Bactrian Gold: Challenges and Hope for Private-Sector Development in Afghanistan

Based on interviews with Afghanistan's business and economic stakeholders about developing the country's private sector, outlines obstacles to business growth, including security, corruption, and infrastructure; their implications; and recommendations

Intertextual Episodes in Lectures: A Classification from the Perspective of Incidental Learning from Reading

In a parallel language environment it is important that teaching takes account of both the languages students are expected to work in.  Lectures in the mother tongue need to offer access to textbooks in English and encouragement to read. This paper describes a preliminary study for an investigation of the extent to which they actually do so. A corpus of lectures in English for mainly L1 English students (from BASE and MICASE)  was examined for the types of reference to reading which occur, classified by their potential usefulness for access and encouragement. Such references were called ‘intertextual episodes’. Seven preliminary categories of intertextual episode were identified.  In some disciplines the text is the topic of the lecture rather than a medium for information on the topic, and this category was not pursued further. In the remaining six the text was a medium for information about the text. Three of them involved management, of texts by the lecturer her/him self, of student writing, or of student reading. The remaining three involved reference to the content of the text either introducing to students, reporting its content, or, really the most interesting category, relativizing it and thus potentially encouraging critical reading. Straightforward reporting that certain content was in the text at a certain point was the most common type, followed by management of student reading. Relativization was relatively infrequent. The exercise has provided us with categories which can be used for an experimental phase where the effect of different types of reference can be tested, and for observation of the references actually used in L1 lectures in a parallel-language environment

Alien Registration- Malmstrom, Carl (Saint George, Knox County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/13295/thumbnail.jp

Personality Traits and Deception Detection Ability Among College Students with Primary Psychopathic Traits

Because psychopaths are exceptionally good at deceiving others, researchers have proposed that this population of individuals may be more likely than the average person to detect deception. However, previous research has provided mixed results on the ability of individuals with psychopathic traits to detect deception at a greater level than chance. The inconclusive results on this topic have warranted future research on examining sex differences and personality traits that are attributed to individuals with psychopathy that may aid their ability to detect deception at a higher level than others. The current study tested 133 San Jose State University undergraduates by having them indicate whether individuals in 10 different video clips were lying or telling the truth. Participants’ psychopathic tendencies were measured using the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy scale (LSRP) and their personality traits were measured using the Big Five Inventory (BFI). A Fisher’s r to z transformation was conducted to test Hypothesis 1, that sex would moderate the relationship between deception detection accuracy and primary psychopathic traits. However, our analyses revealed no moderating effect by sex. A one-tailed bivariate correlation was also performed to test Hypothesis 2, which stated that low scores on the BFI for Agreeableness and Conscientiousness would be correlated with higher deception detection accuracy. No significant relationships were found. However, non-significant results displayed non-linear relationships between Agreeableness, Conscientiousness and detection accuracy

Magnetic Properties of Thin Nickel Films

Nickel films deposited from a nickel ammonium sulphate solution containing boric acid show decreasing coercive force with decreasing thickness in the range from 140 to 60 mμ. The films are similar to films deposited from the same solution but without boric acid, but are magnetically harder. Nickel films show an ageing effect not found for iron and cobalt. Heating to l00°C accelerates this effect. The effect of tension on the films is studied by measuring at 100°C, in which case the differential expansion of the brass base and the film supplies the tension. The effect is zero for thickness of about 110 mμ and is opposite in sense for thicker and thinner films. This result cannot be explained in terms of the usual effect of tension on bulk nickel

Establishing the validity of domestication genes using DNA from ancient chickens

Peer reviewedPostprin

A pipeline for targeted metagenomics of environmental bacteria.

BackgroundMetagenomics and single cell genomics provide a window into the genetic repertoire of yet uncultivated microorganisms, but both methods are usually taxonomically untargeted. The combination of fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) and fluorescence activated cell sorting (FACS) has the potential to enrich taxonomically well-defined clades for genomic analyses.MethodsCells hybridized with a taxon-specific FISH probe are enriched based on their fluorescence signal via flow cytometric cell sorting. A recently developed FISH procedure, the hybridization chain reaction (HCR)-FISH, provides the high signal intensities required for flow cytometric sorting while maintaining the integrity of the cellular DNA for subsequent genome sequencing. Sorted cells are subjected to shotgun sequencing, resulting in targeted metagenomes of low diversity.ResultsPure cultures of different taxonomic groups were used to (1) adapt and optimize the HCR-FISH protocol and (2) assess the effects of various cell fixation methods on both the signal intensity for cell sorting and the quality of subsequent genome amplification and sequencing. Best results were obtained for ethanol-fixed cells in terms of both HCR-FISH signal intensity and genome assembly quality. Our newly developed pipeline was successfully applied to a marine plankton sample from the North Sea yielding good quality metagenome assembled genomes from a yet uncultivated flavobacterial clade.ConclusionsWith the developed pipeline, targeted metagenomes at various taxonomic levels can be efficiently retrieved from environmental samples. The resulting metagenome assembled genomes allow for the description of yet uncharacterized microbial clades. Video abstract

Magnetization of Electrolytic Nickel Films

The magnetic properties of nickel films electrolytically deposited on brass tubes are determined by the method previously described for Iron and Cobalt films (Phys. Rev. 30, 681 (1927); 35 292 (1930). Films about 130 rnμ thick attain a magnetization of about 380 c. g. s. units in a field of 200 gauss, a value about equal to that for bulk nickel. As in Iron and Cobalt the coercive force is high, but the remanence is somewhat less than was found for iron and cobalt