Oil Palm Research in Context: Identifying the Need for Biodiversity Assessment

Oil palm cultivation is frequently cited as a major threat to tropical biodiversity as it is centered on some of the world's most biodiverse regions. In this report, Web of Science was used to find papers on oil palm published since 1970, which were assigned to different subject categories to visualize their research focus. Recent years have seen a broadening in the scope of research, with a slight growth in publications on the environment and a dramatic increase in those on biofuel. Despite this, less than 1% of publications are related to biodiversity and species conservation. In the context of global vegetable oil markets, palm oil and soyabean account for over 60% of production but are the subject of less than 10% of research. Much more work must be done to establish the impacts of habitat conversion to oil palm plantation on biodiversity. Results from such studies are crucial for informing conservation strategies and ensuring sustainable management of plantations

Active fixturing: literature review and future research directions

Fixtures are used to fixate, position and support workpieces and represent a crucial tool in manufacturing. Their performance determines the result of the whole manufacturing process of a product. There is a vast amount of research done on automatic fixture layout synthesis and optimisation and fixture design verification. Most of this work considers fixture mechanics to be static and the fixture elements to be passive. However, a new generation of fixtures has emerged that has actuated fixture elements for active control of the part–fixture system during manufacturing operations to increase the end product quality. This paper analyses the latest studies in the field of active fixture design and its relationship with flexible and reconfigurable fixturing systems. First, a brief introduction is given on the importance of research of fixturing systems. Secondly, the basics of workholding and fixture design are visited, after which the state-of-the-art in active fixturing and related concepts is presented. Fourthly, part–fixture dynamics and design strategies which take these into account are discussed. Fifthly, the control strategies used in active fixturing systems are examined. Finally, some final conclusions and prospective future research directions are presented

Numerical magnitude affects temporal memories but not time encoding

Previous research has suggested that the perception of time is influenced by concurrent magnitude information (e.g., numerical magnitude in digits, spatial distance), but the locus of the effect is unclear, with some findings suggesting that concurrent magnitudes such as space affect temporal memories and others suggesting that numerical magnitudes in digits affect the clock speed during time encoding. The current paper reports 6 experiments in which participants perceived a stimulus duration and then reproduced it. We showed that though a digit of a large magnitude (e.g., 9), relative to a digit of a small magnitude (e.g., 2), led to a longer reproduced duration when the digits were presented during the perception of the stimulus duration, such a magnitude effect disappeared when the digits were presented during the reproduction of the stimulus duration. These findings disconfirm the account that large numerical magnitudes accelerate the speed of an internal clock during time encoding, as such an account incorrectly predicts that a large numerical magnitude should lead to a shorter reproduced duration when presented during reproduction. Instead, the findings suggest that numerical magnitudes, like other magnitudes such as space, affect temporal memories when numerical magnitudes and temporal durations are concurrently held in memory. Under this account, concurrent numerical magnitudes have the chance to influence the memory of the perceived duration when they are presented during perception but not when they are presented at the reproduction stage

Estimation of sensitive data from a dichotomous population

Randomized response technique, Relative efficiency, Sensitive character,

Cytokines as an adjuvant to tumor vaccines: Efficacy of local methods of delivery

Background: We examined alternative methods of delivering cytokines as an adjunct for priming lymph node (LN) cells draining sites of vaccine inoculation for the purpose of generating immune cells for adoptive immunotherapy.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/41416/1/10434_2006_Article_BF02305540.pd

Bayesian estimation of proportion and sensitivity level in randomized response procedures

Randomized response method, Proportion estimation, Sensitivity level estimation, Bayesian inference, Beta distribution mixture,