1,822 research outputs found
File Naming in Digital Media Research: Examples from the Humanities and Social Sciences
This paper identifies organizational challenges faced by Social Science and Humanities (SSH) scholars when dealing with digital data and media, and suggests improved file naming practices in order to maximize organization, making files easier to find, more useable, and more easily shared. We argue that such skills are not formally discussed in the literature and therefore many scholars do not recognize the problem until they cannot locate a specific file or are sharing files with colleagues. We asked SSH scholars to share their file naming strategies (or lack thereof ) and we use these narrative anecdotes to discuss common problems and suggest possible solutions for their general file naming needs
Metal Content of Metallo-β-lactamase L1 Is Determined by the Bioavailability of Metal Ions
In an effort to probe whether the metal content of metallo-β-lactamase L1 is affected by metal ion bioavailability, L1 was overexpressed as mature protein (M-L1) and full-length (FL-L1) analogues, and the analogues were characterized with metal analyses, kinetics, and EPR spectroscopy. FL-L1, containing the putative leader sequence, was localized in the periplasm of Escherichia coli and shown to bind Zn(II) preferentially. The metal content of FL-L1 could be altered if the enzyme was overexpressed in minimal medium containing Fe and Mn, and surprisingly, an Fe-binding analogue was obtained. On the other hand, M-L1, lacking the putative leader sequence, was localized in the cytoplasm of E. coli and shown to bind various amounts of Fe and Zn(II), and like FL-L1, the metal content of the resulting enzyme could be affected by the amount of metal ions in the growth medium. L1 was refolded in the presence of Fe, and a dinuclear Fe-containing analogue of L1 was obtained, although this analogue is catalytically inactive. EPR spectra demonstrate the presence of an antiferromagnetically coupled Fe(III)Fe(II) center in Fe-containing L1 and suggest the presence of a Fe(III)Zn(II) center in M-L1. Metal analyses on the cytoplasmic and periplasmic fractions of E. coli showed that the concentration of metal ions in the periplasm is not tightly controlled and increases as the concentration of metal ions in the growth medium increases. In contrast, the concentration of Zn(II) in the cytoplasm is tightly controlled while that of Fe is less so
Ultraviolet light induced annihilation of silicon dangling bonds in hydrogenated amorphous silicon nitride films
We report results of electron paramagnetic resonance, photothermal deflection spectroscopy, and capacitance‐voltage measurements on amorphous hydrogenated silicon nitride (a‐SiNx:H) thin films exposed to ultraviolet (UV) illumination. It has been previously shown that exposure to UV light activates silicon dangling‐bond defects, i.e., K0 centers, in a‐SiNx:H thin films. Here, we demonstrate that the initially UV‐activated K0 center can be irreversibly annihilated at long illumination times. Because this effect seems to scale with H content of the measured films, we propose that hydrogen may be passivating the K0 defects during the extended UV exposure. We also show that films subjected to long UV exposures trap charge as efficiently as those having much larger K0 concentrations. A few possibilities to explain this effect are discussed. © 1995 American Institute of Physics.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/70316/2/JAPIAU-77-11-5730-1.pd
LISA Data Analysis using MCMC methods
The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) is expected to simultaneously
detect many thousands of low frequency gravitational wave signals. This
presents a data analysis challenge that is very different to the one
encountered in ground based gravitational wave astronomy. LISA data analysis
requires the identification of individual signals from a data stream containing
an unknown number of overlapping signals. Because of the signal overlaps, a
global fit to all the signals has to be performed in order to avoid biasing the
solution. However, performing such a global fit requires the exploration of an
enormous parameter space with a dimension upwards of 50,000. Markov Chain Monte
Carlo (MCMC) methods offer a very promising solution to the LISA data analysis
problem. MCMC algorithms are able to efficiently explore large parameter
spaces, simultaneously providing parameter estimates, error analyses and even
model selection. Here we present the first application of MCMC methods to
simulated LISA data and demonstrate the great potential of the MCMC approach.
Our implementation uses a generalized F-statistic to evaluate the likelihoods,
and simulated annealing to speed convergence of the Markov chains. As a final
step we super-cool the chains to extract maximum likelihood estimates, and
estimates of the Bayes factors for competing models. We find that the MCMC
approach is able to correctly identify the number of signals present, extract
the source parameters, and return error estimates consistent with Fisher
information matrix predictions.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figure
Sensitivity and parameter-estimation precision for alternate LISA configurations
We describe a simple framework to assess the LISA scientific performance
(more specifically, its sensitivity and expected parameter-estimation precision
for prescribed gravitational-wave signals) under the assumption of failure of
one or two inter-spacecraft laser measurements (links) and of one to four
intra-spacecraft laser measurements. We apply the framework to the simple case
of measuring the LISA sensitivity to monochromatic circular binaries, and the
LISA parameter-estimation precision for the gravitational-wave polarization
angle of these systems. Compared to the six-link baseline configuration, the
five-link case is characterized by a small loss in signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)
in the high-frequency section of the LISA band; the four-link case shows a
reduction by a factor of sqrt(2) at low frequencies, and by up to ~2 at high
frequencies. The uncertainty in the estimate of polarization, as computed in
the Fisher-matrix formalism, also worsens when moving from six to five, and
then to four links: this can be explained by the reduced SNR available in those
configurations (except for observations shorter than three months, where five
and six links do better than four even with the same SNR). In addition, we
prove (for generic signals) that the SNR and Fisher matrix are invariant with
respect to the choice of a basis of TDI observables; rather, they depend only
on which inter-spacecraft and intra-spacecraft measurements are available.Comment: 17 pages, 4 EPS figures, IOP style, corrected CQG versio
Extracting galactic binary signals from the first round of Mock LISA Data Challenges
We report on the performance of an end-to-end Bayesian analysis pipeline for
detecting and characterizing galactic binary signals in simulated LISA data.
Our principal analysis tool is the Blocked-Annealed Metropolis Hasting (BAM)
algorithm, which has been optimized to search for tens of thousands of
overlapping signals across the LISA band. The BAM algorithm employs Bayesian
model selection to determine the number of resolvable sources, and provides
posterior distribution functions for all the model parameters. The BAM
algorithm performed almost flawlessly on all the Round 1 Mock LISA Data
Challenge data sets, including those with many highly overlapping sources. The
only misses were later traced to a coding error that affected high frequency
sources. In addition to the BAM algorithm we also successfully tested a Genetic
Algorithm (GA), but only on data sets with isolated signals as the GA has yet
to be optimized to handle large numbers of overlapping signals.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Proceedings of GWDAW-11 (Berlin,
Dec. '06
The 'Parekh Report' - national identities with nations and nationalism
‘Multiculturalists’ often advocate national identities. Yet few study the ways in which ‘multiculturalists’ do so and in this article I will help to fill this gap. I will show that the Commission for Multi-Ethnic Britain’s report reflects a previously unnoticed way of thinking about the nature and worth of national identities that the Commission’s chair, and prominent political theorist, Bhikhu Parekh, had been developing since the 1970s. This way of thinking will be shown to avoid the questionable ways in which conservative and liberal nationalists discuss the nature and worth of national identities while offering an alternative way to do so. I will thus show that a report that was once criticised for the way it discussed national identities reflects how ‘multiculturalists’ think about national identities in a distinct and valuable way that has gone unrecognised
Report on the first round of the Mock LISA Data Challenges
The Mock LISA Data Challenges (MLDCs) have the dual purpose of fostering the
development of LISA data analysis tools and capabilities, and demonstrating the
technical readiness already achieved by the gravitational-wave community in
distilling a rich science payoff from the LISA data output. The first round of
MLDCs has just been completed: nine data sets containing simulated
gravitational wave signals produced either by galactic binaries or massive
black hole binaries embedded in simulated LISA instrumental noise were released
in June 2006 with deadline for submission of results at the beginning of
December 2006. Ten groups have participated in this first round of challenges.
Here we describe the challenges, summarise the results, and provide a first
critical assessment of the entries.Comment: Proceedings report from GWDAW 11. Added author, added reference,
clarified some text, removed typos. Results unchanged; Removed author, minor
edits, reflects submitted versio
Spectroscopic and Mechanistic Studies of Heterodimetallic Forms of Metallo-β-lactamase NDM-1
In an effort to characterize the roles of each metal ion in metallo-β-lactamase NDM-1, heterodimetallic analogues (CoCo-, ZnCo-, and CoCd-) of the enzyme were generated and characterized. UV–vis, 1H NMR, EPR, and EXAFS spectroscopies were used to confirm the fidelity of the metal substitutions, including the presence of a homogeneous, heterodimetallic cluster, with a single-atom bridge. This marks the first preparation of a metallo-β-lactamase selectively substituted with a paramagnetic metal ion, Co(II), either in the Zn1 (CoCd-NDM-1) or in the Zn2 site (ZnCo-NDM-1), as well as both (CoCo-NDM-1). We then used these metal-substituted forms of the enzyme to probe the reaction mechanism, using steady-state and stopped-flow kinetics, stopped-flow fluorescence, and rapid-freeze-quench EPR. Both metal sites show significant effects on the kinetic constants, and both paramagnetic variants (CoCd- and ZnCo-NDM-1) showed significant structural changes on reaction with substrate. These changes are discussed in terms of a minimal kinetic mechanism that incorporates all of the data
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