In My View

While Lieutenant Commander Maksim Y. Tokarev’s article “Kamikazes: The Soviet Legacy” (Naval War College Review, Winter 2014) was extremely infor- mative regarding the history and theory behind Soviet anti-carrier doctrine, his analysis of Japanese kamikaze tactics appears flawed with regard to his comments about dive bombing

Sustainable Development Report: Blockchain, the Web3 & the SDGs

This is an output paper of the applied research that was conducted between July 2018 - October 2019 funded by the Austrian Development Agency (ADA) and conducted by the Research Institute for Cryptoeconomics at the Vienna University of Economics and Business and RCE Vienna (Regional Centre of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development).Series: Working Paper Series / Institute for Cryptoeconomics / Interdisciplinary Researc

Sustainable Development Report: Blockchain, the Web3 & the SDGs

This is an output paper of the applied research that was conducted between July 2018 - October 2019 funded by the Austrian Development Agency (ADA) and conducted by the Research Institute for Cryptoeconomics at the Vienna University of Economics and Business and RCE Vienna (Regional Centre of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development).Series: Working Paper Series / Institute for Cryptoeconomics / Interdisciplinary Researc

Midway

Six decades after the spectacular American victory over the Imperial Japanese Navy’s First Air Fleet, the reasons behind the U.S. Navy’s success at the battle of Midway are still not fully understood. Though the details of this famous battle continue to be argued in the pages of scholarly jour- nals, the critical role of doctrine has not been properly analyzed.1 Yet it was better doctrine that ultimately led to the American victory once the forces were engaged, a victory that changed the course of war in the Pacific

Royal Catchfly (Silene regia) Growth and Floral Development in Response to Fertilizer and Photo Period

Royal Catchfly, Silene regia, is a prairie forb that is endangered in multiple states. More information on the plant\u27s development and propagation is essential to successful recovery programs. Little is known about S. regia\u27s response to fertilizer or how floral initiation is triggered. Within Caryophyllaceae floral initiation often is linked to photoperiod. The objectives of my study were to investigate how fertilizer affects growth of S. regia to transplant stage and to determine if flowering of S. regia is initiated by photoperiod or developmental age. For fertilizer, treatments consisted of a control, a 20-20-20 liquid fertilizer solution at 1.25 g/L applied weekly, and an Osmocote 14-14-14 four-month slow release solid fertilizer at 14.6 g/L. Various shoot and root parameters were measured. For flowering, treatments of either long day photoperiod (16 hours light/8 hours dark) or short day photoperiod (8 hours light/16 hours dark). Basal rosette leaf number, node number on elongated stems, axillary stem number, and flower bud number were recorded weekly. Overall, fertilizer increased growth relative to the control for shoot and root parameters. Solid fertilizer was better than weekly liquid at producing healthy shoots, but had no difference in root parameters. For long day photoperiod plants, 38.5% had elongated stems, but for short day photoperiod plants, 0% had elongated stems. Short day plants were smaller than long day plants but by week 16 were equal or greater in size, yet still no plants flowered. Plants grew axillary stems and 19.4 ± 8.8 flower buds. Solid fertilizer mixed into the soil was the best for growth. A long day photoperiod triggered floral initiation in S. regia. Future studies should use this information to increase survival in transplants planted into natural areas

Ultrasonic tracking of a sinking ball in a vibrated dense granular suspension

Observing and understanding the movement of an intruder through opaque dense suspensions such as quicksand remains a practical and conceptual challenge. Here we use an ultrasonic probe to investigate the dynamics of a steel ball sinking in a 3D dense glass bead packing saturated by water. We show that the frictional model developed for dry granular media can be used to describe the ball motion induced by horizontal vibration. From this rheology we infer the static friction coefficient and effective viscosity that decrease when increasing the vibration intensity. Our main finding is that the vibration-induced reduction of the yield stress and increase of the sinking depth are presumably due to induced slipping at the grain contacts but without visible plastic rearrangements of grains, in contrast to dry granular packings. To explain these results, we propose a mechanism of acoustic lubrication that reduces the inter-particle friction and leads to a decrease of the yield stress. This scenario is different from the mechanism of liquefaction usually invoked in loosely packed quicksands where the vibration-induced compaction increases the pore pressure and decreases the confining pressure on the solid skeleton, thus reducing the granular resistance to external load.Comment: 9 pages and 5 figures, plus the supplemental information (1 page, 2 movies, 1 figure

Regression sampling in statistical auditing

Auditing;Regression Analysis;accountancy

Evolving a 24-hr oscillator in budding yeast

We asked how a new, complex trait evolves by selecting for diurnal oscillations in the budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae. We expressed yellow fluorescent protein (YFP) from a yeast promoter and selected for a regular alternation between low and high fluorescence over a 24-hr period. This selection produced changes in cell adhesion rather than YFP expression: clonal populations oscillated between single cells and multicellular clumps. The oscillations are not a response to environmental cues and continue for at least three cycles in a constant environment. We identified eight putative causative mutations in one clone and recreated the evolved phenotype in the ancestral strain. The mutated genes lack obvious relationships to each other, but multiple lineages change from the haploid to the diploid pattern of gene expression. We show that a novel, complex phenotype can evolve by small sets of mutations in genes whose molecular functions appear to be unrelated to each other. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.04875.00