291 research outputs found
Delivering on seafood traceability under the new U.S. import monitoring program
The United States is the worldâs largest fish importer. Recent reports, however, indicate that 25â30% of wild-caught seafood imported into the US is illegally caught, heightening concerns over the countryâs significant role in driving Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing. In January 2017, NOAA enacted the Seafood Import Monitoring Program in an effort to combat IUU fishing through mandating improved seafood traceability requirements. This program requires reporting of fisheries data from harvest to arrival at the US border. Given the role of the US as a major global importer of seafood, this regulation could be a transformative action on fisheries worldwide if implementation includes two key componentsâ(1) applying best available and most appropriate technologies and (2) building monitoring and enforcement capacity among trading nations. This paper provides insightful commentary on the potential for this US policy to lead by example and improve an essential natural resource that over a billion people worldwide depend on for nutrition and livelihoods
Reflecting on loss in Papua New Guinea
This article takes up the conundrum of conducting anthropological fieldwork with people who claim that they have 'lost their culture,' as is the case with Suau people in the Massim region of Papua New Guinea. But rather than claiming culture loss as a process of dispossession, Suau claim it as a consequence of their own attempts to engage with colonial interests. Suau appear to have responded to missionization and their close proximity to the colonial-era capital by jettisoning many of the practices characteristic of Massim societies, now identified as 'kastom.' The rejection of kastom in order to facilitate their relations with Europeans during colonialism, followed by the mourning for kastom after independence, both invite consideration of a kind of reflexivity that requires action based on the presumed perspective of another
Optimization by Quantum Annealing: Lessons from hard 3-SAT cases
The Path Integral Monte Carlo simulated Quantum Annealing algorithm is
applied to the optimization of a large hard instance of the Random 3-SAT
Problem (N=10000). The dynamical behavior of the quantum and the classical
annealing are compared, showing important qualitative differences in the way of
exploring the complex energy landscape of the combinatorial optimization
problem. At variance with the results obtained for the Ising spin glass and for
the Traveling Salesman Problem, in the present case the linear-schedule Quantum
Annealing performance is definitely worse than Classical Annealing.
Nevertheless, a quantum cooling protocol based on field-cycling and able to
outperform standard classical simulated annealing over short time scales is
introduced.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, submitted to PR
Minimizing energy below the glass thresholds
Focusing on the optimization version of the random K-satisfiability problem,
the MAX-K-SAT problem, we study the performance of the finite energy version of
the Survey Propagation (SP) algorithm. We show that a simple (linear time)
backtrack decimation strategy is sufficient to reach configurations well below
the lower bound for the dynamic threshold energy and very close to the analytic
prediction for the optimal ground states. A comparative numerical study on one
of the most efficient local search procedures is also given.Comment: 12 pages, submitted to Phys. Rev. E, accepted for publicatio
Clinical significance of metabolic superscan in patients with hyperthyroidism
BACKGROUND: Hyperthyroid patients commonly complain of
generalized bony aches, which are frequently overlooked due
to the more prominent symptoms of cardiovascular and nervous
disturbances. Hyperthyroid patients are expected to have
abnormal bone metabolism as part of the generalized hypermetabolic
status.
The aim of this study is to verify the presence of metabolic bone
superscan in association with the hypermetabolic stats in various
groups of hyperthyroidism. Secondly, to correlate these
superscan features with the various laboratory results in hyperthyroid
patients.
MATERIAL AND METHODS: Forty-five hyperthyroid patients
confirmed by clinical and laboratory results were enrolled in
this work. In all patients, a 99mTc-pertechnetate thyroid uptake
scan was acquired. On a different day, total body bone scan
was acquired three hours post IV injection of 555-925 MBq of
99mTc-MDP. Serum FT3, FT4, TSH, Ca++, alkaline phosphatase
(AP) and parathyroid hormone (PTH) were monitored in all patients
as markers of thyroid and bone metabolism. Ten cases
with no thyroid diseases were included as a control group. Patients
with thyroiditis or long history of antithyroid drugs for more
than one year were excluded from the study.
RESULTS: The patients were subdivided into three groups:
Graves´ disease (GD) (n = 30), toxic nodular goiter (TNG) (n = 10) and autonomous toxic adenoma (AT) (n = 5). The TSH for the whole group was significantly suppressed compared to
the control group with higher suppression in the Graves´ disease
group than in the TNG or AT groups. 99mTc-pertechnetate
uptake values in the Graves´ disease group were significantly
higher than the TNG and AT groups (p < 0.05).
Metabolic superscan (MSS) was noted in 90% of the Graves´
cases, 20% in TNG and in none of the AT group. There were no
significant differences regarding Ca+, AP and PTH between
the Graves´ and non-Graves´ groups (p > 0.05).
CONCLUSIONS: Disturbances in bone metabolism are more
prevalent in Graves´ disease than in other types of hyperthyroidism.
The addition of the bone scan to the diagnostic work
up of patients with Graves´ disease is a sensitive indicator for
metabolic bone changes and could help in the future management
and follow up for this group of patients
Functional evolution of quantum cylindrical waves
Kucha{\v{r}} showed that the quantum dynamics of (1 polarization) cylindrical
wave solutions to vacuum general relativity is determined by that of a free
axially-symmetric scalar field along arbitrary axially-symmetric foliations of
a fixed flat 2+1 dimensional spacetime. We investigate if such a dynamics can
be defined {\em unitarily} within the standard Fock space quantization of the
scalar field.
Evolution between two arbitrary slices of an arbitrary foliation of the flat
spacetime can be built out of a restricted class of evolutions (and their
inverses). The restricted evolution is from an initial flat slice to an
arbitrary (in general, curved) slice of the flat spacetime and can be
decomposed into (i) `time' evolution in which the spatial Minkowskian
coordinates serve as spatial coordinates on the initial and the final slice,
followed by (ii) the action of a spatial diffeomorphism of the final slice on
the data obtained from (i). We show that although the functional evolution of
(i) is unitarily implemented in the quantum theory, generic spatial
diffeomorphisms of (ii) are not. Our results imply that a Tomanaga-Schwinger
type functional evolution of quantum cylindrical waves is not a viable concept
even though, remarkably, the more limited notion of functional evolution in
Kucha{\v{r}}'s `half parametrized formalism' is well-defined.Comment: Replaced with published versio
Enhancing the energy resolution of resonant coherent excitation using the cooled U 89+ beam extracted from the ESR
Synopsis We report on the resonant coherent excitation (RCE) of the 2 s -2 p 3/2 transition in Li-like U 89+ with an enhanced energy resolution, which was achieved by reducing the projectiles momentum spread. The kinetic temperature of the beam was decreased by electron cooling in the ESR, and the collisional momentum broadening in the target was suppressed by the use of thin crystal (1.0 and 2.5 Îźm-thick). The resonance width was observed to be âź1.4 eV in FWHM, which is three-times narrower than that from the previous work
A screen for kinase inhibitors identifies antimicrobial imidazopyridine aminofurazans as specific inhibitors of the Listeria monocytogenes PASTA kinase PrkA
Bacterial signaling systems such as protein kinases and quorum sensing have become increasingly attractive targets for the development of novel antimicrobial agents in a time of rising antibiotic resistance. The family of bacterial Penicillin-binding-protein And Serine/Threonine kinase-Associated (PASTA) kinases is of particular interest due to the role of these kinases in regulating resistance to β-lactam antibiotics. As such, small-molecule kinase inhibitors that target PASTA kinases may prove beneficial as treatments adjunctive to β-lactam therapy. Despite this interest, only limited progress has been made in identifying functional inhibitors of the PASTA kinases that have both activity against the intact microbe and high kinase specificity. Here, we report the results of a small-molecule screen that identified GSK690693, an imidazopyridine aminofurazan-type kinase inhibitor that increases the sensitivity of the intracellular pathogen Listeria monocytogenes to various β-lactams by inhibiting the PASTA kinase PrkA. GSK690693 potently inhibited PrkA kinase activity biochemically and exhibited significant selectivity for PrkA relative to the Staphylococcus aureus PASTA kinase Stk1. Furthermore, other imidazopyridine aminofurazans could effectively inhibit PrkA and potentiate β-lactam antibiotic activity to varying degrees. The presence of the 2-methyl-3-butyn-2-ol (alkynol) moiety was important for both biochemical and antimicrobial activity. Finally, mutagenesis studies demonstrated residues in the back pocket of the active site are important for GSK690693 selectivity. These data suggest that targeted screens can successfully identify PASTA kinase inhibitors with both biochemical and antimicrobial specificity. Moreover, the imidazopyridine aminofurazans represent a family of PASTA kinase inhibitors that have the potential to be optimized for selective PASTA kinase inhibition
- âŚ