Slott-Agape Project

SLOTT-AGAPE (Systematic Lensing Observation at Toppo Telescope - Andromeda Gravitational Amplification Pixel Lensing Experiment) is a new collaboration project among international partners from England, France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland that intends to perform microlensing observation by using M31 as target. The MACHOs search is made thanks to the pixel lensing technique.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, proceeding of XLIII Congresso della Societa' Astronomica Italiana, Napoli, 4-8 Maggio, 199

Coastline responses to changing storm patterns

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2006. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Research Letters 33 (2006): L18404, doi:10.1029/2006GL027445.Researchers and coastal managers are pondering how accelerated sea-level rise and possibly intensified storms will affect shorelines. These issues are most often investigated in a cross-shore profile framework, fostering the implicit assumption that coastline responses will be approximately uniform in the alongshore direction. However, experiments with a recently developed numerical model of coastline change on a large spatial domain suggest that the shoreline responses to climate change could be highly variable. As storm and wave climates change, large-scale coastline shapes are likely to shift—causing areas of greatly accelerated coastal erosion to alternate with areas of considerable shoreline accretion. On complex-shaped coastlines, including cuspate-cape and spit coastlines, the alongshore variation in shoreline retreat rates could be an order of magnitude higher than the baseline retreat rate expected from sea-level rise alone.The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Science Foundation Biocomplexity Program, and the Duke University Center on Global Change supported this work

Community syndicalism for the United States: preliminary observations on law and globalization in democratic production

two structural labor crises for developed economies: 1) The channeling of substantial investment into non-productive, paper commodities, reducing growth of production for use and therefore reducing available aggregate job creation; and 2) The continued exportation of industrial jobs to other lower cost jurisdictions, and outsourcing, automation, just-in-time production, and speed-ups associated with global supply chains. As a result, local communities and regional populations have destabilized and even collapsed with attendant social problems. One possible response is Community Syndicalism – local community finance and operating credit for industrial production combined with democratic worker ownership and control of production. The result would increase investment directly for production, retain jobs in existing population centers, promote job skilling, and retain tax bases for local services and income supporting local businesses, at the same time increasing support for authentic political democracy by rendering the exploitive ideology of the Public/Private distinction superfluous. Slowing job exportation may reduce the global race to the bottom of labor standards and differential wage rates reducing the return to producers of value and increasing the skew of income distribution undermining social wages and welfare worldwide. Community Syndicalism can serve as moral goal in an alternative production model focusing incentives on long term stability of jobs and community economic base

Targeted retroviral gene transfer into the rat biliary tract

The ability to induce proliferation by temporary duct ligation suggested an hypothesis that retrovirus-mediated gene transfer into cells of the biliary tract could be accomplished. The time course of histologic changes, incorporation of 3 H-thymidine and immunofluorescent staining with a monoclonal antibody to cytokeratin-19 (a marker for differentiated bile ducts) was studied in male Fischer F344 rats. A recombinant Gibbon ape leukemia virus (GALV), containing a gene encoding Escherichia coli β-galactosidase was next introduced into 24 hr obstructed bile ducts. Gene transfer was maximal when virus was exposed to the obstructed duct for 12 hr (∼0.1%). The majority of X-gal positive cells were in cytokeratin-19 negative peribiliary tissues, which had the appearance of newly forming bile ducts. The data suggest that cells targeted by retroviral infection of the obstructed rat bile duct may be a precursor of mature, fully differentiated biliary epithelium.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/45547/1/11188_2006_Article_BF02374373.pd

Characterization of on-road vehicle emissions in the Mexico City Metropolitan Area using a mobile laboratory in chase and fleet average measurement modes during the MCMA-2003 field campaign

International audienceA mobile laboratory was used to measure on-road vehicle emission ratios during the MCMA-2003 field campaign held during the spring of 2003 in the Mexico City Metropolitan Area (MCMA). The measured emission ratios represent a sample of emissions of in-use vehicles under real world driving conditions for the MCMA. From the relative amounts of NOx and selected VOC's sampled, the results indicate that the technique is capable of differentiating among vehicle categories and fuel type in real world driving conditions. Emission ratios for NOx, NOy, NH3, H2CO, CH3CHO, and other selected volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are presented for chase sampled vehicles in the form of frequency distributions as well as estimates for the fleet averaged emissions. Our measurements of emission ratios for both CNG and gasoline powered "colectivos" (public transportation buses that are intensively used in the MCMA) indicate that ? in a mole per mole basis ? have significantly larger NOx and aldehydes emissions ratios as compared to other sampled vehicles in the MCMA. Similarly, ratios of selected VOCs and NOy showed a strong dependence on traffic mode. These results are compared with the vehicle emissions inventory for the MCMA, other vehicle emissions measurements in the MCMA, and measurements of on-road emissions in U.S. cities. We estimate NOx emissions as 100 600±29 200 metric tons per year for light duty gasoline vehicles in the MCMA for 2003. According to these results, annual NOx emissions estimated in the emissions inventory for this category are within the range of our estimated NOx annual emissions. Our estimates for motor vehicle emissions of benzene, toluene, formaldehyde, and acetaldehyde in the MCMA indicate these species are present in concentrations higher than previously reported. The high motor vehicle aldehyde emissions may have an impact on the photochemistry of urban areas

Development and validation of a brief, descriptive Danish pain questionnaire (BDDPQ).

BACKGROUND: A new pain questionnaire should be simple, be documented to have discriminative function, and be related to previously used questionnaires. METHODS: Word meaning was validated by using bilingual Danish medical students and asking them to translate words taken from the Danish version of the McGill pain questionnaire into English. Evaluative word value was estimated using a visual analog scale (VAS). Discriminative function was assessed by having patients with one of six painful conditions (postherpetic neuralgia, phantom limb pain, rheumatoid arthritis, ankle fracture, appendicitis, or labor pain) complete the questionnaire. RESULTS: We were not able to find Danish words that were reliably back-translated to the English words 'splitting' or 'gnawing'. A simple three-word set of evaluative terms had good separation when rated on a VAS scale ('let' 17.5+/-6.5 mm; 'moderat' 42.7+/-8.6 mm; and 'staerk' 74.9+/-9.7 mm). The questionnaire was able to discriminate among the six painful conditions with 77% accuracy by just using the descriptive words. The accuracy of the questionnaire increased to 96% with the addition of evaluative terms (for pain at rest and with activity), chronicity (acute vs. chronic), and location of the pain. CONCLUSIONS: A Danish pain questionnaire that subjects and patients can self-administer has been developed and validated relative to the words used in the English McGill Pain questionnaire. The discriminative ability of the questionnaire among some common painful conditions has been tested and documented. The questionnaire may be of use in patient care and research