Host Selection of the giant willow aphid (Tuberolachnus salignus)

The giant willow aphid [Tuberolachnus salignus (Gmelin)] has recently become noteworthy as a potential pest species due to the increased uptake of willow, its host-plant, for use in growing biomass for energy production. In this paper we describe host selection studies of T. salignus on short rotation coppice (SRC) willow varieties in laboratory bioassays and field experiments. In laboratory olfactometry tests, T. salignus was significantly attracted to certain SRC willow varieties, but not to others. Field trials during 2007 and 2008 showed that T. salignus infestation levels varied significantly on different SRC willow varieties and that levels are highest on the varieties to which they are most strongly attracted in the laboratory bioassays

Overview study of Space Power Technologies for the advanced energetics program

Space power technologies are reviewed to determine the state-of-the-art and to identify advanced or novel concepts which promise large increases in performance. The potential for incresed performance is judged relative to benchmarks based on technologies which have been flight tested. Space power technology concepts selected for their potentially high performance are prioritized in a list of R & D topical recommendations for the NASA program on Advanced Energetics. The technology categories studied are solar collection, nuclear power sources, energy conversion, energy storage, power transmission, and power processing. The emphasis is on electric power generation in space for satellite on board electric power, for electric propulsion, or for beamed power to spacecraft. Generic mission categories such as low Earth orbit missions and geosynchronous orbit missions are used to distinguish general requirements placed on the performance of power conversion technology. Each space power technology is judged on its own merits without reference to specific missions or power systems. Recommendations include 31 space power concepts which span the entire collection of technology categories studied and represent the critical technologies needed for higher power, lighter weight, more efficient power conversion in space

Improving mental health outcomes: achieving equity through quality improvement

Objective. To investigate equity of patient outcomes in a psychological therapy service, following increased access achieved by a quality improvement (QI) initiative. Design. Retrospective service evaluation of health outcomes; data analysed by ANOVA, chi-squared and Statistical Process Control. Setting. A psychological therapy service in Westminster, London, UK. Participants. People living in the Borough of Westminster, London, attending the service (from either healthcare professional or self-referral) between February 2009 and May 2012. Intervention(s). Social marketing interventions were used to increase referrals, including the promotion of the service through local media and through existing social networks. Main Outcome Measure(s). (i) Severity of depression on entry using Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ9). (ii) Changes to severity of depression following treatment (ΔPHQ9). (iii) Changes in attainment of a meaningful improvement in condition assessed by a key performance indicator. Results. Patients from areas of high deprivation entered the service with more severe depression (M = 15.47, SD = 6.75), com-pared with patients from areas of low (M = 13.20, SD = 6.75) and medium (M = 14.44, SD = 6.64) deprivation. Patients in low

Verifying Heap-Manipulating Programs with Unknown Procedure Calls

10.1007/978-3-642-16901-4_13Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)6447 LNCS171-18

Estimating city-level travel patterns using street imagery: A case study of using Google Street View in Britain.

BACKGROUND: Street imagery is a promising and growing big data source providing current and historical images in more than 100 countries. Studies have reported using this data to audit road infrastructure and other built environment features. Here we explore a novel application, using Google Street View (GSV) to predict travel patterns at the city level. METHODS: We sampled 34 cities in Great Britain. In each city, we accessed 2000 GSV images from 1000 random locations. We selected archived images from time periods overlapping with the 2011 Census and the 2011-2013 Active People Survey (APS). We manually annotated the images into seven categories of road users. We developed regression models with the counts of images of road users as predictors. The outcomes included Census-reported commute shares of four modes (combined walking plus public transport, cycling, motorcycle, and car), as well as APS-reported past-month participation in walking and cycling. RESULTS: We found high correlations between GSV counts of cyclists ('GSV-cyclists') and cycle commute mode share (r = 0.92)/past-month cycling (r = 0.90). Likewise, GSV-pedestrians was moderately correlated with past-month walking for transport (r = 0.46), GSV-motorcycles was moderately correlated with commute share of motorcycles (r = 0.44), and GSV-buses was highly correlated with commute share of walking plus public transport (r = 0.81). GSV-car was not correlated with car commute mode share (r = -0.12). However, in multivariable regression models, all outcomes were predicted well, except past-month walking. The prediction performance was measured using cross-validation analyses. GSV-buses and GSV-cyclists are the strongest predictors for most outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: GSV images are a promising new big data source to predict urban mobility patterns. Predictive power was the greatest for those modes that varied the most (cycle and bus). With its ability to identify mode of travel and capture street activity often excluded in routinely carried out surveys, GSV has the potential to be complementary to new and traditional data. With half the world's population covered by street imagery, and with up to 10 years historical data available in GSV, further testing across multiple settings is warranted both for cross-sectional and longitudinal assessments

Stacking Entropy of Hard Sphere Crystals

Classical hard spheres crystallize at equilibrium at high enough density. Crystals made up of stackings of 2-dimensional hexagonal close-packed layers (e.g. fcc, hcp, etc.) differ in entropy by only about $10^{-3}k_B$ per sphere (all configurations are degenerate in energy). To readily resolve and study these small entropy differences, we have implemented two different multicanonical Monte Carlo algorithms that allow direct equilibration between crystals with different stacking sequences. Recent work had demonstrated that the fcc stacking has higher entropy than the hcp stacking. We have studied other stackings to demonstrate that the fcc stacking does indeed have the highest entropy of ALL possible stackings. The entropic interactions we could detect involve three, four and (although with less statistical certainty) five consecutive layers of spheres. These interlayer entropic interactions fall off in strength with increasing distance, as expected; this fall-off appears to be much slower near the melting density than at the maximum (close-packing) density. At maximum density the entropy difference between fcc and hcp stackings is $0.00115 +/- 0.00004 k_B$ per sphere, which is roughly 30% higher than the same quantity measured near the melting transition.Comment: 15 page

Velocity Statistics in the Two-Dimensional Granular Turbulence

We studied the macroscopic statistical properties on the freely evolving quasi-elastic hard disk (granular) system by performing a large-scale (up to a few million particles) event-driven molecular dynamics systematically and found that remarkably analogous to an enstrophy cascade process in the decaying two-dimensional fluid turbulence. There are four typical stages in the freely evolving inelastic hard disk system, which are homogeneous, shearing (vortex), clustering and final state. In the shearing stage, the self-organized macroscopic coherent vortices become dominant. In the clustering stage, the energy spectra are close to the expectation of Kraichnan-Batchelor theory and the squared two-particle separation strictly obeys Richardson law.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, to be published in PR

Photochemistry of Furyl- and Thienyldiazomethanes: Spectroscopic Characterization of Triplet 3-Thienylcarbene

Photolysis (λ \u3e 543 nm) of 3-thienyldiazomethane (1), matrix isolated in Ar or N2 at 10 K, yields triplet 3-thienylcarbene (13) and α-thial-methylenecyclopropene (9). Carbene 13 was characterized by IR, UV/vis, and EPR spectroscopy. The conformational isomers of 3-thienylcarbene (s-E and s-Z) exhibit an unusually large difference in zero-field splitting parameters in the triplet EPR spectrum (|D/hc| = 0.508 cm–1, |E/hc| = 0.0554 cm–1; |D/hc| = 0.579 cm–1, |E/hc| = 0.0315 cm–1). Natural Bond Orbital (NBO) calculations reveal substantially differing spin densities in the 3-thienyl ring at the positions adjacent to the carbene center, which is one factor contributing to the large difference in D values. NBO calculations also reveal a stabilizing interaction between the sp orbital of the carbene carbon in the s-Z rotamer of 13 and the antibonding σ orbital between sulfur and the neighboring carbon—an interaction that is not observed in the s-E rotamer of 13. In contrast to the EPR spectra, the electronic absorption spectra of the rotamers of triplet 3-thienylcarbene (13) are indistinguishable under our experimental conditions. The carbene exhibits a weak electronic absorption in the visible spectrum (λmax = 467 nm) that is characteristic of triplet arylcarbenes. Although studies of 2-thienyldiazomethane (2), 3-furyldiazomethane (3), or 2-furyldiazomethane (4) provided further insight into the photochemical interconversions among C5H4S or C5H4O isomers, these studies did not lead to the spectroscopic detection of the corresponding triplet carbenes (2-thienylcarbene (11), 3-furylcarbene (23), or 2-furylcarbene (22), respectively)

Improving the prediction of maturity from anthropometric variables using a maturity ratio

� 2018 Human Kinetics, Inc. Purpose: This study aimed to improve the prediction accuracy of age at peak height velocity (APHV) from anthropometric assessment using nonlinear models and a maturity ratio rather than a maturity offset. Methods: The dataset used to develop the original prediction equations was used to test a new prediction model, utilizing the maturity ratio and a polynomial prediction equation. This model was then applied to a sample of male youth academy soccer players (n = 1330) to validate the new model in youth athletes. Results: A new equation was developed to estimate APHV more accurately than the original model (new model: Akaike information criterion: -6062.1, R2 = 90.82%; original model: Akaike information criterion = 3048.7, R2 = 88.88%) within a general population of boys, particularly with relatively high/low APHVs. This study has also highlighted the successful application of the new model to estimate APHV using anthropometric variables in youth athletes, thereby supporting the use of this model in sports talent identification and development. Conclusion: This study argues that this newly developed equation should become standard practice for the estimation of maturity from anthropometric variables in boys from both a general and an athletic population

Psychopathology in Williams syndrome: the effect of individual differences across the lifespan

The present research aimed to comprehensively explore psychopathology in Williams syndrome (WS) across the lifespan and evaluate the relationship between psychopathology and age category (child or adult), gender and cognitive ability. The parents of 50 participants with WS, aged 6-50 years, were interviewed using the Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School-Age Children (K-SADS-PL). The prevalence of a wide range of Axis I DSM-IV disorders was assessed. In addition to high rates of anxiety and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) (38% and 20% respectively), 14% of our sample met criteria for a depressive disorder and 42% of participants were not experiencing any significant psychopathological difficulties. There was some evidence for different patterns of psychopathology between children and adults with WS and between males and females. These relationships were largely in keeping with those found in the typically developing population, thus supporting the validity of applying theory and treatment approaches for psychopathology in the typically developing population to WS