background: the most popular building materials are soil bricks and different types of stones. radon is released into ambient air from soil and stones due to ubiquitous uranium and radium in them, thus increasing the airborne radon concentration. the radioactivity in soils is related to radioactivity in the rocks from which the soil is formed. in the present investigation, the radon emanated fr...

The second modern synthesis of biology [1] must start with new stratifications and conceptualizations, as well as new ways to connect all of them [2], which are to be perfected through in-depth discussions that may be provoked by seemingly controversial ideas. And new paradigms can thus be built upon the novel thoughts that may eventually converge. As knowledge accumulates based on either newly...

A new approach to qualitatively describe shapes is introduced. A set of qualitatively distinct polygons is proposed, which can be characterised by a number of predicates. Interesting properties concerning the similarity of different polygons arise. As a result, the difficulty in defining equivalence classes of polygons can be overcome in a special qualitative manner. The usefulness of this appr...

JONATHAN M. WATERS1,∗, STEVEN A. TREWICK2, ADRIAN M. PATERSON3, HAMISH G. SPENCER1, MARTYN KENNEDY1, DAVE CRAW4, CHRISTOPHER P. BURRIDGE5, AND GRAHAM P. WALLIS6 1Allan Wilson Centre for Molecular Ecology and Evolution, Department of Zoology, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand; 2Ecology Group, IAE, Massey University, Private Bag 11-222, Palmerston North, New Zealand; 3Departmen...

We have constructed a series of quasi-hydrostatic evolutionary models for the M2 Iab supergiant Betelgeuse (α Orionis). Our models are constrained by the observed temperature, luminosity, surface composition and mass loss for this star, along with recent parallax measurements and high resolution imagery which directly determine its radius. The surface convective zone obtained in our model rough...

Flow makes vein L eaf veins, just like roots and shoots, use fl ows of the plant hormone auxin to drive their patterning, say Enrico Scarpella (University of Alberta, Canada), Thomas Berleth (University of Toronto, Canada), and colleagues. Models for leaf vein patterning have been based on either auxin fl ows or reaction–diffusion systems. The fl ow models had a hard time explaining how loops w...

arly endosomes may help to create their own short-range tracks, according to a report from Stéphane Gasman, Yannis Kalaidzidis, and Marino Zerial (Max Planck Institute, Dresden, Germany). The results also suggest parallels between membrane trafficking, signaling, and regulation of the cytoskeleton. Trafficking of early endosomes requires the small GTPase RhoD. Zerial’s group identified the firs...

Studies of the structure of particle tracks have led to models of track effects based on radial dose and radiobiological target theory that have been very successful in describing and predicting track effects in physical, chemical, and biological systems. For describing mammalian cellular inactivation two inactivation modes are required, called gamma-kill and ion-kill, the first due to synergis...