Effect of fertility control on a population's productivity

The effect of a sterilising agent upon the productivity of vertebrate pests, such as feral horses, feral dogs, wild rabbits or fruit-eating birds, depends upon the population's social structure and mating system. We investigated the theoretical effect on productivity of three forms of dominance, two effects of sterilisation on dominance, and four modes of transmission. Seventeen of the possible 24 combinations are feasible but lead to only four possible outcomes. Three of these result in lowered productivity. The fourth, where the breeding of a dominant female suppresses breeding in the sub-ordinate females of her group, leads to a perverse outcome. Productivity increases with sterilisation unless the proportion of females sterilised exceeds (n- 2)/(n- 1) where n (> 2) is the number of females in the group. A knowledge of social structure and mating system is therefore highly desirable before population control by suppressing female fertility is attempted or even contemplated

Reduction of Couplings in the Type-II 2HDM

The idea of reduction of couplings consists in the search for relations between seemingly independent couplings of a renormalizable theory that are renormalization group invariant. In this article, we demonstrate the existence of such 1-loop relations among the top Yukawa, the Higgs quartic and the gauge colour couplings of the Type-II Two Higgs Doublet Model at a high-energy boundary. The phenomenological viability of the reduced theory suggests the value of $\tan\beta$ and the scale in which new physics may appear.Comment: 13 pages, 2 table

Localization, analysis and evolution of transposed human immunoglobulin VK genes

The localization of Vκ gene regions to chromosome 2, on which the κ locus is located, and to other chromosomes is described. The Vκ genes that have been transposed to other chromosomes are called orphons. The finding of two new Vκ genes on chromosome 22 is reported. A Vκ II gene of this region and two Vκ I genes of the Chr 1 and the cos 118 regions were sequenced. The two Vκ I orphon sequences and two others that had been determined previously were 97.5% identical, indicating that they may have evolved from a common ancestor by amplification. A model of the evolution of the human Vκ orphons is discussed. Author Keywords: Human-rodent cell hybrids; cosmids; restriction maps; ligation artifacts; orphon; recombinant DNA Abbreviations: aa, amino acid(s); bp, base pair(s); Chr1, Vκ gene-containing regions of chromosomes 1; Chr22, Vκ gene-containing regions of chromosomes 22; FR, framework regions; CDR, complementary determining regions; kb, kilo-base(s) or 1000 bp; L, L′, parts of a leader gene segment; m219-1, the first subclone of the cosmid clone cos 219; orphon, Vκ gene outside the κ locus on chromosome 2pl2; SSC, 0.15 M NaCl, 0.015 M Na3-citrate, pH 7.6; V, variable gene segments; J, joining gene segments; C, constant gene segments; Vκ I to Vκ IV, variable gene segments of immunoglobulin light chains of the κ type belonging to subgroups I to IV; for reasons of simplicity Vκ gene segments are generally called Vκ gene

A Short Non-Saline Sprinkling Increases the Tuber Weights of Saline Sprinkler Irrigated Potatoes

© 2017 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Previous work has shown that a short non-saline sprinkling, following saline sprinkling, increased crop growth. We incorporated this finding into an investigation of two approaches to the conjunctive use of saline and non-saline water sources for sprinkler irrigation of potatoes viz., (i) mixing waters prior to application, and (ii) keeping waters temporally separate, that is commencing each irrigation with saline water and finishing it with non-saline sprinkling. The latter approach delayed canopy senescence and increased tuber weight by at least 150%. Under both approaches, soil salinities and leaf and tuber concentrations of Na+ and Cl− were similar. Thus, the advantages of a non-saline sprinkling cannot be explained in terms of its effect on either soil osmotic potential or bulk tissue concentrations of putatively toxic ions Na+ and Cl−. We propose that the positive effect of finishing irrigations with a non-saline sprinkling may be attributed to either dilution, and hence increase in osmotic potential, of the water film that remains on the leaf after each irrigation or its effect on the distribution of the putatively toxic ions Na+ and Cl− within tissue. View Full-Tex

UWE en Sistema de Recomendación de Objetos de Aprendizaje. Aplicando Ingeniería Web: Un Método en Caso de Estudio

La Ingeniería Web propone nuevos métodos para el diseño de aplicaciones que se ejecutan en esta nueva plataforma que es la World Wide Web. Uno de estos métodos es UWE (UML Web Engineering), el cual aprovecha la notación estándar del UML e incorpora elementos que son propios del desarrollo Web. En este artículo se presenta un caso de estudio para el diseño de un Sistema de Recomendación de Objetos de Aprendizaje, donde el modelado básico se realiza mediante el UWE. Se modela una aplicación Web que permite a los usuarios realizar la composición de los Objetos de Aprendizaje que el mismo sistema le recomienda al usuario previo análisis de las características tanto del mismo como de los Objeto de Aprendizaje almacenados en un repositorio especializado llamado AGORA

Electromagnetic modeling and optimization of packaged photodetector modules for 100 Gbit/s applications

In this paper, we propose an accurate full 3D EM behavioral model of PD chips for the first time. The model, which is meshed at 130 GHz, runs for about 17 minutes on an Intel Core2 Duo CPU@3 GHz PC with 3.5 GB of RAM. The impact of various parameters in wire- bonding transitions for transmission characteristic is summarized in the Table I. When numbers of bonding wires are placed separately all through strips of CBCPWs as well as keeping an optimized gap of transitions, more than 10 GHz bandwidth improvement can be achieved compared the worst case. We also notice that optimization on bonding wires does not significantly improve the fast decay beyond 60 GHz. Further investigation and optimization of the transition is required including a redesign of the CBCPW

Percutaneous management of thoracolumbar burst fractures: Evolution of techniques and strategy

SummaryIntroductionA number of techniques have been described in the management of thoracolumbar spinal fractures, testimony to the absence of consensus on their treatment. For the past few years, minimally invasive techniques have been developed to limit surgery-related iatrogenic injury. The objective of this study was to report the results of percutaneous management of these lesions and the technical progress made based on our experience.Patients and methodsTwenty-nine patients presenting an A3 fracture, with a mean age of 51 years, were included in this study. All had a balloon kyphoplasty and percutaneous osteosynthesis. Of the first 22 cases, kyphoplasty was the initial procedure performed associated with reduction maneuvers using distraction. Assessment was clinical (neurological status and pain intensity) and radiological (implant positioning, cement leakage, restoration of local kyphosis and any loss of correction).ResultsIn the overall series, the mean local kyphosis correction was 11° with a 2° angle loss at the last follow-up. Pain assessment showed significant improvement, decreasing from 6/10 to 1/10 on discharge. The mean hospital stay lasted 4 days. On the follow-up radiological exams, no cases of extrapedicular screw migration were noted; in two cases, lateral cement leakage was found. The results were equivalent in terms of correction no matter which procedure was performed first, although for the second part of the series the technology was available to bend the spinal fixation rod to the desired curve.DiscussionThe results of this study support the growing interest in minimally invasive techniques in the management of spinal injuries with no neurological deficit. In addition, the evolving material makes it possible to come close to conventional techniques, including reduction maneuvers, while limiting muscle injury by using a purely percutaneous approach. Rigorous patient selection is necessary and the time to learn the procedure must be taken into account. Studies with a longer follow-up are required to confirm the stability of the correction over time.Level of evidenceLevel IV. Retrospective observational study