The Ursinus Weekly, January 15, 1909

Notice • Week of Prayer • The Dean\u27s column • Lectures • Basketball in the academy • Societies • Personals • Alumni notes • Advisory Council • Notes • Seminary notes • Group meetings • The Literary Supplement: An undemocratic constitution; The responsibilities of political power in the hands of the people; Two leading novelists of American fiction; The close of the year; The cry of the childrenhttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/weekly/2855/thumbnail.jp

abd-A Regulation by the iab-8 Noncoding RNA

The homeotic genes in Drosophila melanogaster are aligned on the chromosome in the order of the body segments that they affect. The genes affecting the more posterior segments repress the more anterior genes. This posterior dominance rule must be qualified in the case of abdominal-A (abd-A) repression by Abdominal-B (Abd-B). Animals lacking Abd-B show ectopic expression of abd-A in the epidermis of the eighth abdominal segment, but not in the central nervous system. Repression in these neuronal cells is accomplished by a 92 kb noncoding RNA. This “iab-8 RNA” produces a micro RNA to repress abd-A, but also has a second, redundant repression mechanism that acts only “in cis.” Transcriptional interference with the abd-A promoter is the most likely mechanism

Longitudinal river zonation in the tropics: examples of fish and caddisflies from endorheic Awash river, Ethiopia

Primary Research PaperSpecific concepts of fluvial ecology are well studied in riverine ecosystems of the temperate zone but poorly investigated in the Afrotropical region. Hence, we examined the longitudinal zonation of fish and adult caddisfly (Trichoptera) assemblages in the endorheic Awash River (1,250 km in length), Ethiopia. We expected that species assemblages are structured along environmental gradients, reflecting the pattern of large-scale freshwater ecoregions. We applied multivariate statistical methods to test for differences in spatial species assemblage structure and identified characteristic taxa of the observed biocoenoses by indicator species analyses. Fish and caddisfly assemblages were clustered into highland and lowland communities, following the freshwater ecoregions, but separated by an ecotone with highest biodiversity. Moreover, the caddisfly results suggest separating the heterogeneous highlands into a forested and a deforested zone. Surprisingly, the Awash drainage is rather species-poor: only 11 fish (1 endemic, 2 introduced) and 28 caddisfly species (8 new records for Ethiopia) were recorded from the mainstem and its major tributaries. Nevertheless, specialized species characterize the highland forests, whereas the lowlands primarily host geographically widely distributed species. This study showed that a combined approach of fish and caddisflies is a suitable method for assessing regional characteristics of fluvial ecosystems in the tropicsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

BlueGene/L Applications: Parallelism on a Massive Scale

BlueGene/L (BG/L), developed through a partnership between IBM and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), is currently the world's largest system both in terms of scale with 131,072 processors and absolute performance with a peak rate of 367 TFlop/s. BG/L has led the Top500 list the last four times with a Linpack rate of 280.6 TFlop/s for the full machine installed at LLNL and is expected to remain the fastest computer in the next few editions. However, the real value of a machine like BG/L derives from the scientific breakthroughs that real applications can produce by successfully using its unprecedented scale and computational power. In this paper, we describe our experiences with eight large scale applications on BG/L from several application domains, ranging from molecular dynamics to dislocation dynamics and turbulence simulations to searches in semantic graphs. We also discuss the challenges we faced when scaling these codes and present several successful optimization techniques. All applications show excellent scaling behavior, even at very large processor counts, with one code even achieving a sustained performance of more than 100 TFlop/s, clearly demonstrating the real success of the BG/L design

Identifying and evaluating field indicators of urogenital schistosomiasis-related morbidity in preschool-aged children

BACKGROUND:Several studies have been conducted quantifying the impact of schistosome infections on health and development in school-aged children. In contrast, relatively little is known about morbidity levels in preschool-aged children (≤ 5 years) who have been neglected in terms of schistosome research and control. The aim of this study was to compare the utility of available point-of-care (POC) morbidity diagnostic tools in preschool versus primary school-aged children (6-10 years) and determine markers which can be used in the field to identify and quantify Schistosoma haematobium-related morbidity. METHODS/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS:A comparative cross-sectional study was conducted to evaluate the performance of currently available POC morbidity diagnostic tools on Zimbabwean children aged 1-5 years (n=104) and 6-10 years (n=194). Morbidity was determined using the POC diagnostics questionnaire-based reporting of haematuria and dysuria, clinical examination, urinalysis by dipsticks, and urine albumin-to-creatinine ratio (UACR). Attributable fractions were used to quantify the proportion of morbidity attributable to S. haematobium infection. Based on results of attributable fractions, UACR was identified as the most reliable tool for detecting schistosome-related morbidity, followed by dipsticks, visual urine inspection, questionnaires, and lastly clinical examination. The results of urine dipstick attributes showed that proteinuria and microhaematuria accounted for most differences between schistosome egg-positive and negative children (T=-50.1; p<0.001). These observations were consistent in preschool vs. primary school-aged children. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE:Preschool-aged children in endemic areas can be effectively screened for schistosome-related morbidity using the same currently available diagnostic tools applicable to older children. UACR for detecting albuminuria is recommended as the best choice for rapid assessment of morbidity attributed to S. haematobium infection in children in the field. The use of dipstick microhaematuria and proteinuria as additional indicators of schistosome-related morbidity would improve the estimation of disease burden in young children

Individual differences in white matter anatomy predict dissociable components of reading skill in adults.

We used diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to investigate relationships between white matter anatomy and different reading subskills in typical-reading adults. A series of analytic approaches revealed that phonological decoding ability is associated with anatomical markers that do not relate to other reading-related cognitive abilities. Thus, individual differences in phonological decoding might relate to connectivity between a network of cortical regions, while skills like sight word reading might rely less strongly on integration across regions. Specifically, manually-drawn ROIs and probabilistic tractography revealed an association between the volume and integrity of white matter underlying primary auditory cortex and nonword reading ability. In a related finding, more extensive cross-hemispheric connections through the isthmus of the corpus callosum predicted better phonological decoding. Atlas-based white matter ROIs demonstrated that relationships with nonword reading were strongest in the inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus and uncinate fasciculus that connect occipital and anterior temporal cortex with inferior frontal cortex. In contrast, tract volume underlying the left angular gyrus was related to nonverbal IQ. Finally, connectivity underlying functional ROIs that are differentially active during phonological and semantic processing predicted nonword reading and reading comprehension, respectively. Together, these results provide important insights into how white matter anatomy may relate to both typical reading subskills, and perhaps a roadmap for understanding neural connectivity in individuals with reading impairments

Assessing fiscal sustainability in Swaziland

Background: Understanding and assessing fiscal sustainability is essential in ensuring financial and macro-economic stability. Fiscal sustainability has emerged as an important subject for Swaziland given the increasingly volatile government revenues especially those coming through the South African Customs Union (SACU), which threw the country into a severe fiscal crisis between 2010 and 2012, as well as the pressures on increased government spending in the post-fiscal crisis era.   Aim: This article primarily focuses on studying whether Swaziland’s fiscal policy remains on a sustainable path or whether corrective measures would be required.   Setting: Study focuses on Swaziland, a small open economy that is vulnerable to external shocks. The country also relies heavily on South African Customs Union (SACU) revenues.   Methods: The study employs a broad approach to assessing fiscal sustainability in Swaziland covering both deterministic and stochastic analysis. On the deterministic analysis, the article studies the evolution of debt given macro-economic variables and further estimates fiscal sustainability indicators such as the primary gap and tax-gap. From a stochastic analysis, the article uses the Trehan and Walsh Methodology as well as Hakkio and Rush Methodology.   Results: Fiscal sustainability indicators reflected that the country is on an unsustainable path with a primary gap and tax-gap of about 7% of gross domestic product (GDP) that has to be corrected. The econometric results also portray an evidence of ‘weak-form’ sustainability in the long-run. This is because public expenditures are rising at a faster pace than revenues thereby rendering government deficits unsustainable in the medium term. The econometric results also suggest a tax-spend hypothesis in the long-run, while short-run developments point to a spend-tax hypothesis. In both instances the correction measure is cutting expenditure, mainly recurrent expenditure.   Conclusion: The study recommends corrective measures (mainly cuts in government expenditure) for fiscal policy to be brought back into a sustainable path without which a fiscal crisis is imminent. The recommendations are mainly based on the fiscal sustainability indicators as they are more forward looking for the short to medium term. The article suggests fiscal rules based on these indicators