The media salience trends of 40 events in the UK between 1984 and 2003 were examined to determine the validity of allegations regarding the agenda-setting effect of appointing public inquiries. Results show that, contrary to the 'long grass' argument, the attenuation in media salience following the appointment of a public inquiry is not different from that of non-inquired events. The findings are analysed and an alternative explanation is suggested for the prevalence of the 'long grass' argument. (English) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Long chain alkanethiols self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) formed on Au microelectrodes showed higher sensitivity towards defects than the same monolayers on macroelectrodes. The anal. of cyclic voltammetry and electrochem. impedance spectroscopy (EIS) expts. performed on covered microelectrodes were consistent with the formation of pinholes of about 10 nm in diam. Moreover, the EIS data exhibited a specific behavior that was interpreted invoking the short circuiting of the pinholes impedance by the surrounding surface of the microelectrode in the high frequency domain, whereas in the low frequencies, the surface covered by the SAM was assume to act as an insulator. [on SciFinder(R)]
A novel fluorine-18 labeled amine fluorocyanoborane derivative was synthesized from the bromo-derivative precursor in 22% radiochemical yield. The [18F] labeling was accomplished by a semiautomatic method that is based on the synthesis of Ag 18F from Ag2CO3 and H 18F in a platinum dish followed by sonication of the bromo-precursor with Ag 18F in dry benzene to produce [18F] labeled amine fluorocyanoborane which was used with no further purification. A total of 50 microCi of the [18F] labeled amine fluorocyanoborane was injected into normal, female Sprague-Dawley rats (250-300 g) via the tail vein and monitored by Positron emission tomography (PET)/CT to detect its biodistribution in the rat body. The images showed an uptake of this compound in the bones of rats.
Analyzing the propagation dynamics of a light beam of arbitrary linear input polarization in an electro-activated photorefractive soliton we are able to experimentally find the conditions that separate its linear polarization components, mapping them into spatially distinct regions at the crystal output. Extending experiments to the switching scheme based on two oppositely biased solitons, we are able to transform this spatial separation into a separation of two distinct guided modes. The result is a miniaturized electro-optic polarization separator. (c) 2007 Optical Society of America.
The problem of extracting as much information as possible from a sequence of observations of a stationary stochastic process X0,X1, ¦,Xn has been considered by many authors from different points of view. It has long been known through the work of D. Bailey that no universal estimator for P(Xn+1|X0,X1, ...Xn) can be found which converges to the true estimator almost surely. Despite this result, for restricted classes of processes, or for sequences of estimators along stopping times, universal estimators can be found. We present here a survey of some of the recent work that has been done along these lines.
REASONS FOR PERFORMING STUDY: Clostridium botulinum type C is prevalent in Israel and outbreaks recorded in many species, other than horses. Association between levels of anti-BoNT/C antibodies and equine grass sickness (EGS) have been demonstrated but seroprevalence of anti-BoNT/C antibodies in horses has not been reported nor has EGS been reported in Israel. OBJECTIVES: To determine the seroprevalence of specific anti-BoNT/C antibodies in horses in Israel and to determine whether age, breed and gender, or geographical region of farms are potential risk factors for exposure to BoNT/C. HYPOTHESIS: Anti-BoNT/C antibodies are prevalent among horses in Israel and farm and horse-level variables are associated with increased risk for exposure. METHODS: Serum samples from 198 horses were collected and the levels of specific anti-BoNT/C antibodies were determined using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). For each categorical variable indicator variables were created and the odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) for the outcome variable were calculated using a univariable and multivariable logistic regression models. RESULTS: A total of 61 (30.8%) horses were ELISA positive for anti-BoNT/C IgG antibodies. The farm and its geographical region were associated significantly with seropositivity, horse-level variables, such as gender and breed, were also associated with seropositivity. Quarter Horse and Warmblood mares placed in the southern region of Israel had the highest odds to be tested positive for anti-BoNT/C IgG antibodies. CONCLUSIONS AND POTENTIAL RELEVANCE: Several farm and various horse-level risk factors for exposure to BoNT/C, found in this study, could be correlated to previously reported risk factors of EGS. Studies are required to determine the predisposing factors that cause EGS, which is apparently not present in Israel.
The figure of the butler, the protagonist of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel is a subtle illustration of the ability of human consciousness to deceive itself in what Sartre called “bad faith.” The self-deception is enhanced by being legitimized in the framework of a professional ethics. This ethics of the “dignity” of a job perfectly well accomplished, which is presented as nothing but blind obedience, not only leads to the character’s failure in his life but, more dangerously, to his serving as an instrument of evil action. Indirect commentary on latter aspect of the novel can be sought in Sartre’s analysis of “bad faith” and Marx’s of the alienated consciousness but also in the experiments in social psychology conducted by Stanley Milgram which point to the mechanisms by which ordinary people can become agents of mass destruction.
January 2007: Michel Terestchenko teaches at Reims University, France. He is the author of works on political phisolophy (Les violences de l’abstraction, Paris : Presses Universitaires de France, 1992 ; Philosophie politique, 2 vols, « Individu et société » (vol. 1), « Ethique, droit et science » (vol. 2), 4 éd. 2006, Paris: Hachette) and on moral philosophy (Amour et désespoir, de François de Sales à Fénelon, Paris: Seuil, 2000; and Un si fragile vernis d’humanité, banalité du mal, banalité du bien, Paris: La Découverte, 2005).
Gary Snyder has described his book-length poem Mountains and Rivers without End (1996) as a “mythic narrative of the female Buddha Tārā.” Snyder’s poem “An Offering for Tārā,” like several other poems in his corpus, describes a sensual, forgiving feminine divinity of the sort that many literary scholars now find problematic. By considering two poems from the Sixties alongside one from the mid-Nineties, we can see the developments within Snyder’s own myths and texts, but we also see how the images and ideas woven into discourses such as “Orientalism” or “the divine feminine” can undergo dramatic changes within the career of a single writer. Examining Snyder’s early poems “For a Far-out Friend,” and “Hymn to the Goddess San Francisco in Paradise” alongside Joanne Kyger’s “Tapestry,” the essay closely examines instances of divine femininity in Beat writing before returning to Snyder’s mature work, “An Offering for Tārā,” to show how Snyder fashions a postmodern American mode of tantric poetics that is politically progressive. His poetic approach has not been to repress the afflictive desires identified by feminist and anti-Orientalist critics but rather, in the manner of tantric Buddhist practice, to mindfully embrace and re-organize them.
June 2007: John Whalen-Bridge teaches in the department of English Language and Literature at the National University of Singapore, where he is also Convenor of the Religious Studies Minor Program of FASS. He has written Political Fiction and the American Self (1998) and articles on Gary Snyder, Charles Johnson, Vladimir Nabokov, Norman Mailer, and Maxine Hong Kingston. His current book project is concerned with Asian religion, especially Buddhism, and he is also co-editing a series with SUNY Press on Buddhism and American culture.
The vertical inflorescences of the Mediterranean annual Salvia viridis carry many small, colorful flowers, and are frequently terminated by a conspicuous tuft of colorful leaves ("flags") that attracts insect pollinators. Insects may use the flags as indicators of the food reward in the inflorescences, as long-distance cues for locating and choosing flowering patches, or both. Clipping of flags from patches of inflorescences in the field significantly reduced the number of pollinators that arrived at the patches, but not the total number of inflorescences and flowers visited by them. The number of flowers visited per inflorescence significantly increased with inflorescence size, however. Inflorescence and flower visits rates signific antly increased with patch size when flags were present, but not after flag removal. 6% of the plants in the study population did not develop any flag during blooming, yet suffered no reduction in seed set as compared to flag-bearing neighboring individuals. These results suggest that flags signal long-distance information to pollinators (perhaps indicating patch location or size), while flower-related cues may indicate inflorescence quality.Plants that do not develop flags probably benefit from the flag signals displayed by their neighbors, without bearing the costs of flag production. Thus, flagproducing plants can be viewed as altruists that enhance their neighbors' fitness. Greenhouse-grown S. viridis plants allocated '' 0.5% of their biomass to flag production, and plants grown under water stress did not reduce their biomassallocation to flags as compared to irrigated controls. These findings suggest that the expenses of flag production are modest, perhaps reducing the cost of altruism. We discuss additional potential evolutionary mechanisms that may select for the maintenance of flag production.
We seek the first indications that a nanoelectromechanical system (NEMS) is entering the quantum domain as its mass and temperature are decreased. We find them by studying the transition from classical to quantum behavior of a driven nonlinear Duffing resonator. Numerical solutions of the equations of motion, operating in the bistable regime of the resonator, demonstrate that the quantum Wigner function gradually deviates from the corresponding classical phase-space probability density. These clear differences that develop due to nonlinearity can serve as experimental signatures, in the near future, that NEMS resonators are entering the quantum domain.
{In the context of survival analysis, we define a covariate X as protective (detrimental) for the failure time T if the conditional distribution of [T | X = x] is stochastically increasing (decreasing) as a function of x. In the presence of another covariate Y, there exist situations where [T | X = x
