Ultrahigh-Temperature Ceramic-Polymer-Derived SiOC Ceramic Composites for High-Performance Electromagnetic Interference Shielding.

High-performance electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding materials for a high-temperature harsh environment are highly required for electronics and aerospace applications. Here, a composite made of ultrahigh-temperature ceramic- and polymer-derived SiOC ceramic (PDC-SiOC) with high EMI shielding was reported for such applications. A total EMI shielding efficiency (SE) of 26.

Integrating health and safety in the workplace: how closely aligning health and safety strategies can yield measurable benefits.

Objective: To better understand how integrating health and safety strategies in the workplace has evolved and establish a replicable, scalable framework for advancing the concept with a system of health and safety metrics, modeled after the Dow Jones Sustainability Index.

Methods: Seven leading national and international programs aimed at creating a culture of health and safety in the workplace were compared and contrasted.

Results: A list of forty variables was selected, making it clear there is a wide variety of approaches to integration of health and safety in the workplace.

Positioning of chemosensory proteins and FtsZ through the Rhodobacter sphaeroides cell cycle.

Bacterial chemotaxis depends on signalling through large protein complexes. Each cell must inherit a complex on division, suggesting some co-ordination with cell division. In Escherichia coli the membrane-spanning chemosensory complexes are polar and new static complexes form at pre-cytokinetic sites, ensuring positioning at the new pole after division and suggesting a role for the bacterial cytoskeleton.

Wind turbines: is there a human health risk?

The term "Wind Turbine Syndrome" was coined in a recently self-published book, which hypothesized that a multitude of symptoms such as headache and dizziness resulted from wind turbines generating low frequency sound (LFS). The objective of this article is to provide a summary of the peer-reviewed literature on the research that has examined the relationship between human health effects and exposure to LFS and sound generated from the operation of wind turbines. At present, a specific health condition has not been documented in the peer-reviewed literature that has been classified as a disease caused by exposure to sound levels and frequencies generated by the operation of wind turbines.

Bacterial cell identification in differential interference contrast microscopy images.

Background: Microscopy image segmentation lays the foundation for shape analysis, motion tracking, and classification of biological objects. Despite its importance, automated segmentation remains challenging for several widely used non-fluorescence, interference-based microscopy imaging modalities. For example in differential interference contrast microscopy which plays an important role in modern bacterial cell biology.

Effects of rare-earth co-doping on the local structure of rare-earth phosphate glasses using high and low energy X-ray diffraction.

Rare-earth co-doping in inorganic materials has a long-held tradition of facilitating highly desirable optoelectronic properties for their application to the laser industry. This study concentrates specifically on rare-earth phosphate glasses, (R2O3)x(R'2O3)y(P2O5)(1-(x+y)), where (R, R') denotes (Ce, Er) or (La, Nd) co-doping and the total rare-earth composition corresponds to a range between metaphosphate, RP3O9, and ultraphosphate, RP5O14. Thereupon, the effects of rare-earth co-doping on the local structure are assessed at the atomic level.

Sphyrna gilberti sp. nov., a new hammerhead shark (Carcharhiniformes, Sphyrnidae) from the western Atlantic Ocean.

Sphyrna gilberti sp. nov. is described based on 54 specimens collected in the coastal waters of South Carolina, U.

ParA-like protein uses nonspecific chromosomal DNA binding to partition protein complexes.

Recent data have shown that plasmid partitioning Par-like systems are used by some bacterial cells to control localization of protein complexes. Here we demonstrate that one of these homologs, PpfA, uses nonspecific chromosome binding to separate cytoplasmic clusters of chemotaxis proteins upon division. Using fluorescent microscopy and point mutations, we show dynamic chromosome binding and Walker-type ATPase activity are essential for cluster segregation.

Feedback control architecture and the bacterial chemotaxis network.

Bacteria move towards favourable and away from toxic environments by changing their swimming pattern. This response is regulated by the chemotaxis signalling pathway, which has an important feature: it uses feedback to 'reset' (adapt) the bacterial sensing ability, which allows the bacteria to sense a range of background environmental changes. The role of this feedback has been studied extensively in the simple chemotaxis pathway of Escherichia coli.

Adaptation and control circuits in bacterial chemotaxis.

Bacteria are capable of sensing and responding to changes in their environment. One of the ways they do this is via chemotaxis, regulating swimming behaviour. The chemotaxis pathway senses chemoattractant gradients and uses a feedback loop to change the bacterial swimming pattern; this feedback loop differs in detail between species.

A model invalidation-based approach for elucidating biological signalling pathways, applied to the chemotaxis pathway in R. sphaeroides.

Background: Developing methods for understanding the connectivity of signalling pathways is a major challenge in biological research. For this purpose, mathematical models are routinely developed based on experimental observations, which also allow the prediction of the system behaviour under different experimental conditions. Often, however, the same experimental data can be represented by several competing network models.

Meta-analysis of animal fat or animal protein intake and colorectal cancer.

Background: In the recent World Cancer Research Fund/American Institute for Cancer Research report of diet and cancer, it was concluded that there is limited but suggestive evidence that animal fat intake increases the risk of colorectal cancer.

Objective: To clarify this potential relation, we conducted meta-analyses across a variety of subgroups, incorporating data from additional studies.

Design: Analyses of high compared with low animal fat intakes and categorical dose-response evaluations were conducted.

A bifunctional kinase-phosphatase in bacterial chemotaxis.

Phosphorylation-based signaling pathways employ dephosphorylation mechanisms for signal termination. Histidine to aspartate phosphosignaling in the two-component system that controls bacterial chemotaxis has been studied extensively. Rhodobacter sphaeroides has a complex chemosensory pathway with multiple homologues of the Escherichia coli chemosensory proteins, although it lacks homologues of known signal-terminating CheY-P phosphatases, such as CheZ, CheC, FliY or CheX.

Pleural plaques: a review of diagnostic issues and possible nonasbestos factors.

The authors reviewed nonasbestos etiologies and diagnostic issues related to pleural plaques. Through searches of PUBMED and DIALOG using the term pleural plaques, they identified 125 articles. The authors found additional references by reviewing citations of these 125 articles.

A novel facility using a Laue focusing monochromator for high-pressure diffraction at the SRS, Daresbury, UK.

A novel Laue focusing monochromator has been developed to provide intense X-radiation for high-pressure diffraction experiments. A beamline using this monochromator has been successfully developed on station 9.5 at the SRS, Daresbury Laboratory.

Two chemosensory operons of Rhodobacter sphaeroides are regulated independently by sigma 28 and sigma 54.

Rhodobacter sphaeroides has a complex chemosensory system, with several loci encoding multiple homologues of the components required for chemosensing in Escherichia coli. The operons cheOp2 and cheOp3 each encode complete pathways, and both are essential for chemosensing. The components of cheOp2 are predominantly localized to the cell pole, whereas those encoded by cheOp3 are predominantly targeted to a discrete cluster in the cytoplasm.

Global population genetic structure and male-mediated gene flow in the green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas): analysis of microsatellite loci.

We assessed the degree of population subdivision among global populations of green sea turtles, Chelonia mydas, using four microsatellite loci. Previously, a single-copy nuclear DNA study indicated significant male-mediated gene flow among populations alternately fixed for different mitochondrial DNA haplotypes and that genetic divergence between populations in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans was more common than subdivisions among populations within ocean basins. Even so, overall levels of variation at single-copy loci were low and inferences were limited.