Exploring the potential of Agave as a biofuel crop on arid land

Worldwide awareness of global warming and depleting fossil fuel sources has made research into alternative resources, such as plant fuels imperative. Since groundwater irrigation is unsustainable, especially in desert climates, plants that are drought resistant or can utilize otherwise unusable water are more viable sources of future biofuel production. Agave nevadensis, a species belonging to the family Agavaceae are succulent plants native to Las Vegas. This experiment aims to expose A. nevadensis to both wastewater and drought conditions and observe its response. The results can help define Agave as a water-resourceful biofuel both tolerant of drought and capable of utilizing urban water

The Role of a transcription factor in regulating rice response to drought stress

The current water shortage is a major concern in regard to our global climate change crisis. A decrease in the availability of water will have direct effects on the development of plants. Some crops, such as Oryza sativa, or commonly known as rice, requires an abundant amount of water for adequate growth. With the water shortage crisis, it will become extremely difficult to harvest such crops to meet the world’s food demand. However, many plants have evolved mechanisms for overcoming and tolerating stresses such as drought. My research focuses on studying the proteins involved with these mechanisms. The WRKY superfamily is a family of transcription factors that up or down-regulate pathways in response to biotic and abiotic stresses in plants. We propose and hypothesize that OsWRKY70 plays a role in the abiotic stress of drought in rice. To identify the physiological role of this gene, we studied the phenotype of OsWRKY70 knockout mutants using an insertional transposon in comparison to its wildtype counterparts. This project aims to study the proteins involved with drought resistance in rice, which will pave the way for the production of genetically engineered crops that will be better at conserving water

A Comparison Between the Judicial and Administrative Routes to Enforce Intellectual Property Rights In China, 7 J. Marshall Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 529 (2008)

Over the past two decades, a sophisticated intellectual property law system has developed in support of China’s transition to economic superpower. In today’s global economy, it is crucial that international marketers understand how to navigate this new system to best protect their intellectual property rights. China allows for two distinct procedures by which intellectual property assets may be protected, one judicial and the other administrative. Each choice holds distinct advantages and disadvantages for a party seeking to enforce its rights. Making the best choice involves familiarization with the particulars of each procedure and gauging the likelihood of a successful outcome. The details of these procedures, along with their benefits and drawbacks, are surveyed here to provide a cursory understanding of intellectual property rights in China

An Approach for Removing Redundant Data from RFID Data Streams

Radio frequency identification (RFID) systems are emerging as the primary object identification mechanism, especially in supply chain management. However, RFID naturally generates a large amount of duplicate readings. Removing these duplicates from the RFID data stream is paramount as it does not contribute new information to the system and wastes system resources. Existing approaches to deal with this problem cannot fulfill the real time demands to process the massive RFID data stream. We propose a data filtering approach that efficiently detects and removes duplicate readings from RFID data streams. Experimental results show that the proposed approach offers a significant improvement as compared to the existing approaches

Relevance of magnetism to cuprate superconductivity: Lanthanides versus charge-compensated cuprates

We address what seemed to be a contradiction between the lanthanide series REBa$_2$Cu$_3$O$_y$ (RE123) and the charge-compensated series (Ca$_{x}$La$_{1-x}$)(Ba$_{1.75-x}$La$_{0.25+x}$)Cu$_{3}$O$_{y}$ (CLBLCO) regarding the superexchange ($J$) dependence of the maximum superconductivity (SC) critical temperature $T_c^{max}(J)$; RE and $x$ are implicit variables. This is done by measuring the N\'{e}el temperature and the temperature dependence of the magnetic order parameter for RE=Nd, Sm, Eu, Gd, Dy, Yb, Y, and for Y(BaSr)Cu$_3$O$_y$, at various very light dopings. The doping is determined by thermopower, and the magnetic properties by muon spin rotation. We find that the normalized-temperature dependence of the order parameter is identical for all RE123 in the undoped limit (with the exception of Gd123) implying identical out-of-plane magnetic coupling. The extrapolation of $T_N$ to zero doping suggests that, despite the variations in ionic radii, $J$ varies too weakly in this system to test the relation between SC and magnetism. This stands in contrast to CLBLCO where both $T_c^{max}$ and $T_N^{max}$ vary considerably in the undoped limit, and a positive correlation between the two quantities was observed.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure

Internet-based profiler system as integrative framework to support translational research

BACKGROUND: Translational research requires taking basic science observations and developing them into clinically useful tests and therapeutics. We have developed a process to develop molecular biomarkers for diagnosis and prognosis by integrating tissue microarray (TMA) technology and an internet-database tool, Profiler. TMA technology allows investigators to study hundreds of patient samples on a single glass slide resulting in the conservation of tissue and the reduction in inter-experimental variability. The Profiler system allows investigator to reliably track, store, and evaluate TMA experiments. Here within we describe the process that has evolved through an empirical basis over the past 5 years at two academic institutions. RESULTS: The generic design of this system makes it compatible with multiple organ system (e.g., prostate, breast, lung, renal, and hematopoietic system,). Studies and folders are restricted to authorized users as required. Over the past 5 years, investigators at 2 academic institutions have scanned 656 TMA experiments and collected 63,311 digital images of these tissue samples. 68 pathologists from 12 major user groups have accessed the system. Two groups directly link clinical data from over 500 patients for immediate access and the remaining groups choose to maintain clinical and pathology data on separate systems. Profiler currently has 170 K data points such as staining intensity, tumor grade, and nuclear size. Due to the relational database structure, analysis can be easily performed on single or multiple TMA experimental results. The TMA module of Profiler can maintain images acquired from multiple systems. CONCLUSION: We have developed a robust process to develop molecular biomarkers using TMA technology and an internet-based database system to track all steps of this process. This system is extendable to other types of molecular data as separate modules and is freely available to academic institutions for licensing

An all-photonic, dynamic device for flattening the spectrum of a laser frequency comb for precise calibration of radial velocity measurements

Laser frequency combs are fast becoming critical to reaching the highest radial velocity precisions. One shortcoming is the highly variable brightness of the comb lines across the spectrum (up to 4-5 orders of magnitude). This can result in some lines saturating while others are at low signal and lost in the noise. Losing lines to either of these effects reduces the precision and hence effectiveness of the comb. In addition, the brightness of the comb lines can vary with time which could drive comb lines with initially reasonable SNR's into the two regimes described above. To mitigate these two effects, laser frequency combs use optical flattener's. Flattener's are typically bulk optic setups that disperse the comb light with a grating, and then use a spatial light modulator to control the amplitude across the spectrum before recombining the light into another single mode fiber and sending it to the spectrograph. These setups can be large (small bench top), expensive (several hundred thousand dollars) and have limited stability. To address these issues, we have developed an all-photonic spectrum flattener on a chip. The device is constructed from optical waveguides on a SiN chip. The light from the laser frequency comb's output optical fiber can be directly connected to the chip, where the light is first dispersed using an arrayed waveguide grating. To control the brightness of each channel, the light is passed through a Mach-Zehnder interferometer before being recombined with a second arrayed waveguide grating. Thermo-optic phase modulators are used in each channel before recombination to path length match the channels as needed. Here we present the results from our first generation prototype. The device operates from 1400-1800 nm (covering the H band), with 20, 20 nm wide channels.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, conferenc

Flattening laser frequency comb spectra with a high dynamic range, broadband spectral shaper on-a-chip

Spectral shaping is critical to many fields of science. In astronomy for example, the detection of exoplanets via the Doppler effect hinges on the ability to calibrate a high resolution spectrograph. Laser frequency combs can be used for this, but the wildly varying intensity across the spectrum can make it impossible to optimally utilize the entire comb, leading to a reduced overall precision of calibration. To circumvent this, astronomical applications of laser frequency combs rely on a bulk optic setup which can flatten the output spectrum before sending it to the spectrograph. Such flatteners require complex and expensive optical elements like spatial light modulators and have non-negligible bench top footprints. Here we present an alternative in the form of an all-photonic spectral shaper that can be used to flatten the spectrum of a laser frequency comb. The device consists of a circuit etched into a silicon nitride wafer that supports an arrayed-waveguide grating to disperse the light over hundreds of nanometers in wavelength, followed by Mach-Zehnder interferometers to control the amplitude of each channel, thermo-optic phase modulators to phase the channels and a second arrayed-waveguide grating to recombine the spectrum. The demonstrator device operates from 1400 to 1800 nm (covering the astronomical H band), with twenty 20 nm wide channels. The device allows for nearly 40 dBs of dynamic modulation of the spectrum via the Mach-Zehnders , which is greater than that offered by most spatial light modulators. With a superluminescent diode, we reduced the static spectral variation to ~3 dB, limited by the properties of the components used in the circuit and on a laser frequency comb we managed to reduce the modulation to 5 dBs, sufficient for astronomical applications.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2209.0945