A comparison of the whole-body and segmental methodologies of bioimpedance analysis

Theory supports the use of a segmental methodology (SM) for bioimpedance analysis (BIA) of body water (BW). However, previous studies have generally failed to show a significant improvement when the SM is used in place of a whole-body methodology. A pilot study was conducted to compare the two methodologies in control and overweight subjects. BW of each subject was measured by D2O dilution and also estimated from BIA measurements. Bland and Altman analysis was used to compare the two values of BW. The SM resulted in a small but not significantly improved limits of agreement of measured and BIA estimated BW (psimilar to0.3). This and the results of previous studies suggest that improvements in prediction of BW obtained from application of the SM may be intrinsically small and may not justify the additional effort in application.

Read the whole thing: Journalism, weblogs and the re-mediation of the war in Iraq

This paper examines a particular form of online activity-weblogging, and how it has allowed for specific new forms of popular political communication in the context of the Second Gulf War. After describing the basics of weblogging, the paper discusses Western media coverage of the war and then shows how 'warbloggers' positioned themselves vis-à-vis media coverage and propaganda, creating commentaries that frequently combined media and political criticism. While bloggers of every political hue offered a range of perspectives and personal styles, some general tendencies are evident in warblogging discourse. The piece ends by questioning the significance of warblogging in terms of its potential contribution to democratic communication.

A genetic map of macadamia based on randomly amplified DNA fingerprinting (RAF) markers

The first genetic linkage map of macadamia (Macadamia integrifolia and M. tetraphylla) is presented. The map is based on 56 F-1 progeny of cultivars 'Keauhou' and 'A16'. Eighty-four percent of the 382 markers analysed segregated as Mendelian loci. The two-way pseudo-testcross mapping strategy allowed construction of separate parental cultivar maps. Ninety bridging loci enabled merging of these maps to produce a detailed genetic map of macadamia, 1100 cM in length and spanning 70-80% of the genome. The combined map comprised 24 linkage groups with 265 framework markers: 259 markers from randomly amplified DNA fingerprinting (RAF), five random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD), and one sequence-tagged microsatellite site (STMS). The RAF marker system unexpectedly revealed 16 codominant markers, one of them a putative microsatellite locus and exhibiting four distinct alleles in the cross. This molecular study is the most comprehensive examination to date of genetic loci of macadamia, and is a major step towards developing marker-assisted selection for this crop.

Mapping the royal road and other hierarchical functions

In this paper we present a technique for visualising hierarchical and symmetric, multimodal fitness functions that have been investigated in the evolutionary computation literature. The focus of this technique is on landscapes in moderate-dimensional, binary spaces (i.e., fitness functions defined over {0, 1}(n), for n less than or equal to 16). The visualisation approach involves an unfolding of the hyperspace into a two-dimensional graph, whose layout represents the topology of the space using a recursive relationship, and whose shading defines the shape of the cost surface defined on the space. Using this technique we present case-study explorations of three fitness functions: royal road, hierarchical-if-and-only-if (H-IFF), and hierarchically decomposable functions (HDF). The visualisation approach provides an insight into the properties of these functions, particularly with respect to the size and shape of the basins of attraction around each of the local optima.