Defining Distinction,or Four Good Reasons for Success: The Extraordinary Career of Renzo Piano

For 30 years, Renzo Piano has been producing distinguished buildings and delighting the world with his innovation and sensitivity. Here, Livio Sacchi attempts to tease out some of the reasons behind Piano's sustained success. Having gained an almost unparalleled international profile during the last couple of decades, a period that has been notoriously difficult for Italian architects, Piano's career has an almost mythic quality. It boasts one of the most unlikely competition wins of all time that ceded one of the most prestigious sites in the world, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, to two completely unknown architects in their late 20s. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Light-Induced Activation of a Specific Type-5 Metabotropic Glutamate Receptor Antagonist in the Ventrobasal Thalamus Causes Analgesia in a Mouse Model of Breakthrough Cancer Pain

Breakthrough cancer pain (BTcP) refers to a sudden and transient exacerbation of pain, which develops in patients treated with opioid analgesics. Fast-onset analgesia is required for the treatment of BTcP. Light-activated drugs offer a novel potential strategy for the rapid control of pain without the typical adverse effects of systemic analgesic drugs. mGlu5 metabotropic glutamate receptor antagonists display potent analgesic activity, and light-induced activation of one of these compounds (JF-NP-26) in the thalamus was found to induce analgesia in models of inflammatory and neuropathic pain. We used an established mouse model of BTcP based on the injection of cancer cells into the femur, followed, 16 days later, by systemic administration of morphine. BTcP was induced by injection of endothelin-1 (ET-1) into the tumor, 20 min after morphine administration. Mice were implanted with optic fibers delivering light in the visible spectrum (405 nm) in the thalamus or prelimbic cortex to locally activate systemically injected JF-NP-26. Light delivery in the thalamus caused rapid and substantial analgesia, and this effect was specific because light delivery in the prelimbic cortex did not relieve BTcP. This finding lays the groundwork for the use of optopharmacology in the treatment of BTcP.     

The Social Life of Wireless Urban Spaces: Internet Use,Social Networks,and the Public Realm

This study explores the role of urban public spaces for democratic and social engagement. It examines the impact of wireless Internet use on urban public spaces, Internet users, and others who inhabit these spaces. Through observations of 7 parks, plazas, and markets in 4 North American cities, and surveys of wireless Internet users in those sites, we explore how this new technology is related to processes of social interaction, privatism, and democratic engagement. Findings reveal that Internet use within public spaces affords interactions with existing acquaintances that are more diverse than those associated with mobile phone use. However, the level of colocated social diversity to which Internet users are exposed is less than that of most users of these spaces. Yet, online activities in public spaces do contribute to broader participation in the public sphere. Internet connectivity within public spaces may contribute to higher overall levels of democratic and social engagement than what is afforded by exposure within similar spaces free of Internet connectivity.     

Thermodynamic and dynamic fragility in metallic glass-formers

This paper focuses on the study of glasses using models of thermodynamic and transport properties (e.g. heat capacity, viscosity and liquid fragility) for various alloys in comparison with organic and inorganic substances. The work attempts to identify possible correlations and trends in these properties which can relate to indicators of melt fragility for metallic glasses. The ratio of the specific heat integral between selected temperatures gives only a rough indication of the fragility behaviour. More insight is gained by considering the thermodynamic fragility index derived from the potential energy landscape model having either a hyperbolic or Gaussian distribution of energy minima. The Wang–Angell–Richert correlation holds for some metallic glasses. Deviations from it help in identifying hidden transitions in the liquid state.     

Dissociative experiences and eating disorders in a female college sample

OBJECTIVES: Perioperative ischaemic stroke is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality associated with carotid endarterectomy (CEA). The aim was to test the hypotheses that the detection of microembolic ultrasonic signals (MES) with transcranial Doppler ultrasound (TCD) during and after the operation may be of value in identifying patients at increased perioperative stroke risk. DESIGN: Open prospective case series. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Eighty-one consecutive patients undergoing CEA with TCD monitoring. Preoperative, intraoperative and interval postoperative TCD monitoring of the middle cerebral artery (MCA) ipsilateral to the operated carotid artery. On-line pre- and intraoperative MES counting and blinded off-line analysis of postoperative MES counts. End-points were any focal neurological deficit and death at 30 days postoperatively. RESULTS: MES were detected in 94% of patients intraoperatively and 71% of cases during the first postoperative hour. MES counts ranged from 0 to 25 per operative phase (range of median counts 0-8) and from 0 to 212 per hour postoperatively (range of median counts 0-4). Eight cases (10%) developed postoperative MES counts greater than 50/h. Five of these eight cases evolved ischaemic neurological deficits in the territory of the insonated MCA, indicating a strong association between frequent postoperative microembolism and the development of early cerebral ischaemia (chi 2 = 34.2, p < 0.0001). Intraoperative MES were not associated with clinical outcome measures. CONCLUSIONS: MES counts of greater than 50/h in the early postoperative phase of carotid endarterectomy are predictive of the development of ipsilateral focal cerebral ischaemia.     

The light field camera: extended depth of field, aliasing, and superresolution

Portable light field (LF) cameras have demonstrated capabilities beyond conventional cameras. In a single snapshot, they enable digital image refocusing and 3D reconstruction. We show that they obtain a larger depth of field but maintain the ability to reconstruct detail at high resolution. In fact, all depths are approximately focused, except for a thin slab where blur size is bounded, i.e., their depth of field is essentially inverted compared to regular cameras. Crucial to their success is the way they sample the LF, trading off spatial versus angular resolution, and how aliasing affects the LF. We show that applying traditional multiview stereo methods to the extracted low-resolution views can result in reconstruction errors due to aliasing. We address these challenges using an explicit image formation model, and incorporate Lambertian and texture preserving priors to reconstruct both scene depth and its superresolved texture in a variational Bayesian framework, eliminating aliasing by fusing multiview information. We demonstrate the method on synthetic and real images captured with our LF camera, and show that it can outperform other computational camera systems.     

Arachidonic acid-induced malondialdehyde formation in rat platelets. Kinetic aspects and inhibition by acetylsalicylic acid and indomethacin

Malondialdehyde (MDA) is a stable product of arachidonic acid metabolism, catalyzed by the enzyme cyclo-oxygenase. The experimental conditions for measuring the kinetic of MDA formation in rat platelet-rich plasma were defined. In platelets stimulated with arachidonic acid MDA formation was almost linear for a limited period of time (between 0 and 2 min) and was concentration-dependent with saturation kinetics. The hyperbolic curves obtained were recast in a linear plot (according to transformation S/V versus S) and straight lines fitting all experimental points were obtained. The apparent Km value of arachidonic acid was 0.49 +/- 0.09 mM and Vmax 1.44 +/- 0.06 nmoles MDA/1.4 x 10(9) platelets/min. The apparent type of inhibition and the relative potency of acetylsalicylic acid and indomethacin on MDA formation were also investigated. Inhibition by both drugs was concentration-dependent, and was much stronger when either drug was preincubated with platelets for 10 min than for 1 min. Analysis of the data by Dixon plots (1/V versus inhibitor concentrations) revealed an apparently competitive type of inhibition. It is suggested that both acetylsalicylic acid and indomethacin inhibit cyclo-oxygenase in platelet-rich plasma by a similar mechanism, not involving covalent binding of either drug to the enzyme.     

Organisation of the tmb catabolic operons of Pseudomonas putida TMB and evolutionary relationship with the xyl operons of the TOL plasmid pWW0

In Pseudomonas putida (Pp) TMB the genes involved in the catabolism of methyl-substituted aromatic hydrocarbons 1,2,4-trimethylbenzene, m- and p-xylene (tmb operon), are functionally and genetically homologous to the xyl genes of the plasmid pWW0, but are chromosomally encoded. We have analysed by cloning. Southern blotting and sequencing of selected regions the organisation of the tmb cluster. This analysis shows that the structural and regulatory genes of the tmb and xyl systems exhibit a high degree of homology and are similarly organised in operons. However the operons are differently arranged on the Pp TMB chromosome and on the pWW0 plasmid. Comparison of the two systems suggests that the operon arrangement found in pWW0 may have originated from that found in Pp TMB via cointegration mediated by replicative transposition or by intermolecular recombination between two copies of the insertion element IS1246.     

Benefits to volunteers in a community-based health promotion and chronic illness self-management program for the elderly

1. Volunteers for health promotion programs tend to be younger and healthier than program participants. 2. Volunteers in a health promotion program reported improved health and function. 3. Nurses involved in health promotion programs can extend their efforts by using trained volunteers.     

Motion Deblurring of Faces

International Journal of Computer Vision - Face analysis lies at the heart of computer vision with remarkable progress in the past decades. Face recognition and tracking are tackled by building...