Hundred years of history and the future of the Foundation 'Willie Commelin Scholten Phytopathological Laboratory'

The past More than a century ago, on December 18th, 1894, the Foundation 'Willie Commelin Scholten Phytopathological Laboratory', in short 'WCS-Foundation' (WCS) , was established in Amsterdam. It was one of the first institutes in the world dedicated to scientific research and higher education in plant pathology. The finances were by courtesy of Mr C.W.R. Scholten and Mrs H.H. Scholten née Commelin, in commemoration of their late son Willie, who had shown himself highly interested in plant pathology when studying botany under the supervision of Prof. Dr Hugo de Vries, one of the founders of the WCS. The families Scholten and Commelin both were wellknown in the Amsterdam community for many centuries. Johannes Commelin, a botanist who lived from 1629 to 1692, was Director of the Amsterdam Botanical Gardens. In 1920, the WCS-laboratory moved to the town of Baarn where it could use the field facilities of the Botanical Gardens of the UtrechtUniversity. In the course of time, the responsibilities for education and research in plant pathology in Baarn were assigned to the University of Utrecht, the University of Amsterdam and the Free University at Amsterdam (Kerling, 1966; 1969). As part of the general cut-backs in higher education, the Free University withdrew in 1987 and the boards of the Universities of Amsterdam and Utrecht decided in 1988 to transfer their Department of plant pathology from Baarn. As a result, the Department was split and moved to the Faculties of Biology at the University campuses at Amsterdam and Utrecht, respectively. In June 1991, the facilities of the Willie Commelin Scholten Phytopathological Laboratory at Baarn were closed. TheWCS-Foundation carrying the same name, however, set a new course to continue her objectives of promoting research and education in plant pathology, as will be discussed later. For more than 100 years, the WCS-Foundation greatly influenced the development of plant pathology and mycology in the Netherlands. On the initiative of the first director, Prof. Dr J. Ritzema Bos, the Plant Protection Service was founded in 1899, and under his directorship located in the Willie Commelin Scholten Phytopathological Laboratory in Amsterdam. His research was application-oriented and finally resulted in his nomination as Director of the newly founded 'Institute of Phytopathology' at Wageningen. Ritzema Bos took his 'Plant Protection Service', the Netherlands Society of Plant Pathology and his 'Tijdschrift over Plantenziekten' with him to Wageningen. This journal later became The Netherlands Journal of Plant Pathology and since 1994 is being continued as the European Journal of Plant Pathology, published in co-operation with the European Foundation for Plant Pathology. Ritzema Bos was succeeded by Johanna Westerdijk as the new director of the WCS-Laboratory in 1906

Unravelling of Waste in a Touristic Area of Pangandaran From Neglecting Towards Embracing Informal Waste Management Practices, West Java, Indonesia

Increased attention for sustainable waste management practices has in Indonesia resulted in legislation that seeks participation and self-regulation amongst people in urban and rural areas. However districts are trying to meet the expectations of the national government, implementing Westernized-recycling systems. We demonstrate that these top-down waste management practices as well as the current approach towardsscavenging systemsas being problematic and undesirable, will not lead to effective waste management. Using a holistic approach we explore the subjectivity of waste and alternating perceptions of these objects in both formal and informal waste management practices.Moreover this article considers the functioning of informal waste management systems to be dynamic and profitable. Within the context of a touristic area that can\u27t keep up with the increasing amount of solid waste, this article advocates a highly potential informal waste management practices that are systematically overlooked

Electromagnetic form factors of the (rho) meson in light cone QCD sum rules

We investigate the electromagnetic form factors of the (rho) meson in light cone QCD sum rules. We find that the ratio of the magnetic and charge form factors is larger than two at all values of Q^2, (Q^2 >= 0.5 GeV^2). The values of the individual form factors at fixed values of Q^2 predicted by the light cone QCD sum rules are quite different compared to the results of other approaches. These results can be checked in future, when more precise data on (rho) meson form factors is available.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, LaTeX formatte

Interference effects in the photorecombination of argonlike Sc3+ ions: Storage-ring experiment and theory

Absolute total electron-ion recombination rate coefficients of argonlike Sc3+(3s2 3p6) ions have been measured for relative energies between electrons and ions ranging from 0 to 45 eV. This energy range comprises all dielectronic recombination resonances attached to 3p -> 3d and 3p -> 4s excitations. A broad resonance with an experimental width of 0.89 +- 0.07 eV due to the 3p5 3d2 2F intermediate state is found at 12.31 +- 0.03 eV with a small experimental evidence for an asymmetric line shape. From R-Matrix and perturbative calculations we infer that the asymmetric line shape may not only be due to quantum mechanical interference between direct and resonant recombination channels as predicted by Gorczyca et al. [Phys. Rev. A 56, 4742 (1997)], but may partly also be due to the interaction with an adjacent overlapping DR resonance of the same symmetry. The overall agreement between theory and experiment is poor. Differences between our experimental and our theoretical resonance positions are as large as 1.4 eV. This illustrates the difficulty to accurately describe the structure of an atomic system with an open 3d-shell with state-of-the-art theoretical methods. Furthermore, we find that a relativistic theoretical treatment of the system under study is mandatory since the existence of experimentally observed strong 3p5 3d2 2D and 3p5 3d 4s 2D resonances can only be explained when calculations beyond LS-coupling are carried out.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, 3 tables, Phys. Rev. A (in print), see also: http://www.strz.uni-giessen.de/~k

Playing Charades in the fMRI: Are Mirror and/or Mentalizing Areas Involved in Gestural Communication?

Communication is an important aspect of human life, allowing us to powerfully coordinate our behaviour with that of others. Boiled down to its mere essentials, communication entails transferring a mental content from one brain to another. Spoken language obviously plays an important role in communication between human individuals. Manual gestures however often aid the semantic interpretation of the spoken message, and gestures may have played a central role in the earlier evolution of communication. Here we used the social game of charades to investigate the neural basis of gestural communication by having participants produce and interpret meaningful gestures while their brain activity was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging. While participants decoded observed gestures, the putative mirror neuron system (pMNS: premotor, parietal and posterior mid-temporal cortex), associated with motor simulation, and the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ), associated with mentalizing and agency attribution, were significantly recruited. Of these areas only the pMNS was recruited during the production of gestures. This suggests that gestural communication relies on a combination of simulation and, during decoding, mentalizing/agency attribution brain areas. Comparing the decoding of gestures with a condition in which participants viewed the same gestures with an instruction not to interpret the gestures showed that although parts of the pMNS responded more strongly during active decoding, most of the pMNS and the TPJ did not show such significant task effects. This suggests that the mere observation of gestures recruits most of the system involved in voluntary interpretation

Single-photon single ionization of W+^{+} ions: experiment and theory

Experimental and theoretical results are reported for photoionization of Ta-like (W$^{+}$) tungsten ions. Absolute cross sections were measured in the energy range 16 to 245 eV employing the photon-ion merged-beam setup at the Advanced Light Source in Berkeley. Detailed photon-energy scans at 100 meV bandwidth were performed in the 16 to 108 eV range. In addition, the cross section was scanned at 50 meV resolution in regions where fine resonance structures could be observed. Theoretical results were obtained from a Dirac-Coulomb R-matrix approach. Photoionization cross section calculations were performed for singly ionized atomic tungsten ions in their $5s^2 5p^6 5d^4({^5}D)6s \; {^6}{\rm D}_{J}$, $J$=1/2, ground level and the associated excited metastable levels with $J$=3/2, 5/2, 7/2 and 9/2. Since the ion beams used in the experiments must be expected to contain long-lived excited states also from excited configurations, additional cross-section calculations were performed for the second-lowest term, 5d^5 \; ^6{\rm S}_{J}, $J$=5/2, and for the $^4$F term, 5d^3 6s^2 \; ^4{\rm F}_{J}, with $J$ = 3/2, 5/2, 7/2 and 9/2. Given the complexity of the electronic structure of W$^+$ the calculations reproduce the main features of the experimental cross section quite well.Comment: 23 pages, 7 figures, 1 table: Accepted for publication in J. Phys. B: At. Mol. & Opt. Phy