US Cosmic Visions: New Ideas in Dark Matter 2017: Community Report

This white paper summarizes the workshop "U.S. Cosmic Visions: New Ideas in Dark Matter" held at University of Maryland on March 23-25, 2017.Comment: 102 pages + reference

Networked Occupancy Sensor System

Energy is often wasted on systems that are used to provide services such as light, heating, air conditioning and ventilation. If these services were intelligently controlled, there is potential for significant improvements in energy conservation. A system including room sensors, database, and webserver was designed, constructed, and implemented over the course of this project. Sensors report occupancy and light status and temperature. Real-time room data is available via the webserver and is archived in the database. The system is networked via Ethernet and powered using the power over Ethernet (802.3af) standard

Environmental Compliance: Acquisition, Storage, and Analysis of Waste Oil Data

In 2007, the United States Coast Guard in conjunction with the Department of Justice began implementing a Special Waste Oil Monitoring System on vessels that have repeatedly violated environmental regulations regarding oil-waste. Until now, the process for analyzing this data and been both slow and laborious. To address this, a system for data acquisition, storage and analysis was created. If implemented, this system will reduce analysis time from three months down to two weeks

Dissection of the MYCN locus in Feingold syndrome and isolated oesophageal atresia

Feingold syndrome (FS) is a syndromic microcephaly entity for which MYCN is the major disease-causing gene. We studied the expression pattern of MYCN at different stages of human embryonic development and collected a series of 17 FS and 12 isolated oesophageal atresia (IOA) cases. An MYCN gene deletion/mutation was identified in 47% of FS cases exclusively. We hypothesized that mutations or deletions of highly conserved non-coding elements (HCNEs) at the MYCN locus could lead to its misregulation and thereby to FS and/or IOA. We subsequently sequenced five HCNEs at the MYCN locus and designed a high-density tiling path comparative genomic hybridization array of 3.3 Mb at the MYCN locus. We found no mutations or deletions in this region, supporting the hypothesis of genetic heterogeneity in FS

US Cosmic Visions: New Ideas in Dark Matter 2017: Community Report

This white paper summarizes the workshop "U.S. Cosmic Visions: New Ideas in Dark Matter" held at University of Maryland on March 23-25, 2017

Call to restrict neonicotinoids

On 28 April 2018 the European Parliament voted for a complete and permanent ban on all outdoor uses of the three most commonly used neonicotinoid pesticides. With the partial exception of the state of Ontario, Canada, governments elsewhere have failed to take action. Below is a letter, signed by 232 scientists from around the world, urgently calling for global action by policy makers to address this issue