2012 INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON ANIMAL BIOTECHNOLOGY, SHINSHU UNIVERSITY

Date: January 31, 2012 / Venue: Faculty of Agriculture, Shinshu University / Host: Shinshu UniversitySpecial Lecture: Sarah Marie Cummings / Plenary Lectures: Hiroshi Kagami "Perspectives for Animal Biotechnology" / Plenary Lectures: Koh-ichi Hamano "Sex Preselection in Bovine" / Plenary Lectures: Jianzhi Pan "Animal Biotechnology in China: Research and Development of Genetically Engineered Farm Animals" / Plenary Lectures: Shosei Yoshida "Behavior of the mouse spermatogenic stem cells in the testis" / Plenary Lectures: Katsuhiko Hayashi "Reconstitution of the Mouse Germ Cell Specification by Pluripotent Stem Cells" / Plenary Lectures: Robert Kneller "Japanese and American Models for Commercializing University Discoveries" / Plenary Lectures: Takahiro Tagami "Improvement of Germline Transmission in Chimeric Chickens" / Plenary Lectures: Kohzy Hiramatsu "Neuroendocrine Control in Animal Production" / Plenary Lectures: Shinichi Yonekura "Molecular Mechanisms of Neuronal Connectivity ; Introduce the Drosophila Technology for Neuroscience Research / Plenary Lectures: Tamas Somfai "Cryopreservation of Porcine Oocytes and Zygotes" / Plenary Lectures: Yoshiaki Nakamura "Genetic Conservation at the Cellular Level in Chicken"Other2012 INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON ANIMAL BIOTECHNOLOGY, SHINSHU UNIVERSITY, 2012conference pape

Multiaccess Channels with State Known to One Encoder: Another Case of Degraded Message Sets

We consider a two-user state-dependent multiaccess channel in which only one of the encoders is informed, non-causally, of the channel states. Two independent messages are transmitted: a common message transmitted by both the informed and uninformed encoders, and an individual message transmitted by only the uninformed encoder. We derive inner and outer bounds on the capacity region of this model in the discrete memoryless case as well as the Gaussian case. Further, we show that the bounds for the Gaussian case are tight in some special cases.Comment: 5 pages, Proc. of IEEE International Symposium on Information theory, ISIT 2009, Seoul, Kore

Pyrotechnics as sustainable intangible heritage

In the Far East, and many centuries later in the West, the art and science of pyrotechnics had developed to form an integral part of a festive event, cultural or otherwise. Indeed, as in the case of the Maltese Archipelago, the art of pyrotechnics qualifies as intangible heritage in terms of the UNESCO‟s Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. It is an expression of living heritage which lends identity to a community and its cultural milieu. As the manufacturing process has to abide with optimal health and safety standards, the protection of fireworks production sites is of paramount significance. Development planning policies should be designed (i) to minimize the impact of such factories on the environment, whether it is natural, cultural and/or social and (ii) to protect these factories against urbanization, a major parameter in densely populated areas such as the Maltese Islands. Such policies should take into account the legacy of pyrotechnics, a cultural heritage of humanity. Working out and developing policies with the official authorities will guarantee implementable, scientifically grounded, planning regulations applicable to sites for the production and the setting off of fireworks. This will ensure sustainable existence of pyrotechnics with the socio-economic benefits which are associated with it.peer-reviewe

Bounds on the Capacity of the Relay Channel with Noncausal State Information at Source

We consider a three-terminal state-dependent relay channel with the channel state available non-causally at only the source. Such a model may be of interest for node cooperation in the framework of cognition, i.e., collaborative signal transmission involving cognitive and non-cognitive radios. We study the capacity of this communication model. One principal problem in this setup is caused by the relay's not knowing the channel state. In the discrete memoryless (DM) case, we establish lower bounds on channel capacity. For the Gaussian case, we derive lower and upper bounds on the channel capacity. The upper bound is strictly better than the cut-set upper bound. We show that one of the developed lower bounds comes close to the upper bound, asymptotically, for certain ranges of rates.Comment: 5 pages, submitted to 2010 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theor

The economic vulnerability and potential for adaptation of the Maltese Islands to climate change

The phenomenon of climate change is associated with potential wide-ranging effects, not least on human welfare. Increasing mean temperatures, rising sea-water levels, more pronounced temperature extremes, lower rainfall with nonetheless more intense precipitations accompanied by an increase in days of thunderstorms, increased atmospheric pollution and a reduction in daylight hours can be expected to have important economic influences as they affect production decisions and consumption patterns. The extent of economic vulnerability to climate change and the potential for adaptation depend on, amongst other things, the geographical and resource characteristics of the country or region involved, the structure of production and consumption and demographic and social considerations. The aim of this paper is to explore the potential economic vulnerability and possibilities for adaptation to climate change of the Maltese Islands. It is a contribution to the output of Working Group III: Vulnerability and Adaptation involved in the preparation of the First National Communication by Malta to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The climate change projections assumed in this paper are those developed for the purposes of the Communication, featuring overall a moderate impact of climate change including temperature increases ranging between 1 and 4 degrees Celsius and a rise in sea level of between half and 1 meter in a long term scenario. Following this introduction, Section 2 presents an assessment of the current state of the Maltese Islands in terms of their demographic and economic characteristics, together with a discussion of their likely future long-term development. The baseline scenario through which the effects of future climate changes are to be assessed should as much as possible consider the future pattern of economic activities rather than the present one. For instance, vulnerability to climate change would be high if the future development of the economy depends on the growth of a climate-sensitive sector, even though that sector may currently account for a relatively small share of economic activity. Section 3 reviews the potential vulnerability and possibilities of adaptation to climate change of small islands states in general. This is interesting because smallness and insularity are perhaps among the most important characteristics defining the Maltese economy in its relation to climate change. Section 4 brings together the findings of Sections 2 and 3 to focus the discussion of vulnerability and adaptation to climate change on Malta. From an analytical viewpoint, an assessment of the economic vulnerability to climate change can take place through two approaches. One is the evaluation of the loss of the economy‟s amenities, income and consumption welfare due to climate change. The other is based on adaptation costs associated with attempts to eliminate the negative effects of climate change, and would therefore focus on the costs of adaptation. Based on these considerations, this paper presents a qualitative assessment of the key long term climatic impacts and effects on the Maltese economy, discussing their potential severity and possibilities for adaptation. The approach used is based on the methodologies recommended by the United Nations Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This is followed by a discussion on the role of quantitative estimates in the context of this study.peer-reviewe

Robust video transmission using reversible watermarking techniques

This paper presents a novel error-resilient strategy which employs a reversible watermarking technique to protect the H.264/AVC video content. The proposed scheme adopts reversible watermarking to embed an error detection codeword within every Macro block (MB). The watermark is then extracted at the decoder and used to detect the corrupted MBs to be concealed. The proposed scheme further manages to recover the original video content after watermark extraction, thus providing no loss in video quality. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed approach provides a substantial gain of up to 2.6 dB in Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) relative to the standard with a minimal increase in complexity.peer-reviewe

Damage index for stone monuments

Precise diagnosis is required for characterisation, interpretation, rating and prediction of the weathering damages at stone monuments and is vital for remedy of stone damages and sustainable monument preservation. Quantitative rating of damages represents an important scientific contribution to reliable damage diagnosis at stone monuments. Damage indices are introduced as new tool for scientific quantification and rating of stone damages. Application of damage indices improves stone damage diagnosis and is very suitable for evaluation and certification of preservation measures and for long-term survey and maintenance of stone monuments. Importance and use of damage indices are presented for monuments in Germany, Malta, Jordan, Egypt and Brazil.peer-reviewe