The 50 most-cited articles in Journal of Bioresource Management, 2017

A few years ago, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie received a letter from a dear friend from childhood, asking her how to raise her baby girl as a feminist. 'Dear Ijeawele' is Adichie's letter of response. Here are fifteen suggestions for how to empower a daughter to become a strong, independent woman. From encouraging her to choose a helicopter, and not only a doll, as a toy if she so desires; having open conversations with her about clothes, makeup, and sexuality; debunking the myth that women are somehow biologically arranged to be in the kitchen making dinner, and that men can "allow" women to have full careers, Dear Ijeawele goes right to the heart of sexual politics in the twenty-first century. It can start a conversation about what it really means to be a woman today

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a complex paradigm where billions of devices are connected to a network. These connected devices form an intelligent system of systems that share the data without human-to-computer or human-to-human interaction. These systems extract meaningful data that can transform human lives, businesses, and the world in significant ways. However, the reality of IoT is prone to countless cyber-attacks in the extremely hostile environment like the internet. The recent hack of 2014 Jeep Cherokee, iStan pacemaker, and a German steel plant are a few notable security breaches. To secure an IoT system, the traditional high-end security solutions are not suitable, as IoT devices are of low storage capacity and less processing power. Moreover, the IoT devices are connected for longer time periods without human intervention. This raises a need to develop smart security solutions which are light-weight, distributed and have a high longevity of service. Rather than per-device security for numerous IoT devices, it is more feasible to implement security solutions for network…

A moving reflection on a subject that touches us all, by the bestselling author of Claire of the Sea Light Edwidge Danticat's The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story is at once a personal account of her mother dying from cancer and a deeply considered reckoning with the ways that other writers have approached death in their own work. "Writing has been the primary way I have tried to make sense of my losses,"Danticat notes in her introduction. "I have been writing about death for as long as I have been writing." The book moves outward from the shock of her mother's diagnosis and sifts through Danticat's writing life and personal history, all the while shifting fluidly from examples that range from Gabriel GarcIa MArquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude to Toni Morrison's Sula. The narrative, which continually circles the many incarnations of death from individual to large-scale catastrophes, culminates in a beautiful, heartrending prayer in the voice of Danticat's mother. A moving tribute and a work of astute criticism, The Art of Death is a book that will profoundly alter all who…

Explaining Suicide: Patterns, Motivations, and What Notes Reveal discusses top motivations for suicide, how they differ between note leavers and non-note leavers, and how we can use the information to create better prevention tactics. As 15% to 40% of suicides leave suicide notes, a valuable clue to help unlock the motivation of the suicidal person, they are an integral tool for study. This book represents the first large scale analysis (1200+ subjects) of motivations for suicide across multiple ages in the same time period, 13% of whom left notes.

We characterize three notions of explainable AI that cut across research fields: opaque systems that offer no insight into its algo- rithmic mechanisms; interpretable systems where users can mathemat- ically analyze its algorithmic mechanisms; and comprehensible systems that emit symbols enabling user-driven explanations of how a conclusion is reached. The paper is motivated by a corpus analysis of NIPS, ACL, COGSCI, and ICCV/ECCV paper titles showing differences in how work on explainable AI is positioned in various fields. We close by introducing a fourth notion: truly explainable systems, where automated reasoning is central to output crafted explanations without requiring human post processing as final step of the generative process.

The problems of synonymy, incorrect species author citation/abbreviation and spelling errors are hampering botanical research around the globe. This article was aimed to quantify the intensity and errors encountered in this regard in published botanical articles pertaining to the Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistan. To address this issue, 100 articles published in 1999-2015 were reviewed. A total of 5460 entries were processed carefully and 1350 species binomials (excluding repititions) were extracted that were linked with 1333 accepted binomials according to theplantlist.org. Out of these accepted species binomials, 1109 were communicated correctly, whereas the remaining 224 binomials were conveyed in the form of 241 synonyms. Average synonyms to accepted binomials ratio for the said timespan was calculated quite high as 13.99%. By taking these conveyed synonyms as our sub sample, we further detected 712 errors related to orthography, author citations and abbreviations. A strong positive and significant Pearson correlation was observed amongst the number of articles published, total…

Semantics-based Summarization of Entities in Knowledge Graphs.The processing of structured and semi-structured content on the Web has been gaining attention with the rapid progress in the Linking Open Data project and the development of commercial knowledge graphs.Knowledge graphs capture domain-specific or encyclopedic knowledge in the form of a data layer and add rich and explicit semantics on top of the data layer to infer additional knowledge.The data layer of a knowledge graph represents entities and their descriptions.The semantic layer on top of the data layer is called the schema (ontology), where relationships of the entity descriptions, their classes, and the hierarchy of the relationships and classes are defined.Today, there exist large knowledge graphs in the research community (e.g., encyclopedic datasets like DBpedia and Yago) and corporate world (e.g., Google knowledge graph) that encapsulate a large amount of knowledge for human and machine consumption.Typically, they consist of millions of entities and billions of facts describing these entities.While it is good to…

Genus Ficus belongs to family Moraceae having 40 genera and over 1000 species worldwide.Different methods have been used for phytochemical screening of medicinal plants like total phenolics content (TPC) and total flavonoids content (TFC) assays to quantify phenolics and flavonoids.The phytochemical analysis exhibited highest total phenolics content in M extract of stem and total flavonoids content in ethyl acetate (EA) extract of leaves i.e. 61.2±1.3 µg GAE/mg extract and 25.1±0.9µg QE/mg extract respectively.Total reduction power and total antioxidant capacity were maximum in the M extract of stem i.e. 243.89±1.6 µg AAE/mg extract and 127.08±2.7 µg AAE/mg extract respectively.

Wendell Berry's profound critique of American culture has entered its sixth decade, and in this new gathering he reaches with deep devotion toward a long view of Agrarian philosophy. Mr. Berry believes that American cultural problems are nearly always aligned with their agricultural problems, and recent events have shone a terrible spotlight on the divides between our urban and rural citizens. Our communities are as endangered as our landscapes. There is, as Berry outlines, still much work to do, and our daily lives--in hope and affection -- must triumph over despair. Mr. Berry moves deftly between the real and the imagined. The Art of Loading Brush is an energetic mix of essays and stories, including "The Thought of Limits in a Prodigal Age," which explores Agrarian ideals as they present themselves historically and as they might apply to our work today. "The Presence of Nature in the Natural World" is added here as the bookend of this developing New Agrarianism. Four stories from an as-yet-unfinished novel, better described as "an essay in imagination," extend the Port William…

Sandwich panel structures are widely used in aerospace, marine, and automotive applications because of their high flexural stiffness, strength-to-weight ratio, good vibration damping, and low through-thickness thermal conductivity. These structures consist of solid face sheets and low-density cellular core structures, which are often based upon honeycomb topologies. The recent progress of additive manufacturing (AM) (popularly known as 3D printing) processes has allowed lattice configurations to be designed with improved thermal-mechanical properties. The aim of this work is to design and print lattice truss structures (LTS) keeping in mind the flexible nature of AM. Several 3D printed core structures were created using polymeric material and were tested under low-velocity impact loads. Different unit-cell configurations were compared to aluminum honeycomb cores that are tested under the same conditions. An impact machine was designed and fabricated following the ASTM D7136 Standard to correctly capture the impact response. The absorption energy as well as the failure mechanisms of…

The contamination of aquatic habitats has become a serious problem for sustainability of the fisheries sector in Pakistan. Among different pollutants, heavy metals are very toxic. Their toxicity can be assessed by using antioxidant enzymes as biomarkers. These enzymes protect the living organisms from the oxidative stress caused by the heavy metals. Therefore, the effect of lead chloride (PbCl2) on the peroxidase enzyme activity in the tissues (liver and kidney) of Cirrhinamrigala was investigated. Four groups of Cirrhinamrigala were exposed, separately, to 96-hr LC50 concentration of PbCl2 along with its sub-lethal concentrations, viz.2/3rd, 1/4th and 1/5th for a period of 30 days. Another group of fish was kept in metal free media as a control. After 30 days, fish were dissected and their liver and kidney isolated and preserved for enzyme assay. Peroxidase activity in the tissues of PbCl2 exposed Cirrhinamrigala was compared with the control group. Results revealed that the activity of peroxidase enzyme in fish organs increased significantly (p

In traditional networks, switches and routers are very expensive, complex, and inflexible because forwarding and handling of packets are in the same device. However, Software Defined Networking (SDN) makes networks design more flexible, cheaper, and programmable because it separates the control plane from the data plane. SDN gives administrators of networks more flexibility to handle the whole network by using one device which is the controller. Unfortunately, SDN faces a lot of security problems that may severely affect the network operations if not properly addressed. Threat vectors may target main components of SDN such as the control plane, the data plane, and/or the application. Threats may also target the communication among these components. Among the threats that can cause significant damages include attacks on the control plane and communication between the controller and other networks components by exploiting the vulnerabilities in the controller or communication protocols. Controllers of SDN and their communications may be subjected to different types of attacks. DDoS…

Saussurea lappa is a traditionally well-known plant for its medicinal uses in different indigenous systems of medicine. It is widely used in the treatment of asthma, ulcer, stomach problems and inflammatory diseases. In current study the phytochemical screening of S. lappa showed the presence of sesquiterpenes, anthraquinones, lignans, alkaloids, flavonoids, glycosides and steroids. Antimicrobial potential of subject plant was also investigated against three bacterial strains and maximum antibacterial activity was observed by CEE against S. aureus, CAE against P. aeruginosa, while CME, CEE, EAE and PEE showed almost same significant activity against E. coli. The CME (1000 ppm) was found to have maximum anti-tumor activity with 75% tumor inhibition potential. Significant DNA protection (of plasmid pBR322) activity was observed in 100 ppm CME and EAE. Therefore, S. lappa can be considered as promising candidate for isolation of bioactive compounds having antibacterial, antitumor and DNA protective potential.

The present study explored the relationship between experience of trauma and posttraumatic growth (PTG) among 86 graduate level counselors-in-training (CIT). Results indicated that the most frequent trauma endorsed was witnessed or learned about violence to a loved one and the higher the rating of the most severe trauma experienced related to a higher reported level of personal growth. Overall, 67% of the CIT received support for their trauma by participating in personal counseling. Implications for counselor educators includes an understanding of the potential for trauma impacting students as well as different responses to trauma based on gender and the number of traumatic experiences.

RF CMOS Tunable Gilbert Mixer with Wide Tuning Frequency and Controllable Bandwidth: Design Sythesis and Verification".The double-balanced Gilbert mixer is widely used in RF receivers.In general, it is desirable to design a wide tuning frequency Gilbert mixer for low power, high conversion gain, low noise figure, and good linearity, but they are not easy to attain simultaneously.Therefore, trade-offs always exist by tuning design parameters.To observe the trade-off relationship between each tunable parameter and to make a mixer achieve specified requirements easily (i.e., tuning frequency range, bandwidth, and power), an automated design synthesis and verification approach for Gilbert mixer is proposed.A wide tuning CMOS Gilbert mixer design synthesis while keeping the local oscillator frequency of 2 GHz is presented as an example.Designed in 180 nanometer CMOS process, the tunable Gilbert mixer achieves a tuning frequency span of 2 GHz (1.1 -3.1 GHz), a controllable bandwidth of ~50 MHz, a high conversion gain (0.5 -6.4 dB), a low noise figure (6.81 -8.36 dB), and a power of 9 mW.

Bistorta amplexicaulis (D. Don) Greene is an herb that belongs to the Family Polygonaceae. Its local name in Pakistan is Rain and masloon (Saqib and Sultan, 2005) and in India it is Sarbguni (Sharma et al., 2004).

Background and Aims Pancreatitis presents with significant risk for morbidity and mortality acutely. The purpose of this study was to evaluate demographics, comorbidity burden, and hospital characteristics and their effect on in-hospital mortality in patients with acute pancreatitis. Methods Data was collected from The National Hospital Discharge Survey for patients admitted for acute pancreatitis from 2001-2010. Patients were separated into those who suffered in-hospital mortality and those that were discharged. Data was analyzed regarding demographics, length of stay, comorbidity burden, mortality, principal payment, and hospital size. Statistical comparisons were made using SPSS with chi-square and student T tests with a significance level of 0.05. Results 27,259 cases of acute pancreatitis were identified, with 573 who suffered in-hospital mortality. The mortality group was significantly older and had a longer length of stay. Patients with four or more comorbidities had a higher mortality rate (2.5%) compared to those with three or less (0.1%) (p<0.001). Region displayed a…

Useful information has been extracted from the road accident data in United Kingdom (UK), using data analytics method, for avoiding possible accidents in rural and urban areas. This analysis make use of several methodologies such as data integration, support vector machines (SVM), correlation machines and multinomial goodness. The entire datasets have been imported from the traffic department of UK with due permission. The information extracted from these huge datasets forms a basis for several predictions, which in turn avoid unnecessary memory lapses. Since data is expected to grow continuously over a period of time, this work primarily proposes a new framework model which can be trained and adapt itself to new data and make accurate predictions. This work also throws some light on use of SVM’s methodology for text classifiers from the obtained traffic data. Finally, it emphasizes the uniqueness and adaptability of SVMs methodology appropriate for this kind of research work.

Travel guide to Hemingway sites in Havana, including the Finca Vigía, El Floridita, and La Bodeguita. Expounds on Cuba’s continued fascination with the author.

In today’s geopolitical environment, the emergence of religious extremism is becoming more prevalent. Justified as a holy war, jihadists are becoming more brash and calculated in attacking targets to inflict maximum damage and instill the greatest amount of fear. Coordinated, lethal, terrorist attacks against innocent targets; killing indiscriminately is a preferred tactic of extremists. Multiple attacks, coordinated either in proximity or timing, using firearms, explosive devices, or fire to inflict damage and disrupt life is the basis of a Complex Coordinated Terrorist Attack (CCTA). City and regional emergency response plans should address mitigating efforts to a CCTA. Community strength and resiliency is dependent on a rapid, seamless, local, regional, and potentially federal response to a terrorist event. To aid in planning efforts, multiple federal agencies sponsor a collaborative effort among federal, state, local, and private sector entities aimed at assessing community vulnerabilities to terror attacks, existing emergency response plans, and consultation to develop regional…

Four groups (n=10) of one year old Labeo rohita were exposed to 96-hr LC50 and sub-lethal (2/3rd, 1/4th and 1/5th) concentrations of MnCl2 for a duration of 30 days in the glass aquaria of 50L water capacity. After an exposure period of 30 days, the activity of peroxidase enzyme in the liver and brain of MnCl2 exposed fish was measured and compared with the control group. Physico-chemical parameters of the test media, viz. pH, dissolved oxygen, carbon dioxide, total ammonia, total hardness, calcium and magnesium were also monitored on a 12 hour basis during the whole experimental duration by following the standard protocol. The results showed that peroxidase activity in the fish increased significantly more than the control fish in both organs after exposure of manganese chloride. The enzyme peroxidase had activity of 0.543±0.004 UmL-1 and 0.274±0.004 UmL-1 in the liver and brain, respectively, in MnCl2 stressed fish. However, in control fish, the enzyme activity was observed as 0.117±0.008 UmL-1 and 0.024±0.005 UmL-1 in the liver and brain, respectively. The regression analyses…

Laboratory tests were conducted on fingerlings of Tilapia nilotica to check the bioaccumulation patterns of lead (Pb), cadmium (Cd) and cobalt (Co) during acute toxicity at constant water temperature, pH and total hardness. Metal mixtures viz. Lead + Cadmium, Cobalt-Lead and Cadmium-Cobalt were selected to assess the acute toxicity in terms of 96-hr LC50 along with bioaccumulation patterns in selected organs of Tilapia nilotica (skin, muscles and liver). Sensitivity of Tilapia nilotica in terms of 96-hr LC50 for all mixtures varied significantly. The 96-hr LC50 of binary metal mixtures agreed in that order: cadmium-cobalt > lead-cadmium > cobalt-lead with statistically significant differences at p

On account of huge yield losses, weed infestation is a serious threat in wheat crops throughout the country. A comprehensive survey to find out the major weeds in wheat in Dera Ismail Khan was carried out during the crop season of 2012-13. Wheat fields at seed farms of Rakhmanghan, RakhZandani, Rata Kulachi and adjacent farmer’s fields to each seed farm were investigated. Data was collected at the peak growth stage of weeds and the quadratic method was used to record relative density (RD), relative frequency (RF), relative crowding coefficient (RCC) and importance value index (IVI). The results revealed that the major and most problematic weed of wheat at all the locations was Avena fatua (wild oat) on account of having maximum IVI at Rakh Manghan (78.51 & 77.44), Rata Kulachi (77.82 & 77.54) and Rakh Zandani (77.51 & 77.53) seed Farms and Farmer’s fields respectively. Rumex dentatus (dock) and Convolvulus arvensis (Lehli) were the second and third abundantly occurring weeds at almost all the seed farms and farmer fields on account of having the second and third highest IVI values…

Aggression and boxing performance: Testing the channeling hypothesis with multiple statistical methodologies.D. G. Winter, John, Stewart, Klohnen, and Duncan (1998) demonstrated the first use of the channeling hypothesis to show how the explicit personality trait of extraversion channeled one's implicit achievement and affiliation personality to predict important life outcomes.Since then, various implicit and explicit measures of personality have been combined, but moderation analyses have predominantly been the "mechanism of operation" to demonstrate the channeling hypothesis (Bing, LeBreton, Davison, Migetz, & James, 2007, p. 147).The current study had two goals.The first goal was to use implicit and explicit measures of aggression to predict performance of 325 men and women from the United Sates Military Academy in a mandatory boxing course.The second goal was to determine whether or not other statistical methodologies could be established as the mechanism of operation for the channeling hypothesis.Using path analyses of structural equations models, we found that explicit…

Truong conducted an experiment to observe the effect that nitrogen and potassium from organic sources has on plant growth. Truong makes suggestions for further research.

Diagnostics are necessary for measurement of plasma parameters such as electron, ion and atomic densities, electron temperature, plasma expansion velocity and spatial resolution of density gradients. These parameters play a critical role in defining how a plasma will interact with electromagnetic radiation. For example, the plasma black-out phenomenon occurs when electromagnetic waves are at frequencies below the plasma frequency, where plasma frequency is a function of electron density. Wave propagation diagnostics can improve understanding of a plasma when measurement supports parameter estimation. In this report, the dual-wavelength interferometry method provides a single diagnostic capability to measure plasma expansion velocity, atomic density and electron densities. Using a laboratory plasma created with wire-ablation pulsed-power techniques and the Sarkisov model, electron and atomic densities are estimated for copper and aluminum plasmas.

Next generation aircraft (especially combat aircraft) will include more technology and capability than ever before. This increase in technology comes at the price of higher electrical power requirements and increased waste heat that must be removed from components to avoid overheating induced shutdowns. To help combat the resulting power and thermal management problem, a vehicle level power and thermal management design and optimization toolset was developed in MATLAB®/Simulink®. A dynamic model of a three-stream variable cycle engine was desired to add to the capabilities of the power and thermal management toolset. As an intermediate step to this goal, the dynamic mixed-flow turbofan engine model previously developed for the toolset was modified with an afterburner, a variable geometry nozzle, and a new controller to automatically control the new components. The new afterburning turbofan engine model was tested for a notional mission profile both with and without power take-off. This testing showed that the afterburning turbofan engine model and controller were successful enough…

We present the results of analyzing gait motion in-person video taken from a commercially available wearable camera embedded in a pair of glasses. The video is analyzed with three different computer vision methods to extract motion vectors from different gait sequences from four individuals for comparison against a manually annotated ground truth dataset. Using a combination of signal processing and computer vision techniques, gait features are extracted to identify the walking pace of the individual wearing the camera and are validated using the ground truth dataset. We perform an additional data collection with both the camera and a body-worn accelerometer to understand the correlation between our vision-based data and a more traditional set of accelerometer data. Our results indicate that the extraction of activity from the video in a controlled setting shows strong promise of being utilized in different activity monitoring applications such as in the eldercare environment, as well as for monitoring chronic healthcare conditions.

When it comes to decision making, the dominant viewsuggests that engaging in a detailed analytical thought processis more beneficial than deciding based on one’s feelings.However, there seems to be a tradeoff, as the complexity andamount of elements on which to base the decision increases,decisions based on affect seem to be more accurate thandecisions based on a thorough analytical process in specificcontexts. In those last cases, an affective modulation ofmemory may help to make better decisions in complex tasksthat exceed human’s limited cognitive capacities. Some dualprocess accounts, ‘‘deliberation-without-attention’’hypothesis (Dijksterhuis et al., 2006), oppose a cognitive (i.e.,conscious) route to an affective (i.e., unconscious) route.Since most dual process accounts suggest one type of processis better than the other, the interaction and integration ofaffective and more conscious analytical processes in decisionmaking have been understudied. To address this issue, wepropose an explanation of the dynamics and interaction ofcognitive (i.e., explicit) and affective (i.e.,…

The traditional education systems that have been used for several centuries have evolved very slowly and might be ineffective for addressing diverse learning styles and levels of preparation. This system is characterized by many students interacting with a single teacher, who is unable to address the individual needs of every student. Therefore, some students can become frustrated and fail to reach their educational potential. An Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS), which is a computer application used to provide students with one-to-one supplemental tutoring tailored to the student's learning style and pace, is of interest to educators for improving student learning. To evaluate the effectiveness of ITS, a systematic review of the recent literature was performed using a carefully crafted protocol designed to provide data to support a meta-study of the effectiveness of ITS. The research question guiding this study is: "Does an intelligent tutoring system improve students' learning abilities more than traditional learning?" A t-test, one-way ANOVA test, and KNIME program that does…

An Experimental Investigation of Residual Stress Development during Selective Laser Melting of Ti-6Al-4V.Selective laser melting (SLM) is an additive manufacturing (AM) process that gives rise to large thermal gradients and rapid cooling rates that lead to the development of undesirable residual stress and distortion.In this work, a number of different techniques (i.e., x-ray-diffraction, hole-drilling, layer-removal, and contour) were utilized to establish the effect of process parameters on residualstress development during SLM of Ti-6Al-4V.The measurements indicated that higher laser power, slower scan speed, smaller stripe width, reduced substrate overhang, and reduced build plan area each reduce the level of residual stress.In addition, the correlation between microstructure, crystallographic texture, and residual stress were investigated using electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) and backscatter electron (BSE) imaging.The experimental results from this work provide a quantitative foundation for future simulations of residual stress evolution during SLM and provide an…

The Passeriformes is the largest and most diverse commonly recognized clade of birds including more than seventy families. The reed beds are important habitats for several passerine bird species and the abundance of these species seem to be influenced by vegetation structure. Passerines feed mainly on insects, nuts and seeds collected from trees and shrubs in summer. In winter their feeding behavior changes and they feed on berries and fruits (Roberts, 1992). This study was conducted to prepare and compare the new checklist and distribution of Passeriformes in District Bagh in Azad Kashmir with the previous one for getting new bird data.

Habitat destruction and anthropogenic activities cause wild birds to migrate towards urban areas in search of food and sometimes nesting in high-roof buildings, where they are caught by local people using different techniques and are further used for hunting or recreational purposes.An injured Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) was found entangled in bushes near the vicinity of Balkasar Research Complex, Chakwal, Pakistan.After complete physical examination, a wound on the right wing and closed leg fracture was diagnosed.The successful treatment was done by anti-parasitic and anti-bacterial drugs with careful monitoring.Splint was adjusted after aligning the fractured bones to regain their original position.The bird was fed with fresh meat soaked in a little quantity of water so that the water intake can be made sure.After complete recovery, the eagle was kept under observation for two weeks and then set free to breathe in the open atmosphere.The successful treatment and release of wild birds into their natural habitat in such cases can help in their population stability and…

Typhoid is caused by Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi that is usually diagnosed by using serologic and immuno-chromatographic techniques in developing counties including Pakistan, which is thought to be an unreliable diagnostic method.For accurate diagnosis we used molecular techniques to amplify 204 bp StyR-36 and 498 bp flagellin gene for the identification of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi.This study was done on 58 individuals diagnosed positive of typhoid via serologic tests and 50 healthy individuals as a control group.Success rate of amplification for flagellin gene was 77.58% while that for StyR-36 gene was 68.97% showing that flagellin gene primer is characterized by higher value of percentage of amplification than that of StyR-36 gene primer.For precise and accurate diagnosis of Salmonella infection, both genes can be targeted using specific molecular markers.

Wheat (Triticum aestivum) is an important cereal crop grown worldwide on large areas. Yields of wheat are decreasing worldwide due to heavy metal contamination. A number of genes have been characterized as those that confer tolerance to cadmium stress. PCS1 is one of them. Phytochelatins have a key role in the detoxification of heavy metals in plants. However, the mechanism behind the detoxification remains unknown and wheat genes related to detoxification have not yet been identified. Here we report the isolation of cDNA encoding of phytochelatin synthase (PCS) from wheat (var. Galaxy 2013). The AtPCS1 cDNA sequence contained 833 bp and encodes 277 amino acid proteins having a molecular weight of 55kDa. Multiple alignment and phylogenetic analyses were conducted by using bioinformatic tools. AtPCS1 was most related to the Hordeum vulgare PCS1 gene (AK372435.1) as they were clustered in the same clade. This gene could be helpful in making transgenic crops which will help in phytoremediation.

A weed is an herbaceous plant that grows as a wild plant, and is considered a hindrance in the growth of preferred vegetation or cumbering the ground, and has no value for beauty or use. However, some weeds have roles in medicine, ecology and many other fields. A survey was conducted in Lahore to observe the weed varieties present in the area of Samanabad. The present study was carried out in May and June 2014.The primary purpose of the study was to gain knowledge about the availability of the total number of species present in this area. We also assessed whether these weeds were directly or indirectly beneficial for humans. Results of this study revealed a total of 33 species belonging to 20 different families which were collected and identified. Weeds were arranged in alphabetical order according to their respective families. Data inventory constitutes family name, botanical name, local name and life form. Results revealed the relative diversity of each family as Poaceae at 18.18% and Asteraceae at 15.15%. Out of 33 weed species, 64% were annual, 30% perennial and 6% biennial. The…

Effects of Myrrh on HSV Type 1 Using Plaque Assay.Herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) is a highly infective human pathogen which infects a wide range of population in North America and worldwide.HSV-1 infection has two phases, lytic and latent.Recurrence of HSV-1 is a major challenge to clinicians to control the infection especially in immune depleted individuals.Acyclovir (ACV) is an antiviral drug used to treat HSV-1 infection.Low solubility of ACV in water, mutation of viral thymidine kinase, and mutation of viral DNA polymerase are major problems that cause usage limitations of ACV.Myrrh has been used as an analgesic and anti-inflammatory natural product in middle eastern countries for centuries.Recently Myrrh has shown a promising therapeutic action against fungal and parasitic infections.In the current study, low concentrations of Myrrh treatment increased cell survival of HSV-1 infected Vero cells.Prolonged exposure to Myrrh was found to be toxic to viable cells.Myrrh treatment of HSV-1 infected Vero cells was compared with ACV treatment of HSV-1 infected Vero cell.Myrrh…

Gwen Evans, Executive Director of OhioLINK, discussed the various challenges surrounding the creation and adoption of Open Educational Resources (OERs) in Ohio.

Conditional Correlation Analysis.Correlation analysis is a frequently used statistical measure to examine the relationship among variables in different practical applications.However, the traditional correlation analysis uses an overly simplistic method to do so.It measures how two variables are related in an application by examining only their relationship in the entire underlying data space.As a result, traditional correlation analysis may miss a strong correlation between those variables especially when that relationship exists in the small subpopulation of the larger data space.This is no longer acceptable and may lose a fair share of information in this era of Big Data which often contains highly diverse nature of data where data can differ in a noticeable manner within the same application.To remedy this situation, we are introducing a new approach called Conditional Correlation Analysis (CCR) in this thesis.Instead of computing the correlation among variables in the entire data space, this approach first divides the entire data space into multiple subpopulations using…

Bistatic SAR Polar Format Image Formation: Distortion Correction and Scene Size Limits.The polar format algorithm (PFA) for bistatic synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image formation offers the compromise between image quality and computational complexity afforded by PFA, while enabling the geometric flexibility of a bistatic collection scenario.The use of the far-field approximation (FFA), which enables the use of the two-dimensional (2D) fast Fourier transform (FFT) in PFA, introduces spatially-varying distortion and defocus effects causing geometric warping and blurring in the resulting image.In this thesis, the residual phase errors due to the FFA are analyzed by decomposing the residual phase errors in the time dimension into their constant, linear, and quadratic Taylor series components.Based on the analysis, a 2D interpolation-based distortion correction technique is developed, and accurate scene size limits are derived for the corrected image to mitigate the effects of defocus.The phase error analysis is conducted with respect to arbitrary transmitter and receiver trajectories,…

Hudson presents the emerging trend of medical tourism and discusses the personal, logistical, ethical, and economic implications of this trend. Hudson advises consumers to observe caution and thoroughly research all treatment options.

In today's business world, storytelling with data is a powerful way to communicate, convince, and persuade.Such skills are highly desirable in all types of professions.Participants of this hands-on workshop will lean storytelling with Tableau, which skills can be applied to teaching subjects such as data analytics, visualization, and communication as well as presentations in our day-to-day job and research projects.

Cryptographic and coding theory algorithms use arithmetic operations over finite fields. Finite field multiplications over GF(2m) are critical components for these systems. Well known irreducible polynomials are all-one-polynomials (AOP), equally spaced polynomial (ESP), trinomial and pentanomial. Due to its simple structure, AOP based multiplica- tion is easy to implement and hence the AOP based multiplication of variable length can be used as a standard computation core. In this thesis, first of all, we employ low register complexity AOP based systolic multiplication core to propose multiplication over GF(2m) based on NIST recommended pentanomials. The proposed parallel and serial ar- chitectures use pre-computation (PC) modules to compute bits involve in multiplication and re-combination (RC) modules to combine computed bits from PC to form vectors which will reduce the multiplication complexity. The corresponding architecture based on the proposed algorithm is then synthesized by Xilinx ISE 14.1 on a Virtex 5 FPGA device and it is observed that the proposed structures has lower…

This chapter considers how to meet the needs for eldercare under a condition of zero population growth necessary to address the environmental crisis. It points out that eldercare falls outside the dominant economic forms. It reviews the potential effect on eldercare of the standard proposals for post-capitalism based on quality, fairness of the distribution of care, fairness of the assignment of responsibility, and the level of care. It proposes building new institutions that would perform the functions traditionally performed by families, post-families, to provide necessary services and develop intergenerational relationships. Finally, it considers the challenges for implementing post-families.

A First-Principles Simulation StudyA third-generation of solar cell is based on organic-inorganic hybrid perovskite materials.These have reached up to 22.1% conversion efficiency through exponential growth just within the last decade, compared to much longer improvement times for other photovoltaic technologies.Lead halide perovskites are among the most commonly used materials in this context.Despite the relatively large number of available works on some of these materials, in particular CH3NH3PbI3, others are less investigated.Here, we focused on CH3NH3PbCl3, CH3NH3PbBr3 and CH3NH3PbI3 for assessing structure stability and optical response.Using quantum-mechanics-based first principles approaches, we calculated the optimized structures of these three materials in their cubic phase, followed by their optical response.Structure characteristics including geometrical features, energetics and phonon dispersions were presented and analyzed.Electronic structure calculations and resultant optical characteristics including real and imaginary dielectric constants, refractive index and…

Breast cancer remains the second most prevalent cancer among women in the U.S. with metastatic breast cancer having the worst prognosis. A rapidly proliferating tumor under various stressors will promote phenotypic cellular changes, known as epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT), which allows cells to begin to invade surrounding tissue, enter the circulatory system, and eventually seed a distant metastatic site. The phospholipase D (PLD) enzymes are critical regulators of cell signaling pathways necessary for cell migration. While the importance of PLD enzymes in cancer cell invasion is well known, clinically applicable methods of PLD inhibition are not yet available. The best-studied isoforms are the `classical’ PLD1 and PLD2 membrane lipases that hydrolyze phosphatidylcholine (PC) to free choline and phosphatidic acid (PA). PA acts as a secondary messenger activating numerous pathways leading to cell growth and proliferation, vesicle trafficking, and cell migration. PLD1 and PLD2 are upregulated in several cancers including breast and, furthermore, promote tumorigenesis and…

Exploiting Alignments in Linked Data for Compression and Query Answering.Linked data has experienced accelerated growth in recent years due to its interlinking ability across disparate sources, made possible via machine-processable RDF data.Today, a large number of organizations, including governments and news providers, publish data in RDF format, inviting developers to build useful applications through reuse and integration of structured data.This has led to tremendous increase in the amount of RDF data on the web.Although the growth of RDF data can be viewed as a positive sign for semantic web initiatives, it causes performance bottlenecks for RDF data management systems that store and provide access to data.In addition, a growing number of ontologies and vocabularies make retrieving data a challenging task.The aim of this research is to show how alignments in the Linked Data can be exploited to compress and query the linked datasets.First, we introduce two compression techniques that compress RDF datasets through identification and removal of semantic and contextual redundancies…

Extracellular signal-regulated kinase 3 (ERK3) is an atypical protein kinase of the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) family. In comparison to well-investigated ERK1/2 (classical) MAPKs, much less has been discovered about ERK3 signaling and its cellular functions. Recent studies have shown that ERK3 is overexpressed in various types of cancers such as lung cancer and breast cancer and that ERK3 promotes cancer cell migration and invasion. How ERK3 regulates cancer cell motility and invasiveness, however, is still largely unknown. RhoGTPases, including Rho, Cdc42 and Rac1, play critical roles in regulating cell motility and invasiveness through activating downstream effectors such as p21-activated kinases (PAKs). Rho GTPase-GDP dissociation inhibitor 1 (RhoGDI1) inhibits RhoGTPases’ activity by binding to GDP-bound GTPases and preventing their activation. Cdc42 and Rac1 are well-known activators of group I PAKs, including PAK1, PAK2 and PAK3. They activate group I PAKs through binding to the latter’s auto-inhibitory domains and exposing the auto-phosphorylation residues.…

The Iceliini are a small, enigmatic New World tribe of Tachininae consisting of three genera, Icelia RobineauDesvoidy, Iceliopsis Guimarães, and Erviopsis Townsend, and five recognized species (Guimarães 1976). All known species are exclusively Neotropical in distribution with the exception of Icelia triquetra (Olivier), which ranges from Brazil, through Central America, and as far north as New York state (O’Hara & Wood 2004). Members of the tribe are generally medium-sized (ca. 7–12 mm), elongate, yellowish or grayish in color, and resemble Dexiini or Leskiini in general appearance. Species of Iceliini are relatively rarely collected and there is but a single host record (Lepidoptera; see below). Here, we report on the discovery of a specimen of Iceliopsis borgmeieri Guimarães from the U.S. state of Florida, a species never before recorded outside of Brazil.