Employment deconcentration in European metropolitan areas: A comprehensive comparison and policy implications

This chapter features a cross-national comparison of economic deconcentration in 12 European metropolitan areas analysing two attributes of employment deconcentration: the magnitude, which refers to the scale of deconcentration; and the physical form. The discussion is positioned in the framework of two dimensions of governance systems: welfare-state regime and central-local government relations. Our expectation that deconcentration would take place on a smaller scale and in a more concentrated form in comprehensive welfare state systems than in liberal regimes is confirmed for one decentralized comprehensive welfare state case and three decentralized liberal state metropolitan areas, but not for the other seven cases. Arguments accounting for this mismatch are put forward. In addition, the effects of deconcentration on the quality of life and the impact of policies are discussed

Performance, carcass characteristics, economic margin and meat quality in young Tudanca bulls fed on two levels of grass silage and concentrate

This study investigates the effect on performance, carcass and meat characteristics of increasing the forage level in the diet of fattening Tudanca young bulls using silage as the forage source as compared with a conventional ad libitum straw plus concentrate diet. Twenty two Tudanca young bulls were assigned to three different finishing diets: ad libitum grass silage plus ad libitum concentrate (GS-AC), ad libitum grass silage plus concentrate limited to a half of the intake of the ad libitum group (GS-LC), ad libitum barley straw plus ad libitum concentrate (Str-AC) and then slaughtered at around 11 months of age. GS-LC diet resulted in relation to GS-AC and Str-AC diets in lower (p <= 0.05) average daily weight gain (750 vs 1, 059 and 991 g/animal/day, respectively), lower (p <= 0.05) carcass weight (133 vs 159 and 152 kg, respectively) and carcasses with slightly lower conformation scores. Although GS-LC diet allowed for a lower dependence on concentrate (372 vs 657 and 729 kg/animal, respectively), economic margin was similar for the two GS groups (-63.1 and -64.1 vs -91.8 (sic)/head). The polyunsaturated/saturated fatty acid ratio was the lowest (p <= 0.05) in GS-AC meat (the group showing the highest IMF levels) and the ratio n-6/n-3 was the highest (p <= 0.05) in Str-AC meat. GS-LC meat showed higher collagen content and Str-AC meat presented higher cohesiveness, springiness and chewiness values. Results suggested that the substitution of straw by grass silage and the restriction of the concentrate level could be recommended for finishing young Tudanca bulls in indoors systems

MiR393 regulation of auxin signaling and redox-related components during acclimation to salinity in Arabidopsis

One of the most striking aspects of plant plasticity is the modulation of development in response to environmental changes. Plant growth and development largely depend on the phytohormone auxin that exerts its function through a partially redundant family of F-box receptors, the TIR1-AFBs. We have previously reported that the Arabidopsis double mutant tir1 afb2 is more tolerant to salt stress than wild-type plants and we hypothesized that down-regulation of auxin signaling might be part of Arabidopsis acclimation to salinity. In this work, we show that NaCl-mediated salt stress induces miR393 expression by enhancing the transcription of AtMIR393A and leads to a concomitant reduction in the levels of the TIR1 and AFB2 receptors. Consequently, NaCl triggers stabilization of Aux/IAA repressors leading to down-regulation of auxin signaling. Further, we report that miR393 is likely involved in repression of lateral root (LR) initiation, emergence and elongation during salinity, since the mir393ab mutant shows reduced inhibition of emergent and mature LR number and length upon NaCl-treatment. Additionally, mir393ab mutant plants have increased levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in LRs, and reduced ascorbate peroxidase (APX) enzymatic activity compared with wild-type plants during salinity. Thus, miR393 regulation of the TIR1 and AFB2 receptors could be a critical checkpoint between auxin signaling and specfic redoxassociated components in order to coordinate tissue and time-specific growth responses and tolerance during acclimation to salinity in Arabidopsis.Instituto de Fisiología Vegeta

Mandelbrot set in coupled logistic maps and in an electronic experiment

We suggest an approach to constructing physical systems with dynamical characteristics of the complex analytic iterative maps. The idea follows from a simple notion that the complex quadratic map by a variable change may be transformed into a set of two identical real one-dimensional quadratic maps with a particular coupling. Hence, dynamical behavior of similar nature may occur in coupled dissipative nonlinear systems, which relate to the Feigenbaum universality class. To substantiate the feasibility of this concept, we consider an electronic system, which exhibits dynamical phenomena intrinsic to complex analytic maps. Experimental results are presented, providing the Mandelbrot set in the parameter plane of this physical system.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figure

EnzMet™: An Enzymatic Metallography Reagent for Accurately Delineating Neuronal Boundaries for Segmenting Gap Junction-Coupled Neurons in their Three-dimensional Space

Extended abstract of a paper presented at Microscopy and Microanalysis 2012 in Phoenix, Arizona, USA, July 29 - August 2, 201

Sequential design of computer experiments for the estimation of a probability of failure

This paper deals with the problem of estimating the volume of the excursion set of a function $f:\mathbb{R}^d \to \mathbb{R}$ above a given threshold, under a probability measure on $\mathbb{R}^d$ that is assumed to be known. In the industrial world, this corresponds to the problem of estimating a probability of failure of a system. When only an expensive-to-simulate model of the system is available, the budget for simulations is usually severely limited and therefore classical Monte Carlo methods ought to be avoided. One of the main contributions of this article is to derive SUR (stepwise uncertainty reduction) strategies from a Bayesian-theoretic formulation of the problem of estimating a probability of failure. These sequential strategies use a Gaussian process model of $f$ and aim at performing evaluations of $f$ as efficiently as possible to infer the value of the probability of failure. We compare these strategies to other strategies also based on a Gaussian process model for estimating a probability of failure.Comment: This is an author-generated postprint version. The published version is available at http://www.springerlink.co