How mutable is the future: Can long futures be adaptively transformed by choices and decisions in the face of indomitable challenges?

An earlier inquiry and exploration into the systems involved in large scale space travel revealed a compelling narrative of balancing forces and in- fluences, which were later combined with strategy and game theory, and designed into a cooperative multiplayer board game. Evaluations (play- tests) of a prototype board-based game revealed several intriguing dynamics affecting the probabilities of complex futures, one of which suggested that futures are not the outcomes of planned trajectories, but are continuously changing possibilities over time, capable of moving between directional dynamics such as continuation, discipline, collapse, and transformation. Player motivations, interactions, decisions, and actions, both initiated or in response to events, were the primary authors of a game’s progression. This research project further investigates the influence of active intervention into future outcomes by explicitly incorporating critical uncertainties into an updated version of the board game. Using the updated game as a framework for interaction, the project collects data from Design Action Research workshops to discover a rubric effective for measuring patterns of change based on the Dator 4 Futures framework

Teaching by Example: A Pedagogical Approach to Animal Biology Instruction

The use of examples is a powerful teaching and learning tool in the sciences, as they effectively illustrate concepts or processes above and beyond their theoretical basis. Whereas, the traditional pedagogical approach involves the teaching of fundamental principles or theories followed by a process of animating or illustrating them with examples; in the biological sciences exemplification is rarely the means by which theories or principles are taught. In other words, the generality of sciences are often taught first and foremost and the use of examples as particularities may be used to reinforce the rule or to show its exceptions. This approach is an inductive teaching process, wherein students are learning generalities from particularities in a constructivist manner. Furthermore, some branches of the life sciences may in fact lend themselves well to pedagogical exemplification, in that they allow the instructor and the students to co-engage in dialogue, whereby captivating student interest and putting them in an active role on learning the fundamental concepts within. One such branch is that of animal behaviour, which is often described by students as a ‘nature channel’ course, in which they enjoy the particularities of the examples, as much as the biological principles that underlie them. In this talk, we will describe the process by which a 3rd year Animal Behaviour course is taught via exemplification, illustrate the ease with which it leads to stimulating in-class dialogue between the professor and students, as well as a description of the types of examples that most effectively contribute to learning generalities from particular instances

Genetic recombination is targeted towards gene promoter regions in dogs

The identification of the H3K4 trimethylase, PRDM9, as the gene responsible for recombination hotspot localization has provided considerable insight into the mechanisms by which recombination is initiated in mammals. However, uniquely amongst mammals, canids appear to lack a functional version of PRDM9 and may therefore provide a model for understanding recombination that occurs in the absence of PRDM9, and thus how PRDM9 functions to shape the recombination landscape. We have constructed a fine-scale genetic map from patterns of linkage disequilibrium assessed using high-throughput sequence data from 51 free-ranging dogs, Canis lupus familiaris. While broad-scale properties of recombination appear similar to other mammalian species, our fine-scale estimates indicate that canine highly elevated recombination rates are observed in the vicinity of CpG rich regions including gene promoter regions, but show little association with H3K4 trimethylation marks identified in spermatocytes. By comparison to genomic data from the Andean fox, Lycalopex culpaeus, we show that biased gene conversion is a plausible mechanism by which the high CpG content of the dog genome could have occurred.Comment: Updated version, with significant revision

A Numerical Approach to Coulomb Gauge QCD

We calculate the ghost two-point function in Coulomb gauge QCD with a simple model vacuum gluon wavefunction using Monte Carlo integration. This approach extends the previous analytic studies of the ghost propagator with this ansatz, where a ladder-rainbow expansion was unavoidable for calculating the path integral over gluon field configurations. The new approach allows us to study the possible critical behavior of the coupling constant, as well as the Coulomb potential derived from the ghost dressing function. We demonstrate that IR enhancement of the ghost correlator or Coulomb form factor fails to quantitatively reproduce confinement using Gaussian vacuum wavefunctional

ACFA: Secure Runtime Auditing & Guaranteed Device Healing via Active Control Flow Attestation

Low-end embedded devices are increasingly used in various smart applications and spaces. They are implemented under strict cost and energy budgets, using microcontroller units (MCUs) that lack security features available in general-purpose processors. In this context, Remote Attestation (RA) was proposed as an inexpensive security service to enable a verifier (Vrf) to remotely detect illegal modifications to a software binary installed on a low-end prover MCU (Prv). Since attacks that hijack the software's control flow can evade RA, Control Flow Attestation (CFA) augments RA with information about the exact order in which instructions in the binary are executed, enabling detection of control flow attacks. We observe that current CFA architectures can not guarantee that Vrf ever receives control flow reports in case of attacks. In turn, while they support exploit detection, they provide no means to pinpoint the exploit origin. Furthermore, existing CFA requires either binary instrumentation, incurring significant runtime overhead and code size increase, or relatively expensive hardware support, such as hash engines. In addition, current techniques are neither continuous (only meant to attest self-contained operations) nor active (offer no secure means to remotely remediate detected compromises). To jointly address these challenges, we propose ACFA: a hybrid (hardware/software) architecture for Active CFA. ACFA enables continuous monitoring of all control flow transfers in the MCU and does not require binary instrumentation. It also leverages the recently proposed concept of Active Roots-of-Trust to enable secure auditing of vulnerability sources and guaranteed remediation when a compromise is detected. We provide an open-source reference implementation of ACFA on top of a commodity low-end MCU (TI MSP430) and evaluate it to demonstrate its security and cost-effectiveness

Preferences for the administration of Testosterone gel: Evidence from a Discrete Choice Experiment

Objectives: Differences in testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) gel products may affect patient satisfaction, quality-of-life, and treatment response and adherence. This study investigated preferences for TRT gel in terms of formulation and administration. Methods: 525 male adults aged 45 years and over completed a discrete choice experiment. Respondents made repeated choices between two hypothetical testosterone gel treatments described according to four attributes: form, ease of use, impact of use on showering/swimming, and location/dosage of the application. Choice data were analyzed using a latent class model. Results: Three preference classes were identified. Respondents across all classes displayed a preference for the gel being dispensed in smaller units with accurate dosing, waiting shorter times after the gel application before swimming/showering, and using 2.5 gm of gel to be applied to the inner thigh/abdomen as opposed 5 gm to shoulder/abdomen. The importance of these characteristics differed across classes, with preference class membership predicted by age and education level. For instance, younger men (aged 45–64 years) were more likely to belong to a class that prioritized reduced waiting time before being able to undertake activities. Formulation was not an important driver of choice. Conclusions: Preferences demonstrate a predilection for TRT gel dispensed in small units allowing precise dosing, shorter waiting time after application, and application to the inner thigh/abdomen. However, the strength of importance of these characteristics differs between men. This study highlights the attributes of TRT gel considered important to patient subgroups, and which may ultimately affect treatment response, medication adherence, and patient quality-of-life

DiCA: A Hardware-Software Co-Design for Differential Checkpointing in Intermittently Powered Devices

Intermittently powered devices rely on opportunistic energy-harvesting to function, leading to recurrent power interruptions. This paper introduces DiCA, a proposal for a hardware/software co-design to create differential check-points in intermittent devices. DiCA leverages an affordable hardware module that simplifies the check-pointing process, reducing the check-point generation time and energy consumption. This hardware module continuously monitors volatile memory, efficiently tracking modifications and determining optimal check-point times. To minimize energy waste, the module dynamically estimates the energy required to create and store the check-point based on tracked memory modifications, triggering the check-pointing routine optimally via a nonmaskable interrupt. Experimental results show the cost-effectiveness and energy efficiency of DiCA, enabling extended application activity cycles in intermittently powered embedded devices.Comment: 8 pages and 7 figures. To be published at IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design (ICCAD) 202

Split-marker-mediated genome editing improves homologous recombination frequency in the CTG clade yeast Candida intermedia

Genome-editing toolboxes are essential for the exploration and exploitation of nonconventional yeast species as cell factories, as they facilitate both genome studies and metabolic engineering. The nonconventional yeast\ua0Candida intermedia\ua0is a biotechnologically interesting species due to its capacity to convert a wide range of carbon sources, including xylose and lactose found in forestry and dairy industry waste and side-streams, into added-value products. However, possibilities of genetic manipulation have so far been limited due to lack of molecular tools for this species. We describe here the development of a genome editing method for\ua0C. intermedia, based on electroporation and gene deletion cassettes containing the\ua0Candida albicans NAT1\ua0dominant selection marker flanked by 1000 base pair sequences homologous to the target loci. Linear deletion cassettes targeting the\ua0ADE2\ua0gene originally resulted in\ua0<1% targeting efficiencies, suggesting that\ua0C. intermedia\ua0mainly uses nonhomologous end joining for integration of foreign DNA fragments. By developing a split-marker based deletion technique for\ua0C. intermedia, we successfully improved the homologous recombination rates, achieving targeting efficiencies up to 70%. For marker-less deletions, we also employed the split-marker cassette in combination with a recombinase system, which enabled the construction of double deletion mutants via marker recycling. Overall, the split-marker technique proved to be a quick and reliable method for generating gene deletions in\ua0C. intermedia, which opens the possibility to uncover and enhance its cell factory potential

"Slimming" of power law tails by increasing market returns

We introduce a simple generalization of rational bubble models which removes the fundamental problem discovered by [Lux and Sornette, 1999] that the distribution of returns is a power law with exponent less than 1, in contradiction with empirical data. The idea is that the price fluctuations associated with bubbles must on average grow with the mean market return r. When r is larger than the discount rate r_delta, the distribution of returns of the observable price, sum of the bubble component and of the fundamental price, exhibits an intermediate tail with an exponent which can be larger than 1. This regime r>r_delta corresponds to a generalization of the rational bubble model in which the fundamental price is no more given by the discounted value of future dividends. We explain how this is possible. Our model predicts that, the higher is the market remuneration r above the discount rate, the larger is the power law exponent and thus the thinner is the tail of the distribution of price returns.Comment: 13 pages + 4 figure