Spatial Decision Support System (SDSS) assist in strategic decision-making activities considering spatial and temporal variables, which help in Regional planning. WEPA is a SDSS designed for assessment of wind potential spatially. A wind energy system transforms the kinetic energy of the wind into mechanical or electrical energy that can be harnessed for practical use. Wind energy can diversify the economies of rural communities, adding to the tax base and providing new types of income. Wind turbines can add a new source of property value in rural areas that have a hard time
attracting new industry. Wind speed is extremely important parameter for assessing the amount of energy a wind turbine can convert to electricity: The energy content of the wind varies with the cube (the third power) of the average wind speed. Estimation of the wind power potential for a site is the most important requirement for selecting a site for the installation of a wind electric generator and evaluating projects in economic terms. It is based on data of the wind frequency distribution at the site, which are collected from a meteorological mast consisting of wind anemometer and a wind vane and spatial parameters (like area available for setting up wind farm, landscape, etc.). The wind
resource is governed by the climatology of the region concerned and has large variability with reference to space (spatial expanse) and time (season) at any fixed location. Hence the need to conduct wind resource surveys and spatial analysis constitute vital components in programs for exploiting wind energy. SDSS for assessing wind potential of a region / location is designed with user friendly
GUI's (Graphic User Interface) using VB as front end with MS Access database (backend). Validation and pilot testing of WEPA SDSS has been done with the data collected for 45 locations in Karnataka based on primary data at selected locations and data collected from the meteorological observatories of the India Meteorological Department (IMD). Wind energy and its characteristics have been analysed
for these locations to generate user-friendly reports and spatial maps. Energy Pattern Factor (EPF) and Power Densities are computed for sites with hourly wind data. With the knowledge of EPF and mean wind speed, mean power density is computed for the locations with only monthly data. Wind energy conversion systems would be most effective in these locations during May to August. The analyses show that coastal and dry arid zones in Karnataka have good wind potential, which if exploited would
help local industries, coconut and areca plantations, and agriculture. Pre-monsoon availability of wind energy would help in irrigating these orchards, making wind energy a desirable alternative.


In spite of the compelling logic that would support extending copyright to engineered DNA sequences, copyright protection for genetic code has not been legally recognized in the US, or as far as we know anywhere. The Copyright Act is silent on the point, the courts do not appear to have ever addressed the question, and the Copyright Office has taken the position that an engineered genetic sequence is not copyrightable subject matter. In an attempt to advance the conversation, we submitted an engineered DNA sequence to the Copyright Office for registration, and then appealed the Office's decision refusing to register engineered genetic sequences. This article reports the outcome of our experiment, and provides as supplementary material the actual letter we submitted to the Copyright Office appealing its initial decision not to register genetic sequences (the "Appeal"), along with the Copyright Office's letter denying our appeal (the "Denial), which provides a detailed explanation of the Office's position regarding the copyrightability of engineered DNA. The bulk of the article is devoted to refuting the legal and policy justifications set forth by the Office in its Denial.


A pollutant of small particles is emitted both by a point source at a height h above ground level and by an infinite line source at ground level in an atmosphere in which a uni-directional wind speed, U, is prevailing. The pollutant is subjected to diffusion in all directions in the presence of advection and settling due to gravity. The equation governing the concentration of the pollutant is studied when the wind speed and the individual components of the diffusion tensor are proportional to the distance above ground

Adopting a Cartesian system of coordinates in which the x-axis lies along the direction of the wind velocity, the z-axis is vertically upwards, and the y-axis completes the right-hand triad, the solution for the concentration is obtained in closed form. In the presence of the point source alone, the relative importance of the components of diffusion along the three axes is discussed. It is found that for any plane y = constant (=A), the concentration c(x, y, z) is focused along a curve of 'extensive pollution'. In the plane A = 0, the concentration decreases along the curve of extensive pollution with increasing distance from the source. For planes A ≠ 0, however, the curve of extensive pollution possesses a point of accumulation, which lies at a non-zero value of x. With increasing distance from the plane A = 0, the point of accumulation moves laterally away from the plane x = 0 and towards the ground. The presence of the point of accumulation is entirely due to the presence of lateral diffusion.

When the infinite line source at ground level is also present, the solution can be obtained in closed form only for a 2-D concentration c(x, z) of dust. The relative importance of the two sources is illustrated by an example. It is found that the ground source flattens the line of extensive pollution and helps to enhance the transport of dust downwind. The solution for the line source acting alone is illustrated by an example relevant to soil erosion of agricultural land.


Assessment is a time consuming and important part of academic life for tutors and students alike. It shapes the teaching and allows the tutor to guide the learning process. However, student learning is more effective when they understand the assessment process. Tutors, as expert assessor, are in the best place to develop such knowledge but, they need to plan for this in advance and consider the students' perspective. The purpose of this paper is to both inform and influence tutors' assessment practice using recent literature. Information searches were employed to gather literature from peer reviewed journal articles using keywords that are important within the assessment context: assessment, formative assessment, criteria, feedback, and self-assessment. The literature was collated under each of three question areas that take into account the students' perspective: 1. If I had some criteria and examples I would know 'What do I need to do?', and 'What should it look like?' 2. If I had some feedback while doing my work I would know if 'I am doing what is required?' and 'How I can improve?' 3. If I had support to self-assess 'Would I be able to assess myself?' The literature addressed each of the aforementioned questions. The findings suggest that: in order to answer question one student engagement with criteria and exemplars is required; In order to answer question two students need to engage with tutor feedback that is clear, meaningful and related to criteria; Finally, in order to answer question three students must be given the opportunity to self-assess and be supported through this with feedback from the tutor. Practical suggestions are provided to assist tutors' assessment practice. Proposed elements and benefits of the assessment process for tutors and students are outlined. In 1 McKevitt: Questions for Assessment: A Guide for Tutors' Practice and Studen Published by ARROW@DIT, 2015 2 general, a formative approach to assessment is ideal for students. While engagement with the assessment process is valuable for the student it has to be planned for in advance by the tutor.


Gaussian graphical models capture dependence relationships between random variables through the pattern of nonzero elements in the corresponding inverse covariance matrices. To date, there has been a large body of literature on both computational methods and analytical results on the estimation of a single graphical model. However, in many application domains, one has to estimate several related graphical models, a problem that has also received attention in the literature. The available approaches usually assume that all graphical models are globally related. On the other hand, in many settings different relationships between subsets of the node sets exist between different graphical models. We develop methodology that jointly estimates multiple Gaussian graphical models, assuming that there exists prior information on how they are structurally related. For many applications, such information is available from external data sources. The proposed method consists of first applying neighborhood selection with a group lasso penalty to obtain edge sets of the graphs, and a maximum likelihood refit for estimating the nonzero entries in the inverse covariance matrices. We establish consistency of the proposed method for sparse high-dimensional Gaussian graphical models and examine its performance using simulation experiments. Applications to a climate data set and a breast cancer data set are also discussed.


The field of academic research and publication have traditionally been the almost exclusive domain of White Academics. They institute, control and apply "White codes" to syndicate the publication of academic journals, magazines and books, all from their White privileged positions in academia especially in the Western World. As a result of this, non-white academics especially those from the so-called Third World have had a lot of difficulty moving ahead in the world of academic research and especially publication in the journals, magazines and books that are controlled exclusively by White academics. Knowledge, in this sense, is therefore constructed, reconstructed, distributed and reproduced by Whites who, more often than not, see no value in the knowledge base of academics and researchers from the so-called Third World. Using Critical Race Theory and Post-Colonial Theory as the anchors of analysis, this study takes an oppositional and deconstructive stand on the construction, reconstruction, distribution and reproduction of knowledge in research and academia. It examines the experiences of non-white academics in this domain by telling their own story, not the single story" that "Whiteness" often tells about them. It makes recommendations that aim to promote equity in the arena of current and future knowledge construction and reproduction in research and academia. Key Words: academic research; knowledge construction, White privilege; critical race theory; post-colonial theory, non-white academics


The James Madison Carpenter Collection Online Catalogue: A Searchable Online Catalogue of the James Madison Carpenter Collection, held at the Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress Catalogued and encoded by Julia C. Bishop, David Atkinson, Elaine Bradtke, Eddie Cass, Thomas A. McKean and Robert Young Walser. Sheffield: The Humanities Research Institute Online Press, 2003. URL 3 June 2003: http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/carpenter/ Regular readers of this journal are probably familiar with James Madison Carpenter from the special issue on his collection that was published in 1998. He was a Harvard scholar with interests in folk song--primarily 'chanties' and ballads--but latterly also in folk drama. He undertook extensive field collecting trips in the Britain and America in the late 1920s and 1930s. The size of his collection is awesome, with numbers for the different types of record present in their hundreds and thousands. In total, there are about 14,000 pages of material, including tune transcriptions, plus hundreds of photographs and sound recordings on Dictaphone cylinders and disc. These are some of the earliest field sound recordings of British and American folk song. To give an idea of scope, there are 4000 versions of Child ballads, 800 sea shanties and fore-bitters, 320 nursery rhymes/songs and singing games, 400 other songs, 500 folk plays, plus other assorted customs and traditions. Carpenter published very little of this material, but it became publicly accessible after it was acquired by the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress in 1972. Microfilm copies of the collection are held by the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library at Cecil Sharp House and by the Central Library, Aberdeen. However, usage of Carpenter's material has hitherto been limited because finding aids have either been limited in detail and/or not been widely available. This situation changed in April 2003 with the launch of The James Madison Carpenter Collection Online Catalogue. This is the first fruit of an international project whose ultimate aim is to publish a critical edition of the collection. The project team is led by Dr Julia Bishop of the National Centre for English Cultural Tradition at the University of Sheffield, and comprises Robert Young Walser, David Atkinson, Elaine Bradtke, Eddie Cass, Ian Russell and Thomas A. McKean--all distinguished in their respective fields--with further expert help from Michael Heaney and Steve Roud. Staff at the American Folklife Center also provide significant support. The catalogue's web site is very attractively put together, with well-crafted introductory pages describing Carpenter, his collection and the project, as well as guidance on how to use the catalogue and various reference lists of categories and sources. Naturally, the search facility will be the key part of the online catalogue for most people, although they can also browse sequentially through the inventory if they wish. It is possible to search for words in all of the text, or in specific fields: Titles, All names, Contributors' names, Places, Dates, Genre, Page numbers, and Child ballad number or title. Genre categories mostly relate to folk-song styles, but also cover other art forms and traditions. …


"This fine collection of essays represents an important contribution to the rediscovery of Baldwin's stature as essayist, novelist, black prophetic political voice, and witness to the Civil Rights era. The title provides an excellent thematic focus. He understood both the necessity, and the impossibility, of being a black 'American' writer. He took these issues 'Beyond'---Paris, Istanbul, various parts of Africa---but this formative experience only returned him to the unresolved dilemmas. He was a fine novelist and a major prophetic political voice. He produced some of the most important essays of the twentieth century and addressed in depth the complexities of the black political movement. His relative invisibility almost lost us one of the most significant voices of his generation. This welcome 'revival' retrieves it. Close call."---Stuart Hall, Professor Emeritus, Open University This interdisciplinary collection by leading writers in their fields brings together a discussion of the many facets of James Baldwin, both as a writer and as the prophetic conscience of a nation. The core of the volume addresses the shifting, complex relations between Baldwin as an American as American as any Texas GI as he once wryly put it and his life as an itinerant cosmopolitan. His ambivalent imaginings of America were always mediated by his conception of a world beyond America: a world he knew both from his travels and from his voracious reading. He was a man whose instincts were, at every turn, nurtured by America; but who at the same time developed a ferocious critique of American exceptionalism. In seeking to understand how, as an American, he could learn to live with difference breaking the power of fundamentalisms of all stripes he opened an urgent, timely debate that is still ours. His America was an idea fired by desire and grief in equal measure. As the authors assembled here argue, to read him now allows us to imagine new possibilities for the future. With contributions by Kevin Birmingham, Douglas Field, Kevin Gaines, Briallen Hopper, Quentin Miller, Vaughn Rasberry, Robert Reid-Pharr, George Shulman, Hortense Spillers, Colm Toibin, Eleanor W. Traylor, Cheryl A. Wall, and Magdalena Zaborowska. "


Some donors and governments propose that health insurance mechanisms can close health financing gaps and benefit poor people. Although beneficial for the people able to join, this method of financing health care has so far been unable to sufficiently fill financing gaps in health systems and improve access to quality health care for the poor. Donors and governments need to consider the evidence and scale up public resources for the health sector. Without adequate public funding and government stewardship, health insurance mechanisms pose a threat rather than an opportunity to the objectives of equity and universal access to health care.


We introduce a framework for designing multi-scale, adaptive, shift-invariant frames and bi-frames for representing signals. The new framework, called AdaFrame, improves over dictionary learning-based techniques in terms of computational efficiency at inference time. It improves classical multi-scale basis such as wavelet frames in terms of coding efficiency. It provides an attractive alternative to dictionary learning-based techniques for low level signal processing tasks, such as compression and denoising, as well as high level tasks, such as feature extraction for object recognition. Connections with deep convolutional networks are also discussed. In particular, the proposed framework reveals a drawback in the commonly used approach for visualizing the activations of the intermediate layers in convolutional networks, and suggests a natural alternative.


The manganese ores of the Northern Apennine ophiolites (Val Gravegila, Eastern Liguria, Italy) occur within chert sequences, mainly as stratiform layers (0.1-1 m thick) or massive lenses (5-20 m thick). The ores originated in the Ligurian-Piedmont oceanic basin (Middle Callovian) during turbiditic resedimentation of hydrothermally Mn-enriched submarine muds. During Upper Cretaceous-Lower Cenozoic orogenic events, the primary sedimentary oxide assemblages were completely recrystallized to braunite + quartz assemblages under prehnite-pumpellyte facies conditions (T = 275 ± 25 °C; P = 2.5 ± 0.5 kbar). This tectonic event induced mobilisation of Mn and Si, and thickening of the mineralised layers. A complex network of sigmoidal quartz veins formed at this stage. The interaction between the Mn mineralisation and the circulating fluids generated centimetric to decimetric reaction rims in the wall rock, where the braunite + quartz assemblage is replaced by Mn silicates (mainly bementite, johannsenite, parsettensite and rhodonite) and carbonates (mainly Mn-bearing calcite and rhodochrosite) with a zoned distribution. Mineral zoning points to an early interaction between the Mn mineralisation and H 2 O-CO 2 fluids with high water activity. Two distinct types of fluids are present in syntectonic quartz veins, namely a low-salinity water-rich fluid, and a Mn-Ca-Na-Mg-Fe-bearing aqueous solution that in all probability represent a relict of an early fluid phase circulating during breakdown of braunite. The isochore distribution related to low-salinity fluids indicates that veining processes took place during the main tectono-metamorphic events, at peak P-T conditions.


Gallium (Ga) helps solubilize rare-earth ions in chalcogenide glasses, but has been found to form the dominant crystallizing selenide phase in bulk glass in our previous work. Here, the crystallization behavior is compared of as-annealed 0–3000 ppmw Dy3+-doped Ge–As–Ga–Se glasses with different Ga levels: Ge16.5As(19−x)GaxSe64.5 (at.%), for x = 3 and 10, named Ga3 and Ga10 glass series, respectively. X-ray diffraction and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy are employed to examine crystals in the bulk of the as-prepared glasses, and the crystalline phase is proved to be the same: Ge-modified, face centered cubic α-Ga2Se3. Light scattering of polished glass samples is monitored using Fourier transform spectroscopy. When Ga is decreased from 10 to 3 at.%, the bulk crystallization is dramatically reduced and the optical scattering loss decreases. Surface defects, with a rough topology observed for both series of as-prepared chalcogenide glasses, are demonstrated to comprise Dy, Si, and [O]. For the first time, evidence for the proposed nucleation agent Dy2O3 is found inside the bulk of as-prepared glass. This is an important result because rare-earth ions bound in a high phonon–energy oxide local environment are, as a consequence, inactive mid-infrared fluorophores because they undergo preferential nonradiative decay of excited states.


Journal of Clinical Biochemistry and Nutrition is a bi-monthly journal, currently published from Japan by the Society for free Radical Research. It publishes six issues in a year. The study examines the article published in the Journal of Clinical Biochemistry and Nutrition from 2007 to 2017. This paper aimed to assess growth pattern of research output, authorship pattern, degree of collaboration, ranking of authors based on productivity and h-index, most cited references, type of items produced, keyword wise distribution, most productive countries and most productive institutions, distributions of research output and also estimate the future growth of publications using straight line equation. There are 813 articles were published during 2007-2017(11 years). The highest number of 88 articles were published in 2009 and lowest number of 63 articles published in 2007. Majority of the contributions are more than five authors. There exists a higher level of collaborations between the authors. Naito Y is the most productive author ranked in first position and Suzuki H, Yoshikawa T and Watanabe K are each of them having h-index score 9 who are placed in the first rank. this study also reveals the highly cited papers in Journal of Clinical Biochemistry and Nutrition. Most of the research outputs in the journal are articles. 'Induced' is the keyword which is mostly occurred in the journal. Nearly one-third of the articles were published in Japan. It is known that different institutions were involved in the publication of articles, from these top most productive institutions are listed. It is estimated that research output of the source journal may take slightly increasing future.


Deep neural networks (DNNs) have achieved superior performance in various prediction tasks, but can be very vulnerable to adversarial examples or perturbations. Therefore, it is crucial to measure the sensitivity of DNNs to various forms of perturbations in real applications. We introduce a novel perturbation manifold and its associated influence measure to quantify the effects of various perturbations on DNN classifiers. Such perturbations include various external and internal perturbations to input samples and network parameters. The proposed measure is motivated by information geometry and provides desirable invariance properties. We demonstrate that our influence measure is useful for four model building tasks: detecting potential 'outliers', analyzing the sensitivity of model architectures, comparing network sensitivity between training and test sets, and locating vulnerable areas. Experiments show reasonably good performance of the proposed measure for the popular DNN models ResNet50 and DenseNet121 on CIFAR10 and MNIST datasets.


Increasingly, physical limitations lead to a shift from high clocked single core processors to CPUs with up to eight, or more, independent but slower processing cores, and multi-core or even multi-CPU computers. In order to retain performance gains in the future, the speech decoding process has to be re-organized to employ a certain amount of thread-level parallelism on those CPUs. In this work, we compare two common approaches for dynamic prefix tree decoders: Parallel Score Computation and Parallel Search, and a combination of both. Both have already been studied intensively, however it is shown here, that the latter suffers from hardware cache effects which limit absolute speed-ups and scalability in general. We propose a cache efficient variation of the Parallel Score Computation which is more scalable and faster than any other parallel strategy we compared it with.


More Americans now play video games than go to the movies (NPD Group, 2009). The meteoric rise in popularity of video games highlights the need for research approaches that can deepen our scientific understanding of video game engagement. This article advances a theory-based motivational model for examining and evaluating the ways by which video game engagement shapes psychological processes and influences well-being. Rooted in self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000; Ryan & Deci, 2000a), our approach suggests that both the appeal and well-being effects of video games are based in their potential to satisfy basic psychological needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness. We review recent empirical evidence applying this perspective to a number of topics including need satisfaction in games and short-term well-being, the motivational appeal of violent game content, motivational sources of postplay aggression, the antecedents and consequences of disordered patterns of game engagement, and the determinants and effects of immersion. Implications of this model for the future study of game motivation and the use of video games in interventions are discussed.


In this paper, we analyze and extend an online learning frame-work known as Context-Attentive Bandit, motivated by various practical applications, from medical diagnosis to dialog systems, where due to observation costs only a small subset of a potentially large number of context variables can be observed at each iteration; however, the agent has a freedom to choose which variables to observe. We derive a novel algorithm, called Context-Attentive Thompson Sampling (CATS), which builds upon the Linear Thompson Sampling approach, adapting it to Context-Attentive Bandit setting. We provide a theoretical regret analysis and an extensive empirical evaluation demonstrating advantages of the proposed approach over several baseline methods on a variety of real-life datasets.


Hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD) is a common childhood disease caused by many enteroviruses, including enterovirus A71 (EV-A71). Understanding the adaptive immune responses in EV-A71 infection is critical for the development of diagnostic tools, and potential therapeutics and vaccines. The first objective of the study was to determine the antibody responses in HFMD patients. EV-A71-specific IgM antibodies in serum samples from 89 patients with HFMD were detected by commercial IgMcapture enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and IgM-colloidal gold
immunochromatographic assay (GICA). The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value rates were 78.4, 80.8, 74.4, and 84.0%, respectively, for the IgM-capture ELISA, and 75.7, 76.9, 70.0, and 81.6% for the IgM GICA. Concordance between the two assays was 91.1%. The overall performance suggests that
both commercial diagnostic kits are suitable for early diagnosis of HFMD caused by EV-A71 in Malaysia. For the second objective, these sera were subsequently used to
characterize antibody responses against the structural and non-structural proteins of EVA71. Each viral protein was cloned and expressed in either bacterial or mammalian
systems, and tested with antisera by Western bloting. The results revealed that all structural proteins (VP1-4), and non-structural proteins 2A, 3C and 3D were targets of
EV-A71 IgM, whereas EV-A71 IgG recognized all the structural and non-structural proteins. Subsequent characterization of linear B-cell epitopes on EV-A71 was performed with 63 biotinylated peptides predicted to be immunogenic in silico. In total, 22 IgM and 4 IgG dominant linear epitopes were identified. The amino acid sequences of these epitopes were then aligned with 12 enterovirus species, and peptides were
further tested with individual serum and mapped to their structural localization. PEP27 (VP1 142-156) and PEP23 (VP1 41-55) were identified as EV-A71 IgM-specific and IgG cross-reactive immunodominant epitopes, respectively. In addition to the antibody responses, T cells have important functions in immune protection against viral diseases. Hence the final objective was to examine the T cell responses in enterovirus infection. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells collected from HFMD patients were stimulated with EV-A71, and T-cell markers and cytokines were analysed by flow cytometry. EV-A71-infected and coxsackievirus A6 (CV-A6)-infected patients showed similar T cell responses suggesting that the induced T-cell responses were cross-reactive. A higher frequency of IFN-γ expressing CD4+ T cells was observed in children, but a higher frequency of IFN-γ expressing CD8+ T cells was observed in adults. This may be because CD4+ cells are involved in responses to primary infections, which mostly occur in children, while the CD8+ responses in adults represent immune memory. Cytolytic enzymes such as granzyme B and perforin, which are critical mediators for anti-viral immunity, were expressed in both children and adults. Higher granzyme B compared to perforin was expressed in CD8+ T cells in both children and adults, suggesting that a proportion of EV-A71-specific CD8+ T cells may not be directly cytotoxic. Similar expression of CD57+ CD8+ T cells was observed in children and adults. The expression of CD57 cells suggests that immunosenescence common in chronic infection may also play a role in EV-A71 T-cell immunity. Overall, this study provides new knowledge in the immunoprotection mechanisms against EV-A71


Many standard computer vision datasets exhibit biases due to a variety of sources including illumination condition, imaging system, and preference of dataset collectors. Biases like these can have downstream effects in the use of vision datasets in the construction of generalizable techniques, especially for the goal of the creation of a classification system capable of generalizing to unseen and novel datasets. In this work we propose Unbiased Metric Learning (UML), a metric learning approach, to achieve this goal. UML operates in the following two steps: (1) By varying hyper parameters, it learns a set of less biased candidate distance metrics on training examples from multiple biased datasets. The key idea is to learn a neighborhood for each example, which consists of not only examples of the same category from the same dataset, but those from other datasets. The learning framework is based on structural SVM. (2) We do model validation on a set of weakly-labeled web images retrieved by issuing class labels as keywords to search engine. The metric with best validation performance is selected. Although the web images sometimes have noisy labels, they often tend to be less biased, which makes them suitable for the validation set in our task. Cross-dataset image classification experiments are carried out. Results show significant performance improvement on four well-known computer vision datasets.


Water vapor measurements from Aura Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS, above 300 hPa) and Aqua Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS, below 300 hPa) are analyzed to study the variations of moisture during the 2006–2007 and 2009–2010 El Niños. The 2006–2007 El Niño is an East Pacific (EP) El Niño, while the 2009–2010 El Niño is a Central Pacific (CP) El Niño or El Niño Modoki. Results show that these two types of El Niño events produce different patterns of water vapor anomalies over the tropical ocean, approximately resembling the cloud anomalies shown in Su and Jiang (2013). Regression of water vapor anomalies onto the Niño‐3.4 SST for the A‐Train period shows a clear "upper tropospheric amplification" of the fractional water vapor change, i.e., the ratio of the change in specific humidity to the layer‐averaged specific humidity. Furthermore, tropical water vapor anomalies in different circulation regimes are examined. It is shown that the variations of water vapor during the 2006–2007 El Niño are mainly controlled by the thermodynamic component, whereas both dynamic and thermodynamic components control the water vapor anomalies during the 2009–2010 El Niño. GFDL AM2.1 model simulations of water vapor and cloud anomalies for the two El Niños are compared with the satellite observations. In general, the model approximately reproduces the water vapor anomalies on both zonal and meridional planes but it produces too strong a cloud response in the mid‐ and lower troposphere. The model fails to capture the dynamic component of water vapor anomalies, particularly over the Indian Ocean.


The technology-push of die stacking and application-pull of Big Data machine learning (BDML) have created a unique opportunity for processing-near-memory (PNM). This paper makes four contributions: (1) While previous PNM work explores general MapReduce workloads, we identify three workload characteristics: (a) irregular-and-compute-light (i.e., perform only a few operations per input word which include data-dependent branches and indirect memory accesses); (b) compact (i.e., the computation has a small intermediate live data and uses only a small amount of contiguous input data); and (c) memory-row-dense (i.e., process the input data without skipping over many bytes). We show that BDMLs have or can be transformed to have these characteristics which, except for irregularity, are necessary for bandwidthand energyefficient PNM, irrespective of the architecture. (2) Based on these characteristics, we propose RowCore, a row-oriented PNM architecture, which (pre)fetches and operates on entire memory rows to exploit BDMLs' row-density. Instead of this row-centric access and compute-schedule, traditional architectures opportunistically improve row locality while fetching and operating on cache blocks. (3) RowCore employs well-known MIMD execution to handle BDMLs' irregularity, and sequential prefetch of input data to hide memory latency. In RowCore, however, one corelet prefetches a row for all the corelets which may stray far from each other due to their MIMD execution. Consequently, a leading corelet may prematurely evict the prefetched data before a lagging corelet has consumed the data. RowCore employs novel cross-corelet flow-control to prevent such eviction. (4) RowCore further exploits its flow-controlled prefetch for frequency scaling based on novel coarse-grain compute-memory rate-matching which decreases (increases) the processor clock speed when the prefetch buffers are empty (full). Using simulations, we show that RowCore improves performance and energy, by 135% and 20% over a GPGPU with prefetch, and by 35% and 34% over a multicore with prefetch, when all three architectures use the same resources (i.e., number of cores, and on-processor-die memory) and identical diestacking (i.e., GPGPUs/multicores/RowCore and DRAM).


Documentation of air pollution and sources in the emirate of Abu Dhabi has never been reviewed in terms of it effect on health. No research by means of a population-based study has been conducted in order to define the important epidemiological characteristics of air pollution in human health. Therefore, the present study was designed to investigate the levels of air pollutants in the environment of Abu Dhabi Emirate, and the effects of air pollution on human health. Additionally, a comprehensive time-series analysis was performed on the air quality data for a period of four years (1998-2001). The study was undertaken by conducting comparison of pollutants including measurements of particulate matter less than 10 micron, ozone, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide at three different areas. In addition to the prevailing meteorological factors such as wind speed and direction, temperature, and relative humidity at three different locations, as following: � The FECC site in Salam Street which is represents a highly populated area with heavy traffic and commercial area. ,.. Mussafah, a main industrial area. ,. Bateen, representing levels in a residential location. An epidemiological study was performed on respiratory and non respiratory patients admitted to AI-Jazeerah and AI-Mafraq hospital from the annual reports in Abu Dhabi Emirate, for the period spanning January 1999to December 2001. Results showed that the critical air pollutants in Abu Dhabi city in United Arab Emirates (UAE) were nitric oxide, particulate matter (PM10) and ground ozone above the national ambient air quality standards and the proposed standards for Abu Dhabi city. However, carbon monoxide and sulphur dioxide were below the (NMOS) standard and proposed standard for Abu Dhabi city. Also that the Mussafah industrial area was more polluted than the FECC , commercial and Bateen residential areas according to air quality index. There VI was a possible effect from the oil fields both onshore/offshore, Mussafah emissions on the quality of the atmosphere in the FECC and Bateen areas. Other possible sources of pollution were power plants and traffic. Furthermore, there was a strong association between increasing ozone levels and patients admitted for respiratory diseases. Also, there was strong association between increasing S02 levels and admitted patients for non respiratory diseases. This study indicated the importance to develop a new control strategy to manage and improve the air quality there. However, consideration should be given to the future expansion of towns and cities towards industrial emission sources, and a potential decrease in the air quality of residential areas as a possible consequence.


Amongst the spaces in which human beings attend, the house is the place where one affects and is affected by it on a daily basis. Each of the various spaces of the house possesses unique characteristics and various factors such as climate, culture, society, and others contribute in the formation of them. The establishment of these spaces at the side of one another gives rise to different spatial systems that lead to the formation of various types in this kind of architecture and influences the shape of the various patterns of using them in addition to bringing about shape differences. The present study aims at investigating and comparing the functional efficiency of the houses in three house patterns with large, small and micro modules using space-related mathematical relations. To do so, nine traditional houses have been selected for the aforementioned three spatial systems in the cities of Kashan, Isfahan, and Yazd as the case studies. The study method in this research is descriptive-analytical and the type of the inference applied herein is deductive of the comparative type. The initial data were extracted through drawing graphs related to the plans of each of the studied houses; then, these data were inserted into the mathematical relations of spatial syntax. This way, based on the indices "spatial value", "mean depth of the space" and "relative integration", the functional efficiency of each of the aforementioned patterns was extracted. The results signified that the houses with a large module have the highest spatial value, highest depth amount and highest relative integration rate that altogether eventually result in the increase in the functional efficiency of such a pattern of the house in contrast to the smalland micro-module house patterns. Moreover, the investigation of the spatial difference in the nine studied patterns indicated the existence of similarities in the configuration and spatial organization of the houses in Kashan and Isfahan and their differences from the houses in Yazd in this regard.


Two chiral bisferrocenyl-modified bis(acyl-thiourea) enantiomers, (1R,2R)-bis(ferrocenylcarbonylthioureido)cyclohexane (1) and (1S,2S)-bis(ferrocenylcarbonylthioureido)cyclohexane (2), were synthesized by the reactions of 2.2 equivalents of ferrocenoyl isothiocyanate with (1R,2R) and (1S,2S)-1,2-diaminocyclohexane (1,2-DACH) via a nucleophilic addition reaction, respectively. The two new compounds were fully characterized by 1H NMR, 13C NMR, IR, UV-Vis, elemental analyses and single-crystal X-ray diffraction. The cyclic voltammetry (CV) and differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) experiments of compounds 1 and 2 showed roughly similar single reversible redox waves when using nBu4NClO4 (TBAP) as the supporting electrolyte, whereas two CV and DPV waves were observed when using nBu4NBArF4 [ArF4 = 3,5-bis(trifluoromethyl)phenyl]. Furthermore, both compounds 1 and 2 displayed potential antitumor activity against human HepG2 cells. When compounds 1 and 2 were crystallized from diethyl ether, the solvent-free enantiomers (1 and 2) were obtained, respectively. Molecules of both solvent-free enantiomers (1 and 2) assemble into a three-dimensional network structure through hydrogen-bonding and C–H⋯π (cyclopentadienyl rings) interactions. On the other hand, crystallization of compound 1 from benzene produced a benzene disolvate, 1·(C6H6)2. Molecules of the solvent-free and disolvated forms of compound 1 exhibit different molecular conformations and packing arrangements.


Background and Objectives: Around one million deaths result from malaria each year worldwide. The infection starts by the inoculation of sporozoites by female Anopheles mosquito into the host. The mechanism of invasion of sporozoites into the host is not clear to date. CD81 is considered the only host receptor to be significant for the invasion of sporozoites. The aim of the first phase of this project is to identify potential ligands that binds with high affinity to the residues in CD81 involved in CD81-malaria sporozoites interaction in silico, use them to generate selective high affinity ligands (SHALs) and use these SHALs to inhibit the interaction of CD81-sporozoites, thus preventing progression of malaria infection. Methods and Results: AutoDockTools 1.5.6 was used to prepare the crystal structures of the CD81-LEL protein (1G8Q) by deleting water molecules, adding polar hydrogens, and assigning Gasteiger charges and to create a grid bounding box, which provided the desired grid parameter file using 0.375 A spacing. Autoligand, an AutoDock tool, was used to identify several binding sites on CD81. Fill points were created using a 1 A grid, and the calculations were performed using 10 to 210 fill points. AutoDock 4.2 was used to screen 30,000 ligands obtained from different libraries (NCI_DSII and Asinex) to identify small molecules that might bind to each site. The docking results were analyzed and virtual screening hits for each binding site on CD81-LEL were ranked according to selection criteria required for the design of promising SHALs. Distances between pairs of bound ligands were estimated and used to design several SHALs that should bind selectively to CD81. Conclusion: New computational tools have been used to design in silico several SHAL-based inhibitors that have the potential to prevent entry of Plasmodium falciparum sporozoites into hepatocytes and thus malaria infection.


Abstract Despite the contention that risk and uncertainty play an important role in agriculture in North Florida and South Alabama, very little is known about producers' perceptions of risk. This paper describes the procedures used and the results obtained from a statistically random survey of farmers' perceptions of the importance of various sources of risk and alternative risk management practices. Initially, farmers were asked to define risk and then to rank various sources of risk and management responses to risk based on the relative importance of each to their operation. Summary statistics, Chi-square analyses, and logistic regression techniques were used to analyze the data.


Abstract: The Monte Postale section (Bolca, northern Italy), one of the most famous Lagerstätten of the Eocene, has been investigated to reconstruct the sedimentary succession and to determine both the larger foraminiferal and the calcareous nannofossil biozones. The results allowed us to ascribe the Monte Postale limestones to the Shallow Benthic Zone 11 and to the calcareous nannofossil Zone CNE 5-?6 (= NP 13-?14a). The direct correlation of the SB and CNE Zones is consistent with the current biostratigraphic schemes and allows assignment of the deposition of the succession to the interval between 50.7 and 48.9 Ma, in the late Ypresian (early Eocene). According to the available biostratigraphic data, the uppermost portion of the Monte Postale section should correlate with the Pesciara limestones.


Background Bisphenol A (BPA), an endocrine disruptor, is a component of polycarbonate plastics, epoxy resins, and polystyrene. Several studies have reported potent in vivo effects, because BPA behaves as an estrogen agonist and/or antagonist and as an androgen and thyroid hormone antagonist. Objectives We investigated the effects of neonatal exposure to BPA on the reproductive axis in adult female Sprague-Dawley rats. Methods Female rats were injected subcutaneously, daily from postnatal day 1 (PND1) to PND10 with BPA in castor oil at 500 μg/50 μL [BPA500; ~ 10−4 M, a dose higher than the lowest observed adverse effect level (LOAEL) of 50 mg/kg], 50 μg/50 μL (BPA50), or 5 μg/50 μL (both BPA50 and BPA5 are doses lower than the LOAEL), or castor oil vehicle alone. In adults we studied a) the release of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) from hypothalamic explants, b) serum sex hormone levels, and c) ovarian morphology, ovulation, and fertility. Results Neonatal exposure to BPA was associated with increased serum testosterone and estradiol levels, reduced progesterone in adulthood, and altered in vitro GnRH secretion. Animals exposed to BPA500 had altered ovarian morphology, showing a large number of cysts. Animals exposed to BPA50 had reduced fertility without changes in the number of oocytes on the morning of estrus, whereas animals exposed to BPA500 showed infertility. Conclusions Exposure to high doses of BPA during the period of brain sexual differentiation altered the hypothalamic–pituitary–gonadal axis in female Sprague-Dawley rats. These results have the potential to link neonatal exposure to high doses of BPA in rats with the development of polycystic ovarian syndrome. Studies of doses and routes of administration more consistent with human exposures are needed to determine the relevance of these findings to human health.


During studies on the yeast communities associated with rotting wood in the Xishuangbanna Tropical Rainforest in PR China, four novel yeast strains were found. Phylogenetic analysis based on the concatenated sequences of the D1/D2 domains of the large subunit rRNA gene and the ITS regions showed that these strains represented two novel species in the Candida albicans/Lodderomyces clade. The novel species, represented by strains NYNU 17948 and NYNU 17981, formed a clade with Candida maltosa and Candida baotianmanensis, with 1-1.8% sequence divergence in the D1/D2 domains and 8.9-10% sequence divergence in the ITS regions. The other novel species, represented by NYNU 17105 and NYNU 17763, is most closely related to Candida blackwelliae with 0.7 % sequence divergence in the D1/D2 domains and 6.9 % sequence divergence in the ITS regions. The two novel species could be distinguished from their closest described species in terms of physiological traits. The two novel species are described as Candida yunnanensis sp. nov. (holotype NYNU 17948) and Candida parablackwelliae sp. nov. (holotype NYNU 17763).


Previous estimates of the volatile contents of Martian basalts, and hence their source regions, ranged from nearly volatile‐free through estimates similar to those found in terrestrial subduction zones. Here, we use the bulk chemistry of Martian meteorites, along with Martian apatite and amphibole chemistry, to constrain the volatile contents of the Martian interior. Our estimates show that the volatile content of the source region for the Martian meteorites is similar to the terrestrial Mid‐Ocean‐Ridge Mantle source. Chlorine is enriched compared with the depleted terrestrial mantle but is similar to the terrestrial enriched source region; fluorine is similar to the terrestrial primitive mantle; and water is consistent with the terrestrial mantle. Our results show that Martian magmas were not volatile saturated; had water/chlorine and water/fluorine ratios ~0.4–18; and are most similar, in terms of volatiles, to terrestrial MORBs. Presumably, there are variations in volatile content in the Martian interior as suggested by apatite compositions, but more bulk chemical data, especially for fluorine and water, are required to investigate these variations. Finally, the Noachian Martian interior, as exemplified by surface basalts and NWA 7034, may have had higher volatile contents.


Introduction: Sella turcica is an important cephalometric structure and attempts have been made in the past to correlate its dimensions to the malocclusion. However, no study has so far compared the size of sella to the jaw bases that determine the type of malocclusion. The present study was undertaken to find out any such correlation if it exists. Materials and Methods: Lateral cephalograms of 110 adults consisting of 40 Class I, 40 Class II, and 30 Class III patients were assessed for the measurement of sella length, width, height, and area. The maxillary length, mandibular ramus height, and body length were also measured. The sella dimensions were compared among three malocclusion types by one-way ANOVA. Pearson correlation was calculated between the jaw size and sella dimensions. Furthermore, the ratio of jaw base lengths and sella area were calculated. Results and Conclusion: Mean sella length, width and area were found to be greatest in Class III, followed by Class I and least in Class II though the results were not statistically significant. 3 out of 4 measured dimensions of sella, correlated significantly with mandibular ramus and body length each. However, only one dimension of sella showed significant correlation with maxilla. The mandibular ramus and body length show a nearly constant ratio to sella area (0.83–0.85, 0.64–0.65, respectively) in all the three malocclusions. Thus, mandible has a definite and better correlation to the size of sella turcica.


Gaussian process state-space models (GP-SSMs) are a very flexible family of models of nonlinear dynamical systems. They comprise a Bayesian nonparametric representation of the dynamics of the system and additional (hyper-)parameters governing the properties of this nonparametric representation. The Bayesian formalism enables systematic reasoning about the uncertainty in the system dynamics. We present an approach to maximum likelihood identification of the parameters in GP-SSMs, while retaining the full nonparametric description of the dynamics. The method is based on a stochastic approximation version of the EM algorithm that employs recent developments in particle Markov chain Monte Carlo for efficient identification.


Prescribed fire is used to reverse invasion by woody vegetation on grasslands, but managers often are uncertain whether influences of shrub and tree reduction outweigh potential effects of fire on nest survival of grassland birds. During the 2001–2003 breeding seasons, we examined relationships of prescribed fire and woody vegetation to nest survival of clay-colored sparrow (Spizella pallida) and Savannah sparrow (Passerculus sandwichensis) in mixed-grass prairie at Des Lacs National Wildlife Refuge in northwestern North Dakota, USA. We assessed relationships of nest survival to 1) recent fire history, in terms of number of breeding seasons (2, 3, or 4–5) since the last prescribed fire, and 2) prevalence of trees and tall (>1.5 m) shrubs in the landscape and of low (≤1.5 m) shrubs within 5 m of nests. Nest survival of both species exhibited distinct patterns related to age of the nest and day of year, but bore no relationship to fire history. Survival of clay-colored sparrow nests declined as the amount of trees and tall shrubs within 100 m increased, but we found no relationship to suggest nest parasitism by brown-headed cowbirds (Molothrus ater) as an underlying mechanism. We found little evidence linking nest survival of Savannah sparrow to woody vegetation. Our results suggest that fire can be used to restore northern mixed-grass prairies without adversely affecting nest survival of ≥2 widespread passerine species. Survival of nests of clay-colored sparrow may increase when tall woody cover is reduced by fire. Our data lend support to the use of fire for reducing scattered patches of tall woody cover to enhance survival of nests of ≥1 grassland bird species in northern mixed-grass prairies, but further study is needed that incorporates experimental approaches and assessments of shorter term effects of fire on survival of nests of grassland passerines. © 2017 This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.


For many practical applications of ASP, for instance data integration or planning, query answering is important, and therefore query optimization techniques for ASP are of great interest. Magic Sets are one of these techniques, originally defined for Datalog queries (ASP without disjunction and negation). Dynamic Magic Sets (DMS) are an extension of this technique, which has been proved to be sound and complete for query answering over ASP programs with stratified negation.

A distinguishing feature of DMS is that the optimization can be exploited also during the non-deterministic phase of ASP engines. In particular, after some assumptions have been made during the computation, parts of the program may become irrelevant to a query under these assumptions. This allows for dynamic pruning of the search space, which may result in exponential performance gains.

In this paper, the correctness of DMS is formally established and proved for brave and cautious reasoning over the class of super-coherent ASP programs (ASP sc programs). ASPsc programs guarantee consistency (i.e., have answer sets) when an arbitrary set of facts is added to them. This result generalizes the applicability of DMS, since the class of ASPsc programs is richer than ASP programs with stratified negation, and in particular includes all odd-cycle-free programs. DMS has been implemented as an extension of DLV, and the effectiveness of DMS for ASPsc programs is empirically confirmed by experimental results with this system.


We study an efficient broadcast scheme in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). The objective is to determine a small set of forward nodes to ensure full coverage. We first study several methods that guarantee coverage when the local view of each node on its neighborhood information is updated in a timely manner. Then we consider a general case where nodes move even during the broadcast process, making it impractical to maintain up-to-date and consistent local views. A formal framework is used to model inaccurate local views in MANETs, where full coverage is guaranteed if three sufficient conditions, connectivity, link availability, and consistency, are met. Three solutions are proposed to satisfy those conditions. First, we give a minimal transmission range that maintains the connectivity of the virtual network constructed from local views. Then, we use two transmission ranges, one for neighborhood information collection and the other for actual data transmission, to form a buffer zone that guarantees the availability of logical links in the physical network. Finally, we propose a mechanism called aggregated local view to ensure consistent local views. By these, we extend Wu and Dai's coverage condition for broadcasting in a network with mobile nodes. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme is confirmed via both performance analysis and simulation study.


Although the impact of sheet erosion on the selective transportation of mineral soil particles has been widely investigated, little is yet known about the specific mechanisms of organic carbon (OC) erosion, which constitutes an important link in the global carbon cycle. The present study was conducted to quantify the impact of sheet erosion on OC losses from soils. Erosion plots with the lengths of 1‐ and 5‐m were installed at different topographic positions along a hillslope in a mountainous South African region. A total of 32 rainfall events from a three years period (November 2010 up to February 2013), were studied and evaluated for runoff (R), particulate and dissolved organic carbon (POCL and DOCL). In comparison to the 0–0·05 m bulk soil, the sediments from the 1‐m plots were enriched in OC by a factor 2·6 and those from the 5‐m long plots by a factor of 2·2, respectively. These findings suggest a preferential erosion of OC. In addition, total organic carbon losses (TOCL) were incurred mainly in particulate form (~94%) and the increase in TOCL from 14·09 ± 0·68 g C m−1 yr−1 on 1‐m plots to 50·03 ± 2·89 g C m−1 yr−1 on 5‐m plots illustrated an increase in sheet erosion efficiency with increasing slope length. Both TOCL and sediment enrichment in OC correspondingly increased with a decrease in soil basal grass cover. The characteristics of rainstorms had no significant impact on the selectivity of OC erosion. The results accrued in this study investigating the links between sheet erosion and OC losses, are expected to be of future value in the generation of carbon specific erosion models, which can further help to inform and improve climate change mitigation measures. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


We consider a relaxation of the concept of well-covered graphs, which are
graphs with all maximal independent sets of the same size. The extent to which
a graph fails to be well-covered can be measured by its independence gap,
defined as the difference between the maximum and minimum sizes of a maximal
independent set in $G$. While the well-covered graphs are exactly the graphs of
independence gap zero, we investigate in this paper graphs of independence gap
one, which we also call almost well-covered graphs. Previous works due to
Finbow et al. (1994) and Barbosa et al. (2013) have implications for the
structure of almost well-covered graphs of girth at least $k$ for $k\in
\{7,8\}$. We focus on almost well-covered graphs of girth at least $6$. We show
that every graph in this class has at most two vertices each of which is
adjacent to exactly $2$ leaves. We give efficiently testable characterizations
of almost well-covered graphs of girth at least $6$ having exactly one or
exactly two such vertices. Building on these results, we develop a
polynomial-time recognition algorithm of almost well-covered
$\{C_3,C_4,C_5,C_7\}$-free graphs.


In 1957, the four lower Mekong River states jointly organized the development of the basin and established a legal regime that has spanned five decades of cooperation. In 1995, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Thailand and Vietnam concluded the Agreement on the Cooperation for the Sustainable Development of the Mekong River Basin and formed the Mekong River Commission, which has been lauded as the most progressive of river institutions and a model for the world. At the core of the 1995 Mekong Agreement is the concept of sustainable development. Guided by this sustainable development paradigm, the Lower Mekong River Basin states attempt to balance the maintenance of water quantity with protection of water quality, and agree to cooperate and use the Mekong's water resources in a manner in which the river system's environmental conditions and ecological balance are conserved and maintained. However, development of the Mekong and its tributaries has rendered the efficacy of the Mekong legal regime to support holistic water resources management questionable. More than ten years of experience has shown that there are aspects of the 1995 Mekong Agreement that should be strengthened in order to secure the environmental, economic and social benefits that it promises.


The 316L austenitic stainless steels, Ti-6A1-4V and Ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWP) are very attractive and well known materials for diverse engineering applications due to their many superior properties. More specifically, these materials have acquired much attention in biomedical applications due to their excellent biocompatibility. However, the practical use of these materials are limited in many cases by the need to attain specific tribological (that means, low' friction and wear rate) and mechanical (that means, high hardness, high loadbearing capacity) properties. The long-term outcome of the total joint replacement is currently limited by the breakdown of the implant by wear processes. Therefore, much research has been carried out in this area to reduce the incidence of wear. The goal of this project was to enhance the mechanical and tribological properties of the biocompatible surface by the plasma nitriding and
duplex coating process.

The works consisted of three phases. In the first phase, in order to acquire a preliminary approximation of the different process parameters, finite volume and finite element methods have been employed to determine (i) the gas mixture pattern inside the sputtering chamber and (ii) the thermal stress inside the coating, with and without considering graded interlaycr respectively.

In the second phase of the work, a new plasma nitriding process has been used using an existing carbon based coating system. Plasma nitriding was performed on biomaterials substrates where a Saddle field neutral fast atom beam source and an auxiliary heater was used for substrate heating. It has been observed that low temperature plasma nitriding of the stainless steel samples produced a precipitation and black layer free, hard, thick and load supporting nitridcd layer within a short processing time which was suitable for subsequent coating deposition as well. Plasma nitriding has also been carried out on Ti-6A1-4V and non-conductivc UHMWP biomaterials. In both cases plasma nitriding treatment increased the untreated substrate hardness and wear properties substantially.

In the third phase o f the w'ork, the additional improvement of mechanical and tribological properties of the solid lubricant based coatings (MoS2 and DLC), a continuous and discontinuous duplex coating system has been investigated. The main focus has been on the improvement of the load bearing capacity of the coating-substratc system. For the first time a continuous duplex process is being introduced consisting of the plasma nitriding followed by in situ deposition of the DLC biomedical coating. The process has been successfully carried out in a single process chamber (PECVD based Saddle field neutral fast atom beam source) without any interlaycr or post nitriding treatment. Rockwell C indention results confirmed the improvement of the adhesion in the duplex treated coating samples compared to the non-duplex treated sample. Duplex treatment significantly increased the composite hardness and reduced the plastic deformation of the substrate. The Pin on disk tests showed that the duplex treatment increase the overall wear properties of the coating compared to the non-duplex coating. In addition, a discontinuous duplex treatment consisting of plasma nitriding and TiN+MoS, coatings with and without a graded interlaycr on the stainless steel substrate were investigated. Low-temperature plasma nitriding was performed with the newly developed process (Saddle field fast atom beam source) and coatings were deposited by closed-field unbalanced magnetron sputtering. Results showed that the graded interlaycr and plasma nitnding had a great influence on the load bearing and overall tribological properties of the coating-substratc
system.


Combining cinematic and diplomatic history, this article examines a curious relic of the détente phase of the Cold War, the fantasy-musical The Blue Bird. Released on the silver screen in 1976, The Blue Bird was the only U.S.-Soviet cinematic coproduction during the Cold War. The movie was made for a variety of commercial, artistic, and ideological reasons but failed to live up to expectations. The production was shambolic, critics were disdainful, and the film was a dud at the box office. The Blue Bird is largely forgotten nowadays, but the story of the film's production and reception sheds valuable light on the economics and politics of cross-bloc filmmaking. It also provides insight into the importance of cinema as an instrument of public diplomacy at the height of détente.


I. INTRODUCTION The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decided en banc on September 13, 2004 that no adverse inference of willful infringement of a patent may be drawn either from the failure to obtain legal advice or the invocation of the attorney-client privilege concerning the advice sought. (1) This landmark case, Knorr-Bremse Systeme Fuer Nutzfahrzeuge GMBH v. Dana Corporation, (2) hereinafter Knorr-Bremse, overrules prior Federal Circuit precedent (3) and makes willful patent infringement (4) more difficult to prove, and thus treble damages (5) and attorneys' fees, (6) more difficult to obtain, in patent infringement suits. This article will examine the historical precedent for an inference of willful patent infringement either from the failure to receive legal advice on the issue or the invocation of the attorney-client privilege concerning advice sought. This article will then analyze Knorr-Bremse, called one of the major appellate cases of 2004, (7) in which the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit overruled their own prior precedent to no longer allow such an inference. This article will conclude with implications arising from this landmark case. II. INFERENCE OF WILLFUL PATENT INFRINGEMENT FROM EITHER FAILURE TO CONSULT LEGAL COUNSEL OR INVOKING THE ATTORNEY-CLIENT PRIVILEGE The U.S. Patent Act defines a patent infringer as anyone who, "without authority makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented invention, within the United States or imports into the United States any patented invention" during the patent term. (8) A civil remedy is available for patent infringement. (9) These civil damages are to be adequate to compensate for the infringement, and, according to the Patent Act section 284, may be increased by the court to up to three times the amount found or assessed. (10) The court in exceptional cases, may also award reasonable attorney fees to the prevailing party, under the Patent Act section 285. (11) The increase in damages authorized by section 284 may occur when the infringement is willful. (12) No statutory standard sets the circumstances under which the district court may find willfulness to enhance damages. (13) In determining willful infringement, the court must find by clear and convincing evidence in the totality of the circumstances (14) that the alleged infringer acted in disregard of the patent and lacked a reasonable basis for believing that he had the right to perform the infringing act. (15) The totality of the circumstances must be weighed by the district court. (16) While there is no hard and fast per se rule for willfulness, (17) the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, however, has recognized several factors which may be weighed in determining whether damages should be enhanced. (18) These factors include: (1) whether the infringer deliberately copied the ideas or design of another; (2) whether the infringer, when the infringer knew of the patent holder's patent protection, investigated the issue and had a good faith belief that the patent was invalid or was not infringed; (3) the infringer's behavior as a party to the litigation; (4) the defendant's size and financial condition; (5) closeness of the case; (6) duration of the infringer's misconduct; (7) the infringer's motivation for harm; and (8) whether the defendant attempted to conceal his misconduct. (19) Considering the second factor--investigating the issue and forming a good faith belief of non-infringement--the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a finding of non-willful infringement and no enhanced damages when the alleged infringer had a copy of the invention not marked "Patent Pending," and no patent had been issued, when there was reasonable reliance on advice of counsel. (20) There are similar illustrative, but not exhaustive, decisions involving advice of patent counsel. For example, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed a finding of willfulness when a patent attorney evaluated the patent and advised the defendants that their competing invention did not infringe. …


Extracellular vesicles (EV) are emergent therapeutic effectors that have reached clinical trial investigation. To translate EV-based therapeutic to clinic, the challenge is to demonstrate quality, safety, and efficacy, as required for any medicinal product. EV research translation into medicinal products is an exciting and challenging perspective. Recent papers, provide important guidance on regulatory aspects of pharmaceutical development, defining EVs for therapeutic applications and critical considerations for the development of potency tests. In addition, the ISEV Task Force on Regulatory Affairs and Clinical Use of EV-based Therapeutics as well as the Exosomes Committee from the ISCT are expected to contribute in an active way to the development of EV-based medicinal products by providing update on the scientific progress in EVs field, information to patients and expert resource network for regulatory bodies. The contribution of our work group ''Extracellular Vesicle translatiOn to clinicaL perspectiVEs – EVOLVE France", created in 2020, can be positioned in complement to all these important initiatives. Based on complementary scientific, technical, and medical expertise, we provide EV-specific recommendations for manufacturing, quality control, analytics, non-clinical development, and clinical trials, according to current European legislation. We especially focus on early phase clinical trials concerning immediate needs in the field. The main contents of the investigational medicinal product dossier, marketing authorization applications, and critical guideline information are outlined for the transition from research to clinical development and ultimate market authorization. 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.


The Australian dairy industry has a farmgate value of AU$3 billion and employs over 40,000 people across the supply chain. Without doubt, the success of the industry is based on a strong foundation of competitiveness, created through a long history of research, development and extension (RD&E). Understanding how the research and extension continuum works and learns together is a fundamental issue implicating the effectiveness of innovation development along with deployment of industry funding.
Farmlets have been a key tool for Australian dairy RD&E, and are small scale dairy farms used to research farming system management issues. Within most of these projects is a team of researchers and extension practitioners working together with their regional farming community to improve management systems, and increase the profitability and sustainability. However, little is known as to what the requirements and possibilities for learning from these farmlet projects are. Anecdotal evidence suggested that farmlet stakeholders consider farmlets to be a learning platform for the dairy industry. But just how do farmlets act as a learning platform for the Australian dairy industry?
Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) was used as the theoretical framework for underpinning this research. A qualitative, constructionist approach to the research methodology utilised four case studies of regional farmlet project activities which were supported by two national dairy project case studies, for analysing learning platforms. Evidence was sourced through interviews, participant observation and secondary data. Strassaurian Grounded Theory method was employed for data analysis, using Nvivo qualitative data analysis software and thematic analysis techniques. Critical to the approach was for the student to work within the programs both as a contributor to the teams activities and as an observer.
This research concluded that farmlets do act as learning platforms for the Australian dairy industry which is defined as ―an intellectual construction that aims to take the process, activities, outputs and outcomes that the dairy RD&E continuum use to set joint objectives and share physical and intellectual resources to manage adaptation‖. What underpins this construction is fundamentally a series of processes and contradictions that challenge cultural norms and adequacy of practice. It commands embracement and management of contradictions as a fundamental part to practice, rather than an inconvenience or interfering event.
5
Overall, the research seeks to encourage broader questioning of not just on what we do in terms of dairy farming systems RD&E using farmlets, but how we work, learn and share knowledge throughout the process of implementing a project. It seeks to make a contribution to the domain of farming systems RD&E, along with stimulating greater dialogue and thinking and subsequent practices that will better capture and utilise transformation processes across the continuum. The new age of current competitiveness and accountability against the deployment of industry funds commands this, as a narrow focus on just providing industry with technical on-farm knowledge outputs is no longer adequate.


Objectives: To validate a sensitive and specific screening test for AD and other dementias, assess its reliability and discriminative validity, and present normative data for its use in various applied settings. Background: To improve discrimination in screening for AD and dementia, we developed the Memory Impairment Screen (MIS), a 4-minute, four-item, delayed free- and cued-recall test of memory impairment. The MIS uses controlled learning to ensure attention, induce specific semantic processing, and optimize encoding specificity to improve detection of dementia. Methods: Equivalent forms of the MIS were given at the beginning and end of the testing session to assess alternate forms reliability. Discriminative validity was assessed in a criterion sample of 483 aged individuals, 50 of whom had dementia according to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (3rd ed., revised) criteria. Results: The MIS had good alternate forms reliability, high construct validity for memory impairment, and good discriminative validity in terms of sensitivity, specificity, and positive predictive value. We present normative data for use in settings with different base rates (prevalences) of AD and dementia. Conclusion: The MIS provides efficient, reliable, and valid screening for AD and other dementias.


This study sought to determine whether using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) would detect differences in personality preferences in first-year dental students admitted to the same dental school through different admission methods. First-year dental students admitted in 2000 and 2001 were given the MBTI instrument during orientation prior to the start of classes. In fall 2000, the Class of 2004 had 140 students, with 116 in the traditional track and twenty-four in the parallel problem-based learning (PBL) track. In fall 2001, the Class of 2005 had 144 students, all enrolled in the PBL curriculum. All students admitted to the PBL track had experienced a process that included evaluation of their participation in a small group. Students in the traditional track had individual interviews with faculty members. Both student groups were required to meet the same baseline grade point average and Dental Admission Test standards. In 2000, the PBL students showed personality preferences that were distinctly different from the personality preferences of traditional track students in the categories of Extroversion (89 percent PBL, 44 percent traditional) and Thinking (72 percent PBL, 39 percent traditional). In 2001, the all-PBL class retained the trend towards Extroversion (69 percent). This study suggests that admission method may effectively change the personality preference distribution exhibited by the students who are admitted to dental school.


This paper analyzes the evidence of non-linearities in the reaction function of the Central Bank of Chile as it relates to its final objective, inflation, and/or to its intermediate objectives defined by the monetary policy transmission channels. The study uses the flexible approach to non-linear inference proposed by Hamilton (2001), which allows the estimation of non-linear functions by using the data to determine the specific form of the non-linearity to be adopted instead of making any prior assumption of a particular functional form. It is observed that even though the Central Bank's response is linear in relation to the deviations of the inflation rate from its target, there is evidence of non-linearities with respect to the business cycle. Contrary to previous studies, in particular Corbo (2002), the current account gap does not have any predictive role in the reaction function for the period being analyzed.


ton, Reisner, Koo, Hutchinson, Van Dusen, and Stanley Jones. The subjects include missionary strategies, religious liberty, anthropology, rural service, literacy, missions and imperialism, and the price of victory (love). The book is a mine of information for preachers and for average laymen. Good for study groups and prayer meetings. The book brings the world task of the church to your door.


This paper investigates the relationship between freight transport, economic growth and environmental degradation (CO2 emissions) experienced by ninety countries over the period 1980-2014. The estimation is divided into the global panel, high-income countries, upper-middle income countries, lower-middle income countries, and lower-income countries. This paper employed simultaneous equation Model and was estimated by Three-Stage Least Squares (3SLS). The results discovered the existence of bi-directional causality relationship between economic growth and freight transport in the high-income countries and lower-income countries. The result also indicated the bi-directional causality relationship between the transportation and CO2 emissions in the panel upper-middle-income countries. Lastly, the finding indicated the bi-directional causality between economic growth and CO2 emissions in lower-middle income countries.


BACKGROUND & AIMS
Changes in intestinal microbiome composition are associated with inflammatory, metabolic, and malignant disorders. We studied how exocrine pancreatic function affects intestinal microbiota.

METHODS
We performed 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequencing analysis of stool samples from 1795 volunteers from the population-based Study of Health in Pomerania who had no history of pancreatic disease. We also measured fecal pancreatic elastase by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and performed quantitative imaging of secretin-stimulated pancreatic fluid secretion. Associations of exocrine pancreatic function with microbial diversity or individual genera were calculated by permutational analysis of variance or linear regression, respectively.

RESULTS
Differences in pancreatic elastase levels associated with significantly (P < .0001) greater changes in microbiota diversity than with participant age, body mass index, sex, smoking, alcohol consumption, or dietary factors. Significant changes in the abundance of 30 taxa, such as an increase in Prevotella (q < .0001) and a decrease of Bacteroides (q < .0001), indicated a shift from a type-1 to a type-2 enterotype. Changes in pancreatic fluid secretion alone were also associated with changes in microbial diversity (P = .0002), although to a lesser degree.

CONCLUSIONS
In an analysis of fecal samples from 1795 volunteers, pancreatic acinar cell, rather than duct cell, function is presently the single most significant host factor to be associated with changes in intestinal microbiota composition.


The films of John Akomfrah have begun, with their recent increase in both budgets and ambitions, to seem less like artworks than research projects. The Nine Muses (2012) worked through a specific body of testimony and archive footage related to the first post-war wave of Caribbean migrants to arrive in Britain. The Stuart Hall Project and The Unfinished Conversation(2013) sorted through the facts and documents of the life and ideas of a figure important to Akomfrah's project –Hall had acted in an advisory role early on in the work of the Black Audio Film Collective, of which Akomfrah was a founding member. Peripeteia, first shown in Akomfrah's 2012 show at Carroll/Fletcher, extrapolated from two drawings by Albrecht Durer depicting black Africans a bleak, well-composed drama of dislocation.


The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Landsat program has been dedicated to sustaining data continuity over the 20-year period during which Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) and Enhanced TM Plus (ETM+) sensors have been acquiring images of the Earth's surface. In 2000, NASA launched the Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) Advanced Land Imager (ALI) to test new technology that could improve the TM/ETM+ sensor series, yet ensure Landsat data continuity. The study reported here quantified the continuity of satellite-retrieved surface reflectance (/spl rho/) for the three most recent Landsat sensors (Landsat-4 TM, Landsat-5 TM, and Landsat-7 ETM+) and the EO-1 ALI sensor. The study was based on ground-data verification and, in the case of the ETM+ to ALI comparison, coincident image analysis. Reflectance retrieved from all four sensors showed good correlation with ground-measured reflectance, and the sensor-to-sensor data continuity was excellent for all sensors and all bands. A qualitative analysis of the new ALI spectral bands (4p: 0.845-0.890 /spl mu/m and 5p: 1.20-1.30 /spl mu/m) showed that ALI band 5p provided information that was different from that provided by the ETM+/ALI shortwave infrared bands 5 and 7 for agricultural targets and that ALI band 4p has the advantage over the existing ETM+ near-infrared (NIR) band 4 and ALI NIR band 4 of being relatively insensitive to water vapor absorption. The basic conclusion of this study is that the four sensors can provide excellent data continuity for temporal studies of natural resources. Furthermore, the new technologies put forward by the EO-1 ALI sensor have had no apparent effect on data continuity and should be considered for the upcoming Landsat-8 sensor payload.


Roots and background of reformed theology and ecclesiastical being in South Africa. After investigating researches and publications on the ethical direction taken by Dutch theology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, J A Loader came to the conclusion that this direction is an important - if not the most important - background to the theology of the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk van Afrika. and of its theological training at the University of Pretona, especially during the earlier years and at the time of its inception. In this article the outcome of the research undertaken by Loader is critically reviewed and seriously questioned. It is maintained that his evaluation of ethical theology is too rigid and its influence on the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk overemphasised. It seems that the prominent influence of Hoedemaker and confessional theology is overlooked by Loader.


Fish stocks have decreased substantially over the last decades due to human exploitation of the ocean. This declining trend has been exacerbated by climate change, with acidifying waters harming marine life. This paper exploits exogenous variation in water acidity across time and space to study how the ocean impacts early-childhood mortality. We collate and analyze more than 1.5 million births between 1972 and 2018 in communities near the shore of 36 developing countries. By comparing children born in the same location but on different dates and controlling for a set of high-dimensional fixed effects, we identify the causal impact of in utero exposure to the ocean's acidity on mortality. In coastal areas, a 0.01 unit increase in acidity causes 2 additional neonatal deaths per 1,000 live births. This result is robust to within-siblings comparisons. It is selectively affecting the weakest children as the effect gradually vanishes after the first month of life. Mothers do not compensate with any additional health investment during the gestation period. Reduced access to nutrients derived from fish that are essential to fetal growth is the key mechanism behind our findings. While fish is critical to global food security, humanity's relationship with the ocean remains poorly understood. This paper provides the first quantitative evidence linking the exploitation of natural resources with malnutrition and neonatal selection.


The creation of the Black-Scholes-Merton options pricing model and its publication in 1 973 , expanded risk management financial research and practice. Concurrently, there have been many assets created in the derivative markets. In line with this, the introduction of Australian Treasury-Bond futures overnight options at the Sydney Futures Exchange (SFE) during 1993 offers a unique opportunity to examine trading behavior with a different market microstructure. This dissertation is the first study of its kind to investigate the market microstructure of the SFE overnight options market. This work explores market microstructure aspects of Australian Treasury Bond futures overnight options regarding market liquidity, transaction costs, market order flows, information asymmetry, and market volatility. We first present an institutional overview of the Sydney Futures Exchange (SFE) and discussions about products traded at the SFE. This builds the foundation for the following empirical studies. Next, we examine trading behaviours of 3-Year and 1 0y ear T-Bond futures overnight options by looking at intra-night bid-ask spreads, trading volume, and volatility patterns. We observe different intra-night bid-ask spreads, trading volume, and volatility patterns compared to stocks and long dated options. Third, the impact of overnight options introduction on the underlying 3-Year and 1 0-Year T-Bond futures market is examined. Results indicate that the introduction of overnight options has influence on the underlying 3-Year and 1 0-Year T-Bond futures. Fourth, we examine information shocks on the underlying futures return volatility and present optimal time-varying models to estimate and forecast the underlying futures return volatility. The analysis undertaken allows us to recommend the most appropriate models for predicting return volatility for the underlying futures market, and hence presents a key element in the puzzle of how best to price these innovative products. Finally, implied, forecasted, and realized volatility are examined to determine information content of implied volatility when predicting future volatility. This information may be useful to traders wishing to accurately price overnight options.


The gaseous phase in experiments of diamond crystallisation in the carbonate-carbon systems Li 2 CO 3 -C, Na 2 CO 3 -C, K 2 CO 3 -C, CS 2 CO 3 -C, CaCO 3 -C, CaMg(CO 3 ) 2 -C at P = 7 GPa and T =1 700–1750°C (using the "split-sphere" high-pressure device) was studied by means of gas chromatography. Unlike in traditional metal-carbon systems, in which diamond forms under highly reducing conditions in the presence of a methane-hydrogen fluid, crystallisation of diamond in carbonate-carbon systems occurs in the presence of a H 2 O-CO 2 -rich fluid. The results provide experimental confirmation of the possibility for diamond to crystallise in nature in a wide range of redox conditions.


Psychological well-being occurs when there is an absence of mental disorders and presence of positive states. Given the increasing prevalence of mental disorders, which are thought to have their roots in childhood, improving psychological well-being in children is currently an important area of research. Physical activity has been proposed as a method by which negative states can be reduced and positive states increased, thereby increasing children's overall psychological well-being and in turn helping to protect against a decline into clinical disorders. Research focusing on physical activity and psychological wellbeing has mainly used selfreported measurements to assess physical activity, a method which leads to considerable non-differential misclassification that in turn will attenuate associations between physical activity and psychological wellbeing. Few studies have employed more precise, objective measures such as accelerometry. Despite providing a more precise measure of physical activity, a number of limitations are present with the use of accelerometry, specifically concerning the data reduction processes. Various decisions made when handling accelerometer data can result in misclassification of time spent in different intensities of physical activity and can introduce selection bias. The present thesis aims to address how the decisions made during data reduction can affect estimates of physical activity prevalence and alter the observed relationships between physical activity and psychological well-being in children. The first study of this thesis assessed the misclassification of activity intensities occurring as a result of the use of various accelerometer cut-points and the resulting variation in relationships between physical activity and psychological well-being that occurs. Results showed that the use of different cut-points to determine physical activity intensity alters the magnitude of the relationship between physical activity and psychological well-being; relationships were attenuated, with some becoming non-significant. The second study addressed the issue of children's compliance with wear time requirements over multiple time points; compliance with wear time decreased over time, whilst inclusion and exclusion rules based on minimum wear times introduced selection bias. The use of more lenient wear time criteria, to reduce selection bias, introduced misclassification of physical activity intensities. Further, longitudinal relationships between physical activity and psychological well-being differed depending upon the wear time criteria employed. The third study aimed to address whether compliance, and in turn selection bias would systematically differ between groups of a trial of a physical activity intervention, and whether this would alter the results of the intervention itself. Results showed that compliance varied across trial condition, that selection bias with groups was different for each condition and that non-compliance hindered the exploration of the mediating effect of physical activity on psychological well-being. Study four involved the validation and calibration of a new wrist worn, waterproof physical activity monitor more compatible with 24 hour wear, thus potentially overcoming the compliance problems noted in the earlier studies. Results showed good concurrent and criterion validity, with high classification accuracy for the cutpoints created. The final study assessed the acceptability and compliance with 24 hour wear in children and allowed a detailed examination of the underestimation of time spent in PA intensities that occurs from capturing shorter and different periods of the day. Results showed large misclassification with 10 hour capture periods relative to complete observation, with time in activity intensities varying across different periods of the day. The results of this thesis demonstrate that substantial selection bias and misclassification of time in activity intensities can be introduced through the decisions made during the processing of raw accelerometry data. Furthermore, this error alters the relationships between physical activity and psychological well-being. The results indicate that the true relationship between physical activity and psychological well-being in children may still be unknown, with researchers reporting relationships and effects only relevant to the measurement methods and data reduction processes they have employed. A method of overcoming selection bias and reducing misclassification is through 24 hour wear, which through the design of new accelerometers is now possible. Future studies should use monitors compatible with and acceptable for complete observation. This would result in more precise estimates of time spent in physical activity intensities and less selection bias. Both of these improvements would greatly increase our understanding of the relationship between physical activity and psychological well-being in children.


Post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression is a mechanism that governs developmental and cellular events in metazoans. In early embryogenesis, transcriptionally quiescent cells depend upon maternally supplied factors such as RNA binding proteins and RNA that control key decisions. Morphogen gradients form and in turn pattern the early embryo generating different cell types and spatial order. In the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans , the early embryo relies upon several RNA binding proteins that control mRNA stability, translation efficiency, and/or mRNA localization of cell fate determinants essential for proper development. MEX-5 and MEX-3 are two conserved RNA-binding proteins required to pattern the anterior/posterior axis and early embryo. Mutation of either gene results in a maternal effect lethal phenotype with proliferating posterior muscle into the anterior blastomeres (Muscle EXcess). Several cell-fate determinants are aberrantly expressed in mex-5 and mex-3 embryos. Both proteins are thought to interact with cis -regulatory elements present in 3'-UTRs of target RNAs controlling their metabolism. However, previous studies failed to demonstrate that these proteins regulate maternal transcripts directly. This dissertation presents a thorough assessment of the RNA binding properties of MEX-5 and MEX-3. Quantitative biochemical approaches were used to determine the RNA binding specificity of both proteins. MEX-5 has a relaxed specificity, binding with high affinity to linear RNA containing a tract of six or more uridines within an eight-nucleotide window. This is very different from its mammalian homologs Tristetraprolin (TTP) and ERF-2. I was able to identify two amino acids present within the MEX-5 RNA binding domain that are required for the differential RNA recognition observed between MEX-5 and TTP. MEX-3 on the other hand is a specific RNA binding protein, recognizing a bipartite element with flexible spacing between two four-nucleotide half-sites. I demonstrate that this element is required for MEX-3 dependent regulation in vivo . Previous studies only identify a small number of candidate regulatory targets of MEX-5 and MEX-3. The defined sequence specificity of both proteins is used to predict new putative targets that may be regulated by either protein. Collectively, this study examines the RNA binding properties of MEX-5 and MEX-3 to clarify their role as post-transcriptional regulators in nematode development.


The dynamical evolution of stellar clusters is driven to a large extent by their environment. Several studies so far have considered the effect of tidal fields and their variations, for example, from giant molecular clouds, galactic discs or spiral arms. In this paper, we will concentrate on a tidal field whose effects on star clusters have not yet been studied, namely that of bars. We present a set of direct N-body simulations of star clusters moving in an analytic potential representing a barred galaxy. We compare the evolution of the clusters moving both on different planar periodic orbits in the barred potential and on circular orbits in a potential obtained by axisymmetrizing its mass distribution. We show that both the shape of the underlying orbit and its stability have strong impact on the cluster evolution as well as the morphology and orientation of the tidal tails and the substructures therein. We find that the dissolution time-scale of the cluster in our simulations is mainly determined by the tidal forcing along the orbit and, for a given tidal forcing, only very little by the exact shape of the gravitational potential in which the cluster is moving.


Analyzing the planet at scale with satellite imagery and machine learning is a dream that has been constantly hindered by the cost of difficult-to-access highly-representative high-resolution imagery. To remediate this, we introduce here the WorldStrat dataset. The largest and most varied such publicly available dataset, at Airbus SPOT 6/7 satellites' high resolution of up to 1.5 m/pixel, empowered by European Space Agency's Phi-Lab as part of the ESA-funded QueryPlanet project, we curate nearly 10,000 sqkm of unique locations to ensure stratified representation of all types of land-use across the world: from agriculture to ice caps, from forests to multiple urbanization densities. We also enrich those with locations typically under-represented in ML datasets: sites of humanitarian interest, illegal mining sites, and settlements of persons at risk. We temporally-match each high-resolution image with multiple low-resolution images from the freely accessible lower-resolution Sentinel-2 satellites at 10 m/pixel. We accompany this dataset with an open-source Python package to: rebuild or extend the WorldStrat dataset, train and infer baseline algorithms, and learn with abundant tutorials, all compatible with the popular EO-learn toolbox. We hereby hope to foster broad-spectrum applications of ML to satellite imagery, and possibly develop from free public low-resolution Sentinel2 imagery the same power of analysis allowed by costly private high-resolution imagery. We illustrate this specific point by training and releasing several highly compute-efficient baselines on the task of Multi-Frame Super-Resolution. High-resolution Airbus imagery is CC BY-NC, while the labels and Sentinel2 imagery are CC BY, and the source code and pre-trained models under BSD. The dataset is available at https://zenodo.org/record/6810792 and the software package at https://github.com/worldstrat/worldstrat .