Precise determination of mini railway track with ground based laser scanning

In order to determine the relative or absolute railway track and foundation deformation, ground-based laser scanning technology is utilised in this study to attain a precise 3D track reference. Located at the University of Nottingham’s Innovation Park, the newly built Nottingham Geospatial Building, where the Nottingham Geospatial Institute is based, has a roof laboratory that has unique testing facilities. This includes a mini railway track of 120m in length and other long-term monitoring monuments. A test was performed to precisely determine the ground-truth location of the railway track using a phase-based laser scanner for the formation of a standard reference. A real three dimensional mesh of the laser scanning data forms the basis for the line extraction. The compactly supported radial basis function (CS-RBF) was employed to determine the track features based on a 3D mesh approach. To verify the achievable accuracy of laser scanning technology, ground truth points measured with geodetic methods are compared with the extracted sample points and the results are presented in this paper

Effects of deer on woodland structure revealed through terrestrial laser scanning

1. Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) captures the three-dimensional structure of habitats. Compared to traditional methods of forest mensuration, it allows quantification of structure at increased resolution, and the derivation of novel metrics with which to inform ecological studies and habitat management. 2. Lowland woodlands in the UK have altered in structure over the last century due to increased abundance of deer and a decline in management. We compared whole-canopy profiles between woodlands with high (>10 deer km−2) and low deer density (c. 1 deer km−2), and in stands with and without records of management interventions in the last 20 years, providing a test case for the application of TLS in habitat assessment for conservation and management. 3. Forty closed-canopy lowland woodlands (height range 16·5–29·4 m) were surveyed using TLS in two regions of the UK, divided into areas of high- and low-deer abundance, and between plots which had been recently managed or were unmanaged. Three-dimensional reconstructions of the woodlands were created to document the density of foliage and stem material across the entire vertical span of the canopy. 4. There was a 68% lower density of understorey foliage (0·5–2 m above-ground) in high-deer woodlands, consistent in both regions. Despite this, total amounts of foliage detected across the full canopy did not differ between deer density levels. High-deer sites were 5 m taller overall and differed in the distribution of foliage across their vertical profile. Managed woodlands, in contrast, exhibited relatively minor differences from controls, including a lower quantity of stem material at heights from 2 to 5 m, but no difference in foliage density. All main effects were replicated equally in both regions despite notable differences in stand structures between them. 5. Synthesis and applications. Terrestrial laser scanning allows ecologists to move beyond two-dimensional measures of vegetation structure and quantify patterns across complex, heterogeneous, three-dimensional habitats. Our findings suggest that reduction of deer populations is likely to have a strong impact on woodland structures and aid in restoring the complex understorey habitats required by many birds, whereas management interventions as currently practiced have limited and inconsistent effects

A connection between stress and development in the multicelular prokaryote Streptomyces coelicolor

Morphological changes leading to aerial mycelium formation and sporulation in the mycelial bacterium Streptomyces coelicolor rely on establishing distinct patterns of gene expression in separate regions of the colony. sH was identified previously as one of three paralogous sigma factors associated with stress responses in S. coelicolor. Here, we show that sigH and the upstream gene prsH (encoding a putative antisigma factor of sH) form an operon transcribed from two developmentally regulated promoters, sigHp1 and sigHp2. While sigHp1 activity is confined to the early phase of growth, transcription of sigHp2 is dramatically induced at the time of aerial hyphae formation. Localization of sigHp2 activity using a transcriptional fusion to the green fluorescent protein reporter gene (sigHp2–egfp) showed that sigHp2 transcription is spatially restricted to sporulating aerial hyphae in wild-type S. coelicolor. However, analysis of mutants unable to form aerial hyphae (bld mutants) showed that sigHp2 transcription and sH protein levels are dramatically upregulated in a bldD mutant, and that the sigHp2–egfp fusion was expressed ectopically in the substrate mycelium in the bldD background. Finally, a protein possessing sigHp2 promoter-binding activity was purified to homogeneity from crude mycelial extracts of S. coelicolor and shown to be BldD. The BldD binding site in the sigHp2 promoter was defined by DNase I footprinting. These data show that expression of sH is subject to temporal and spatial regulation during colony development, that this tissue-specific regulation is mediated directly by the developmental transcription factor BldD and suggest that stress and developmental programmes may be intimately connected in Streptomyces morphogenesis

Symbolic power: the future of nuclear energy in Lithuania

EU accession states may have thrown off their Soviet past in political terms, but abandoning some of the Soviet era technologies is proving to be harder. Civil nuclear power is on the way out in most of Europe, but for some ex-Soviet countries this may present serious problems of economic, social and cultural transformation -- especially in countries like Lithuania, where nuclear power supplies the bulk of the electricity. The issue has come to a head given the EU's insistence that several ex-Soviet states must agree to close their nuclear plant as a condition of EU entry. Lithuania is the accession country most wedded to and certainly most reliant on nuclear power. It has a nuclear plant which uses a technology (the RBMK, Chernobyl-type reactor) which the EU has insisted should be closed rapidly on safety grounds. This has proved an unpopular requirement in Lithuania for a variety of reasons. There are problem with ensuring continued energy supplies and replacing the lost employment and earning power. However Lithuania also has a more general commitment to this technology as a symbol of national prowess and independence. During and immediately after the struggle for national independence in 1991, the country had a mass anti-nuclear movement. This has been analysed as a covert expression of nationalist and anti-Soviet feeling, given that most opposition to nuclear power evaporated after independence (Dawson 1996). Subsequently the EU ruled that Lithuania's Ignalina nuclear plant should be closed. Yet now it is widely seen as a national asset, a view reinforced by resentment about the EU apparently imposing an unwarranted closure policy. This article will analyse how public and policy views on nuclear power have changed over time in Lithuania and how its symbolic meaning has changed during different phases of transformation of the Lithuanian society

Midwife-led debriefing after operative birth: four to six year follow-up of a randomised trial [ISRCTN24648614]

BACKGROUND: There is little evidence that single-session debriefing is effective in reducing adverse mental health outcomes after trauma. Few trials have included long-term follow-up, but two also suggest possible negative effects of debriefing. We aimed to assess longer-term maternal health outcomes in a trial of midwife-led debriefing following an operative birth, given that findings at six months could not rule out a possible adverse effect of debriefing. METHODS: Four to six years after participating in a midwife-led trial of debriefing following an operative birth, 1039/1041 women were mailed a questionnaire containing the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) and the SF-36 health status measure. RESULTS: Responses were obtained from 534 women (51.4%). Responders from the two trial groups remained comparable 4–6 years postpartum. No significant differences on maternal health outcomes were found between the trial groups. CONCLUSION: In the longer term, maternal health status was neither positively nor adversely affected by the experience of debriefing, despite a hint of adverse effects at six months postpartum. Short debriefing interventions have not proven effective in improving mental health outcomes for women following childbirth

X-ray induced fragmentation of size-selected salt cluster-ions stored in an ion trap

Peer reviewe

The neural correlates of inner speech defined by voxel-based lesion–symptom mapping

The neural correlates of inner speech have been investigated previously using functional imaging. However, methodological and other limitations have so far precluded a clear description of the neural anatomy of inner speech and its relation to overt speech. Specifically, studies that examine only inner speech often fail to control for subjects’ behaviour in the scanner and therefore cannot determine the relation between inner and overt speech. Functional imaging studies comparing inner and overt speech have not produced replicable results and some have similar methodological caveats as studies looking only at inner speech. Lesion analysis can avoid the methodological pitfalls associated with using inner and overt speech in functional imaging studies, while at the same time providing important data about the neural correlates essential for the specific function. Despite its advantages, a study of the neural correlates of inner speech using lesion analysis has not been carried out before. In this study, 17 patients with chronic post-stroke aphasia performed inner speech tasks (rhyme and homophone judgements), and overt speech tasks (reading aloud). The relationship between brain structure and language ability was studied using voxel-based lesion–symptom mapping. This showed that inner speech abilities were affected by lesions to the left pars opercularis in the inferior frontal gyrus and to the white matter adjacent to the left supramarginal gyrus, over and above overt speech production and working memory. These results suggest that inner speech cannot be assumed to be simply overt speech without a motor component. It also suggests that the use of overt speech to understand inner speech and vice versa might result in misleading conclusions, both in imaging studies and clinical practice

A cross dialectal view of the Arabic dative alternation

This paper is concerned with the syntax of ditransitive verbs in Arabic.We concentrate on the vernaculars, focussing in particular on three geographically spread dialects: Egyptian Cairene Arabic, the dominant vernacular in Egypt, Hijazi Arabic, spoken in Western Saudi Arabia and Maltese, a mixed language with a Magrebi/Siculo-Arabic stratum. We show that all three exhibit an alternation (the dative alternation) between a ditransitive ('double object') construction and a corresponding prepositional dative construction, and outline a number of differences between these constructions in the different varieties of Arabic. We consider the distribution of verbs exhibiting the dative alternation in the light of Ryding's (2011) observations concerning Modern Standard Arabic

Constitutive expression of ftsZ overrides the whi developmental genes to initiate sporulation of Streptomyces coelicolor

The filamentous soil bacteria Streptomyces undergo a highly complex developmental programme. Before streptomycetes commit themselves to sporulation, distinct morphological checkpoints are passed in the aerial hyphae that are subject to multi-level control by the whi sporulation genes. Here we show that whi-independent expression of FtsZ restores sporulation to the early sporulation mutants whiA, whiB, whiG, whiH, whiI and whiJ. Viability, stress resistance and high-resolution electron microscopy underlined that viable spores were formed. However, spores from sporulation-restored whiA and whiG mutants showed defects in DNA segregation/condensation, while spores from the complemented whiB mutant had increased stress sensitivity, perhaps as a result of changes in the spore sheath. In contrast to the whi mutants, normal sporulation of ssgB null mutants—which fail to properly localise FtsZ—could not be restored by enhancing FtsZ protein levels, forming spore-like bodies that lack spore walls. Our data strongly suggest that the whi genes control a decisive event towards sporulation of streptomycetes, namely the correct timing of developmental ftsZ transcription. The biological significance may be to ensure that sporulation-specific cell division will only start once sufficient aerial mycelium biomass has been generated. Our data shed new light on the longstanding question as to how whi genes control sporulation, which has intrigued scientists for four decades