Experts Discuss “The Poverty of Nations”

Cedarville University will host a seminar entitled, The Poverty of Nations, on Tuesday, Sept. 2, with special guests Wayne Grudem, Ph.D. and Barry Asmus, Ph.D., co-authors of “The Poverty of Nations: A Sustainable Solution.” The event will be held in the Dixon Ministry Center at 7 p.m. and is open to the public. Grudem and Asmus are nationally known for their economic and biblical perspectives. Asmus is a senior economist with the National Center for Policy Analysis, and Grudem is a research professor of theology and biblical studies at Phoenix Seminary. According to their book, Grudem and Asmus believe the solution to solving national poverty is in a comprehensive development plan that integrates the principles of a free market system with biblical teaching on social ethics. Through personal freedom, the rule of law, private property, moral virtue and education, Grudem and Asmus believe there is a clear path for promoting economic prosperity and safe-guarding a country’s long-term stability

The Design Process and Usability Assessment of an Exergame System to Facilitate Strength for Task Training for Lower Limb Stroke Rehabilitation

Successful stroke rehabilitation relies on early, long-term, repetitive and intensive treatment, which is rarely adhered to by patients. Exergames can increase patients’ engagement with their therapy. Marketed exergaming systems for lower limb rehabilitation are hard to find and, none yet, facilitate Strength for Task Training (STT), a novel physiotherapeutic method for stroke rehabilitation. STT involves performing brief but intensive strength training (priming) prior to task-specific training to promote neural plasticity and maximize the gains in locomotor ability. This research investigates how the design of an exergame system (game and game controller) for lower limb stroke rehabilitation can facilitate unsupervised STT and therefore allow stroke patients to care for their own health. The findings suggest that specific elements of STT can be incorporated in an exergame system. Barriers to use can be reduced through considering the diverse physiological and cognitive abilities of patients and aesthetic consideration can help create a meaningful system than promotes its use in the home. The semantics of form and movement play an essential role for stroke patients to be able to carry out their exercises

On the Qubit Routing Problem

We introduce a new architecture-agnostic methodology for mapping abstract quantum circuits to realistic quantum computing devices with restricted qubit connectivity, as implemented by Cambridge Quantum Computing\u27s t|ket> compiler. We present empirical results showing the effectiveness of this method in terms of reducing two-qubit gate depth and two-qubit gate count, compared to other implementations

t|ket> : A retargetable compiler for NISQ devices

We present t|ket>, a quantum software development platform produced by Cambridge Quantum Computing Ltd. The heart of t|ket> is a language-agnostic optimising compiler designed to generate code for a variety of NISQ devices, which has several features designed to minimise the influence of device error. The compiler has been extensively benchmarked and outperforms most competitors in terms of circuit optimisation and qubit routing

Opening the black box: soil microcosm experiments reveal soot black carbon short-term oxidation and influence on soil organic carbon mineralisation

Soils hold three quarters of the total organic carbon (OC) stock in terrestrial ecosystems and yet we fundamentally lack detailed mechanistic understanding of the turnover of major soil OC pools. Black carbon (BC), the product of the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels and biomass, is ubiquitous in soils globally. Although BC is a major soil carbon pool, its effects on the global carbon cycle have not yet been resolved. Soil BC represents a large stable carbon pool turning over on geological timescales, but research suggests it can alter soil biogeochemical cycling including that of soil OC. Here, we established two soil microcosm experiments: experiment one added 13C OC to soil with and without added BC (soot or biochar) to investigate whether it suppresses OC mineralisation; experiment two added 13C BC (soot) to soil to establish whether it is mineralised in soil over a short timescale. Gases were sampled over six-months and analysed using isotope ratio mass spectrometry. In experiment one we found that the efflux of 13C OC from soil decreased over time, but the addition of soot to soil significantly reduced the mineralisation of OC from 32% of the total supplied without soot to 14% of the total supplied with soot. In contrast, there was not a significant difference after the addition of biochar in the flux of 13C from the OC added to the soil. In experiment two, we found that the efflux 13C from soil with added 13C soot significantly differed from the control, but this efflux declined over time. There was a cumulative loss of 0.17% 13C from soot over the experiment. These experimental results represent a step-change in understanding the influence of BC continuum on carbon dynamics, which has major consequences for the way we monitor and manage soils for carbon sequestration in future

Search Engine for Antimicrobial Resistance: A Cloud Compatible Pipeline and Web Interface for Rapidly Detecting Antimicrobial Resistance Genes Directly from Sequence Data.

BACKGROUND: Antimicrobial resistance remains a growing and significant concern in human and veterinary medicine. Current laboratory methods for the detection and surveillance of antimicrobial resistant bacteria are limited in their effectiveness and scope. With the rapidly developing field of whole genome sequencing beginning to be utilised in clinical practice, the ability to interrogate sequencing data quickly and easily for the presence of antimicrobial resistance genes will become increasingly important and useful for informing clinical decisions. Additionally, use of such tools will provide insight into the dynamics of antimicrobial resistance genes in metagenomic samples such as those used in environmental monitoring. RESULTS: Here we present the Search Engine for Antimicrobial Resistance (SEAR), a pipeline and web interface for detection of horizontally acquired antimicrobial resistance genes in raw sequencing data. The pipeline provides gene information, abundance estimation and the reconstructed sequence of antimicrobial resistance genes; it also provides web links to additional information on each gene. The pipeline utilises clustering and read mapping to annotate full-length genes relative to a user-defined database. It also uses local alignment of annotated genes to a range of online databases to provide additional information. We demonstrate SEAR's application in the detection and abundance estimation of antimicrobial resistance genes in two novel environmental metagenomes, 32 human faecal microbiome datasets and 126 clinical isolates of Shigella sonnei. CONCLUSIONS: We have developed a pipeline that contributes to the improved capacity for antimicrobial resistance detection afforded by next generation sequencing technologies, allowing for rapid detection of antimicrobial resistance genes directly from sequencing data. SEAR uses raw sequencing data via an intuitive interface so can be run rapidly without requiring advanced bioinformatic skills or resources. Finally, we show that SEAR is effective in detecting antimicrobial resistance genes in metagenomic and isolate sequencing data from both environmental metagenomes and sequencing data from clinical isolates.This research was funded by GlaxoSmithKline, the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council under an industrial CASE studentship. The funder Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science provided support in the form of salaries, research materials and facilities for authors DVJ and CBA, but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The funder GlaxoSmithKline provided support in the form of salaries for author JR, but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.This is the final version. It was first published by PLOS at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0133492

1989 Texas DTPA Reform: Closing the DTPA Loophole in the 1987 Tort Reform Laws and the Ongoing Quest for Fairer DTPA Laws.

Abstract Forthcoming