The Cotonou Agreement: Will it Successfully Improve the Small Island Economies of the Caribbean?

On June 23, 2000, after eighteen months of negotiations, the European Union (EU) and its Member States signed a new partnership agreement with the African, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) states in Cotonou, Benin, called the Cotonou Agreement. This twenty-year partnership agreement with seventy-seven ACP states replaced the Lome Convention, which had provided the structure for trade and cooperation between the ACP states and the EU since 1975. The Cotonou Agreement focuses on poverty reduction as its principal objective, which will be achieved through political dialogue, development aid, and closer economic and trade cooperation. This Note discusses the structure of the Cotonou Agreement and analyzes the various effects the Agreement will have on the ACP countries, particularly, the countries of the Caribbean. It concludes that, despite its objectives, the Agreement will likely contribute to a decline in the economies of the ACP nations

A Comparative Study of Antioxidants in Color Preservation of Fish

Author Institution: Kent State University, Kent, OhioFifteen commercial antioxidants were evaluated as color preserving agents in fish. Erythorbic acid (Miles Lab.) at a concentration of 1% in 10% formalin proved to maintain all colors studied in near natural conditions for more than two years. Ionol CP-40 (Shell Chemical Company) 1% was successful for red-color preservation for two years. Limited success in preserving red was also experienced with Antioxidant 221 (Greef Company) 0.1%, Antioxidant 703 (Ethyl Corporation) 1%, and Dillydap (Carlisle) 0.1%. All other agents failed to maintain color beyond that of formalin controls, failure in most cases being attributed to antioxidant insolubility. Isopropyl alcohol was ineffective as a vehicle for antioxidants used in biological color preservation

A texture-based framework for improving CFD data visualization in a virtual environment

In the field of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) accurate representations of fluid phenomena can be simulated but require large amounts of data to represent the flow domain. Inefficient handling and access of the data at initialization and runtime can limit the ability of the engineering to quickly visualize and investigate the entire flow simulation, and thus hampering the ability to make a quality engineering decision in a timely manner. This problem is amplified n-fold if the solution set is time dependent, or transient. To visualize the data efficiently, dataset access should be decreased if not eliminated at runtime to provide an interactive environment to the end user. Also a reduction in the size of the initial datasets should be reduced as much as possible while maintaining validity of the solution so that larger (i.e. transient) solution datasets can be visualized. To accomplish this, the format in which the dataset is stored should be changed from conventional formats. With the recent advancements of graphical processor unit (GPU) technology, current research in the computer graphics community has lead a novel approach for efficiently storing and accessing flow field data as texture data during a visualization. A so-called texture-based solution for visualization of flow fields allows the end user to visualize complex three-dimensional flow fields in an intuitive fashion while remaining interactive. This work presents a framework for incorporating texture-based analysis techniques into a current CFD visualization application to improve the capabilities for investigating flow fields. The framework presented easily extendible to allow for research and incorporation of progressive visualization methods, in keeping with current technology. Comparisons of the current framework with the texture-based framework are shown to effectively visualize a dataset that could not be visualized in its entirety with the current framework. Comparisons of common visualization techniques, such as contour planes and streamlines, are made to show how the texture-based framework out performs the current framework

A texture-based framework for improving CFD data visualization in a virtual environment

In the field of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) accurate representations of fluid phenomena can be simulated but require large amounts of data to represent the flow domain. Most datasets generated from a CFD simulation can be coarse, {approx} 10,000 nodes or cells, or very fine with node counts on the order of 1,000,000. A typical dataset solution can also contain multiple solutions for each node, pertaining to various properties of the flow at a particular node. Scalar properties such as density, temperature, pressure, and velocity magnitude are properties that are typically calculated and stored in a dataset solution. Solutions are not limited to just scalar properties. Vector quantities, such as velocity, are also often calculated and stored for a CFD simulation. Accessing all of this data efficiently during runtime is a key problem for visualization in an interactive application. Understanding simulation solutions requires a post-processing tool to convert the data into something more meaningful. Ideally, the application would present an interactive visual representation of the numerical data for any dataset that was simulated while maintaining the accuracy of the calculated solution. Most CFD applications currently sacrifice interactivity for accuracy, yielding highly detailed flow descriptions but limiting interaction for investigating the field

Establishing model-to-model interoperability in an engineering workflow

The modeling tools available for engineering design and analysis are traditionally created in isolation with features and capabilities geared toward a particular domain, that is, that many traditional engineering modeling tools are isolated, unable to readily connect to or be integrated into a larger tool set. With the advent of cloud computing and the success of delivering applications built using a microservices architecture, a more modern approach would allow an engineering design application to be composed of smaller independently developed and contributed applications within an environment capable of executing those applications without modification to the environment. This is somewhat analogous to an application store with one main difference. In the engineering design and analysis case, the goal is to enable the coupling of the applications together to perform higher level analysis, whereas in the application store, most applications are used independently. This work introduces an Application Coupling Interface (ACI), for declaring the semantics of the application programming interfaces (APIs) of a modeled subsystem, a central repository providing access to curated web enabled engineered subsystems via ACIs and an extension of an existing cloud enabled engineering modeling/design environment to incorporate a new messaging system capable of autonomously orchestrating the execution and exchange of data between the subsystems. Together, these components provide the basis for an extensible analysis and design platform that accelerates discovery and innovation through the promotion of contribution and reuse of web enabled engineering models

Comprehensive Essentiality Analysis of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis Genome via Saturating Transposon Mutagenesis

For decades, identifying the regions of a bacterial chromosome that are necessary for viability has relied on mapping integration sites in libraries of random transposon mutants to find loci that are unable to sustain insertion. To date, these studies have analyzed subsaturated libraries, necessitating the application of statistical methods to estimate the likelihood that a gap in transposon coverage is the result of biological selection and not the stochasticity of insertion. As a result, the essentiality of many genomic features, particularly small ones, could not be reliably assessed. We sought to overcome this limitation by creating a completely saturated transposon library in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. In assessing the composition of this highly saturated library by deep sequencing, we discovered that a previously unknown sequence bias of the Himar1 element rendered approximately 9% of potential TA dinucleotide insertion sites less permissible for insertion. We used a hidden Markov model of essentiality that accounted for this unanticipated bias, allowing us to confidently evaluate the essentiality of features that contained as few as 2 TA sites, including open reading frames (ORF), experimentally identified noncoding RNAs, methylation sites, and promoters. In addition, several essential regions that did not correspond to known features were identified, suggesting uncharacterized functions that are necessary for growth. This work provides an authoritative catalog of essential regions of the M. tuberculosis genome and a statistical framework for applying saturating mutagenesis to other bacteria

DNA replication fidelity in Mycobacterium tuberculosis is mediated by an ancestral prokaryotic proofreader

The DNA replication machinery is an important target for antibiotic development for increasingly drug resistant bacteria including Mycobacterium tuberculosis1. While blocking DNA replication leads to cell death, disrupting the processes used to ensure replication fidelity can accelerate mutation and the evolution of drug resistance. In E. coli, the proofreading subunit of the replisome, the ε-exonuclease, is essential for high fidelity DNA replication2; however, we find that it is completely dispensable in M. tuberculosis. Rather, the mycobacterial replicative polymerase, DnaE1, encodes a novel editing function that proofreads DNA replication, mediated by an intrinsic 3′-5′ exonuclease activity within its PHP domain. Inactivation of the DnaE1 PHP domain increases the mutation rate by greater than 3,000 fold. Moreover, phylogenetic analysis of DNA replication proofreading in the bacterial kingdom suggests that E. coli is a phylogenetic outlier and that PHP-domain mediated proofreading is widely conserved and indeed may be the ancestral prokaryotic proofreader

Establishing model-to-model interoperability in an engineering workflow

The modeling tools available for engineering design and analysis are traditionally created in isolation with features and capabilities geared toward a particular domain, that is, that many traditional engineering modeling tools are isolated, unable to readily connect to or be integrated into a larger tool set. With the advent of cloud computing and the success of delivering applications built using a microservices architecture, a more modern approach would allow an engineering design application to be composed of smaller independently developed and contributed applications within an environment capable of executing those applications without modification to the environment. This is somewhat analogous to an application store with one main difference. In the engineering design and analysis case, the goal is to enable the coupling of the applications together to perform higher level analysis, whereas in the application store, most applications are used independently. This work introduces an Application Coupling Interface (ACI), for declaring the semantics of the application programming interfaces (APIs) of a modeled subsystem, a central repository providing access to curated web enabled engineered subsystems via ACIs and an extension of an existing cloud enabled engineering modeling/design environment to incorporate a new messaging system capable of autonomously orchestrating the execution and exchange of data between the subsystems. Together, these components provide the basis for an extensible analysis and design platform that accelerates discovery and innovation through the promotion of contribution and reuse of web enabled engineering models.</p