Paleolimnological Evidence of Terrestrial and Lacustrine Environmental Change in Response to European Settlement of the Red River Valley, Manitoba and North Dakota

Limnological and terrestrial changes in three floodplain lakes are correlated with settlement of the Red River valley in Manitoba and North Dakota. Distinctive pollen, diatom and thecamoebian assemblages provide proxy evidence of the ecological changes from pre- to post-settlement periods in Horseshoe Lake, Lake Louise and Salt Lake. In the pre-settlement period (Zone I), prior to ~1812, grass and Quercus pollen dominate and are indicative of a tall grass prairie-oak riparian forest ecosystem. Diatom and thecamoebian assemblages suggest oligo- to mesotrophic limnological conditions, and more brackish water than presently occurs in Horseshoe Lake. The onset of the post-settlement period (Zone II) corresponds to distinctive terrestrial and limnological changes. A sharp decline in Quercus at the base of this zone correlates with documented regional riparian deforestation, whereas the increase in the weed taxa Salsola, Brassica, Rumex and Ambrosia is associated with the introduction of European agricultural practices and cereal grasses. Diatom and thecamoebian assemblages indicate progressive floodplain lake eutrophication, as well as increased salinity in Salt Lake. Salt Lake is the most brackish lake and supports the brackish-water foraminifera Trochammina macrescens cf. polystoma. Increased erosion and run off in the watershed has caused a more than twofold increase in lake basin sedimentation between the pre-settlement and post-settlement periods.Cette étude établit une corrélation entre les changements limnologiques et terrestres dans la plaine d’inondation de trois lacs et le peuplement de la vallée de la rivière Rouge au Manitoba et dans le Dakota du Nord. Divers assemblages polliniques, de diatomées et de thécamoébiens mettent en évidence de façon indirecte des changements écologiques entre les périodes pré- et post-peuplement aux alentours des lacs Horseshoe, Louise et Salt. Dans la période antérieure au peuplement (Zone I), soit avant 1812, la domination de la signature pollinique des graminées et du chêne indique un écosystème forestier riverain composé de graminées de haute taille et de chênes. Quant aux assemblages de diatomées et de thécamoébiens, ils permettent de penser à des conditions limnologiques d’oligo à mésotrophiques et des eaux plus saumâtres à cette période qu’actuellement dans le lac Horseshoe. La période post-peuplement (Zone II) correspond à des changements terrestres et limnologiques spécifiques. Le déclin marqué du chêne à la base de cette zone correspond en effet à la déforestation des rives de cette région, telle qu’attestée dans les documents, tandis que les taxons Salsola, Brassica, Rumex et Ambrosia correspondent à l’instauration de pratiques agricoles européennes et la culture des céréales. Les assemblages de diatomées et de thécamoébiens indiquent aussi une eutrophisation progressive de la plaine inondable de même que l’augmentation de la salinité du lac Salt, ce dernier étant le plus salé des trois lacs. Il accueille des foraminifères d’eaux saumâtres du genre Trochammina macrescens cf. polystoma. L’accroissement de l’érosion et du ruissellement dans le bassin-versant a quadruplé la sédimentation entre les périodes pré- et post-peuplement

Efektivitas Konseling Behavioral Teknik Assertive Training untuk Meminimalisasi Perilaku Menyimpang pada Siswa Kelas VIII SMP Negeri 2 Singaraja Tahun Pelajaran 2013/2014

Tujuan penelitian ini secara umum adalah untuk mengetahui efektifitas konseling behavioral untuk meminimalisasi perilaku menyimpang pada siswa kelas VIII SMP Negeri 2 Singaraja tahun pelajaran 2013/2014. Jenis penelitian ini adalah penelitian eksperimen dengan desain “Postest Only Control Group Design”. Populasi penelitian adalah siswa kelas VIII SMP Negeri 2 Singaraja tahun pelajaran 2013/2014 dengan N=575. Sampel Penelitian ditetapkan 82 orang yang pengambilan sampelnya dilakukan dengan teknik Group Random Sampling. Metode pengumpulan data yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah metode kuesioner. Data penelitian dianalisis dengan teknik statistik t-test dan dibantu dengan program Microsoft office excel 2007 dan SPSS 16.0 for windows. Hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa : (1) terdapat perbedaan signifikan perilaku menyimpang antara kelompok siswa yang mengikuti dengan kelompok siswa yang tidak mengikuti konseling behavioral di kelas VIII SMP Negeri 2 Singaraja hal ini dilihat dari mean kelompok siswa yang mengikuti konseling behavioral (133,17) dengan kelompok siswa yang tidak mengikuti konseling behavioral (85,32), hal ini dilihat dari hasil analisis nilai thitung lebih besar dari ttabel dengan df =82 Dan taraf signifikansi 1% (t=0,053, p < 0,01). Sehingga penerapan konseling behavioral teknik assertive Training untuk meminimalisasi perilaku menyimpang pada siswa kelas VIII SMP Negeri 2 Singaraja tahun pelajaran 2013/2014 efektifKata Kunci : Kata kunci : konseling behavioral, assertive training, perilaku menyimpang The purpose of this study was to determine the general effectiveness of behavioral counseling to minimize deviant behavior in the eighth grade students of SMP Negeri 2 Singaraja school year 2013/2014. This research is an experimental research design with "post-test Only Control Group Design". The study population is the eighth grade students of SMP Negeri 2 Singaraja school year 2013/2014 with N = 575. The study sample set 82 men who carried out the sample collection Group Random Sampling technique. Data collection methods used in this study is a questionnaire method. Data were analyzed by t-test statistical techniques and assisted with the program Microsoft office excel 2007 and SPSS 16.0 for Windows. The results of this study indicate that: (1) there are significant differences in deviant behavior among groups of students who follow the group of students who do not follow the behavioral counseling in Junior High School eighth grade 2 Singaraja it is seen from the mean of the group of students who take (133.17) with group students who do not follow (85.32), it is seen from the results of the analysis tcount greater than t table with df = 82 and 1% significance level (t = 0.053,

Crystal structure of isobutyl 4-(2-chloro-phenyl)-5-cyano-6-{(E)-[(dimethylamino)-methylidene]amino}-2-methyl-4H-pyran-3-carboxylate

The authors thank Dr Babu Varghese, Senior Scientific Officer SAIF, IIT Madras, India, for carrying out the data collection.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Additive Manufacturing of Ceramic Materials: a Performance Comparison of Catalysts for Monopropellant Thrusters

Switchgrass ( L.) is a promising herbaceous energy crop, but further gains in biomass yield and quality must be achieved to enable a viable bioenergy industry. Developing DNA markers can contribute to such progress, but depiction of genetic bases should be reliable, involving simple additive marker effects and also interactions with genetic backgrounds (e.g., ecotypes) or synergies with other markers. We analyzed plant height, C content, N content, and mineral concentration in a diverse panel consisting of 512 genotypes of upland and lowland ecotypes. We performed association analyses based on exome capture sequencing and tested 439,170 markers for marginal effects, 83,290 markers for marker × ecotype interactions, and up to 311,445 marker pairs for pairwise interactions. Analyses of pairwise interactions focused on subsets of marker pairs preselected on the basis of marginal marker effects, gene ontology annotation, and pairwise marker associations. Our tests identified 12 significant effects. Homology and gene expression information corroborated seven effects and indicated plausible causal pathways: flowering time and lignin synthesis for plant height; plant growth and senescence for C content and mineral concentration. Four pairwise interactions were detected, including three interactions preselected on the basis of pairwise marker correlations. Furthermore, a marker × ecotype interaction and a pairwise interaction were confirmed in an independent switchgrass panel. Our analyses identified reliable candidate variants for important bioenergy traits. Moreover, they exemplified the importance of interactive effects for depicting genetic bases and illustrated the usefulness of preselecting marker pairs for identifying pairwise marker interactions in association studies

Categorizing facial expressions : a comparison of computational models

The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com Copyright SpringerRecognizing expressions is a key part of human social interaction, and processing of facial expression information is largely automatic for humans, but it is a non-trivial task for a computational system. The purpose of this work is to develop computational models capable of differentiating between a range of human facial expressions. Raw face images are examples of high-dimensional data, so here we use two dimensionality reduction techniques: principal component analysis and curvilinear component analysis. We also preprocess the images with a bank of Gabor filters, so that important features in the face images may be identified. Subsequently, the faces are classified using a support vector machine. We show that it is possible to differentiate faces with a prototypical expression from the neutral expression. Moreover, we can achieve this with data that has been massively reduced in size: in the best case the original images are reduced to just 5 components. We also investigate the effect size on face images, a concept which has not been reported previously on faces. This enables us to identify those areas of the face that are involved in the production of a facial expression.Peer reviewe

Cooperative Collection Development Requires Access: SALToC—A Low‐Tech, High‐Value Distributed Online Project for Article‐Level Discovery in Foreign‐Language Print‐Only Journals

Foreign‐language journals are an essential component of interdisciplinary area studies collections at research libraries but are, by definition, low‐use materials. Librarians who select them seek to broaden these collections, reduce duplication, and enable shared access to them. The challenge is lack of article‐level discoverability: these are print‐only journals, not covered in online indexing/abstracting services. If users cannot discover these articles, then how can cooperating libraries share them, and distribute responsibility for collecting them, which is essential to coordinated collection development? The SALToC project collaboratively address this issue by creating simple, centrally browsable tables of contents for target journals, through a low‐tech, low‐cost distributed process that benefits users at all participating libraries. For journals not available online nor included in article databases or indexes, this kind of discovery facilitates research by enabling scholars to use previously undiscoverable holdings of other libraries: they can now issue interlibrary loan, document delivery, and/or offsite retrieval requests, with full citations for desired articles. (Many libraries provide article document delivery, if the requester has a citation). Coordinated collection development (via planned reduction of duplication coupled with broader collective coverage) becomes supportable in the research library community only when shared access (and its prerequisite—discovery) is provided. The South Asian Language Journals Table of Contents (SALToC) project represents a proof‐of‐concept demonstration of the value of this approach. This paper shows how simple, grass‐roots distributed efforts can contribute significantly to discoverability of hard to discover resources, thereby making coordinated collection development cost‐effective, popular among users, and sustainable

The genome of the protozoan parasite Cystoisospora suis and a reverse vaccinology approach to identify vaccine candidates

Vaccine development targeting protozoan parasites remains challenging, partly due to the complex interactions between these eukaryotes and the host immune system. Reverse vaccinology is a promising approach for direct screening of genome sequence assemblies for new vaccine candidate proteins. Here, we applied this paradigm to Cystoisospora suis, an apicomplexan parasite that causes enteritis and diarrhea in suckling piglets and economic losses in pig production worldwide. Using Next Generation Sequencing we produced an ∼84 Mb sequence assembly for the C. suis genome, making it the first available reference for the genus Cystoisospora. Then, we derived a manually curated annotation of more than 11,000 protein-coding genes and applied the tool Vacceed to identify 1,168 vaccine candidates by screening the predicted C. suis proteome. To refine the set of candidates, we looked at proteins that are highly expressed in merozoites and specific to apicomplexans. The stringent set of candidates included 220 proteins, among which were 152 proteins with unknown function, 17 surface antigens of the SAG and SRS gene families, 12 proteins of the apicomplexan-specific secretory organelles including AMA1, MIC6, MIC13, ROP6, ROP12, ROP27, ROP32 and three proteins related to cell adhesion. Finally, we demonstrated in vitro the immunogenic potential of a C. suis-specific 42 kDa transmembrane protein, which might constitute an attractive candidate for further testing

Exceptional Quartics are Ubiquitous

For each real quadratic field we constructively show the existence of infinitely many exceptional quartic number fields containing that quadratic field. On the other hand, another infinite collection of quartic exceptional fields without any quadratic subfields is also provided. Both these families are non-Galois extensions of $\mathbf{Q}$, and their normal closu res have Galois groups $D_4$ and $S_4$ respectively. We also show that an infinite number of these exceptional quartic fields have power integral basis, i.e., monogenic. We also construct large collections of exceptional number fields in all degrees greater than 4.Comment: 13 pages. Conjecture in earlier version is prove