Evidence from Strandings for Geomagnetic Sensitivity in Cetaceans

We tested the hypothesis that cetaceans use weak anomalies in the geomagnetic field as cues for orientation, navigation and/or piloting. Using the positions of 212 stranding events of live animals in the Smith sonian compilation which fall within the boundaries of the USGS East-Coast Aeromagnetic Survey, we found that there are highly significant tendencies for cetaceans to beach themselves near coastal locations with local magnetic minima. Monte-Carlo simulations confirm the significance of these effects. These results suggest that cetaceans have a magnetic sensory systemcomparable to that in other migratory and homing animals, and predict that the magnetic topography and in particular the marine magnetic lineations may play an important role in guiding long-distance migration. The ‘map’ sense of migratoryanimals may therefore be largely based on a simple strategy of following paths of local magnetic minima and avoiding magnetic gradients

Evidence that fin whales respond to the geomagnetic field during migration

We challenge the hypothesis that fin whales use a magnetic sense to guide migration by testing for associations between geophysical parameters and the positions where fin whales were observed over the continental shelf off the northeastern United States. Monte Carlo simulations estimated the probability that the distribution of fin whale sighting was random with respect to bottom depth, bottom slope and the intensity and gradient of the geomagnetic field. The simulations demonstrated no overall association of sighting positions with any of these four geophysical parameters. Analysis of the data by season, however, demonstrated statistically reliable associations of sighting positions with areas of low geomagnetic intensity and gradient in winter and fall, respectively, but no association of sighting positions with bathymetric parameters in any season. An attempt to focus on migrating animals by excluding those observed feeding confirmed the associations of sighting positions with low geomagnetic intensity and gradient in winter and fall, respectively, and revealed additional associations with low geomagnetic gradients in winter and spring. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that fin whales, and perhaps other mysticete species, possess a magnetic sense that they use to guide migration

Credit Access of Rice Farmer-Borrowers and Financial Performance of Banca Banca Primary Multipurpose Cooperative under the Laguna Credit Surety Fund Program in Victoria and Pila, Laguna, Philippines: 2010–2014

The province of Laguna and BSP launched the LCSF to help the mSMEs and most especially the cooperatives in increasing their worthiness to formal institutions. LCSF is a trust fund designed to enhance the credit worthiness and mitigate the risk of banks in extending credit to mSMEs. This program was pursued by the local government to facilitate credit access among small farmers and other small scale borrowers. BBPMPC was one of the 15 member-cooperatives of LCSF which contributed PhP100,000 to the program. The cooperative also availed loan through DBP’s credit line that was secured by LCSF, which was used to provide cash and inputs to its rice farmer-borrowers on credit.This study analyzed credit access of rice farmer-borrowers and the financial performance of Banca Banca Primary Multi-Purpose Cooperative under the Laguna Credit Surety Fund Program in Laguna covering the period 2010 to 2014.  Thirty five rice farmer-borrowers of BBPMPC in the municipalities of Victoria and Pila in Laguna were interviewed during the conduct of the study.The result of the study showed that the rice farmer-borrowers reduced their borrowing from other sources after the cooperative availed LCSF. It was due to increased amount of loan granted to the rice farmer-borrowers. As for the loan utilization and repayment performance of the rice farmer-borrowers, most of them utilized funds only for farm operations and had fully paid their loans from the cooperative. The rice farmer-borrowers were also very satisfied with the lending operation of the cooperative.  In general, it was found out that: LCSF was seen to be beneficial to BBPMPC because it provided the rice farmer-borrowers easier access to credit and LCSF helped improve the financial standing of BBPMPC.    Therefore, LCSF should improve information dissemination to encourage more cooperatives into their program. This would further extend credit to farmers and provide technical assistance to its members.

Standardized Patients in Occupational Therapy Education

The use of standardized patients (SPs) in occupational therapy (OT) education has greatly increased in recent years; however, there is limited research on the perceptions of student’s clinical readiness utilizing SPs and whether or not the utilization of SPs prepare students for fieldwork. The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of SPs in OT education and the perceived clinical readiness of students. The use of SPs has been thoroughly researched in other healthcare related fields. It is important that the same critical attention be given to their use in our own field, which emphasizes the importance of clinical readiness in the development of future professionals. A survey was given to the OT students of Dominican University of California who have had experience with the curriculum, which utilizes SPs. Students were asked to rate their own perceptions of readiness in a number of skills, which were practiced using SPs. Students were also asked to answer qualitative questions regarding their experiences in the simulated environment with SPs. Results indicated that four common themes emerged to the perceptions on the effectiveness of SPs. The use of SPs helped implement observational skills, bring classroom information to practical experience, identified the impact of secondary health conditions/comorbidity, and had effect on student performance due to anxiety. Further studies should be conducted to support this growing area of OT education

Extended depth-of-field light-sheet microscopy improves imaging of large volumes at high numerical aperture

Light-sheet microscopes must compromise between field of view, optical sectioning, resolution, and detection efficiency. High-numerical-aperture (NA) detection objective lenses provide high resolution but their narrow depth of field fails to capture effectively the fluorescence signal generated by the illumination light sheets, in imaging large volumes. Here, we present ExD-SPIM (extended depth-of-field selective-plane illumination microscopy), an improved light-sheet microscopy strategy that solves this limitation by extending the depth of field (DOF) of high-NA detection objectives to match the thickness of the illumination light sheet. This extension of the DOF uses a phase mask to axially stretch the point-spread function of the objective lens while largely preserving lateral resolution. This matching of the detection DOF to the illumination-sheet thickness increases total fluorescence collection, reduces background, and improves the overall signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). We demonstrate, through numerical simulations and imaging of bead phantoms as well as living animals, that ExD-SPIM increases the SNR by more than three-fold and dramatically reduces the rate of fluorescence photobleaching, when compared to a low-NA system with an equivalent depth of field. Compared to conventional high-NA detection, ExD-SPIM improves the signal sensitivity and volumetric coverage of whole-brain activity imaging, increasing the number of detected neurons by over a third.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures; supplementary material include

Framework for Automatic PCB Marking Detection and Recognition for Hardware Assurance

A Bill of Materials (BoM) is a list of all components on a printed circuit board (PCB). Since BoMs are useful for hardware assurance, automatic BoM extraction (AutoBoM) is of great interest to the government and electronics industry. To achieve a high-accuracy AutoBoM process, domain knowledge of PCB text and logos must be utilized. In this study, we discuss the challenges associated with automatic PCB marking extraction and propose 1) a plan for collecting salient PCB marking data, and 2) a framework for incorporating this data for automatic PCB assurance. Given the proposed dataset plan and framework, subsequent future work, implications, and open research possibilities are detailed.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, Government Microcircuit Applications & Critical Technology Conference (GOMACTech) 202

Rice Galaxy: An open resource for plant science

Background: Rice molecular genetics, breeding, genetic diversity, and allied research (such as rice-pathogen interaction) have adopted sequencing technologies and high-density genotyping platforms for genome variation analysis and gene discovery. Germplasm collections representing rice diversity, improved varieties, and elite breeding materials are accessible through rice gene banks for use in research and breeding, with many having genome sequences and high-density genotype data available. Combining phenotypic and genotypic information on these accessions enables genome-wide association analysis, which is driving quantitative trait loci discovery and molecular marker development. Comparative sequence analyses across quantitative trait loci regions facilitate the discovery of novel alleles. Analyses involving DNA sequences and large genotyping matrices for thousands of samples, however, pose a challenge to non−computer savvy rice researchers. Findings: The Rice Galaxy resource has shared datasets that include high-density genotypes from the 3,000 Rice Genomes project and sequences with corresponding annotations from 9 published rice genomes. The Rice Galaxy web server and deployment installer includes tools for designing single-nucleotide polymorphism assays, analyzing genome-wide association studies, population diversity, rice−bacterial pathogen diagnostics, and a suite of published genomic prediction methods. A prototype Rice Galaxy compliant to Open Access, Open Data, and Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reproducible principles is also presented. Conclusions: Rice Galaxy is a freely available resource that empowers the plant research community to perform state-of-the-art analyses and utilize publicly available big datasets for both fundamental and applied science