IVOA Recommendation: Universal Worker Service Pattern Version 1.0

The Universal Worker Service (UWS) pattern defines how to manage asynchronous execution of jobs on a service. Any application of the pattern defines a family of related services with a common service contract. Possible uses of the pattern are also described

Management in General Practice - 3: A slelection of articles

A selection of articles published in the medical journal Pulse in 199

A comparison of the results from intra-pleural and intra-peritoneal studies with those from inhalation and intratracheal tests for the assessment of pulmonary responses to inhalable dusts and fibres.

The aim of this paper is to compare results from inhalation studies with those from intraperitoneal and intrapleural tests, where available, for a number of fibrous and particulate test materials. The objective is to determine how well intraperitoneal/intrapleural studies predict the pathological responses observed in more standard in vivo studies of pulmonary toxicity, with a particular focus on carcinogenicity. Published toxicity data was obtained for a number of materials including asbestos, wollastonite, MMVFs (including glass fibres, stone wools and RCF), silicon carbide whiskers, potassium octatitanate, quartz, kevlar, polypropylene and titanium dioxide. For some of the fibrous material reviewed, there is conformity between the results of intraperitoneal and inhalation tests such that they are either consistently positive or consistently negative. For the remaining fibrous materials reviewed, intraperitoneal and inhalation tests give different results, with positive results in the intraperitoneal test not being reflected by positive inhalation results. It is suggested that the intraperitoneal test can be used to exonerate a dust or fibre (because if negative in the intraperitoneal test it is extremely unlikely to be positive in either inhalation or intratracheal tests) but should not be used to positively determine that a dust or fibre is carcinogenic by inhalation. We would argue against the use of intraperitoneal tests for human health risk assessment except perhaps for the purpose of exoneration of a material from classification as a carcinogen.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Factors affecting the heat coagulation of homogenized coffee cream

Cover title.Bibliography: p. 578

How did the 2003 dividend tax cut affect stock prices?

We test the hypothesis that the 2003 dividend tax cut boosted U.S. stock prices and thus lowered the cost of equity. Using an event- study methodology, we attempt to identify an aggregate stock market effect by comparing the behavior of U.S. common stock prices to that of European stocks and real estate investment trusts. We also examine the relative cross-sectional response of prices on high-dividend versus low-dividend paying stocks. We do not find any imprint of the dividend tax cut news on the value of the aggregate U.S. stock market. On the other hand, high-dividend stocks outperformed low-dividend stocks by a few percentage points over the event windows, suggesting that the tax cut did induce asset reallocation within equity portfolios. Finally, the positive abnormal returns on non-dividend paying U.S. stocks in 2003 do not appear to be tied to tax-cut news.Taxation ; Stock - Prices

Interband and intraband optical transitions in InAs nanocrystal quantum dots: A pseudopotential approach

An atomistic pseudopotential method is used to investigate the electronic and optical properties of spherical InAs nanocrystals. Our calculated interband (valence-to-conduction) absorption spectra reproduce the features observed experimentally both qualitatively and quantitatively. The results relative to intraband (valence-to-valence and conduction-to-conduction) absorption successfully reproduce the recently measured photoinduced absorption spectra, which had so far been addressed only qualitatively. They exclude the hypothesis of a thermal activation process between dot-interior-delocalized hole states to explain the temperature dependence observed experimentally. Furthermore, based on the agreement of our data with the experimental valence intersublevel transitions and the almost complete overlap of the latter with scanning tunneling microscopic (STM) measurements, we question the simplistic attribution of the observed STM peaks obtained for negative bias

Animal Crackers: Rationality and Animality in the Western Political Imaginary

The issue of the animality of man is back on the philosophical and sociological agenda. At the philosophical level, this results from the more thorough-going critique of anthropocentrism and humanism in contemporary thought. At the sociological level, the re-emergence of the thematic of barbarism, on the one hand, and the emergence of the recognition of our 'posthuman future', on the other hand, has brought into question the centrality of the humanity of the human. I would like to consider four different but inter-related questions that circle around the issues of the subject, sexual difference and the difference between what has been called historically 'man' and animal before concluding with what could be called 'the comatose woman'. I will say a few things first about the emergence of the 'non-concept' of difference in contemporary thought and how it has been used to deconstruct the purported domination of the subject and the technological preformation of thought that flows from it. My argument will be that this reading of philosophy, as Derrida points out, brings to the fore the question of what the German language calls Geschlecht; that is, the question or questions of species difference, of sexual difference, of ethnic or racial difference. In sum, those differences that the subject of western metaphysics transcended, either non-dialectically or dialectically. These differences have been described conventionally as belonging to the order of nature, which is a categorization that deconstruction rejects. What might lie beyond nature and these 'naturalised' differences is a certain experience of an originary multiplicity of the world before its determination by subjectifying thought. The question that the issue of sexual and species difference raises, however, is: How can we both deconstruct the subject and the spiritualist metaphysics that determine it, while not falling into a naturalism or biologism that still requires both critique and denunciation? Is there not only a paradox, but a dangerous paradox in trying to think the multiple. It is my argument that deconstruction can not really answer these question and that this fact necessitates a re-evaluation of the subject and points to the limitations of postmodern notions of difference