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This publication reviews a variety of empirically supported approaches to dealing with alcohol and drug problems in adolescents. Its focus is to provide motivationally based brief interventions that can be delivered in a variety of contexts address key developmental considerations and draw on the latest knowledge about the processes of addictive behavior change. Information was obtained from a multidisciplinary group of experts to create this resource guide for anyone working with or studying adolescents-at-risk. Part 1 reviews current research on substance abuse in adolescents and young adults and outlines the basic principles of developmentally informed assessment and intervention. Emphasized are the benefits of working with adolescents on their own territory and reaching out to all who are engaged in health-risk behavior. Part 2 presents a range of specific interventions, including skills training for substance abuse prevention; integrative behavioral and family therapy; motivational interviewing; interventions for dually diagnosed youth; Internet-based education; and applications to HIV prevention. The chapters describe the goals and methods of these approaches, review available data on treatment efficacy, and offer case studies along with clinical interpretations. Part 3 discusses future directions for brief interventions for addictive behaviors. (Contains over 500 references.) (JDM)

This book presents papers from some leading social scientists and scholars who examine the contemporary contours of America's gang problem. New material is provided on wilding (i.e., running amok for no specific reason) gangs, migration and drug trafficking, and public education disruption. Other topics involve organization of gangs, their social function, their relation to conventional society, and the social and psychological factors that contribute to involvement in them. Papers and their authors are as follows: "Origins and Problems of Gang Research in the United States" (Daniel J. Monti); "Gangs, Drugs, and Violence" (Joan Moore); "Anatomy of a Wilding Gang" (Scott Cummings); " Down With the Program': Racial Attitudes and Group Violence Among Youth in Bensonhurst and Gravesend" (Howard Pinderhughes); "The Established Gang" (Diego Vigil); "Hispanic Street Gangs in Chicago's Public Schools" (Ray Hutchison and Charles Kyle); "Blazon Nouveau: Gang Graffiti in the Barrios of Los Angeles and Chicago" (Ray Hutchison); "The Working Gang" (Felix Padilla); "Gang Organization and Migration" (Jerome H. Skolnick, Ricky Bluthenthal, and Theodore Correl); "Gangs in More- and Less-Settled Communities" (Daniel J. Monti); Moral Panic and the Response to Gangs in California' (Pat Jackson with Cary Rudman); "Gangs and Civil Rights" (Robert A. Destro); and "Public Policy and Gangs: Social Science and the Urban Underclass" (Scott Cummings and Daniel J. Monti). Contains an index and a bibliography of more than 500 items. (GLR)

The Rechtschaffen and Kales system for scoring sleep states distinguishes a waking state, nonrapid eye movement (NREM) sleep, and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. From the polysomnographic point of view, four stages are conventionally distinguished during NREM sleep. The young adult spends 20-28 of a night's sleep in REM sleep, 4-5 in stage 1, 46-50 in stage 2, 6-8 in stage 3, and 10-16 in stage 4. A range of differences in average sleep length has been established in young adults. In this respect, subjects have been characterized who sleep significantly less (short sleepers) or more (long sleepers) relative to a group norm. Short sleepers spend less time in stages 1, 2, and 3 sleep, whereas long sleepers spend more time in stage 2 sleep and REM sleep. On the basis of behavioral and polysomnographic aspects, three sleep states have been defined in the newborn infant: quiet sleep (the precursor of adult NREM sleep), active-REM sleep (the precursor of adult REM sleep), and indeterminate sleep. Total sleep time attains its highest levels in neonates and young infants (16-17 h). The fastest decrease in sleep length is observed in the 6-month-old infant (13-14 h) and is mainly related to the diminution of REM sleep during daytime. Compared to the infancy, changes of sleep duration during early childhood occur at a slower pace. The total amount of sleep decreases to 12 h by 4 years and to 8-10 h by 10 years. A series of neural structures involved in the occurrence of waking, NREM sleep, and REM sleep have been characterized in the central nervous system (CNS). In addition, a number of neurotransmitters have been described that function to promote waking (acetylcholine, noradrenaline, dopamine, serotonin, histamine, glutamate, and orexin), NREM sleep (Γ-aminobutyric acid, gallanin, and adenosine), and REM sleep (acetylcholine). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fig. 1.A view of St Mark's Basilica The pavement of St Mark's Basilica in Venice is very famous for its historical-artistic importance, for its undulation, for the richness of the materials. Conservative restoration and the necessity of a precise acquaintance of the entire mosaic induced to the digital relief in scale 1:1 of all the musive surface to obtain a 3D orthophoto. In a first test area, and in a subsequently area about 40mq in the right transept, technologies, elaborations, instruments for the appraisal of the operating feasibility of a relief have been experienced. After the verification of the relief feasibility 3000 targets have been placed on the pavement (one; each 80 cm per 2000mq), those ones have been topographically surveyed by the means of a total station and they have been levelled in altitude. All has been punctually geo-referenced in the national cartographic system. With an high resolution metric digital camera, employing a f/40mm lens with nadiral shot about 2.20m have been realized more than 2000 shots. Ground pixel measures 0,5mm. The DSM (Digital Surface Model), with lcm net, has been obtained by the auto-correlation of the image by the means of Socet Set 5.2.0 software property of BAE System. As from the DTM we finally proceeded with the realization of the 3D orthophoto of the all pavement. Fig. 2.The actual state of the orthophoto is inserted into the plan This one gives us the correct position of each pavemental tessera and permits a totally automatical form to extract altimetric profiles between prearranged points and so realize, always automatically, templates for the restoring of the basement with his characteristical undulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cooperative mobile positioning is raising up as a promising new branch of wireless location, in which several research directions are being explored. In this chapter, we apply the cooperative mobile positioning framework as an innovative solution for positioning determination in 4G wireless networks by introducing the Ad-Coop Positioning System (ACPS). The ACPS is supported by a hybrid cellular ad-hoc architecture, where the cellular network has a centralized control over the adhoc connections among pairs of mobiles. Specifically, peer-to-peer communications are exploited in a mesh fashion within cellular-established clusters for cooperationaided localization purposes (from that, the word ad-coop is derived). The numerical results exposed in the chapter will show that thanks to the spatial proximity and spatial diversity within a group of cooperative mobiles, our proposal has the potential to enhance the location estimation accuracy with respect to conventional hybrid positioning techniques in stand-alone cellular networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the production of most of the current medicines is based on chemical synthesis, more than 25% of the current prescribed drugs contains at least one active ingredient of plant origin (Kaufman et al 1999). Examples of important plant-derived pharmaceuticals include the antitumoral taxol and vinblastine, the antimalarial drug quinine and artemisinin, the analgesical morphine and codeine. In addition, it has been estimated that more than 80% of the world's population in developing countries depends primarily on herbal medicine for basic healthcare needs (Vines 2004). There is also a revival of traditional medicine in developed countries and an increase in the use of herbal remedies. The world market of herbal medicines, including herbal and raw material, has been estimated to have an annual growth rate between 5-15%. Total global herbal drug market is estimated as US $ 62 billion and it is expected to grow to US $ 5 trillion by the year 2050 (Joshi et al. 2004). At same time, there is a growing concern on loss of genetic diversity since about 75% of the 50,000 different medicinal plant species in use are collected from the wild (Edwards 2004). Moreover, to rely solely on wild spontaneous plants as a production system can be extremely dangerous, as shown recently by severe shortage problems of the antimalarial artemisinin (Scheindlin 2005). Additionally, bioactive plant compounds are produced generally at very low amount and, often, it is not economically convenient to extract them from natural sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agronomy, the science ruling the fields, has the privilege and the task of dealing with many aspects and related disciplines, covering the biological and the physical sphere. Harmonizing the complex of interactions arising form the organisms, factors and conditions involved in the process of plant growth is not an easy task, as general. Optimising plant growth and crop production, while safeguarding the environment, often proves a harder challenge. In this light, the crops for industrial end-uses may intrinsically be seen as crops of potential large scale, thus exerting a significant influence - both positive and negative — on the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The major changes occurring life long in the human immune system are here described. The progressive inflammatory status which is established during aging together with the progressive susceptibility to infectious diseases are discussed in the frame of the genetic variant influence. Finally, the possibility to counteract the susceptibility to infections by coping with or slowing down immunosenescence, using different molecules or strategies, is argued [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Minimum Energy Broadcast problem consists in finding the minimum-energy range assignment for a given set S of n stations of an ad hoc wireless network that allows a source station to perform broadcast operations over S. We prove a nearly tight asymptotical bound on the optimal cost for the Minimum Energy Broadcast problem on square grids. We emphasize that finding tight bounds for this problem restriction is far to be easy: it involves the Gauss's Circle problem and the Apollonian Circle Packing. We also derive near-tight bounds for the Bounded-Hop version of this problem. Our results imply that the best-known heuristic, the MST-based one, for the Minimum Energy Broadcast problem is far to achieve optimal solutions (even) on very regular, well-spread instances: its worst-case approximation ratio is about π and it yields $\Omega(\sqrt{n})$ hops. As a by product, we get nearly tight bounds for the Minimum Disk Cover problem and for its restriction in which the allowed disks must have non-constant radius. Finally, we emphasize that our upper bounds are obtained via polynomial time constructions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A complete plant design is described through an huge amount of data organized in a big number of documents of different types logically linked each other by complex relationships; managing information about plants is a complex and expensive task. The techniques commonly adopted for hazard identification require high costs and time for their development; many specialists in different disciplines need to be involved for all the time necessary to complete the plant documentation analysis. The research project here presented is based on the idea of taking advantage of the organization of the information typically offered by Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) systems in order to allow designers to evaluate specific plant aspects, in particular those concerning possible hazards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and congenital heart diseases express the atrial essential myosin light chains (ALC-1) in their ventricles, replacing the ventricular essential light chains (VLC-1). VLC-l/ALC-1 isoform shift is correlated with increases in cardiac contractile parameters of a transgenic rat model overexpressing hALC-1 in the heart (TGR/hALC-1) compared to normal WKY rats. To investigate, whether the benefical effects of the hALC-1 on cardiac contractility could attenuate contractile failure of the overloaded heart, aortocaval shunt operations of 9-10 weeks old WKY and TGR/hALC-1 were performed. 5 weeks later, both animals groups were sacrificed for analysis of cardiac contraction and transgene expression. Control animals were operated but remained normal body and heart weights. The whole heart contractility parameters were evaluated using the Langendorff heart preparation. Shunt-operated TGR/hALC-1 and WKY rats developed comparable levels of cardiac hypertrophy which was assoc iated with significant reduction of contractile parameters of the Langendorff hearts. However, the decline of cardiac contractility was less pronounced in shunt-operated TGR/hALC-1 compared to shunt-operated WKY. In fact, developed left ventricular pressure as well as maximal velocity of pressure development and relaxation were significantly higher in shunt-operated TGR/hALC-1 as compared to shunt-operated WKY. Expression of hALC-1 was 17µg/mg whole SDS-protein in control (sham-operated) controls and declined significantly to 14 µg/mg whole SDS-protein in hypertrophied TGR/hALC-1. these results demonstrate that the expression of hALC-1 could have a beneficial effect on the overloaded hypertrophied heart. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The d-Dim h-hops MST problem is defined as follows: Given a set S of points in the d-dimensional Euclidean space and s ∈ S, find a minimum-cost spanning tree for S rooted at s with height at most h. We investigate the problem for any constants h and d > 0. We prove the first non trivial lower bound on the solution cost for almost all Euclidean instances (i.e. the lower-bound holds with high probability). Then we introduce an easy-to-implement, very fast divide and conquer heuristic and we prove that its solution cost matches the lower bound. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In situ hybridization is particularly appropriate for mapping specific DNA sequences on polytene chromosomes of Drosophila and other dipterans. This technique is based on the recognition and binding of one labeled sequence (the probe) to homologous sequences on chromosomes fixed on a microscope slide. The probes are labeled with biotin or other nonradioactive products, and the probe signal can be detected as a thin line on the chromosomes, following the shape of the classical Giemsa-stained chromosome bands, thus allowing the detection of TE insertions within the range of 50 to 200 kb. In our laboratory we work on many individuals from natural populations, and as a result we process high numbers of slides hybridized with various DNA probes of transposable elements every day. Therefore, the in situ hybridization technique we use is a simplification of earlier published protocols. This chapter presents our simplified standard in situ hybridization protocol for labeling polytene chromosomes of Drosophila with biotin and a fluorescence stain (FISH). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The behavior of turbulent boundary layer over a flat bottom and a scour hole, in the presence of a cylindrical obstacle normal to the bottom has been investigated. This has been done through flow visualizations. The flow structures in the flat bottom and in the scour hole cases have been compared. The dominant features of the vortex structure in terms of the number of the principal vortices and critical lines have been taken as the main flow parameters. The flow fields, with different Reynolds numbers, have also been compared. The Poincare-Bendixon theorem, modified for a 3D body attached to a surface, has been verified by means of the flow visualizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well known that thermocapillary convection arises in liquid bridges when the isothermal support discs are at different temperatures. As the temperature difference increases the convective flow shows a transition from a steady axisymmetric to an oscillatory regime. Although a number of experiments have been performed and a considerable number of publications have appeared during the past ten years on oscillatory thermocapillary convection in liquid bridges, a definitive understanding of the physical mechanisms of the onset of instability and a coherent picture of the thermo-fluid-dynamic field has not yet emerged. On this subject the "Onset" experiment has been successfully performed during the D2 Spacelab mission using the Advanced Fluid Physics Module (AFPM). The experiment has investigated this transition for various bridge geometries and has provided quantitative measurements, which allow one to characterise the flow at the onset of the instability. The paper discusses the experimental observations, compars them with the available theoretical models of the instability. This comparison provides a validation of the oscillation description in terms of hydrothermal waves and also a new interpretation of the experimental results obtained previously. Finally a new scaling law for the oscillation frequencies at the onset is presented which agrees with all available experimental data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A fluid-dynamic model of the hanging (or sitting) drop is proposed to study the time evolution of the thermo-solutal flow fields in protein crystallyzers. An Order of Magnitude Analysis of the vapour phase surrounding the drop shows that buoyancy effects are negligible in the vaporization chamber and that the evaporation is a very fast process, so that the rate of evaporation is controlled essentially by water diffusion through the air space. The liquid drop is modelled as a mixture of water, precipitating agent and protein bounded by an undeformable interface with a surface tension depending on the concentrations. The cases considered refer to the crystallization of lysozyme in a solution of NaCl in water. Preliminary numerical results are shown corresponding to zero-g and to one-g (with and without Marangoni effect). The computations seem to indicate that in the pre-nucleation phase the Marangoni effects may be relevant at 0−g for the full drop. For the half-drop geometry Marangoni flows may plays only a role on ground. In the post-nucleation phase the comparison between 0−g and 1−g shows that in ground conditions the mass transfer is enhanced by convection and therefore the crystal growth rate increases, but the nonuniformity in the interface concentration gradients around the growing crystal may have a detrimental effect on the growth kinetics. A preliminary validation of the code is accomplished comparing the numerical results with experimental ones obtained in a facility at MARS center. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]