Guidelines for data collection and monitoring for asset management of New Zealand road bridges

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QuEST and High Performance Simulation of Quantum Computers

We introduce QuEST, the Quantum Exact Simulation Toolkit, and compare it to ProjectQ, qHipster and a recent distributed implementation of Quantum++. QuEST is the first open source, OpenMP and MPI hybridised, GPU accelerated simulator of universal quantum circuits. Embodied as a C library, it is designed so that a user's code can be deployed seamlessly to any platform from a laptop to a supercomputer. QuEST is capable of simulating generic quantum circuits of general single-qubit gates and multi-qubit controlled gates, on pure and mixed states, represented as state-vectors and density matrices, and under the presence of decoherence. Using the ARCUS Phase-B and ARCHER supercomputers, we benchmark QuEST's simulation of random circuits of up to 38 qubits, distributed over up to 2048 compute nodes, each with up to 24 cores. We directly compare QuEST's performance to ProjectQ's on single machines, and discuss the differences in distribution strategies of QuEST, qHipster and Quantum++. QuEST shows excellent scaling, both strong and weak, on multicore and distributed architectures.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures; fixed typos; updated QuEST URL and fixed typo in Fig. 4 caption where ProjectQ and QuEST were swapped in speedup subplot explanation; added explanation of simulation algorithm, updated bibliography; stressed technical novelty of QuEST; mentioned new density matrix suppor

A political ecology of living aquatic resources in Lao PDR

This thesis uses a political ecology framework to critically analyse how development and environmental orthodoxies influence the use, management and development of living aquatic resources in an information poor developing country context. The research focuses specifically on Lao PDR, the only landlocked country of the Mekong River Basin, to question how knowledge over living aquatic resources is framed by a range of stakeholders. Specific attention is given to how aquaculture has gained ascendancy over capture fisheries in the rhetoric of resources users as well as government and nongovernment organisations. The empirical research focuses on the role of broad scale economic, social and environmental influences over resource use, the practical and perceived importance of both aquaculture and capture fisheries in rural Lao livelihoods and finally, how living aquatic resources are represented within the dominant development agendas of conservation, poverty alleviation and rural development. Field work was conducted in Savannakhet province in Southern Lao PDR over 18 months from 2001 to 2002. The thesis has a strong empirical research base divided into activities carried out over multiple scales ranging from household to the Mekong River Basin. The thesis begins by establishing the historical context of resource use as well as the major orthodoxies on which development is based. Attention then turns to the extensive empirical research conducted over three districts of Savannakhet province. The results of the empirical research report two macro scale studies at the district level. The first is a survey of fish ponds across three districts focusing on the spatial distribution of investment and resource use. The second is a survey of fish trade focusing on the differential trade between culture and capture fish species. The results of both studies highlight the disjuncture between complex patterns of aquaculture and capture fishery use and the major assumptions made about the use of these two resources by policy makers and management. Analysis then moves to the local level focusing on the role and importance of aquaculture and capture fisheries to the livelihoods of rural Lao communities. The results show the instrumental and hermeneutic importance of fish and other aquatic resources in the livelihoods of households and the community. In particular it is shown that capture fisheries are more important to rural livelihoods in terms of income and nutrition, while aquaculture is perceived as a more important activity in the development of community and household economies. ii The final section then compares the empirical findings of the thesis with the policy and planning agendas of government and non-government organisations. The analysis focuses on the role of ideas and agency creating a highly politicised policy environment concluding that aquaculture based policy is more compatible with both government and non government agendas of poverty alleviation and rural development than capture fisheries. Furthermore, capture fisheries are marginalised within conservation as a resource that cannot contribute to the improvement of livelihoods or alleviate poverty. The thesis concludes that living aquatic resources provide an imperative source of food and income to rural communities through diverse and complex human-environment interactions. In contrast government and non-government organisations operating at regional, national and local scales of policy and planning simplify these relationships drawing on wider orthodoxies of aquaculture and capture fisheries development. These simplifications do not reflect the problems and needs of the predominantly rural population. Furthermore, in the absence of a strong empirical base of information, living aquatic resources management and development has become highly politicised. Instead of responding to the realities of resource users, policy and planning reflect the interests and beliefs of development organisations, government and non-government. The thesis provides an important, grounded account of the importance of living aquatic resources to rural livelihoods in Lao PDR and how these resources are understood and translated into national development and management agendas. In doing so the thesis contributes to an understanding of how complex human-environmental systems are perceived and represented in development policy and wider knowledge systems. The thesis also makes an important theoretical contribution to the growing body of literature on critical political ecology by arguing for the revitalisation of ecology as an integrated approach within political ecology and more widely within the study of humanenvironment interaction

Investigating Post-Translational Modification of the Net Protein Superfamily

The Net protein superfamily represents a group of actin binding proteins contain a novel actin binding domain at their N termini. The aim of this project was to investigate post-translational modification of these proteins in order to explore how the interaction of these proteins with actin is regulated. A bioinformatics-based approach was used to predict sites for multiple types of modification, with a focus on phosphorylation, that were conserved between members of the superfamily. It became clear that there was some level of conservation of predicted post-translational modification sites at the C-terminus in multiple Net families. Net4B was identified as having a high probability of being phosphorylated at the C-terminus and predicted to have its N- and C-termini proximal to one another in its tertiary structure, and following this mutant forms of the protein were created to investigate how its actin binding activity would be affected if one site, S509, was phosphorylated or dephosphorylated. The mutants were transiently expressed in Nicotania benthamiana and the appearance of the leaf cells assessed. Whilst phosphomimicry of S509 resulted in no appreciable change in the appearance of the GFP-tagged protein, mutation to a residue imitating a non-phosphorylatable serine resulted in the formation of punctae, in some cases much like the ‘beads-on-a-string’ seen in other members of the Net superfamily. This finding may have implications for the regulation of actin binding in other Net proteins and for other proteins outside of the superfamily. Two models are presented in both of these contexts. This project may also provide groundwork for future experiments concerning phosphorylation and acylation, and may illuminate the mechanism by which Net proteins interact with actin and with the membranes with which they are respectively localised

Not just for the wealthy: Rethinking farmed fish consumption in the Global South

Aquaculture’s contributions to food security in the Global South are widely misunderstood. Dominant narratives suggest that aquaculture contributes mainly to international trade benefiting richer Northern consumers, or provides for wealthy urban consumers in Southern markets. On the supply side, the literature promotes an idealized vision of ‘small-scale’, low input, semi-subsistence farming as the primary means by which aquaculture can contribute to food security, or emphasizes the role of ‘industrial’ export oriented aquaculture in undermining local food security. In fact, farmed fish is produced predominantly by a ‘missing middle’ segment of commercial and increasingly intensive farms, and overwhelmingly remains in Southern domestic markets for consumption by poor and middle income consumers in both urban and rural areas, making an important but underappreciated contribution to global food security

COVID-19 and neglected tropical diseases in Africa: impacts, interactions, consequences

The world has been assaulted by COVID-19. Unpredictable changes in all sectors of economies and societies will manifest themselves over the coming months and years. The most robust health systems have become overwhelmed and pre-occupied in response to the virus. The impact of COVID-19 will evolve from an acute medical emergency response to a chronic ‘maintenance’ phase, with health services adapting to life with the virus as another infectious agent. However, economic and societal costs will vastly outweigh initial medical costs, given the widely predicted global depression—trivial compared with the cost of preparedness that should have been undertaken. The most vulnerable in society will be driven into deeper poverty. The consequential mental health morbidity and suicidal ideations will place an increased burden on already overstretched services, against the background of mental illness being the world's leading cause of morbidity.1 This is likely to be exacerbated by increased violence and social stress on already depressed economies with high levels of unemployment. There may be hope for a vaccine, but its efficacy, duration of immunity and the complexities of distribution in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) will be major challenges. The longer-term consequences of the pandemic for Africa will be profound, given health system fragilities.2 In this editorial, we discuss the potential impact of COVID-19 on neglected tropical disease (NTD) programmes as health services seek to function in the newly changed COVID-19 environmen

Let them eat carp: Fish farms are helping to fight hunger

First paragraph: Over the past three decades, the global aquaculture industry has risen from obscurity to become a critical source of food for millions of people. In 1990, only 13 percent of world seafood consumption was farmed; by 2014, aquaculture was providing more than half of the fish consumed directly by human beings.  The boom has made farmed fish like shrimp, tilapia and pangasius catfish – imported from countries such as Thailand, China and Vietnam – an increasingly common sight in European and North American supermarkets. As a result, much research on aquaculture has emphasized production for export.  This focus has led scholars to question whether aquaculture contributes to the food security of poorer people in producing countries. Many have concluded it does not. Meanwhile, the industry’s advocates often emphasize the potential for small-scale farms, mainly growing fish for home consumption, to feed the poor. Farms of this kind are sometimes claimed to account for 70 to 80 percent of global aquaculture production

The ultrastructure and function of the gut of Patella vulgata

The limpet gut consists of a long coiled tube lined by a ciliated columnar epithelium, into which open the ducts of the salivary and digestive glands. Six sections can be distinguished: the buccalcavity, oesophagus, stomach, style sac, intestine and rectum. The oesophagus can be subdivided into a dorsal food channel and a series of lateral pouches forming the oesophageal gland. The intestine is divisible into sections designated A, B, C, D and E. Ultrastructural and histochemical analyses revealed nine cell types, seven of them glandular. A single type of gland cell lining the tubules of the salivary gland produces a viscous secretion that lubricates the radula and entraps particles rasped from the substratum. Mucous cells occur in the buccal cavity, dorsal food channel and rectum; in the rectum, mucus aids defaecation, but elsewhere it entraps loose particles that are consequently transported to the stomach. The only extracellular enzyme, an amylase derived from the gland cells of the oesophageal gland, is mixed with the food in the dorsal food channel. Ciliated and unciliated columnar cells lining the ducts of the digestive gland, stomach, style sac and anterior intestine, release blebs of cytoplasm into the lumen to consolidate loose particles into a faecal rod that is rotated along the intestine. Clavate gland cells and possibly basal gland cells in the posterior intestine, cover the faecal rod with their secretion to form a durable rod. The vacuolated digestive cells of the digestive gland, digest food intracellularly releasing undigestible residues in spherules of cytoplasm, these are bound into a liver string by the proteinaceoussecretion of the basophilic cells. Both these cell types and the amylase-secreting cells exhibit phases of activity, but only that of the latter is related to the tidal cycle. Tritiated D-glucose was absorbed by the oesophagus, intestine and digestive gland by a mechanism inhibited by 2,4-DNP and phloridzin. The mechanisms operating in the oesophagus and posterior intestine were sodium-dependent. Fluid movements from the intestinal lumen to the blood occurred.<p