239 research outputs found

    The effect of organic amendments on clubroot (Plasmodiophora brassicae)

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    This report was presented at the UK Organic Research 2002 Conference. Clubroot (Plasmodiophora brassicae) is an important disease of organic brassica crops. Organic soil amendments were added at realistic rates and times to infested organic soil in pot trials in order to evaluate their effect on the disease. Both chitin and straw amendments reduced disease incidence compared to other amendments but straw also reduced plant vigour

    Zombie Hard disks - Data from the Living Dead

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    There have been a number of studies conducted in relation to data remaining on disks purchased on the second hand market. A large number of these studies have indicated that a proportion of these disks contain a degree of residual data placed on the drive by the original owners. The Security Research Centre at BT has sponsored a residual data study over the last five years examining disks sourced around the globe, in the UK, USA, Germany France and Australia. In 2008 as part of a 5 year study, Glamorgan University in conjunction with Edith Cowan University in Australia, Longwood University in Virginia USA and the BT Security Research Centre completed the fourth annual disk study aimed at assessing the volume and nature of information that remains on computer hard disks offered for sale on the second hand market. One of the main findings of the study was the high proportion of disks that are sold in a non-functioning state. As in both previous and following years a percentage of the hard disks examined in the 2008 study failed the imaging process and were marked as faulty. This paper describes further analysis of a number of these faulty drives from the UK sample set of the 2008 study. This paper details the analysis of non-functioning disks supplied to the University of Glamorgan to determine the ease with which data can be recovered from these drives using specialist recovery tools. It discusses implications for both computer forensics and information security practices and procedures

    CD28- cells are increased in early rheumatoid arthritis and are linked with cytomegalovirus status

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    Objective: CD3+CD8+CD28− cells are higher in Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA). The aim of this study was to assess CD3+CD8+CD28− cells in patients with early RA and assess the effects of cytomegalovirus (CMV) seropositivity. Method: In this prospective observation study, 50 RA patients were recruited from Cardiff University Hospital of Wales (UHW) rheumatology outpatient, 25 patients with early disease (disease duration 0–6 months) and 25 patients with established disease (>2 years). These were compared with 25 healthy controls. Clinical and serological markers of inflammation were noted, and peripheral blood mononuclear cells were analyzed using flow cytometry. Results: The percentage of the CD8+CD28− T cells was increased in RA patients and was associated with disease duration. The percentage of CD8+CD28− T cells was increased in CMV positive early and established RA grouped and early RA patients in comparison to CMV negative patients (p < 0.05). There is a weak but statistically significant correlation between the percentage of CD3+CD8+CD28− cells and CRP in CMV positive RA patients (r = 0.227, p < 0.05). Conclusion: The percentage of CD8+CD28− T cells is higher in RA patients and correlates with disease duration, highlighting a potential role early in the disease process. These cells were also higher in CMV positive early RA patients which may suggest a role of CMV in disease development

    The 2009 Analysis of Information Remaining on Disks Offered for Sale on the Second Hand Market

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    The ever increasing use and reliance upon computers in both the public and private sector has led to enormous numbers of computers being disposed of at the end of their useful life within an organisation. As the cost of computers has dropped, their use in the home has also continued to increase. In most organisations, computers have a relatively short life and are replaced on a regular basis with the result that, if not properly cleansed of data, they are released into the public domain containing data that can be relatively up to date. This problem is exacerbated by the increasing popularity and use of smart phones, which also contain significant storage capacity. From the results of the research it remains clear that the majority of organisations and private individuals that are using these computers still remain ignorant or misinformed of the potential volume and type of information that is stored on the hard disks contained within these systems. The evidence of the research is that neither organisations nor individuals have considered, or are aware of, the potential impact of the information that is contained in the disks from these systems becoming available to an unintended third party. This is the fifth study in an ongoing research programme being conducted into the levels and types of information that remain on computer hard disks that have been offered for sale on the second hand market. This ongoing research series has been undertaken to gain an understanding of the level and types of information that remains on these disks, to determine the damage that could potentially be caused if the information was misused, and to determine whether there are any developing trends. The disks used have been purchased in a number of countries. The rationale for this was to determine whether there are any national or regional differences in the way that computer disks are disposed of and to compare the results for any regional or temporal trends. The disks were obtained from a wide range of sources in each of the regions in order to minimise the effect of any action by an individual source. The first study was carried out in 2005 and since then has been repeated annually with the scope being incrementally extended to include additional research partners and countries. The study in 2009 was carried out by British Telecommunications (BT) and the University of Glamorgan in the UK, Edith Cowan University in Australia, Khalifa University in the United Arab Emirates and Longwood University in the USA. The core methodology of the research has remained unaltered throughout the duration of the study. The methodology has included the acquisition of a number of second hand computer disks from a range of sources and determining whether the data contained on the disks has been effectively erased or if they still contain information relating to previous owners. If information was found on the disks from which the previous user or owner could be identified, the research examined whether it was of a sensitive nature or in a sufficient volume to represent a risk. One of the consistent results of the research through the entire period has been that, for a significant proportion of the disks that have been examined, there was sufficient information present to pose a risk of a compromise of sensitive information to either the organisation or the individual that had previously used the disks. The potential impacts of the exposure of this information could include embarrassment to individuals and organisations, fraud, blackmail and identity theft. In every year since the study started, criminal activity has also been exposed. As has been stated in the previous reports, where the disks had originated from organisations, they had, in many cases, failed to meet their statutory, regulatory and legal obligations

    Identification of the Askja-S Tephra in a rare turlough record from Pant-y-Llyn, south Wales

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    Tephrochronology and especially crypto-tephrochronology is an established chronological technique employed in a range of depositional environments in Europe and beyond. During the late Quaternary, Icelandic cryptotephra deposits are widely found in palaeorecords across northern latitudes of Europe e.g. Scotland, Ireland, Norway, Sweden and the Faroe Islands but are sporadic in southerly latitudes as distance from Iceland increases. As yet, very few Icelandic cryptotephras have been identified in Wales or southern England which may well reflect the geographical limit of Icelandic tephra distribution. Here, however, we report the discovery of an Icelandic cryptotephra deposit within a sediment sequence retrieved from the Pant-y-Llyn turlough (Carmarthenshire, south Wales), the only known turlough in Britain. Turloughs are groundwater-fed ephemeral lakes associated with limestone bedrock and can accumulate sediments that may yield records suitable for palaeoreconstructions. A discrete peak of glass shards originating from the Askja-S eruption is identified in the sediment record. This discovery extends the distribution of this early Holocene eruption giving new insight into its dispersal patterns and also indicates that sedimentary sequences from sites in these more southerly latitudes are valuable repositories for ash preservation. Furthermore, its discovery within a carbonate-rich sequence provides a minimum age constraint on the timing of sediment accumulation and provides an alternative tool for what is typically a problematic dating environment

    Seabed morphology and bed shear stress predict temperate reef habitats in a high energy marine region

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    High energy marine regions host ecologically important habitats like temperate reefs, but are less anthropogenically developed and understudied compared to lower energy waters. In the marine environment direct habitat observation is limited to small spatial scales, and high energy waters present additional logistical challenges and constraints. Semi-automated predictive habitat mapping is a cost-effective tool to map benthic habitats across large extents, but performance is context specific. High resolution environmental data used for predictive mapping are often limited to bathymetry, acoustic backscatter and their derivatives. However, hydrodynamic energy at the seabed is a critical habitat structuring factor and likely an important, yet rarely incorporated, predictor of habitat composition and spatial patterning. Here, we used a machine learning classification approach to map temperate reef substrate and biogenic reef habitat in a tidal energy development area, incorporating bathymetric derivatives at multiple scales and simulated tidally induced seabed shear stress. We mapped reef substrate (four classes: sediment (not reef), stony reef (low resemblance), stony reef (medium – high resemblance) and bedrock reef) with overall balanced accuracy of 71.7%. Our model to predict potential biogenic Sabellaria spinulosa reef performed less well with an overall balanced accuracy of 63.4%. Despite low performance metrics for the target class of potential reef in this model, it still provided insight into the importance of different environmental variables for mapping S. spinulosa biogenic reef habitat. Tidally induced mean bed shear stress was one of the most important predictor variables for both reef substrate and biogenic reef models, with ruggedness calculated at multiple scales from 3 m to 140 m also important for the reef substrate model. We identified previously unresolved relationships between temperate reef spatial distribution, hydrodynamic energy and seabed three-dimensional structure in energetic waters. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of the spatial ecology of high energy marine ecosystems and will inform evidence-based decision making for sustainable development, particularly within the growing tidal energy sector

    Scale-dependent spatial patterns in benthic communities around a tropical island seascape

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    Understanding and predicting patterns of spatial organization across ecological communities is central to the field of landscape ecology, and a similar line of inquiry has begun to evolve sub-tidally among seascape ecologists. Much of our current understanding of the processes driving marine community patterns, particularly in the tropics, has come from small-scale, spatially-discrete data that are often not representative of the broader seascape. Here we expand the spatial extent of seascape ecology studies and combine spatially-expansive in situ digital imagery, oceanographic measurements, spatial statistics, and predictive modeling to test whether predictable patterns emerge between coral reef benthic competitors across scales in response to intra-island gradients in physical drivers. We do this around the entire circumference of a remote, uninhabited island in the central Pacific (Jarvis Island) that lacks the confounding effects of direct human impacts. We show, for the first time, that competing benthic groups demonstrate predictable scaling patterns of organization, with positive autocorrelation in the cover of each group at scales \u3c ~1 km. Moreover, we show how gradients in subsurface temperature and surface wave power drive spatially-abrupt transition points in group dominance, explaining 48–84% of the overall variation in benthic cover around the island. Along the western coast, we documented ten times more sub-surface cooling-hours than any other part of the coastline, with events typically resulting in a drop of 1–4°C over a period of \u3c 5 h. These high frequency temperature fluctuations are indicative of upwelling induced by internal waves and here result in localized nitrogen enrichment (NO 2 + NO 3 ) that promotes hard coral dominance around 44% of the island\u27s perimeter. Our findings show that, in the absence of confounding direct human impacts, the spatial organization of coral reef benthic competitors are predictable and somewhat bounded across the seascape by concurrent gradients in physical drivers
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