Impact of riparian land use on stream insects of Kudremukh National Park, Karnataka state, India

The impact of riparian land use on the stream insect communities was studied at Kudremukh National Park located within Western Ghats, a tropical biodiversity hotspot in India. The diversity and community composition of stream insects varied across streams with different riparian land use types. The rarefied family and generic richness was highest in streams with natural semi evergreen forests as riparian vegetation. However, when the streams had human habitations and areca nut plantations as riparian land use type, the rarefied richness was higher than that of streams with natural evergreen forests and grasslands. The streams with scrub lands and iron ore mining as the riparian land use had the lowest rarefied richness. Within a landscape, the streams with the natural riparian vegetation had similar community composition. However, streams with natural grasslands as the riparian vegetation, had low diversity and the community composition was similar to those of paddy fields. We discuss how stream insect assemblages differ due to varied riparian land use patterns, reflecting fundamental alterations in the functioning of stream ecosystems. This understanding is vital to conserve, manage and restore tropical riverine ecosystems.

Residential Differentiation, Housing Policy and Urban Planning in the Transformation from State Socialism to a Market Economy: The Case of Tallinn

The thesis examines urban issues arising from the transformation from state socialism to a market economy. The main topics are residential differentiation, i.e., uneven spatial distribution of social groups across urban residential areas, and the effects of housing policy and town planning on urban development. The case study is development in Tallinn, the capital city of Estonia, in the context of development of Central and Eastern European cities under and after socialism. The main body of the thesis consists of four separately published refereed articles. The research question that brings the articles together is how the residential (socio-spatial) pattern of cities developed during the state socialist period and how and why that pattern has changed since the transformation to a market economy began. The first article reviews the literature on residential differentiation in Budapest, Prague, Tallinn and Warsaw under state socialism from the viewpoint of the role of housing policy in the processes of residential differentiation at various stages of the socialist era. The paper shows how the socialist housing provision system produced socio-occupational residential differentiation directly and indirectly and it describes how the residential patterns of these cities developed. The second article is critical of oversimplified accounts of rapid reorganisation of the overall socio-spatial pattern of post-socialist cities and of claims that residential mobility has had a straightforward role in it. The Tallinn case study, consisting of an analysis of the distribution of socio-economic groups across eight city districts and over four housing types in 1999 as well as examining the role of residential mobility in differentiation during the 1990s, provides contrasting evidence. The third article analyses the role and effects of housing policies in Tallinn s residential differentiation. The focus is on contemporary post-privatisation housing-policy measures and their effects. The article shows that the Estonian housing policies do not even aim to reduce, prevent or slow down the harmful effects of the considerable income disparities that are manifest in housing inequality and residential differentiation. The fourth article examines the development of Tallinn s urban planning system 1991-2004 from the viewpoint of what means it has provided the city with to intervene in urban development and how the city has used these tools. The paper finds that despite some recent progress in planning, its role in guiding where and how the city actually developed has so far been limited. Tallinn s urban development is rather initiated and driven by private agents seeking profit from their investment in land. The thesis includes original empirical research in the three articles that analyse development since socialism. The second article employs quantitative data and methods, primarily index calculation, whereas the third and the fourth ones draw from a survey of policy documents combined with interviews with key informants. Keywords: residential differentiation, housing policy, urban planning, post-socialist transformation, Estonia, Tallinn

Itämafia : Uhkakuvapolitiikka, rikosilmiöt ja kulttuuriset merkitykset

The Eastern Mafia Threat policy, crime phenomena, and cultural meanings An interdisciplinary research on the crime phenomena and the threat policy relating to the organized crime and the mafia of Russia and Estonia is based on 151 expert interviews, statistics, documents, research literature, and press material. The main part of the material consists of interviews of the Finnish, Estonian and Russian police authorities specialized in the problem of organized crime, and the reports on the crime situation drawn up in the Finnish diplomatic representations in Tallinn and St Petersburg. The interviews have been gathered in the years 1996-2001. The main theoretical tools of the research are constructivist research on social problems, and political psychology. Definitional processes of social problems and cultural semantic structures behind them are identified in the analysis and connected to the analysis of the crime cases. Both in the Anglo-American and Russian cultural frames there appears an inflated and exaggerated talk, according to which the mafia rules everything in Russia and is spreading everywhere. There is the traditional anti-Semitic paranoia in the core of this cultural symbiosis produced by Russian legal nihilism, the theory of totalitarianism of Sovietology, and the inertia of Russian anti-capitalism. To equate the Sicilian Mafia with Russia is an anachronism, since no empirical proof of systematic uncontrolled violence or absolute power vacuum in Russia can be found. In the Anglo-American policy of threat images, "the Russian mafia" was seen as a commodified conspiracy theory, which the police, the media, and the research took advantage of, blurring the line between fact and fiction. In Finland, the evolution of the policy of threat images proceeded in three phases: Initially, extensive rolling of refugees and criminals from Russia to Finland was emphasized in the beginning of the 1990's. In the second phase, the eastern mafia was said to infiltrate all over Finnish society and administration. Finland was, however, found immune to this kind of spreading. In the third phase, in the 21st century, the organized crime of Finland was said to be lead from abroad. In Finland, the policy of threat images was especially canalised to moral panics connected to "eastern prostitution". In Estonia, the policy of threat images emphasized the crime organized by the Russian authorities and politicians in order to weaken Estonia. In Russia, the policy of threat images emphasized the total criminalizing of society caused by criminal capitalism. In every country, the policy of threat images was affected by a so-called large-group identity, a term by Vamik Volkan, in which a so-called chosen trauma caused a political paranoia of an outer and inner danger. In Finland, procuring, car theft, and narcotics crimes were at their widest arranged by the Finnish often with the help of the Estonians. The Russians had no influence in the most serious violent crimes in Finland, although the number of assassinations were at least 5, 000 in Russia in the 1990's. In Russia, the assassinations were on one hand connected to marital problems, on the other hand to the pursuit of public attention and a hoped-for effect by the aid of the murder of an influential person. In the white-collar crime phenomena between Finland and Russia, the Finnish state and Finnish corporations gained remarkable benefit of the frauds aimed at the states of the Soviet Union and Russia in 1980's-21st century. The situation of Estonia was very difficult compared to that of Russia in the 1990's, which was manifested in the stagnation of the Estonian police and judicial authorities, the crimes of the police and the voluntary paramilitary organization, bomb explosions, the rebellion called "the jaeger crisis" in the voluntary paramilitary organization, and the "blood autumn" of Eastern Virumaa, in other words terror. The situation of Estonia had a powerful effect on the crime situation of Finland and on the security of the Finnish diplomats. In the continuum of the Finnish policy of threat images, Russia and the Russians were, however, presented as a source of a marked danger.

Thermodynamic analysis of three state denaturation of Peanut Agglutinin

Peanut Agglutinin (PNA) is a homotetrameric protein with a very unusual open quaternary structure. During denaturation, it first dissociates into a molten globule like state, which subsequently undergoes complete denaturation. Urea denaturation of PNA at neutral pH has been studied by intrinsic fluorescence spectroscopy and has been fitted to a three state model, A(4) double left right arrow 4I double left right arrow 4U, to get all the relevant thermodynamic parameters. Urea denaturation leads to continuous red shift of wavelength maxima. The molten globule like state is formed in a short range of urea concentration. Refolding of the denatured PNA has been attempted by intrinsic fluorescence study. Refolding by instantaneous dilution shows the occurrence of the formation of an intermediate at a relatively rapid rate, within few seconds. The transition from PNA tetramer to molten globule like state is found to have a Delta G value of similar to 33 kcal/mole while it is similar to 8 kcal/mole for the transition from molten globule like state to a completely denatured state. This in turn indicates that the tetramerization in PNA contributes significantly to the stability of the oligomer.

Molten globule-like state of peanut lectin monomer retains its carbohydrate specificity - Implications in protein folding and legume lectin oligomerization

A central question in biological chemistry is the minimal structural requirement of a protein that would determine its specificity and activity, the underlying basis being the importance of the entire structural element of a protein with regards to its activity vis a vis the overall integrity and stability of the protein. Although there are many reports on the characterization of protein folding/ unfolding intermediates, with considerable secondary structural elements but substantial loss of tertiary structure, none of them have been reported to show any activity toward their respective ligands. This may be a result of the conditions under which such intermediates have been isolated or due to the importance of specific structural elements for the activity. In this paper we report such an intermediate in the unfolding of peanut agglutinin that seems to retain, to a considerable degree, its carbohydrate binding specificity and activity. This result has significant implications on the molten globule state during the folding pathway(s) of proteins in general and the quaternary association in legume lectins in particular, where precise subunit topology is required for their biologic activities.

The dynamics of solvation of an electron in the image potential state by a layer of polar adsorbates

Recently, ultrafast two-photon photoemission has been used to study electron solvation at a two-dimensional metal/polar adsorbate interfaces [A. Miller , Science 297, 1163 (2002)]. The electron is bound to the surface by the image interaction. Earlier we have suggested a theoretical description of the states of the electron interacting with a two-dimensional layer of the polar adsorbate [K. L. Sebastian , J. Chem. Phys. 119, 10350 (2003)]. In this paper we have analyzed the dynamics of electron solvation, assuming a trial wave function for the electron and the solvent polarization and then using the Dirac-Frenkel variational method to determine it. The electron is initially photoexcited to a delocalized state, which has a finite but large size, and causes the polar molecules to reorient. This reorientation acts back on the electron and causes its wave function to shrink, which will cause further reorientation of the polar molecules, and the process continues until the electron gets self-trapped. For reasonable values for the parameters, we are able to obtain fair agreement with the experimental observations. (c) 2005 American Institute of Physics.

2(n)-SEMA-a robust solid state nuclear magnetic resonance experiment for measuring heteronuclear dipolar couplings in static oriented systems using effective transverse spin-lock

Separated local field (SLF) spectroscopy is a powerful technique to measure heteronuclear dipolar couplings. The method provides site-specific dipolar couplings for oriented samples such as membrane proteins oriented in lipid bilayers and liquid crystals. A majority of the SLF techniques utilize the well-known Polarization Inversion Spin Exchange at Magic Angle (PISEMA) pulse scheme which employs spin exchange at the magic angle under Hartmann-Hahn match. Though PISEMA provides a relatively large scaling factor for the heteronuclear dipolar coupling and a better resolution along the dipolar dimension, it has a few shortcomings. One of the major problems with PISEMA is that the sequence is very much sensitive to proton carrier offset and the measured dipolar coupling changes dramatically with the change in the carrier frequency. The study presented here focuses on modified PISEMA sequences which are relatively insensitive to proton offsets over a large range. In the proposed sequences, the proton magnetization is cycled through two quadrants while the effective field is cycled through either two or four quadrants. The modified sequences have been named as 2(n)-SEMA where n represents the number of quadrants the effective field is cycled through. Experiments carried out on a liquid crystal and a single crystal of a model peptide demonstrate the usefulness of the modified sequences. A systematic study under various offsets and Hartmann-Hahn mismatch conditions has been carried out and the performance is compared with PISEMA under similar conditions.

Benedict-Webb-Rubin equation of state constants for N2O4 ⇄ 2NO2,NO,and O2

Benedict-Webb-Rubin equation of state constants for NO, O2, and the equilibrium mixture N2O4 ⇄ 2NO2 are reported.

Measurement of the WW+WZ Production Cross Section Using the lepton+jets Final State at CDF II

We report two complementary measurements of the WW+WZ cross section in the final state consisting of an electron or muon, missing transverse energy, and jets, performed using p\bar{p} collision data at sqrt{s} = 1.96 TeV collected by the CDF II detector. The first method uses the dijet invariant mass distribution while the second more sensitive method uses matrix-element calculations. The result from the second method has a signal significance of 5.4 sigma and is the first observation of WW+WZ production using this signature. Combining the results gives sigma_{WW+WZ} = 16.0 +/- 3.3 pb, in agreement with the standard model prediction.

Toward a widely usable finite-state morphology workbench for less studied languages, 1: Desiderata

Most of the world’s languages lack electronic word form dictionaries. The linguists who gather such dictionaries could be helped with an efficient morphology workbench that adapts to different environments and uses. A widely usable workbench could be characterized, ideally, as generally applicable, extensible, and freely available (GEA). It seems that such a solution could be implemented in the framework of finite-state methods. The current work defines the GEA desiderata and starts a series of articles concerning these desiderata in finite- state morphology. Subsequent parts will review the state of the art and present an action plan toward creating a widely usable finite-state morphology workbench.

Of citizen's rights and wrongs of the state

Argues that a human rights based concsiousness needs to supersede legal technocracy to avoid the wrongs of deporting family members. Response to public discussion over deportation of two elderly grandmothers from Finland.

A class of one-dimensional steady-state flows in radiation-gas-dynamics

The study of steady-state flows in radiation-gas-dynamics, when radiation pressure is negligible in comparison with gas pressure, can be reduced to the study of a single first-order ordinary differential equation in particle velocity and radiation pressure. The class of steady flows, determined by the fact that the velocities in two uniform states are real, i.e. the Rankine-Hugoniot points are real, has been discussed in detail in a previous paper by one of us, when the Mach number M of the flow in one of the uniform states (at x=+∞) is greater than one and the flow direction is in the negative direction of the x-axis. In this paper we have discussed the case when M is less than or equal to one and the flow direction is still in the negative direction of the x-axis. We have drawn the various phase planes and the integral curves in each phase plane give various steady flows. We have also discussed the appearance of discontinuities in these flows.

Search for WW and WZ production in lepton plus jets final state at CDF

We present a search for WW and WZ production in final states that contain a charged lepton (electron or muon) and at least two jets, produced in sqrt(s) = 1.96 TeV ppbar collisions at the Fermilab Tevatron, using data corresponding to 1.2 fb-1 of integrated luminosity collected with the CDF II detector. Diboson production in this decay channel has yet to be observed at hadron colliders due to the large single W plus jets background. An artificial neural network has been developed to increase signal sensitivity, as compared with an event selection based on conventional cuts. We set a 95% confidence level upper limit of sigma_{WW}* BR(W->lnu,W->jets)+ sigma_{WZ}*BR(W->lnu,Z->jets)

First Observation of Vector Boson Pairs in a Hadronic Final State at the Tevatron Collider

We present the first observation in hadronic collisions of the electroweak production of vector boson pairs (VV, V=W, Z) where one boson decays to a dijet final state. The data correspond to 3.5  fb-1 of integrated luminosity of pp̅ collisions at √s=1.96  TeV collected by the CDF II detector at the Fermilab Tevatron. We observe 1516±239(stat)±144(syst) diboson candidate events and measure a cross section σ(pp̅ →VV+X) of 18.0±2.8(stat)±2.4(syst)±1.1(lumi)  pb, in agreement with the expectations of the standard model.