Ion chambers simplify absolute intensity measurements in the vacuum ultraviolet

Single or double ion chamber technique measures absolute radiation intensities in the extreme vacuum ultraviolet region of the spectrum. The ion chambers use rare gases as the ion carrier. Photon absorbed by the gas creates one ion pair so a measure of these is a measure of the number of incident photons

OpenForensics:a digital forensics GPU pattern matching approach for the 21st century

Pattern matching is a crucial component employed in many digital forensic (DF) analysis techniques, such as file-carving. The capacity of storage available on modern consumer devices has increased substantially in the past century, making pattern matching approaches of current generation DF tools increasingly ineffective in performing timely analyses on data seized in a DF investigation. As pattern matching is a trivally parallelisable problem, general purpose programming on graphic processing units (GPGPU) is a natural fit for this problem. This paper presents a pattern matching framework - OpenForensics - that demonstrates substantial performance improvements from the use of modern parallelisable algorithms and graphic processing units (GPUs) to search for patterns within forensic images and local storage devices

Hydrogeological report on water well monitoring in Aboriginal lands to May 2002

Water well monitoring data from wells on Aboriginal lands (Pitjantjatjara, Yalata, Nepabunna and Oak Valley) are summarised for the period April 2001 to May 2002. This report also shows plots and analysis of all data for each well since monitoring began. In the Pitjantjatjara lands aquifers at all communities except Kalka, Mimili and Fregon showed significant recharge and water levels have recovered to, or are above, the levels recorded at the time of drilling. The three exceptions are probably extensive aquifers that have generally been free from signs of depletion. The only community for which there is any short term (5-10 years) concern is Indulkana. Whilst there was recharge to the older wells, the community now relies on the Indulkana Range wells for a larger portion of its water supply. The aquifer in which these wells is completed was not recharged and water levels are declining. At Nepabunna supplies are still marginal and the heavy pumping regime has made monitoring insensitive to small but possibly significant changes. Modification of the monitoring is required, preferably with separate monitoring wells. The Yalata aquifer is unaffected by pumping, but the groundwater level appears to be declining by natural drainage. No recharge is observed. Oak Valley supplies have held up remarkably well, but are still regarded as fragile. Stringent water management is essential if the additional costs of importing water are to be avoided.repor

The ROTSE-III Robotic Telescope System

The observation of a prompt optical flash from GRB990123 convincingly demonstrated the value of autonomous robotic telescope systems. Pursuing a program of rapid follow-up observations of gamma-ray bursts, the Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment (ROTSE) has developed a next-generation instrument, ROTSE-III, that will continue the search for fast optical transients. The entire system was designed as an economical robotic facility to be installed at remote sites throughout the world. There are seven major system components: optics, optical tube assembly, CCD camera, telescope mount, enclosure, environmental sensing & protection and data acquisition. Each is described in turn in the hope that the techniques developed here will be useful in similar contexts elsewhere.Comment: 19 pages, including 4 figures. To be published in PASP in January, 2003. PASP Number IP02-11

de Sitter geodesics: reappraising the notion of motion

The de Sitter spacetime is transitive under a combination of translations and proper conformal transformations. Its usual family of geodesics, however, does not take into account this property. As a consequence, there are points in de Sitter spacetime which cannot be joined to each other by any one of these geodesics. By taking into account the appropriate transitivity properties in the variational principle, a new family of maximizing trajectories is obtained, whose members are able to connect any two points of the de Sitter spacetime. These geodesics introduce a new notion of motion, given by a combination of translations and proper conformal transformations, which may possibly become important at very-high energies, where conformal symmetry plays a significant role.Comment: 9 pages. V2: Presentation changes aiming at clarifying the text; version accepted for publication in Gen. Rel. Gra

An engineered Tetrahymena tRNA(Gln) for in vivo incorporation of unnatural amino acids into proteins by nonsense suppression

A new tRNA, THG73, has been designed and evaluated as a vehicle for incorporating unnatural amino acids site-specifically into proteins expressed in vivo using the stop codon suppression technique. The construct is a modification of tRNAGln(CUA) from Tetrahymena thermophila, which naturally recognizes the stop codon UAG. Using electrophysiological studies of mutations at several sites of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor, it is established that THG73 represents a major improvement over previous nonsense suppressors both in terms of efficiency and fidelity of unnatural amino acid incorporation. Compared with a previous tRNA used for in vivo suppression, THG73 is as much as 100-fold less likely to be acylated by endogenous synthetases of the Xenopus oocyte. This effectively eliminates a major concern of the in vivo suppression methodology, the undesirable incorporation of natural amino acids at the suppression site. In addition, THG73 is 4-10-fold more efficient at incorporating unnatural amino acids in the oocyte system. Taken together, these two advances should greatly expand the range of applicability of the in vivo nonsense suppression methodology

Precautionary labelling of foods for allergen content: are we ready for a global framework?

© 2014 Allen et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.Food allergy appears to be on the rise with the current mainstay of treatment centred on allergen avoidance. Mandatory allergen labelling has improved the safety of food for allergic consumers. However an additional form of voluntary labelling (termed precautionary allergen labelling) has evolved on a wide range of packaged goods, in a bid by manufacturers to minimise risk to customers, and the negative impact on business that might result from exposure to trace amounts of food allergen present during cross-contamination during production. This has resulted in near ubiquitous utilisation of a multitude of different precautionary allergen labels with subsequent confusion amongst many consumers as to their significance. The global nature of food production and manufacturing makes harmonisation of allergen labelling regulations across the world a matter of increasing importance. Addressing inconsistencies across countries with regards to labelling legislation, as well as improvement or even banning of precautionary allergy labelling are both likely to be significant steps forward in improved food safety for allergic families. This article outlines the current status of allergen labelling legislation around the world and reviews the value of current existing precautionary allergen labelling for the allergic consumer. We strongly urge for an international framework to be considered to help roadmap a solution to the weaknesses of the current systems, and discuss the role of legislation in facilitating this

Gut-seeded α-synuclein fibrils promote gut dysfunction and brain pathology specifically in aged mice

Parkinson’s disease is a synucleinopathy that is characterized by motor dysfunction, death of midbrain dopaminergic neurons and accumulation of α-synuclein (α-Syn) aggregates. Evidence suggests that α-Syn aggregation can originate in peripheral tissues and progress to the brain via autonomic fibers. We tested this by inoculating the duodenal wall of mice with α-Syn preformed fibrils. Following inoculation, we observed gastrointestinal deficits and physiological changes to the enteric nervous system. Using the AAV-PHP.S capsid to target the lysosomal enzyme glucocerebrosidase for peripheral gene transfer, we found that α-Syn pathology is reduced due to the increased expression of this protein. Lastly, inoculation of α-Syn fibrils in aged mice, but not younger mice, resulted in progression of α-Syn histopathology to the midbrain and subsequent motor defects. Our results characterize peripheral synucleinopathy in prodromal Parkinson’s disease and explore cellular mechanisms for the gut-to-brain progression of α-Syn pathology

Reversing conditional orderings

We analyze some specific aspects concerning conditional orderings and relations among them. To this purpose we define a suitable concept of reversed conditional ordering and prove some related results. In particular we aim to compare the univariate stochastic orderings ≤ st, ≤ hr, and ≤ lr in terms of differences among different notions of conditional orderings. Some applications of our result to the analysis of positive dependence will be detailed. We concentrate attention to the case of a pair of scalar random variables X, Y ​. Suitable extensions to multivariate cases are possible