Automorphisms of Partially Commutative Groups II: Combinatorial Subgroups

We define several "standard" subgroups of the automorphism group Aut(G) of a partially commutative (right-angled Artin) group and use these standard subgroups to describe decompositions of Aut(G). If C is the commutation graph of G, we show how Aut(G) decomposes in terms of the connected components of C: obtaining a particularly clear decomposition theorem in the special case where C has no isolated vertices. If C has no vertices of a type we call dominated then we give a semi-direct decompostion of Aut(G) into a subgroup of locally conjugating automorphisms by the subgroup stabilising a certain lattice of "admissible subsets" of the vertices of C. We then characterise those graphs for which Aut(G) is a product (not necessarily semi-direct) of two such subgroups.Comment: 7 figures, 63 pages. Notation and definitions clarified and typos corrected. 2 new figures added. Appendix containing details of presentation and proof of a theorem adde

EVALUATION OF THE 2006/7 AGRICULTURAL INPUT SUBSIDY PROGRAMME, MALAWI. FINAL REPORT

This report evaluates the 2006/7 Malawi Government Agricultural Input Subsidy Programme (AISP). The main objective of the evaluation is to assess the impact and implementation of the AISP in order to provide lessons for future interventions in growth and social protection. The evaluation combined qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection and analysis. Quantitative data were collected through a national survey in 2007 of 2,491 households who were previously interviewed in the 2004/05 Integrated Household Survey, a survey of retail shops selling inputs in six districts and data on stocks and sales from manufacturers, large-scale importers and dealers of fertilizers and seeds. The quantitative data was triangulated by qualitative data from focus group discussions with smallholder farmers in 12 districts, and key informant interviews with government staff, input distributors and beneficiary and non-beneficiary households. The analysis is based on descriptive statistics, econometric modelling and livelihood and rural economy modelling. An Interim Report in March 2007 provides fuller details of the implementation of the programme.Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Food Security and Poverty, Productivity Analysis,

Fast classification of drones and birds with an LSTM network applied to 1D phase data

Funding: Science and Technology Facilities Council under grant ST/N006569/1.This study investigates a new type of drone classifier based on Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks. As a real-time surveillance system, the classification time of a drone detection radar is crucial. The motivation for this work is to develop a classification framework which has low latency in terms of data processing for the algorithm input. Theoretical modeling of a rotary wing drone and a bird wing flapping returns were done first to exhibit the difference in the patterns of the respective phase progressions. Then, 94 GHzexperimental trial data containing 4800 sequences of drones, birds, noise and clutter were used to create a diverse training dataset of 1D phase data for supervised learning. A stackedLSTM network with tuned hyperparameters was generated to reduce the possible overfitting from a simple LSTM model. Validation accuracy of 98.1% was achieved for 2-class classification of drone and non-drone. Further performance assessment was then done with 30 unseen test data, where the network was able to correctly classify all the sequences. It is ascertained that this method can be ~10 times faster than a spectrogram based classification model, which requires additional Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) operations

Campylobacter jejuni PflB is required for motility and colonisation of the chicken gastrointestinal tract.

Campylobacter jejuni is the leading cause of foodborne bacterial gastroenteritis worldwide. Although the mechanisms by which C. jejuni causes disease are not completely understood, the presence of functional flagella appears to be required for colonisation of the gastrointestinal tract of humans and animals. Therefore much attention has been given to understanding the synthesis and role of flagella in C. jejuni. In this study we report insights into the function of PflB that is essential for Campylobacter motility. We have explored the function of this gene by constructing deletion mutants in C. jejuni strains NCTC11168 and M1, in the genes cj0390 and CJM1_0368, respectively. The mutants were non-motile yet assembled flagella that appeared structurally identical to the wild type. Furthermore the protein is required for C. jejuni colonisation of caeca in a two-week old chicken colonisation model.This work was supported by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) Senior Fellowship awarded to D.J.M.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.micpath.2015.09.01