CWRML: representing crop wild relative conservation and use data in XML

Background Crop wild relatives are wild species that are closely related to crops. They are valuable as potential gene donors for crop improvement and may help to ensure food security for the future. However, they are becoming increasingly threatened in the wild and are inadequately conserved, both in situ and ex situ. Information about the conservation status and utilisation potential of crop wild relatives is diverse and dispersed, and no single agreed standard exists for representing such information; yet, this information is vital to ensure these species are effectively conserved and utilised. The European Community-funded project, European Crop Wild Relative Diversity Assessment and Conservation Forum, determined the minimum information requirements for the conservation and utilisation of crop wild relatives and created the Crop Wild Relative Information System, incorporating an eXtensible Markup Language (XML) schema to aid data sharing and exchange. Results Crop Wild Relative Markup Language (CWRML) was developed to represent the data necessary for crop wild relative conservation and ensure that they can be effectively utilised for crop improvement. The schema partitions data into taxon-, site-, and population-specific elements, to allow for integration with other more general conservation biology schemata which may emerge as accepted standards in the future. These elements are composed of sub-elements, which are structured in order to facilitate the use of the schema in a variety of crop wild relative conservation and use contexts. Pre-existing standards for data representation in conservation biology were reviewed and incorporated into the schema as restrictions on element data contents, where appropriate. Conclusion CWRML provides a flexible data communication format for representing in situ and ex situ conservation status of individual taxa as well as their utilisation potential. The development of the schema highlights a number of instances where additional standards-development may be valuable, particularly with regard to the representation of population-specific data and utilisation potential. As crop wild relatives are intrinsically no different to other wild plant species there is potential for the inclusion of CWRML data elements in the emerging standards for representation of biodiversity data

Computer recommendations for an automatic approach and landing system for V/STOL aircraft. Volume 2 - Equations

Automatic approach and landing system for V/STOL aircraf

Cervical cancer prognosis and diagnosis using electrical impedance spectroscopy

Electrical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) has been used as an adjunct to colposcopy for cervical cancer diagnosis for many years, Currently, the template match method is employed for EIS measurements analysis, where the measured EIS spectra are compared with the templates generated from three-dimensional finite element (FE) models of cancerous and non-cancerous cervical tissue, and the matches between the measured EIS spectra and the templates are then used to derive a score that indicates the association strength of the measured EIS to the High-Grade Cervical Intraepithelial Neoplasia (HG CIN). These FE models can be viewed as the computational versions of the associated physical tissue models. In this paper, the problem is revisited with an objective to develop a new method for EIS data analysis that might reveal the relationship between the change in the tissue structure due to disease and the change in the measured spectrum. This could provide us with important information to understand the histopathological mechanism that underpins the EIS-based HG CIN diagnostic decision making and the prognostic value of EIS for cervical cancer diagnosis. A further objective is to develop an alternative EIS data processing method for HG CIN detection that does not rely on physical models of tissues so as to facilitate extending the EIS technique to new medical diagnostic applications where the template spectra are not available. An EIS data-driven method was developed in this paper to achieve the above objectives, where the EIS data analysis for cervical cancer diagnosis and prognosis were formulated as the classification problems and a Cole model-based spectrum curve fitting approach was proposed to extract features from EIS readings for classification. Machine learning techniques were then used to build classification models with the selected features for cervical cancer diagnosis and evaluation of the prognostic value of the measured EIS. The interpretable classification models were developed with real EIS data sets, which enable us to associate the changes in the observed EIS and the risk of being HG CIN or developing HG CIN with the changes in tissue structure due to disease. The developed classification models were used for HG CIN detection and evaluation of the prognostic value of EIS and the results demonstrated the effectiveness of the developed method. The method developed is of long-term benefit for EIS–based cervical cancer diagnosis and, in conjunction with standard colposcopy, there is the potential for the developed method to provide a more effective and efficient patient management strategy for clinic practice

An evaluation of management strategies for Atlantic tuna stocks

International agreements for the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) convention area imply that Atlantic tuna stocks should be managed by strategies based on maximum sustainable yield (MSY); however, there is concern whether this will actually ensure sustainability with sufficiently high probability consistent with the principals of the precautionary approach. Therefore, the performance of MSY management strategies based on current assessment procedures was evaluated using a computer simulation framework. The framework includes the data collection, assessment, prediction, and management processes, as well as the implementation of management regulations. It therefore provides an integrated way to evaluate the relative importance of and the interactions between each component of the system with regard to the overall success of the management strategy. The study elucidates guidelines about assessment and management that are general enough to be applied to all tunas in the Atlantic Ocean. It does so by comparing different hypotheses about management and assessment for three stocks (North Atlantic albacore, Atlantic bigeye and East Atlantic skipjack), which are representative of the variety encountered (i.e. from data rich to poor and tropical to temperate waters) in ICCAT stocks. Management performance was especially sensitive to the carrying capacity of the stock. The type of proxy used for MSY was more important to the success of the procedure than the frequency of assessment or the number of indices used in the assessment. Whilst the procedure was successful at achieving the management objectives for albacore, it was only partially successful for bigeye and was too conservative for skipjack.No disponibl

Globalising assessment: an ethnography of literacy assessment, camels and fast food in the Mongolian Gobi

What happens when standardised literacy assessments travel globally? The paper presents an ethnographic account of adult literacy assessment events in rural Mongolia. It examines the dynamics of literacy assessment in terms of the movement and re-contextualisation of test items as they travel globally and are received locally by Mongolian respondents. The analysis of literacy assessment events is informed by Goodwin’s ‘participation framework’ on language as embodied and situated interactive phenomena and by Actor Network Theory. Actor Network Theory (ANT) is applied to examine literacy assessment events as processes of translation shaped by an ‘assemblage’ of human and non-human actors (including the assessment texts)

Utopia documents: linking scholarly literature with research data

Motivation: In recent years, the gulf between the mass of accumulating-research data and the massive literature describing and analyzing those data has widened. The need for intelligent tools to bridge this gap, to rescue the knowledge being systematically isolated in literature and data silos, is now widely acknowledged

Edible crabs “Go West”: migrations and incubation cycle of Cancer pagurus revealed by electronic tags

Crustaceans are key components of marine ecosystems which, like other exploited marine taxa, show seasonable patterns of distribution and activity, with consequences for their availability to capture by targeted fisheries. Despite concerns over the sustainability of crab fisheries worldwide, difficulties in observing crabs’ behaviour over their annual cycles, and the timings and durations of reproduction, remain poorly understood. From the release of 128 mature female edible crabs tagged with electronic data storage tags (DSTs), we demonstrate predominantly westward migration in the English Channel. Eastern Channel crabs migrated further than western Channel crabs, while crabs released outside the Channel showed little or no migration. Individual migrations were punctuated by a 7-month hiatus, when crabs remained stationary, coincident with the main period of crab spawning and egg incubation. Incubation commenced earlier in the west, from late October onwards, and brooding locations, determined using tidal geolocation, occurred throughout the species range. With an overall return rate of 34%, our results demonstrate that previous reluctance to tag crabs with relatively high-cost DSTs for fear of loss following moulting is unfounded, and that DSTs can generate precise information with regards life-history metrics that would be unachievable using other conventional means