Towards a territorialized approach to urban renewal: A comparison of policies in France and the Netherlands

Urban renewal is an important objective of public policies in France and in the Netherlands. In both countries, central government involvement in urban renewal is evolving from direct intervention through sectoral subsidies, towards a “territorialized” policy. Funding for urban renewal is made available for local planning authorities in contracts with central government. These contracts are based on territorial strategies elaborated at the local level. This takes place in a context where the role of the public sector is changing. Local planning authorities become more autonomous and depend to a lesser extent on central government. At the same time, they develop a more businesslike approach towards co-operation with private bodies. In this article, the evolution of urban renewal policies in France and the Netherlands is examined within this context. It appears that in both countries, a territorialized approach towards urban renewal is found to be adequate. However, important questions remain unanswered regarding the appropriate level of public intervention, its legitimacy, the division of risks and rewards among partners in urban renewal projects, and the capacity of local planning authorities.     

Analysis of the causes of pump failure and differences of failure characteristics

It is generally accepted that sewage pumping stations are directly responsible for affecting sewer system performance in terms of combined sewer overflows and flooding. However, the specific causes of pump failure are unknown. This paper presents the analysis of pump failure data provided by four sewer management authorities in The Netherlands. Pump failures have been studied accounting for the nature of failures, operation and maintenance procedures of the management authority, ageing of the pumps and changes in the environment of pumps. Pumps have been clustered on the basis of specific characteristics of their 'environment', including pump age, operating time, pump capacity and degree of pollution of the sewage. The analysis shows that the well known 'bathtub' type failure rate curve can describe failures of sewage pumps. The impact of the degree of pollution of the sewage, however, is less clear. Operating time and total pumping capacity show no correlation with failure rate. Consequently, further research using data mining techniques is needed to separate the impact of the different aspects of the environment of a pump.     

The ultrapurification of tellurium

High-purity tellurium is used in the preparation of II–VI compounds, particularly CdTe and Cd_x Hg_1?x Te. Distillation of tellurium under low-pressure H₂ reduces the concentrations of iron and silicon. The addition of CdTe to tellurium prior to zone refining, in a quantity less than the eutectic concentration, has been observed to change the segregation behavior of Ca, K, Ga and As, which enables more efficient refining. Emission spectroscopy, spark source mass spectroscopy and the evaluation of Cd_0.21Hg_0.79 Te have been used to characterize these effects.     

Wheel access duration in rats: I. Effects on feeding and running.

The effects of 0-, 2-, and 24-hr wheel access on the pattern of running, feeding, and weight were explored over 24 days in 3 groups of 8 male rats. Both 2 and 24 hr of wheel access suppressed feeding by about 15% for about 8 days before feeding gradually returned to normal. Weight in these 2 groups was similar and was suppressed for the 24 days. Like the pattern seen with drug self-administration (S. H. Ahmed & G. F. Koob, 1998, 1999), running levels stayed low with short, 2-hr daytime wheel access, but with long, 24-hr access, rats' running escalated over days to chronically high levels. These results may have relevance for the understanding of addiction and anorexia nervosa. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

GCase and LIMP2 Abnormalities in the Liver of Niemann Pick Type C Mice

The lysosomal storage disease Niemann–Pick type C (NPC) is caused by impaired cholesterol efflux from lysosomes, which is accompanied by secondary lysosomal accumulation of sphingomyelin and glucosylceramide (GlcCer). Similar to Gaucher disease (GD), patients deficient in glucocerebrosidase (GCase) degrading GlcCer, NPC patients show an elevated glucosylsphingosine and glucosylated cholesterol. In livers of mice lacking the lysosomal cholesterol efflux transporter NPC1, we investigated the expression of established biomarkers of lipid-laden macrophages of GD patients, their GCase status, and content on the cytosol facing glucosylceramidase GBA2 and lysosomal integral membrane protein type B (LIMP2), a transporter of newly formed GCase to lysosomes. Livers of 80-week-old Npc1^−/− mice showed a partially reduced GCase protein and enzymatic activity. In contrast, GBA2 levels tended to be reciprocally increased with the GCase deficiency. In Npc1^−/− liver, increased expression of lysosomal enzymes (cathepsin D, acid ceramidase) was observed as well as increased markers of lipid-stressed macrophages (GPNMB and galectin-3). Immunohistochemistry showed that the latter markers are expressed by lipid laden Kupffer cells. Earlier reported increase of LIMP2 in Npc1^−/− liver was confirmed. Unexpectedly, immunohistochemistry showed that LIMP2 is particularly overexpressed in the hepatocytes of the Npc1^−/− liver. LIMP2 in these hepatocytes seems not to only localize to (endo)lysosomes. The recent recognition that LIMP2 harbors a cholesterol channel prompts the speculation that LIMP2 in Npc1^−/− hepatocytes might mediate export of cholesterol into the bile and thus protects the hepatocytes.     

Immunological and functional characterization of Mycobacterium leprae protein antigens: an overview

A major focus of leprosy research in the last 10 years has been the identification and characterization of antigens of Mycobacterium leprae that interact with antibodies and T cells of the host's immune response. Through the combined efforts of many different laboratories, a substantial number of protein antigens have been identified and characterized. In this MicroReview we present an updated list of M. leprae protein antigens, and, with emphasis on recent developments, summarize what is known regarding their functional and immunological features.     

Definition of natural T cell antigens with mimicry epitopes obtained from dedicated synthetic peptide libraries

Progress has recently been made in the use of synthetic peptide libraries for the identification of T cell-stimulating ligands. T cell epitopes identified from synthetic libraries are mimics of natural epitopes. Here we show how the mimicry epitopes obtained from synthetic peptide libraries enable unambiguous identification of natural T cell Ags. Synthetic peptide libraries were screened with Mycobacterium tuberculosis-reactive and -autoreactive T cell clones. In two cases, database homology searches with mimicry epitopes isolated from a dedicated synthetic peptide library allowed immediate identification of the natural antigenic protein. In two other cases, an amino acid pattern that reflected the epitope requirements of the T cell was determined by substitution and omission mixture analysis. Subsequently, the natural Ag was identified from databases using this refined pattern. This approach opens new perspectives for rapid and reliable Ag definition, representing a feasible alternative to the biochemical and genetic approaches described thus far.     

Training of a discrete recurrent neural network for sequence classification by using a helper FNN

This research is concerned with a gradient descent training algorithm for a target network that makes use of a helper feed-forward network (FFN) to represent the cost function required for training the target network. A helper FFN is trained because the cost relation for the target is not differentiable. The transfer function of the trained helper FFN provides a differentiable cost function of the parameter vector for the target network allowing gradient search methods for finding the optimum values of the parameters. The method is applied to the training of discrete recurrent networks (DRNNs) that are used as a tool for classification of temporal sequences of characters from some alphabet and identification of a finite state machine (FSM) that may have produced all the sequences. Classification of sequences that are input to the DRNN is based on the terminal state of the network after the last element in the input sequence has been processed. If the DRNN is to be used for classifying sequences the terminal states for class 0 sequences must be distinct from the terminal states for class 1 sequences. The cost value to be used in training must therefore be a function of this disjointedness and no more. The outcome of this is a cost relationship that is not continuous but discrete and therefore derivative free methods have to be used or alternatively the method suggested in this paper. In the latter case the transform function of the helper FFN that is trained using the cost function is a differentiable function that can be used in the training of the DRNN using gradient descent.Acknowledgement. This work was supported by a discovery grant from the Government of Canada. The comments made by the reviewers are also greatly appreciated and have proven to be quite useful.     

Some Design Aspects of a Two-Stage Rail-to-Rail CMOS Op Amp

A two-stage low-voltage CMOS op amp with rail-to-rail input and output voltage ranges is presented. The circuit uses complementary differential input pairs to achieve the rail-to-rail common-mode input voltage range. The differential pairs operate in strong inversion, and the constant transconductance is obtained by keeping the sum of the square roots of the tail currents constant. Such an input stage has an offset voltage which depends on the common input voltage level, resulting in a poor common-mode rejection ratio. Therefore, special attention has been given to the reduction of the op amp's systematic offset voltage. Gain-boost amplifiers are connected in a special way to provide not only an increase of the low-frequency open-loop gain, but also to provide a significant reduction of the systematic offset voltage.     

Web-accessible scientific workflow system for performance monitoring

We describe the design and implementation of a web-accessible scientific workflow system for environmental performance monitoring. This workflow environment integrates distributed automated data acquisition with server side data management and information visualization through flexible browser-based data access tools. Component technologies include a rich browser-based client, a back-end server for methodical data processing, user management, and result delivery, and third party applications which are invoked by the back-end using web services. This environment allows for reproducible, transparent result generation by a diverse user base, and provides a seamless integration between data selection, analysis applications, and result delivery. This workflow system has been implemented for several sites and monitoring systems with different degrees of complexity.