Defining the Costs of an Outbreak of Karnal Bunt of Wheat

In determining the economic impact of a possible outbreak of the quarantinable wheat disease Karnal Bunt, an examination was made of the detailed components of the costs involved. The costs were classified as: (a) Direct costs (yield and quality losses); (b) Reaction costs (export bans, quality down-grading, seed industry costs); and (c) Control costs (quarantine zones, fungicides, spore destruction). The relative importance of each of these cost components is measured for a hypothetical outbreak of Karnal Bunt in the European Union, as a means of ensuring that the policy responses to such an outbreak are appropriate considering the costs involved.disease, quarantine, cost, wheat, Agricultural and Food Policy, Crop Production/Industries,

Can the United States Afford a “No-Fault” System of Compensation for Medical Injury?

One of the key issues separating US critics of a no-fault alternative to the tort system for compensating victims of medical injury from supporters is its anticipated cost. Results from a study are presented that estimate the costs of a no-fault system, one that is similar to the system now in operation in Sweden, within the context of the US health care system

drawProteins: a Bioconductor/R package for reproducible and programmatic generation of protein schematics

Protein schematics are valuable for research, teaching and knowledge communication. However, the tools used to automate the process are challenging. The purpose of the drawProteins package is to enable the generation of schematics of proteins in an automated fashion that can integrate with the Bioconductor/R suite of tools for bioinformatics and statistical analysis. Using UniProt accession numbers, the package uses the UniProt API to get the features of the protein from the UniProt database. The features are assembled into a data frame and visualized using adaptations of the ggplot2 package. Visualizations can be customised in many ways including adding additional protein features information from other data frames, altering colors and protein names and adding extra layers using other ggplot2 functions. This can be completed within a script that makes the workflow reproducible and sharable

Personal and Network Dynamics in Performance of Knowledge Workers: A Study of Australian Breast Radiologists

published_or_final_versio

A new method for atmospheric detection of the CH3O2 radical

A new method for measurement of the methyl peroxy (CH3O2) radical has been developed using the conversion of CH3O2 into CH3O by excess NO with subsequent detection of CH3O by fluorescence assay by gas expansion (FAGE) with laser excitation at ca. 298 nm. The method can also directly detect CH3O, when no nitric oxide is added. Laboratory calibrations were performed to characterise the FAGE instrument sensitivity using the conventional radical source employed in OH calibration with conversion of a known concentration of OH into CH3O2 via reaction with CH4 in the presence of O2. Detection limits of 3.8 × 108 and 3.0 × 108 molecule cm−3 were determined for CH3O2 and CH3O respectively for a signal-to-noise ratio of 2 and 5 min averaging time. Averaging over 1 h reduces the detection limit for CH3O2 to 1.1 × 108 molecule cm−3, which is comparable to atmospheric concentrations. The kinetics of the second-order decay of CH3O2 via its self-reaction were observed in HIRAC (Highly Instrumented Reactor for Atmospheric Chemistry) at 295 K and 1 bar and used as an alternative method of calibration to obtain a calibration constant with overlapping error limits at the 1σ level with the result of the conventional method of calibration. The overall uncertainties of the two methods of calibrations are similar – 15 % for the kinetic method and 17 % for the conventional method – and are discussed in detail. The capability to quantitatively measure CH3O in chamber experiments is demonstrated via observation in HIRAC of CH3O formed as a product of the CH3O2 self-reaction

Solvent Dependence of Lateral Charge Transfer in a Porphyrin Monolayer

Lateral charge transport in a redox-active monolayer can be utilized for solar energy harvesting. A model porphyrin system was chosen to study the influence of the solvent on lateral hole hopping, which plays a crucial role in the charge-transfer kinetics. We examined the influence of water, acetonitrile, and propylene carbonate as solvents. Hole-hopping lifetimes varied by nearly three orders of magnitude among solvents, ranging from 3 ns in water to 2800 ns in propylene carbonate, and increased nonlinearly as a function of added acetonitrile in aqueous solvent mixtures. These results elucidate the important roles of solvation, molecular packing dynamics, and lateral charge-transfer mechanisms that have implications for all dye-sensitized photoelectrochemical device designs

An Acoustic Charge Transport Imager for High Definition Television Applications: Low-Voltage SAW Amplifiers on Multilayer GaAs/ZnO Substrates

This thesis addresses the acoustoelectric issues concerning the amplification of surface acoustic waves (SAWs) and the reflection of SAWs from slanted reflector gratings on GaAs, with application to a novel acoustic charge transport (ACT) device architecture. First a simple model of the SAWAMP was developed, which was subsequently used to define the epitaxially grown material structure necessary to provide simultaneously high resistance and high electron mobility. In addition, a segmented SAWAMP structure was explored with line widths on the order of an acoustic wavelength. This resulted in the demonstration of SAWAMPS with an order of magnitude less voltage and power requirements than previously reported devices. A two-dimensional model was developed to explain the performance of devices with charge confinement layers less then 0.5 mm, which was experimentally verified. This model was extended to predict a greatly increased gain from the addition of a ZnO overlay. These overlays were experimentally attempted, but no working devices were reported due to process incompatibilities. In addition to the SAWAMP research, the reflection of SAWs from slanted gratings on GaAs was also studied and experimentally determined reflection coefficients for both 45 deg grooves and Al stripes on GaAs have been reported for the first time. The SAWAMp and reflector gratings were combined to investigate the integrated ring oscillator for application to the proposed ACT device and design parameters for this device have been provided

Comparison of Two Methods for Quantifying Northern Bobwhite Habitat Use

Habitat use is an important ecological parameter that is used to make informed decisions about quail management and research. Statistical methods for quantifying habitat use are numerous, but few objective criteria are available to support the selection of a particular analytical approach. Therefore, we compared breeding season habitat use by radio-marked northern bobwhites (Colinus virginianus) at 2 study sites in Mississippi with 2 widely used statistical methods; Chi-square goodness-of-fit test with Bonferroni confidence intervals, and compositional analysis. These statistical methods produced similar results for both study areas; however, more detailed habitat use information was provided by compositional analysis when performed using the customary hierarchical approach. Therefore, for analysis of radio-marked quail, we recommend this method due to its effective hierarchical approach, improved statistical validity, and ability to incorporate other population parameters (e.g .. survival) into statistical models of habitat use by northern bobwhites