bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Die Bedeutung der Stickstoffverbindungen des Bodens und der Pflanzen für die Tierernährung sowie experimentelle Untersuchungen zur Wertbeurteilung des Nahrungsstickstoffs
Authors: Drepper Kraft
Published: August 2010

Im Teil I der Arbeit (Bd. 12, S. 27) werden die N‐Verbindungen und die Bedeutung ihrer Bindungsart für die Pflanzenernährung besprochen.

Genotypische Veränderungen der Proteinmenge und ‐qualität in Pflanzen sowie auch die Beeinflussung durch Veränderung der Umweltverhältnisse (insbesondere Düngung) werden erörtert.

Im Abschnitt über die Bedeutung des Nahrungsstickstoffs für die Tierernährung wird festgestellt, daß nicht nur Menge und Qualität eines Nährstoffs allein wertbestimmend sind, sondern vor allem auchdas Verhältnis zu anderen Futterinhaltsstoffen. Außerdem ist die Anforderung einer bestimmten Tierart an die Qualität seiner Nahrung abhängig von der geforderten Leistung. Die Angaben von Bedarfszahlen für essentielle Aminosäuren sollten immer in Relation zur Rohproteinmenge, nidit mit Bezug auf die Gesamtkost, erfolgen.

Die im II. Teil der Arbeit (Bd. 12, S. 88) besprochenen Tierversuche wurden an Ratten durchgeführt und erstrecken sich auf den Vergleich der Bilanz‐Methode mit Verfahren, die eine direkte Bestimmung des retinierten Körper‐N erlauben. Die Ergebnisse gestatten den Schluß, daß die Wertermittlung von Futtermittelrohproteinen mit gleicher Genauigkeit durch die direkte Körper‐N‐Analyse (oder auch aus Berechnung aus Wasserbestimmungen im Gesamttier) erfolgen kann (Net Protein Utilization) anstatt durch die Bilanz‐Methode (Biologische Wertigkeit). Die Bestimmung der Net Protein Utilization ist technisch einfacher und bezieht die Verdaulichkeit mit ein.

Bei alien Versuchen wurde mit Hilfe der N‐Bilanz‐Methode eine hohere („schein‐ bare”) N‐Retention ermittelt als durch die direkte Körper‐N‐Analyse („wahre N‐Retention”). Dieser Befund erfordert weitere Untersuchungen.

Die Eiweißbausteinanalyse als Mittel zur Nahrungswertermittlung von Futtermittelrohproteinen wird im III. Teil der Arbeit beschrieben. Mit Hilfe dieser Methode kann nur ein theoretisch moglicher Futterwert ermittelt werden, der der Nachprüfung durch Tierversuche bedarf, es werden jedoch wertvolle Hinweise auf den Grund eines eventuell vorliegenden Mangels (Fehlen oder zu geringe Konzentration bestimmter essentieller Aminäsauren) erhalten.

Das beschrieben: Verfahren kann zu Bausteinanalysen im Gesamtfutter verwendet werden. Es beruht auf einer adsorptiven Gruppentrennung nach Hydrolyse mit nachfolgender papierchromatographischer Auftrennung der Gruppen und Bestimmung der Aminosäuren direkt auf dem Papier. Die Fehlergrenze beträgt ± 10 %.
Schweineerkrankungen infolge Mangels an tierischem Eiweiß, zugleich ein Beitrag zur Ätiologie und Therapie des enzootischen Herztodes
Authors: Englert H. K. , Kopp Chl.
Published: August 2010

In einem Schweinebestand, in dem keinerlei tierisches Eiweiß gefüttert wurde, traten außer verschiedenen sonstigen Eiweißmangelkrankheiten typische Fälle von enzootisdiem Herztod auf. Die histologischen Befunde der Nebennieren sprachen für eine Unterfunktion dieses Organes. Mit Cortisongaben gelang es, zwei schwerkranke Tiere zu retten, während alle übrigen, nicht mit Cortison behandelten Tiere des Bestandes verendeten oder notgeschlachtet werden mußten. Elektrophoretische Bluteiweißuntersuchungen zeigten hochgradige Verschiebungen im Albumin:Globulin‐Verhältnis. Bei den durch Cortison geretteten Tieren waren diese Verschiebungen nach mehrwöchiger Fischmehlfütterung wieder weitgehend normalisiert. Aus den Untersuchungen wird der Schluß gezogen, daß es beim Schwein bei ungenügender Versorgung mit tierischem Eiweiß zu einem diagnostisch verwertbaren Absinken des Albuminspiegels im Blutserum kommt, daß es hierbei zu enzootischem Herztod kommen kann, welcher in enger Verbindung mit einer Unterfunktion der Nebennieren stehen dürfte, und daß Nebennierenrindenhormonpräparate überraschende therapeutische Erfolge in derartigen Schweinebestanden bringen können.
Eine einfache Bestimmungsmethode der N‐haltigen Substanzen in Silage. Ammoniak‐, wasserloslicher und Gesamtstickstoff
Authors: Juhasz B. , Szegedi B. , Gertner M.
Published: August 2010

Ein einfaches Mikrodiffusionsverfahren zur Ammoniak‐, wasserlöslichen‐ und Gesamtstickstoff‐Bestimmung von Silageproben wurde ausgearbeitet. Die Mikrodiffusion des durch Alkalisierung freiwerdenden Stickstoffs wird in Streptomycin‐Gläsern vorgenommen und der freiwerdende Ammoniak‐N mit Nessler‐Reagenz bestimmt. Mit der Methode lassen sich außerdem die wasserlöslichen und die Gesamtstickstoffmengen der verschiedenen Futtermittel bestimmen. Die gewonnenen Werte wurden mit den Resultaten des Destinations‐ bzw. Mikro‐Kjeldabl‐Verfahrens verglichen. Die neue Methode läßt sich erheblich rascher, billiger und leichter durchführen als die erwähnten und liefert innerhalb der Fehlergrenzen mit diesen übereinstimmende Ergebnisse.
Decomposition of litter from three major plant species of jarrah (Eucalyptus marginata Donn ex Sm.) forest in relation to site fire history and soil type
Authors: O'CONNELL A.M. , MENAGE P.
Published: August 2010

Rates of weight loss and release of N, P, K, S, Ca, Mg, Na, and Cl from litter of several species in jarrah (E. marginata Donn ex Sm.) forest were measured in relation to site fire history and soil type. Weight loss from leaf litter decreased in the order jarrah > marri (E. calophylla R. Br. ex Lindl.) > Banksia grandis Willd. After 18 months on the forest floor senesced leaves of jarrah, marri and Banksia had lost 45%, 42% and 19%, respectively, of their original weight. Although greatest rates of decomposition occurred on a site burnt 3 y previously by an intense autumn fire and slowest rates on a site which had not been burnt for 8 y, the differences between burn sites were small in comparison with the total weight loss from decomposing litter. The order of release of nutrients from decomposing eucalypt litter was P<N<Ca<S<Mg<Cl<K<Na. There appears to be only slow release of N and P from the litter layer of these forests in the period between successive control burns.

Fresh jarrah leaves, which are similar in chemical composition to leaf litter falling after crowns have been scorched by intense fire, decompose rapidly in comparison with senescent leaf tissue. Release of nutrients, particularly N and P, is also more rapid from fresh leaves than from leaf litter.

Rates of decomposition of green leaves differed between soil types in the order reddish gravels > dark sandy duplex soil > yellow gravels. These differences may be related to the higher nutrient status of the reddish gravel soils.
Differences in the utilization of water vapour and free water in two co‐occurring foliose lichens from semi‐arid southern Australia
Authors: De VRIES MELITA C. , WATLING JENNIFER R.
Published: August 2010

Hydration and dehydration kinetics were investigated in two xerophytic lichens with contrasting thallus morphologies, Chondropsis semiviridis (F.Muell. ex Nyl.) Nyl. and Xanthoparmelia convoluta (Krempehl.) Hale. Pulse‐modulated chlorophyll fluorescence was used to measure photosynthetic activity in thalli hydrated with either liquid water or water vapour in the laboratory and in the field. Water content (WC) and photosynthetic activity of thalli in both species increased rapidly on contact with liquid water. When exposed to water vapour, C. semiviridis hydrated more rapidly and achieved higher WC than X. convoluta. Both lichens achieved maximum Fv/Fm at low WC, regardless of hydration source. Rates of water loss were slower, and Fv/Fm remained high for longer, in X. convoluta than in C. semiviridis. Light saturated electron transport rates of both lichens were low compared with a homoiohydric plant from the same environment. Our results suggest that X. convoluta, which has a more complex morphology, retains water and remains photosynthetically active for significantly longer periods than C. semiviridis, providing X. convoluta with a potential advantage in the semi‐arid environment in which both species are found.
Review: Dupuytren's disease in Asia and the migration theory of Dupuytren's disease
Authors: Slattery David
Published: August 2010

Background:  The presentation of a Chinese patient with unilateral Dupuytren's disease (DD) prompted a literature search and a review of the epidemiology of DD in the Asian population as it has never been cumulatively reported. The purpose of this paper is to review all the reported cases of DD in the literature and aetiological links to DD elsewhere.

Methods:  The literature was searched with a wide variety of terms, and subsequent references were analysed and further references investigated for other reported cases of DD in the Asian population.

Results:  This review found 595 cases and has shown that DD is present to a variable extent in China (96 cases), Thailand (19 cases), Vietnam (one case), India (15 cases) and Japan (474 cases). A total of 54% had bilateral disease. Risk factors (diabetes, trauma, epilepsy, alcoholism, manual labour) were reportedly present in 65% of the patients, and a positive family history was reported in 9%. The average patient age was 67 years.

Conclusion:  This review shows that there is a low but significant incidence of DD across Asia, which supports the hypothesis of a widespread genetic susceptibility to the disease. Therefore, the prevalence of DD in this community is not likely due to sporadic genetic mutation as previously presumed but rather individual genetic susceptibility and that risk factors play a major role in the expression of DD in this population.
Prognosis and surgical treatment of gastric cancer invading adjacent organs
Authors: Zhang Ming , Zhang Hongfeng , Ma Yan , Zhu Guanyu , Xue Yingwei
Published: August 2010

Background:  The prognostic factors and surgical management of gastric cancer invading adjacent organs remains controversial. The aim was to provide valuable prognostic and surgical information on patients with gastric cancer invading adjacent organs.

Methods:  The retrospectively study included 367 patients who underwent gastric resection for gastric cancer invading adjacent organs. Clinicopathologic variables were evaluated as predictors of long‐term survival by univariate and multivariate analyses. Multivariate analysis was performed using Cox's proportional hazards model.

Results:  The five‐year survival rate was 10.1%, and median survival period was 14 months. The five‐year survival rate was influenced by histologic type, lymph node metastasis, liver metastasis, peritoneal dissemination, extent of lymph node dissection and curability of operation. Of these, independent prognostic factors were lymph node metastasis (N2, N3 versus N0, N1, relative risk 2.028, P < 0.001), liver metastasis (present versus absent, relative risk 1.582, P= 0.023) and curative resection (no versus yes, relative risk 1.719, P < 0.001). A significant survival benefit for curative resection was observed with a five‐year survival rate of 21.5% compared with non‐curatively resected cases (5.1%).

Conclusions:  In patients with gastric cancer invading adjacent organs, three independent prognostic factors were lymph node metastasis, liver metastasis, and curative resection. For patients with gastric cancer invading adjacent organs, we recommend performing combined organ resection in patients with locally advanced gastric carcinoma regardless of curability.
Turkish women's perceptions of antenatal education
Authors: Serçekuş P. , Mete S.
Published: August 2010

Serçekuş P. & Mete S. (2010) Turkish women's perceptions of antenatal education. International Nursing Review57, 395–401

Background:  Antenatal education is considered essential for expectant women. Although there are a number of studies on the effects of antenatal education, there are few studies featuring substantial evidence in this area. For this reason, the benefits have not been clearly defined.

Aim:  To describe women's perceptions of the effectiveness of antenatal education on pregnancy, childbirth and the post‐partum period, and also to describe their impressions on the type of education received.

Methods:  A qualitative approach was used. The study featured 15 primipara women who had attended antenatal education. Data were gathered through semi‐structured interviews and analysed using the content analysis method.

Findings:  The results of this study showed that education provided a basis of knowledge about pregnancy, childbirth and the post‐partum period. It was found that education could have positive effects on pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, motherhood and infant care, and that it could at the same time have a positive or negative effect on fear of childbirth. Although different advantages were found to be perceived in both individual and group education, it was discovered that the study participants were much more satisfied with attending group sessions.

Key conclusions and implications for practice:  Antenatal education should be planned in such a way that its content and methodology do not increase fear. When the lower costs incurred and the higher satisfaction level attained are considered, group education appears to be the type of antenatal education that should be preferred.
POISSON VERSUS BINOMIAL: APPOINTMENT OF JUDGES TO THE U.S. SUPREME COURT
Authors: Voinov Vassilly , Voinov Evgeniy , Rakhimova Roza
Published: August 2010

The problem of discriminating between the Poisson and binomial models is discussed in the context of a detailed statistical analysis of the number of appointments of the U.S. Supreme Court justices from 1789 to 2004. Various new and existing tests are examined. The analysis shows that both simple Poisson and simple binomial models are equally appropriate for describing the data. No firm statistical evidence in favour of an exponential Poisson regression model was found. Two attendant results were obtained by simulation: firstly, that the likelihood ratio test is the most powerful of those considered when testing for the Poisson versus binomial and, secondly, that the classical variance test with an upper‐tail critical region is biased.
Internal and External Corporate Governance: An Interface between an Organization and its Environment
Authors: Filatotchev Igor , Nakajima Chizu
Published: August 2010

Most corporate governance research focuses on a universal link between corporate governance practices (e.g. shareholder activism, board independence) and performance outcomes, but neglects how interdependences between the organization and diverse environments lead to variations in the effectiveness of different corporate governance practices. This paper develops an organizational approach to corporate governance and focuses on two dominant streams that analyse internal and external governance mechanisms. First, we explore governance practices aimed at dealing with a complex set of problems internal to an organization, such as conflicts of interest between managers and shareholders, different types of shareholders, and block‐holder opportunism. Second, we discuss the importance of formal and informal governance arrangements that organizations use in managing their relationships with external parties, such as alliance partners, overseas subsidiaries and network members. We argue that an integrated approach bringing these two streams together helps to develop a more holistic view on the effectiveness and efficiency of various corporate governance mechanisms, and suggests a number of avenues for future research. This paper also sets the scene for this thematic issue on corporate governance, scopes the field and introduces 11 papers which make significant contributions towards our understanding of corporate governance.
Reusable Visualizations and Animations for Surgery Planning
Authors: Mühler K. , Preim B.
Published: August 2010

For surgical planning, the exploration of 3D visualizations and 2D slice views is essential. However, the generation of visualizations which support the specific treatment decisions is very tedious. Therefore, the reuse of once designed visualizations for similar cases can strongly accelerate the process of surgical planning. We present a new technique that enables the easy reuse of both medical visualization types: 3D scenes and 2D slice views. We introduce the keystates as a concept to describe the state of a visualization in a general manner. They can be easily applied to new datasets to create similar visualizations. Keystates can be shared between surgeons of one specialization to reproduce and document the planning process for collaborative work. Furthermore, animations can support the surgeon on individual exploration and are also useful in collaborative environments, where complex issues must be presented in a short time. Therefore, we provide a framework, where animations can be visually designed by surgeons during their exploration process without any programming or authoring skills. We discuss several transitions between different visualizations and present an application from clinical routine.
Multi‐layer Depth Peeling by Single‐Pass Rasterisation for Faster Isosurface Raytracing on GPUs
Authors: Liu Baoquan , Clapworthy Gordon J. , Dong Feng
Published: August 2010

Empty‐space skipping is an essential acceleration technique for volume rendering. Image‐order empty‐space skipping is not well suited to GPU implementation, since it must perform checks on, essentially, a per‐sample basis, as in kd‐tree traversal, which can lead to a great deal of divergent branching at runtime, which is very expensive in a modern GPU pipeline. In contrast, object‐order empty‐space skipping is extremely fast on a GPU and has negligible overheads compared with approaches without empty‐space skipping, since it employs the hardware unit for rasterisation. However, previous object‐order algorithms have been able to skip only exterior empty space and not the interior empty space that lies inside or between volume objects.

In this paper, we address these issues by proposing a multi‐layer depth‐peeling approach that can obtain all of the depth layers of the tight‐fitting bounding geometry of the isosurface by a single rasterising pass. The maximum count of layers peeled by our approach can be up to thousands, while maintaining 32‐bit float‐point accuracy, which was not possible previously. By raytracing only the valid ray segments between each consecutive pair of depth layers, we can skip both the interior and exterior empty space efficiently.

In comparisons with 3 state‐of‐the‐art GPU isosurface rendering algorithms, this technique achieved much faster rendering across a variety of data sets.
A Maximum Enhancing Higher‐Order Tensor Glyph
Authors: Schultz T. , Kindlmann G.
Published: August 2010

Glyphs are a fundamental tool in tensor visualization, since they provide an intuitive geometric representation of the full tensor information. The Higher‐Order Maximum Enhancing (HOME) glyph, a generalization of the second‐order tensor ellipsoid, was recently shown to emphasize the orientational information in the tensor through a pointed shape around maxima. This paper states and formally proves several important properties of this novel glyph, presents its first three‐dimensional implementation, and proposes a new coloring scheme that reflects peak direction and sharpness. Application to data from High Angular Resolution Diffusion Imaging (HARDI) shows that the method allows for interactive data exploration and confirms that the HOME glyph conveys fiber spread and crossings more effectively than the conventional polar plot.
Understanding Interactive Legends: a Comparative Evaluation with Standard Widgets
Authors: Riche Nathalie Henry , Lee Bongshin , Plaisant Catherine
Published: August 2010

Interactive information visualization systems rely on widgets to allow users to interact with the data and modify the representation. We define interactive legends as a class of controls combining the visual representation of static legends and interaction mechanisms of widgets. As interactive legends start to appear in popular websites, we categorize their designs for common data types and evaluate their effectiveness compare to standard widgets. Results suggest that 1) interactive legends can lead to faster perception of the mapping between data values and visual encodings and 2) interaction time is affected differently depending on the data type. Additionally, our study indicates superiority both in terms of perception and interaction of ordinal controls over numerical ones. Numerical techniques are mostly used in today's systems. By providing solutions to allowing users to modify ranges interactively, we believe that interactive legends make it possible to increase the use of ordinal techniques for visual exploration.
GraphDice: A System for Exploring Multivariate Social Networks
Authors: Bezerianos A. , Chevalier F. , Dragicevic P. , Elmqvist N. , Fekete J.D.
Published: August 2010

Social networks collected by historians or sociologists typically have a large number of actors and edge attributes. Applying social network analysis (SNA) algorithms to these networks produces additional attributes such as degree, centrality, and clustering coefficients. Understanding the effects of this plethora of attributes is one of the main challenges of multivariate SNA. We present the design of GraphDice, a multivariate network visualization system for exploring the attribute space of edges and actors. GraphDice builds upon the ScatterDice system for its main multidimensional navigation paradigm, and extends it with novel mechanisms to support network exploration in general and SNA tasks in particular. Novel mechanisms include visualization of attributes of interval type and projection of numerical edge attributes to node attributes. We show how these extensions to the original ScatterDice system allow to support complex visual analysis tasks on networks with hundreds of actors and up to 30 attributes, while providing a simple and consistent interface for interacting with network data.
Illustrative White Matter Fiber Bundles
Authors: Otten Ron , Vilanova Anna , Van De Wetering Huub
Published: August 2010

Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) has made feasible the visualization of the fibrous structure of the brain white matter. In the last decades, several fiber‐tracking methods have been developed to reconstruct the fiber tracts from DTI data. Usually these fiber tracts are shown individually based on some selection criteria like region of interest. However, if the white matter as a whole is being visualized clutter is generated by directly rendering the individual fiber tracts. Often users are actually interested in fiber bundles, anatomically meaningful entities that abstract from the fibers they contain. Several clustering techniques have been developed that try to group the fiber tracts in fiber bundles. However, even if clustering succeeds, the complex nature of white matter still makes it difficult to investigate. In this paper, we propose the use of illustration techniques to ease the exploration of white matter clusters. We create a technique to visualize an individual cluster as a whole. The amount of fibers visualized for the cluster is reduced to just a few hint lines, and silhouette and contours are used to improve the definition of the cluster borders. Multiple clusters can be easily visualized by a combination of the single cluster visualizations. Focus+context concepts are used to extend the multiple‐cluster renderings. Exploded views ease the exploration of the focus cluster while keeping the context clusters in an abstract form. Real‐time results are achieved by the GPU implementation of the presented techniques.
Isosurface Similarity Maps
Authors: Bruckner Stefan , Möller Torsten
Published: August 2010

In this paper, we introduce the concept of isosurface similarity maps for the visualization of volume data. Iso‐surface similarity maps present structural information of a volume data set by depicting similarities between individual isosurfaces quantified by a robust information‐theoretic measure. Unlike conventional histograms, they are not based on the frequency of isovalues and/or derivatives and therefore provide complementary information. We demonstrate that this new representation can be used to guide transfer function design and visualization parameter specification. Furthermore, we use isosurface similarity to develop an automatic parameter‐free method for identifying representative isovalues. Using real‐world data sets, we show that isosurface similarity maps can be a useful addition to conventional classification techniques.
Accelerated Visualization of Dynamic Molecular Surfaces
Authors: Lindow Norbert , Baum Daniel , Prohaska Steffen , Hege Hans‐Christian
Published: August 2010

Molecular surfaces play an important role in studying the interactions between molecules. Visualizing the dynamic behavior of molecules is particularly interesting to gain insights into a molecular system. Only recently it has become possible to interactively visualize dynamic molecular surfaces using ray casting techniques.

In this paper, we show how to further accelerate the construction and the rendering of the solvent excluded surface (SES) and the molecular skin surface (MSS). We propose several improvements to reduce the update times for displaying these molecular surfaces. First, we adopt a parallel approximate Voronoi diagram algorithm to compute the MSS. This accelerates the MSS computation by more than one order of magnitude on a single core. Second, we demonstrate that the contour‐buildup algorithm is ideally suited for computing the SES due to its inherently parallel structure. For both parallel algorithms, we observe good scalability up to 8 cores and, thus, obtain interactive frame rates for molecular dynamics trajectories of up to twenty thousand atoms for the SES and up to a few thousand atoms for the MSS. Third, we reduce the rendering time for the SES using tight‐fitting bounding quadrangles as rasterization primitives. These primitives also accelerate the rendering of the MSS. With these improvements, the interactive visualization of the MSS of dynamic trajectories of a few thousand atoms becomes for the first time possible. Nevertheless, the SES remains a few times faster than the MSS.
Streaming‐Enabled Parallel Dataflow Architecture for Multicore Systems
Authors: Vo Huy T. , Osmari Daniel K. , Summa Brian , Comba João L. D. , Pascucci Valerio , Silva Cláudio T.
Published: August 2010

We propose a new framework design for exploiting multi‐core architectures in the context of visualization dataflow systems. Recent hardware advancements have greatly increased the levels of parallelism available with all indications showing this trend will continue in the future. Existing visualization dataflow systems have attempted to take advantage of these new resources, though they still have a number of limitations when deployed on shared memory multi‐core architectures. Ideally, visualization systems should be built on top of a parallel dataflow scheme that can optimally utilize CPUs and assign resources adaptively to pipeline elements. We propose the design of a flexible dataflow architecture aimed at addressing many of the shortcomings of existing systems including a unified execution model for both demand‐driven and event‐driven models; a resource scheduler that can automatically make decisions on how to allocate computing resources; and support for more general streaming data structures which include unstructured elements. We have implemented our system on top of VTK with backward compatibility. In this paper, we provide evidence of performance improvements on a number of applications.
Topological Landscape Ensembles for Visualization of Scalar‐Valued Functions
Authors: Harvey William , Wang Yusu
Published: August 2010

Visual representation techniques enable perception and exploration of scientific data. Following the topological landscapes metaphor of Weber et al., we provide a new algorithm for visualizing scalar functions defined on simply connected domains of arbitrary dimension. For a potentially high dimensional scalar field, our algorithm produces a collection of, in some sense complete, two‐dimensional terrain models whose contour trees and corresponding topological persistences are identical to those of the input scalar field. The algorithm exactly preserves the volume of each region corresponding to an arc in the contour tree. We also introduce an efficiently computable metric on terrain models we generate. Based on this metric, we develop a tool that can help the users to explore the space of possible terrain models.
An Interactive Visual Analytics System for Bridge Management
Authors: Wang Xiaoyu , Dou Wenwen , Chen Shen‐En , Ribarsky William , Chang Remco
Published: August 2010

Bridges deteriorate over their life cycles and require continuous maintenance to ensure their structural integrity, and in turn, the safety of the public. Maintaining bridges is a multi‐faceted operation that requires both domain knowledge and analytics techniques over large data sources. Although most existing bridge management systems (BMS) are very efficient at data storage, they are not as effective at providing analytical capabilities or as flexible at supporting different inspection technologies. In this paper, we present a visual analytics system that extends the capability of current BMSs. Based on a nation‐wide survey and our interviews with bridge managers, we designed our system to be customizable so that it can provide interactive exploration, information correlation, and domain‐oriented data analysis. When tested by bridge managers of the U.S. Department of Transportation, we validated that our system provides bridge managers with the necessary features for performing in‐depth analysis of bridges from a variety of perspectives that are in accordance to their typical workflow.
Pathline: A Tool For Comparative Functional Genomics
Authors: Meyer M. , Wong B. , Styczynski M. , Munzner T. , Pfister H.
Published: August 2010

Biologists pioneering the new field of comparative functional genomics attempt to infer the mechanisms of gene regulation by looking for similarities and differences of gene activity over time across multiple species. They use three kinds of data: functional data such as gene activity measurements, pathway data that represent a series of reactions within a cellular process, and phylogenetic relationship data that describe the relatedness of species. No existing visualization tool can visually encode the biologically interesting relationships between multiple pathways, multiple genes, and multiple species. We tackle the challenge of visualizing all aspects of this comparative functional genomics dataset with a new interactive tool called Pathline. In addition to the overall characterization of the problem and design of Pathline, our contributions include two new visual encoding techniques. One is a new method for linearizing metabolic pathways that provides appropriate topological information and supports the comparison of quantitative data along the pathway. The second is the curvemap view, a depiction of time series data for comparison of gene activity and metabolite levels across multiple species. Pathline was developed in close collaboration with a team of genomic scientists. We validate our approach with case studies of the biologists’ use of Pathline and report on how they use the tool to confirm existing findings and to discover new scientific insights.
The Name of the Rose
Authors: PEARCE EDWARD
Published: August 2010

Party names have been collected since ‘Whig’ and ‘Tory’ meant ‘Scotch rebel’ and ‘Irish bandit’. ‘Conservative’ began as a catch‐all on the right when one did not use the word ‘right’ in politics, struggled with ‘Unionist’ until Ireland got away and was a euphemism for ‘Tory’ before the Americans used it to describe howling extremists. ‘Labour’ meant skilled men in best suits and school teachers with elbow patches, and now has the resonance of Nineveh and Tyre.
A Long Way to Go: The Final Report of the Speaker's Conference on Parliamentary Representation
Authors: LOVENDUSKI JONI
Published: August 2010

The Speaker's Conference on Parliamentary Representation reported in January 2010. The report calls for a host of measures to improve the representativeness of the House of Commons and to revitalise political parties, as well as to enhance citizenship education, develop youth and community citizenship engagement programmes, and more generally to revitalise British democracy. Early responses indicate that the government and political parties will take the report seriously. The report is thoughtful, thorough and extensive, a treasure trove for policy makers, advocates and researchers. If it has a weakness, it is that it shows a better understanding of parliamentary reform than of party reform.
In Defence of Politics
Authors: FLINDERS MATTHEW
Published: August 2010

In this, my inaugural lecture, I wanted to sing out in praise of politics! This seemed such a good idea twelve months ago, but now in the wake of even more stories about MPs not declaring foreign trips and former ministers demanding ‘cash for access’ the idea of trying to defend politicians and praise politics suddenly seems like a very bad idea. And yet it is exactly because politics is held in such low esteem that the lecture is so important. Democratic politics matters because it achieves far more than we generally give it credit for. I want to rediscover the essence and arguments of Bernard Crick's classic book In Defence of Politics because its arguments are more appropriate today than when they were first published in 1962.
Reconciling Constitutionalism with Power: Towards a Constitutional Nomos of Political Ordering
Authors: KUO MING‐SUNG
Published: August 2010

Drawing upon Hannah Arendt's and Carl Schmitt's theories on the relationship between nomos and boundary, this paper revisits how constitutionalism and political power are reconciled as constitutional ordering. It first analyzes constitutionalism in the light of political modernity. Indicating that political power grounded by constitutions is omnipotent, complementing and completing constitutionalism, the paper contends that an omnipotent constitutional ordering is anything but an unleashed Leviathan. It is argued that constitutional omnipotence is framed and thus constrained by a constitutional nomos, the matrix of which is a dual delimitation of boundaries, generational, and jurisdictional.
SOCIAL CONFLICT, GROWTH AND FACTOR SHARES
Authors: Tsoukis Christopher , Tournemaine Frederic
Published: August 2010

Standard growth theory is based on atomistic agents with no strategic interactions among them. In contrast, we model growth as resulting from a one‐off, strategic game between ‘workers’ and owners of capital (‘capitalists’) on factor shares, in an otherwise standard ‘AK’ growth model. The resulting distribution of income between factors further determines the marginal revenue product of capital and the rate of growth. We analyse the properties of four equilibria: competitive, Stackelberg equilibrium, a hybrid non‐cooperative regime and cooperative, in terms of labour shares, growth and welfare. Our model thus endogenizes key aspects of the ‘social contract’.
Voice or Loyalty? The Evolution of the European Environment Agency (EEA)
Authors: MARTENS MARIA
Published: August 2010

This article seeks to contribute to the debate about the role and autonomy of European agencies, and it is argued that in order to capture a fuller picture of their functioning, we need to go beyond a legal framework, taking into account institutional features that involve both formal and informal processes. We also need to follow processes over time in order to avoid snapshot images and to be able to identify dynamics of institutionalization and change. The article examines the evolution of the European Environment Agency (EEA) from its inception in 1991, and analyses its gradual transformation from a legal to a living institution in the EU system. Over the years the agency has become a more loyal partner to the Commission in the European administrative system, balancing the ability to have a credible voice on the one hand and the need for stability and a secure resource supply on the other.
Justice, Not Democracy: Legitimacy in the European Union
Authors: NEYER JÜRGEN
Published: August 2010

The EU is often assessed against the standard of democracy, which it has no fair chance to fulfil. A new and attractive normative agenda is needed if the EU is to escape its deep legitimacy crisis. This article proposes to substitute the discourse on the democratic deficit of the EU with a discourse on its contribution to transnational justice. Whilst the democratic discourse most often focuses on parliamentary competences and divided government, the discourse on justice centres on the people, puts primary emphasis on power asymmetries and on overcoming the obstacles to justifiable political outcomes. The proposal to analyse the EU in terms of justice does not lower the normative standard but corrects it.
Climate Change and the European Union's Leadership Moment: An Inconvenient Truth?
Authors: PARKER CHARLES F. , KARLSSON CHRISTER
Published: August 2010

This article examines the nexus between the EU's goal of being a leading actor on the world stage in devising a global solution to the threat of climate change and the performance of its Member States in meeting their climate change obligations. In doing so the article will discuss the concept of EU leadership, examine the modes of leadership the EU has employed in pursuing its climate protection objectives, scrutinize the extent to which EU Member States are actually living up to their Kyoto obligations and analyse how the EU's own performance, credibility and legitimacy in this area affects its aspirations to be a key norm‐entrepreneur in the establishment of a post‐2012 climate change agreement. The article concludes with a balance sheet of some of the Union's key successes and failures and closes by highlighting some potentially inconvenient truths that might frustrate the EU's climate protection aspirations.
The Nordics, the EU and the Reluctance Towards Supranational Judicial Review
Authors: WIND MARLENE
Published: August 2010

The Nordic countries have no tradition of judicial review by courts and have generally been hesitant to make use of the preliminary ruling procedure in the European Union. New data indicate that Nordic courts prefer to solve as many EU‐related judicial disputes as possible without involving a supranational organ such as the ECJ. Building on two comprehensive surveys of Danish and Swedish courts and judges, this study challenges the theory of judicial empowerment when explaining judicial integration in the EU. The article argues that in order to explain when and why Member State courts make use of the preliminary ruling procedure, a much deeper understanding of the prevalent legal/political culture and concept of democracy in each Member State is required. In particular, the distinction between majoritarian versus constitutional democracies may help us understand why majoritarian democracies express greater scepticism towards supranational judicial review.
Impact Assessment and the Liberalization of the EU Energy Markets: Evidence‐Based Policy‐Making or Policy‐Based Evidence‐Making?
Authors: TORRITI JACOPO
Published: August 2010

The European Commission proposal on the liberalization of energy markets has been widely debated in policy, stakeholder and academic circles both for its content and the potential consequences for the structure of the EU gas and electricity markets. However, little has been said about the empirical evidence produced by the European Commission to support this legislative package. Since the Impact Assessment (IA) system has been in place, there have been concerns regarding quality and adequateness, especially when quantifying costs, benefits and risks, selecting policy options and considering stakeholder opinions. This article examines how these crucial issues were factored into the IA on the liberalization of EU energy markets. It is concluded that the selected policy option reflects the position of some stakeholders at the expense of the available evidence on its impacts on markets, society and the environment.
Population ecology of the Rice rat (Oryzomys palustris) in a coastal marsh
Authors: Wolfe J. L.
Published: August 2010

Rice rats were studied for four years by grid trapping in a tidal marsh on the northern Gulf of Mexico. Preliminary trapping indicated that marshes are preferred over other coastal habitats. Population densities fluctuated from spring lows of about 2/ha to highs of about 25/ha in the autumn and early winter. Reproduction occurred throughout the year, the major season being late spring to late autumn. Recruitment of juveniles was at a maximum from May to September. Males were more abundant than females in population samples, and had a higher mean body weight. This was because weight classes of 40 g and below were slightly skewed in favour of females and weight classes above 40 g heavily favoured males. The survival rate was low, with less than 20% of animals marked remaining on the grids for more than three months. Maximum longevity was 24 months. Results are compared to those of previous studies done on an offshore island and in the Florida everglades.
The ecology of a Mediterranean tortoise (Testudo hermanni): Reproduction
Authors: Swingland I. R. , Stubbs D.
Published: August 2010

A three‐year study on reproduction in wild populations of Testudo hermanni has shown that:

(a) sexual activity occurs between March and October, except the nesting season (May and June), and is most frequent in August and September,

(b) tortoises are promiscuous in their mating habits, there is no evidence of mate selection in relation to size,

(c) nest site selection is correlated to ground temperature and nesting itself mainly occurs in the early evening before dark, when the ground temperature characteristics are most indicative of a specific site's relative temperature,

(d) incubation takes about three months and is probably temperature dependent,

(e) most nests are preyed upon by mammalian predators within a few days after laying (> 90% being destroyed), the main cue being the smell of the eggs,

(f) average clutch size in Greece is higher than in France, while mean egg weight in France is higher than in Greece, and there is no strong relationship between body size or weight and egg or clutch weight in either country,

(g) in contrast to other studies, there is no apparent correlation between rainfall and reproduction parameters,

(h) some females nest in successive years, and more than once in a year, with a laying interval of 10–20 days,

(i) mean size of sexually active individuals is not significantly different from the mean size of adults, although nesting females are significantly bigger; the minimum size for sexually active males is about 120 mm and for females 130 mm.

The discussion examines these observations in an evolutionary context.
Morphometric variation in the Hooded seal (Cystophora cristata)
Authors: Wlig Øystein
Published: August 2010

Intra‐ and intersexual variation in 16 skull dimensions and total body length of 233 aged Hooded seals caught in the north‐west Atlantic were investigated. Absolute growth was described by asymptotic growth curves applied to single dimensions, as well as to scores on the first principal component of logarithmically transformed cranial data, which are believed to reflect the multivariate nature of growth. All dimensions were found to be fully developed later in males than in females. The growth of the male skulls was found to continue for more than 20 years, while the females approach final size about–7 years earlier than males, according to the scores on the first principal component. Female seals were found to reach 86 % of final total body length at the time of maturation, which is a generalized pinniped pattern. In both sexes, a yearling skull was characterized by a large brain‐case, which decreased relatively with growth. The male skulls were further characterized by an increase in zygomatic width and orbital width in relation to basal length, a pattern which was not found in females.

All the asymptotic values were significantly larger in males than in females. The dimorphism develops mainly as a result of prolonged growth of males after the attainment of sexual maturity.
‘Fingerprinting’ snakes: a digital system applied to a population of Natrix maura
Authors: Hailey A. , Davies P. M. C.
Published: August 2010

An identification system for individual snakes, Natrix maura, was developed, based on photographs of the pattern on the ventral scales. The patterns appeared to be constant, and contained sufficient information (allowing for non‐randomness within the pattern) to render duplication unlikely, even in extremely large populations. After digitization, the patterns were compared for overall similarity by computer, and those which matched were checked visually. Using this system on a third of the scales, only 1% of known recaptures (those in which one of the compared photographs was of poor quality) were missed, and coding was reduced to 2.2 min. This sifting makes recognition by natural marks practicable in very large samples, and is robust enough to absorb considerable error in coding.
Population fluctuations, reproduction and survival in the Striped fieldmouse Rhabdomys pumilio on the Cape Flats, South Africa
Authors: David J. H. M. , Jarvis J. U. M.
Published: August 2010

A wild population of Striped fieldmice was studied for a continuous period of five years in an area of alien Acacio bush about 24 km from Cape Town, South Africa. Mice were live‐trapped, marked by toe‐clipping and released on a 60‐station grid, and also kill‐trapped in a separate area. Marked annual fluctuations in the population size were correlated with a 6–8 month summer breeding season. There were also marked inter‐annual differences in peak population size. The age of sexual maturity of females was determined from the first pregnancy which occurred at 6–7 weeks old; and of males from the presence of visible spermatozoa in the vas deferens which occurred at about 11 weeks old. Litter size was affected by both the age and the body mass of the female. It appeared that mean survival from birth was only approximately 1.5 months and that survival from first capture was about 1.9–2.5 months. This high mortality appeared to be the major reason for the sharp seasonal fluctuations in population size and may also have been responsible for the interannual differences since marked changes in survival were recorded between some years.
Annual cycles in the African stonechat Saxicola torquata axillaris and their relationship to environmental factors
Authors: Dittami J. P. , Gwinner Eberhard
Published: August 2010

Seasonal changes in gonadal size, body weight, male song and the plasma titres of luteinizing hormone (LH), oestradiol and testosterone were investigated in a free‐living population of African stonechats, Suxicola torquata axillaris, on Menengai Crater, Nakuru, Kenya. These were compared with the occurrence of nesting and moult in the population and a number of seasonally changing environmental factors including photoperiod, insect abundance and rain. Annual cycles in these stonechats appears to be regulated by endogenous events which are responsive to environmental factors on a seasonal basis. The dry season may play an important rôle in the synchronization of the population by inhibiting nesting in birds otherwise capable of reproductive activity. Rain is postulated as a time‐giving cue for moult and gonadal regression. The possibility of photoperiodic changes at the equator acting as seasonal time‐giving cues remains open.