Trees to the sky : prehistoric hunting in New Ireland, Papua New Guinea

This dissertation investigates the nature of prehistoric hunting strategies in New Ireland, Papua New Guinea. New Ireland contains the earliest radiocarbon determinations for human occupation and therefore provides an opportunity to investigate colonisation. It also has a depauperate fauna compared to New Guinea and therefore provides an opportunity to investigate subsequent human adaptations. Hunting strategies are investigated through an analysis of the Buang Merabak faunal assemblage. The Buang Merabak assemblage contains prehistoric food refuse including shell and bone midden material and stone artefacts. The results of the faunal analysis are interpreted to investigate issues of resource use, land use and mobility. Resource use is reflected through prey selectivity and provides the opportunity to investigate the nature of hunting specialisation as a mechanism of adaptation. Prey taxa have discrete ecological requirements that are the parameters of their spatial distribution across the island. Notions of human land use are reflected through the spatial distribution of the prey taxa and are interpreted as a reflection of both on site and off site activities. In order to exploit each particular taxon the hunter must interact with the prey within the prey's environment. Therefore within the hunting context, human land use is reflected by the prey they capture and bring back to the site. Mobility is reflected through resource use and land use. The spatial distribution of the prey taxa reflects the distance the hunter must cover in order to capture the prey and return to the site. In this context, mobility is notionally a relative scale that rates the degree of movement required to exploit the resources reflected in the assemblage. The results are brought together to suggest a New Ireland specific model of behaviour that can be tested against further research. This dissertation argues that terrestrial faunas such as Dobsonia sp. bats and the Phalanger orienta/is were an important aspect of the Late-Pleistocene subsistence economy in New Ireland

Model-As-A-Service (MaaS) Using the Cloud Services Innovation Platform (CSIP)

Cloud infrastructures for modelling activities such as data processing, performing environmental simulations, or conducting model calibrations/optimizations provide a cost effective alternative to traditional high performance computing approaches. Cloud - based modelling examples emerged into the m ore formal notion: \u27Model - as - a - Service\u27 (MaaS). This paper presents the Cloud Services Innovation Platform (CSIP) as a software framework offering MaaS. It describes both the internal CSIP infrastructure and software architecture that manages cloud resources for typical modelling tasks, and the use of CSIP\u27s \u27 ModelServices API \u27 for a modelling application . CSIP\u27s architecture supports fast and resource aware auto - scaling of computational resources. An example model service is presented: the USDA hydrograph model EFH2 used in the desktop - based \u27engineering field tools\u27 is deployed as a CSIP service. This and other MaaS CSIP examples benefit from the use of cloud resources to enable straightforward scalable model deployment into cloud environments

The Model Parameter Estimation Experiment (MOPEX): Its structure, connection to other international initiatives and future directions

The Model Parameter Estimation Experiment (MOPEX) is an international project aimed at developing enhanced techniques for the a priori estimation of parameters in hydrologic models and in land surface parameterization schemes connected to atmospheric models. The MOPEX science strategy involves: database creation, a priori parameter estimation methodology development, parameter refinement or calibration, and the demonstration of parameter transferability. A comprehensive MOPEX database has been developed that contains historical hydrometeorological data and land surface characteristics data for many hydrologic basins in the United States (US) and in other countries. This database is being continuously expanded to include basins from various hydroclimatic regimes throughout the world. MOPEX research has largely been driven by a series of international workshops that have brought interested hydrologists and land surface modelers together to exchange knowledge and experience in developing and applying parameter estimation techniques. With its focus on parameter estimation, MOPEX plays an important role in the international context of other initiatives such as GEWEX, PUB and PILPS. This paper outlines the MOPEX initiative, discusses its role in the scientific community and briefly states future directions

Integrated Modelling Frameworks for Environmental Assessment and Decision Support

As argued in Chapter 1, modern management of environmental resources defines problems from a holistic and integrated perspective, thereby imposing strong requirements on Environmental Decision Support Systems (EDSSs) and Integrated Assessment Tools (IATs). These systems and tools tend to be increasingly complex in terms of software architecture and computational power in order to cope with the type of problems they must solve. For instance, the discipline of Integrated Assessment (IA) needs tools that arc able to span a wide range of disciplines, from socio-economics to ecology to hydrology. Such tools must support a wide range of methodologies and techniques like agent-based modeling, Bayesian decision networks, optimization, multicriteria analyses and visualization tools, to name a few

Terahertz Faraday Rotation of SrFe 12 O 19 Hexaferrites Enhanced by Nb Doping

From American Chemical Society via Jisc Publications RouterHistory: received 2022-07-21, rev-recd 2022-09-25, accepted 2022-09-26, pub-electronic 2022-10-04, asap 2022-10-04, issue-pub 2022-10-19Article version: VoRPublication status: PublishedFunder: National Natural Science Foundation of China; doi: 10.13039/501100001809; Grant(s): 12174146Funder: National Natural Science Foundation of China; doi: 10.13039/501100001809; Grant(s): 91963201Funder: China Scholarship Council; doi: 10.13039/501100004543; Grant(s): 201806370199Funder: Vedeck? Grantov? Agent?ra M?VVa? SR a SAV; doi: 10.13039/501100006109; Grant(s): 2/0034/23Funder: Vedeck? Grantov? Agent?ra M?VVa? SR a SAV; doi: 10.13039/501100006109; Grant(s): 2/0038/20Funder: Higher Education Discipline Innovation Project; doi: 10.13039/501100013314; Grant(s): B2006The magneto-optical and dielectric behavior of M-type hexaferrites as permanent magnets in the THz band is essential for potential applications like microwave absorbers and antennas, while are rarely reported in recent years. In this work, single-phase SrFe12–x Nb x O19 hexaferrite ceramics were prepared by the conventional solid-state sintering method. Temperature dependence of dielectric parameters was investigated here to determine the relationship between dielectric response and magnetic phase transition. The saturated magnetization increases by nearly 12%, while the coercive field decreases by 30% in the x = 0.03 composition compared to that of the x = 0.00 sample. Besides, the Nb substitution improves the magneto-optical behavior in the THz band by comparing the Faraday rotation parameter from 0.75 (x = 0.00) to 1.30 (x = 0.03). The changes in the magnetic properties are explained by a composition-driven increase of the net magnetic moment and enhanced ferromagnetic exchange coupling. The substitution of the donor dopant Nb on the Fe site is a feasible way to obtain multifunctional M-type hexaferrites as preferred candidates for permanent magnets, sensors, and other electronic devices

Disentangling Immediate Adaptive Introgression from Selection on Standing Introgressed Variation in Humans.

Recent studies have reported evidence suggesting that portions of contemporary human genomes introgressed from archaic hominin populations went to high frequencies due to positive selection. However, no study to date has specifically addressed the postintrogression population dynamics of these putative cases of adaptive introgression. Here, for the first time, we specifically define cases of immediate adaptive introgression (iAI) in which archaic haplotypes rose to high frequencies in humans as a result of a selective sweep that occurred shortly after the introgression event. We define these cases as distinct from instances of selection on standing introgressed variation (SI), in which an introgressed haplotype initially segregated neutrally and subsequently underwent positive selection. Using a geographically diverse data set, we report novel cases of selection on introgressed variation in living humans and shortlist among these cases those whose selective sweeps are more consistent with having been the product of iAI rather than SI. Many of these novel inferred iAI haplotypes have potential biological relevance, including three that contain immune-related genes in West Siberians, South Asians, and West Eurasians. Overall, our results suggest that iAI may not represent the full picture of positive selection on archaically introgressed haplotypes in humans and that more work needs to be done to analyze the role of SI in the archaic introgression landscape of living humans

Papuan mitochondrial genomes and the settlement of Sahul

New Guineans represent one of the oldest locally continuous populations outside Africa, harboring among the greatest linguistic and genetic diversity on the planet. Archeological and genetic evidence suggest that their ancestors reached Sahul (present day New Guinea and Australia) by at least 55,000 years ago (kya). However, little is known about this early settlement phase or subsequent dispersal and population structuring over the subsequent period of time. Here we report 379 complete Papuan mitochondrial genomes from across Papua New Guinea, which allow us to reconstruct the phylogenetic and phylogeographic history of northern Sahul. Our results support the arrival of two groups of settlers in Sahul within the same broad time window (50–65 kya), each carrying a different set of maternal lineages and settling Northern and Southern Sahul separately. Strong geographic structure in northern Sahul remains visible today, indicating limited dispersal over time despite major climatic, cultural, and historical changes. However, following a period of isolation lasting nearly 20 ky after initial settlement, environmental changes postdating the Last Glacial Maximum stimulated diversification of mtDNA lineages and greater interactions within and beyond Northern Sahul, to Southern Sahul, Wallacea and beyond. Later, in the Holocene, populations from New Guinea, in contrast to those of Australia, participated in early interactions with incoming Asian populations from Island Southeast Asia and continuing into Oceania

Assessment of p.Phe508del-CFTR functional restoration in pediatric primary cystic fibrosis airway epithelial cells

© 2018 Sutanto et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Background Mutations in the cystic fibrosis transmembrane regulator (CFTR) gene can reduce function of the CFTR ion channel activity and impair cellular chloride secretion. The gold standard method to assess CFTR function of ion transport using the Ussing chamber requires a high number of airway epithelial cells grown at air-liquid interface, limiting the application of this method for high throughput screening of potential therapeutic compounds in primary airway epithelial cells (pAECs) featuring less common CFTR mutations. This study assessed an alternative approach, using a small scale halide assay that can be adapted for a personalized high throughput setting to analyze CFTR function of pAEC. Methods Pediatric pAECs derived from children with CF (pAEC CF ) were established and expanded as monolayer cultures, before seeding into 96-well plates for the halide assay. Cells were then transduced with an adenoviral construct containing yellow fluorescent protein (eYFP) reporter gene, alone or in combination with either wild-type CFTR (WT-CFTR) or p.Phe508-del CFTR. Four days post transduction, cells were stimulated with forskolin and genistein, and assessed for quenching of the eYFP signal following injection of iodide solution into the assay media. Results Data showed that pAEC CF can express eYFP at high efficiency following transduction with the eYFP construct. The halide assay was able to discriminate functional restoration of CFTR in pAEC CF treated with either WT-CFTR construct or the positive controls syntaxin 8 and B-cell receptor-associated protein 31 shRNAs. Significance The current study demonstrates that the halide assay can be adapted for pediatric pAEC CF to evaluate restoration of CFTR function. With the ongoing development of small molecules to modulate the folding and/or activity of various mutated CFTR proteins, this halide assay presents a small-scale personalized screening platform that could assess therapeutic potential of molecules across a broad range of CFTR mutations