A Comparison of Small and Large Business Managers' Attitudes Toward Innovation and the Role of Government in Promoting Technology

House  Resolution  820 calls for   the establishment  of  technology  partnerships,  funded by  the federal    government,   designed   specifically   to  improve   small   businesses  access  to technology.   However, government-industry partnerships  have been criticized for  creating a government-assisted organization to compete with do1nestic private sector firms. The critics of  such  partnerships   argue  that  marker  intervention   by  the  government   often  results  in competitive  disadvantages for   the  very firms   the partnership   was  intended  to help.     This study assessed  the attitudes of small  business owners and managers toward  government  directed market interventions such as that proposed  in HR 820.  The results suggest  that there are some important  differences  between  managers  at  large  corporations  and  small  businesses  on  the effectiveness  of  market  intervention  by  the government,  both  in terms of job   creation  and technology   enhancement.      Within  the  subsample   of  small  firms,   however,   there   is  sharp disagreement on the value of government  programs  such as those proposed  in H.R. 820

Diet-induced obesity impairs mammary development and lactogenesis in murine mammary gland

We have developed a mouse model of diet-induced obesity that shows numerous abnormalities relating to mammary gland function. Animals ate 40% more calories when offered a high-fat diet and gained weight at three times the rate of controls. They exhibited reduced conception rates, increased peripartum pup mortality, and impaired lactogenesis. The impairment of lactogenesis involved lipid accumulation in the secretory epithelial cells indicative of an absence of copius milk secretion. Expression of mRNAs for -casein, whey acid protein, and -lactalbumin were all decreased immediately postpartum but recovered as lactation was established over 2–3 days. Expression of acetyl-CoA carboxylase (ACC)- mRNA was also decreased at parturition as was the total enzyme activity, although there was a compensatory increase in the proportion in the active state. By day 10 of lactation, the proportion of ACC in the active state was also decreased in obese animals, indicative of suppression of de novo fatty acid synthesis resulting from the supply of preformed fatty acids in the diet. Although obese animals consumed more calories in the nonpregnant and early pregnant states, they showed a marked depression in fat intake around day 9 of pregnancy before food intake recovered in later pregnancy. Food intake increased dramatically in both lean and obese animals during lactation although total calories consumed were identical in both groups. Thus, despite access to high-energy diets, the obese animals mobilized even more adipose tissue during lactation than their lean counterparts. Obese animals also exhibited marked abnormalities in alveolar development of the mammary gland, which may partially explain the delay in differentiation evident during lactogenesis

Impact of URI Canonicalization on Memento Count

Quantifying the captures of a URI over time is useful for researchers to identify the extent to which a Web page has been archived. Memento TimeMaps provide a format to list mementos (URI-Ms) for captures along with brief metadata, like Memento-Datetime, for each URI-M. However, when some URI-Ms are dereferenced, they simply provide a redirect to a different URI-M (instead of a unique representation at the datetime), often also present in the TimeMap. This infers that confidently obtaining an accurate count quantifying the number of non-forwarding captures for a URI-R is not possible using a TimeMap alone and that the magnitude of a TimeMap is not equivalent to the number of representations it identifies. In this work we discuss this particular phenomena in depth. We also perform a breakdown of the dynamics of counting mementos for a particular URI-R (google.com) and quantify the prevalence of the various canonicalization patterns that exacerbate attempts at counting using only a TimeMap. For google.com we found that 84.9% of the URI-Ms result in an HTTP redirect when dereferenced. We expand on and apply this metric to TimeMaps for seven other URI-Rs of large Web sites and thirteen academic institutions. Using a ratio metric DI for the number of URI-Ms without redirects to those requiring a redirect when dereferenced, five of the eight large web sites' and two of the thirteen academic institutions' TimeMaps had a ratio of ratio less than one, indicating that more than half of the URI-Ms in these TimeMaps result in redirects when dereferenced.Comment: 43 pages, 8 figure

Visions of Automation and Realities of Certification

Quite a lot of people envision automation as the solution to many of the problems in aviation and air transportation today, across all sectors: commercial, private, and military. This paper explains why some recent experiences with complex, highly-integrated, automated systems suggest that this vision will not be realized unless significant progress is made over the current state-of-the-practice in software system development and certification

Gemini Near-infrared Spectroscopy of Luminous z~6 Quasars: Chemical Abundances, Black Hole Masses, and MgII Absorption

We present Gemini near-infrared spectroscopic observations of six luminous quasars at z=5.8$\sim$6.3. Five of them were observed using Gemini-South/GNIRS, which provides a simultaneous wavelength coverage of 0.9--2.5 $\mu$m in cross dispersion mode. The other source was observed in K band with Gemini-North/NIRI. We calculate line strengths for all detected emission lines and use their ratios to estimate gas metallicity in the broad-line regions of the quasars. The metallicity is found to be supersolar with a typical value of $\sim$4 Z_{\sun}, and a comparison with low-redshift observations shows no strong evolution in metallicity up to z$\sim$6. The FeII/MgII ratio of the quasars is 4.9+/-1.4, consistent with low-redshift measurements. We estimate central BH masses of 10^9 to 10^{10} M_{\sun} and Eddington luminosity ratios of order unity. We identify two MgII $\lambda\lambda$2796,2803 absorbers with rest equivalent width W_0^{\lambda2796}>1 \AA at 2.2<z<3 and three MgII absorbers with W_0^{\lambda2796}>1.5 \AA at z>3 in the spectra, with the two most distant absorbers at z=4.8668 and 4.8823, respectively. The redshift number densities (dN/dz) of MgII absorbers with W_0^{\lambda2796}>1.5 \AA are consistent with no cosmic evolution up to z>4.Comment: 33 pages (including 7 figures and 6 tables), AJ in pres

The Trypanosoma cruzi enzyme TcGPXI is a glycosomal peroxidase and can be linked to trypanothione reduction by glutathione or tryparedoxin.

Trypanosoma cruzi glutathione-dependent peroxidase I (TcGPXI) can reduce fatty acid, phospholipid, and short chain organic hydroperoxides utilizing a novel redox cycle in which enzyme activity is linked to the reduction of trypanothione, a parasite-specific thiol, by glutathione. Here we show that TcGPXI activity can also be linked to trypanothione reduction by an alternative pathway involving the thioredoxin-like protein tryparedoxin. The presence of this new pathway was first detected using dialyzed soluble fractions of parasite extract. Tryparedoxin was identified as the intermediate molecule following purification, sequence analysis, antibody studies, and reconstitution of the redox cycle in vitro. The system can be readily saturated by trypanothione, the rate-limiting step being the interaction of trypanothione with the tryparedoxin. Both tryparedoxin and TcGPXI operate by a ping-pong mechanism. Overexpression of TcGPXI in transfected parasites confers increased resistance to exogenous hydroperoxides. TcGPXI contains a carboxyl-terminal tripeptide (ARI) that could act as a targeting signal for the glycosome, a kinetoplastid-specific organelle. Using immunofluorescence, tagged fluorescent proteins, and biochemical fractionation, we have demonstrated that TcGPXI is localized to both the glycosome and the cytosol. The ability of TcGPXI to use alternative electron donors may reflect their availability at the corresponding subcellular sites

Fourth NASA Langley Formal Methods Workshop

This publication consists of papers presented at NASA Langley Research Center's fourth workshop on the application of formal methods to the design and verification of life-critical systems. Topic considered include: Proving properties of accident; modeling and validating SAFER in VDM-SL; requirement analysis of real-time control systems using PVS; a tabular language for system design; automated deductive verification of parallel systems. Also included is a fundamental hardware design in PVS

WARCreate - Create Wayback-Consumable WARC Files From Any Webpage

[First Slide] What is WARCreate? Google Chrome extension Creates WARC files Enables preservation by users from their browser First steps in bringing Institutional Archiving facilities to the P