In 1992, experts at the National Science Foundation Workshop titled "Low-Frequency Electrical Precursors to Earthquakes: Fact or Fiction?" concluded that "seismic electric signals observed in Greece are generated in the Earth, and the apparent correlation with earthquakes is promising" [Park, 1992]. On March 5 and 26,1993, strong earthquakes hit Pirgos City, Greece. Despite heavy damage, there ...

Distributed objects bring to distributed computing such desirable properties of modularisation, abstraction and reuse easing the burden of development and maintenance by diminishing the gap between implementation and real-world objects. Distributed objects, however, need a consistent framework in which inter-object communication may take place. The Common Object Request Broker Architecture (COR...

Dentin is a mesenchymal tissue, and, as such, is based on a collagenous matrix that is reinforced by apatite mineral. Collagen fibrils show piezoelectricity, a phenomenon that is used by piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM) to obtain high-resolution images. We applied PFM to image human dentin with 10-nm resolution, and to test the hypothesis that zones of piezoactivity, indicating the presence...

609 M uscle activity is driven by spikes of calcium release. Weisleder et al. (page 639) fi nd that aged muscles, when compared with young muscles, have reduced Ca 2+ release following stimulation. The dampened response may be caused by a failure to maintain robust membranous compartments that can respond to an input with a single output. Previous work from the group showed that Ca 2+ sparks ca...