strategies should consider the influence of small upland streams and protection of downstream riparian zones alone is not sufficient to protect water quality

Prime Focus Spectrograph - Subaru's future -

The Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS) of the Subaru Measurement of Images and Redshifts (SuMIRe) project has been endorsed by Japanese community as one of the main future instruments of the Subaru 8.2-meter telescope at Mauna Kea, Hawaii. This optical/near-infrared multi-fiber spectrograph targets cosmology with galaxy surveys, Galactic archaeology, and studies of galaxy/AGN evolution. Taking advantage of Subaru's wide field of view, which is further extended with the recently completed Wide Field Corrector, PFS will enable us to carry out multi-fiber spectroscopy of 2400 targets within 1.3 degree diameter. A microlens is attached at each fiber entrance for F-ratio transformation into a larger one so that difficulties of spectrograph design are eased. Fibers are accurately placed onto target positions by positioners, each of which consists of two stages of piezo-electric rotary motors, through iterations by using back-illuminated fiber position measurements with a wide-field metrology camera. Fibers then carry light to a set of four identical fast-Schmidt spectrographs with three color arms each: the wavelength ranges from 0.38 {\mu}m to 1.3 {\mu}m will be simultaneously observed with an average resolving power of 3000. Before and during the era of extremely large telescopes, PFS will provide the unique capability of obtaining spectra of 2400 cosmological/astrophysical targets simultaneously with an 8-10 meter class telescope. The PFS collaboration, led by IPMU, consists of USP/LNA in Brazil, Caltech/JPL, Princeton, & JHU in USA, LAM in France, ASIAA in Taiwan, and NAOJ/Subaru.Comment: 13 pages, 11 figures, submitted to "Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy IV, Ian S. McLean, Suzanne K. Ramsay, Hideki Takami, Editors, Proc. SPIE 8446 (2012)