The importance of being adhesive

Phytonematodes cause annual crop losses of $100 billion per year. Pasteuria penetrans is a bacterium that has potential to be developed into a biological control agent as an alternative to nematicides. This poster is an overview of a collagen-like gene that is responsible for adhesion of the bacterium to the nematode's cuticle as the first step in the infection process.Non peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Future wireless applications for a networked city: services for visitors and residents

Future wireless networks will offer near-ubiquitous high-bandwidth communications to mobile users. In addition, the accurate position of users will be known, either through network services or via additional sensing devices such as GPS. These characteristics of future mobile environments will enable the development of location-aware and, more generally, context-sensitive applications. In an attempt to explore the system, application, and user issues associated with the development and deployment of such applications, we began to develop the Lancaster GUIDE system in early 1997, finishing the first phase of the project in 1999. In its entirety, GUIDE comprises a citywide wireless network based on 802.11, a context-sensitive tour guide application with, crucially, significant content, and a set of supporting distributed systems services. Uniquely in the field, GUIDE has been evaluated using members of the general public, and we have gained significant experience in the design of usable context-sensitive applications. We focus on the applications and supporting infrastructure that will form part of GUIDE II, the successor to the GUIDE system. These developments are designed to expand GUIDE outside the tour guide domain, and to provide applications and services for residents of the city of Lancaster, offering a vision of the future mobile environments that will emerge once ubiquitous high-bandwidth coverage is available in most cities

Mobile-awareness:designing for mobile interactive systems

In recent years, we have witnessed a significant increase in the availability and adoption of mobile devices with wireless communications capabilities. Such devices can be used as the end-system in network-based (single or multi

Distribution of Supernova Remnants in the Galaxy

The number of Supernova Remnants (SNRs) observable in the Galaxy is consistent with the number expected to be formed in a Universe that is 7,000 years old. The resulting problem of the missing Supernova Remnants is well known and is recognized by astronomers who work in this field

Counting Back to Zero: A Review of Cosmological Models That Begin Under Conditions of Zero Entropy

In recent years there have been significant developments in cosmological models that assume zero or near zero entropy conditions for the origin of the universe. Modern versions of these models are providing quantifiable interpretations for a wide range of astronomical phenomena. These interpretations are mutually consistent but are in strong variance with interpretations based on ‘Hot Big Bang’ cosmologies. On the other hand, low entropy cosmogony models have a theoretical framework that has strong resonance with creationary requirements for cosmogony

Emotional Dissonance Among UK Animal Technologists: Evidence, Impact and Management Implications

The care and welfare of laboratory animals born, nurtured and experimented upon within a research facility is the primary function for animal technologists. While discharging these responsibilities the emotional needs of the carers require consideration, balancing their perceptions of animal care against the purpose for which the animals exist. As little published information is available on the emotional challenges faced by UK animal technologists, this thesis redresses the balance, exploring the subject in detail through qualitative and quantitative methods. Emotional dissonance, often expressed as felt emotion versus enacted emotion, is a negative output from Emotional Labour. Animal technologists operate in a service environment and the results demonstrate that they ‘act’ under duress and self-regulate which emotions to display. Using exploratory factor analysis the results illustrate two key drivers on felt and enacted emotions. These include internal elements associated with daily tasks elements such as euthanasia and external factors such as budgets over which they have little or no control. Emotional dissonance is shown to occur within various employment grades. Resultant emotions include, guilt, shame and sadness. These can lead to affects upon job satisfaction propagating feelings of workplace alienation, isolation and fear, particularly from antivivisectionist organisations. When organisational support was not forthcoming or lacked empathy, individuals deployed various coping methods. This demonstrates both management and organisational implications including gender, educational attainment and whether a person has staff supervision responsibilities. Observations drawn through both qualitative and quantitative research clearly signpost a spectrum of indicators of emotional dissonance leading to individual, managerial and organisational theoretical implications. In doing so, emotion knowledge has been increased on a previously under researched occupational sector existing within a largely secretive environment. The research on a hitherto largely unknown employment grouping provides insights that had previously existed only mainly in anecdotal ways. The results provide strong evidence to further support existing research demonstrating how roles with significant emotional components directly impact upon individuals and the organisations that employ them

Estimating the Knowledge-Capital Model of the Multinational Enterprise: Comment

A recent American Economic Review article by David L. Carr, James R. Markusen, and Keith E. Maskus (CMM) estimates a regression specification based upon the 'knowledge-capital' model of the Multinational Enterprise (MNE). The knowledge-capital model combines 'horizontal' motivations for FDI -- the desire to place production close to customers and thereby avoid trade costs -- with 'vertical' motivations -- the desire to carry out unskilled-labor intensive production activities in locations with relatively abundant unskilled labor. The CMM estimates pool inward and outward U.S. affiliate sales data from 1986 through 1994 and appear to support the knowledge-capital model of the MNE. We show that CMM's empirical framework mis-specifies the terms measuring differences in skilled-labor abundance, key variables that identify vertical MNE motivations. After correcting this specification error estimates no longer reject the horizontal model in favor of the knowledge-capital model. Instead, the data strongly support the predictions of the horizontal model of MNEs: affiliate activity between countries decreases as absolute differences in skill-labor abundance widen. Qualitatively identical results are also found using data that include a wider variety of parent and host countries, including data for the OECD.

A comparison of methodologies for the staining and quantification of intracellular components of Arbuscular Mychorrizal (AM) fungi in the root cortex of two varieties of winter wheat

© 2019 The Authors. The definitive peer reviewed, edited version of this article is published in Access Microbiology, https://doi.org/10.1099/acmi.0.000083. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.Arbuscular Mychorrizal (AM) fungi are one of the most common fungal organisms to exist in symbiosis with terrestrial plants facilitating the growth and maintenance of arable crops. Wheat has been studied extensively for AM fungal symbiosis using the carcinogen trypan blue as the identifying stain for fungal components, namely arbuscles, vesicles and hyphal structures. The present study uses Sheaffer® blue ink with a lower risk as an alternative to this carcinogenic stain. Justification for this is determined by stained wheat root sections (n = 120), with statistically significant increases in the observed abundance of intracellular root cortical fungal structures stained with Sheaffer® blue ink compared to trypan blue for both Zulu (P = 0.003) and Siskin (P = 0.0003) varieties of winter wheat. This new alternative combines an improved quantification of intracellular fungal components with a lower hazard risk at a lower cost.Peer reviewe