Windowless Room Research Articles

Two-Headed Boy

The blood was drawn into vials by a plasma center on campus, where I went under the needle twice a week. The vials looked like glass bullets, and the blood looked bright at first, almost vermilion, then darkened to cardinal. Yet all I could see was green: cash flowing for the booze and blotters that fueled my first year of college. The donor center paid for each draft of plasma with easy money. The exchange rate ran to my favor until the day I approached the front desk and an orderly gave me a hard stare then gripped my folder with alarm. My black leggings, velvet jacket, and silver rosary glowed in his eyes as if in ultraviolet light, as if radioactive. Between us, a four-letter word sparked like static, my blood stopped, and the air went dead. “No doubt about it,” the orderly said through tight lips as he walked me to a windowless room at the back of the clinic, “AIDS.” He’d run a second test, but it’d take a month and he’d never seen a false positive. Never. Anyway, I had the symptoms, didn’t I? “Where there’s smoke—” he started then stopped, one freckled hand covering his mouth. Then he waved at the air and counted the symptoms on his fingers, like a Sunday school teacher listing the Ten Plagues of Egypt. Fatigue, fever, swollen glands. Dry cough, skin rash, sudden weight loss. Night sweats, nausea, phantom sensations in the feet and hands. I showed every sign of affliction. What’s more, I was queer, wasn’t I? The orderly reminded me of my perjury in signing the official weekly donation form. In Louisiana, gay blood was as outlaw as absinthe and presumed just as toxic. Only the green fairy conducted a plague of one, while the lavender virus ushered gay men by the dozens then by the hundreds and thousands out of classrooms, theaters, and studios, out of bars, bathhouses, and discos. I’d lied, it was true, for the money, for the drugs. There was no more relief in the confession than

Hearing the shape of a room

Seeing the shape of a room is not difficult for most people. Using a combination of stereo vision and parallax as we move around the room, we can resolve the position and angle of walls to determine the size and shape of the room we are in. However, suppose now that you are blind, or in a windowless room with no lights. It is still possible to get a sense of the size of the room by using sound. Clap your hands and the echoes will typically tell you if you are in a small office, a medium-sized classroom, or a large concert hall. However, is it possible to tell the shape of a room using sound alone? This is the question addressed by Dokmanic et al. (1) in PNAS.

Review: Kevin Roche: Architecture as Environment

Kevin Roche: Architecture as Environment Museum of the City of New York, New York 27 September 2011–5 February 2012 Two projects by Kevin Roche, the Oakland Museum of California (1961–68) and the Ford Foundation Headquarters, New York (1963–68), received accolades from contemporary critics and continue to stand out today as paradigmatic examples of the phenomenon this exhibition’s curator, Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen, calls “architecture as environment.” A community’s sense of identity, Roche’s designs for each project suggested, might be framed by its collective relationship with a garden or gardens. On a metaphorical level, the designs poetically highlighted the beauty of the natural environment at a time when “environmentalism” began its move to center stage in politics and the public conversation about the future, as demonstrated by Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring of 1962 and Buckminster Fuller’s Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth of 1969.1 Recently on view at the Museum of the City of New York, Kevin Roche: Architecture as Environment is a condensed version of the exhibition originally shown at the Yale School of Architecture Gallery 7 February–6 May 2011, a venue distinguished architecturally by spaciousness, height, and natural light. At the Museum of the City of New York, by contrast, the exhibition occupies two confined spaces, an entrance vestibule followed by a main gallery extending the full length of a narrow, windowless room. At the start of the exhibition in New York, the visitor is greeted with a brief introduction to Kevin Roche’s career. Roche left Ireland for America in 1948 to study with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and in 1950 he began work with Eero Saarinen in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. There he assisted with the General Motors Technical Center, and after Saarinen’s death in 1961, he oversaw the completion of the CBS Building, the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, and Bell Telephone Laboratories. In 1964 he became a United States citizen, and in …

TEACHERS AND TECHNOLOGY: WHO’S THE BOSS?

This past week, I sat in a small, windowless room with the express purpose of talking to a blank screen. I had been asked to participate in a Skype conference, and - for the first time - unaccompanied by an adult (otherwise known as a technician). Yes… Arne did set up the machine, align the entire program and show me how to work it with detailed instructions. But, it was my responsibility alone to push the “call” button and contact the meeting coordinator. So, after Arne left me to my own devices, I sat there with a bead of sweat on my upper lip as my finger twitched to push that button. My mouse hovered for a while, and then… I hooked up. It was almost instantaneously answered and the coordinator’s familiar face floated on the screen. Courting hubris, I congratulated myself on this operation. We actually chatted for a few minutes when she received another call. All of a sudden things started to become choppy and disoriented on the miniature world in front of me. Then the coordinator said the last words before the image went inky black: “hmmm… maybe if I press this…”

Energy saving in lighting system with fuzzy logic controller which uses light-pipe and dimmable ballast

Approximately, 20% of the electricity consumed in the world is spent for lighting. More efficient utilization of the sun, as a natural source of light, for lighting would save electricity used for lighting. The aim of this study is to illuminate a windowless room via a light-pipe and dimmable electronic ballasts. Light-pipe is used for the illumination of the space during the daytime. In case of inadequate daylight, artificial lighting is made via dimmable electronic ballasts and fluorescence lamps. Artificial lighting is supervised by a fuzzy logic control system to keep the illumination level at 350lux. When there is a motion in the room, the system works with the message of the motion sensor, which, thereby, enables energy saving. Additionally, dimming the lamps result in conversation of the electrical energy used for illumination. After the experimental studies, 350lux value targeted in the work plane is achieved with ±10lux error.

The Innermost Regions of Relativistic Jets: Wrapping Up the Enigma

What are relativistic jets like within a million Schwarzschild radii of the accreting black hole that powers them? A meeting in Granada, Spain in June 2013, organized by José L. Gómez and his conspirators brought together observers and theorists to survey the current state of observational data and efforts to interpret them. This conference summary reviews the results, insights, arguments, conflicts, and agreements that occurred during five sunny days spent in a windowless room in a hotel at the bottom of the hill that holds the heart of the beautiful city.

Evaluating discomfort glare from non-uniform electric light sources

This study tested the appropriateness of unified glare rating (UGR), CIE glare index (CGI), British glare index (BGI), and visual comfort probability (VCP) for evaluating discomfort glare from common non-uniform electric light sources. An experiment was conducted in a windowless room. High dynamic range photogrammetry was used for measuring three non-uniform fluorescent glare sources. The luminance and geometry data were acquired to calculate the glare ratings. The sub-divisibility and additivity of UGR, CGI, BGI, and VCP were tested via numerical method. Their predictability was evaluated using 67 subjects in two sessions. It was found that UGR, CGI, BGI, and VCP all have valid additivity, but only UGR and CGI have valid sub-divisibility. Current formulae of UGR, CGI, BGI and VCP all overestimate the glare sensation from non-uniform sources that young people may feel.

Photopia를 이용한 추적식 디쉬형 집광기의 배광분포 분석 및 자연채광 성능 예측

A set of candela distribution curves(CDCs) were generated for a fiber optic dish daylighting system by Photopia under clear sky conditions at different solar altitudes. The candela distribution curves were then exported to Radiance for photometric analysis of a windowless lecture room. Observations were made on the Radiance rendered illuminance images, which provided photo realistic scenes varying with solar altitudes. If no tracking error were assumed, the daylight collection efficiency of the system remained at a constant value of 68.4% during its operation. Higher the solar altitude angle, greater in photometric quantities were observed, which are represented by candela(cd) and total lumens(lm). In all cases considered, however, the angle of light distribution remained fixed reflecting the solar tracking feature of the system. The illuminance uniformity on the workplane lingered around 0.12, which is quite low. This is quite a contrast to its average value of 0.68 of the area directly below the terminal device (diffuser) of the system. The maximum illuminance of 1,340lux was obtained at a solar altitude of 80 degrees.

Checking Out

Checking Out Dara Weinberg (bio) I turn off the Xerox machine and the fax and the other fax and the PC tower and the fluorescents, put the check register in the desk, lock the desk, and take the elevator eleven floors down to the narrow front of East 21st Street. When I come out, the space between the buildings is so thin it’s an upside-down skyscraper of sky, narrower at the street. There will be no sky at all for the next two hours of trains back to Brooklyn. Someone once told me I should come to New York, so I did. Two trains and three stations later, and a walk past a housing project like a cliff made of bricks— I am back in my windowless basement room with the tile floor, staring at the square grate in the middle, wondering what the drain was for. I eat the same sandwich I eat every night. A car alarm punctuates the seconds of the dark, as if to say how few hours of single-malt sleep stand between me and tomorrow’s trains. Someone once told me I should come to New York, so I did. Tomorrow I will try to buy food for a different kind of sandwich and it will not go well— I will see the word California on a bag of mandarin oranges and start crying in the narrow aisles of the supermarket— and a man with a cart full of cat food will ask me to move, please, [End Page 7] he is trying to get to the checkout. Where I come from, I want to tell him, they make the grocery stores big enough for someone to cry in the produce section and someone else to move around them. And when you get to the parking lot you put your oranges in a car, not a backpack, and you drive the car home, and you park the car in a driveway above ground, never under, and you eat the whole bag of mandarin oranges at a kitchen table bigger than Brooklyn. [End Page 8] Dara Weinberg Dara Weinberg was born in Los Angeles and lives in Baltimore. Copyright © 2010 Johns Hopkins University Press

Peter Whitehead: The Slade Years

Peter Whitehead:The Slade Years Henry K. Miller (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Cambridge acceptance letter, 1956 Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. London County Council scholarship, 1956 [End Page 28] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 3. Letter from the Guardian, 1961 Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 4. Letter to hire Whitehead as Bertrand Russell's cameraman, 1965 [End Page 29] Eternal Return There's a story Peter Whitehead likes to tell about his masterpiece, The Fall. He had decided to abandon filmmaking for good while attending its premiere at the 1969 Edinburgh Film Festival, and later that year, after its brief run at the London Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), he took the film for a screening—its last for all he knew, since it had not been picked up by a distributor—at the place where he had become a filmmaker seven years earlier, bringing his career full circle. This was the Slade School of Fine Art, more precisely the Physics Theatre of University College London (UCL), which Thorold Dickinson, who had run the Slade's Film Department since its inception in 1960, had colonized as a repertory venue, open to students across the city, to rival the National Film Theatre. All of Whitehead's films had come into being through a confrontation of serendipity and—behind-the-scenes, after-hours—deepwater study, philosophical and scientific as much as cinematic, and The Fall was no exception, a spontaneous response to an apparently decisive moment in American history as it unfolded over the course of 1967 and 1968, reconstructed if not in tranquility then at least away from the violence. It was also a record of this reconstruction, a dramatization of the director's attempt to understand what he had seen. So he was taken aback when Dickinson told him, recalling a student short of Whitehead's, shown in the same theater half a decade earlier, that "it's exactly the same film. The subject, structure—I thought I was watching Parallels again."1 The film, twelve minutes long, hasn't been seen in public since that first screening in 1964, and Whitehead himself has dismissed it as apprentice [End Page 30] work. But was Dickinson right? Does this strange unconscious continuity provide the ultimate key to the Whitehead mystery? All will be revealed. First Shorts Whitehead had arrived at the Slade in the autumn of 1962, just as Dickinson's department was finding its feet. The course, as Whitehead described it a year later, comprised three weekly screenings in the Physics Theatre, and a seminar in Dickinson's windowless basement room. "'It's not a film school,'" Whitehead quoted Dickinson as saying. "'We are not teaching practical techniques. We are pioneering. Jacques Ledoux [director of the Belgian Cinémathèque] shook me at the IFFS [International Federation of Film Societies] recently when he pointed out that this is unique. Nowhere else in this hemisphere has a University taken the film under its wing and placed it right in the middle of a School of Fine Arts.'"2 Its novelty is still underestimated. The main programs in 1962-1963—painstakingly put together by Dickinson, who called in favors from friends like Ledoux and Henri Langlois—were "A Survey of Italian Film," which included a number of titles never seen before in Britain, such as Rossellini's La Nave Bianca (IT, 1941), and, during the first term, "A Film Record of the 1930s," a mixture of nonfiction and feature films which climaxed with Renoir's La Règle du Jeu (FR, 1939). Whitehead, however, had not gone there to study film. During his second year at Cambridge, he had taken up painting, first exhibiting at the town's Arts Council gallery in June 1960, and in his final year, by which time he had begun to frequent the local art school, he won both a painter's place at the Slade and a London County Council scholarship to pay for it. Whitehead initially identified himself as a figurative painter, his primary influences Francis Bacon and Keith Vaughan. Typically, however, his varied interests interbred and—this in...

Boys School

73 I n 1977, the year I was to begin first grade, my parents decided to take me out of our local public elementary school, where I had attended kindergarten, and enroll me in an allboys private school across town, in what was back then a fairly downtrodden neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan . The move, so far as I can remember, came on the heels of a few run-ins I’d had with some older, black kids in the schoolyard toward the end of the previous year (I want to say they took the cookies from my lunch), and so, at least as far as my mother was concerned, my physical safety was a factor in the decision. But my older brother had been moved into a private school two years earlier, when he was in fourth grade, and it’s almost certain that I would have eventually followed suit. Partly it had to do with the fact that the New York City public schools were crumbling under a broken state budget, and my parents, themselves proud products of the public education system, were no longer convinced those schools could provide us with a good education. And partly it had to do with the fact that my parents, who had gone on to graduate from Harvard Law School, understood firsthand the particular pleasures of attending a well-endowed institution. But mostly I think it had to do with the fact that this was what successful professionals in the city like my parents did: enrolled their children in good private schools, so they could get into good colleges and graduate schools and go on to get good, high-paying jobs. Which is to say that, in the end, the decision probably had less to do with who I was than what my parents had become. So while my father sometimes acted as though he resented the decision—as though my mother’s anxiety had somehow forced his hand, that had it been left to him, I (let alone, my brother) would have toughed it out in public school as he had done and been the better for it—I suspect that he, like our mother, took a lot of satisfaction, pride even, in knowing that he had done ANDREW D. COHEN BOYS SCHOOL colorado review 74 his part to set us safely on the path toward prosperity, success, and happiness. The school was not just any private school, but one of the oldest , most competitive schools in the country, dating back some three hundred years to a time when its founders had to petition the London-based Society for the Propagation of the Gospel for funding. Once a church charity school, after the Revolution the school transformed itself into a college preparatory program modeled on the great English schools, like Harrow and Eaton, establishing a private endowment, easing its reliance on the Episcopal Church, adopting a new motto—“Labore et Virtue ”—and, according to the reverend who gave the address at the school’s 150th anniversary celebration, dedicating itself to nothing less than the “rightful training of our rising youth, of our city’s and country’s coming rulers.” Though the four-story building housing the elementary school I would attend dated back a mere seventy-five years, one nonetheless felt as though he were entering an imposing vault of history and expectation. I remember the apprehension with which I first walked through those wrought-iron gates, the heavy wooden doors, the arched entryway, and found myself standing in the Great Hall, with its high ceilings, its marble floors, its giant glass chandelier casting a gloomy yellow light against the dark corners of the windowless room. To the left stood the receptionist’s hulking wooden desk, beside which arose a broad marble staircase; before me, between two shallow staircases descending to the library, was a seating area with aged leather wing chairs and alumni magazines; to the right, past a series of glass display cases containing old trophies, basketballs, and yellowing, black and white photographs of unsmiling boys in knickers, stood two wooden doors that led to the administrative offices, including that of the headmaster with his...

Elderly Chinese Couples' Primary Room Use in Urban Apartments

This study aimed to clarify room use in the dwelling units of elderly Chinese couples in their daily lives. For this purpose, the authors used Active Radio Frequency Identification technology (Active RFID) to identify the room (Base) in which elderly Chinese couples stay for the longest duration between rising and going to bed. Findings showed that the surveyed couples could be classified into two types: i.) Those who use and share the bedroom as Base, and ii.) Those who use the living room as a shared Base in the evening and tend to use different rooms as Base during the day. Most elderly men stayed in the same Base during the day, while the elderly women used multiple rooms in the morning. The Base obtained by objective observation (Objective Base) and the Base identified by subjects (Subjective Base) were more in accord during the day. This shows that the Base in the mind of the subjects indicated the room where they spent the most time during the day. In summer, they also chose a north-facing or windowless room as Base. Additional interviews revealed that this choice was made because such rooms were cooler.

General practice at the margins: a student's experience of homelessness

There is an awkward silence as I close the door to a small, windowless room and ask Steven to take a seat. Sitting forward with elbows propped on his knees and hands clasped, he rocks slightly in anticipation, looking me over, perhaps waiting for me to judge. I smile and ask how he's doing today. He sits back in the chair, crosses his legs and tells me his story. Steven is 29 years old and a recovering intravenous drug user. He is currently on probation and struggling to find stable accommodation. He is just one of the many thousands of people in the UK who will find themselves homeless this winter. I ask him to describe how he came to be here today. When he was 9 years old, Steven was sexually abused and with little support from family or friends his school life began to deteriorate. He turned to cannabis in order to ‘numb the anxiety and torment of it all’. Following expulsion from school, he associated himself with a local gang, slipping into harder drugs and petty crime. For Steven, it was the dealers who perpetuated this familiar cycle: ‘They manipulate their clients by claiming they have no cannabis but offer cocaine at a cheaper price instead. They'd then offer heroin to calm you from your high and once hooked, they'd crank up the prices.’ Soon Steven began stealing to fund his habit and at 16 years of age, he was given a custodial sentence. With little support on his release, he was forced to ‘skipper’ (sleep rough or flit from place to place in order to fnd a bed for the night) the homeless scene, an environment that fuelled his addictions. Thus a depressingly mundane …

Conjugated nonadecadienoic acid (CNA) shares similar molecular mechanisms with conjugated linoleic acid (CLA)

Previously, conjugated nonadecadienoic acid (CNA) has been shown to reduce body fat dose‐dependently and it was more effective than CLA in mice. In this study, we hypothesized that the effects of dietary CNA on expression of genes involving fat and energy metabolism are similar to CLA's. Fifty female 129Sv/J retired breeders were housed in individual wire‐bottomed cages in a windowless room with a 12‐h light‐dark cycle and fed a semi‐purified powdered diet based on the AIN‐93 diet with 20% total fat. After a week adaptation period, mice were randomly assigned into control and 4 groups of treatment (0.5% of CLA, 0.01%, 0.05%, or 0.1% of CNA as weight of diet). Peroxisome proliferator‐activated receptor‐γ (PPAR‐γ), acetyl‐CoA carboxylase (ACAC), fatty acid synthase (FAS), lipoprotein lipase (LPL), hormone‐sensitive lipase (HSL), glucose transporter 4 (GLUT4), and uncoupling protein‐2 (UCP‐2) from white adipose tissue, and PPAR‐α from the liver were quantified by real‐time quantitative PCR. The mRNA expressions of FAS, ACAC, UCP‐2, and PPAR‐γ in the adipose tissue were decreased by CLA as well as CNA. Meanwhile HSL expression was enhanced by CNA but not by CLA. Hepatic PPAR‐α mRNA expression was increased by both CNA and CLA. Overall, the effects of 0.1% dietary CNA on expression of genes involving fat and energy metabolism were similar to that of 0.5% dietary CLA. This supports our hypothesis that dietary CNA has an effect similar to CLA on lipid metabolism at the molecular level, however, differences on lipolysis may help explain the improved efficacy of CNA on body fat reduction compared to CLA. Supported by AHA SDG and ILSI North America

Good Guys

Good Guys Maureen Stanton (bio) The Beautiful Plant My brother Patrick and I speed down Route 9, a curvy, one-lane, luge track of a road, toward Buchanan, New York, where the Indian Point III Nuclear Generating Station rises from the east bank of the Hudson River, thirty-five miles north of Manhattan. Through a friend, Patrick and I have landed temporary jobs as painters for a refueling outage and “plant beautification” project.1 To work here, Patrick and I must join the International Brotherhood of Painters and Allied Trades. For this, we need a Good Guy letter from a union member vouching for our character. I have no idea who has signed for us—our friend has arranged that—but someone is willing to say we are Good Guys. (Incidentally, the Good Guy letter is an actual form with the words “Good Guy Letter” printed across the top.) We pass a baseball diamond along the Hudson, then turn into a sylvan glade enclosed in chain link. At the guard station, Patrick offers the name of our employer, NPS Energy Systems, then we cruise past hunks of rusting metal and neolithic concrete forms in wire-mesh pens to a four-story, L-shaped training building. From the parking lot, we see only a half-dozen modular buildings and two warehouses surrounded by woods. I’m amazed at how easy it is to hide a nuclear power plant. [End Page 389] Inside the training center, next to a mock control room that visitors peer into as if looking upon a nursery, is the windowless conference room where we will spend the next five days in Fitness for Duty training. Our group of trainees includes thirty construction workers—pipe fitters, electricians, insulators, carpenters, painters—and one executive who looks pink and priggish in his white shirt and tight tie. Patrick and I stand out too, with our uncallused hands, our fingernails evenly trimmed white quarter moons, and Patrick’s fleece pullover, evidently not a masculine fabric like denim or the brown Carhartt jackets everyone wears. Patrick’s hair is resolutely short, unlike the “mullet” that is popular here, clipped bangs and sideburns with long hair in back, a schizophrenic style that shouts, “I may look like a citizen, but I’m a rebel at heart.”2 Patrick would blend more easily if he weren’t with me. Of the nearly three hundred construction workers hired for the outage, only eight are female. “It’s nice that your brother brought you into the trade,” a sixtyish electrician says to me before class. Then adds, “I just don’t think women belong in construction.” Our instructor, Jack, a thin, ruddy-faced retiree who trains part-time, begins by administering a psychological exam, a series of statements to which we must respond strongly agree, strongly disagree, or neutral. Jack hands out number two pencils and answer sheets with rows of tiny blank ovals and instructs us to select neutral as seldom as possible.3 The problem is that some statements I 4agree with slightly, but not strongly. For example: “Threats never bother me.” Well, idle threats don’t bother me. Serious threats do. The fact is threats sometimes bother me. I’m momentarily stymied, but finally choose strongly disagree. Now I worry they will interpret my answer as demonstrating paranoia. Haven’t I just implied that “Threats always bother me?” Perhaps I am being paranoid. I move on. “The pomp and splendor of any big state ceremony are things which [End Page 390] should be preserved.” I typically don’t go for ceremonies, but who doesn’t like a parade? I think I agree, but certainly not strongly. What choice do I have? “If plates are the least bit dirty, I feel too disgusted to eat.” I do have standards, but I don’t want to appear neurotic. I decide to strongly disagree. “I have disturbing thoughts that keep me awake at night.” I’ve been an insomniac most of my life, and yes, thoughts keep me awake. Are they disturbing? Sometimes, otherwise they wouldn’t keep me awake. I’m beginning to feel anxious. I can’t respond to any of the statements without...

Tell Me a Story

Research Article| January 01 2008 Tell Me a Story Lisa Hunter Lisa Hunter LISA HUNTER is an arts journalist and author of The Intrepid Art Collector (2006). Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Afterimage (2008) 35 (4): 2–3. https://doi.org/10.1525/aft.2008.35.4.2.1 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Lisa Hunter; Tell Me a Story. Afterimage 1 January 2008; 35 (4): 2–3. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/aft.2008.35.4.2.1 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAfterimage Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2008 Afterimage/Visual Studies Workshop, unless otherwise noted. Reprints require written permission and acknowledgement of previous publication in Afterimage.2008 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Assessment and Application of the Biotin Switch Technique for Examining Protein S-Nitrosylation under Conditions of Pharmacologically Induced Oxidative Stress

Protein S-nitrosylation has emerged as a principal mechanism by which nitric oxide exerts biological effects. Among methods for studying protein S-nitrosylation, the biotin switch technique (BST) has rapidly gained popularity because of the ease with which it can detect individual S-nitrosylated (SNO) proteins in biological samples. The identification of SNO sites by the BST relies on the ability of ascorbate to generate a thiol from an S-nitrosothiol, but not from alternatively S-oxidized thiols (e.g. disulfides, sulfenic acids). However, the specificity of this reaction has recently been challenged, prompting several claims that the BST may produce false-positive results and raising concerns about the application of the BST under oxidizing conditions. Here we perform a comparative analysis of the BST using differentially S-oxidized and S-nitrosylated forms of protein tyrosine phosphatase 1B, as well as intact and lysed human embryonic kidney 293 cells treated with S-oxidizing and S-nitrosylating agents, and verify that the assay is highly specific for SNO. Strikingly, exposure of samples to indirect sunlight from a laboratory window resulted in artifactual ascorbate-dependent signals that are likely promoted by the semidehydroascorbate radical; protection from sunlight eliminated the artifact. In contrast, exposure of SNO proteins to a strong ultraviolet light source (SNO photolysis) prior to the BST provided independent verification of assay specificity. By combining BST with photolysis, we have shown that anti-cancer drug-induced oxidative stress facilitates the S-nitrosylation of the major apoptotic effector glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase. Collectively, these experiments demonstrate that SNO-dependent signaling pathways can be modulated by oxidative conditions and suggest a potential role for S-nitrosylation in antineoplastic drug action.

The Mechanisms of Monticello: Saving Labor in Jefferson's America

In November of 1812, Dr. Robert Patterson wrote to the recently retired Thomas Jefferson relating the peculiar and amusing events surrounding fellow Philadelphia native Charles Redheffer and his ill-fated perpetual motion machine. Patterson, a friend who shared Jefferson's fascination for machines and scientific inquiry, would have recalled the throngs of intrigued spectators who had paid admission to witness the demonstration of Redheffer's ambitious device, for throughout the American industrial revolution, a machine that would operate in perpetuity without an external, expendable power source represented the holy grail of mechanics, engineers, and optimistic tinkerers of all stripes. Indeed, Jefferson himself received dozens of letters from would-be designers of such fanciful machinery. But Redheffer's machine employed a heretofore unexamined source of generation. What paying customers saw, through a barred window, was a gravity-driven pendulum affair that presumably provided the energy to power another, separate machine through a set of interlocking gears. Hidden from view, however, and locked in an adjacent windowless room was an old bearded man, connected to Redheffer's contrivance via a long catgut belt and actually supplying power through a simple hand crank. Redheffer, it soon became clear, was feeding the poor fellow bread and water and forcing him to operate the crank drive all day long—thankless drudge work for meager wages. A bemused Jefferson noted that the "sham machinery" relied on [End Page 377] an "extensive delusion" among the general public concerning the efficacy of such inventions, for "the almighty himself could not construct a machine of perpetual motion while the laws exist which he has prescribed for the government of matter in our system; that the equilibrium established by him between cause and effect must be suspended to effect that purpose." Jefferson's response, although conversational and almost jocular, reveals a startling number of the core issues surrounding how Americans came to regard the forces of mechanization and enslavement in the fledgling union. And Jefferson's personal views not only reveal the interconnection between the two but also exemplify the various intellectual and ideological attempts to reconcile a crucial cultural dilemma, defining many of the most basic debates regarding the limits of liberty, the nature of human agency, and the proper direction of American society.1 Redheffer's thwarted deception illustrates nicely many of the themes that confronted Americans at the turn of the nineteenth century: the intoxicating promise of progressive thought, especially in science and the mechanical arts, to deliver a new order through the manipulation of labor and production; a burgeoning ethos of exhibitionism that publicized and transferred into spectacle many of the more controversial aspects of American culture; the subtly intrinsic interconnection between machinery and slavery (or the veritable enslavement of an indispensable yet increasingly degraded workforce, whatever its legal status); and the intellectualization, rationalization, and aestheticization of these themes by important cultural and literary figures. To interpret Jefferson's views and recognize their connection to the main currents of thought in the intellectual and cultural life of early America is to confront an enigmatic figure primarily through his language. It is a task that must appreciate the curious nature of literacy and communication during Jefferson's lifetime and one that must also recognize the rhetorical power and cultural force of Jefferson's public texts as well as the more searching, introspective character of his personal [End Page 378] correspondences and documents. Jefferson's letter to Patterson exemplifies an intuitive association between the textual and the material, between his rhetorical methods and the mechanical essence of the spectacle he is describing and interpreting. What brings these two strands together, in the end, is the manner in which Jefferson and Americans of this era proposed to save labor, to produce capital and goods more effectively and efficiently through the twin modes of technology and slavery. I wish to demonstrate that Jefferson's lifelong struggle to make sense of and to articulate...

An intercomparison between gross α counting and gross β counting for grab-sampling determination of airborne radon progeny and thoron progeny

The instantaneous values of the airborne activity concentrations of radon progeny and thoron progeny have been determined 34 times in a closed and windowless room in a cellar using two independent grab-sampling methods in order to compare the performance of the methods. The activity concentration of radon ( 222Rn) was also measured and it varied between 200 and 650 Bq m −3. Two samples of radon and thoron progeny were collected simultaneously from roughly the same air volume by filtering. For the first method, the isotopes were collected on membrane filter and gross α counting was applied over several successive time intervals. This method was a slightly improved version of the methods that are applied generally for this reason for decades. For the second method, the isotopes were collected on glass-fibre filter and gross β counts were registered over several time intervals. This other method was developed a few years ago and the above series of measurements was the first opportunity to make an intercomparison between it and another similar method based on α counting. Individual radon progeny and thoron progeny activity concentrations (for the isotopes 218Po, 214Pb, 214Bi and 212Pb) were evaluated by both methods. The detailed investigation of the results showed that the systematic deviation of the methods is small but significant and isotope-dependent. The weighted averages of the β/α activity concentration ratios for 218Po, 214Pb, 214Bi, EEDC 222 (Equilibrium-Equivalent Decay-product Concentration of radon progeny) and 212Pb were 0.99±0.03, 0.90±0.02, 1.03±0.02, 0.96±0.02 and 0.80±0.03, respectively. The source of the systematic deviation is probably the inaccurate knowledge of the counting efficiencies mainly in the case of the α-counting method. A significant random-type difference between the results obtained with the two methods has also been revealed. For example, the β/α ratio for EEDC 222 varied between 0.81±0.01 and 1.22±0.03, where the errors derive from the random errors of the independent β and α results. The detailed investigation of the results showed that the α method is responsible for the overwhelming part of this random deviation that was caused mainly by the lower accuracy, stability and reliability of this method. The performance of the β method proved to be better mainly because of its higher accuracy, stability and reliability.

On the energy efficiency of a prototype hybrid daylighting system

This paper presents the development of a method to control the light output from a prototype hybrid lighting system. This system transports daylight from a heliostat with a concentrating fresnel lens to a luminaire in a windowless room, via a large core liquid fiber optic. The main artificial lighting system is located outside of the building without the possibility for dimming due to the lamp type chosen. Consequently a control strategy is needed in order to minimize the switching cycles of the lamps (severe reduction in lamp life) while at the same time maintain the lighting levels in the interior.