Searchable Sky Coverage of Astronomical Observations: Footprints and Exposures

Sky coverage is one of the most important pieces of information about astronomical observations. We discuss possible representations, and present algorithms to create and manipulate shapes consisting of generalized spherical polygons with arbitrary complexity and size on the celestial sphere. This shape specification integrates well with our Hierarchical Triangular Mesh indexing toolbox, whose performance and capabilities are enhanced by the advanced features presented here. Our portable implementation of the relevant spherical geometry routines comes with wrapper functions for database queries, which are currently being used within several scientific catalog archives including the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the Galaxy Evolution Explorer and the Hubble Legacy Archive projects as well as the Footprint Service of the Virtual Observatory.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, submitted to PAS

Free Trade and Investment in the Fisheries Sector of the Asia-Pacific Region: An Economic Analysis of Tariffs

This paper was commissioned by the APEC Working Group on Fisheries to examine the economic impact of eliminating tariffs on fish and fish products in APEC economies. Chapter II provides a qualitative assessment of the impacts of liberalization of fisheries trade drawing on the available data and economic theory. Chapter III presents specific quantitative estimates of the impact on trade flows of fish and fish products using an econometrically estimated model of fisheries trade liberalization. Chapter IV summarizes the study’s overall conclusions. These are that the economic impact of the removal of tariffs on fish and fish products in the APEC region would be significant, but modest. It is estimated that, in value terms, the long- run increase in imports in the region, arising from the elimination of tariffs, would be less than 5 per cent of the 1995 level in value. The corresponding increase in exports would be equal to slightly less than 3 per cent of the 1995 level.international trade in fish and fish products, APEC region, impact of tariffs

Free Trade and Investment in the Fisheries Sector of the Asia-Pacific Region: An Economic Analysis of Tariffs

This paper was commissioned by the APEC Working Group on Fisheries to examine the economic impact of eliminating tariffs on fish and fish products in APEC economies. Chapter II provides a qualitative assessment of the impacts of liberalization of fisheries trade drawing on the available data and economic theory. Chapter III presents specific quantitative estimates of the impact on trade flows of fish and fish products using an econometrically estimated model of fisheries trade liberalization. Chapter IV summarizes the study’s overall conclusions. These are that the economic impact of the removal of tariffs on fish and fish products in the APEC region would be significant, but modest. It is estimated that, in value terms, the long- run increase in imports in the region, arising from the elimination of tariffs, would be less than 5 per cent of the 1995 level in value. The corresponding increase in exports would be equal to slightly less than 3 per cent of the 1995 level

Free Trade and Investment in the Fisheries Sector of the Asia-Pacific Region: An Economic Analysis of Tariffs

This paper was commissioned by the APEC Working Group on Fisheries to examine the economic impact of eliminating tariffs on fish and fish products in APEC economies. Chapter II provides a qualitative assessment of the impacts of liberalization of fisheries trade drawing on the available data and economic theory. Chapter III presents specific quantitative estimates of the impact on trade flows of fish and fish products using an econometrically estimated model of fisheries trade liberalization. Chapter IV summarizes the study’s overall conclusions. These are that the economic impact of the removal of tariffs on fish and fish products in the APEC region would be significant, but modest. It is estimated that, in value terms, the long- run increase in imports in the region, arising from the elimination of tariffs, would be less than 5 per cent of the 1995 level in value. The corresponding increase in exports would be equal to slightly less than 3 per cent of the 1995 level

Preparing Red-Green-Blue (RGB) Images from CCD Data

We present a new, and we believe arguably correct, algorithm for producing Red-Green-Blue (RBG) composites from 3-band astronomical images. Our method ensures that an object with a specified astronomical color (e.g. g-r and r-i) has a unique color in the RGB image, as opposed to the burnt-out white stars to which we are accustomed. A natural consequence of this is that we can use the same colors to code color-magnitude diagrams, providing a natural `index' to our images. We also introduce the use of an asinh stretch, which allows us to show faint objects while simultaneously preserving the structure of brighter objects in the field, such as the spiral arms of large galaxies. We believe that, in addition to their aesthetic value, our images convey far more information than do the traditional ones, and provide examples from Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) imaging, the Hubble Deep Field (HDF), and Chandra to support our claims. More examples are available at http://www.astro.princeton.edu/~rhl/PrettyPicture

Conservation defines functional motifs in the squint/nodal-related 1 RNA dorsal localization element

RNA localization is emerging as a general principle of sub-cellular protein localization and cellular organization. However, the sequence and structural requirements in many RNA localization elements remain poorly understood. Whereas transcription factor-binding sites in DNA can be recognized as short degenerate motifs, and consensus binding sites readily inferred, protein-binding sites in RNA often contain structural features, and can be difficult to infer. We previously showed that zebrafish squint/nodal-related 1 (sqt/ndr1) RNA localizes to the future dorsal side of the embryo. Interestingly, mammalian nodal RNA can also localize to dorsal when injected into zebrafish embryos, suggesting that the sequence motif(s) may be conserved, even though the fish and mammal UTRs cannot be aligned. To define potential sequence and structural features, we obtained ndr1 3′-UTR sequences from approximately 50 fishes that are closely, or distantly, related to zebrafish, for high-resolution phylogenetic footprinting. We identify conserved sequence and structural motifs within the zebrafish/carp family and catfish. We find that two novel motifs, a single-stranded AGCAC motif and a small stem-loop, are required for efficient sqt RNA localization. These findings show that comparative sequencing in the zebrafish/carp family is an efficient approach for identifying weak consensus binding sites for RNA regulatory proteins

Genomic and Proteomic Analyses of the Fungus Arthrobotrys oligospora Provide Insights into Nematode-Trap Formation

Nematode-trapping fungi are “carnivorous” and attack their hosts using specialized trapping devices. The morphological development of these traps is the key indicator of their switch from saprophytic to predacious lifestyles. Here, the genome of the nematode-trapping fungus Arthrobotrys oligospora Fres. (ATCC24927) was reported. The genome contains 40.07 Mb assembled sequence with 11,479 predicted genes. Comparative analysis showed that A. oligospora shared many more genes with pathogenic fungi than with non-pathogenic fungi. Specifically, compared to several sequenced ascomycete fungi, the A. oligospora genome has a larger number of pathogenicity-related genes in the subtilisin, cellulase, cellobiohydrolase, and pectinesterase gene families. Searching against the pathogen-host interaction gene database identified 398 homologous genes involved in pathogenicity in other fungi. The analysis of repetitive sequences provided evidence for repeat-induced point mutations in A. oligospora. Proteomic and quantitative PCR (qPCR) analyses revealed that 90 genes were significantly up-regulated at the early stage of trap-formation by nematode extracts and most of these genes were involved in translation, amino acid metabolism, carbohydrate metabolism, cell wall and membrane biogenesis. Based on the combined genomic, proteomic and qPCR data, a model for the formation of nematode trapping device in this fungus was proposed. In this model, multiple fungal signal transduction pathways are activated by its nematode prey to further regulate downstream genes associated with diverse cellular processes such as energy metabolism, biosynthesis of the cell wall and adhesive proteins, cell division, glycerol accumulation and peroxisome biogenesis. This study will facilitate the identification of pathogenicity-related genes and provide a broad foundation for understanding the molecular and evolutionary mechanisms underlying fungi-nematodes interactions

Specifying and Using a Partitionable Group Communication Service

Group communication services are becoming accepted as effective building blocks for the construction of fault-tolerant distributed applications. Many specifications for group communication services have been proposed. However, there is still no agreement about what these specifications should say, especially in cases where the services are partitionable, that is, where communication failures may lead to simultaneous creation of groups with disjoint memberships, such that each group is unaware of the existence of any other group

A Dynamic Primary View Group Communication Service

View-oriented group communication services are widely used for fault-tolerant distributed computing