Crash Site Debris Recovery Mobile Application

The Crash Site Debris Recovery Mobile Application is a prototype Windows Phone Application designed to assist crash investigators, first responders, and clean-up crews to locate aircraft crash debris in ground impact crash situations. The application, using a debris trajectory formula, the GPS location of the mobile device, a geoprocessing service, and user-defined variables of the affected aircraft and its crash characteristics, projects an estimated area of high debris concentration. In testing, the application has shown to be promising in furthering the development of mobile applications for use in airplane crash events

Recombining your way out of trouble: the genetic architecture of hybrid fitness under environmental stress

Hybridization between species is a fundamental evolutionary force that can both promote and delay adaptation. There is a deficit in our understanding of the genetic basis of hybrid fitness, especially in non-domesticated organisms. We also know little about how hybrid fitness changes as a function of environmental stress. Here, we made genetically variable F2 hybrid populations from two divergent Saccharomyces yeast species, exposed populations to ten toxins, and sequenced the most resilient hybrids on low coverage using ddRADseq. We expected to find strong negative epistasis and heterozygote advantage in the hybrid genomes. We investigated three aspects of hybridness: 1) hybridity, 2) interspecific heterozygosity, and 3) epistasis (positive or negative associations between non-homologous chromosomes). Linear mixed effect models revealed strong genotype-by-environment interactions with many chromosomes and chromosomal interactions showing species-biased content depending on the environment. Against our predictions, we found extensive selection against heterozygosity such that homozygous allelic combinations from the same species were strongly overrepresented in an otherwise hybrid genomic background. We also observed multiple cases of positive epistasis between chromosomes from opposite species, confirmed by epistasis- and selection-free simulations, which is surprising given the large divergence of the parental species (~15% genome-wide). Together, these results suggest that stress-resilient hybrid genomes can be assembled from the best features of both parents, without paying high costs of negative epistasis across large evolutionary distances. Our findings illustrate the importance of measuring genetic trait architecture in an environmental context when determining the evolutionary potential of hybrid populations

Magnetic Battery Feasibility Study using Flux Switching Topology

Permanent magnets have long been known to store magnetic energy in the alignment of the magnetic domains within the material. This paper investigates the possibility of constructing a magnetic device which can effectively extract the stored potential energy from permanent magnets and convert that energy into electrical energy. The concept stemmed from a number of patents which claimed to effectively extract energy from strong neodymium or samarium cobalt magnets on a macroscopic scale using specially designed magnetic flux paths. Their method uses one of several different techniques to switch permanent magnet flux between alternating paths and electrical energy is extracted from coils intercepting this flux as it changes within the core. Using experimental testing, magnetic simulations, and theoretical predictions, our research examined this question. The experimental results indicate that the devices tested do not effectively extract magnetic energy from the magnetized materials under test, indicating that the design is not suitable for use as a magnetic battery

Varkenshouderij in niet-concentratiegebieden : op weg naar duurzaamheid

In opdracht van de vakgroepen varkenshouderij van de N LTO en WLTO is onderzoek uitgevoerd naar de voorwaarden om een duurzame varkenshouderij in de niet-concentratiegebieden mogelijk te maken. Met behulp van gegevens uit de CBS-Landbouwtelling, een analyse van de inhoud van Streek- en Bestemmingsplannen en de resultaten van een enquête onder varkenshouders is nagegaan op welke wijze gekomen kan worden tot: 1) een verantwoorde en duurzame afzet van de geproduceerde mest; 2) een optimale afstemming tussen opfokzeugen, zeugen en vleesvarkens in het gebied; 3) ontwikkelingsmogelijkheden voor individuele bedrijven. Hiervoor zijn oplossingsrichtingen aangegeven en worden beleidsaanbevelingen gedaa

Reading the Complex Skipper Butterfly Fauna of One Tropical Place

BACKGROUND: An intense, 30-year, ongoing biodiversity inventory of Lepidoptera, together with their food plants and parasitoids, is centered on the rearing of wild-caught caterpillars in the 120,000 terrestrial hectares of dry, rain, and cloud forest of Area de Conservacion Guanacaste (ACG) in northwestern Costa Rica. Since 2003, DNA barcoding of all species has aided their identification and discovery. We summarize the process and results for a large set of the species of two speciose subfamilies of ACG skipper butterflies (Hesperiidae) and emphasize the effectiveness of barcoding these species (which are often difficult and time-consuming to identify). METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Adults are DNA barcoded by the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario, Guelph, Canada; and they are identified by correlating the resulting COI barcode information with more traditional information such as food plant, facies, genitalia, microlocation within ACG, caterpillar traits, etc. This process has found about 303 morphologically defined species of eudamine and pyrgine Hesperiidae breeding in ACG (about 25% of the ACG butterfly fauna) and another 44 units indicated by distinct barcodes (n = 9,094), which may be additional species and therefore may represent as much as a 13% increase. All but the members of one complex can be identified by their DNA barcodes. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Addition of DNA barcoding to the methodology greatly improved the inventory, both through faster (hence cheaper) accurate identification of the species that are distinguishable without barcoding, as well as those that require it, and through the revelation of species "hidden" within what have long been viewed as single species. Barcoding increased the recognition of species-level specialization. It would be no more appropriate to ignore barcode data in a species inventory than it would be to ignore adult genitalia variation or caterpillar ecology

Stability of the replica-symmetric saddle-point in general mean-field spin-glass models

Within the replica approach to mean-field spin-glasses the transition from ergodic high-temperature behaviour to the glassy low-temperature phase is marked by the instability of the replica-symmetric saddle-point. For general spin-glass models with non-Gaussian field distributions the corresponding Hessian is a $2^n\times 2^n$ matrix with the number $n$ of replicas tending to zero eventually. We block-diagonalize this Hessian matrix using representation theory of the permutation group and identify the blocks related to the spin-glass susceptibility. Performing the limit $n\to 0$ within these blocks we derive expressions for the de~Almeida-Thouless line of general spin-glass models. Specifying these expressions to the cases of the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick, Viana-Bray, and the L\'evy spin glass respectively we obtain results in agreement with previous findings using the cavity approach

The phase diagram of L\'evy spin glasses

We study the L\'evy spin-glass model with the replica and the cavity method. In this model each spin interacts through a finite number of strong bonds and an infinite number of weak bonds. This hybrid behaviour of L\'evy spin glasses becomes transparent in our solution: the local field contains a part propagating along a backbone of strong bonds and a Gaussian noise term due to weak bonds. Our method allows to determine the complete replica symmetric phase diagram, the replica symmetry breaking line and the entropy. The results are compared with simulations and previous calculations using a Gaussian ansatz for the distribution of fields.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figure

Development of a new small-sized plasma optical emission detector for gas chromatography

Für die Trennung von Quecksilber und Zinn haltiger Organometallverbindungen wird häufig die Gaschromatographie eingesetzt, da sie eine hohe Trennleistung mit einem geringen Proben- und Lösemittelbedarf kombiniert. Die erforderliche Elementselektivität wird meist durch ein auf Plasmatechnik basiertem Detektionssystem durch Optische- oder Massenspektrometrische erreicht. Das in dieser Arbeit entwickelte System besteht aus einer miniaturisierten Mikrowelleninduzierten Plasmaquelle mit Optischeremissionsdetektion. Mithilfe der speziell an die Anforderungen angepasste Software wird eine einfache und vollständig automatisierte Detektion von Organoquecksilber- und Organozinnverbindungen ermöglicht. Die Arbeit dokumentiert Entwicklung und Charakterisierung des neuen Systems. Die analytische Leistungsfähigkeit wird durch die Untersuchung zertifizierter Referenzmaterialien und unterschiedlicher Realproben unter Beweis gestellt. Separation of organometallic compound of mercury and tin is usually performed by application of gas chromatography as it provides high separation efficiency in combination with low sample and solvent requirements. The required element selectivity can be achieved by application of plasma based detection systems using optical emission spectrometry or mass spectrometry. Within this work a new and simple to use detector has been developed. The system is based on a microwave induced plasma source with optical emission spectrometry and small dimensions. The used optical emission detection and the purpose made software provide a fully automated application for detection of organometallic mercury and tin compounds. The work describes the development and characterization of this detection system. Analytical performance is demonstrated by the analysis of different certified reference materials and real samples

Inherited pericentric inversion of chromosome number two: A linkage study *

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/66205/1/j.1469-1809.1969.tb01629.x.pd