The innovative capacity of voluntary organisations and the provision of public services: A longitudinal approach

The prior history of voluntary and community organisations (VCOs) as pioneers of public services during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century has lead to reification of the innovativeness of these organisations. Is this reification justified – are VCOs inherently innovative, or is innovation contingent on other factors? This paper reports on a longitudinal study of this capacity conducted over 1994 – 2006. This study finds that the innovative capacity of VCOs is in fact not an inherent capacity but rather is contingent upon the public policy framework that privileges innovation above other activity of VCOs. The implications of this for theory, policy and practice are considered

Learning Contextual Reward Expectations for Value Adaptation

Substantial evidence indicates that subjective value is adapted to the statistics of reward expected within a given temporal context. However, how these contextual expectations are learned is poorly understood. To examine such learning, we exploited a recent observation that participants performing a gambling task adjust their preferences as a function of context. We show that, in the absence of contextual cues providing reward information, an average reward expectation was learned from recent past experience. Learning dependent on contextual cues emerged when two contexts alternated at a fast rate, whereas both cue-independent and cue-dependent forms of learning were apparent when two contexts alternated at a slower rate. Motivated by these behavioral findings, we reanalyzed a previous fMRI data set to probe the neural substrates of learning contextual reward expectations. We observed a form of reward prediction error related to average reward such that, at option presentation, activity in ventral tegmental area/substantia nigra and ventral striatum correlated positively and negatively, respectively, with the actual and predicted value of options. Moreover, an inverse correlation between activity in ventral tegmental area/substantia nigra (but not striatum) and predicted option value was greater in participants showing enhanced choice adaptation to context. The findings help understanding the mechanisms underlying learning of contextual reward expectation

A proteomic investigation of Fusobacterium nucleatum alkaline-induced biofilms

Background: The Gram negative anaerobe Fusobacterium nucleatum has been implicated in the aetiology of periodontal diseases. Although frequently isolated from healthy dental plaque, its numbers and proportion increase in plaque associated with disease. One of the significant physico-chemical changes in the diseased gingival sulcus is increased environmental pH. When grown under controlled conditions in our laboratory, F. nucleatum subspecies polymorphum formed mono-culture biofilms when cultured at pH 8.2. Biofilm formation is a survival strategy for bacteria, often associated with altered physiology and increased virulence. A proteomic approach was used to understand the phenotypic changes in F. nucleatum cells associated with alkaline induced biofilms. The proteomic based identification of significantly altered proteins was verified where possible using additional methods including quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR), enzyme assay, acidic end-product analysis, intracellular polyglucose assay and Western blotting. Results: Of 421 proteins detected on two-dimensional electrophoresis gels, spot densities of 54 proteins varied significantly (p < 0.05) in F. nucleatum cultured at pH 8.2 compared to growth at pH 7.4. Proteins that were differentially produced in biofilm cells were associated with the functional classes; metabolic enzymes, transport, stress response and hypothetical proteins. Our results suggest that biofilm cells were more metabolically efficient than planktonic cells as changes to amino acid and glucose metabolism generated additional energy needed for survival in a sub-optimal environment. The intracellular concentration of stress response proteins including heat shock protein GroEL and recombinational protein RecA increased markedly in the alkaline environment. A significant finding was the increased abundance of an adhesin, Fusobacterial outer membrane protein A (FomA). This surface protein is known for its capacity to bind to a vast number of bacterial species and human epithelial cells and its increased abundance was associated with biofilm formation. Conclusion: This investigation identified a number of proteins that were significantly altered by F. nucleatum in response to alkaline conditions similar to those reported in diseased periodontal pockets. The results provide insight into the adaptive mechanisms used by F. nucleatum biofilms in response to pH increase in the host environment.Jactty Chew, Peter S Zilm, Janet M Fuss and Neville J Gull

Spin Two Glueball Mass and Glueball Regge Trajectory from Supergravity

We calculate the mass of the lowest lying spin two glueball in N=1 super Yang-Mills from the dual Klebanov-Strassler background. We show that the Regge trajectory obtained is linear; the 0++, 1-- and 2++ states lie on a line of slope 0.23 -measured in units of the conifold deformation. We also compare mass ratios with lattice data and find agreement within one standard deviation.Comment: 17 pages, 2 figure

Shape optimization using a matrix-free Newton method

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1997.Includes bibliographical references (leaf 15).by Cheewee P. Chew.M.S

Gigantic transmission band edge resonance in periodic stacks of anisotropic layers

We consider Fabry-Perot cavity resonance in periodic stacks of anisotropic layers with misaligned in-plane anisotropy at the frequency close to a photonic band edge. We show that in-plane dielectric anisotropy can result in a dramatic increase in field intensity and group delay associated with the transmission resonance. The field enhancement appears to be proportional to forth degree of the number N of layers in the stack. By contrast, in common periodic stacks of isotropic layers, those effects are much weaker and proportional to N^2. Thus, the anisotropy allows to drastically reduce the size of the resonance cavity with similar performance. The key characteristic of the periodic arrays with the gigantic transmission resonance is that the dispersion curve omega(k)at the photonic band edge has the degenerate form Delta(omega) ~ Delta(k)^4, rather than the regular form Delta(omega) ~ Delta(k)^2. This can be realized in specially arranged stacks of misaligned anisotropic layers. The degenerate band edge cavity resonance with similar outstanding properties can also be realized in a waveguide environment, as well as in a linear array of coupled multimode resonators, provided that certain symmetry conditions are in place.Comment: To be submitted to Phys. Re

Grating-coupled excitation of multiple surface plasmon-polariton waves

The excitation of multiple surface-plasmon-polariton (SPP) waves of different linear polarization states and phase speeds by a surface-relief grating formed by a metal and a rugate filter, both of finite thickness, was studied theoretically, using rigorous coupled-wave-analysis. The incident plane wave can be either p or s polarized. The excitation of SPP waves is indicated by the presence of those peaks in the plots of absorbance vs. the incidence angle that are independent of the thickness of the rugate filter. The absorbance peaks representing the excitation of s-polarized SPP waves are narrower than those representing p-polarized SPP waves. Two incident plane waves propagating in different directions may excite the same SPP wave. A line source could excite several SPP waves simultaneously

Matching Points with Things

Given an ordered set of points and an ordered set of geometric objects in the plane, we are interested in finding a non-crossing matching between point-object pairs. We show that when the objects we match the points to are finite point sets, the problem is NP-complete in general, and polynomial when the objects are on a line or when their number is at most 2. When the objects are line segments, we show that the problem is NP-complete in general, and polynomial when the segments form a convex polygon or are all on a line. Finally, for objects that are straight lines, we show that the problem of finding a min-max non-crossing matching is NP-complete