1,953 research outputs found
The New Black on the Development Catwalk: Incorporating Rule of Law into the Sustainable Development Goals
As the post-2015 Development Agenda is set to replace the Millennium Development Goals (âMDGsâ), one of the most controversial new elements of the new agenda is the rule of law. While all of the official fora for discussing and producing recommendations have concluded that the rule of law (or some variation) should be included, there are still significant challenges to its incorporation in the final Sustainable Development Goals (âSDGsâ). The interrelated points of contention have included whether rule of law applies at the national government level, whether it encompasses domestic governance, and how the concept should be defined and measured. Going forward, there are a few key factors influencing whether and how the rule of law will be incorporated into the next round of development goals: 1) the compelling force of traditional views on development in determining member statesâ positions in the debate; 2) the continued importance of the United Nations General Assembly (âUNGAâ) Rule of Law Declaration; 3) the centrality of the General Assemblyâs Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals (âOWGâ); and 4) the ease of measurement and implementation of proposed indicators. If incorporated into the new agenda, a rule of law goal will likely include indicators that are easily evaluated and generate little political friction, such as legal identity
Py-Feat: Python Facial Expression Analysis Toolbox
Studying facial expressions is a notoriously difficult endeavor. Recent
advances in the field of affective computing have yielded impressive progress
in automatically detecting facial expressions from pictures and videos.
However, much of this work has yet to be widely disseminated in social science
domains such as psychology. Current state of the art models require
considerable domain expertise that is not traditionally incorporated into
social science training programs. Furthermore, there is a notable absence of
user-friendly and open-source software that provides a comprehensive set of
tools and functions that support facial expression research. In this paper, we
introduce Py-Feat, an open-source Python toolbox that provides support for
detecting, preprocessing, analyzing, and visualizing facial expression data.
Py-Feat makes it easy for domain experts to disseminate and benchmark computer
vision models and also for end users to quickly process, analyze, and visualize
face expression data. We hope this platform will facilitate increased use of
facial expression data in human behavior research.Comment: 25 pages, 3 figures, 5 table
Surge of Typhoid Intestinal Perforations as Possible Result of COVID-19-Associated Delays in Seeking Care, Madagascar.
During the coronavirus disease pandemic, we observed a 6.4-fold increase in typhoid intestinal perforation incidence in Antananarivo, Madagascar. Thirteen perforations occurred within 6 months (February 2020-July 2020), compared with 13 perforations during the previous 41 months (August 2016-January 2020). The increase may be attributable to delayed healthcare seeking during the pandemic
Characterization of Few Mode Fibers by OLCI Technique
International audienceAll LP modes of a few mode fiber are simultaneously characterized using phase-sensitive optical low-coherence interferometry. The differential modal group delay and absolute chromatic dispersion values of each mode are retrieved from a single measurement without spatial mode transformers
Demonstration of an erbium-doped fiber with annular doping for low gain compression in cladding-pumped amplifiers
We present the design and characterization of a cladding-pumped amplifier with erbium doping located in an annular region near the core. This erbium-doped fiber is proposed to reduce gain saturation, leading to smaller gain compression when compared to uniform core doping. Through numerical simulations, we first compare the performance of three fibers with different erbium doping profiles in the core or the cladding. When the doped fibers are operated at the optimum length, results show that the smaller overlap of the signal mode field with the annular erbium doping region leads to higher gain and lower saturation of the amplifier. A single-core erbium-doped fiber with an annular doping and a D-shaped cladding was fabricated. Measurements demonstrate less than 4 dB of gain compression over the C-band for input power ranging from â40 dBm to 3 dBm. Small gain compression EDFAs are of interest for applications that require input channel reconfiguration. Higher gain and saturation output power are also key issues in cladding-pumped multi-core amplifiers
Dynamic Status Signal Reflects Outcome of Social Interactions, but Not Energetic Stress
Social defeat induces stress-responses in a wide array of vertebrates and can generate winner-loser effects. Dynamic condition-dependent signaling systems that reflect preparation for subsequent agonistic interactions, and thereby mediate winner-loser effects, should be more sensitive to competitive history than to non-social sources of stress. Bill color of female American goldfinches (Spinus tristus) is a dynamic condition-dependent ornament that functions as a signal of competitive status and mediates intrasexual agonistic social interactions. We tested the âsocial experience signaling hypothesisâ in female goldfinches by (1) manipulating a non-social energetic stressor by experimentally elevating flight costs via wing-clipping in free-ranging birds, and (2) manipulating social experience by staging competitive interactions among captive birds. Bill color change did not differ between wing clipped and non-clipped females, even though stress-response, as measured by the heterophil to lymphocyte (H:L) ratio, increased significantly in clipped females relative to unclipped females. In contrast, winners and losers in the social experience experiment differed significantly in the degree and direction of bill color change following social contests, with bill color increasing in winners and decreasing in losers. These results suggest that dynamic bill color of female American goldfinches signals recent social history, but is less sensitive to some stressors stemming from non-social sources, and thereby suggest that signals can evolve sensitivity to specific types of processes relevant to the context in which they are used
Variation in morphoâphysiological and metabolic responses to low nitrogen stress across the sorghum association panel
Background: Access to biologically available nitrogen is a key constraint on plant growth in both natural and agricultural settings. Variation in tolerance to nitrogen deficit stress and productivity in nitrogen limited conditions exists both within and between plant species. However, our understanding of changes in different phenotypes under long term low nitrogen stress and their impact on important agronomic traits, such as yield, is still limited.
Results: Here we quantified variation in the metabolic, physiological, and morphological responses of a sorghum association panel assembled to represent global genetic diversity to long term, nitrogen deficit stress and the relationship of these responses to grain yield under both conditions. Grain yield exhibits substantial genotype by environment interaction while many other morphological and physiological traits exhibited consistent responses to nitrogen stress across the population. Large scale nontargeted metabolic profiling for a subset of lines in both conditions identified a range of metabolic responses to long term nitrogen deficit stress. Several metabolites were associated with yield under high and low nitrogen conditions.
Conclusion: Our results highlight that grain yield in sorghum, unlike many morpho-physiological traits, exhibits substantial variability of genotype specific responses to long term low severity nitrogen deficit stress. Metabolic response to long term nitrogen stress shown higher proportion of variability explained by genotype specific responses than did morpho-pysiological traits and several metabolites were correlated with yield. This suggest, that it might be possible to build predictive models using metabolite abundance to estimate which sorghum genotypes will exhibit greater or lesser decreases in yield in response to nitrogen deficit, however further research needs to be done to evaluate such model
The Grizzly, November 10, 2016
Ursinus Picks New Dean / VPAA after Months-Long Search âą Innovation and Discovery Center Breaks New Ground âą Q&A with Anupy Singla âą International Perspective: Chinese Teaching Assistant Embraces the Freedom to be Herself in the U.S. âą U-Speak Talk to Explore Under-Represented Voices âą Women Entrepreneurs Share Stories of Success âą Opinions: Offensive Costumes are Micro-aggressions; UC Needs In-Person Activism to Make Progress âą Wrestling Looks to Win it All in 2016-2017 âą Field Hockey Tops Conference Once Againhttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/grizzlynews/1655/thumbnail.jp
Integrated cladding-pumped multicore few-mode erbium-doped fibre amplifier for space-division-multiplexed communications
Space-division multiplexing (SDM), whereby multiple spatial
channels in multimode1 and multicore2 optical fibres are used
to increase the total transmission capacity per fibre, is being
investigated to avert a data capacity crunch3,4 and reduce the
cost per transmitted bit. With the number of channels employed
in SDM transmission experiments continuing to rise, there is a
requirement for integrated SDM components that are scalable.
Here, we demonstrate a cladding-pumped SDM erbium-doped
fibre amplifier (EDFA) that consists of six uncoupled multimode
erbium-doped cores. Each core supports three spatial modes,
which enables the EDFA to amplify a total of 18 spatial channels
(six cores Ă three modes) simultaneously with a single pump
diode and a complexity similar to a single-mode EDFA. The amplifier delivers >20 dBm total output power per core and <7 dB noise
figure over the C-band. This cladding-pumped EDFA enables
combined space-division and wavelength-division multiplexed
transmission over multiple multimode fibre spans
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