Desktop fiber push-out apparatus

A desktop fiber push-out was developed which offers the advantage of being compact, easy to operate, and inexpensive. A description of the design and operation of this apparatus is given

Archaeal ubiquity

In the seventeenth century, Antoine von Leeuwenhook used a simple microscope to discover that we live within a previously undetected microbial world containing an enormously diverse population of creatures. The late nineteenth and early twentieth century brought advances in microbial culture techniques and in biochemistry, uncovering the roles that microbes play in all aspects of our world, from causing disease to modulating geochemical cycles. In the last 25 years, molecular biology has revealed the complexity and pervasiveness of the microbial world and its importance for understanding the interactions that maintain living systems on the planet. The paper by Preston et al. (1) in this issue of the Proceedings provides a clear illustration of the power of these molecular techniques to describe new biological relationships and to pose important questions about the mechanisms that drive evolution. The analysis of ribosomal RNA gene sequences is one molecular approach that has radically altered our view of microbial diversity. Its application can be extended and expedited by the use of PCR. The confluence of these techniques has stimulated the rapid assembly of sequence information from homologues rRNA gene regions derived from virtually all classes of organisms. The data collected thus far support the scheme first presented by Woese et al. (2), which holds that the relationships among organisms can be summarized in the form of a universal phylogenetic tree comprised of one eukaryotic and two prokaryotic domains: the Eucarya, the Bacteria, and the Archaea (Fig. 1)

International R&D Spillovers Between U.S. and Japanese R&D Intensive Sectors

A great deal of empirical evidence shows that a country's production structure and productivity growth depend on its own R&D capital formation. With the growing role of international trade, foreign investment and international knowledge diffusion, domestic production and productivity also depend on the R&D activities of other countries. The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the bilateral link between the U.S. and Japanese economies in terms of how R&D capital formation in one country affects the production structure, physical and R&D capital accumulation, and productivity growth in the other country. We find that production processes become less labor intensive as international R&D spillovers grow. In the short-run, R&D intensity is complementary to the international spillover. This relationship persists in the long-run for the U.S., but the Japanese decrease their own R&D intensity. U.S. R&D capital accounts for 60% of Japanese total factor productivity growth, while Japanese R&D capital contributes 20% to U.S. productivity gains. International spillovers cause social rates of return to be about four times the private returns.