Vegetative and reproductive development of shoots of different order of three maize hybrids at two contrasting population densities

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Auction sale to close estate of Mary P. Chrystie, dec'd, 23 building plots, also Harlem River water front, near Morris Heights stations, N.Y. Central and N.Y. & Northern railroads : Wednesday, November 22d, 1893, at 12 o'clock noon at no. 111 Broadway, New York Real Estate salesroom : by order of Morris & Steele, attorneys ... New York City /

Street map showing properties to be sold, existing buildings (some with owners' names), and railroad stations.

A Mutational Hotspot and Strong Selection Contribute to the Order of Mutations Selected for during Escherichia coli Adaptation to the Gut

The relative role of drift versus selection underlying the evolution of bacterial species within the gut microbiota remains poorly understood. The large sizes of bacterial populations in this environment suggest that even adaptive mutations with weak effects, thought to be the most frequently occurring, could substantially contribute to a rapid pace of evolutionary change in the gut. We followed the emergence of intra-species diversity in a commensal Escherichia coli strain that previously acquired an adaptive mutation with strong effect during one week of colonization of the mouse gut. Following this first step, which consisted of inactivating a metabolic operon, one third of the subsequent adaptive mutations were found to have a selective effect as high as the first. Nevertheless, the order of the adaptive steps was strongly affected by a mutational hotspot with an exceptionally high mutation rate of 10-5. The pattern of polymorphism emerging in the populations evolving within different hosts was characterized by periodic selection, which reduced diversity, but also frequency-dependent selection, actively maintaining genetic diversity. Furthermore, the continuous emergence of similar phenotypes due to distinct mutations, known as clonal interference, was pervasive. Evolutionary change within the gut is therefore highly repeatable within and across hosts, with adaptive mutations of selection coefficients as strong as 12% accumulating without strong constraints on genetic background. In vivo competitive assays showed that one of the second steps (focA) exhibited positive epistasis with the first, while another (dcuB) exhibited negative epistasis. The data shows that strong effect adaptive mutations continuously recur in gut commensal bacterial species.

Sistema em Leibniz e Descartes

Descartes concebe que a verdadeira ordem científica é a ordem das razões, na qual se parte das verdades mais fáceis e evidentes em direção às mais difíceis e complexas. Assim, estabelece-se uma ordem única, progressiva e irreversível, onde cada membro da cadeia depende daqueles que o antecederam, de modo que cada tese possui um lugar não-intercambiável dentro da doutrina. Leibniz, ao contrário, defende que "[...] uma mesma verdade pode ter vários lugares, conforme as diferentes relações que pode possuir" (Novos Ensaios, IV, XXI, § 4). A fim de evitar as repetições, reunindo-se o máximo de verdades no mínimo de volumes, o autor propõe que a melhor ordem científica é a disposição sistemática das matérias, que consiste em uma organização do saber na qual cada lugar reenvia a outros, tornando clara a conexão entre os conhecimentos. Em contraposição ao modelo de sistema cartesiano, no modelo leibniziano, as teses se fundamentam mutuamente e a ordem das verdades estabelecidas é reversível. Ora, é devido a essas diferenças na concepção de sistema que Leibniz, ao contrário de Descartes, pode pretender tomar o que há de melhor nos sistemas legados pela tradição para constituir o seu próprio sistema, já que para ele há uma certa maleabilidade na constituição do sistema filosófico.

Le réductionnisme dans le Traité de la nature humaine de David Hume

Résumé : À l’aube des études humiennes, Norman Kemp Smith appelait à représenter Hume « suivant toutes ses nombreuses activités », comme s’il pressentait que l’étude de la pensée humienne pouvait s’avérer un labyrinthe dans lesquels les commentaires pouvaient s’égarer et se perdre de vue. Ce pressentiment, on peut le dire aujourd’hui, s’est avéré juste, et il porte avec lui une clé de lecture : pour dépasser la représentation parcellaire, fragmentée et ultimement incohérente d’un Hume kaléidoscopique, le mieux est peut-être de s’intéresser à ses activités. La présente thèse vise à circonscrire la pratique humienne de la philosophie, ou, pourrait-on dire, du travail épistémologique et conceptuel, dans l’espace de son magnum opus, et cela à l’aide d’une clé de lecture : celle du réductionnisme. Si le Traité est une oeuvre que l’on peut qualifier d’empiriste, on ne saurait la lire seulement par ce biais ou par celui de questions localisées, et nous montrons que le projet du Traité ne peut se comprendre qu’en voyant comment Hume tente d’y réduire la et les connaissances à des dépendances ou à des parties de sa propre théorie de la nature humaine. Pour cela, nous procédons via quatre chapitres. D’abord, nous tentons de circonscrire les caractéristiques les plus importantes du projet humien, c’est-à-dire de ce que Hume avait l’intention de développer à travers les contenus particuliers du Traité ; ensuite, nous nous concentrons sur la base dont Hume part et dont il se servira pour accomplir des réductions, base que l’on peut appeler une théorie des perceptions doublée d’une théorie de l’esprit (principes, facultés, relations) ; ces deux théories, couplées à un standard strict pour obtenir le statut de « vraie idée » ou d’idée intelligible, semblent amener de par leurs prémisses assez directement au scepticisme, et c’est pourquoi on traitera du scepticisme avant d’évoquer les aspects « naturalistes » du Traité au-delà des éléments de base de la théorie des perceptions et de l’esprit, soit une manoeuvre qui ne suit pas tout à fait l’ordre humien d’exposition mais nous semble suivre un certain ordre des raisons ; enfin, la quatrième partie nous permettra de passer en revue diverses réductions opérées par Hume, celles qui mènent au scepticisme pyrrhonien mises à part, ce qui nous permettra de voir quelles sont les limites et les problèmes afférents à son réductionnisme particulier. Refondateur, systématique et totalisant dans ses intentions, le Traité suit bien plus qu’un projet simplement empiriste, et on verra que dans la démarche humienne l’empirisme apparaît davantage dans les conclusions qu’au point même de départ. En le lisant comme le lieu et la conséquence d’une orientation que l’on peut dire réductionniste, on peut trouver dans le Traité un fil conducteur qui, en dépit de problèmes plus ou moins importants rencontrés en cours de route, ne se rompt pas.

BTBPs versus BTPhens: some reasons for their differences in properties concerning the partitioning of minor actinides and the advantages of BTPhens

Two members of the tetradentate N-donor ligand families 6,6′-bis(1,2,4-triazin-3-yl)-2,2′-bipyridine (BTBP) and 2,9-bis(1,2,4-triazin-3-yl)-1,10-phenanthroline (BTPhen) currently being developed for separating actinides from lanthanides have been studied. It has been confirmed that CyMe4-BTPhen 2 has faster complexation kinetics than CyMe4-BTBP 1. The values for the HOMO−LUMO gap of 2 are comparable with those of CyMe4-BTBP 1 for which the HOMO−LUMO gap was previously calculated to be 2.13 eV. The displacement of BTBP from its bis-lanthanum(III) complex by BTPhen was observed by NMR, and constitutes the only direct evidence for the greater thermodynamic stability of the complexes of BTPhen. NMR competition experiments suggest the following order of bis-complex stability: 1:2 bis-BTPhen complex ≥ heteroleptic BTBP/BTPhen 1:2 bis-complex > 1:2 bis-BTBP complex. Kinetics studies on some bis-triazine N-donor ligands using the stopped-flow technique showed a clear relationship between the rates of metal ion complexation and the degree to which the ligand is preorganized for metal binding. The BTBPs must overcome a significant (ca. 12 kcal mol−1) energy barrier to rotation about the central biaryl C−C axis in order to achieve the cis−cis conformation that is required to form a complex, whereas the cis−cis conformation is fixed in the BTPhens. Complexation thermodynamics and kinetics studies in acetonitrile show subtle differences between the thermodynamic stabilities of the complexes formed, with similar stability constants being found for both ligands. The first crystal structure of a 1:1 complex of CyMe4-BTPhen 2 with Y(NO3)3 is also reported. The metal ion is 10- coordinate being bonded to the tetradentate ligand 2 and three bidentate nitrate ions. The tetradentate ligand is nearly planar with angles between consecutive rings of 16.4(2)°, 6.4(2)°, 9.7(2)°, respectively.

Departing from the virtual community : a discussion of the ways and means to uncover localised order in online games

This paper is part one of a three part study into the collective regulation processes of players in massive multiplayer online games (MMOG). Traditionally game playing has not been classed as problematic, however with introduction of new media technologies and new ways to play games, certain contexts have become obscure, namely the localised order of ‘playing online’ or how players manage and maintain order between each other as opposed to ‘following the rules’. Principally this paper will examine concepts of ‘virtual community’. These will be illustrated as particularly unhelpful when considering how people conduct themselves in these spaces. Thus, ‘virtual community’ will be seen as critical in implicating various online behaviours as superior to other online behaviours causing obscurity and blurring actions. This obscurity is grounded by strong associations in the virtual community as logic of practise in and of itself; behaviours that fall outside this category become common sense and as such are made invisible for investigation. This paper will draw upon the theories of Basil Bernstein and Pierre Bourdieu to produce a distinction between online behaviours and ultimately make them visible for further investigation. In doing so this paper seeks to form a basis for future research where interaction in these spaces can be identified as belonging to a certain framework to inform the design of online games and applications more effectively.

An assessment system for evaluation of driving competencies

Automobiles have deeply impacted the way in which we travel but they have also contributed to many deaths and injury due to crashes. A number of reasons for these crashes have been pointed out by researchers. Inexperience has been identified as a contributing factor to road crashes. Driver’s driving abilities also play a vital role in judging the road environment and reacting in-time to avoid any possible collision. Therefore driver’s perceptual and motor skills remain the key factors impacting on road safety. Our failure to understand what is really important for learners, in terms of competent driving, is one of the many challenges for building better training programs. Driver training is one of the interventions aimed at decreasing the number of crashes that involve young drivers. Currently, there is a need to develop comprehensive driver evaluation system that benefits from the advances in Driver Assistance Systems. A multidisciplinary approach is necessary to explain how driving abilities evolves with on-road driving experience. To our knowledge, driver assistance systems have never been comprehensively used in a driver training context to assess the safety aspect of driving. The aim and novelty of this thesis is to develop and evaluate an Intelligent Driver Training System (IDTS) as an automated assessment tool that will help drivers and their trainers to comprehensively view complex driving manoeuvres and potentially provide effective feedback by post processing the data recorded during driving. This system is designed to help driver trainers to accurately evaluate driver performance and has the potential to provide valuable feedback to the drivers. Since driving is dependent on fuzzy inputs from the driver (i.e. approximate distance calculation from the other vehicles, approximate assumption of the other vehicle speed), it is necessary that the evaluation system is based on criteria and rules that handles uncertain and fuzzy characteristics of the driving tasks. Therefore, the proposed IDTS utilizes fuzzy set theory for the assessment of driver performance. The proposed research program focuses on integrating the multi-sensory information acquired from the vehicle, driver and environment to assess driving competencies. After information acquisition, the current research focuses on automated segmentation of the selected manoeuvres from the driving scenario. This leads to the creation of a model that determines a “competency” criterion through the driving performance protocol used by driver trainers (i.e. expert knowledge) to assess drivers. This is achieved by comprehensively evaluating and assessing the data stream acquired from multiple in-vehicle sensors using fuzzy rules and classifying the driving manoeuvres (i.e. overtake, lane change, T-crossing and turn) between low and high competency. The fuzzy rules use parameters such as following distance, gaze depth and scan area, distance with respect to lanes and excessive acceleration or braking during the manoeuvres to assess competency. These rules that identify driving competency were initially designed with the help of expert’s knowledge (i.e. driver trainers). In-order to fine tune these rules and the parameters that define these rules, a driving experiment was conducted to identify the empirical differences between novice and experienced drivers. The results from the driving experiment indicated that significant differences existed between novice and experienced driver, in terms of their gaze pattern and duration, speed, stop time at the T-crossing, lane keeping and the time spent in lanes while performing the selected manoeuvres. These differences were used to refine the fuzzy membership functions and rules that govern the assessments of the driving tasks. Next, this research focused on providing an integrated visual assessment interface to both driver trainers and their trainees. By providing a rich set of interactive graphical interfaces, displaying information about the driving tasks, Intelligent Driver Training System (IDTS) visualisation module has the potential to give empirical feedback to its users. Lastly, the validation of the IDTS system’s assessment was conducted by comparing IDTS objective assessments, for the driving experiment, with the subjective assessments of the driver trainers for particular manoeuvres. Results show that not only IDTS was able to match the subjective assessments made by driver trainers during the driving experiment but also identified some additional driving manoeuvres performed in low competency that were not identified by the driver trainers due to increased mental workload of trainers when assessing multiple variables that constitute driving. The validation of IDTS emphasized the need for an automated assessment tool that can segment the manoeuvres from the driving scenario, further investigate the variables within that manoeuvre to determine the manoeuvre’s competency and provide integrated visualisation regarding the manoeuvre to its users (i.e. trainers and trainees). Through analysis and validation it was shown that IDTS is a useful assistance tool for driver trainers to empirically assess and potentially provide feedback regarding the manoeuvres undertaken by the drivers.

Numerical analysis of the time variable fractional order mobile-immobile advection-dispersion model

Many physical processes exhibit fractional order behavior that varies with time or space. The continuum of order in the fractional calculus allows the order of the fractional operator to be considered as a variable. In this paper, we consider the time variable fractional order mobile-immobile advection-dispersion model. Numerical methods and analyses of stability and convergence for the fractional partial differential equations are quite limited and difficult to derive. This motivates us to develop efficient numerical methods as well as stability and convergence of the implicit numerical methods for the fractional order mobile immobile advection-dispersion model. In the paper, we use the Coimbra variable time fractional derivative which is more efficient from the numerical standpoint and is preferable for modeling dynamical systems. An implicit Euler approximation for the equation is proposed and then the stability of the approximation are investigated. As for the convergence of the numerical scheme we only consider a special case, i.e. the time fractional derivative is independent of time variable t. The case where the time fractional derivative depends both the time variable t and the space variable x will be considered in the future work. Finally, numerical examples are provided to show that the implicit Euler approximation is computationally efficient.

Curriculum design and higher order skills : challenging assumptions

This paper is based on an Australian Learning & Teaching Council (ALTC) funded evaluation in 13 universities across Australia and New Zealand of the use of Engineers Without Borders (EWB) projects in first-year engineering courses. All of the partner institutions have implemented this innovation differently and comparison of these implementations affords us the opportunity to assemble "a body of carefully gathered data that provides evidence of which approaches work for which students in which learning environments". This study used a mixed-methods data collection approach and a realist analysis. Data was collected by program logic analysis with course co-ordinators, observation of classes, focus groups with students, exit survey of students and interviews with staff as well as scrutiny of relevant course and curriculum documents. Course designers and co-ordinators gave us a range of reasons for using the projects, most of which alluded to their presumed capacity to deliver experience in and learning of higher order thinking skills in areas such as sustainability, ethics, teamwork and communication. For some students, however, the nature of the projects decreased their interest in issues such as ethical development, sustainability and how to work in teams. We also found that the projects provoked different responses from students depending on the nature of the courses in which they were embedded (general introduction, design, communication, or problem-solving courses) and their mode of delivery (lecture, workshop or online).

Enterprise resource planning or enterprise resource plotting? Technological, organisational and inter-organisational aspects of enterprise resource planning package adoption and diffusion

Those in organisations tend to adopt new technologies as a way to improve their functions, reduce cost and attain best practices. Thus, technology promoters (or vendors) work along those lines in order to convince adopters to invest in those technologies and develop their own organisations profit in return. The possible resultant ‘conflicts of interest’ makes the study of reasons behind IT diffusion and adoption an interesting subject. In this paper we look at IT diffusion and adoption in terms of technology (system features), organisational aspects (firm level characteristics) and inter-organisational aspects (market dynamics) in order to see who might be the real beneficiaries of technology adoption. We use ERP packages as an example of an innovation that has been widely diffused and adopted for the last 10 years. We believe that our findings can be useful to those adopting ERP packages as it gives them a wider view of the situation.

Numerical analysis of a new space-time variable fractional order advection-dispersion equation

Many physical processes appear to exhibit fractional order behavior that may vary with time and/or space. The continuum of order in the fractional calculus allows the order of the fractional operator to be considered as a variable. In this paper, we consider a new space–time variable fractional order advection–dispersion equation on a finite domain. The equation is obtained from the standard advection–dispersion equation by replacing the first-order time derivative by Coimbra’s variable fractional derivative of order α(x)∈(0,1]α(x)∈(0,1], and the first-order and second-order space derivatives by the Riemann–Liouville derivatives of order γ(x,t)∈(0,1]γ(x,t)∈(0,1] and β(x,t)∈(1,2]β(x,t)∈(1,2], respectively. We propose an implicit Euler approximation for the equation and investigate the stability and convergence of the approximation. Finally, numerical examples are provided to show that the implicit Euler approximation is computationally efficient.

Unified Galerkin- and DAE-Based Approximation of Fractional Order Systems

We consider numerical solutions of nonlinear multiterm fractional integrodifferential equations, where the order of the highest derivative is fractional and positive but is otherwise arbitrary. Here, we extend and unify our previous work, where a Galerkin method was developed for efficiently approximating fractional order operators and where elements of the present differential algebraic equation (DAE) formulation were introduced. The DAE system developed here for arbitrary orders of the fractional derivative includes an added block of equations for each fractional order operator, as well as forcing terms arising from nonzero initial conditions. We motivate and explain the structure of the DAE in detail. We explain how nonzero initial conditions should be incorporated within the approximation. We point out that our approach approximates the system and not a specific solution. Consequently, some questions not easily accessible to solvers of initial value problems, such as stability analyses, can be tackled using our approach. Numerical examples show excellent accuracy. DOI: 10.1115/1.4002516]

Analysis of an Interior Penalty Method for Fourth Order Problems on Polygonal Domains

Error analysis for a stable C (0) interior penalty method is derived for general fourth order problems on polygonal domains under minimal regularity assumptions on the exact solution. We prove that this method exhibits quasi-optimal order of convergence in the discrete H (2), H (1) and L (2) norms. L (a) norm error estimates are also discussed. Theoretical results are demonstrated by numerical experiments.

On the strain rate sensitivity of plastic flow in metallic glasses

The nanoindentation technique was employed to examine the strain rate sensitivity, m, and its dependence on the structural state of a Zr-based bulk metallic glass (BMG). The free volume content in the BMG was varied by examining samples in the as-cast (AC), shot-peened (SP), and structurally relaxed (SR) states. Hardness values measured at different loading rates and over a temperature range of 300-423 K as well as the strain-rate jump tests conducted in the quasi-static regime at room temperature, show that m is always negative. All the load-displacement (P-h) curves in this temperature regime exhibit serrated load-displacement responses, indicating that the shear band mediated inhomogeneous plastic flow governs deformation. Such localization of flow and associated softening is the raison d'etre for the negative m. Significant levels of pile-up around the indents were also noted. The order in the average values of hardness, pile-up heights, and the displacement bursts on the P-h curves was always such that SR > AC > SP, which is also the order of increasing free volume content. These observations were utilized to discuss the reasons for the negative strain rate sensitivity, and its dependence on the structural state of metallic glasses. It is suggested that the positive values of m reported in the literature for them are possibly experimental artefacts that arise due to large pile ups around the indents which lead to erroneous estimation in hardness values. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.