1,902 research outputs found
Scientific publications and presentations relating to planetary quarantine. Volume 5: The 1972 supplement
The sixth annual supplement to the bibliography on planetary quarantine contains 191 references, an author index and a permuted title index
Control and modeling of a CELSS (Controlled Ecological Life Support System)
Research topics that arise from the conceptualization of control for closed life support systems which are life support systems in which all or most of the mass is recycled are discussed. Modeling and control of uncertain and poorly defined systems, resource allocation in closed life support systems, and control structures or systems with delay and closure are emphasized
Polarized light ions and spectator nucleon tagging at EIC
An Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) with suitable forward detection capabilities
would enable a unique experimental program of deep-inelastic scattering (DIS)
from polarized light nuclei (deuterium 2H, helium 3He) with spectator nucleon
tagging. Such measurements promise significant advances in several key areas of
nuclear physics and QCD: (a) neutron spin structure, by using polarized
deuterium and eliminating nuclear effects through on-shell extrapolation in the
spectator proton momentum; (b) quark/gluon structure of the bound nucleon at x
> 0.1 and the dynamical mechanisms acting on it, by measuring the spectator
momentum dependence of nuclear structure functions; (c) coherent effects in
QCD, by exploring shadowing in tagged DIS on deuterium at x << 0.1. The JLab
MEIC design (CM energy sqrt{s} = 15-50 GeV/nucleon, luminosity ~ 10^{34}
cm^{-2} s^{-1}) provides polarized deuterium beams and excellent coverage and
resolution for forward spectator tagging. We summarize the physics topics, the
detector and beam requirements for spectator tagging, and on-going R&D efforts.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures. Prepared for proceedings of DIS 2014, XXII.
International Workshop on Deep-Inelastic Scattering and Related Subjects,
University of Warsaw, Poland, April 28 - May 2, 201
Neutron spin structure with polarized deuterons and spectator proton tagging at EIC
The neutron's deep-inelastic structure functions provide essential
information for the flavor separation of the nucleon parton densities, the
nucleon spin decomposition, and precision studies of QCD phenomena in the
flavor-singlet and nonsinglet sectors. Traditional inclusive measurements on
nuclear targets are limited by dilution from scattering on protons, Fermi
motion and binding effects, final-state interactions, and nuclear shadowing at
x << 0.1. An Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) would enable next-generation
measurements of neutron structure with polarized deuteron beams and detection
of forward-moving spectator protons over a wide range of recoil momenta (0 <
p_R < several 100 MeV in the nucleus rest frame). The free neutron structure
functions could be obtained by extrapolating the measured recoil momentum
distributions to the on-shell point. The method eliminates nuclear
modifications and can be applied to polarized scattering, as well as to
semi-inclusive and exclusive final states. We review the prospects for neutron
structure measurements with spectator tagging at EIC, the status of R&D
efforts, and the accelerator and detector requirements.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures. To appear in proceedings of Tensor Polarized
Solid Target Workshop, Jefferson Lab, March 10-12, 201
Recidivism and Inmate Mental Illness
Purpose: With over 700,000 mentally ill inmates are held in U.S. jails and prisons, this study provides a comprehensive assessment of the effect of mental illness among released prisoners on a series of re-entry recidivism outcomes.Methods: Using a cohort of 200,889 inmates released from Florida prisons from 2004 to 2011, several recidivism outcomes are examined among 40,145 individuals with a mental health diagnosis and 10,826 with a serious mental illness are compared with inmates without a mental illness diagnosis. We control for a host of factors known to influence recidivism outcomes using binary logistic regression for one, two, and three year follow-up periods and survival analysis to assess the timing to recidivism.Results: Inmates diagnosed with any type of mental illness are significantly more likely to recidivate and among inmates with a mental illness, those diagnosed with a serious mental condition are significantly more likely to recidivate than those with a less serious mental illness diagnosis.Conclusions: Policies and practices need to ensure that in-prison and community mental health systems have sufficient resources and capacity to adequately address the needs of inmates with mental health issues to reduce the likelihood of these individuals re-offending and ultimately returning to prison
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
On Optimization Modulo Theories, MaxSMT and Sorting Networks
Optimization Modulo Theories (OMT) is an extension of SMT which allows for
finding models that optimize given objectives. (Partial weighted) MaxSMT --or
equivalently OMT with Pseudo-Boolean objective functions, OMT+PB-- is a
very-relevant strict subcase of OMT. We classify existing approaches for MaxSMT
or OMT+PB in two groups: MaxSAT-based approaches exploit the efficiency of
state-of-the-art MAXSAT solvers, but they are specific-purpose and not always
applicable; OMT-based approaches are general-purpose, but they suffer from
intrinsic inefficiencies on MaxSMT/OMT+PB problems.
We identify a major source of such inefficiencies, and we address it by
enhancing OMT by means of bidirectional sorting networks. We implemented this
idea on top of the OptiMathSAT OMT solver. We run an extensive empirical
evaluation on a variety of problems, comparing MaxSAT-based and OMT-based
techniques, with and without sorting networks, implemented on top of
OptiMathSAT and {\nu}Z. The results support the effectiveness of this idea, and
provide interesting insights about the different approaches.Comment: 17 pages, submitted at Tacas 1
Natural killer cells and innate lymphoid cells but not NKT cells are mature in their cytokine production at birth.
Early life is a time of increased susceptibility to infectious diseases and development of allergy. Innate lymphocytes are crucial components of the initiation and regulation of immune responses at mucosal surfaces, but functional differences in innate lymphocytes early in life are not fully described. We aimed to characterise the abundance and function of different innate lymphocyte cell populations in cord blood in comparison to that of adults. Blood was collected from adult donors and umbilical vessels at birth. Multicolour flow cytometry panels were used to identify and characterise lymphocyte populations and their capacity to produce hallmark cytokines. Lymphocytes were more abundant in cord blood compared to adults, however, mucosal-associated invariant T (MAIT) cells and Natural Killer T (NKT)-like cells, were far less abundant. The capacity of NKT-like cells to produce cytokines and their expression of the cytotoxic granule protein granzyme B and the marker of terminal differentiation CD57 were much lower in cord blood than in adults. In contrast, Natural Killer (NK) cells were as abundant in cord blood as in adults, they could produce IFNγ, and their expression of granzyme B was not significantly different to that of adult NK cells, although CD57 expression was lower. All innate lymphoid cell (ILC) subsets were more abundant in cord blood, and ILC1 and ILC2 were capable of production of IFNγ and IL-13, respectively. In conclusion, different innate lymphoid cells differ in both abundance and function in peripheral blood at birth and with important implications for immunity in early life
Bergman kernel and complex singularity exponent
We give a precise estimate of the Bergman kernel for the model domain defined
by where
is a holomorphic map from to ,
in terms of the complex singularity exponent of .Comment: to appear in Science in China, a special issue dedicated to Professor
Zhong Tongde's 80th birthda
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