Some characteristics of the larval breeding sites of Anopheles culicifacies species B and E in Sri Lanka

Background & objectives : Anopheles culicifacies Giles, the major malaria vector in Sri Lanka, existsas a species complex comprising two sympatric sibling species— species B and E. Species E is reportedto be the major vector of Plasmodium vivax and P. falciparum parasites in Sri Lanka, whilst speciesB is a poor or nonvector as in India. Knowledge of the breeding habits of the two sibling species canhelp in designing optimal vector control strategies. Hence, a survey was conducted in Sri Lanka tostudy the preferential breeding habitats of An. culicifacies species B and E.Methods: Immature forms of An. culicifacies were collected from identified breeding sites in malariousdistricts. Collected larvae were typed for their sibling species status based on mitotic Y-chromosomestructure. Data was analysed using Statistical Package for Social Science version 10.0.Results: An. culicifacies immature forms were found in 23 collection sites. Among these samples19 were found to have species E and four to have species B. All species B larvae were collected fromTonigala village in the Puttalam district. None of the 23 sites was found to have both species B and E.Species E, the major vector of malaria, appears to breed in variety of breeding sites which can be of anindication of its adaptive variation to exploit breeding sites with varying limnological characteristics.Interpretation & conclusion: The present findings have to be taken into account when formulatingmore effective larval control measures. They also show the need for a detailed study of possibledifferent preferences for larval breeding sites between species B and E

Gender and innovation processes in integrated fish agri-food systems in Bangladesh and the Philippines: Insights from the CGIAR Research Program on FISH

This FISH report provides insights on the interactions between gender norms, agency, and innovation in fish agri-food systems

Dynamic Race Prediction in Linear Time

Writing reliable concurrent software remains a huge challenge for today's programmers. Programmers rarely reason about their code by explicitly considering different possible inter-leavings of its execution. We consider the problem of detecting data races from individual executions in a sound manner. The classical approach to solving this problem has been to use Lamport's happens-before (HB) relation. Until now HB remains the only approach that runs in linear time. Previous efforts in improving over HB such as causally-precedes (CP) and maximal causal models fall short due to the fact that they are not implementable efficiently and hence have to compromise on their race detecting ability by limiting their techniques to bounded sized fragments of the execution. We present a new relation weak-causally-precedes (WCP) that is provably better than CP in terms of being able to detect more races, while still remaining sound. Moreover it admits a linear time algorithm which works on the entire execution without having to fragment it.Comment: 22 pages, 8 figures, 1 algorithm, 1 tabl

General topological features and instanton vacuum in quantum Hall and spin liquids

We introduce the concept of super universality in quantum Hall and spin liquids which has emerged from previous studies. It states that all the fundamental features of the quantum Hall effect are generically displayed as general topological features of the $\theta$ parameter in nonlinear sigma models in two dimensions. To establish super universality in spin liquids we revisit the mapping by Haldane who argued that the anti ferromagnetic Heisenberg spin $s$ chain is effectively described by the O(3) nonlinear sigma model with a $\theta$ term. By combining the path integral representation for the dimerized spin $s=1/2$ chain with renormalization group decimation techniques we generalise the Haldane approach to include a more complicated theory, the fermionic rotor chain, involving four different renormalization group parameters. We show how the renormalization group calculation technique can be used to lay the bridge between the fermionic rotor chain and the sigma model. As an integral and fundamental aspect of the mapping we establish the topological significance of the dangling spin at the edge of the chain which is in all respects identical to the massless chiral edge excitations in quantum Hall liquids. We consider various different geometries of the spin chain and show that for each of the different geometries correspond to a topologically equivalent quantum Hall liquid.Comment: Title changed, Section 2 and Appendix expanded, an error in the expression for theta correcte

User Intent Prediction in Information-seeking Conversations

Conversational assistants are being progressively adopted by the general population. However, they are not capable of handling complicated information-seeking tasks that involve multiple turns of information exchange. Due to the limited communication bandwidth in conversational search, it is important for conversational assistants to accurately detect and predict user intent in information-seeking conversations. In this paper, we investigate two aspects of user intent prediction in an information-seeking setting. First, we extract features based on the content, structural, and sentiment characteristics of a given utterance, and use classic machine learning methods to perform user intent prediction. We then conduct an in-depth feature importance analysis to identify key features in this prediction task. We find that structural features contribute most to the prediction performance. Given this finding, we construct neural classifiers to incorporate context information and achieve better performance without feature engineering. Our findings can provide insights into the important factors and effective methods of user intent prediction in information-seeking conversations.Comment: Accepted to CHIIR 201

Considerations for How to Rate CPV

The concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) industry is introducing multiple products into the marketplace, but, as yet, the community has not embraced a unified method for assessing a nameplate rating. The choices of whether to use 850, 900, or 1000 W/m2 for the direct-normal irradiance and whether to link the rating to ambient or cell temperature will affect how CPV modules are rated and compared with other technologies. This paper explores the qualitative and quantitative ramifications of these choices using data from two multi-junction CPV modules and two flat-plate modules

Generalised Shastry-Sutherland Models in three and higher dimensions

We construct Heisenberg anti-ferromagnetic models in arbitrary dimensions that have isotropic valence bond crystals (VBC) as their exact ground states. The d=2 model is the Shastry-Sutherland model. In the 3-d case we show that it is possible to have a lattice structure, analogous to that of SrCu_2(BO_3)_2, where the stronger bonds are associated with shorter bond lengths. A dimer mean field theory becomes exact at d -> infinity and a systematic 1/d expansion can be developed about it. We study the Neel-VBC transition at large d and find that the transition is first order in even but second order in odd dimensions.Comment: Published version; slightly expande

Generalized Toric Codes Coupled to Thermal Baths

We have studied the dynamics of a generalized toric code based on qudits at finite temperature by finding the master equation coupling the code's degrees of freedom to a thermal bath. As a consequence, we find that for qutrits new types of anyons and thermal processes appear that are forbidden for qubits. These include creation, annihilation and diffusion throughout the system code. It is possible to solve the master equation in a short-time regime and find expressions for the decay rates as a function of the dimension $d$ of the qudits. Although we provide an explicit proof that the system relax to the Gibbs state for arbitrary qudits, we also prove that above a certain crossing temperature, qutrits initial decay rate is smaller than the original case for qubits. Surprisingly this behavior only happens with qutrits and not with other qudits with $d>3$.Comment: Revtex4 file, color figures. New Journal of Physics' versio

An Elastic Scheduling Algorithm For Resource Co-Allocation Based on System Generated Predictions With Priority

Resource Co-Allocation is basically used to execute multiple site jobs in a large scale computing environments with secure, faultless and in transparent manner. To be precise we are actually allocating multiple resources for different jobs taking into account the time parameter. Here we make use of the Scheduling queue and Resource Co-Allocation to reduce the Turn-around time with an advanced concept of System Generated Prediction based on Priority. In existing works we are scheduling the resource co-allocation request from user runtime estimation. As user runtime estimations are usually very imprecise that is not clear. In proposed work we are scheduling the resource co-allocation request based on system generated predictions through Discovery service & Priority (fairness and user experience) through topological sorting technique. The system generated predictions are better parameters than user runtime estimates for Resource co-Allocation scheduling, because System generated predictions reduce the scheduling time through proxy ser based discovery service technique. The proposed work consider priorities like advanced reservation, system Generated Predictions, Negotiation, Co-scheduling, policy (SLA, Price, Trust) for resource Co-Allocation. The system generated predictions are better than user runtime estimates for Resource co- Allocation scheduling, using the experimental data’s we proved this concept. End User doesn’t want the grid and resource knowledge only submit job to the portal. This proposed portal will take care of all knowledge about the resource collocation automatically with fast and efficient manner

Fifteen new risk loci for coronary artery disease highlight arterial-wall-specific mechanisms

Coronary artery disease (CAD) is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Although 58 genomic regions have been associated with CAD thus far, most of the heritability is unexplained, indicating that additional susceptibility loci await identification. An efficient discovery strategy may be larger-scale evaluation of promising associations suggested by genome-wide association studies (GWAS). Hence, we genotyped 56,309 participants using a targeted gene array derived from earlier GWAS results and performed meta-analysis of results with 194,427 participants previously genotyped, totaling 88,192 CAD cases and 162,544 controls. We identified 25 new SNP-CAD associations (P < 5 × 10(-8), in fixed-effects meta-analysis) from 15 genomic regions, including SNPs in or near genes involved in cellular adhesion, leukocyte migration and atherosclerosis (PECAM1, rs1867624), coagulation and inflammation (PROCR, rs867186 (p.Ser219Gly)) and vascular smooth muscle cell differentiation (LMOD1, rs2820315). Correlation of these regions with cell-type-specific gene expression and plasma protein levels sheds light on potential disease mechanisms