3,889 research outputs found
How Much Longer Will it Take? A Ten-year Review of the Implementation of United Nations General Assembly Resolutions 61/105, 64/72 and 66/68 on the Management of Bottom Fisheries in Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction
The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in 2002 adopted the first in a series of resolutions regarding the conservation of biodiversity in the deep sea. Prompted by seriousconcerns raised by scientists, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and numerous States,these resolutions progressively committed States to act both individually and through regional fishery management organizations (RFMOs) to either manage bottom fisheries in areas beyond national jurisdiction to prevent significant adverse impacts on deep-sea species, ecosystems and biodiversity or else prohibit bottom fishing from taking place.Ten years have passed since the adoption of resolution 61/105 in 2006, calling on States to take a set of specific actions to manage bottom fisheries in areas beyond national jurisdiction to protect vulnerable marine ecosystems (VMEs) from the adverse impacts of bottom fishing and ensure the sustainability of deep-sea fish stocks. Despite the considerable progress by some RFMOs, there remain significant gaps in the implementation of key elements and commitments in the resolutions. The Deep Sea Conservation Coalition (DSCC) has prepared this report to assist the UNGA in its review in 2016 and to address the following question: How effectively have the resolutions been implemented
Direction-Dependent Polarised Primary Beams in Wide-Field Synthesis Imaging
The process of wide-field synthesis imaging is explored, with the aim of
understanding the implications of variable, polarised primary beams for
forthcoming Epoch of Reionisation experiments. These experiments seek to detect
weak signatures from redshifted 21cm emission in deep residual datasets, after
suppression and subtraction of foreground emission. Many subtraction algorithms
benefit from low side-lobes and polarisation leakage at the outset, and both of
these are intimately linked to how the polarised primary beams are handled.
Building on previous contributions from a number of authors, in which
direction-dependent corrections are incorporated into visibility gridding
kernels, we consider the special characteristics of arrays of fixed dipole
antennas operating around 100-200 MHz, looking towards instruments such as the
Square Kilometre Array (SKA) and the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Arrays
(HERA). We show that integrating snapshots in the image domain can help to
produce compact gridding kernels, and also reduce the need to make complicated
polarised leakage corrections during gridding. We also investigate an
alternative form for the gridding kernel that can suppress variations in the
direction-dependent weighting of gridded visibilities by 10s of dB, while
maintaining compact support.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures. Accepted for publication in JA
Speeding up Cylindrical Algebraic Decomposition by Gr\"obner Bases
Gr\"obner Bases and Cylindrical Algebraic Decomposition are generally thought
of as two, rather different, methods of looking at systems of equations and, in
the case of Cylindrical Algebraic Decomposition, inequalities. However, even
for a mixed system of equalities and inequalities, it is possible to apply
Gr\"obner bases to the (conjoined) equalities before invoking CAD. We see that
this is, quite often but not always, a beneficial preconditioning of the CAD
problem.
It is also possible to precondition the (conjoined) inequalities with respect
to the equalities, and this can also be useful in many cases.Comment: To appear in Proc. CICM 2012, LNCS 736
Synthetic biology approaches to biological containment: pre-emptively tackling potential risks
Biocontainment comprises any strategy applied to ensure that harmful organisms are confined to controlled laboratory conditions and not allowed to escape into the environment. Genetically engineered microorganisms (GEMs), regardless of the nature of the modification and how it was established, have potential human or ecological impact if accidentally leaked or voluntarily released into a natural setting. Although all evidence to date is that GEMs are unable to compete in the environment, the power of synthetic biology to rewrite life requires a pre-emptive strategy to tackle possible unknown risks. Physical containment barriers have proven effective but a number of strategies have been developed to further strengthen biocontainment. Research on complex genetic circuits, lethal genes, alternative nucleic acids, genome recoding and synthetic auxotrophies aim to design more effective routes towards biocontainment. Here, we describe recent advances in synthetic biology that contribute to the ongoing efforts to develop new and improved genetic, semantic, metabolic and mechanistic plans for the containment of GEMs
Unfinished Business: a Review of the Implementation of the Provisions of United Nations General Assembly Resolutions 61/105 and 64/72, Related to the Management of Bottom Fisheries in Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction
In 2006 the General Assembly adopted resolution 61/105, based on a compromise proposal offered by deep-sea fishing nations, which committed States and regional fisheries management organisations [RFMOs] to take specific measures to protect vulnerable marine ecosystems [VMEs] from the adverse impacts of bottom fisheries in the high seas and to ensure the longterm sustainability of deep-sea fish stocks. These measures included conducting impact assessments to determine whether significant adverse impacts[SAIs] to VMEs would occur, managing fisheries to prevent SAIs on VMEs, and closing areas of the high seas to bottom fishing where VMEs are known or likely to occur, unless regulations are in place to prevent SAIs and to manage sustainably deep-sea fish stocks. Based on a review in 2009 of the actions taken by States and RFMOS, the UNGA adoptedresolution 64/72 that reaffirmed resolution 61/105 and strengthened the call for action through committing States, inter alia, to ensure that vessels do not engage in bottom fishing until impact assessments have been carried out and to not authorise bottom fishing activities until the measures in resolutions 64/72 and 61/105 have been adopted andimplemented
A new method based on noise counting to monitor the frontend electronics of the LHCb muon detector
A new method has been developed to check the correct behaviour of the
frontend electronics of the LHCb muon detector. This method is based on the
measurement of the electronic noise rate at different thresholds of the
frontend discriminator. The method was used to choose the optimal discriminator
thresholds. A procedure based on this method was implemented in the detector
control system and allowed the detection of a small percentage of frontend
channels which had deteriorated. A Monte Carlo simulation has been performed to
check the validity of the method
1H, 15N and 13C resonance assignements of the cerato-platanin, a phytotoxic protein from Ceratocystis fimbriata”, Journal of Biomolecular NMR
Hyperelliptic Theta-Functions and Spectral Methods: KdV and KP solutions
This is the second in a series of papers on the numerical treatment of
hyperelliptic theta-functions with spectral methods. A code for the numerical
evaluation of solutions to the Ernst equation on hyperelliptic surfaces of
genus 2 is extended to arbitrary genus and general position of the branch
points. The use of spectral approximations allows for an efficient calculation
of all characteristic quantities of the Riemann surface with high precision
even in almost degenerate situations as in the solitonic limit where the branch
points coincide pairwise. As an example we consider hyperelliptic solutions to
the Kadomtsev-Petviashvili and the Korteweg-de Vries equation. Tests of the
numerics using identities for periods on the Riemann surface and the
differential equations are performed. It is shown that an accuracy of the order
of machine precision can be achieved.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figure
Profile of deglutition speech evaluation in an intensive care unit
The combination of an increase in long-term survival and the availability
of a relatively sensitive parathyroid hormone (PTH) assay has led to
an increasing incidence of hyperparathyroidism (HPT) diagnosis in patients
on regular dialysis treatment (RDT). Hitherto the diagnosis has been
based on biochemical data and clinical grounds, as parathyroid (PT) imaging
is limited in accuracy, reproducibility, safety and invasiveness [1, 2].
Today, 201TI and 99mTc subtraction imaging (sq, high resolution ultrasonography
(US) and up-to-date computed tomography (CT) have been proposed
as sensitive and specific tests for primary HPT imaging [4-7]. The
aim of the present study was to assess on a group of patients on RDT the
accuracy of these methods in relation to the degree of HP
- …