Clerics and commanders an examination of the evolution of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps\u27 role in the political economy of Iran

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), also known as the Pasdaran, is a unique military institution created to secure the ideals of Iran\u27s revolution as well its territory. Since the end of the Iran-Iraq War, however, the IRGC\u27s role in Iran\u27s political economy has increased significantly beyond that mandate. Unfortunately, the leadership in the United States has demonstrated neither the aptitude nor the desire to understand Iran. Given the IRGC\u27s command of Iran\u27s nuclear development program and encroachment into its foreign policy, it is more important than ever to understand Iran\u27s leadership structure. This study attempts to explain an important part of that structure by considering the influence of the leadership dynamics of Iran along with its economic and religious/social conditions on the IRGC\u27s position within the state, using an historical analysis consisting of secondary sources. Accordingly, the IRGC\u27s rise to power can be traced back to the dual sovereignty written into the constitution of the Islamic Republic. Though the divine sovereignty, embodied by the velayat-e faqih (Supreme Leader), is supposed to take precedence over popular sovereignty, embodied by the directly elected President, when the two conflict, Khomeini\u27s successor, Khamenei, a junior cleric, was unable to manage then President Hashemi Rafsanjani. So he empowered the IRGC to compensate, but that choice set into motion a sequence of events that has enabled it to become powerful enough to be a threat to the velayat-e faqih himself

Implementation of the FAA research and development electromagnetic database

The Idaho National Engineering Laboratory (INEL) has been assisting the FAA in developing a database of information about lightning. The FAA Research and Development Electromagnetic Database (FRED) will ultimately contain data from a variety of airborne and ground-based lightning research projects. An outline of the data currently available in FRED is presented. The data sources which the FAA intends to incorporate into FRED are listed. In addition, it describes how the researchers may access and use the FRED menu system

Learning organisations: A literature review and critique

Approved for Public Release - UnclassifiedA literature review on the Learning Organisation field was conducted, examining the dominant assumptions and creating a solid foundation for the practical application of the learning organisation concept to the Australian Army. In order to examine the literature's dominant assumptions, we asked the following questions: (i) What are the various meanings attributed to learning organisations?; (ii) What sorts of learnings are privileged within the literature?; (iii) What are the key characteristics or "building blocks" that make up a learning organisation? We discovered that the learning organisation construct represents an evolution from bureaucratic and performance-based organisational form to innovative and flexible organisations. In surveying the literature, other factors found to impact on learning organisations included cognitive, social, cultural, technological and structural elements. For example, learning organisations apply increasingly sophisticated understanding of knowledge and personnel management to best exploit their social, intellectual and knowledge capital. In contrast, some factors are not adequately explored in the literature; for example, the significance of power relations, hierarchy and authority on learning within and by organisations has not been fully elucidated. There is an increasing number of studies investigating the direct impact of developing a learner-centric approach on organisational outcomes; the number of studies linking learning to improved organisational performance is growing. There are real, significant and measureable benefits of developing the learning capabilities of an organisation.Steven Talbot, Christina Stothard, Maya Drobnjak and Denise McDowal

Direct entry by RNase E is a major pathway for the degradation and processing of RNA in Escherichia coli

Escherichia coli endoribonuclease E has a major influence on gene expression. It is essential for the maturation of ribosomal and transfer RNA as well as the rapid degradation of messenger RNA. The latter ensures that translation closely follows programming at the level of transcription. Recently, one of the hallmarks of RNase E, i.e. its ability to bind via a 5'-monophosphorylated end, was shown to be unnecessary for the initial cleavage of some polycistronic tRNA precursors. Here we show using RNA-seq analyses of ribonuclease-deficient strains in vivo and a 5'-sensor mutant of RNase E in vitro that, contrary to current models, 5'-monophosphate-independent, 'direct entry' cleavage is a major pathway for degrading and processing RNA. Moreover, we present further evidence that direct entry is facilitated by RNase E binding simultaneously to multiple unpaired regions. These simple requirements may maximize the rate of degradation and processing by permitting multiple sites to be surveyed directly without being constrained by 5'-end tethering. Cleavage was detected at a multitude of sites previously undescribed for RNase E, including ones that regulate the activity and specificity of ribosomes. A potentially broad role for RNase G, an RNase E paralogue, in the trimming of 5'-monophosphorylated ends was also revealed

Improving functional annotation for industrial microbes: a case study with Pichia pastoris.

The research communities studying microbial model organisms, such as Escherichia coli or Saccharomyces cerevisiae, are well served by model organism databases that have extensive functional annotation. However, this is not true of many industrial microbes that are used widely in biotechnology. In this Opinion piece, we use Pichia (Komagataella) pastoris to illustrate the limitations of the available annotation. We consider the resources that can be implemented in the short term both to improve Gene Ontology (GO) annotation coverage based on annotation transfer, and to establish curation pipelines for the literature corpus of this organism.We gratefully acknowledge funding from the Wellcome Trust (PomBase and Canto; WT090548MA to SGO), and the EU 7th Framework Programme (BIOLEDGE Contract No: 289126 to SGO).This is the published version distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0, which can also be found on the publisher's website at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167779914001061

Cosmic cookery : making a stereoscopic 3D animated movie.

This paper describes our experience making a short stereoscopic movie visualizing the development of structure in the universe during the 13.7 billion years from the Big Bang to the present day. Aimed at a general audience for the Royal Society's 2005 Summer Science Exhibition, the movie illustrates how the latest cosmological theories based on dark matter and dark energy are capable of producing structures as complex as spiral galaxies and allows the viewer to directly compare observations from the real universe with theoretical results. 3D is an inherent feature of the cosmology data sets and stereoscopic visualization provides a natural way to present the images to the viewer, in addition to allowing researchers to visualize these vast, complex data sets. The presentation of the movie used passive, linearly polarized projection onto a 2m wide screen but it was also required to playback on a Sharp RD3D display and in anaglyph projection at venues without dedicated stereoscopic display equipment. Additionally lenticular prints were made from key images in the movie. We discuss the following technical challenges during the stereoscopic production process; 1) Controlling the depth presentation, 2) Editing the stereoscopic sequences, 3) Generating compressed movies in display speci¯c formats. We conclude that the generation of high quality stereoscopic movie content using desktop tools and equipment is feasible. This does require careful quality control and manual intervention but we believe these overheads are worthwhile when presenting inherently 3D data as the result is signi¯cantly increased impact and better understanding of complex 3D scenes

Spectrally tunable magnetic nanoparticles designed for distribution/recollection applications

The comprehensive goal of this research is the synthesis and characterization of nanomaterials that are spectrally tunable in terms of their electromagnetic signal, are robust, magnetic (allowing their piloted movement), and have the potential to be functionalized for the detection of CBRNE threats. Various chemical methods were utilized for synthesis of magnetic (iron) and luminescent rare earth (RE) components, and their mixtures. Effects of integrating an iron core into RE luminescent lattices (excited by UV, emit in the VIS) were investigated. The determination of the optimum balances between magnetic and luminescent components such that the magnetism was maximized while maintaining acceptable fluorescence integrity will be discussed. The emphasis of this work is focused on developing a distributed sensor suitable for use in the terrestrial environment. The robust properties of using a RE luminescent shell would allow the particles to be resistant to photobleaching. Additionally the chemical stability of the RE shell would allow operation in a variety of pH conditions. The magnetic core will ultimately allow the distributed particles to be recollected

Distribution and abundance of fish and crayfish in a Waikato stream in relation to basin area

The aim of this study was to relate the longitudinal distribution of fish and crayfish to increasing basin area and physical site characteristics in the Mangaotama Stream, Waikato region, North Island, New Zealand. Fish and crayfish were captured with two-pass removal electroshocking at 11 sites located in hill-country with pasture, native forest, and mixed land uses within the 21.6 km2 basin. Number of fish species and lineal biomass of fish increased with increasing basin area, but barriers to upstream fish migration also influenced fish distribution; only climbing and non-migratory species were present above a series of small waterfalls. Fish biomass increased in direct proportion to stream width, suggesting that fish used much of the available channel, and stream width was closely related to basin area. Conversely, the abundance of crayfish was related to the amount of edge habitat, and therefore crayfish did not increase in abundance as basin area increased. Densities of all fish species combined ranged from 17 to 459 fish 100 m-2, and biomass ranged from 14 to 206 g m-2. Eels dominated the fish assemblages, comprising 85-100% of the total biomass; longfinned eels the majority of the biomass at most sites. Despite the open access of the lower sites to introduced brown trout, native species dominated all the fish communities sampled

Alzheimer\u27s, angiotensin IV and an aminopeptidase

The angiotensin AT4 receptor was originally defined as the specific, high affinity binding site for the hexapeptide angiotensin IV (Ang IV). Subsequently, the peptide LVV-hemorphin 7 was also demonstrated to be a bioactive ligand of the AT4 receptor. Central administration of Ang IV or LVV-hemorphin 7 (LVV-H7) markedly enhances learning and memory in normal rodents and reverse memory deficits observed in animal models of amnesia. The high affinity binding site has a broad distribution in the brain including areas such as the hippocmapus that are involved in memory processing. The high affinity Ang IV binding site (AT4 receptor) has been identified as the transmembrane enzyme, insulin-regulated membrane aminopeptidase (IRAP). Insulin-regulated aminopeptidase is a type II integral membrane spanning protein belonging to the M1 family of aminopeptidases and in insulin-responsive cells colocalizes with GLUT4 in specific intra-cellular vesicles. Both Ang IV and LVV-H7 are competitive inhibitors of IRAP catalytic activity and are not substrates of the enzyme.<br /