NBC News Scripts
WBAP-TV (Television station : Fort Worth, Tex.)
1954-12-31
Search results
22 records were found.
The New Zealand Structural Loading Standard, until its latest revision, was using the structural displacement ductility factor as a measure of the deformation demand of all potential plastic hinges in a structure. In the revised version of New Zealand Structural Loading Standard for Earthquake Actions (NZS 1170.5:2004) the detailing of potential plastic regions is determined according to the local inelastic deformation demand in these regions. The change has been prompted by evidence that the structural ductility factor gives a poor indication of the demand on individual plastic regions. This is a major paradigm shift in international design codes. This new approach has been adopted by the New Zealand Concrete Structures Standard (NZS 3101:2006) which classifies potential plastic regions into three categories (namely ductile, limited d...
The genomes of mammals and birds show dramatic variation in base composition over large scales, the so called isochore structure of the genome. The origin of isochores is still controversial: various neutral and selectionist models have been proposed – and criticized – since the discovery of isochores in the 1970s. The availability of complete mammalian genomes has yielded new opportunities for addressing this question. In particular, it was recently proposed that (i) the isochore structure is declining in many mammalian groups, and that (ii) GC-content is influenced by local recombination rate, possibly via the mechanism of GC-biased gene conversion. In this article we review the existing support for these two hypotheses, and discuss how they can be combined to provide a new perspective on isochore evolution.
Social capital support and a sense of connection with place are recognized components of human wellbeing. This study examines the social capital support health benefits to be derived from skateboarding in skate-parks. A content analysis of 35 skateboarders' survey responses revealed the existence of four benefits, namely, establishing new and reconnecting with old friendships; bonding to a friendship group, gaining peer respect and status; and increased opportunities to interact with people. Collectively, these benefits expanded the skateboarders' social horizons by providing increased opportunities to gain community recognition and acceptance. The implications for planning integrated communities through enhancing skateboarding opportunities are discussed.
Risk of stock collapse is a genuine motivation for cooperative fisheries management. We analyse the effect of an endogenously determined risk of stock collapse on the incentives to cooperate in a Great Fish War model. We establish that equilibrium harvest strategies are non-linear in stock and find that Grand Coalitions can be stable for any number of players if free-riding results in a total depletion of the fish stock. The results thus show conditions under which a Great Fish War becomes a Great Fish Pact. However, this conclusion no longer holds upon dropping the standard assumption that payoffs are evaluated in steady states. If payoffs in the transition between steady states are included, the increased incentives to deviate offset the increased benefits from cooperation due to the presence of endogenous risk and the Great Fish Pac...
We have investigated whether there is adaptive evolution in mitochondrial DNA, using an extensive data set containing over 500 animal species from a wide range of taxonomic groups. We apply a variety of McDonald–Kreitman style methods to the data. We find that the evolution of mitochondrial DNA is dominated by slightly dele-terious mutations, a finding which is supported by a number of previous studies. However, when we control for the presence of deleterious mutations using a new method, we find that mitochondria undergo a significant amount of adaptive evolution, with an estimated 26% (95% confidence intervals: 5.7–45%) of nonsynonymous substitutions fixed by adaptive evolution. We further find some weak evidence that the rate of adaptive evolution is correlated to synonymous diversity. We interpret this as evidence that at least som...
Mutation is the ultimate source of genetic variation, and knowledge of mutation rates is fundamental for our understanding of all evolutionary processes. High throughput sequencing of mutation accumulation lines has provided genome wide spontaneous mutation rates in a dozen model species, but estimates from nonmodel organisms from much of the diversity of life are very limited. Here, we report mutation rates in four haploid marine bacterial-sized photosynthetic eukaryotic algae; Bathycoccus prasinos, Ostreococcus tauri, Ostreococcus mediterraneus, and Micromonas pusilla. The spontaneous mutation rate between species varies from μ = 4.4 × 10−10 to 9.8 × 10−10 mutations per nucleotide per generation. Within genomes, there is a two-fold increase of the mutation rate in intergenic regions, consistent with an optimization of mismatch and tr...
The present study investigated whether better musical ability was related to better reading ability, on the basis that music is related to memory that is crucial to reading acquisition, music improves auditory temporal processing that is relevant to phonological processing, and children undergoing music training have improved reading skills.
Forty-one undergraduates participated in various language tasks. Musical intelligence of multiple intelligence, pitch discrimination, rhythmic and melodic patterns identification and music reading were also examined. Participants were divided into high- and low- ability groups based on their overall musical ability, their ability to discriminate pitch, to identify music pattern, to read music, and their musical IQ.
Results indicated that participants with formal music training were better i...
The current study investigated whether better musical ability and better musical intelligence were related to better verbal memory, based on the findings that musicians have larger left Planum Temporale that is also involved in one’s verbal memory.
Forty-one undergraduates participated in a musical ability test that examined pitch discrimination, rhythmic and melodic patterns identification and music reading. Musical intelligence of multiple intelligence and verbal memory were also examined. Participants were then divided into high- and low- ability groups based on their overall musical ability, their ability to discriminate pitch, to identify music pattern, to read music, and their musical IQ.
Results showed that participants with formal music training were better in pitch discrimination, music reading and musical IQ. However...
Along the green lineage (Chlorophyta and Streptophyta), mitochondria and chloroplast are mainly uniparentally transmitted and their evolution is thus clonal. The mode of organellar inheritance in their ancestor is less certain. The inability to make clear phylogenetic inference is partly due to a lack of information for deep branching organisms in this lineage. Here, we investigate organellar evolution in the early branching green alga Ostreococcus tauri using population genomics data from the complete mitochondrial and chloro-plast genomes. The haplotype structure is consistent with clonal evolution in mitochondria, while we find evidence for recombination in the chloroplast genome. The number of recombination events in the genealogy of the chloroplast suggests that recombination, and thus biparental inheritance, is not rare. Consiste...
