Using front-end and formative evaluation to design and test persuasive bird feeding warning signs

Wildlife feeding is a wide-spread and controversial practice that can pose serious threats to the safety of both wildlife and visitors. The design and effectiveness of warning signs in recreational areas varies considerably and is rarely the product of theoretical models or scientific research. This study uses front-end and formative evaluation to design and test the perceived effectiveness of warning signs relating to bird feeding. Stage One examined visitors' beliefs, attitudes and bird feeding behaviour and found significant differences between feeders and non-feeders. Stage Two involved designing and evaluating three signs that built on the beliefs, knowledge and mis/conceptions identified in Stage One. Respondents thought the sign that focused on the birds' health and safety would be the most persuasive, however, elements of the other two signs were also positively evaluated. The article concludes with recommendations for the wording of future bird feeding warning signs. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A distributed systems approach to secure Internet mail

One of the obstacles to improved security of the Internet is ad hoc development of technologies with different design goals and different security goals. This paper proposes reconceptualizing the Internet as a secure distributed system, focusing specifically on the application layer. The notion is to redesign specific functionality, based on principles discovered in research on distributed systems in the decades since the initial development of the Internet. Because of the problems in retrofitting new technology across millions of clients and servers, any options with prospects of success must support backward compatibility. This paper outlines a possible new architecture for internet-based mail which would replace existing protocols by a more secure framework. To maintain backward compatibility, initial implementation could offer a web browser-based front end but the longer-term approach would be to implement the system using appropriate models of replication. (C) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Design of a compact ultra-wideband antenna

A simple method for the design of ultra-wideband antennas in planar format is presented. This method is demonstrated for a high-dielectric-constant substrate material, which allows for a considerable antenna size reduction. Simulations are performed using Ansoft's High-Frequency Structure Simulator (HFSS) for antennas assuming Du-Pont951 (epsilon(r) = 7.8) and RT6010LM (epsilon(r) = 10.2) substrates. For the 1-mm-thick DuPont951, the designed antenna with 22 X 28 nun dimensions features a 10-dB return-loss band width front 2.7 GHz to more than 15 GHz. For the 0.64-mm-thick RT6010LM a 20 X 26 nun antenna exhibits a 10-dB return loss bandwidth from 3.1 to 15 GHz. Both antennas feature nearly omnidirectional properties across the whole 10-dB return-loss bandwidth. The validity of the presented UWB antenna design strategy is confirmed by measurements performed on a prototype developed on RT6010LM substrate. (c) 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Formalising behaviour trees with CSP

Behaviour Trees is a novel approach for requirements engineering. It advocates a graphical tree notation that is easy to use and to understand. Individual requirements axe modelled as single trees which later on are integrated into a model of the system as a whole. We develop a formal semantics for a subset of Behaviour Trees using CSP. This work, on one hand, provides tool support for Behaviour Trees. On the other hand, it builds a front-end to a subset of the CSP notation and gives CSP users a new modelling strategy which is well suited to the challenges of requirements engineering.

Measurement of free drug and clinical end-point by high-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry: Applications and implications for pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic studies

Free drug measurement and pharmacodymanic markers provide the opportunity for a better understanding of drug efficacy and toxicity. High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC)-mass spectrometry (MS) is a powerful analytical technique that could facilitate the measurement of free drug and these markers. Currently, there are very few published methods for the determination of free drug concentrations by HPLC-MS. The development of atmospheric pressure ionisation sources, together with on-line microdialysis or on-line equilibrium dialysis and column switching techniques have reduced sample run times and increased assay efficiency. The availability of such methods will aid in drug development and the clinical use of certain drugs, including anti-convulsants, anti-arrhythmics, immunosuppressants, local anaesthetics, anti-fungals and protease inhibitors. The history of free drug measurement and an overview of the current HPLC-MS applications for these drugs are discussed. Immunosuppressant drugs are used as an example for the application of HPLC-MS in the measurement of drug pharmacodynamics. Potential biomarkers of immunosuppression that could be measured by HPLC-MS include purine nucleoside/nucleotides, drug-protein complexes and phosphorylated peptides. At the proteomic level, two-dimensional gel electrophoresis combined with matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionisation time-of-flight (TOF) MS is a powerful tool for identifying proteins involved in the response to inflammatory mediators. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Lessons from tomographic studies of the mammalian Golgi

Basic structure studies of the biosynthetic machinery of the cell by electron microscopy (EM) have underpinned much of our fundamental knowledge in the areas of molecular cell biology and membrane traffic. Driven by our collective desire to understand how changes in the complex and dynamic structure of this enigmatic organelle relate to its pivotal roles in the cell, the comparatively high-resolution glimpses of the Golgi and other compartments of the secretory pathway offered to us through EM have helped to inspire the development and application of some of our most informative, complimentary (molecular, biochemical and genetic) approaches. Even so, no one has yet even come close to relating the basic molecular mechanisms of transport, through and from the Golgi, to its ultrastructure, to everybody's satisfaction. Over the past decade, EM tomography has afforded new insights into structure -function relationships of the Golgi and provoked a re-evaluation of older paradigms. By providing a set of tools for structurally dissecting cells at high-resolution in three-dimensions (3D), EM tomography has emerged as a method for studying molecular cell biology in situ. As we move rapidly toward the establishment of molecular atlases of organelles through advances in proteomics and genomics, tomographic studies of the Golgi offer the tantalizing possibility that one day, we will be able to map the spatio-temporal coordinates of Golgi-related proteins and lipids accurately in the context of 4D cellular space. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Synthetic, EPR spectroscopic, magnetic and X-ray crystallographic structural studies on copper(II) complexes of the tridentate N2S donor ligand formed from 6-methyl-2-formylpyridine and S-methyldithiocarbazate (Hmpsme)

New copper(II) complexes of general empirical formula, Cu(mpsme)X center dot xCH(3)COCH(3) (mpsme = anionic form of the 6-methyl-2-formylpyridine Schiff base of S-methyldithiocarbazate; X = Cl, N-3, NCS, NO3; x = 0, 0.5) have been synthesized and characterized by IR, electronic, EPR and susceptibility measurements. Room temperature mu(eff) values for the complexes are in the range 1.75-2.1 mu(beta) typical of uncoupled or weakly coupled Cu(II) centres. The EPR spectra of the [Cu(mpsme)X] (X = Cl, N-3, NO3, NCS) complexes reveal a tetragonally distorted coordination sphere around the mononuclear Cu(II) centre. We have exploited second derivative EPR spectra in conjunction with Fourier filtering (sine bell and Hamming functions) to extract all of the nitrogen hyperfine coupling matrices. While the X-ray crystallography of [Cu(mpsme)NCS] reveals a linear polymer in which the thiocyanate anion bridges the two copper(II) ions, the EPR spectra in solution are typical of a magnetically isolated monomeric Cu(II) centres indicating dissociation of the polymeric chain in solution. The structures of the free ligand, Hmpsme and the {[Cu(mpsme)NO3] center dot 0.5CH(3)COCH(3)}(2) and [Cu(mpsme)NCS](n) complexes have been determined by X-ray diffraction. The {[Cu(mpsme)NO3]0.5CH(3)COCH(3)}(2) complex is a centrosymmetric dimer in which each copper atom adopts a five-coordinate distorted square-pyramidal geometry with an N2OS2 coordination environment, the Schiff base coordinating as a uninegatively charged tridentate ligand chelating through the pyridine and azomethine nitrogen atoms and the thiolate, an oxygen atom of a unidentate nitrato ligand and a bridging sulfur atom from the second ligand completing the coordination sphere. The [Cu(mpsme)(NCS)](n) complex has a novel staircase-like one dimensional polymeric structure in which the NCS- ligands bridge two adjacent copper(II) ions asymmetrically in an end-to-end fashion providing its nitrogen atom to one copper and the sulfur atom to the other. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Unlocking pathology archives for molecular genetic studies: a reliable method to generate probes for chromogenic and fluorescent in situ hybridization

Chromogenic (CISH) and fluorescent ( FISH) in situ hybridization have emerged as reliable techniques to identify amplifications and chromosomal translocations. CISH provides a spatial distribution of gene copy number changes in tumour tissue and allows a direct correlation between copy number changes and the morphological features of neoplastic cells. However, the limited number of commercially available gene probes has hindered the use of this technique. We have devised a protocol to generate probes for CISH that can be applied to formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissue sections (FFPETS). Bacterial artificial chromosomes ( BACs) containing fragments of human DNA which map to specific genomic regions of interest are amplified with phi 29 polymerase and random primer labelled with biotin. The genomic location of these can be readily confirmed by BAC end pair sequencing and FISH mapping on normal lymphocyte metaphase spreads. To demonstrate the reliability of the probes generated with this protocol, four strategies were employed: (i) probes mapping to cyclin D1 (CCND1) were generated and their performance was compared with that of a commercially available probe for the same gene in a series of 10 FFPETS of breast cancer samples of which five harboured CCND1 amplification; (ii) probes targeting cyclin-dependent kinase 4 were used to validate an amplification identified by microarray-based comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH) in a pleomorphic adenoma; (iii) probes targeting fibroblast growth factor receptor 1 and CCND1 were used to validate amplifications mapping to these regions, as defined by aCGH, in an invasive lobular breast carcinoma with FISH and CISH; and (iv) gene-specific probes for ETV6 and NTRK3 were used to demonstrate the presence of t(12; 15)(p12; q25) translocation in a case of breast secretory carcinoma with dual colour FISH. In summary, this protocol enables the generation of probes mapping to any gene of interest that can be applied to FFPETS, allowing correlation of morphological features with gene copy number.