Desert Groove

<正>From the far southern reaches of the Sahara,a musical trio brings Tuareg culture to China Born to a family of blacksmiths in the city of Agadez,on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert in Niger,nothing predestined Goumour Omar Adam to become a musician.In fact,his journey into music was     

Pellagra: a rare disease observed in a victim of mental and physical abuse

Lesions of the brain stem and cerebellum due to nutritional deficiencies are mostly seen in chronic alcohol abuse and more rarely in severe malnutrition. We report the case of a 27-year-old woman, found dead in the family flat. She presented cachexia (167 cm, 25 kg) and multiple hematomas of the limbs. Postmortem examination revealed lesions due to peritonitis. Neuropathological examination showed severe atrophy of the corpus callosum and central neuronal chromatolysis, which are observed in pellagra. Inflammatory colitis or celiac disease was not found. Toxicological analysis was negative, in particular no alcohol absorption. Pellagra, which is due to nicotinamide deficiency, is a disease rarely seen in this country. In this case, nutritional deficiency was the consequence of failure to eat in a context of abuse. The woman was born of an incestuous relationship and presented intellectual retardation due to poor affective relations with her mother.     

Public transportation policy making in France as an implementation problem

Public transportation policy is analyzed as the output of a complex social system of interdependencies and power relationships linking the central state bodies to various economic and political organizations. The interest groups structure the system by controlling the implementation process. The system works because of cheating—violating the public regulations, but the interest groups need state regulation to protect their privileges.The study of governmental projects is a particularly stimulating form of political analysis. Because it emphasizes both the process and the contents of the activities of public authorities, which is to say the goods and services produced by the State, such a study deals with problems having specific impact on and distinct meaning for individuals. It also allows one to avoid overly abstract speculation on the nature of the State by placing the discussion on a more scientifically fruitful level, that of the effective interactions and exchanges among institutions and groups.Our objective will be to demonstrate the importance of the implementation sequence of public policy, particularly in terms of its effects on the understanding of the definition of alternative solutions. We will concentrate on the way in which an ensemble of systems effects, induced by governmental action conditions both the perception of the problem to which this action is supposedly responding, and the elaboration of decisions to solve the problem. The method employed will be that of suggesting a form of analysis which will discern those fields of force and interaction processes with which decision makers, in this case public authorities, are confronted. The method employed should thus be useful in understanding the process of decision making.     

STR-genotyping from human medieval tooth and bone samples

We extracted the DNA contained in samples of bones and teeth from 10 skeletons excavated from the Gravette site (400-1000 AD, south of France). Ancient DNA was analysed by autosomal short tandem repeats (STRs). The DNA present in these ancient remains appeared very degraded, but nevertheless, better conserved in tooth than in bone samples. Moreover, we showed that the DNA extracted from ancient dental pulp was not exempt from polymerase chain reaction (PCR) inhibitors, which could result from extreme DNA fragmentation. An adapted protocol with a supplementary step of purification removed this inhibition.     

Analysis of explosive damage in metals using orientation imaging microscopy

The goal of this project was to determine whether quantitative information concerning the size and nature of an explosive blast could be determined using Orientation Imaging Microscopy (OIM) to analyze the texture of blast-affected metal. Selected 1018 steel and 2024 aluminum samples were subjected to various explosive blasts chosen to simulate a wide range of possible pressure waves. The explosives used were PBX 9404, Comp-C4, Gelmax, and Bullseye. The explosive tests were carried out at Sandia National Laboratory, and the OIM analysis was conducted at Ames Laboratory. It was discovered that while suitable patterns could be obtained from the steel samples, the oxide layer present on the surface of the aluminum samples prevented these samples from being studied. The results of the OIM studies on the steel samples indicate that damage can be tracked using OIM imaging and that Comp-C4 seems to produce patterns significantly different than the other explosives.     

Breaking New Ground

<正>The first Sino-Egyptian joint archaeological dig marks a milestone in Chinese archaeology’s overseas cooperation For Gao Wei,breaking ground is nothing new.As a Chinese archaeologist,he has taken part in countless digs throughout the country.But when the f irst Chinese shovel hits the dirt in Egypt,as expected in October this year,it takes on special