Soil Compaction Study of 20 Timber-harvest Units on the Ouachita National Forest

A soil compaction study was performed on 20 timber harvest units on both rocky (15-35 % by volume gravel) and non-rocky (<15 % by volume gravel) surface soils of the Ouachita National Forest in Arkansas, to determine if these areas met the USDA Forest Service Southern Region (R8) soil quality standards for compaction and affected area extent. The compaction standard states bulk density cannot increase more than 15 % from its natural (undisturbed) level and not more than 15 % of an activity area can be adversely affected. Eight of the study units exceeded this standard. These eight units generally contained less than 15 % rock fragments in the top 8 inches (20 cm) of soil, and seven of the eight had been harvested during the moist season (December-June) using rubber tire skidders. The non-rocky soil units, when harvested during the dry season (July-November), resulted in about 20-50 % less compaction than when harvested during the moist season. Non-rocky soils with a sandy loam surface tended to compact less during dry season but more during moist season equipment operation than the non-rocky loam or silt loam soils. Compaction also averaged about 30-50 % less on the rocky soils than on non-rocky soils. On the rocky soils, logging equipment operation during either the dry or moist season did not show a difference, and only native surface roads and log decks tended to have a greater than 15 % bulk density increase. Compaction due to timber harvest activities that had occurred at least 15-20 years earlier averaged about 9 % bulk density increase for the nonrocky soils and 7 % for the rocky soils, and indicated that partial recovery had occurred. An analysis of surface infiltration rates found that a 15 % density change resulted in more than 60 % reduction in infiltration. This study also found that a 15 % density change can be visually determined by change in soil structure

W(h)ither Fossils? Studying Morphological Character Evolution in the Age of Molecular Sequences

A major challenge in the post-genomics era will be to integrate molecular sequence data from extant organisms with morphological data from fossil and extant taxa into a single, coherent picture of phylogenetic relationships; only then will these phylogenetic hypotheses be effectively applied to the study of morphological character evolution. At least two analytical approaches to solving this problem have been utilized: (1) simultaneous analysis of molecular sequence and morphological data with fossil taxa included as terminals in the analysis, and (2) the molecular scaffold approach, in which morphological data are analyzed over a molecular backbone (with constraints that force extant taxa into positions suggested by sequence data). The perceived obstacles to including fossil taxa directly in simultaneous analyses of morphological and molecular sequence data with extant taxa include: (1) that fossil taxa are missing the molecular sequence portion of the character data; (2) that morphological characters might be misleading due to convergence; and (3) character weighting, specifically how and whether to weight characters in the morphological partition relative to characters in the molecular sequence data partition. The molecular scaffold has been put forward as a potential solution to at least some of these problems. Using examples of simultaneous analyses from the literature, as well as new analyses of previously published morphological and molecular sequence data matrices for extant and fossil Chiroptera (bats), we argue that the simultaneous analysis approach is superior to the molecular scaffold approach, specifically addressing the problems to which the molecular scaffold has been suggested as a solution. Finally, the application of phylogenetic hypotheses including fossil taxa (whatever their derivation) to the study of morphological character evolution is discussed, with special emphasis on scenarios in which fossil taxa are likely to be most enlightening: (1) in determining the sequence of character evolution; (2) in determining the timing of character evolution; and (3) in making inferences about the presence or absence of characteristics in fossil taxa that may not be directly observable in the fossil record. Published By: Missouri Botanical Garde

Assessing the Requirements for Industry Relevant Quantum Computation

In this paper, we use open-source tools to perform quantum resource estimation to assess the requirements for industry-relevant quantum computation. Our analysis uses the problem of industrial shift scheduling in manufacturing and the Quantum Industrial Shift Scheduling algorithm. We base our figures of merit on current technology, as well as theoretical high-fidelity scenarios for superconducting qubit platforms. We find that the execution time of gate and measurement operations determines the overall computational runtime more strongly than the system error rates. Moreover, achieving a quantum speedup would not only require low system error rates ($10^{-6}$ or better), but also measurement operations with an execution time below 10ns. This rules out the possibility of near-term quantum advantage for this use case, and suggests that significant technological or algorithmic progress will be needed before such an advantage can be achieved

Optimization of insect cell based protein production processes - online monitoring, expression systems, scale-up

Due to the increasing use of insect cell based expression systems in research and industrial recombinant protein production, the development of efficient and reproducible production processes remains a challenging task. In this context, the application of online monitoring techniques is intended to ensure high and reproducible product qualities already during the early phases of process development. In the following chapter, the most common transient and stable insect cell based expression systems are briefly introduced. Novel applications of insect cell based expression systems for the production of insect derived antimicrobial peptides/proteins (AMPs) are discussed using the example of G. mellonella derived gloverin. Suitable in situ sensor techniques for insect cell culture monitoring in disposable and common bioreactor systems are outlined with respect to optical and capacitive sensor concepts. Since scale-up of production processes is one of the most critical steps in process development, a conclusive overview is given about scale up aspects for industrial insect cell culture processes

Benchmarking Quantum Generative Learning: A Study on Scalability and Noise Resilience using QUARK

Quantum computing promises a disruptive impact on machine learning algorithms, taking advantage of the exponentially large Hilbert space available. However, it is not clear how to scale quantum machine learning (QML) to industrial-level applications. This paper investigates the scalability and noise resilience of quantum generative learning applications. We consider the training performance in the presence of statistical noise due to finite-shot noise statistics and quantum noise due to decoherence to analyze the scalability of QML methods. We employ rigorous benchmarking techniques to track progress and identify challenges in scaling QML algorithms, and show how characterization of QML systems can be accelerated, simplified, and made reproducible when the QUARK framework is used. We show that QGANs are not as affected by the curse of dimensionality as QCBMs and to which extent QCBMs are resilient to noise

Phylogenomic analysis of 997 nuclear genes reveals the need for extensive generic re-delimitation in Caesalpinioideae (Leguminosae)

Subfamily Caesalpinioideae with ca. 4,600 species in 152 genera is the second-largest subfamily of legumes (Leguminosae) and forms an ecologically and economically important group of trees, shrubs and lianas with a pantropical distribution. Despite major advances in the last few decades towards aligning genera with clades across Caesalpinioideae, generic delimitation remains in a state of considerable flux, especially across the mimosoid clade. We test the monophyly of genera across Caesalpinioideae via phylogenomic analysis of 997 nuclear genes sequenced via targeted enrichment (Hybseq) for 420 species and 147 of the 152 genera currently recognised in the subfamily. We show that 22 genera are non-monophyletic or nested in other genera and that non-monophyly is concentrated in the mimosoid clade where ca. 25% of the 90 genera are found to be non-monophyletic. We suggest two main reasons for this pervasive generic non-monophyly: (i) extensive morphological homoplasy that we document here for a handful of important traits and, particularly, the repeated evolution of distinctive fruit types that were historically emphasised in delimiting genera and (ii) this is an artefact of the lack of pantropical taxonomic syntheses and sampling in previous phylogenies and the consequent failure to identify clades that span the Old World and New World or conversely amphi-Atlantic genera that are non-monophyletic, both of which are critical for delimiting genera across this large pantropical clade. Finally, we discuss taxon delimitation in the phylogenomic era and especially how assessing patterns of gene tree conflict can provide additional insights into generic delimitation. This new phylogenomic framework provides the foundations for a series of papers reclassifying genera that are presented here in Advances in Legume Systematics (ALS) 14 Part 1, for establishing a new higher-level phylogenetic tribal and clade-based classification of Caesalpinioideae that is the focus of ALS14 Part 2 and for downstream analyses of evolutionary diversification and biogeography of this important group of legumes which are presented elsewhere

Stratified Abstraction of Access Control Policies

The shift to cloud-based APIs has made application security critically depend on understanding and reasoning about policies that regulate access to cloud resources. We present stratified predicate abstraction, a new approach that summarizes complex security policies into a compact set of positive and declarative statements that precisely state who has access to a resource. We have implemented stratified abstraction and deployed it as the engine powering AWS’s IAM Access Analyzer service, and hence, demonstrate how formal methods and SMT can be used for security policy explanation

Hybrid capture of 964 nuclear genes resolves evolutionary relationships in the mimosoid legumes and reveals the polytomous origins of a large pantropical radiation

PREMISE Targeted enrichment methods facilitate sequencing of hundreds of nuclear loci to enhance phylogenetic resolution and elucidate why some parts of the “tree of life” are difficult (if not impossible) to resolve. The mimosoid legumes are a prominent pantropical clade of ~3300 species of woody angiosperms for which previous phylogenies have shown extensive lack of resolution, especially among the species‐rich and taxonomically challenging ingoids. METHODS We generated transcriptomes to select low‐copy nuclear genes, enrich these via hybrid capture for representative species of most mimosoid genera, and analyze the resulting data using de novo assembly and various phylogenomic tools for species tree inference. We also evaluate gene tree support and conflict for key internodes and use phylogenetic network analysis to investigate phylogenetic signal across the ingoids. RESULTS Our selection of 964 nuclear genes greatly improves phylogenetic resolution across the mimosoid phylogeny and shows that the ingoid clade can be resolved into several well‐supported clades. However, nearly all loci show lack of phylogenetic signal for some of the deeper internodes within the ingoids. CONCLUSIONS Lack of resolution in the ingoid clade is most likely the result of hyperfast diversification, potentially causing a hard polytomy of six or seven lineages. The gene set for targeted sequencing presented here offers great potential to further enhance the phylogeny of mimosoids and the wider Caesalpinioideae with denser taxon sampling, to provide a framework for taxonomic reclassification, and to study the ingoid radiation