219 research outputs found

    Curriculum Vitae (Feminae): Biography and Early American Women Lawyers

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    In this review, Carol Sanger examines the recent surge of interest in the lives of early women lawyers. Using Jane Friedman\u27s biography of Myra Bradwell, America\u27s First Woman Lawyer, as a starting point, Professor Sanger explores the complexities for the feminist biographer of reconciling for herself and for her subject conflicting professional, political, and personal sensibilities. Professor Sanger concludes that to advance the project of women\u27s history, feminist biographers ought not retreat to the comforts of commemorative Victorian biography, even for Victorian subject, but should instead strive to present and accept early women subjects on their own complex terms

    An atmospheric electrical method to determine the eddy diffusion coefficient

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    The ion-aerosol balance equations are solved to get the profiles of atmospheric electric parameters over the ground surface in an aerosol-rich environment under the conditions of surface radioactivity. Combining the earlier results for low aerosol concentrations and the present results for high aerosol concentrations, a relation is obtained between the average value of atmospheric electric space charge in the lowest ~2 m, the surface electric field and eddy diffusivity/aerosol concentration. The values of eddy diffusivity estimated from this method using some earlier measurements of space charge and surface electric field are in reasonably good agreement with those calculated from other standard methods using meteorological or electrical variables

    Changes in concentration and size distribution of aerosols during fog over the south Indian Ocean

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    Measurements of the concentration and size distribution of aerosol particles in the size-ranges of 0.5-20 μm and 16-700 nm diameters were made during six fog episodes over the south Indian Ocean. Observations show that concentrations of particles of all sizes start decreasing 1-2 hours before the occurrence of fog. This decrease is more prominent for coarse particles of >1 μm diameter and continues until 10-20 minutes before the onset of fog when particle concentrations in all size ranges rapidly increase by one/two orders of magnitude in ~20 minutes. Thereafter, concentrations of particles of all sizes gradually decrease until the dissipation of fog. After the fog dissipation, concentrations of coarse mode particles rapidly increase and restore to their pre-fog levels but concentrations of the Aitken mode particles decrease slowly and reach their pre-fog levels only after 1-2 hours. The net effect of fog is to change the bimodal size distributions of aerosols with a coarse mode at 1.0 μm and an accumulation mode at 40-60 nm to a power law size distribution. It is proposed that the preferential growth and sedimentation of the coarse mode hygroscopic particles in the initial phase cause a large decrease in the aerosol surface area. As a result, the low vapour pressure gases which were initially being used for the growth of coarse mode particles, now accelerate the growth rates of the accumulation and Aitken mode particles

    Size-distribution of submicron aerosol particles over the Indian Ocean during IFP-99 of INDOEX

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    Measurements of the size-distribution of submicron aerosol particles of diameter from 0.003 to 1 μm are made over the Indian Ocean during the IFP-99 of the Indian Ocean Experiment (INDOEX). Measurements are made during the onward journey from Goa to Port Louis, Mauritius from 20 January to 11 February 1999 onboard ORV Sagar Kanya and during the return journey from Port Louis to Male from 22 February to 1 March 1999 onboard Ronald H. Brown. Observations show large concentrations in the range of 2-6 × 103 particles/cm3 over the Indian Ocean in the northern hemisphere and these drop down to about 500 particles/cm3 in the southern hemisphere. However, the aerosol concentrations show a peak of about 3 × 103 particles/cm3 at 13°S. In the northern hemisphere, the concentration of particles of diameter < 0.0749 μm increases from 14°N to 1°N and then steeply falls. On the other hand, the concentration of particles of diameter > 0.0749 μm keeps decreasing up to 6°S. Size distributions of particles at open sea in the northern hemisphere show a maximum at 0.133 μm and minimum at 0.0422 μm and are generally openended at the smaller size end. The size-distributions of particles are sometimes relatively flat from 0.0133 to 0.237 μm when the particle concentrations are low in the southern hemisphere. The transport and accumulation of aerosol particles in the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone is discussed. The relative abundance of large versus small particles is examined with respect to the variation of surface atmospheric pressure along the route

    Airborne measurements of submicron aerosols across the coastline at Bhubaneswar during ICARB

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    Airborne measurements of the number concentration and size distribution of aerosols from 13 to 700 nm diameter have been made at four vertical levels across a coastline at Bhubaneswar (20°25'N, 85°83'E) during the Integrated Campaign for Aerosols, gases and Radiation Budget (ICARB) programme conducted in March-April 2006. The measurements made during the constant-level flights at 0.5, 1, 2 and 3 km altitude levels extend ~100 km over land and ~150km over ocean. Aerosol number concentrations vary from 2200 to 4500 cm-3 at 0.5 km level but are almost constant at ~6000 cm-3 and ~800 cm-3 at 2 and 3 km levels, respectively. At 1km level, aerosol number concentration shows a peak of 18,070 cm-3 around the coastline. Most of the aerosol size distribution curves at 0.5 km and 1 km levels are monomodal with a maxima at 110 nm diameter which shifts to 70 nm diameter at 2 and 3 km levels. However, at the peak at 1 km level, number concentration has a bimodal distribution with an additional maximum appearing in nucleation mode. It is proposed that this maxima in nucleation mode at 1 km level may be due to the formation and transport of new particles from coastal regions

    Measurements of the atmospheric electric field and conductivity made over Indian Ocean during December 96 - January 97

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    Observations of the atmospheric electric field and conductivity are made over the Indian Ocean during the pre-Indian Ocean Experiment (pre-INDOEX) cruise of ORV Sagar Kanya in December '96-January '97. The average of the diurnal variations of electric field on 6 fair-weather days during the cruise shows a single periodic variation with a maximum at 1100 GMT and a minimum at 0300 GMT. Its possible implications with respect to the global electric circuit are discussed. Electric conductivity is generally less in the northern hemisphere and increases 2-3 times in the southern hemisphere. Background aerosol concentrations have been calculated from the observed values of the electrical conductivity and discussed with respect to the local meteorological conditions in the region. The results show aerosol concentration of 1300 to 1800 particles/cm3 near the coastline in the northern hemisphere which slowly decrease as one goes away from the coast. Comparatively much lower aerosol concentrations of about 800 particles/cm3 are observed at 12-14°S in the pristine air of the southern hemisphere. Observations indicate a change of 2 to 4 times in the background aerosol pollution since the Carnegie measurements in this area in the second decade of this century

    Third-generation RNA-sequencing analysis : graph alignment and transcript assembly with long reads

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    The information contained in the genome of an organism, its DNA, is expressed through transcription of its genes to RNA, in quantities determined by many internal and external factors. As such, studying the gene expression can give valuable information for e.g. clinical diagnostics. A common analysis workflow of RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) data consists of mapping the sequencing reads to a reference genome, followed by the transcript assembly and quantification based on these alignments. The advent of second-generation sequencing revolutionized the field by reducing the sequencing costs by 50,000-fold. Now another revolution is imminent with the third-generation sequencing platforms producing an order of magnitude higher read lengths. However, higher error rate, higher cost and lower throughput compared to the second-generation sequencing bring their own challenges. To compensate for the low throughput and high cost, hybrid approaches using both short second-generation and long third-generation reads have gathered recent interest. The first part of this thesis focuses on the analysis of short-read RNA-seq data. As short-read mapping is an already well-researched field, we focus on giving a literature review of the topic. For transcript assembly we propose a novel (at the time of the publication) approach of using minimum-cost flows to solve the problem of covering a graph created from the read alignments with a set of paths with the minimum cost, under some cost model. Various network-flow-based solutions were proposed in parallel to, as well as after, ours. The second part, where the main contributions of this thesis lie, focuses on the analysis of long-read RNA-seq data. The driving point of our research has been the Minimum Path Cover with Subpath Constraints (MPC-SC) model, where transcript assembly is modeled as a minimum path cover problem, with the addition that each of the chains of exons (subpath constraints) created from the long reads must be completely contained in a solution path. In addition to implementing this concept, we experimentally studied different approaches on how to find the exon chains in practice. The evaluated approaches included aligning the long reads to a graph created from short read alignments instead of the reference genome, which led to our final contribution: extending a co-linear chaining algorithm from between two sequences to between a sequence and a directed acyclic graph.Transkriptiossa organismin geenien mallin mukaan luodaan RNA-molekyyleja. Lukuisat tekijät, sekä solun sisäiset että ulkoiset, määrittävät mitä geenejä transkriptoidaan, ja missä määrin. Tämän prosessin tutkiminen antaa arvokasta tietoa esimerkiksi lääketieteelliseen diagnostiikkaan. Yksi yleisistä RNA-sekvensointidatan analyysitavoista koostuu kolmesta osasta: lukujaksojen (read sequences) linjaus referenssigenomiin, transkriptien kokoaminen, ja transkriptien ekspressiotasojen määrittäminen. Toisen sukupolven sekvensointiteknologian kehityksen myötä sekvensoinnin hinta laski huomattavasti, mikä salli RNA-sekvensointidatan käytön yhä useampaan tarkoitukseen. Nyt kolmannen sukupolven sekvensointiteknologiat tarjoavat kertaluokkaa pidempiä lukujaksoja, mikä laajentaa analysointimahdollisuuksia. Kuitenkin suurempi virhemäärä, korkeampi hinta ja pienempi määrä tuotettua dataa tuovat omat haasteensa. Toisen ja kolmannen sukupolven teknologioiden käyttäminen yhdessä, ns. hybridilähestymistapa, on tutkimussuunta joka on kerännyt paljon kiinnostusta viimeaikoina. Tämän tutkielman ensimmäinen osa keskittyy toisen sukupolven, eli ns. lyhyiden RNA-lukujaksojen (short read), analyysiin. Näiden lyhyiden lukujaksojen linjausta referenssigenomiin on tutkittu jo 2000-luvulla, joten tällä alueella keskitymme olemassaolevaan kirjallisuuteen. Transkriptien kokoamisen alalta esittelemme metodin, joka käyttää vähimmäiskustannusvirtauksen (minimum-cost flow) mallia. Vähimmäiskustannusvirtauksen mallissa lukujaksoista luotu verkko peitetään joukolla polkuja, joiden kustannus on pienin mahdollinen. Virtausmalleja on käytetty myös muiden tutkijoiden kehittämissä analyysityökaluissa. Tämän tutkielman suurin kontribuutio on toisessa osassa, joka keskittyy ns. pitkien RNA-lukujaksojen (long read) analysointiin. Tutkimuksemme lähtökohtana on ollut malli, jossa pienimmän polkupeitteen (Minimum Path Cover) ongelmaan lisätään alipolkurajoitus (subpath constraint). Jokainen alipolkurajoitus vastaa eksoniketjua (exon chain), jotka jokin pitkä lukujakso peittää, ja jokaisen alipolkurajoituksen täytyy sisältyä kokonaan johonkin polkupeitteen polkuun. Tämän konseptin toteuttamisen lisäksi testasimme kokeellisesti erilaisia lähestymistapoja eksoniketjujen löytämiseksi. Näihin testattaviin lähestymistapoihin kuului pitkien lukujaksojen linjaaminen suoraan lyhyistä lukujaksoista luotuun verkkoon referenssigenomin sijaan. Tämä lähestymistapa johti tämän tutkielman viimeiseen kontribuutioon: kolineaarisen ketjun (co-linear chaining) algoritmin yleistäminen kahden sekvenssin sijasta sekvenssiin ja suunnattuun syklittömään verkkoon

    Effect of relative humidity on the electrical conductivity of marine air

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    Measurements of the atmospheric electric conductivity made in the equatorial Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea in August and September 1991 show that the value of conductivity decreases from 2.3 × 10-14 mho m-1 in the equatorial Indian Ocean, where relative humidity of the surface air is 70-80%, to 1.1 × 10-14 mho m-1 in the region of the Somali current, where relative humidity of the surface air increases to 80-90%. the inverse relationship observed between conductivity and relative humidity, in spite of showing a large scatter, is stronger in the case of negative than positive conductivity. the sharp increase in the sizes of ions and marine aerosol particles when the relative humidity exceeds 75-80% is proposed as the cause of the observed decrease in conductivity in the region of the Somali current

    Plant population and fungicide economically reduce winter wheat yield gap in Kansas

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    Master of ScienceDepartment of AgronomyRomulo P. LollatoWinter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) water limited yield potential in Kansas averages 5.2 Mg ha⁻¹; however, state-level yields rarely surpassed 3.4 Mg ha⁻¹. Our objective was to quantify the contribution of individual management practices to reduce wheat yield gaps (YG) economically. An incomplete factorial treatment structure established in a randomized complete block design with six replications was used to evaluate 14 treatments during two years in Manhattan, Belleville, and Hutchinson Kansas. Sites were combined based on tillage practice, growing region in Kansas, and disease pressure. Thus, Manhattan had low disease pressure, was no-tilled, and in eastern Kansas for 2015-16 and 2016-17 (two site years). Meanwhile, Belleville and Hutchinson had high disease pressure, were conventionally tilled, and in central Kansas for 2015-16 and 2016-17 (four site years). We individually added six treatments to a farmer’s practice control (FP) or removed from a water-limited yield control (Y[subscript]w), which received all treatments. Practices were additional split-nitrogen (N), sulfur (S), chloride (Cl), increased plant population, foliar fungicide, and plant growth regulator (PGR). Percent YG was calculated by block and site-year using the Y[subscript]w as reference for potential yield. Orthogonal contrasts indicated yield under no-till which had low disease pressure increased from the FP by the full Y[subscript]w (+0.37 Mg ha⁻¹), but also by the individual practices split-N (+0.28 Mg ha⁻¹), S (+0.26 Mg ha⁻¹), increased plant population (+0.36 Mg ha⁻¹), and fungicide (+0.18 Mg ha⁻¹). In the conventional till which had high disease pressure, wheat yield was increased by 1.18 Mg ha⁻¹ from the Y[subscript]w and by 1.44 Mg ha⁻¹ from the fungicide. The Y[subscript]w and split-N increased grain protein concentration in no-till and conventional-till on average by 9 g kg-1 and 12 g kg-1, respectively. Across all inputs, orthogonal contrasts indicated that the FP yield gap was 8% in no-till which had low disease pressure. Likewise, the orthogonal contrasts indicated that across individual treatments the YG was reduced by split-N (6%), S (5%), Cl (3%), increased plant population (8%), and fungicide (4%). Meanwhile, orthogonal contrasts indicated that the FP yield gap was 20% across all inputs and across individual inputs reduced to 5% from fungicide under conventional-till which had high disease pressure. Fungicide increased net return (+106.57ha1)underconventionaltillwhichhadhighdiseasepressure,andincreasedplantpopulationundernotillwhichhadlowdiseasepressure(+106.57 ha⁻¹) under conventional-till which had high disease pressure, and increased plant population under no-till which had low disease pressure (+36.65 ha⁻¹). While a high-cost input (i.e. fungicide) only economically reduced YG greater than 20%; however, a low-cost input (i.e. increased plant population) economically reduced YG less than 20%
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