Preparation of New Fibers on the Basis of Codeine Imprinted Polymer

A monolithic copolymer of methacrylic acid-ethylene glycol dimathacrylate as a fiber with 2 cm length and 0.3 mm diameter, containing codeine (CO) template was prepared through thermal radical co-polymerization procedure. This fiber is a robust recognition material capable of mimicking natural systems, combined with solid-phase micro-extraction (SPME) and gas chromatography/mass spectrometry for the extraction of trace CO from various street-drug samples. Effective experimental parameters such as Methacrylic Acid (MAA), Ethylene glycol dimethacrylate (EDMA), and CO proportions, nature, and dimension of mold, copolymerization time and temperature were optimized. Experimental studies such as scanning electron microscopy (SEM) reveal that highly homogenate fiber was achieved that can preciously be used for the above mentioned goals.     

The influence of sad mood on cognition.

Neuroimaging has identified an overlapping network of brain regions whose activity is modulated by mood and cognition. Studies of depressed individuals have shown changes in perception, attention, memory, and executive functions. This suggests that mood has a pervasive effect on cognition. Direct evidence of the effect of sad mood on cognition is surprisingly limited, however. Published studies have generally addressed a single cognitive ability per study because the fleeting nature of laboratory-induced mood precludes extended testing, and robust findings are limited to mood effects on memory for emotional stimuli. In this study, sad mood was induced and prolonged, enabling the effects of mood to be assessed for an array of abilities, including those that share neural substrates with sad mood and those affected by depression. Sad mood affected memory for emotional words and facial emotion recognition, but not the other processes measured, with a significant nonuniformity of effect over tasks. These results are consistent with circumscribed effects of sad mood on certain emotion-related cognitive processes, but not on cognition more generally. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Using implicit equations of parametric curves and surfaces without computing them: Polynomial algebra by values

The availability of the implicit equation of a plane curve or of a 3D surface can be very useful in order to solve many geometric problems involving the considered curve or surface: for example, when dealing with the point position problem or answering intersection questions. On the other hand, it is well known that in most cases, even for moderate degrees, the implicit equation is either difficult to compute or, if computed, the high degree and the big size of the coefficients makes extremely difficult its use in practice.We will show that, for several problems involving plane curves, 3D surfaces and some of their constructions (for example, offsets), it is possible to use the implicit equation (or, more precisely, its properties) without needing to explicitly determine it. We replace the computation of the implicit equation with the evaluation of the considered parameterizations in a set of points. We then translate the geometric problem in hand, into one or several generalized eigenvalue problems on matrix pencils (depending again on several evaluations of the considered parameterizations).This is the so-called “polynomial algebra by values” approach where the huge polynomial equations coming from Elimination Theory (e.g., using resultants) are replaced by big structured and sparse numerical matrices. For these matrices there are well-known numerical techniques allowing to provide the results we need to answer the geometric questions on the considered curves and surfaces.     

A Parallel Proximal Splitting Method for Disparity Estimation from Multicomponent Images Under Illumination Variation

Proximal splitting algorithms play a central role in finding the numerical solution of convex optimization problems. This paper addresses the problem of stereo matching of multi-component images by jointly estimating the disparity and the illumination variation. The global formulation being non-convex, the problem is addressed by solving a sequence of convex relaxations. Each convex relaxation is non trivial and involves many constraints aiming at imposing some regularity on the solution. Experiments demonstrate that the method is efficient and provides better results compared with other approaches.     

Crop yield prediction from remotely sensed vegetation indices and primary productivity in arid and semi-arid lands

Global demands for biomass and arable lands are expected to double in the next 35 years. Scarcity of water resources in arid and semi-arid areas poses a serious threat to their agricultural productivity and hence their food security. In this study, we examine whether crop yields can be predicted from remotely sensed vegetation indices and remotely sensed estimates of primary productivity. Spatial relationships between remotely sensed enhanced vegetation index (EVI), net photosynthesis (P_Net), and gross and net primary production (GPP and NPP, respectively) in irrigated semi-arid and arid agro-ecosystems since the beginning of the century are analysed. The conflict-affected country of Syria is selected as the case study. Relationships between EVI and crop yield are investigated in an effort to enhance food production estimates in affected areas outside governmental jurisdictions. Estimates of NPP derived from reported irrigated agriculture crop data in a semi-arid and an arid zone are compared to remotely sensed NPP in a geospatial environment. Results show that winter crop yields are correlated with spring GPP in semi-arid zones of the study area (R² = 0.85). Summer crop yield can be predicted from either cumulative summer EVI (R² = 0.77) or P_Net in most zones. Where fully irrigated fields are surrounded by hyper-arid landscape, summer P_Net was negative in all instances and EVI was inversely correlated with yield. NPP from crops was much higher (290 gC m^?2 year^?1) in those regions than MOD17 NPP (70 gC m^–2), where 1.0 g of carbon is equivalent to 2.2 g of oven-dry organic matter (= 45% carbon by weight). The gap was less in semi-arid zones (2–39% difference). Overall crop-derived NPP for the period 2000–2013 was 322 versus 300 gC m^–2 for that remotely sensed within the cropped zones of the political units. The results of this study are crucial to derive accurate estimates of irrigated agriculture productivity and to study the effect of the latter on net ecosystem carbon storage.     

Cost-effective energy carriers for transport – The role of the energy supply system in a carbon-constrained world

The aim of this study is to examine how the options for producing electricity, fuels, and heat in a carbon-constrained world affect the cost-effectiveness of a range of fuels and propulsion technologies in the transportation sector. GET 7.0, a global energy system model with five end-use sectors, is used for the analysis. We find that an energy system dominated either by solar or by nuclear tends to make biofuels in plug-in hybrids cost-effective. If coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) dominates the energy system, hydrogen cars, rather than plug-in hybrids tend to become cost-effective. Performing a Monte Carlo simulation, we then show that the general features of our results hold for a wide range of assumptions for the costs of vehicle propulsion technologies (e.g., batteries and fuel cells). However, sufficiently large changes in say the battery costs may overturn the impact of changes in the energy supply system, so that plug-in hybrid vehicles become cost-effective even if coal with CCS dominate the energy supply. We conclude that analyses of future energy carriers and propulsion technologies need to consider developments in the energy supply system.     

Tell Me Who I Am: An Interactive Recommendation System

We consider a model of recommendation systems, where each member from a given set of players has a binary preference to each element in a given set of objects: intuitively, each player either likes or dislikes each object. However, the players do not know their preferences. To find his preference of an object, a player may probe it, but each probe incurs unit cost. The goal of the players is to learn their complete preference vector (approximately) while incurring minimal cost. This is possible if many players have similar preference vectors: such a set of players with similar “taste” may split the cost of probing all objects among them, and share the results of their probes by posting them on a public billboard. The problem is that players do not know a priori whose taste is close to theirs. In this paper we present a distributed randomized peer-to-peer algorithm in which each player outputs a vector which is close to the best possible approximation of the player’s real preference vector after a polylogarithmic number of rounds. The algorithm works under adversarial preferences. Previous algorithms either made severely limiting assumptions on the structure of the preference vectors, or had polynomial overhead. Research of N. Alon supported in part by the Israel Science Foundation and by the Von Neumann Fund. B. Awerbuch supported by NSF grants ANIR-0240551, CCF-0515080 and CCR-0311795. Research of Y. Azar supported in part by the German-Israeli Foundation and by the Israel Science Foundation. Research of B. Patt-Shamir supported in part by Israel Ministry of Science and Technology and by the Israel Science Foundation (grant 664/05).     

Intramuscular fatty acid profile of longissimus dorsi and semitendinosus muscle from Kundi steers fed on pasture with cottonseed cake supplement

The present study was accomplished to evaluate the intramuscular fatty acid (FA) composition of different muscles taken from Kundi steers (n = 15), which were approximately 24 months old, fed on a cottonseed cake supplement, and were made to graze on alfalfa pasture for 95 days prior to slaughter. The samples were taken from longissimus dorsi region (loin and ribeye portion) and distal region of semitendinosus muscle for intramuscular FA analysis. Saturated FA, comprising 49.48–52.09% of total FA composition, in all the muscles were studied. Ribeye portion of longissimus dorsi muscle contain relatively higher (P > 0.05) amount of trans FA (3.37%) as compared with loin portion of longissimus dorsi muscle (3.1%) and distal region of semitendinosus muscle (2.84%). The sum of monounsaturated FA in all the muscles studied was estimated in the range of 32.21–34.64%, while polyunsaturated FA contribute 11.39–12.39% of total FA. The mean conjugated linoleic acid was found to be 0.28, 0.35 and 0.41 in ribeye and loin portion of longissimus dorsi muscle and distal region of semitendinosus muscle, respectively.