6,168 research outputs found
Topical Issues in Environmental Finance
The purposes of this paper are to illustrate some practical examples of environmental finance situations; demonstrate that all of these situations could benefit from environmental economics and its insights; and, suggest some specific topics in environmental finance that might be of interest to researchers.Environmental finance
New iterative method for three-dimensional eddy-current problems
Author name used in this publication: Eric Ka-Wai Cheng2001-2002 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalVersion of RecordPublishe
Coordinate Bethe Ansatz for Spin s XXX Model
We compute the eigenfunctions and eigenvalues of the periodic integrable spin
s XXX model using the coordinate Bethe ansatz. To do so, we compute explicitly
the Hamiltonian of the model. These results generalize what has been obtained
for spin 1/2 and spin 1 chains
Molecular Profiling and Antibiotic Resistance of Salmonella Enterica Subsp. Enterica Isolated from Indigenous Ulam and Poultry Meat
Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica formed the major group that represents nearly
60% of the salmonellae. Salmonella organisms emerged as a public health problem
in many countries as salmonellosis has become the most prevalent foodborne disease
worldwide. It has been estimated that approximately 1.4 million cases were reported
annually in the developed nations such as USA. In Malaysia, of 8,640 cases of food
poisoning reported by the Ministry of Health for the year 1999, 811 (9.4%) were due
to Salmonella. The purpose of this study was to characterize and study Salmonella
enterica subsp. enterica (S. enterica) using multiple antimicrobial resistance and
several molecular typing methods including plasmid profiling, PCR-RFLP, RAPD,
ERIC-PCR and Multiplex PCR on antibiotic resistant gene. The isolate were
recovered from poultry meat (55), four types of indigenous vegetables namely
‘selom’ (Oenanthe stolonifera) (59), ‘pegaga’ (Centella asiatica) (20), ‘kesum’
(Polygonum minus) (41), ‘kangkong’ (Ipomoea aquatica) (14) and processed food
(11).Genomic DNA of the 200 S. enterica isolates belonging to 43 different serovars were
recovered from poultry meat, various indigenous vegetables and processed food was
confirmed by specific and duplex PCR targeting the iroB gene that yielded 443 bp
and 606 bp amplicons. The PCR amplification of iroB gene is a rapid and reliable
method for distinguishing between S. enterica and other bacterial species.
Plasmids of S. enterica varied in sizes from 2 to more than 200 kb. Despite limited
knowledge on their function, their presence is frequently used for strain
differentiation in epidemiological studies. Plasmid profiling on the 200 S. enterica
isolates demonstrated high discriminatory capability for serovars differentiation in
this study that was clustered into 70 groups based on the number and pattern of the
bands.
One of the amplification based techniques used in this study for molecular
characterization was PCR-RFLP that incorporated PCR of iroB1, iroB2 and
restriction digest with BglII and AluI to determine the relatedness of bacterial strains.
Results obtained showed that PCR-RFLP has excellent typeablity but low
discriminatory power due to its inability to produce different banding patterns.
ERIC sequences are short, highly conserved 126 bp non-coding regions found in the
Enterobacteriaceae. Its location in bacterial genomes allows discrimination at the
genus, species and serovars levels. RAPD is an amplification-based technique using
arbitrary primers to detect changes in the DNA sequence at the sites in the genome
and enable the discrimination of samples according to sources and serovars.
Dendrogram of RAPD and ERIC-PCR were analyzed and comparisons made using BioNumerics gel analysis software (Applied Maths, Kortrijk, Belgium). Among the
200 isolates of S. enterica, RAPD with arbitrary primers OPAR02, OPAR17 and
OPAR19 generated 47 clusters and 13 single isolates whereas ERIC-PCR with
primers ERIC-1 and ERIC-2 produced 46 clusters and 12 single isolates at 60%
similarity level with discriminatory index (D) of 0.9726 and 0.9606 respectively.
Composite analysis of RAPD and ERIC-PCR profiling simultaneously produced 50
clusters and 18 single isolates at 60% similarity level with highest discriminatory
index of 0.9824. These results demonstrated that composite analysis of RAPD
(OPAR02, OPAR17 and OPAR19) together with ERIC-PCR are a better tool for
differentiation and characterization of S. enterica as compared to a single method
approach.
The multiplex PCR targeted three different antibiotic resistance genes that was used
to detect TEM, PSE-1 and cmlA/tetR genes segment encoding resistance towards
ampicillin, chloramphenicol and tetracycline, respectively which could reduce labour
and cost in analysis of a large number of isolates.
Subsequently antimicrobial resistance was performed using disc diffusion method
with a selection of 13 different antimicrobial agents. Total of 66 profiles were
generated and multiple antimicrobial resistance (MAR) analysis indicated poultry
meat still remains as the main reservoir for multi drug resistant Salmonella. In
contrast, six isolates from the indigenous vegetables showed the highest MAR index
(0.69). This might be due to animal waste fertilizer, irrigation water, contaminated
container and improper handling of food by human that contributed to be the sources
of Salmonella contamination of vegetables. Further investigations need to be conducted to determine if Salmonella isolates in recovered from indigenous
vegetables were gaining more antimicrobial resistance. The characterization of MAR
enabled the determination of antimicrobial patterns and trends in Salmonella from
poultry meat and indigenous vegetables in Malaysia.
As a conclusion, the results from this study could provide valuable information on
the epidemiology and drug resistance trends of S. enterica, and hence contribute
towards better surveillance and infection control measures as well as improved
public health policy
Pengembangan Modul Berbasis Simas Eric pada Materi Sistem Reproduksi untuk SMA Kelas XI
One of the causes of the low learning motivation of students is the low level of adequate learning resources. The right solution to reduce this problem is by developing interactive teaching materials such as learning modules. Developing Simas eric based modules on reproductive system materials suitable for use in biology learning is the aim of this research. The method used in this study is a 3D model adapted from the 4D model consisting of define, design, development, and disseminate. The percentage of the feasibility of Simas eric-based biology modules is obtained from material experts by 90% and the feasibility percentage of Simas eric-based biology modules is obtained from media experts by 98% with very good assessment criteria and very valid categories or can be used without revision, and it is concluded that module-based development Simas eric on reproductive system material is seen from the level of validity, which is very feasible to be applied in the learning process
Scaling Deep Learning on GPU and Knights Landing clusters
The speed of deep neural networks training has become a big bottleneck of
deep learning research and development. For example, training GoogleNet by
ImageNet dataset on one Nvidia K20 GPU needs 21 days. To speed up the training
process, the current deep learning systems heavily rely on the hardware
accelerators. However, these accelerators have limited on-chip memory compared
with CPUs. To handle large datasets, they need to fetch data from either CPU
memory or remote processors. We use both self-hosted Intel Knights Landing
(KNL) clusters and multi-GPU clusters as our target platforms. From an
algorithm aspect, current distributed machine learning systems are mainly
designed for cloud systems. These methods are asynchronous because of the slow
network and high fault-tolerance requirement on cloud systems. We focus on
Elastic Averaging SGD (EASGD) to design algorithms for HPC clusters. Original
EASGD used round-robin method for communication and updating. The communication
is ordered by the machine rank ID, which is inefficient on HPC clusters.
First, we redesign four efficient algorithms for HPC systems to improve
EASGD's poor scaling on clusters. Async EASGD, Async MEASGD, and Hogwild EASGD
are faster \textcolor{black}{than} their existing counterparts (Async SGD,
Async MSGD, and Hogwild SGD, resp.) in all the comparisons. Finally, we design
Sync EASGD, which ties for the best performance among all the methods while
being deterministic. In addition to the algorithmic improvements, we use some
system-algorithm codesign techniques to scale up the algorithms. By reducing
the percentage of communication from 87% to 14%, our Sync EASGD achieves 5.3x
speedup over original EASGD on the same platform. We get 91.5% weak scaling
efficiency on 4253 KNL cores, which is higher than the state-of-the-art
implementation
CHINA’S MILITARY RISE AND ITS IMPACT ON INSTABILITY IN EAST ASIA
AbstrackMeningkatnya anggaran militer China lebih dari satu dekade terakhir ini menyebabkanterjadinya instabilitas di kawasan Asia Timur. Hal ini terutama disebabkan karena Jepangmerasa terancam dengan strategi China dan karenanya Jepang melakukan perubahanterhadap kebijakan pertahanannya. Jepang yang memiliki masalah perbatasan denganChina di sekitar Laut Timur, beranggapan bahwa modernisasi persenjataan China,terutama yang dilakukan terhadap armada lautnya, bukan ditujukan utk menciptakanstabilitas keamanan kawasan namun sebaliknya, menimbulkan ancaman bagi Jepang dannegara tetangga lainnya. Sebagai reaksi terhadap kebijakan pertahanan China tersebut,Jepang, di samping tetap menikmati kerjasama pertahanan dengan Amerika Serikat, telahmemutuskan untuk merubah postur pertahanannya dan meningkatkan anggaran belanjamiliternya. Meskipun terlalu dini untuk menyatakan akan terjadi perang antara Jepangdan China, namun dinamika yang terjadi pada keduanya menimbulkan persepsi yangberagam bagi negara-negara di kawasan Asia Timur, namun yang paling mencolok adalahmeningkatnya perasaan terancam yang akan mengarah pada security dilemma (dilemakeamanan).Kata kunci: Modernisasi pertahanan, Instabilitas, Dilema keamana
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