Social Darwinism and constitutional law with special reference to Lochner v. New York

American historians have generally accepted Richard Hofstadter's thesis that the scientism of Social Darwinism, or more appropriately, Spencerianism, dominated American thought in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and nowhere more enthusiastically or more purposively than within the conservative business community, which used Herbert Spencer's scientism to justify corporate business practices and to rewrite American Constitutional law to protect property interests against governmental regulations. Following Sharlin's general exposition of Herbert Spencer's scientism, this paper examines in detail the validity of the Hofstadter thesis as applied to the notorious Lochner v. New York Supreme Court opinion of 1905. The conclusions drawn from this analysis are offered as a repudiation of the generally accepted belief that it was the conservative activists on the Court who were guilty of Spencerian scientism. On the contrary, the argument is presented that it was Justice Holmes and the liberal reformers who found the evolutionary doctrines of Spencer congenial to their efforts of identifying needed reinterpretations of the American Constitution with biological evolution.     

Model specification and forecasting foreign exchange rates with vector autoregressions

This study examines the forecasting accuracy of alternative vector autoregressive models each in a seven‐variable system that comprises in turn of daily, weekly and monthly foreign exchange (FX) spot rates. The vector autoregressions (VARs) are in non‐stationary, stationary and error‐correction forms and are estimated using OLS. The imposition of Bayesian priors in the OLS estimations also allowed us to obtain another set of results. We find that there is some tendency for the Bayesian estimation method to generate superior forecast measures relatively to the OLS method. This result holds whether or not the data sets contain outliers. Also, the best forecasts under the non‐stationary specification outperformed those of the stationary and error‐correction specifications, particularly at long forecast horizons, while the best forecasts under the stationary and error‐correction specifications are generally similar. The findings for the OLS forecasts are consistent with recent simulation results. The predictive ability of the VARs is very weak. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

癌生长是寄主中的过寄生现象

报道了人乳腺癌细胞MCF7和正常细胞MCF10,MRC5混合培养实验,分析了实验结果．结果表明：在营养物充足条件下癌细胞和正常细胞系寄生共存关系,而在饥饿条件下癌细胞和正常细胞是过寄生-捕食者和食饵的关系．讨论了此结果的生物医学含义．     

脑瘤诱发的组织变化和皮层脑电图分析

健康组织和肿瘤组织具有不同的代谢,结构和热力学特性.脑瘤的代谢和结构无序性导致其有较高的熵产生.两种组织不同的熵产生决定了熵由癌流向健康组织.脑瘤和正常细胞在熵和能量方面的差异诱发皮层不同的脑电信号.研究了28个脑瘤患者的脑电图并和健康人进行比较,观察到脑瘤患者脑电图频率的降低.多数情况中慢alpha和theta波出现在肿瘤投影区,此可能与其高熵产生和向外的熵流有关.研究认为,脑瘤的持续高熵产生和热耗散及其它物理效应使得皮层电产生慢化,从而使肿瘤及其邻近的脑组织显示出频率较低的电活性.     

Microwave Plasma Synthesis of Nanopowders

1 Results and Discussion Nanopowders were synthesized by using microwave plasma synthesis technique.The microwave plasma was operated in atmospheric pressure at a frequency of 2.45 GHz.The reaction temperature is directly related to the power of the microwave generator that can be controlled by adjusting the actual operating current.Firstly,ionization and dissociation of precursor species will be occurred in the plasma,nucleus can then be formed by the collision of these molecules,followed by the growth...     

Efficient export of carbon to the deep ocean through dissolved organic matter

Oceanic dissolved organic carbon (DOC) constitutes one of the largest pools of reduced carbon in the biosphere. Estimated DOC export from the surface ocean represents 20% of total organic carbon flux to the deep ocean, which constitutes a primary control on atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. DOC is the carbon component of dissolved organic matter (DOM) and an accurate quantification of DOM pools, fluxes and their controls is therefore critical to understanding oceanic carbon cycling. DOC export is directly coupled with dissolved organic nitrogen and phosphorus export. However, the C:N:P stoichiometry (by atoms) of DOM dynamics is poorly understood. Here we study the stoichiometry of the DOM pool and of DOM decomposition in continental shelf, continental slope and central ocean gyre environments. We find that DOM is remineralized and produced with a C:N:P stoichiometry of 199:20:1 that is substantially lower than for bulk pools (typically >775:54:1), but greater than for particulate organic matter (106:16:1--the Redfield ratio). Thus for a given mass of new N and P introduced into surface water, more DOC can be exported than would occur at the Redfield ratio. This may contribute to the excess respiration estimated to occur in the interior ocean. Our results place an explicit constraint on global carbon export and elemental balance via advective pathways.     

Small molecule modifiers of circadian clocks

Circadian clocks orchestrate 24-h oscillations of essential physiological and behavioral processes in response to daily environmental changes. These clocks are remarkably precise under constant conditions yet highly responsive to resetting signals. With the molecular composition of the core oscillator largely established, recent research has increasingly focused on clock-modifying mechanisms/molecules. In particular, small molecule modifiers, intrinsic or extrinsic, are emerging as powerful tools for understanding basic clock biology as well as developing putative therapeutic agents for clock-associated diseases. In this review, we will focus on synthetic compounds capable of modifying the period, phase, or amplitude of circadian clocks, with particular emphasis on the mammalian clock. We will discuss the potential of exploiting these small molecule modifiers in both basic and translational research.