Conformational equilibria of (E)-6-bromo-7-hydroxy-3,7-dimethyl-2-octene

The 1H NMR spectral parameters of the title compound have been determined in cyclohexane-d12 and p-dioxane-d8 solutions by means of high-frequency NMR. The results are interpreted in terms of conformational equilibria. Linear Electric Field (LEF) effects may play a major role in explaining the differences between the 13C NMR chemical shifts of the title compound and those of the model (E)2,6-dimethyl-2,6-octadiene. Some preliminary calculations of the LEF-induced shifts are presented, as well as the problems involved in the recognition of the LEF contributions to the experimental shift differences

A risk computation model for environmental restoration activities

A risk computation model useful in environmental restoration activities was developed for the US Department of Energy (DOE). This model, the Multimedia Environmental Pollutant Assessment System (MEPAS), can be used to evaluate effects of potential exposures over a broad range of regulatory issues including radioactive carcinogenic, nonradioactive carcinogenic, and noncarcinogenic effects. MEPAS integrates risk computation components. Release, transport, dispersion, deposition, exposure, and uptake computations are linked in a single system for evaluation of air, surface water, ground water, and overland flow transport. MEPAS uses standard computation approaches. Whenever available and appropriate, US Environmental Protection Agency guidance and models were used to facilitate compatibility and acceptance. MEPAS is a computational tool that can be used at several phases of an environmental restoration effort. At a preliminary stage in problem characterization, potential problems can be prioritized. As more data become available, MEPAS can provide an estimate of baseline risks or evaluate environmental monitoring data. In the feasibility stage, MEPAS can compute risk from alternative remedies. However, MEPAS is not designed to replace a detailed risk assessment of the selected remedy. For major problems, it will be appropriate to use a more detailed, risk computation tool for a detailed, site-specific evaluation of the selected remedy. 15 refs., 2 figs

Long-term-consequence analysis of no action alternative 2

This report is a supplement to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) Disposal-Phase Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement. Data and information is described which pertains to estimated impacts from postulated long-term release of radionuclides and hazardous constituents from alpha-bearing wastes stored at major generator/storage sites after loss of institutional control (no action alternative 2). Under this alternative, wastes would remain at the generator sites and not be emplaced at WIPP

Natural Language, Mixed-Initiative Personal Assistant Agents

The increasing popularity and use of personal voice assistant technologies, such as Siri and Google Now, is driving and expanding progress toward the long-term and lofty goal of using artificial intelligence to build human-computer dialog systems capable of understanding natural language. While dialog-based systems such as Siri support utterances communicated through natural language, they are limited in the flexibility they afford to the user in interacting with the system and, thus, support primarily action-requesting and information-seeking tasks. Mixed-initiative interaction, on the other hand, is a flexible interaction technique where the user and the system act as equal participants in an activity, and is often exhibited in human-human conversations. In this paper, we study user support for mixed-initiative interaction with dialog-based systems through natural language using a bag-of-words model and k-nearest-neighbor classifier. We study this problem in the context of a toolkit we developed for automated, mixed-initiative dialog system construction, involving a dialog authoring notation and management engine based on lambda calculus, for specifying and implementing task-based, mixed-initiative dialogs. We use ordering at Subway through natural language, human-computer dialogs as a case study. Our results demonstrate that the dialogs authored with our toolkit support the end user\u27s completion of a natural language, human-computer dialog in a mixed-initiative fashion. The use of natural language in the resulting mixed-initiative dialogs afford the user the ability to experience multiple self-directed paths through the dialog and makes the flexibility in communicating user utterances commensurate with that in dialog completion paths---an aspect missing from commercial assistants like Siri

Marktkansen voor etnisch voedsel en etnische diensten

De bevolkingssamenstelling van de Nederlandse steden is afgelopen jaren sterk veranderd. De stedelijke vraag naar producten en diensten van het platteland is ook sterk veranderd. Uit de quick scan is gebleken dat de 'ethnic food & services' een belangrijk onderdeel vormen van de nieuwe vraag. Dit dient niet alleen ten behoeve van de nichemarkt van ethnic food & services maar kan tegelijkertijd als een strategisch middel ingezet worden om de algemene stadplattelandsrelaties aan te halen, uit te breiden en te verbetere

Discovering Chromatin Motifs using FAIRE Sequencing and the Human Diploid Genome

Background: Specific chromatin structures are associated with active or inactive gene transcription. The gene regulatory elements are intrinsically dynamic and alternate between inactive and active states through the recruitment of DNA binding proteins, such as chromatin-remodeling proteins. Results: We developed a unique genome-wide method to discover DNA motifs associated with chromatin accessibility using formaldehyde-assisted isolation of regulatory elements with high-throughput sequencing (FAIRE-seq). We aligned the FAIRE-seq reads to the GM12878 diploid genome and subsequently identified differential chromatin-state regions (DCSRs) using heterozygous SNPs. The DCSR pairs represent the locations of imbalances of chromatin accessibility between alleles and are ideal to reveal chromatin motifs that may directly modulate chromatin accessibility. In this study, we used DNA 6-10mer sequences to interrogate all DCSRs, and subsequently discovered conserved chromatin motifs with significant changes in the occurrence frequency. To investigate their likely roles in biology, we studied the annotated protein associated with each of the top ten chromatin motifs genome-wide, in the intergenic regions and in genes, respectively. As a result, we found that most of these annotated motifs are associated with chromatin remodeling, reflecting their significance in biology. Conclusions: Our method is the first one using fully phased diploid genome and FAIRE-seq to discover motifs associated with chromatin accessibility. Our results were collected to construct the first chromatin motif database (CMD), providing the potential DNA motifs recognized by chromatin-remodeling proteins and is freely available at http://syslab.nchu.edu.tw/chromatin

Synchronization in a System of Globally Coupled Oscillators with Time Delay

We study the synchronization phenomena in a system of globally coupled oscillators with time delay in the coupling. The self-consistency equations for the order parameter are derived, which depend explicitly on the amount of delay. Analysis of these equations reveals that the system in general exhibits discontinuous transitions in addition to the usual continuous transition, between the incoherent state and a multitude of coherent states with different synchronization frequencies. In particular, the phase diagram is obtained on the plane of the coupling strength and the delay time, and ubiquity of multistability as well as suppression of the synchronization frequency is manifested. Numerical simulations are also performed to give consistent results

Relativistic Structure of the Deuteron: 1.Electro-disintegration and y-scaling

Realistic solutions of the spinor-spinor Bethe-Salpeter equation for the deuteron with realistic interaction kernel including the exchange of pi, sigma, omega, rho, eta and delta mesons, are used to systematically investigate relativistic effects in inclusive quasi-elastic electron-deuteron scattering within the relativistic impulse approximation. Relativistic y-scaling is considered by generalising the non relativistic scaling function to the relativistic case, and it is shown that y-scaling does occur in the usual relativistic scaling variable resulting from the energy conservation in the instant form of dynamics. The present approach of y-scaling is fully covariant, with the deuteron being described by eight components, viz. the 3S_1^{++}, 3S_1^{--}, 3D_1^{++}, 3D_1^{--}, 3P_1^{+-}, 3P_1^{-+}, 1P_1^{+-}, 1P_1^{-+} waves. It is demonstrated that if the negative relative energy states 1P_1, 3P_1 are disregarded, the concept of covariant momentum distributions N(p_0,p), with p_0=M_D/2-\sqrt{p^2+m^2}, can be introduced, and that calculations of lectro-disintegration cross section in terms of these distributions agree within few percents with the exact calculations which include the 1P_1, 3P_1 states, provided the nucleon three momentum |p|\<= 1 GeV/c; in this momentum range, the asymptotic relativistic scaling function is shown to coincide with the longitudinal covariant momentum distribution.Comment: 32 LaTeX pages, 18 eps-figures. Final version to appear in Phys. Rev.