"Out of This Confusion I Bring My Heart": Love, Liberation, and the Rise of Black Lesbian and Gay Cultural Politics in Late Twentieth Century America.

This dissertation investigates themes of liberation and love in post-civil rights Black LGBT literary cultures. Tracing love as a political trope in African American literary history, I demonstrate how it operates as a central theme in black queer cultural production in the late twentieth century. I argue that black lesbian and gay artist-activists were not interested in enacting a myopic sexual agenda but rather expanding the very understanding of love as a political necessity for the achievement of liberation. Whereas most historians argue that by the late 1960s black liberation struggles were on a decline, my investigation of literatures by black lesbian and gay artists shows how black queer culture of the post-civil rights era continue black liberation struggles. While literary scholars and historians have explored the work of Black gay writers and thinkers like James Baldwin and Bayard Rustin, few have examined the larger context of post-civil rights black LGBT culture, and in particular the deep personal and literary connections between Black lesbian writers and an emergent generation of self identified black gay male writers. This dissertation analyzes the political and literary activism of black lesbian feminists Barbara Smith, Audre Lorde, Pat Parker, Cheryl Clarke, Joseph Beam, and Assotto Saint. While intervening in the politics of writing a black liberation narrative, this project also offers a new approach to the study of Afro-American literature and culture by placing black lesbian and gay cultural productions at the center of analysis.PhDAmerican CultureUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/113558/1/dbgreen_1.pd

MPEG-7: The Multimedia Content Description Interface

In this paper a review of the most used MPEG-7 descriptors are presented. Some considerations for choosing the most proper descriptor for a particular image or video data set are outlined

Some Issues in the Art Image Database Systems

In this paper we illustrate several aspects of art databases, such as: the spread of the multimedia art images; the main characteristics of art images; main art images search models; unique characteristics for art image retrieval; the importance of the sensory and semantic gaps. In addition, we present several interesting features of an art image database, such as: image indexing; feature extraction; analysis on various levels of precision; style classification. We stress color features and their base, painting analysis and painting styles. We study also which MPEG-7 descriptors are best for fine painting images retrieval. An experimental system is developed to see how these descriptors work on 900 art images from several remarkable art periods. On the base of our experiments some suggestions for improving the process of searching and analysis of fine art images are given

Runway Safety Monitor Algorithm for Single and Crossing Runway Incursion Detection and Alerting

The Runway Safety Monitor (RSM) is an aircraft based algorithm for runway incursion detection and alerting that was developed in support of NASA's Runway Incursion Prevention System (RIPS) research conducted under the NASA Aviation Safety and Security Program's Synthetic Vision System project. The RSM algorithm provides warnings of runway incursions in sufficient time for pilots to take evasive action and avoid accidents during landings, takeoffs or when taxiing on the runway. The report documents the RSM software and describes in detail how RSM performs runway incursion detection and alerting functions for NASA RIPS. The report also describes the RIPS flight tests conducted at the Reno/Tahoe International Airport (RNO) and the Wallops Flight Facility (WAL) during July and August of 2004, and the RSM performance results and lessons learned from those flight tests

PCI-SS: MISO dynamic nonlinear protein secondary structure prediction

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Since the function of a protein is largely dictated by its three dimensional configuration, determining a protein's structure is of fundamental importance to biology. Here we report on a novel approach to determining the one dimensional secondary structure of proteins (distinguishing α-helices, β-strands, and non-regular structures) from primary sequence data which makes use of Parallel Cascade Identification (PCI), a powerful technique from the field of nonlinear system identification.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Using PSI-BLAST divergent evolutionary profiles as input data, dynamic nonlinear systems are built through a black-box approach to model the process of protein folding. Genetic algorithms (GAs) are applied in order to optimize the architectural parameters of the PCI models. The three-state prediction problem is broken down into a combination of three binary sub-problems and protein structure classifiers are built using 2 layers of PCI classifiers. Careful construction of the optimization, training, and test datasets ensures that no homology exists between any training and testing data. A detailed comparison between PCI and 9 contemporary methods is provided over a set of 125 new protein chains guaranteed to be dissimilar to all training data. Unlike other secondary structure prediction methods, here a web service is developed to provide both human- and machine-readable interfaces to PCI-based protein secondary structure prediction. This server, called PCI-SS, is available at <url>http://bioinf.sce.carleton.ca/PCISS</url>. In addition to a dynamic PHP-generated web interface for humans, a Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) interface is added to permit invocation of the PCI-SS service remotely. This machine-readable interface facilitates incorporation of PCI-SS into multi-faceted systems biology analysis pipelines requiring protein secondary structure information, and greatly simplifies high-throughput analyses. XML is used to represent the input protein sequence data and also to encode the resulting structure prediction in a machine-readable format. To our knowledge, this represents the only publicly available SOAP-interface for a protein secondary structure prediction service with published WSDL interface definition.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Relative to the 9 contemporary methods included in the comparison cascaded PCI classifiers perform well, however PCI finds greatest application as a consensus classifier. When PCI is used to combine a sequence-to-structure PCI-based classifier with the current leading ANN-based method, PSIPRED, the overall error rate (Q3) is maintained while the rate of occurrence of a particularly detrimental error is reduced by up to 25%. This improvement in BAD score, combined with the machine-readable SOAP web service interface makes PCI-SS particularly useful for inclusion in a tertiary structure prediction pipeline.</p

Isolation, characterization and partial sequencing of cystine and thiol peptides of pig heart lipoamide dehydrogenase

Pig heart lipoamide dehydrogenase (EC 1.6.4.3) contains ten half-cystines (as cysteic acid) per mole of enzyme bound FAD. Two of these are linked in an intrachain cystine which acts in concert with the flavin during catalysis. A peptic peptide containing this active center disulfide has been isolated and shown to have the sequence: Glu-Thr-Leu-Gly-Gly-Thr-Cys-Leu-Asn-Val-Gly-Cys-Ile-Pro-Ser (Lys, Ala, Leu). The enzyme also contains seven titratable thiols when either 5,5'-dithiobis (2-nitrobenzoic acid) or iodoacetate is used as titrant. Tryptic peptides containing alkylated thiols have been isolated and characterized by amino acid composition and by their positions in two-dimensional chromatography-electrophoresis. On the basis of map position and composition, the peptides containing thiols can be distinguished from one another. The results are compared with recent data of Brown and Perham (Brown, J. P. and Perham, R. N. (1974) Biochem. J. 138, 505-512) on the compositions and partial sequences of tryptic chymotryptic peptides containing half-cystines. The combined data associate nine of the ten half-cystines with unique compositions.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/22230/1/0000664.pd

Gauge Field Back-reaction on a Black Hole

The order $\hbar$ fluctuations of gauge fields in the vicinity of a blackhole can create a repulsive antigravity region extending out beyond the renormalized Schwarzschild horizon. If the strength of this repulsive force increases as higher orders in the back-reaction are included, the formation of a wormhole-like object could occur.Comment: 17 pages, three figures available on request, in RevTe

High-pressure-mediated dissociation of immune complexes demonstrated in model systems

The use of pressure to disrupt immune complexes was demonstrated in two model systems: prostate-specific antigen (PSA) and anti-PSA antibody; and epiglycanin, a mucin glycoprotein, and an antibody specific to that protein. Dissociation of the anti-PSA antibody from the immobilized PSA antigen was observed when pressures of 415 MPa and 550 MPa (1 MPa ϳ144 psi) were applied at room temperature (ϳ21°C). Application of pressures ranging from 140 MPa to 550 MPa resulted in dissociation of antibody from epiglycanin. In both cases, the rebinding of dissociated antibody to immobilized antigen indicated that the effect of high pressure on the binding of the immune complexes was reversible. These findings suggest that application of high hydrostatic pressure has the potential to be used to significantly improve the sensitivity and specificity of clinical assays

Die polnische Freiheit und Preußens Friedrich : Oder: Über die Furcht der Hohenzollern vor dem polnischen Freiheitsbazillus

Aus Anlass des 300. Geburtstags von „Friedrich dem Großen“ im Jahr 2012 erinnert der Autor daran, dass der Preußenkönig nicht nur ein Philosoph und Aufklärer war, sondern auch ein Verächter von „polnischer Freiheit“ und dass er mit seiner Politik erheblich zur deutsch-polnischen Verfeindung mit beigetragen hat