Design of a highly-birefringent microstructured photonic crystal fiber for pressure monitoring

We present the design of an air hole microstructured photonic crystal fiber for pressure sensing applications. The air-hole photonic crystal lattices were designed to produce a large intrinsic birefringence of 1.16x10-3. The impact of the surrounding air holes for pressure sensing to the propagation mode profiles and indices were studied and improved, which ensures single mode propagation in the fiber core defined by the photonic crystal lattice. An air hole matrix and a practical chemical etching process during the fiber perform preparation stage is proposed to produce an optical fiber with a birefringence-pressure coefficient of 43.89×10-6MPa-1 or a fiber Bragg grating pressure responsivity of 44.15 pm/MPa, which is a 17 times improvement over previous photonic crystal fiber designs. © 2010 Optical Society of America

Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus: Evaluation and Modelling of Verbal Associations

We present a quantitative analysis of human word association pairs and study the types of relations presented in the associations. We put our main focus on the correlation between response types and respondent characteristics such as occupation and gender by contrasting syntagmatic and paradigmatic associations. Finally, we propose a personalised distributed word association model and show the importance of incorporating demographic factors into the models commonly used in natural language processing.Comment: AIST 2017 camera-read

Four Inducible Promoters for Controlled Gene Expression in the Oleaginous Yeast Rhodotorula toruloides

This is the final version of the article. Available from Frontiers Media via the DOI in this record.Rhodotorula (Rhodosporidium) toruloides is an oleaginous yeast with great biotechnological potential, capable of accumulating lipid up to 70% of its dry biomass, and of carotenoid biosynthesis. However, few molecular genetic tools are available for manipulation of this basidiomycete yeast and its high genomic GC content can make routine cloning difficult. We have developed plasmid vectors for transformation of R. toruloides which include elements for Saccharomyces cerevisiae in-yeast assembly; this method is robust to the assembly of GC-rich DNA and of large plasmids. Using such vectors we screened for controllable promoters, and identified inducible promoters from the genes NAR1, ICL1, CTR3, and MET16. These four promoters have independent induction/repression conditions and exhibit different levels and rates of induction in R. toruloides, making them appropriate for controllable transgene expression in different experimental situations. Nested deletions were used to identify regulatory regions in the four promoters, and to delimit the minimal inducible promoters, which are as small as 200 bp for the NAR1 promoter. The NAR1 promoter shows very tight regulation under repressed conditions as determined both by an EGFP reporter gene and by conditional rescue of a leu2 mutant. These new tools facilitate molecular genetic manipulation and controllable gene expression in R. toruloides.This work was supported by Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council doctoral training partnership award BB/J014400/1 to AJ

PHOTOSYNTHETIC, BIOCHEMICAL AND ENZYMATIC INVESTIGATION OF Anabaena fertilissima IN RESPONSE TO AN INSECTICIDE-HEXACHLORO-HEXAHYDRO-METHANOBENZODIOXATHIEPINE- OXIDE

A study on the heterocystous, nitrogen fixing cyanobacterium, Anabaena fertilissima was carried out to investigate the effect of an organochlorine insecticide (hexachloro-hexahydro-methano-benzodioxathiepineoxide, called as endosulfan) at different concentrations of 3, 6 and 12 μgml-1 on the photosynthetic pigments-Chl-a, Carotenoids and Phycobiliproteins-phycocyanin, allophycocyanin and phycoerythrin, stress metabolites such as carbohydrates, proteins, amino acids, phenols and enzyme activities-nitrate reductase and glutamine synthetase. The insecticide- Endosulfan showed to be deleteriously affecting the activities in the cyanobacterium. As early as the 4th day, chl-a and carotenoids reduced by 38% and 20% respectively. The phycobiliproteins declined by 60%, 64% and 28% with respect to Phycocyanin, Allophycocyanin and Phycoerythrin. Moreover, Endosulfan adversely depleted the cellular activities, leading to a marked decrease in the carbohydrates, proteins, phenols and amino acids and enzymes-nitrate reductase and glutamine synthetase. Despite of deleterious effects of Endosulfan on the cyanobacterium Anabaena fertilissima, a unique regenerating ability in presence of the insecticide was observed by the end of 12 days in the lower doses of insecticide

Strong Sphalerons and Electroweak Baryogenesis

We analyze the spontaneous baryogenesis and charge transport mechanisms suggested by Cohen, Kaplan and Nelson for baryon asymmetry generation in extended versions of electroweak theory. We find that accounting for non-perturbative chirality-breaking transitions due to strong sphalerons reduces the baryonic asymmetry by the factor $(m_t/\pi T)^2$ or $\alpha_W$, provided those processes are in thermal equilibrium.Comment: CERN-TH.7080/9

Could we find any signal of the stratosphere-ionosphere coupling in Antarctica?

An investigation searching for a possible coupling between the lower ionosphere and the middle atmosphere in Antarctica is here performed on the basis of stratospheric vertical temperature profiles and ionospheric absorption data observed at the Antarctic Italian Base of Terra Nova Bay (74.69S, 164.12E) during local summer time. The result obtained by applying a multi-regression analysis and a Superimposed Epoch Analysis (SEA) shows a statistically significant ionosphere-stratosphere interaction. In particular, by selecting stratospheric temperature maxima occurring at different heights as the referring epoch for the SEA approach, the ionospheric absorption is found to show a positive and/or negative trend (several days) around it. The tendency for an increasing/decreasing absorption is obtained for temperature maxima occurring below/above the stratospheric level of about 17-19 km, respectively

TICAD 7 Side Event co-organized by HALO Trust, Association for Aid and Relief (AAR) Japan and Mines Advisory Group (MAG) 27 August 2019

Ambassador Smail Chergui, African Union Commissioner for Peace and SecuritySpeech: Yokohama, 27 August 2019: Statement by Ambassador Smail Chergui, African Union Commissioner for Peace and Security During TICAD 7 Side Event co-organized by HALO Trust, Association for Aid and Relief (AAR) Japan and Mines Advisory Group (MAG), Annex F203 - Pacifico Yokoh

Allocution d’ouverture de Son Excellence Ambassadeur Smail Chergui Commissaire à la Paix et à la Sécurité de l’Union Africaine

Discours: Allocution d’ouverture de Son Excellence Ambassadeur Smail Chergui Commissaire à la Paix et à la Sécurité de l’Union Africaine. 10ème Retraite de Haut Niveau sur la Paix et la Sécurité en Afrique Thème : Gouvernance du secteur de la sécurité en Afrique Djibouti, 29-30 Octobre 2019