Book reviews

TOWARDS COSMOPOLIS: Planning for Multicultural Cities. Leonie Sandercock. John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, UK, 1998. ISBN 0471971987 (paperback). 258 pp.; bibliography. RRP $41.15.

THE MYTH OF THE POWERLESS STATE: Governing the Economy in a Global Era. Linda Weiss. Polity/Blackwell, Cambridge, 1998. ISBN 0745615821 (paperback). 260 pp.; index and bibliography. RRP $37.95.

SOCIAL CHANGE, SUBURBAN LIVES: An Australian Newtown 1960s to 1990s. Lois Bryson and Ian Winter. Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1998. ISBN 1864486996 (paperback). 238 pp.; index and bibliography. RRP $29.95.

CONTESTING THE AUSTRALIAN WAY: States, Markets and Civil Society. Paul Smyth and Bettina Cass (eds). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998. ISBN 0521633060 (hardback). 280 pp.; bibliography and index. RRP $90.00.

THE ECOLOGICAL CITY AND THE CITY EFFECT: Essays on the Urban Planning Requirements for the Sustainable City. Franco Archibugi. Ashgate, Aldershot, UK, 1997. ISBN 1859726534 (hardback). 243 pp.; bibliography and index. RRP $96.50.

CITIES FOR TOMORROW: Integrating Land Use, Transport and the Environment. Hans L. Westerman. Austroads, Sydney, 1998. ISBN 0855885033 (paperback). Resource Document 202 pp.; Better Practice Guide. 394 pp.; index. RRP $180.00.

EAST WEST PERSPECTIVES ON 21ST CENTURY URBAN DEVELOPMENT: Sustainable Eastern and Western Cities in the New Millennium. John Brotchie, Peter Newton, Peter Hall and John Dickey (eds). Ashgate, Aldershot, UK, 1999. ISBN 1840143177 (hardback). 432 pp.; bibliography and index. RRP $122.00.

MADE IN LANCASHIRE: A History of Regional Industrialisation. Geoffrey Timmins. Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1998. ISBN 0719045398. 334 pp.; bibliography and index. RRP $145.00.     

Sequence analysis of small cryptic plasmids isolated from Selenomonas ruminantium S20

The degradation kinetics of five glutamine dipeptides in aqueous solution, i.e. glycyl-L-glutamine (Gly-Gln), L-alanyl-L-glutamine (Ala-Gln), L-valyl-L-glutamine (Val-Gln), L-leucyl-L-glutamine (Leu-Gln) and L-isoleucyl-L-glutamine (Ile-Gln), were studied. Stability tests were performed using a stability-indicating high-performance liquid chromatographic assay. Two different Ala-Gln degradation routes, i.e. the cleavage of a peptide bond and the deamination of an amide group, were observed. The degradation was adequately described by pseudo-first-order kinetics. The maximum stability of Ala-Gln was obtained at an approximate pH of 6.0. The pH-rate profile described by specific acid-base catalysis and hydrolysis by water molecules agreed with the experimental results. The activation energy of Ala-Gln at pH 6.0 was determined to be 27. 1kcal mol-1, and the shelf-life (90% remaining) at 25 and 40 degrees C was predicted to be 5.3 years and 7.1 months, respectively. The rate constants of the glutamine dipeptides were influenced by the N-terminal amino acid residue and decreased in the order: Gly-Gln, Ala-Gln, Leu-Gln, Val-Gln and Ile-Gln.     

Cross-language plagiarism detection

Cross-language plagiarism detection deals with the automatic identification and extraction of plagiarism in a multilingual setting. In this setting, a suspicious document is given, and the task is to retrieve all sections from the document that originate from a large, multilingual document collection. Our contributions in this field are as follows: (1) a comprehensive retrieval process for cross-language plagiarism detection is introduced, highlighting the differences to monolingual plagiarism detection, (2) state-of-the-art solutions for two important subtasks are reviewed, (3) retrieval models for the assessment of cross-language similarity are surveyed, and, (4) the three models CL-CNG, CL-ESA and CL-ASA are compared. Our evaluation is of realistic scale: it relies on 120,000 test documents which are selected from the corpora JRC-Acquis and Wikipedia, so that for each test document highly similar documents are available in all of the six languages English, German, Spanish, French, Dutch, and Polish. The models are employed in a series of ranking tasks, and more than 100 million similarities are computed with each model. The results of our evaluation indicate that CL-CNG, despite its simple approach, is the best choice to rank and compare texts across languages if they are syntactically related. CL-ESA almost matches the performance of CL-CNG, but on arbitrary pairs of languages. CL-ASA works best on “exact” translations but does not generalize well.     

City make‐overs: The place marketing of melbourne during the kennett years, 1992–99

Abstract

Over the past two decades, the emergence of a new global economic order has triggered an intensification of competition between cities for footloose investment capital and tourism. Some have proven to be more successful than others at this form of civic boosterism through the adoption of place promotion and place marketing. Unfortunately, most research on this contemporary urban phenomenon has focused on Northern Europe and the United States, not Australia. To redress this imbalance, this paper examines why intercity competition has intensified, outlining the main features of place promotion and marketing and then examining how the Kennett Coalition government place‐marketed Melbourne and Victoria within the Asia‐Pacific Rim region. It attempts to assess whether the place marketing campaign succeeded and highlights a number of limitations with this mode of urban analysis.     

Microencapsulation of Fish Oil by Spray Granulation and Fluid Bed Film Coating

Abstract: The stability of microencapsulated fish oil prepared with 2 production processes, spray granulation (SG) and SG followed by film coating (SG-FC) using a fluid bed equipment, was investigated. In the 1st process, 3 types of fish oil used were based on the ratios of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) (10/50, 33/22, and 18/12). Each type was emulsified with soluble soybean polysaccharide (SSPS) and maltodextrin to produce 25% oil powders. In the 2nd process, 15% film coating of hydroxypropyl betacyclodextrin (HPBCD) was applied to the granules from the 1st process. The powder stability against oxidation was examined by measurement of peroxide values (PV) and headspace propanal after storage at room temperature and at 3 to 4 °C for 6 wk. Uncoated powder containing the lowest concentration of PUFA (18/12) was found to be stable during storage at room temperature with maximum PV of 3.98 ± 0.001 meq/kg oil. The PV increased sharply for uncoated powder with higher concentration of omega-3 (in 33/22 and 10/50 fish oils) after 3 wk storage. The PVs were in agreement with the concentration of propanal, and these 2 parameters remained constant for most of the uncoated powders stored at low temperature. Unexpectedly, the outcomes showed that the coated powders had lower stability than uncoated powders as indicated by higher initial PVs; more hydroperoxides were detected as well as increasing propanal concentration. The investigation suggests that the film-coating by HPBCD ineffectively protected fish oil as the coating process might have induced further oxidation; however, SG is a good method for producing fish oil powder and to protect it from oxidation because of the “onion skin” structure of granules produced in this process.     

Vergleich chromatographischer Reaktorkonzepte

Comparison of Chromatographic Reactor Concepts The integration of a chemical or biochemical reaction and a chromatographic separation in a single apparatus offers the opportunity to overcome chemical equilibrium as well as an increase in the separation efficiency. The different possibilities to design such a chromatographic reactor are discussed. Due to the complex behaviour modelling and simulation are powerful tools for process development and design. Therefore an overview over the different modelling approaches is given. Applying the example of the glucose isomerisation, the different processes based on the chromatographic simulated moving bed (SMB) reactor are compared. Different purity restrictions of the produced fructose syrup lead to different degrees of integration of reaction and separation in respect to a favourable process design.     

Electrical Coupling Between Cells and Graphene Transistors

In this work, both experimental data and a model are presented on the coupling between living cells and graphene solution‐gated field‐effect transistors. Modified HEK 293 cells are successfully cultured on graphene transistor arrays and electrically accessed by the patch clamp method. Transistor recordings are presented, showing the opening and closing of voltage‐gated potassium ion channels in the cell membrane. The experimental data is compared with the broadly used standard point‐contact model. The ion dynamics in the cell–transistor cleft are analyzed to account for the differences between the model and the experimental data revealing a significant increase in the total ionic strength in the cleft. In order to describe the influence of the ion concentration resulting from the cell activity, the ion‐sensitivity of graphene solution‐gated field‐effect transistors is investigated experimentally and modelled by considering the screening effect of the ions on the surface potential at the graphene/electrolyte interface. Finally, the model of the cell–transistor coupling is extended to include the effect of ion accumulation and ion sensitivity. The experimental data shows a very good agreement with this extended model, emphasizing the importance of considering the ion concentration in the cleft to properly understand the cell‐transistor coupling.     

In situ Characterization of SiO2 Nanoparticle Biointeractions Using BrightSilica

By adding a gold core to silica nanoparticles (BrightSilica), silica‐like nanoparticles are generated that, unlike unmodified silica nanoparticles, provide three types of complementary information to investigate the silica nano‐biointeraction inside eukaryotic cells in situ. Firstly, organic molecules in proximity of and penetrating into the silica shell in live cells are monitored by surface‐enhanced Raman scattering (SERS). The SERS data show interaction of the hybrid silica particles with tyrosine, cysteine and phenylalanine side chains of adsorbed proteins. Composition of the biomolecular corona of BrightSilica nanoparticles differs in fibroblast and macrophage cells. Secondly, quantification of the BrightSilica nanoparticles using laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA‐ICP‐MS) micromapping indicates a different interaction of silica nanoparticles compared to gold nanoparticles under the same experimental conditions. Thirdly, the metal cores allow the investigation of particle distribution and interaction in the cellular ultrastructure by cryo nanoscale X‐ray tomography (cryo‐XT). In 3D reconstructions the assumption is confirmed that BrightSilica nanoparticles enter cells by an endocytotic mechanism. The high SERS intensities are explained by the beneficial plasmonic properties due to agglomeration of BrightSilica. The results have implications for the development of multi‐modal qualitative and quantitative characterization in comparative nanotoxicology and bionanotechnology.