OURCOAST, A European initiative to support exchange of experiences and best practices in coastal management

OURCOAST is a three-year initiative commissioned by the General Directorate (DG) Environment of the European Commission to support and ensure the exchange of experiences and best practices in coastal management. This initiative was made possible thanks to the European Parliament that voted a dedicated resource for this purpose into the EU budget in 2008. The European Commission has intensively worked on developing and promoting Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) principles. More recently, an evaluation on ICZM in Europe concluded that although there is still great willingness of Authorities at national, regional and locals levels to implement ICZM, there is still a number of fundamental obstacles that need to be overcome. Some of these constraints are reflected in the lack of proper means for exchange of experiences and access to outstanding studies and best practices being produced in Coastal Member States, at different authority levels. The overall goal of OURCOAST is to create an information base and groundwork that will further support and promote the implementation of ICZM in coastal areas by the establishment of long-lasting information mechanisms that will promote the sharing of experiences and practices and the accomplishments of the project. The project will produce numerous studies of public interest, such as, a comparative analysis of ICZM and marine planning experiences, a state-of-the-art report on EU policies and legislation for ICZM and marine planning. Guidance for future integrated and marine planning projects, and policy recommendations will be formulated for future development of ICZM in Europe. The final results will be presented at an international stakeholders conference in Autumn 2011. The OURCOAST initiative aims to establish a multi-lingual database of Europe-wide ICZM practices in the form of case studies that will be freely accessible through the EUROPA ­ European Commission official web-site to the broad coastal and marine communities and to provide practical guidance to all those who are seeking sustainable solutions to their coastal management practices. Following these challenges, this paper aims to provide more insight and details about the progress activities and various components of the OURCOAST initiative, which is being implemented by a consortium led by ARCADIS and it's subcontractor the Coastal & Marine Union (EUCC). The implementation has started in January 2009 and will end in December 2011. The data collection, website development as well as the analysis are currently being carried out

Influência do armazenamento de substratos orgânicos no desenvolvimento de mudas de alface.

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Explosive pulsed power experimental capability at LLNL

Abstract not provide

The PHENIX Experiment at RHIC

The physics emphases of the PHENIX collaboration and the design and current status of the PHENIX detector are discussed. The plan of the collaboration for making the most effective use of the available luminosity in the first years of RHIC operation is also presented.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure. Further details of the PHENIX physics program available at http://www.rhic.bnl.gov/phenix

Novel computational methods for increasing PCR primer design effectiveness in directed sequencing

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is used in directed sequencing for the discovery of novel polymorphisms. As the first step in PCR directed sequencing, effective PCR primer design is crucial for obtaining high-quality sequence data for target regions. Since current computational primer design tools are not fully tuned with stable underlying laboratory protocols, researchers may still be forced to iteratively optimize protocols for failed amplifications after the primers have been ordered. Furthermore, potentially identifiable factors which contribute to PCR failures have yet to be elucidated. This inefficient approach to primer design is further intensified in a high-throughput laboratory, where hundreds of genes may be targeted in one experiment.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We have developed a fully integrated computational PCR primer design pipeline that plays a key role in our high-throughput directed sequencing pipeline. Investigators may specify target regions defined through a rich set of descriptors, such as Ensembl accessions and arbitrary genomic coordinates. Primer pairs are then selected computationally to produce a minimal amplicon set capable of tiling across the specified target regions. As part of the tiling process, primer pairs are computationally screened to meet the criteria for success with one of two PCR amplification protocols. In the process of improving our sequencing success rate, which currently exceeds 95% for exons, we have discovered novel and accurate computational methods capable of identifying primers that may lead to PCR failures. We reveal the laboratory protocols and their associated, empirically determined computational parameters, as well as describe the novel computational methods which may benefit others in future primer design research.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The high-throughput PCR primer design pipeline has been very successful in providing the basis for high-quality directed sequencing results and for minimizing costs associated with labor and reprocessing. The modular architecture of the primer design software has made it possible to readily integrate additional primer critique tests based on iterative feedback from the laboratory. As a result, the primer design software, coupled with the laboratory protocols, serves as a powerful tool for low and high-throughput primer design to enable successful directed sequencing.</p

Allergenicity assessment of genetically modified crops—what makes sense?

GM crops have great potential to improve food quality, increase harvest yields and decrease dependency on certain chemical pesticides. Before entering the market their safety needs to be scrutinized. This includes a detailed analysis of allergenic risks, as the safety of allergic consumers has high priority. However, not all tests currently being applied to assessing allergenicity have a sound scientific basis. Recent events with transgenic crops reveal the fallacy of applying such tests to GM crops

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead