Faces of Penn State 3 (v3.1) - Nov. 2012
Faces of Penn State showcases the personal accomplishments, public contributions and pioneering spirit resulting from the Penn State experience, education and community. Learn more at http://faces.psu.edu.
Insurgent Intellectual: a career with global impact
Dr Nicholas Farrelly talks to Professor Desmond Ball about some of the highlights from a career that has seen him become one of the world's foremost strategy and defence experts.
Over more than four decades Professor Ball has investigated a broad range of fields including, nuclear, electronic and cyber warfare, signals intelligence, Asia-Pacific security as well as Australian strategic and defence policy.
He has travelled, researched and published extensively, including on sensitive topics, c
Hearing Yourself Hear
Listen in as Artist Jacob Kirkegaard tells of his journey to hear himself hear. With the aid of researchers in Copenhagen, Kirkegaard generates an artificial tone in his own ear by playing two tones at a precise ratio. He has developed this phenomenon into an interactive sound piece he calls Labyrinthitis. (07:13)
8.2 Chromosome scaffolds Most of the chromosomal DNA chains within the interphase nucleus are believed to be held on a scaffold or backbone structure made from various proteins, with loops of between 20 and 200Â kb extruding from attachment sites. This chromosome structure is shown schematically in Figure 40. The scaffold, as well as permitting further compaction, serves to bring the DNA together in organised regions. There are many different protein components of these scaffolds, amongst them DNA topoisomerases.
2.4 Analysis of nucleic acids by electrophoresis and hybridisation Nucleic acids can be separated according to size by gel electrophoresis, most commonly performed using a horizontal gel (Figure 7a). This is in contrast to the vertical gel electrophoresis set-up, which is generally used for analysis of proteins. The size of DNA molecules is usually expressed in terms of the number of
1.5 Obesity At the time of writing (2004) 20% of the adult population of the UK is classified as obese. The number of obese children has doubled since 1982, 10% of six year olds and 17% of fifteen year olds are now classified as obese. As shown in Table 4, obesity is recognized when the BMI exceeds 30 and occurs quite simply wh
3.6 A ‘non-active’ class – the starburst galaxies We end this section by drawing a distinction between the classes of active galaxy that are described in the previous subsections and the starburst galaxies mentioned earlier. As you have seen, starburst galaxies are essentially ordinary galaxies in which a massive burst of star formation has taken place. Their spectra show emission lines from their many HII regions and infrared emission from dust but, in the main, they do not show unusual activity in their nuclei. In the past they were
3.2 Public consultation vs public engagement ‘Public consultation’ is not a new concept in policy making. For society to function effectively, laws and policies must have public support. It is desirable, therefore, to have some idea of what the public thinks about an issue before regulation is finalised. Consultation is based on establishing the nature of a socially collective view that we call ‘public opinion’. The main means of establishing public opinion with at least some degree of confidence is the opinion poll, the methodo
3.1 Introduction On an autumnal morning in November 1994, a group of people gathered at Regent's College, London, conscious that they were making history. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss an important issue: plant biotechnology and how it should be regulated in the UK. At the time, the genetic engineering of plants was emerging as a technology of great potential for the development of new pest-resistant, higher yield crops, although the technique hadn't attracted the degree of media attention and pub
1 Genetic manipulation of plants and GM crops: an introduction In this unit we will consider the genetic manipulation of plants, and the production of GM crops. A great deal has been written about the science of GM crops and the controversial issues surrounding their introduction around the world. In the study time available, we will focus on a small number of selected issues. In this unit you'll have the opportunity to learn more about the science that has been used to engineer a range of GM crops, and examine both the science and social concerns
3.5 A new life There is a common belief that life begins at the moment of conception, i.e. when a sperm fuses with an egg. This is a step forward from past years, when life was alleged to start at the time of ‘quickening’, i.e. when a woman could feel her fetus moving inside her. However, both these opinions suffer from an underlying falsehood: that life ‘begins’ at all. Life is a continuum; gametes are produced by living parents, and fuse to produce new living individuals, but unfused gametes are n
1 Water underground Many people have the impression that underground water occupies vast caverns, such as those in the Derbyshire Peak District, flowing from one cavern to another along underground rivers. This is a common misconception: underground caverns are fairly rare, but huge quantities of water exist underground, within rocks. This is because many rocks contain pores, spaces that come in all shapes and sizes. In sediments, and consequently sedimentary rocks, there are often pores between gr
Acknowledgements Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material in this unit: The content acknowledged below is Proprietary and used under licence (not subject to Creative Commons licence). See Terms and Conditions. Figures 3, 5–7, 40, 41 Voet, D. and Voet, J. G. (1995) Biochemistry, 2nd edn, copyright © 1995 John Wiley & Sons Inc Figures 4, 8, 9a, 10, 14, 24, 25a,c Voet, D. and Voet,
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7.4 Proteomics Traditionally, the study of the biochemistry or structure of a protein necessitated its purification to a high degree. The development of protocols for cloning, manipulation and expression of genes greatly facilitated this kind of study, as will be clear to you from the previous section. In recent years, a number of high-throughput techniques have, to an extent, obviated traditional approaches and permit simultaneous analysis of all the expressed proteins in a cell or organism, known as the <
4.3 Conserved protein domains By comparing the extensive protein databases, it is possible to identify many thousands of conserved domains. For example, within eukaryotes, over 600 domains have been identified with functions related to nuclear, extracellular and signalling proteins. The majority of conserved domains are evolutionarily ancient, with less than 10% being unique to vertebrates.
8.2 Extended radio sources In section 7.5 we studied the spectrum of the synchrotron emission, i.e. how the flux density of radiation depends on the frequency or wavelength of the radio emission. Using radio telescopes such as the VLA (Author(s):
8.1 Continuum spectra Read Section 1.3 of Peterson, up to and including the first two paragraphs of Section 1.3.1 by clicking the link 7.8 Example 2 and questions Example 2 Show that the synchrotron spectrum produced by a power-law distribution of electron energies N(E) dE = N0E−s dE, is described by You may use the approximation that all the power 7.6 Producing synchroton radiation in a laboratory Synchrotron radiation can, of course, be produced in a laboratory by arranging for electrons to be deflected by a magnetic field. Figure 13 shows a beam of synchrotron radiation produced at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (Author(s): 8 Managing the BSE/vCJD episode up to May 1990 BSE was formally recognised as a new disease in November 1986. However, this information was kept under ‘embargo’ at first while an initial epidemiological study – involving the collection of data from 200 herds – was started. The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) was officially informed about BSE by the Chief Veterinary Officer (CVO) in June 1987. By December 1987, those responsible for analysing the data from the initial epidemiological study had concluded that the
Activity 4: General properties of quasars and power-law emission
