A unique facility for V/STOL aircraft hover testing

The Langley Impact Dynamics Research Facility (IDRF) was modified to obtain static force and moment data and to allow assessment of aircraft handling qualities during dynamic tethered hover flight. Test probe procedures were also established. Static lift and control measurements obtained are presented along with results of limited dynamic tethered hover flight

Vocational Evaluation – Deafness

Non

QUANTITATIVE COMPARISON OF 2D POROSITY AND PORE GEOMETRY BETWEEN THE UPPER CASTLE HAYNE AQUIFER, NORTH CAROLINA, AND THE BISCAYNE AQUIFER, FLORIDA, USING IMAGE AND GEOSPATIAL ANALYSIS

Karst aquifers are vital sources of groundwater for domestic and industrial use in many parts of the world. To sustain rising population throughout the southeastern United States, karst aquifers are increasingly exploited to provide the populace a clean and reliable water resource. The moldic Spring Garden Member of the Castle Hayne Limestone and the vuggy Miami Limestone Formation of the Biscayne aquifer systems are two highly productive karst aquifers that provide critical water resources to millions of people in eastern North Carolina and southeastern Florida, respectively. In order to improve our understanding of karst media, a detailed investigation of 2D porosity and pore geometry of Castle Hayne and Biscayne aquifers was undertaken using image and geospatial analysis. The goal of this study was to compare and contrast the pore structure of moldic and vuggy karst aquifers by quantifying 2D porosity and pore geometry in borehole televiewer, slabbed core, and thin-section images. GIS provided an integrated environment for statistical and geospatial analysis, making it the ideal tool for identifying and extracting pore structures from the digital images. Macropore area and perimeter were derived from televiewer, core and thin-section images. These geometric attributes were used to calculate a shape measure. The shape measure provided additional insight into the potential for interconnectivity and geometry of pores across the multiple scales of observation. Results show that both pore area and perimeter for the Castle Hayne and Biscayne aquifers can be described by exponential distributions. The moldic Castle Hayne aquifer has larger pore perimeters, when similar pore areas are compared to those extracted from the vuggy Biscayne aquifer. The complexity of shapes are essentially identical at smaller scales of observation for pores derived from both the Castle Hayne and Biscayne aquifers. However, as the scale of observation increases, the difference between the pore geometries of macropores from the Castle Hayne and Biscayne aquifers also increases. At the two largest scales of observation, pores from the Castle Hayne are more complex than pores with identical areas from the Biscayne.  Results also reveal that the scale of measurement plays a critical role in interpreting quantitative macropore structure within karst aquifers, thus requiring an approach that takes into account the scale of measurement of the macropore geometry. As scale of observation increases from thin-section to borehole image, pore size and pore complexity increase considerably over several orders of magnitude. Such quantitative measures can lead to a better understanding of porosity structure in karst aquifers that can be useful for designing and running groundwater flow models and assessing transport mechanisms in karst media. Most importantly, this study provides a quantitative assessment of the distribution of macropore geometry in karst aquifers with different structures and porosity.  M.S

From Theory to Practice: Plug and Play with Succinct Data Structures

Engineering efficient implementations of compact and succinct structures is a time-consuming and challenging task, since there is no standard library of easy-to- use, highly optimized, and composable components. One consequence is that measuring the practical impact of new theoretical proposals is a difficult task, since older base- line implementations may not rely on the same basic components, and reimplementing from scratch can be very time-consuming. In this paper we present a framework for experimentation with succinct data structures, providing a large set of configurable components, together with tests, benchmarks, and tools to analyze resource requirements. We demonstrate the functionality of the framework by recomposing succinct solutions for document retrieval.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, 3 table

Disease-modifying therapy prescription patterns in people with multiple sclerosis by age

BACKGROUND: Disease-modifying therapies (DMTs) for multiple sclerosis (MS) are approved for their ability to reduce disease activity, namely clinical relapses and signal changes on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Disease activity appears age dependent. Thus, the greatest benefit would be expected in younger people with MS (PwMS) whereas benefits in the elderly are uncertain. METHODS: Real-world data were obtained from PwMS from the North American Research Committee on Multiple Sclerosis (NARCOMS) registry and the US Department of Veterans Affairs Multiple Sclerosis Surveillance Registry (MSSR). RESULTS: 6948 PwMS were surveyed from NARCOMS, and the MSSR had 1719 participants. In younger adult PwMS 40-years old or less, 183 (61.4%) in NARCOMS and 179 (70.5%) in the MSSR were prescribed DMTs. Among PwMS over age 60, 1575 (40.1%) in NARCOMS and 239 (36.3%) in the MSSR were prescribed DMTs. More PwMS in the age group of 31-40 ( CONCLUSION: These findings suggest that DMTs are under-utilized in the younger population and continue to be commonly prescribed in the elderly. Broader access may explain the higher prescription rate of DMTs in US veterans

SAFE-clustering: Single-cell Aggregated (from Ensemble) clustering for single-cell RNA-seq data

Motivation: Accurately clustering cell types from a mass of heterogeneous cells is a crucial first step for the analysis of single-cell RNA-seq (scRNA-Seq) data. Although several methods have been recently developed, they utilize different characteristics of data and yield varying results in terms of both the number of clusters and actual cluster assignments. Results: Here, we present SAFE-clustering, single-cell aggregated (From Ensemble) clustering, a flexible, accurate and robust method for clustering scRNA-Seq data. SAFE-clustering takes as input, results from multiple clustering methods, to build one consensus solution. SAFE-clustering currently embeds four state-of-the-art methods, SC3, CIDR, Seurat and t-SNE þ k-means; and ensembles solutions from these four methods using three hypergraph-based partitioning algorithms. Extensive assessment across 12 datasets with the number of clusters ranging from 3 to 14, and the number of single cells ranging from 49 to 32, 695 showcases the advantages of SAFEclustering in terms of both cluster number (18.2-58.1% reduction in absolute deviation to the truth) and cluster assignment (on average 36.0% improvement, and up to 18.5% over the best of the four methods, measured by adjusted rand index). Moreover, SAFE-clustering is computationally efficient to accommodate large datasets, taking <10 min to process 28 733 cells

Interference of Selected Palmer Amaranth ( Amaranthus palmeri

Palmer amaranth (Amaranthus palmeri S. Wats.) has become difficult to control in row crops due to selection for biotypes that are no longer controlled by acetolactate synthase inhibiting herbicides and/or glyphosate. Early season interference in soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] for 40 days after emergence by three glyphosate-resistant (GR) and three glyphosate-susceptible (GS) Palmer amaranth biotypes from Georgia and North Carolina was compared in the greenhouse. A field experiment over 2 years compared season-long interference of these biotypes in soybean. The six Palmer amaranth biotypes reduced soybean height similarly in the greenhouse but did not affect soybean height in the field. Reduction in soybean fresh weight and dry weight in the greenhouse; and soybean yield in the field varied by Palmer amaranth biotypes. Soybean yield was reduced 21% by Palmer amaranth at the established field density of 0.37 plant m−2. When Palmer amaranth biotypes were grouped by response to glyphosate, the GS group reduced fresh weight, dry weight, and yield of soybean more than the GR group. The results indicate a possible small competitive disadvantage associated with glyphosate resistance, but observed differences among biotypes might also be associated with characteristics within and among biotypes other than glyphosate resistance

Solution structure of a repeated unit of the ABA-1 nematode polyprotein allergen of ascaris reveals a novel fold and two discrete lipid-binding sites

Parasitic nematode worms cause serious health problems in humans and other animals. They can induce allergic-type immune responses, which can be harmful but may at the same time protect against the infections. Allergens are proteins that trigger allergic reactions and these parasites produce a type that is confined to nematodes, the nematode polyprotein allergens (NPAs). These are synthesized as large precursor proteins comprising repeating units of similar amino acid sequence that are subsequently cleaved into multiple copies of the allergen protein. NPAs bind small lipids such as fatty acids and retinol (Vitamin A) and probably transport these sensitive and insoluble compounds between the tissues of the worms. Nematodes cannot synthesize these lipids, so NPAs may also be crucial for extracting nutrients from their hosts. They may also be involved in altering immune responses by controlling the lipids by which the immune and inflammatory cells communicate. We describe the molecular structure of one unit of an NPA, the well-known ABA-1 allergen of Ascaris and find its structure to be of a type not previously found for lipid-binding proteins, and we describe the unusual sites where lipids bind within this structur