Under closed-list proportional representation, a party's electoral list determines the order in which legislative seats are allocated to candidates. When candidates differ in their ability, parties face a trade-off between competence and incentives. Ranking candidates in decreasing order of competence ensures that elected politicians are most competent. Yet, party lists create incentives for candidates that may lead parties not to place their best candidates at the top of the list. We examine this trade-off in a game-theoretical model in which parties rank their candidates on a list, candidates choose their campaign effort, and the election is a team contest for multiple prizes. We analyze how the candidates’ objectives, voters’ attention and media coverage, incumbency, the number of parties competing in the election, and the electoral environment influence how parties rank candidates.

In the fields of engineering, nanoscience, and biomechanics, thin structural members, such as beams, plates, and shells, that are supported by an elastic medium are used in several applications. There is a possibility that these thin structures might buckle under severe loading conditions; higher-order, complicated elastic buckling modes can be found owing to the balance of rigidities between the thin members and elastic supports. In this study, we have shown a new and simple ‘power law’ relation between the critical buckling strain (or loads) and rigidity parameters in structural members supported by an elastic medium, which can be modelled as a Winkler foundation. The following structural members have been considered in this paper: i) a slender beam held by an outer elastic support under axial loading, ii) cylindrical shells supported by an inner elastic core under hydrostatic pressure (plane strain condition), and iii) complete spherical shells that are filled with an inner elastic medium.

This study examined the critical buckling characteristics of hydrostatically pressurized double-walled complete spherical shells. An analytical model based on small deflection thin shell theory is presented; the equations are solved in conjunction with variational principles. Axisymmetric and inextensional assumptions are not initially used in the exact formulation. This approach therefore avoids any discussion about the validity of the solution and allows the model to be extended to cover more generic nonaxisymmetric cases with relative ease. The analytical results are presented using illustrative buckling modes. Based on the developed formulation, only axisymmetric eigenmodes were found to occur despite the inclusion of the effect of interactions between outer and inner shells. Critical modes that are symmetric or antisymmetric about the equator may be determined depending on the combination of the stiffness connecting the outer and inner shells and the radius-to-wall thickness ratios.

Leptospirosis is a worldwide zoonotic disease. In the present investigation, a total of 89 human sera from a flood prone district of Bangladesh was screened by a one-point microscapsule agglutination test (MCAT). MCAT-positive and-doubtful sera were further tested by microscopic agglutination test (MAT) against 16 reference serovars of Leptospira interrogans. and the antibody titres determined. In MCAT, 34 sera were positive and 22 were doubtful. Among those positive and doubtful sera. 33 and 20. respectively were tested by MAT. Thirty-four out of 53 MCAT-screened samples were MAT-positive. The titres ranged from 20 to 1600 with antibodies to serovars copenhageni, australis, cynopteri and icterohaemorrhagiae being the most prevalent. Eleven MCAT-positive samples failed to react with any strains used by MAT, suggesting the presence of new or untested serovars. Among the MAT-positive samples, the presence of antibody against two or more serovars was more common than that of a single serovar. The present study suggests that rural people in Bangladesh are at high risk to leptospiral infection.

Two strains of Eimeria tenella with different decoquinate sensitivity and different glucose phosphate isomerase (GPI) isozymes were used in genetic recombination experiments: a line derived from a laboratory strain (NIAH) was decoquinate-resistant (DR) and had the isozyme GPI-9, while a field isolate (Iwate strain) was decoquinate-sensitive (DS) and had GPI-1. Coccidia-free chickens were orally inoculated with mixed oocysts of the two strains and parasites of the F1 generation were recovered. The F1 progeny showed both forms of the isozyme. Next, oocysts of the F1 progeny were passaged through chickens given the decoquinate-containing diet. The F2 progeny also had GPI-1 and GPI-9, indicating crossfertilization between the two strains. Six single oocysts were isolated from F2 progeny; 1 showed both phenotypes of GPI, 1 had GPI-1 and the remaining 4 lines had GPI-9. Analysis of the amount of GPI in recombinant oocysts suggested that the proliferation rate of the DR strain was slower than that of the DS strain. We concluded that GPI isozymes in E. tenella can serve as useful markers in experiments on chicken coccidia.

Extended abstract of a paper presented at Microscopy and Microanalysis 2006 in Chicago, Illinois, USA, July 30 – August 3, 2006

A new magneto-optical (MO) imaging system for high-throughput characterization of combinatorial magnetic thin films has been developed. The instrument allows us to measure both Faraday rotation and ellipticity maps at various wavelengths (400 nm∼1000 nm), different magnetic fields (0∼2000 G), and different temperatures (12 K∼300 K) for wide variety of materials. We used the magnetic circular dichroism (MCD) modulation technique to map MO properties, relatively free from substrate effects. The superiority of this system is that magnetic hysteresis curves of numerous specimens with different compositions prepared by the combinatorial technique can be simultaneously measured at one sweep of magnetic field, providing an efficient characterization method for combinatorial magnetic materials. We also confirmed that the system possesses enough spatial resolution and sensitivity for detecting MO signals of individual pixels contained in a combinatorial library.

Polymer electrolytes are a topic of interest because of their potential applications in electrochemical devices. However, very few systems exhibit both high conductivities and mechanical strength. Composite polymer electrolytes, composed of conventional polymer electrolytes and inert fillers, provide an avenue to enhance mechanical strength while maintaining ionic conductivity, if the particle sizes of these inert fillers are sufficiently small (< 1 μm in diameter). The determination of the morphology for these inert fillers in polymer matrixes was undertaken to further our understanding of ion transport phenomena in these composite systems. This paper presents an in situobservation of inert fillers in liquid media using environmental TEM.

Surface-modified fume silica was prepared by a two-step process. (1) SiCl4 was used to activate surface silanol (SiOH) groups and generate reactive SiCl groups on the surface of fume silica particles (Aldrich, 7 nm in diameter).

This study focuses on demonstrating the feasibility of constructing a large reinforced concrete silo for the disposal of low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste. In a large-scale model test, the results of temperature (from heat of hydration) and thermal stress analyses were confirmed, as was the practicality of countermeasures to prevent thermal cracking. After one year, the average permeability of the model silo was estimated to be below 1×10−11m/s.

The Collaboration of Australia and Nippon for a GAmma Ray Observatory in the Outback operates two large telescopes at Woomera (South Australia), which detect the Čerenkov light images produced in the atmosphere by electronpositron cascades initiated by very high energy (~1 TeV or 1012 eV) gamma rays. These gamma rays arise from a different mechanism than at EGRET energies: inverse Compton (IC) emission from relativistic electrons.

The spoke-like images are recorded by a multi-pixel camera which facilitates the rejection of the large numbers of oblique and ragged cosmic ray images. A field of view ~3.5° is required. The Australian team operates a triple 4 m diameter mirror telescope, BIGRAT, with a 37 photomultiplier tube camera and energy threshold 600 GeV. The Japanese operate a single, highly accurate 3.8 m diameter f/1 telescope and high resolution 256 photomultipler tube camera. In 1998 a new 7 m telescope is planned for Woomera with a design threshold ~;200GeV.

This paper has made an overview on elastic and structural aspects of three distinct superlattices under hydrostatic pressure up to about 8GPa, which were studied by our unique x-ray diffraction technique incorporated with a diamond-anvil cell. They are metallic fcc/fcc Au/Ni, bcc/fcc Mo/Ni, and semiconductive epitaxially-grown PbSe/SnSe superlattices. In their layer-stacking direction, both metallic superlattices show the supermodulus behavior while the semiconductive one doesn't. However, its pressure-driven cubic-to-orthorhombic phase transition, successively taking place in the SnSe and PbSe layers, has been found to significantly shift by stress due to its epitaxial growth.