Molecular phylogenies support taxonomic revision of three species of Laurencia (Rhodomelaceae, Rhodophyta), with the description of a new genus

Systematics of the Laurencia complex was investigated using a taxon-rich data set including the chloroplast ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase large subunit (rbcL) gene only and a character-rich data set combining the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase 1 (COI-5P), the rbcL marker, and the nuclear large subunit of the ribosomal operon (LSU). Bayesian and ML analyses of these data sets showed that three species hitherto placed in the genus Laurencia were not closely related to Laurencia sensu stricto. Laurencia caspica was the sister group of the remaining Osmundea species, L. crustiformans joined Palisada and L. flexilis consisted of an independent lineage. In light of these results a new genus, Ohelopapa, was proposed to accommodate L. flexilis. This new genus is morphologically characterized by four pericentral cells in each vegetative axial segment, however it lacks corps en cerise in cortical cells and secondary pit connections between cortical cells which are characteristic in Laurencia. Three novel combinations are proposed to render the classification closer to a natural system: Ohelopapa flexilis, Osmundea caspica, and Palisada crustiformans

Homeomorphic Embedding for Online Termination of Symbolic Methods

Well-quasi orders in general, and homeomorphic embedding in particular, have gained popularity to ensure the termination of techniques for program analysis, specialisation, transformation, and verification. In this paper we survey and discuss this use of homeomorphic embedding and clarify the advantages of such an approach over one using well-founded orders. We also discuss various extensions of the homeomorphic embedding relation. We conclude with a study of homeomorphic embedding in the context of metaprogramming, presenting some new (positive and negative) results and open problems

Changing indications and socio-demographic determinants of (adeno)tonsillectomy among children in England--are they linked? A retrospective analysis of hospital data.

OBJECTIVE: To assess whether increased awareness and diagnosis of obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome (OSAS) and national guidance on tonsillectomy for recurrent tonsillitis have influenced the socio-demographic profile of children who underwent tonsillectomy over the last decade. METHOD: Retrospective time-trends study of Hospital Episodes Statistics data. We examined the age, sex and deprivation level, alongside OSAS diagnoses, among children aged <16 years who underwent (adeno)tonsillectomy in England between 2001/2 and 2011/12. RESULTS: Among children aged <16 years, there were 29,697 and 27,732 (adeno)tonsillectomies performed in 2001/2 and 2011/12, respectively. The median age at (adeno)tonsillectomy decreased from 7 (IQR: 5-11) to 5 (IQR: 4-9) years over the decade. (Adeno)tonsillectomy rates among children aged 4-15 years decreased by 14% from 350 (95%CI: 346-354) in 2001/2 to 300 (95%CI: 296-303) per 100,000 children in 2011/12. However, (adeno)tonsillectomy rates among children aged <4 years increased by 58% from 135 (95%CI: 131-140) to 213 (95%CI 208-219) per 100,000 children in 2001/2 and 2011/2, respectively. OSAS diagnoses among children aged <4 years who underwent surgery increased from 18% to 39% between these study years and the proportion of children aged <4 years with OSAS from the most deprived areas increased from 5% to 12%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: (Adeno)tonsillectomy rates declined among children aged 4-15 years, which reflects national guidelines recommending the restriction of the operation to children with more severe recurrent throat infections. However, (adeno)tonsillectomy rates among pre-school children substantially increased over the past decade and one in five children undergoing the operation was aged <4 years in 2011/12.The increase in surgery rates in younger children is likely to have been driven by increased awareness and detection of OSAS, particularly among children from the most deprived areas

One hundred second bit-flip time in a two-photon dissipative oscillator

Current implementations of quantum bits (qubits) continue to undergo too many errors to be scaled into useful quantum machines. An emerging strategy is to encode quantum information in the two meta-stable pointer states of an oscillator exchanging pairs of photons with its environment, a mechanism shown to provide stability without inducing decoherence. Adding photons in these states increases their separation, and macroscopic bit-flip times are expected even for a handful of photons, a range suitable to implement a qubit. However, previous experimental realizations have saturated in the millisecond range. In this work, we aim for the maximum bit-flip time we could achieve in a two-photon dissipative oscillator. To this end, we design a Josephson circuit in a regime that circumvents all suspected dynamical instabilities, and employ a minimally invasive fluorescence detection tool, at the cost of a two-photon exchange rate dominated by single-photon loss. We attain bit-flip times of the order of 100 seconds for states pinned by two-photon dissipation and containing about 40 photons. This experiment lays a solid foundation from which the two-photon exchange rate can be gradually increased, thus gaining access to the preparation and measurement of quantum superposition states, and pursuing the route towards a logical qubit with built-in bit-flip protection

The coinductive formulation of common knowledge

We study the coinductive formulation of common knowledge in type theory. We formalise both the traditional relational semantics and an operator semantics, similar in form to the epistemic system S5, but at the level of events on possible worlds rather than as a logical derivation system. We have two major new results. Firstly, the operator semantics is equivalent to the relational semantics: we discovered that this requires a new hypothesis of semantic entailment on operators, not known in previous literature. Secondly, the coinductive version of common knowledge is equivalent to the traditional transitive closure on the relational interpretation. All results are formalised in the proof assistants Agda and Coq

Methyl group assignment using pseudocontact shifts with PARAssign

Macromolecular Biochemistr

Solved Forms for Path Ordering Constraints

. A usual technique in symbolic constraint solving is to apply transformation rules until a solved form is reached for which the problem becomes simple. Ordering constraints are well-known to be reducible to (a disjunction of) solved forms, but unfortunately no polynomial algorithm deciding the satisfiability of these solved forms is known. Here we deal with a different notion of solved form, where fundamental properties of orderings like transitivity and monotonicity are taken into account. This leads to a new family of constraint solving algorithms for the full recursive path ordering with status (RPOS), and hence as well for other path orderings like LPO, MPO, KNS and RDO, and for all possible total precedences and signatures. Apart from simplicity and elegance from the theoretical point of view, the main contribution of these algorithms is on efficiency in practice. Since guessing is minimized, and, in particular, no linear orderings between the subterms are guessed, ..