When two solids are squeezed together they will in general not make atomic contact everywhere within the nominal (or apparent) contact area. This fact has huge practical implications and must be considered in many technological applications. In this paper I briefly review the basic theories of contact mechanics. I consider in detail a recently developed contact mechanics theory. I derive bounda...

There is a widespread sense that over the last two decades firms have been decentralizing decisions to employees further down the managerial hierarchy. Economists have developed a range of theories to account for delegation, but there is less empirical evidence, especially across countries. This has limited the ability to understand the phenomenon of decentralization. To address this empirical ...

The molecular evolution of mammalian Y-linked DNA sequences is of special interest because of their unique mode of inheritance: most Y-linked sequences are clonally inherited from father to son. Here we investigate the use of Y-linked sequences for phylogenetic inference. We describe a comparative analysis of a 515-bp region from the male sex-determining locus, Sry, in 22 murine rodents (subfam...

We study the flux-flow Hall effect and thermomagnetic transport near the upper critical field Hc2 in extreme type-II superconductors starting from a suitable generalization of the time dependent Ginzburg-Landau equations. We explicitly incorporate the effects of backflow into the calculations of the local electric field and current, leading to a current which is properly divergenceless. The Hal...

The authors report on an infant who had a multiloculated cystic lesion located in segment IV of the liver, consistent with Caroli's disease diagnosed, by routine prenatal ultrasound at 25 weeks' gestation, and confirmed by hepatobiliary HIDA scan and computed tomography soon after birth. Because there was no sign of biliary obstruction, the patient was observed initially, with gradual regressio...

Caroli's disease is a rare congenital disorder characterized by cystic dilatation of the large in-trahepatic bile ducts. The most frequent complications due to biliary stasis are cholelithiasis, cholangitis and sepsis as well as an increased risk of cholangiocarcinoma. Patients may have a history of intermittent abdominal pain, pruritus and/or symptoms of cholangitis. It is rarely diagnosed in ...

Chairman: 1989-93 D. E. Wells (UK); Secretaly: 1989-93 D. G. Westmoreland (USA); Titular Members: K. Biemann (USA; 1989-91); W. H. Gries (FRG; 1989-91); M. J.-F. Leroy (France; 1989-93); M. W. Linscheid (FRG; 1991-93); M. Morita (Japan; 1989-93); M. J. Pellin (USA; 1991-93); B. Ya. Spivakov (Russia; 1989-93); Associate Members: S . Caroli (Italy; 1991-93); W. P. Cofino (Netherlands; 1989-93); R...

BACKGROUND Rodents use olfactory cues for species-specific behaviors. For example, mice emit odors to attract mates of the same species, but not competitors of closely related species. This implies rapid evolution of olfactory signaling, although odors and chemosensory receptors involved are unknown. RESULTS Here, we identify a mouse chemosignal, trimethylamine, and its olfactory receptor, tr...

We investigate the origin and evolution of a mouse processed pseudogene, Makorin1-p1, whose transcripts stabilize functional Makorin1 mRNAs. It is shown that Makorin1-p1 originated almost immediately before the musculus and cervicolor species groups diverged from each other some 4 million years ago and that the Makorin1-p1 orthologs in various Mus species are transcribed. However, Mus caroli in...