Jointly selecting for fibre diameter and fleece weight: A market-level assessment of the QPLU$ Merino breeding project

The QPLU$ Merino breeding project began in the early 1990s. The aim of the project was to demonstrate the efficiency of using a selection index to achieve breeding objectives. A number of selection lines were created from three strains of Merino sheep. During the ten-year course of the project, selection of each line was undertaken using an index based on measurements of fleece weight and fibre diameter. Different emphases were placed on each trait in each selected line. This paper estimates the potential aggregate returns of the project to the Australian sheep and wool industries using an equilibrium displacement model.Australian sheep and wool industries, equilibrium displacement model, cross-commodity relationships, R&D evaluation, Livestock Production/Industries, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

Old model, new problem: when should you update a model and what happens when you do?

This paper is a summary of some of the considerations involved in applying an existing model to a new problem, in particular in deciding whether to update or not, and some of the issues involved in interpreting the output from the new application. Thus where you start from does influence where you end up. Both change in total surplus and to a lesser extent the distribution of this change in total surplus across sectors, depends on the price and quantity data which is used to define the initial equilibrium, even if elasticity values are the same. So careful consideration should be given to whether an existing model should be updated because updating a model does matter. The final point to restate is that consumers of pig meat end up being the winners from either cost saving technology at the farm level or new product development or advertising campaigns at the retail level. Even for new technology implemented at the farm level, producers only receive about 20 per cent of the total benefits. These issues are discussed in detail in Mounter et al. (2005a, 2005b). Therefore in relation to the new problem outlined above, we now have a modelling framework available for the task that has been tested in a number of different ways and that now reflects current industry structure and size. It should be a more appropriate framework than the original that was described in the papers by Mounter et al. (2004, 2005a, 2005b).new model, old model, decision making, change in total surplus, updating a model, new technologies, pork, industry structure, industry size, Agribusiness, Agricultural Finance, Environmental Economics and Policy, Farm Management, Industrial Organization, Institutional and Behavioral Economics, Livestock Production/Industries, Marketing,

Emergence of the Shackleton Range from beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet due to glacial erosion

This paper explores the long-term evolution of a subglacial fjord landscape in the Shackleton Range, Antarctica. We propose that prolonged ice-sheet erosion across a passive continental margin caused troughs to deepen and lower the surrounding ice-sheet surface, leaving adjacent mountains exposed. Geomorphological evidence suggests a change in the direction of regional ice flow accompanied emergence. Simple calculations suggest that isostatic compensation caused by the deepening of bounding ice-stream troughs lowered the ice-sheet surface relative to the mountains by ~800m. Use of multiple cosmogenic isotopes on bedrock and erratics (26Al, 10Be, 21Ne) provides evidence that overriding of the massif and the deepening of the adjacent troughs occurred earlier than the Quaternary. Perhaps this occurred in the mid-Miocene, as elsewhere in East Antarctica in the McMurdo Dry Valleys and the Lambert basin. The implication is that glacial erosion instigates feedback that can change ice-sheet thickness, extent, and direction of flow. Indeed, as the subglacial troughs evolve over millions of years, they increase topographic relief; and this changes the dynamics of the ice sheet. © 2013 Elsevier B.V

Intelligent opinion mining and sentiment analysis using artificial neural networks

The article formulates a rigorously developed concept of opinion mining and sentiment analysis using hybrid neural networks. This conceptual method for processing natural-language text enables a variety of analyses of the subjective content of texts. It is a methodology based on hybrid neural networks for detecting subjective content and potential opinions, as well as a method which allows us to classify different opinion type and sentiment score classes. Moreover, a general processing scheme, using neural networks, for sentiment and opinion analysis has been presented. Furthermore, a methodology which allows us to determine sentiment regression has been devised. The paper proposes a method for classification of the text being examined based on the amount of positive, neutral or negative opinion it contains. The research presented here offers the possibility of motivating and inspiring further development of the methods that have been elaborated in this paper.Stuart, KDC.; Majewski, M. (2015). Intelligent opinion mining and sentiment analysis using artificial neural networks. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. 9492:103-110. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-26561-2_13S1031109492Feldman, R.: Techniques and applications for sentiment analysis. Commun. ACM 56(4), 82–89 (2013)Taboada, M., Brooke, J., Tofiloski, M., Voll, K., Stede, M.: Lexicon-based methods for sentiment analysis. Comput. Linguist. 37(2), 267–307 (2011)Mohammad, S.M., Turney, P.D.: Crowdsourcing a word-emotion association lexicon. Comput. Intell. 29(3), 436–465 (2013)Chen, H., Zimbra, D.: AI and opinion mining. IEEE Intell. Syst. 25(3), 74–80 (2010)Majewski, M., Zurada, J.M.: Sentence recognition using artificial neural networks. Knowl. Based Syst. 21(7), 629–635 (2008)Kacalak, W., Stuart, K.D., Majewski, M.: Intelligent natural language processing. In: Jiao, L., Wang, L., Gao, X., Liu, J., Wu, F. (eds.) ICNC 2006. LNCS, vol. 4221, pp. 584–587. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)Kacalak, W., Stuart, K., Majewski, M.: Selected problems of intelligent handwriting recognition. In: Melin, P., Castillo, O., Ramírez, E.G., Kacprzyk, J., Pedrycz, W. (eds.) IFSA 2007. Advances in Soft Computing, vol. 41, pp. 298–305. Springer, Cancun (2007)Stuart, K.D., Majewski, M.: Selected problems of knowledge discovery using artificial neural networks. In: Liu, D., Fei, S., Hou, Z., Zhang, H., Sun, C. (eds.) ISNN 2007, Part III. LNCS, vol. 4493, pp. 1049–1057. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)Stuart, K., Majewski, M.: A new method for intelligent knowledge discovery. In: Castillo, O., Melin, P., Ross, O.M., Cruz, R.S., Pedrycz, W., Kacprzyk, J. (eds.) IFSA 2007. Advances in Soft Computing, vol. 42, pp. 721–729. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)Stuart, K.D., Majewski, M.: Artificial creativity in linguistics using evolvable fuzzy neural networks. In: Hornby, G.S., Sekanina, L., Haddow, P.C. (eds.) ICES 2008. LNCS, vol. 5216, pp. 437–442. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)Stuart, K.D., Majewski, M.: Evolvable neuro-fuzzy system for artificial creativity in linguistics. In: Huang, D.-S., Wunsch II, D.C., Levine, D.S., Jo, K.-H. (eds.) ICIC 2008. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 5227, pp. 46–53. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)Stuart, K.D., Majewski, M., Trelis, A.B.: Selected problems of intelligent corpus analysis through probabilistic neural networks. In: Zhang, L., Lu, B.-L., Kwok, J. (eds.) ISNN 2010, Part II. LNCS, vol. 6064, pp. 268–275. Springer, Heidelberg (2010)Stuart, K.D., Majewski, M., Trelis, A.B.: Intelligent semantic-based system for corpus analysis through hybrid probabilistic neural networks. In: Liu, D., Zhang, H., Polycarpou, M., Alippi, C., He, H. (eds.) ISNN 2011, Part I. LNCS, vol. 6675, pp. 83–92. Springer, Heidelberg (2011)Specht, D.F.: Probabilistic neural networks. Neural Netw. 3(1), 109–118 (1990)Specht, D.F.: A general regression neural network. IEEE Trans. Neural Netw. 2(6), 568–576 (1991

Automation of flow injection gas diffusion-ion chromatography for the nanomolar determination of methylamines and ammonia in seawater and atmospheric samples

The automation and improved design and performance of Flow Injection Gas Diffusion-Ion Chromatography (FIGD-IC), a novel technique for the simultaneous analysis of trace ammonia (NH3) and methylamines (MAs) in aqueous media, is presented. Automated Flow Injection Gas Diffusion (FIGD) promotes the selective transmembrane diffusion of MAs and NH3 from aqueous sample under strongly alkaline (pH > 12, NaOH), chelated (EDTA) conditions into a recycled acidic acceptor stream. The acceptor is then injected onto an ion chromatograph where NH3 and the MAs are fully resolved as their cations and detected conductimetrically. A versatile PC interfaced control unit and data capture unit (DCU) are employed in series to direct the selonoid valve switching sequence, IC operation and collection of data. Automation, together with other modifications improved both linearily (R2 > 0.99 MAs 0-100 nM, NH3 0-1000 nM) and precision (<8%) of FIGD-IC at nanomolar concentrations, compared with the manual procedure. The system was successfully applied to the determination of MAs and NH3 in seawater and in trapped particulate and gaseous atmospheric samples during an oceanographic research cruise

Selection Of A Novel Aptamer Against Vitronectin Using Capillary Electrophoresis And Next Generation Sequencing

Breast cancer (BC) results in ≃40,000 deaths each year in the United States and even among survivors treatment of the disease may have devastating consequences, including increased risk for heart disease and cognitive impairment resulting from the toxic effects of chemotherapy. Aptamer-mediated drug delivery can contribute to improved treatment outcomes through the selective delivery of chemotherapy to BC cells, provided suitable cancer-specific antigens can be identified. We report here the use of capillary electrophoresis in conjunction with next generation sequencing to develop the first vitronectin (VN) binding aptamer (VBA-01; Kd 405 nmol/l, the first aptamer to vitronectin (VN; Kd = 405 nmol/l), a protein that plays an important role in wound healing and that is present at elevated levels in BC tissue and in the blood of BC patients relative to the corresponding nonmalignant tissues. We used VBA-01 to develop DVBA-01, a dimeric aptamer complex, and conjugated doxorubicin (Dox) to DVBA-01 (7:1 ratio) using pH-sensitive, covalent linkages. Dox conjugation enhanced the thermal stability of the complex (60.2 versus 46.5°C) and did not decrease affinity for the VN target. The resulting DVBA-01-Dox complex displayed increased cytotoxicity to MDA-MB-231 BC cells that were cultured on plasticware coated with VN (1.8 × 10⁻⁶mol/l) relative to uncoated plates (2.4 × 10⁻⁶ mol/l), or plates coated with the related protein fibronectin (2.1 × 10⁻⁶ mol/l). The VBA-01 aptamer was evaluated for binding to human BC tissue using immunohistochemistry and displayed tissue specific binding and apparent association with BC cells. In contrast, a monoclonal antibody that preferentially binds to multimeric VN primarily stained extracellular matrix and vessel walls of BC tissue. Our results indicate a strong potential for using VN-targeting aptamers to improve drug delivery to treat BC

The benefits of organic farming for biodiversity

Previous studies suggest widespread positive responses of biodiversity to organic farming. Many of these studies, however, have been small-scale. This project tested the generality of habitat and biodiversity differences between matched pairs of organic and non-organic farms containing cereal crops in lowland England on a large-scale across a range of taxa including plants, insects, birds and bats. The extent of both cropped and un-cropped habitats together with their composition and management on a range of scales were also compared. Organic farms was likely to favour higher levels of biodiversity and indeed organic farms tended to support higher numbers of species and overall abundance across most taxa. However, the magnitude of the response differed strikingly; plants showed stronger and more consistent responses than other taxa. Some, but not all, differences in biodiversity between systems appear to be a consequence of differences in habitat quantity