A Target Restricted Assembly Method (TRAM) for Phylogenomics

While next generation sequencing technology can produce sequences covering the entire genome, assembly and annotation are still prohibitive steps for many phylogenomics applications. Here we describe a method of Target Restricted Assembly (TRAM) of a single lane of Illumina sequences for genes of relevance to phylogeny reconstruction, i.e. single copy protein-coding genes. This method has the potential to produce a data set of hundreds of genes using only one Illumina lane per taxon

Wavelength- and material-dependent absorption in GaAs and AlGaAs microcavities

The quality factors of modes in nearly identical GaAs and Al_{0.18}Ga_{0.82}As microdisks are tracked over three wavelength ranges centered at 980 nm, 1460 nm, and 1600 nm, with quality factors measured as high as 6.62x10^5 in the 1600-nm band. After accounting for surface scattering, the remaining loss is due to sub-bandgap absorption in the bulk and on the surfaces. We observe the absorption is, on average, 80 percent greater in AlGaAs than in GaAs and in both materials is 540 percent higher at 980 nm than at 1600nm.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, 1 table, minor changes to disucssion of Qrad and Urbach tai

Causes of EndSars Protest as Perceived by Polytechnic Students in Ondo State, Nigeria

The study examined the Causes of Endsars Protest as Perceived by Polytechnic Students in Ondo state.  The sample population was selected from Rufus Giwa Polytechnic, Owo, Ondo State. Result from this study revealed that, there was significant difference between the perception of students who were part of the protest and those who were not part of the protest (t=-2.12, df=1006, p<.05), there was also a significant difference in the perception of students based on political affiliation (t=5.15, df=969.71, p<.05). However, the result furthered reveals that 430(42.7%) of students were not part of the protest due to various reasons, while 109(25.2%) were afraid of being killed by the police/military, 170(39.4%) sees the protest as a waste of their time as they did not see the protest as the solution to the Nigeria problems. T-test and ANOVA were the statistical analysis used to test hypothesis in this study. The researcher(s) developed instrument titled “Causes of Endsars Protest Scale” (CEPS) which was used to collect the data for the study. The scale has a reliability of 0.60, using eighty-eight students to test for reliability. Three hypotheses were stated for the study and were all tested at 0.05 levels of significant. The study therefore recommended that government should identify with the suffering and pains of its people, which should be reflected in how governance is being done and proper mental and emotional screening should be carried out on recruited police officers

Bayesian Image Quality Transfer with CNNs: Exploring Uncertainty in dMRI Super-Resolution

In this work, we investigate the value of uncertainty modeling in 3D super-resolution with convolutional neural networks (CNNs). Deep learning has shown success in a plethora of medical image transformation problems, such as super-resolution (SR) and image synthesis. However, the highly ill-posed nature of such problems results in inevitable ambiguity in the learning of networks. We propose to account for intrinsic uncertainty through a per-patch heteroscedastic noise model and for parameter uncertainty through approximate Bayesian inference in the form of variational dropout. We show that the combined benefits of both lead to the state-of-the-art performance SR of diffusion MR brain images in terms of errors compared to ground truth. We further show that the reduced error scores produce tangible benefits in downstream tractography. In addition, the probabilistic nature of the methods naturally confers a mechanism to quantify uncertainty over the super-resolved output. We demonstrate through experiments on both healthy and pathological brains the potential utility of such an uncertainty measure in the risk assessment of the super-resolved images for subsequent clinical use.Comment: Accepted paper at MICCAI 201

Optimal eigenvalues estimate for the Dirac operator on domains with boundary

We give a lower bound for the eigenvalues of the Dirac operator on a compact domain of a Riemannian spin manifold under the \MIT bag boundary condition. The limiting case is characterized by the existence of an imaginary Killing spinor.Comment: 10 page

AVIRIS user's guide

This paper serves as a brief overview of the AVIRIS instrument (Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer). The AVIRIS sensor collects data that will be used for quantitative characterization of the Earth's surface and atmosphere from geometrically coherent spectroradiometric measurements. This data can be applied to studies in the fields of oceanography, environmental science, snow hydrology, geology, volcanology, soil and land management, atmospheric and aerosol studies, agriculture, and limnology. Applications under development include the assessment and monitoring of environmental hazards such as toxic waste, oil spills, and land/air/water pollution. Mission planning and flight operations are discussed, and recommendations are given regarding the deployment of ground truth experiments

Application of Radiometric Surveys to Delineate between Sedimentary Terrain and Basement Complex: A case study of Sagamu and Abeokuta, South Western Nigeria

NaI (TI) detector crystal coupled to a Canberra series 10 plus multichannel analyser (MCA) was used to analyse the soil samples collected from Sagamu (Sedimentary terrain) and Abeokuta (Basement complex) in South Western Nigeria. The use of the soil samples is to determine the activity concentrations due to radium, thorium and potassium so as to delineate between the two terrains using radiometric survey. From the result of the activity concentrations of these radionuclide, the mean value of the activity concentrations of 40k (72±48) in sedimentary terrain is higher than in 226Ra (35± 20) and 232Thorium (43 ±26) respectively. In the basement complex, the average value of the activity concentration of 40k (80 ±46) was also higher in 226Ra (44±18) and 232Thorium (53 ± 25) respectively. The relatively high value recorded 40k radionuclide may be attributed to the perceived variations in the environment resulting from past activities. The results shows that the activity concentration of the radionuclides is higher in basement complex than in sedimentary terrain thus, delineate between the two terrains since it is well know that in basement complex, granites contain high concentrations of uranium, thorium and potassium. Keywords: key words: Activity concentrations, Basement complex, Radiometric survey, Sedimentary terrain, Soil sample

Phytochemical screening, antioxidant, antiulcer and toxicity studies on Desmodium adscendens (Sw) DC Fabaceae leaf and stem

Purpose: To assess the phytochemical profile, toxicity, as well as the antioxidant, and antiulcer activities of the methanol extracts of Desmodium adscendens stem and leaf.Methods: Maceration procedure was employed in the preparation of the methanol extracts. Phytochemical characterization of the extracts was carried out according to standard methods. In vitro antioxidant activity was evaluated using 2, 2-diphenyl-1-picryhyldrazy (DPPH l) and ferric reducing antioxidant power assay (FRAP). Antiulcer activity was investigated using ethanol-induced ulcer model, while toxicity was assessed by observing the mice for mortality.Results: Phytochemical analysis indicate the presence of glycosides, alkaloids, tannins, flavonoids, and saponins in the stem and leaf. Methanol extracts of the plant exhibited antioxidant activity, with DPPH assay results showing median inhibitory concentration (IC50) of 87.59 (leaf), 108.87 (stem), 28.52 (alpha-tocopherol), and 5.05 μg/mL (ascorbic acid). The FRAP assay results for the stem and leaf extracts were 1483 and 1953 μM Fe2+/g dry plant, respectively, while for ascorbic acid it was 3463 μMFe2+/g. The extracts showed significant antiulcer activity, with 14.27 and 15.18 % ulceration inhibition for the leaf extract, and 12.31 and 13.36 % for the stem extract at administered doses of 100 and 200 mg/kg, respectively. Cimetidine and omeprazole (standards) showed ulceration inhibition of 5.53, and 8.26 % at 5.7 and 0.57 mg/kg doses, respectively.Conclusion: The methanol extracts of Desmodium adscendens stem and leaf offer significant protective activity against ethanol-induced gastric ulceration in rats, and the activity may be related to their antioxidant effect.Keywords: Antioxidant, Antiulcer, Toxicity, Desmodium adscenden

Electric-octupole and pure-electric-quadrupole effects in soft-x-ray photoemission

Second-order [O(k^2), k=omega/c] nondipole effects in soft-x-ray photoemission are demonstrated via an experimental and theoretical study of angular distributions of neon valence photoelectrons in the 100--1200 eV photon-energy range. A newly derived theoretical expression for nondipolar angular distributions characterizes the second-order effects using four new parameters with primary contributions from pure-quadrupole and octupole-dipole interference terms. Independent-particle calculations of these parameters account for a significant portion of the existing discrepancy between experiment and theory for Ne 2p first-order nondipole parameters.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure