Evaluation of an electro-optic remote displacement measuring system

An instrumentation system to provide a noncontact method for measurement of target positions was evaluated. The system employs two electro-optic camera units which give stereo information for use in determining three dimensional target locations. Specially developed, infrared sensitive photodetectors are used in the cameras to sense radiation from light emitting diode targets. Up to 30 of these targets can be monitored with a sampling rate of 312 Hz per target. An important part of the system is a minicomputer which is used to collect the camera data, sort it, make corrections for distortions in the electro-optic system, and perform the necesssary coordinate transformations. If target motions are restricted to locations in a plane which is perpendicular to a camera's optical axis, the system can be used with just one camera. Calibrations performed in this mode characterize accuracies in single camera operation. This information is also useful in determination of single camera contributions to total system errors. For this reason the system was tested in both the single camera and two camera (stereo) modes of operation

The development of radiation resistant insulating layers for planar silicon technology, 29 May 1968 - 28 June 1969

Ion implantation method for improving radiation resistance of thermal oxides on silico

A study of charge storage in silicon oxide resulting from non-penetrating electron irradiation

Charge storage in silicon dioxide resulting from electron irradiatio

An investigation of thin film oxygen partial pressure sensors

Product development and testing of thin film oxygen partial pressure sensor

Charge storage effects in Mylar resulting from electron irradiation, June 1965 - June 1966

Charge storage effects in Mylar from electron irradiatio

The United Kingdom Acid Waters Monitoring Network Data Report for 2005-2006 (year 18)

The UK Acid Waters Monitoring Network (UKAWMN) has been operating continuously since 1988. During the first ten years biological and chemical data were summarised in an annual series of printed reports From the year 2000 annual data reports have also been available from the UKAWMN web page. These are of a similar format to earlier annual reports but focus on graphical representations of time trends in raw data and diagnostic statistics (e.g. species richness and diversity indices). Detailed analysis of data is presented in two interpretative reports, Monteith (2005) and Monteith and Evans (2000) dealing with 15 and 10 years of accumulated results respectively. Both are also available on the UKAWMN web page. A full description of sampling methods and analytical procedures, together with site descriptions, are also presented on the UKAWMN web page

The influence of space radiation upon the MOS micrometeoroid capacitor detector Final report, 17 Jul. 1970 - 16 Feb. 1971

Possible electron irradiated failure modes of MOS micrometeoroid capacitor detector

Mindfulness predicts less texting while driving among young adults: Examining attention- and emotion-regulation motives as potential mediators.

Many young adult drivers read and send text messages while driving despite clear safety risks. Understanding predictors of texting-while-driving may help to indentify relevant targets for interventions to reduce this dangerous behavior. The present study examined whether individual differences in mindfulness is associated with texting-while-driving in a sample of young-adult drivers. Using path analysis, we tested whether this relationship would be mediated by the degree to which individuals use text-messaging as a means of reducing unpleasant emotions (emotion-regulation motives) and the degree to which individuals limit texting in order to focus on present-moment experiences (attention-regulation motives). Individuals lower in mindfulness reported more frequent texting-while-driving and this relationship appeared to be mediated primarily by emotion-regulation motives. Results may help inform the development of mindfulness-based interventions to prevent texting-while-driving

Carry on caring:Infected females maintain their parental care despite high mortality

Parental care is a key component of an organism’s reproductive strategy that is thought to trade-off with allocation toward immunity. Yet, it is unclear how caring parents respond to pathogens: do infected parents reduce care as a sickness behavior or simply from being ill or do they prioritize their offspring by maintaining high levels of care? To address this issue, we investigated the consequences of infection by the pathogen Serratia marcescens on mortality, time spent providing care, reproductive output, and expression of immune genes of female parents in the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides. We compared untreated control females with infected females that were inoculated with live bacteria, immune-challenged females that were inoculated with heat-killed bacteria, and injured females that were injected with buffer. We found that infected and immune-challenged females changed their immune gene expression and that infected females suffered increased mortality. Nevertheless, infected and immune-challenged females maintained their normal level of care and reproductive output. There was thus no evidence that infection led to either a decrease or an increase in parental care or reproductive output. Our results show that parental care, which is generally highly flexible, can remain remarkably robust and consistent despite the elevated mortality caused by infection by pathogens. Overall, these findings suggest that infected females maintain a high level of parental care, a strategy that may ensure that offspring receive the necessary amount of care but that might be detrimental to the parents’ own survival or that may even facilitate disease transmission to offspring

Oral Bacterial Infection and Shedding in <i>Drosophila Melanogaster</i>

International audienceThe fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is one of the best developed model systems of infection and innate immunity. While most work has focused on systemic infections, there has been a recent increase of interest in the mechanisms of gut immunocompetence to pathogens, which require methods to orally infect flies. Here we present a protocol to orally expose individual flies to an opportunistic bacterial pathogen (Pseudomonas aeruginosa) and a natural bacterial pathogen of D. melanogaster (Pseudomonas entomophila). The goal of this protocol is to provide a robust method to expose male and female flies to these pathogens. We provide representative results showing survival phenotypes, microbe loads, and bacterial shedding, which is relevant for the study of heterogeneity in pathogen transmission. Finally, we confirm that Dcy mutants (lacking the protective peritrophic matrix in the gut epithelium) and Relish mutants (lacking a functional immune deficiency (IMD) pathway), show increased susceptibility to bacterial oral infection. This protocol, therefore, describes a robust method to infect flies using the oral route of infection, which can be extended to the study of a variety genetic and environmental sources of variation in gut infection outcomes and bacterial transmission