Relativistic electron beam propagation in the Earth's atmosphere: Modeling results

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/95662/1/grl8999.pd

Alcohol Fuel from Fodder beets: Economic Feasibility of a Small Scale Plant

The study reported in this publication was undertaken to answer with great confidence the question of how economically feasible fodder beet based alcohol production might be. Specific research objectives addressed in the study were the following: 1. to estimate costs of growing fodder beets under South Dakota conditions. 2. to determine the costs of processing fodder beets in a small-scale plant into 185-190 proof alcohol and a feed byproduct. 3. to determine the likely value of the feed by product (the high-protein feed remaining after the alcohol is removed); 4. to estimate the value of 185-190 proof alcohol; and 5. to combine this cost and return information (“1” through “4”) to determine the probable economic feasibility of small-scale fuel alcohol production using fodder beets

Challenges Faced by Jesuit Worldwide Learning Students: Piloting a Mixed Methods Investigation

In 2017 a Creighton University Global Initiative grant provided 20 scholarships in its online B.S. in Leadership Studies for Jesuit Worldwide Learning graduates of the Diploma in Liberal Studies. In 2018-19 the first cohort of scholarship students living in Afghanistan and Jordan were enrolled at Creighton University (CU). In spring 2019, three Creighton University students collaborated with two of the co-authors to develop and to implement a research project to explore barriers faced by Jesuit Worldwide Learning students enrolled in Creighton’s B.S. program. The purpose of this project was to test if Group Concept Mapping, a mixed methods research approach integrating qualitative and quantitative methods, combined with the analysis of narrative course evaluations and interview texts with students, faculty, and staff adopting the Grounded Theory approach can lead to insights that further our understanding of barriers and struggles faced by Jesuit Worldwide Learning students and their instructors, can help strengthen institutional gaps in international learning, and can be used for a future study. The process and the results strongly suggest that the methodology is indeed appropriate to systematically study this or a related research question

Conventional Orthography for Dialectal Arabic (CODA): Principles and Guidelines -- Egyptian Arabic - Version 0.7 - March 2012

This document introduces CODA (Conventional Orthography for Dialectal Arabic) and presents specifications and detailed guidelines for Egyptian Arabic CODA. CODA addresses the problem of inconsistent orthographic choices in raw (naturally occurring) written dialectal Arabic text. The specifications are a succinct summary, while the guidelines contain details and examples. The document has three parts that are ordered from most general to the more specific. In Part 1, we define CODA and present its general goals, principles and considerations in a non-dialect specific manner. In Part 2, we present a high level CODA specification for Egyptian Arabic (EGY). And in Part 3, we present detailed guidelines for EGY CODA

Parsing Arabic Dialects

The Arabic language is a collection of spoken dialects with important phonological, morphological, lexical, and syntactic differences, along with a standard written language, Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). Since the spoken dialects are not officially written, it is very costly to obtain adequate corpora to use for training dialect NLP tools such as parsers. In this paper, we address the problem of parsing transcribed spoken Levantine Arabic (LA). We do not assume the existence of any annotated LA corpus (except for development and testing), nor of a parallel corpus LA-MSA. Instead, we use explicit knowledge about the relation between LA and MSA

Signatures of adaptation to a monocot host in the plant-parasitic cyst nematode Heterodera sacchari.

Interactions between plant-parasitic nematodes and their hosts are mediated by effectors, i.e. secreted proteins that manipulate the plant to the benefit of the pathogen. To understand the role of effectors in host adaptation in nematodes, we analysed the transcriptome of Heterodera sacchari, a cyst nematode parasite of rice (Oryza sativa) and sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum). A multi-gene phylogenetic analysis showed that H. sacchari and the cereal cyst nematode Heterodera avenae share a common evolutionary origin and that they evolved to parasitise monocot plants from a common dicot-parasitic ancestor. We compared the effector repertoires of H. sacchari with those of the dicot parasites Heterodera glycines and Globodera rostochiensis to understand the consequences of this transition. While, in general, effector repertoires are similar between the species, comparing effectors and non-effectors of H. sacchari and G. rostochiensis shows that effectors have accumulated more mutations than non-effectors. Although most effectors show conserved spatiotemporal expression profiles and likely function, some H. sacchari effectors are adapted to monocots. This is exemplified by the plant-peptide hormone mimics, the CLAVATA3/EMBRYO SURROUNDING REGION-like (CLE) effectors. Peptide hormones encoded by H. sacchari CLE effectors are more similar to those from rice than those from other plants, or those from other plant-parasitic nematodes. We experimentally validated the functional significance of these observations by demonstrating that CLE peptides encoded by H. sacchari induce a short root phenotype in rice, whereas those from a related dicot parasite do not. These data provide a functional example of effector evolution that co-occurred with the transition from a dicot-parasitic to a monocot-parasitic lifestyle.BBSR

The importance of cytosolic glutamine synthetase in nitrogen assimilation and recycling

Glutamine synthetase assimilates ammonium into amino acids, thus it is a key enzyme for nitrogen metabolism. The cytosolic isoenzymes of glutamine synthetase assimilate ammonium derived from primary nitrogen uptake and from various internal nitrogen recycling pathways. In this way, cytosolic glutamine synthetase is crucial for the remobilization of protein-derived nitrogen. Cytosolic glutamine synthetase is encoded by a small family of genes that are well conserved across plant species. Members of the cytosolic glutamine synthetase gene family are regulated in response to plant nitrogen status, as well as to environmental cues, such as nitrogen availability and biotic/abiotic stresses. The complex regulation of cytosolic glutamine synthetase at the transcriptional to post-translational levels is key to the establishment of a specific physiological role for each isoenzyme. The diverse physiological roles of cytosolic glutamine synthetase isoenzymes are important in relation to current agricultural and ecological issues

Trends and Challenges in Experimental Macromolecular Crystallography

Macromolecular X-ray crystallography underpins the vigorous field of structural molecular biology having yielded many protein, nucleic acid and virus structures in fine detail. The understanding of the recognition by these macromolecules, as receptors, of their cognate ligands involves the detailed study of the structural chemistry of their molecular interactions. Also these structural details underpin the rational design of novel inhibitors in modern drug discovery in the pharmaceutical industry. Moreover, from such structures the functional details can be inferred, such as the biological chemistry of enzyme reactivity. There is then a vast number and range of types of biological macromolecules that potentially could be studied. The completion of the protein primary sequencing of the yeast genome, and the human genome sequencing project comprising some 105 proteins that is underway, raises expectations for equivalent three dimensional structural database

Est locus uni cuique suus: City and Status in Horace’s Satires 1.8 and 1.9

This is the published version