2,521 research outputs found
Promoting Farm Investment for Sustainable Intensification of African Agriculture
Farm Management, Downloads July 2008-July 2009: 9,
Cash Crop and Foodgrain Productivity in Senegal: Historical View, New Survey Evidence, and Policy Implications
Crop Production/Industries, Productivity Analysis, Downloads July 2008 - June 2009: 10,
Analysis of existing mathematics textbooks for use in secondary schools.
Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston University
Thesis (M.A.)--Boston Universit
IoT Expunge: Implementing Verifiable Retention of IoT Data
The growing deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) systems aims to ease the
daily life of end-users by providing several value-added services. However, IoT
systems may capture and store sensitive, personal data about individuals in the
cloud, thereby jeopardizing user-privacy. Emerging legislation, such as
California's CalOPPA and GDPR in Europe, support strong privacy laws to protect
an individual's data in the cloud. One such law relates to strict enforcement
of data retention policies. This paper proposes a framework, entitled IoT
Expunge that allows sensor data providers to store the data in cloud platforms
that will ensure enforcement of retention policies. Additionally, the cloud
provider produces verifiable proofs of its adherence to the retention policies.
Experimental results on a real-world smart building testbed show that IoT
Expunge imposes minimal overheads to the user to verify the data against data
retention policies.Comment: This paper has been accepted in 10th ACM Conference on Data and
Application Security and Privacy (CODASPY), 202
Application of Dual Task Performance in Pediatrics and Adults with Traumatic Brain Injury: A Systematic Review
Purpose:
The aim of this systematic review of the literature is to investigate the application of cognitive and motor dual task paradigms in the physical therapy management of moderate to severe TBI population across the lifespan in physical therapy practice.https://jdc.jefferson.edu/dptcapstones/1001/thumbnail.jp
Ultra-high Q/V hybrid cavity for strong light-matter interaction
The ability to confine light at the nanoscale continues to excite the research community, with the ratio between quality factor Q and volume V, i.e., the Q/V ratio, being the key figure of merit. In order to achieve strong light-matter interaction, however, it is important to confine a lot of energy in the resonant cavity mode. Here, we demonstrate a novel cavity design that combines a photonic crystal nanobeam cavity with a plasmonic bowtie antenna. The nanobeam cavity is optimised for a good match with the antenna and provides a Q of 1700 and a transmission of 90%. Combined with the bowtie, the hybrid photonic-plasmonic cavity achieves a Q of 800 and a transmission of 20%, both of which remarkable achievements for a hybrid cavity. The ultra-high Q/V of the hybrid cavity is of order of 106 (λ/n)−3, which is comparable to the state-of-the-art of photonic resonant cavities. Based on the high Q/V and the high transmission, we demonstrate the strong efficiency of the hybrid cavity as a nanotweezer for optical trapping. We show that a stable trapping condition can be achieved for a single 200 nm Au bead for a duration of several minutes (ttrap > 5 min) and with very low optical power (Pin = 190 μW)
T-cell derived acetylcholine aids host defenses during enteric bacterial infection with Citrobacter rodentium.
The regulation of mucosal immune function is critical to host protection from enteric pathogens but is incompletely understood. The nervous system and the neurotransmitter acetylcholine play an integral part in host defense against enteric bacterial pathogens. Here we report that acetylcholine producing-T-cells, as a non-neuronal source of ACh, were recruited to the colon during infection with the mouse pathogen Citrobacter rodentium. These ChAT+ T-cells did not exclusively belong to one Th subset and were able to produce IFNγ, IL-17A and IL-22. To interrogate the possible protective effect of acetylcholine released from these cells during enteric infection, T-cells were rendered deficient in their ability to produce acetylcholine through a conditional gene knockout approach. Significantly increased C. rodentium burden was observed in the colon from conditional KO (cKO) compared to WT mice at 10 days post-infection. This increased bacterial burden in cKO mice was associated with increased expression of the cytokines IL-1β, IL-6, and TNFα, but without significant changes in T-cell and ILC associated IL-17A, IL-22, and IFNγ, or epithelial expression of antimicrobial peptides, compared to WT mice. Despite the increased expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines during C. rodentium infection, inducible nitric oxide synthase (Nos2) expression was significantly reduced in intestinal epithelial cells of ChAT T-cell cKO mice 10 days post-infection. Additionally, a cholinergic agonist enhanced IFNγ-induced Nos2 expression in intestinal epithelial cell in vitro. These findings demonstrated that acetylcholine, produced by specialized T-cells that are recruited during C. rodentium infection, are a key mediator in host-microbe interactions and mucosal defenses
Timing analysis for 20 millisecond pulsars in the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array
We present timing models for 20 millisecond pulsars in the Parkes Pulsar
Timing Array. The precision of the parameter measurements in these models has
been improved over earlier results by using longer data sets and modelling the
non-stationary noise. We describe a new noise modelling procedure and
demonstrate its effectiveness using simulated data. Our methodology includes
the addition of annual dispersion measure (DM) variations to the timing models
of some pulsars. We present the first significant parallax measurements for
PSRs J1024-0719, J1045-4509, J1600-3053, J1603-7202, and J1730-2304, as well as
the first significant measurements of some post-Keplerian orbital parameters in
six binary pulsars, caused by kinematic effects. Improved Shapiro delay
measurements have resulted in much improved pulsar mass measurements,
particularly for PSRs J0437-4715 and J1909-3744 with
and respectively. The improved orbital
period-derivative measurement for PSR J0437-4715 results in a derived distance
measurement at the 0.16% level of precision, pc, one of the
most fractionally precise distance measurements of any star to date.Comment: 21 pages, 5 figures, 7 tables. Accepted for publication in MNRA
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