Development of compact circular polarized antenna for WLAN application

Matching the polarization in both the transmitter and receiver antennas is important in terms of decreasing transmission losses. The use of circularly polarized antennas presents an attractive solution to achieve this polarization match which allows for more flexibility in the angle between transmitting and receiving antennas, reduces the effect of multipath reflections, enhances weather penetration and allows for the mobility of both the transmitter and the receiver. Compact circularly polarized microstrip antenna with Circular Polarization (CP) property for wireless communication system at 2.45 GHz is presented. Microstrip patch antennas being popular because of light weight, low volume, thin profile configuration which can be made conformal. Wireless communication systems applications circular polarization antenna is placing vital role. In this study it was applied DGS to produce circular polarization. The single fed circular polarized microstrip antenna is etched on a FR4 with dielectric substrate of 4.3 with the height of 1.6 mm. The axial ratio of approximate 2.1 dB and the radiation pattern results prove that the designed antenna meets the CP criteria. The simulated and measured results show a good agreement and the proposed antenna is suitable for WLAN applications

INTEGRATION OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY IN SCHOOLS: IMPLICATIONS FOR CURRICULUM REFORMS IN SOMALIA

The term information and communication technology is commonly used to refer to a wide range of human endeavors. In Somalia, from 2013 until now, the Ministry of Education has developed the primary and secondary curricula, and by 2020, it will have written the curriculum, syllabi, and textbooks in educational institutions and used ICT equipment. This paper focused on the integration of information and communication technology in schools as a veritable tool for curriculum reform in Somali schools. In Somalia, ICT infrastructure is frequently a deficient resource in academic institutions. It is usually challenging for institutions to offer advanced curricula due to limited resources. Many teachers lack the basic set of skills to use technology such as a lack of understanding of how to integrate ICT into their curriculum development area. Since the teacher's duties include implementing the curriculum to fulfill the requirements of the students, the teacher may need to develop lesson plans and syllabi within the parameters of the provided curriculum. Curriculum reform can be seen as a process that aims to change the objectives of learning and the way learning takes place. Recommendations provided in this paper were: the Ministry of Education should think about offering training programs or hosting in-service workshops, ICT facilities and equipment to Secondary schools so as to make curriculum reform.  Article visualizations

ABC: software for interactive browsing of genomic multiple sequence alignment data

BACKGROUND: Alignment and comparison of related genome sequences is a powerful method to identify regions likely to contain functional elements. Such analyses are data intensive, requiring the inclusion of genomic multiple sequence alignments, sequence annotations, and scores describing regional attributes of columns in the alignment. Visualization and browsing of results can be difficult, and there are currently limited software options for performing this task. RESULTS: The Application for Browsing Constraints (ABC) is interactive Java software for intuitive and efficient exploration of multiple sequence alignments and data typically associated with alignments. It is used to move quickly from a summary view of the entire alignment via arbitrary levels of resolution to individual alignment columns. It allows for the simultaneous display of quantitative data, (e.g., sequence similarity or evolutionary rates) and annotation data (e.g. the locations of genes, repeats, and constrained elements). It can be used to facilitate basic comparative sequence tasks, such as export of data in plain-text formats, visualization of phylogenetic trees, and generation of alignment summary graphics. CONCLUSIONS: The ABC is a lightweight, stand-alone, and flexible graphical user interface for browsing genomic multiple sequence alignments of specific loci, up to hundreds of kilobases or a few megabases in length. It is coded in Java for cross-platform use and the program and source code are freely available under the General Public License. Documentation and a sample data set are also available

A haplome alignment and reference sequence of the highly polymorphic Ciona savignyi genome

The high degree of polymorphism in the genome of the sea squirt Ciona savignyi complicated the assembly of sequence contigs, but a new alignment method results in a much improved sequence

Stock Market Reaction to Corporate Announcements on the NSE and the Efficient Market Hypothesis

This paper examines the efficiency of the Nairobi Stock Exchange which is Kenya’s only stock exchange market. The operation and efficiency of the Nairobi Stock exchange has been of considerable research interest of late. Several researchers have studied about NSE‘s pricing efficiency from 1980 to 1990. This dissertation broadens the debate by further testing the semi-strong form of stock market efficiency in Kenya. The paper investigates whether investors in Kenya can predict and create profitable trading strategies based on the announcement of yearly company earnings reports.The literature review of this dissertation contains a review of the theory of Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH), researches about capital markets and market efficiency, other emerged theories after EMH such as behavioral finance, and event studies. The date of this research is from 2002 to 2006. An event study approach is employed in order to investigate the share price reaction around the yearly company earnings announcement, and the market model is used to predict expected stock returns. We find that there is no significant relationship between stock returns and corporate announcement. The results of the abnormal residual returns showed inconsistent which could be attributed to normal trading activities of the NSE. Though, the finding of this dissertation shows that the NSE is not efficient in the semi strong form of the EMH. The results are subject to the limitations highlighted in the study. The inefficiency of the NSE can be attributed to factors such as lack of demand and supply for securities, market infrastructure, low listed companies, and lack of ways of attracting small investors since majority stock traders are institutional investors

Identification of the Otopetrin Domain, a conserved domain in vertebrate otopetrins and invertebrate otopetrin-like family members

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p><it>Otopetrin 1 (Otop1) </it>encodes a multi-transmembrane domain protein with no homology to known transporters, channels, exchangers, or receptors. Otop1 is necessary for the formation of otoconia and otoliths, calcium carbonate biominerals within the inner ear of mammals and teleost fish that are required for the detection of linear acceleration and gravity. Vertebrate <it>Otop1 </it>and its paralogues <it>Otop2 </it>and <it>Otop3 </it>define a new gene family with homology to the invertebrate Domain of Unknown Function 270 genes (<it>DUF270</it>; pfam03189).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Multi-species comparison of the predicted primary sequences and predicted secondary structures of 62 vertebrate otopetrin, and arthropod and nematode DUF270 proteins, has established that the genes encoding these proteins constitute a single family that we renamed the Otopetrin Domain Protein (<it>ODP</it>) gene family. Signature features of ODP proteins are three "Otopetrin Domains" that are highly conserved between vertebrates, arthropods and nematodes, and a highly constrained predicted loop structure.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our studies suggest a refined topologic model for ODP insertion into the lipid bilayer of 12 transmembrane domains, and highlight conserved amino-acid residues that will aid in the biochemical examination of ODP family function. The high degree of sequence and structural similarity of the ODP proteins may suggest a conserved role in the intracellular trafficking of calcium and the formation of biominerals.</p

Automated Discovery of Functional Generality of Human Gene Expression Programs

An important research problem in computational biology is the identification of expression programs, sets of co-expressed genes orchestrating normal or pathological processes, and the characterization of the functional breadth of these programs. The use of human expression data compendia for discovery of such programs presents several challenges including cellular inhomogeneity within samples, genetic and environmental variation across samples, uncertainty in the numbers of programs and sample populations, and temporal behavior. We developed GeneProgram, a new unsupervised computational framework based on Hierarchical Dirichlet Processes that addresses each of the above challenges. GeneProgram uses expression data to simultaneously organize tissues into groups and genes into overlapping programs with consistent temporal behavior, to produce maps of expression programs, which are sorted by generality scores that exploit the automatically learned groupings. Using synthetic and real gene expression data, we showed that GeneProgram outperformed several popular expression analysis methods. We applied GeneProgram to a compendium of 62 short time-series gene expression datasets exploring the responses of human cells to infectious agents and immune-modulating molecules. GeneProgram produced a map of 104 expression programs, a substantial number of which were significantly enriched for genes involved in key signaling pathways and/or bound by NF-κB transcription factors in genome-wide experiments. Further, GeneProgram discovered expression programs that appear to implicate surprising signaling pathways or receptor types in the response to infection, including Wnt signaling and neurotransmitter receptors. We believe the discovered map of expression programs involved in the response to infection will be useful for guiding future biological experiments; genes from programs with low generality scores might serve as new drug targets that exhibit minimal “cross-talk,” and genes from high generality programs may maintain common physiological responses that go awry in disease states. Further, our method is multipurpose, and can be applied readily to novel compendia of biological data