摘要 :
The Centre for Studies on Cabo Verde and small islands (Università del Salento, Lecce / Brindisi - Italy) in collaboration with ministries MESCI, MED and Culture of Cabo Verde presents the project "Exploring the slave trade to th...
展开
The Centre for Studies on Cabo Verde and small islands (Università del Salento, Lecce / Brindisi - Italy) in collaboration with ministries MESCI, MED and Culture of Cabo Verde presents the project "Exploring the slave trade to through the small islands of Africa and the Mediterranean. Between memory, history and oblivion", and annexed "Migration Africa-Europe", supported by the University of Ghent, Belgium (2012-2013, coordinated by Paul Vandepitte).
收起
摘要 :
On this page in 2009 I wrote a column about not going back. I was thinking about the moon, as it was the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11. The dozen people to have walked on its surface had exhibited bravery and steely minded commitm...
展开
On this page in 2009 I wrote a column about not going back. I was thinking about the moon, as it was the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11. The dozen people to have walked on its surface had exhibited bravery and steely minded commitment far beyond the compass of almost any other mortals. They themselves were by far the most reliable and well proven element of the entire 2,800-tonne rocket they'd strapped themselves into. And they were departing to a hostile black vacuum almost a quarter of a million miles beyond the possibility of rescue. Their only real time connection was a low-bandwidth radio signal carrying voices on abed of interference, and snowstormy black and white video. For the whole planet Earth watching heart in mouth below them, it vividly emphasised the distance and the peril of the enterprise. Spaceflight was initially about the power of nations, and later about the value of science. These days, the principal qualification is wealth. It's led by the egos of hypercapitalists who place themselves way beyond the bounds of earthly institutions. I guess Musk, Bezos and Branson think that because enough people have given them enough money, they've somehow earned a legitimacy equivalent to a nation state. After they've gone up, they'll start taking fare paying space tourists and then those beautiful spectral images of Armstrong and Aldrin will be usurped by extra-planetary Instagrammers. Getting those few into space will distract from improving the lives of the many on our home planet. At which point we'll surely wish humankind never went back.
收起
摘要 :
This article describes the architecture and the network communication of a large-scale, networked virtual environment, which is designed to specifically support closely-coupled collaboration in highly interactive scenarios. Its ma...
展开
This article describes the architecture and the network communication of a large-scale, networked virtual environment, which is designed to specifically support closely-coupled collaboration in highly interactive scenarios. Its main goals are the maintenance of low latency during user interaction and fast multicasting of messages in order to fulfill consistency requirements. This is achieved by sophisticated message distribution techniques, peer-to-peer connections between interacting clients and a global hierarchical communication topology. Scalability is realised through partitioning the virtual world.
收起
摘要 :
Fecundity of the striped searobin (Prionotus evolans) was estimated from the ovaries of 28 fish (3 to 5 years) to range from 90 000 to 218 000 eggs, with some indication of increase with length, weight and age. The preserved, fert...
展开
Fecundity of the striped searobin (Prionotus evolans) was estimated from the ovaries of 28 fish (3 to 5 years) to range from 90 000 to 218 000 eggs, with some indication of increase with length, weight and age. The preserved, fertilized eggs ranged in diameter from 0.21 to 0.57 mm. Early development is described from eggs and larvae that were reared at temperatures of 19.0° to 20.4°C. The fertilized eggs ranged in diameter from 1.05 to 1.25 mm and contained 16-37 oil globules, which moved to various locations in the egg during development. Gastrulation occurred at 15 hr, early embryo at 25 hr and first hatching at 80 hr. Characteristic pigment consists of a transverse band which is located about halfway between the vent and notochord tip in late-stage embryos and yolk-sac larvae. Newly-hatched larvae averaged 2.8 mm NL and flexion occurred at 6.0-6.9 mm. The pectoral fin is present at hatching and all fins are complete at 7.8 mm SL. Head spines are first evident at 6.2 mm NL, and they display prominent features during the course of development. Osteological development is nearly complete at 18.3 mm SL Comparison of P. evolans with recently-published information on P. carolinus reveals differences in embryo pigmentation, head spine development, teeth formation and number of anal fin rays
收起
摘要 :
Interoperable access of geospatial information across disparate geospatial applications has become essential. Geospatial data are highly heterogeneous -- the heterogeneity arises both at the syntactic and semantic levels. Finding ...
展开
Interoperable access of geospatial information across disparate geospatial applications has become essential. Geospatial data are highly heterogeneous -- the heterogeneity arises both at the syntactic and semantic levels. Finding and accessing appropriate data in such a distributed environment is an important research issue. The paper proposes a methodology for interoperable access of geospatial information based on Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) specified standards. An architecture for integrating diverse geospatial data repositories has been proposed using service-based methodology. The semantic issues for discovery and retrieval of geospatial data over distributed geospatial services have also been proposed in the paper. The proposed architecture utilizes the ontological concepts for service description and subsequent discovery of services. An approach for semantic similarity assessment of geospatial services has been discussed.
收起
摘要 :
This paper reports the findings of a comparative study on elite sport policies in Flanders and the Netherlands. The aim is to find out whether differences in elite sport policies can explain the under-performances during internati...
展开
This paper reports the findings of a comparative study on elite sport policies in Flanders and the Netherlands. The aim is to find out whether differences in elite sport policies can explain the under-performances during international competitions of Flanders compared to the Netherlands. A nine pillar model of sports policy factors leading to international success was operationalised through several critical success factors. One of the key elements is the involvement of the athletes, coaches and performance directors in the data collection, in order to have a standardised measure of hypothetical concepts that cannot be observed directly and to assess the elite sport climate as it is perceived. The results showed remarkable differences in the organisation and long-term planning of elite sport policies, financial support for elite sport purposes, a holistic approach towards athletic development, coach development opportunities and the dissemination of scientific information. It was concluded that policy differences may explain differences in success in the two nations to a large extent, but extraneous influences are inherent to international comparative studies and make it therefore impossible to create a theory that is totally construct valid.
收起
摘要 :
Orally ingested bacteria interact with intestinal mucosa and may impact immunity. However, insights in mechanisms involved are limited. In this randomized placebo-controlled cross-over trial, healthy human subjects were given Lact...
展开
Orally ingested bacteria interact with intestinal mucosa and may impact immunity. However, insights in mechanisms involved are limited. In this randomized placebo-controlled cross-over trial, healthy human subjects were given Lactobacillus plantarum supplementation (strain TIFN101, CIP104448, or WCFS1) or placebo for 7 days. To determine whether L. plantarum can enhance immune response, we compared the effects of three stains on systemic and gut mucosal immunity, by among others assessing memory responses against tetanus toxoid (TT)-antigen, and mucosal gene transcription, in human volunteers during induction of mild immune stressor in the intestine, by giving a commonly used enteropathic drug, indomethacin [non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID)]. Systemic effects of the interventions were studies in peripheral blood samples. NSAID was found to induce a reduction in serum CD4+/Foxp3 regulatory cells, which was prevented by L. plantarum TIFN101. T-cell polarization experiments showed L. plantarum TIFN101 to enhance responses against TT-antigen, which indicates stimulation of memory responses by this strain. Cell extracts of the specific L. plantarum strains provoked responses after WCFS1 and TIFN101 consumption, indicating stimulation of immune responses against the specific bacteria. Mucosal immunomodulatory effects were studied in duodenal biopsies. In small intestinal mucosa, TIFN101 upregulated genes associated with maintenance of T- and B-cell function and antigen presentation. Furthermore, L. plantarum TIFN101 and WCFS1 downregulated immunological pathways involved in antigen presentation and shared downregulation of snoRNAs, which may suggest cellular destabilization, but may also be an indicator of tissue repair. Full sequencing of the L. plantarum strains revealed possible gene clusters that might be responsible for the differential biological effects of the bacteria on host immunity. In conclusion, the impact of oral consumption L. plantarum on host immunity is strain dependent and involves responses against bacterial cell components. Some strains may enhance specific responses against pathogens by enhancing antigen presentation and leukocyte maintenance in mucosa. In future studies and clinical settings, caution should be taken in selecting beneficial bacteria as closely related strains can have different effects. Our data show that specific bacterial strains can prevent immune stress induced by commonly consumed painkillers such as NSAID and can have enhancing beneficial effects on immunity of consumers by stimulating antigen presentation and memory responses.
收起
摘要 :
Soft tissue complications around dental implants occur with an incidence between 1 and 7 percent, and the treatments for these have not been as well studied, understood or as predictable as with similar complications associated wi...
展开
Soft tissue complications around dental implants occur with an incidence between 1 and 7 percent, and the treatments for these have not been as well studied, understood or as predictable as with similar complications associated with teeth. These complications include recession, fenestration/dehiscence defects, gingival infl ammation/proliferation and fi stulas. This paper compares and contrasts important mucogingival considerations between teeth and implants. Diagnosis, treatment and prevention of some of the more common soft tissue complications are presented.
收起
摘要 :One of the long-standing ironies of user-friendly JavaScript front ends is that building them typically involved trudging through the DOM (Document Object Model), hardly known for its friendliness to developers. But now developers...
展开One of the long-standing ironies of user-friendly JavaScript front ends is that building them typically involved trudging through the DOM (Document Object Model), hardly known for its friendliness to developers. But now developers have a way to avoid directly interacting with the DOM, thanks to Facebook's decision to open-source its React library for the construction of user interface components. React essentially manages to abstract away the DOM, thus simplifying the programming model while also—in a somewhat surprising turn—improving performance. The key to both advances is that components built from standard JavaScript objects serve as the fundamental building blocks for React's internal framework, thus allowing for greatly simplified composability. Once developers manage to get comfortable with building front ends in this way, they typically find they can more readily see what's going on while also enjoying greater flexibility in terms of how they structure and display data. .
收起
摘要 :
It is widely accepted that human learning and memory is mediated by multiple memory systems that are each best suited to different requirements and demands. Within the domain of categorization, at least two systems are thought to ...
展开
It is widely accepted that human learning and memory is mediated by multiple memory systems that are each best suited to different requirements and demands. Within the domain of categorization, at least two systems are thought to facilitate learning: an explicit (declarative) system depending largely on the prefrontal cortex, and a procedural (non-declarative) system depending on the basal ganglia. Substantial evidence suggests that each system is optimally suited to learn particular categorization tasks. However, it remains unknown precisely how these systems interact to produce optimal learning and behavior. In order to investigate this issue, the present research evaluated the progression of learning through simulation of categorization tasks using COVIS, a well-known model of human category learning that includes both explicit and procedural learning systems. Specifically, the model's parameter space was thoroughly explored in procedurally learned categorization tasks across a variety of conditions and architectures to identify plausible interaction architectures. The simulation results support the hypothesis that one-way interaction between the systems occurs such that the explicit system “bootstraps” learning early on in the procedural system. Thus, the procedural system initially learns a suboptimal strategy employed by the explicit system and later refines its strategy. This bootstrapping could be from cortical-striatal projections that originate in premotor or motor regions of cortex, or possibly by the explicit system's control of motor responses through basal ganglia-mediated loops
收起
