Connectivity of Coupled Hydrologic and Human Systems as the Basis of Resilience in Traditional Irrigation Communities in New Mexico

[EN] Changes in land use and water availability are impacting the integrity of traditional irrigation systems and their associated communities worldwide. We designed a study to quantify the components of resilience within coupled hydrologic and human systems in New Mexico USA. We worked collaboratively with three communities in the northern Rio Grande basin to characterize hydrologic, ecological, socio-cultural, land use, and economic system components of linked water and human social systems. Building on component models and quantified resilience examples, we crafted graphical representations of connectivity and resilience. We added data points from around the world gleaned from a research workshop. We found there was more hydrological connectivity with flow paths from irrigation system to irrigated field to groundwater and river; the most important nexus was shallow groundwater recharge. There was more human connectivity with strong connections to land and community involvement; an important nexus was mutualism/social capital. Within the northern New Mexico communities, it appears that hydrological connectivity is associated with higher water availability and even if disconnected due to water scarcity can be restored with renewed water availability. Community connectivity, on the other hand, seems susceptible to long term disruption that self-perpetuates long after the initial stresses are imposed. We compared resilience of the hydrologic and human systems on axes of climate (arid to sub-humid), hydrologic connectivity (between surface water and groundwater and between watershed and river), and community connectedness (between water users and water infrastructure and between community members and water management organizations) including communities from northern New Mexico, Bali, Spain, Morocco, central Chile, Mexico, Ecuador, and southern New Mexico. Hydrologic connectivity was most related to local water availability and climate. Community connectivity seemed to be a function of other variables such as mutualism and local control of governance. Changes in water availability and land use affected communities disproportionately. There appears to be a combination of characteristics that has particularly high resilience: medium aridity allows enough water for hydrologic connectivity yet has enough water scarcity to engender collective community action. Promoting connectivity may be a way to enhance resilience of traditional irrigation communities.Fernald, A.; Rivera, J.; Rodríquez, S.; Tidwell, V.; Ochoa, C.; Ortiz, Q.; Guldan, S. (2015). Connectivity of Coupled Hydrologic and Human Systems as the Basis of Resilience in Traditional Irrigation Communities in New Mexico. En Irrigation, Society and Landscape. Tribute to Tom F. Glick. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 418-428. https://doi.org/10.4995/ISL2014.2014.172OCS41842

Proteasome inhibition for treatment of leishmaniasis, Chagas disease and sleeping sickness

Chagas disease, leishmaniasis and sleeping sickness affect 20 million people worldwide and lead to more than 50,000 deaths annually. The diseases are caused by infection with the kinetoplastid parasites Trypanosoma cruzi, Leishmania spp. and Trypanosoma brucei spp., respectively. These parasites have similar biology and genomic sequence, suggesting that all three diseases could be cured with drugs that modulate the activity of a conserved parasite target. However, no such molecular targets or broad spectrum drugs have been identified to date. Here we describe a selective inhibitor of the kinetoplastid proteasome (GNF6702) with unprecedented in vivo efficacy, which cleared parasites from mice in all three models of infection. GNF6702 inhibits the kinetoplastid proteasome through a non-competitive mechanism, does not inhibit the mammalian proteasome or growth of mammalian cells, and is well-tolerated in mice. Our data provide genetic and chemical validation of the parasite proteasome as a promising therapeutic target for treatment of kinetoplastid infections, and underscore the possibility of developing a single class of drugs for these neglected diseases

Cyclic Distributed Garbage Collection Without Global Synchronization in CORBA

This paper describes an algorithm for cyclic distributed garbage collection and its implementation. The algorithm is an extension of reference-listing that collects cyclic garbage. It uses back-tracing instead of mark-and-sweep to eliminate the need of global synchronization. First, by using a special heuristic the algorithm chooses an object that is likely to be garbage (suspect). Then the algorithm recursively traces back the references to find the transitive closure of objects that reach the suspect. If this closure does not contain any root, the objects in the closure are garbage, and therefore collected. Back-tracing distributed garbage collection has been covered in previous works, however none of these works mentioned the issues involved in the implementation of this algorithm in a real environment. These implementation issues are addressed and solved in this paper. To prove the feasibility of back-tracing, it has been implemented using off the shelf software components. This pa..

MRT trains mobility tracking using LoRa network

This study aims to develop a smart monitoring system for the Metro Rail Transit (MRT) system in the Philippines using the LoRa network. To achieve this, the researchers developed a sensor node consisting of the Arduino MKR1300, NEO6M GPS module, and the A3144 hall effect sensor. This sensor node sends packets that contain the position and speed of the train to the RAK7246 gateway. To test the system, they utilized two automotive vehicles. The researchers measured the RSSI values at increasing distances to determine the capabilities of LoRa when implemented in the MRT system. From here, they found out that the maximum distance with an RSSI value between -30 dBm to -120dBm is approximately 700m. Additionally, they also measured the RSSI values for different train simulations such as when two trains are parked in a station, two trains are going past each other and one train is leaving a station while the other is parked. The results show that adjacent nodes do not cause interference with each other as there is no effect on the RSSI values for both. Furthermore, the researchers developed a Passenger Information Display System (PIDS) which shows information about the trains such as its speed, position relative to the stations, and the estimated time of arrival to its destination. The PIDS incorporates different algorithms for different train scenarios such as switching lanes or going underground and losing GPS signal, etc. They were also able to measure the delay between the actual arrival of the train and the indicated arrival on the app; the results showed that the average delay was only 3.9 seconds indicating that the system is responsive

Relating the Cognitive Ability and Emotional Intelligence of the De La Salle University Senior High School Students with their Real and Fake Facebook News Post Validation Ability

As advancements in technology and social media platforms become more prominent, so do the number of fake news articles disseminated through them. One’s cognitive ability (CA) and emotional intelligence (EI) have individually been found to influence one’s news validation ability (NVA). However, the relationship between both CA and EI and NVA for real and fake Facebook news posts has not been well-studied, especially in the context of the Filipino youth. To address these gaps, the NVAs of several DLSU Senior High School students for real and fake news posts were modelled from their CAs and EIs using fixed-effect linear and ordinal regression analyses with interaction effects. The data gathering was done through an online survey questionnaire via Google Forms. The statistical significance of the CAs, EIs, and the interaction between the CAs and EIs of the students were assessed to determine their viability as predictors of NVA. Despite the predictors being statistically insignificant (α=0.05) potentially due to a low response rate, CA and EI were found to positively relate with real and fake NVA across all models, consistent with prior findings. It was also found that the ordinal logistic models fitted the data better than their multiple linear counterparts based on their AIC values, indicating that OLR analyses may be preferable for assessing NVA in future studies and in practical use

Burning grey: The worldwide influence of a locally published grey literature

Rice is a major staple crop in the Philippines, which produces a large amount of rice each year. On the other hand, rice production generates biomass waste in the form of rice husks. In consideration of the rice husks’ potential as a biomass energy source and support the development of the rice husk gas stove technology in the Philippines, Engineer Alexis T. Belonio had published a grey literature (GL) entitled “Rice Husk Gas Stove Handbook.” Hence, to fully understand the impact of the technology, a citation analysis was conducted. The works that cited the GL were retrieved from Google Scholar using Harzing’s Publish or Perish software. The complete title of the GL was used as keywords for the search string. Results revealed that the GL was cited by 155 literatures written by 398 authors from 31 countries. Seventy-five (48.4%) of the 155 literatures were cited 797 times. The results showed the wide utilization and the impact of locally-published GL, thereby confirming GL’s value in research and development

Transient Kinetics and Quantum Yield Studies of Nanocrystalline α‑Phenyl-Substituted Ketones: Sorting Out Reactions from Singlet and Triplet Excited States

Recent work has shown that diarylmethyl radicals generated by pulsed laser excitation in nanocrystalline (NC) suspensions of tetraarylacetones constitute a valuable probe for the detailed mechanistic analysis of the solid-state photodecarbonylation reaction. Using a combination of reaction quantum yields and laser flash photolysis in nanocrystalline suspensions of ketones with different substituents on one of the α-carbons, we are able to suggest with confidence that a significant fraction of the initial α-cleavage reaction takes place from the ketone singlet excited state, that the originally formed diarylmethyl-acyl radical pair loses CO in the crystal with time constants in the sub-nanosecond regime, and that the secondary bis­(diarylmethyl) triplet radical pair has a lifetime limited by the rate of intersystem crossing of ca. 70 ns