Urbana University

The Agrobacterium vacuum infiltration method has made it possible to transform Arabidopsis thaliana without plant tissue culture or regeneration. In the present study, this method was evaluated and a substantially modified transformation method was developed. The labor-intensive vacuum infiltration process was eliminated in favor of simple dipping of developing floral tissues into a solution containing Agrobacterium tumefaciens, 5% sucrose and 500 microliters per litre of surfactant Silwet L-77. Sucrose and surfactant were critical to the success of the floral dip method. Plants inoculated when numerous immature floral buds and few siliques were present produced transformed progeny at the highest rate. Plant tissue culture media, the hormone benzylamino purine and pH adjustment were unnecessary, and Agrobacterium could be applied to plants at a range of cell densities. Repeated application of Agrobacterium improved transformation rates and overall yield of transformants approximately twofold. Covering plants for 1 day to retain humidity after inoculation also raised transformation rates twofold. Multiple ecotypes were transformable by this method. The modified method should facilitate high-throughput transformation of Arabidopsis for efforts such as T-DNA gene tagging, positional cloning, or attempts at targeted gene replacement.

Construct Validity in Psychological TestsVALIDATION of psychological tests has not yet been adequately concep tua1ized, as the APA Committee on Psychological Tests learned when it undertook to specify what qualities should be investigated before a test is published.In order to make coherent recommendations the Committee found it necessary to distinguish four types of validity, established by different types of research and requiring different interpre tation.The chief innovation in the Committee's report was the term constmct validity.*This idea was first formulated hy a subcommittee {Meehl and R. C. Cballman) studying how proposed recommendations would apply to projective techniques, and later modified and clarified by the entire Committee {Bordin, Challman, Conrad, Humphreys, Super, and the present writers).The statements agreed upon by tbe Committee (and by committees of two other associations) were published in the Technical Recommendations ( 59).The present interpretation of construct validity is not "official" and deals with some areas in which the Committee would probably not be unanimous.The present writers are solely responsible for this attempt to explain the concept and elaborate its implications.Identification of construct validity was not an isolated development.Writers on validity during the preceding decade had shown a great deal of dissatisfaction with conventional notions of validity, and intro dnced new terms and ideas, hut the resulting aggregation of types of * Referred to in a preliminary report ( 58) as cougruent validity.

When n identical randomly located nodes, each capable of transmitting at W bits per second and using a fixed range, form a wireless network, the throughput /spl lambda/(n) obtainable by each node for a randomly chosen destination is /spl Theta/(W//spl radic/(nlogn)) bits per second under a noninterference protocol. If the nodes are optimally placed in a disk of unit area, traffic patterns are optimally assigned, and each transmission's range is optimally chosen, the bit-distance product that can be transported by the network per second is /spl Theta/(W/spl radic/An) bit-meters per second. Thus even under optimal circumstances, the throughput is only /spl Theta/(W//spl radic/n) bits per second for each node for a destination nonvanishingly far away. Similar results also hold under an alternate physical model where a required signal-to-interference ratio is specified for successful receptions. Fundamentally, it is the need for every node all over the domain to share whatever portion of the channel it is utilizing with nodes in its local neighborhood that is the reason for the constriction in capacity. Splitting the channel into several subchannels does not change any of the results. Some implications may be worth considering by designers. Since the throughput furnished to each user diminishes to zero as the number of users is increased, perhaps networks connecting smaller numbers of users, or featuring connections mostly with nearby neighbors, may be more likely to be find acceptance.

We discuss the theoretical bases that underpin the automation of the computations of tree-level and next-to-leading order cross sections, of their matching to parton shower simulations, and of the merging of matched samples that differ by light-parton multiplicities. We present a computer program, MadGraph5 aMC@NLO, capable of handling all these computations — parton-level fixed order, shower-matched, merged — in a unified framework whose defining features are flexibility, high level of parallelisation, and human intervention limited to input physics quantities. We demonstrate the potential of the program by presenting selected phenomenological applications relevant to the LHC and to a 1-TeV e + e − collider. While next-to-leading order results are restricted to QCD corrections to SM processes in the first public version, we show that from the user viewpoint no changes have to be expected in the case of corrections due to any given renormalisable Lagrangian, and that the implementation of these are well under way.

Research on the relation between social information processing and social adjustment in childhood is reviewed and interpreted within the framework of a reformulated model of human performance and social exchange. This reformulation proves to assimilate almost all previous studies and is a useful heuristic device for organizing the field. The review suggests that overwhelming evidence supports the empirical relation between characteristic processing styles and children's social adjustment, with some aspects of processing (e.g., hostile attributional biases, intention cue detection accuracy, response access patterns, and evaluation of response outcomes) likely to be causal of behaviors that lead to social status and other aspects (e.g., perceived self-competence) likely to be responsive to peer status

I.BASIC CONCEPTS. 1.Who Uses Tests? And for What Purposes? 2.Varieties of Tests and Test Interpretations. 3.Administering Tests. 4.Scores and Score Conversions. 5.How to Judge Tests: Validation. 6.How to Judge Tests: Reliability and other Qualities. II.TESTS OF ABILITY. 7.General Ability: Appraisal Methods. 8.The Meanings of General Ability. 9.Influences on Intellectual Development. 10.Multiple Abilities and Their Role in Counseling. 11.Personnel Selection. III.MEASURES OF TYPICAL RESPONSE. 12.Interest Inventories. 13.General Problems in Studying Personality. 14.Personality Measurement through Self-Report. 15.Judgments and Systematic Observations. 16.Inferences from Performance.

Shaw and McKay's influential theory of community social disorganization has never been directly tested. To address this, a community-level theory that builds on Shaw and McKay's original model is formulated and tested. The general hypothesis is that low economic status, ethnic heterogeneity, residential mobility, and family disruption lead to community social disorganization, which, in turn, increases crime and delinquency rates. A community's level of social organization is measure in terms of local friendship networks, control of street-corner teenage peer groups, and prevalence of organizational participation. The model is first tested by analyzing data for 238 localities in Great Britain constructed from a 1982 national survey of 10,905 residents. The model is then replicated on an independent national sample of 11,030 residents of 300 British localities in 1984. Results from both surveys support the theory and show that between-community variations in social disorganization transmit much of the effect of community structural characteristics on rates of both criminal victimization and criminal offending.

Fluorescent oligonucleotide hybridization probes were used to label bacterial cells for analysis by flow cytometry. The probes, complementary to short sequence elements within the 16S rRNA common to phylogenetically coherent assemblages of microorganisms, were labeled with tetramethylrhodamine and hybridized to suspensions of fixed cells. Flow cytometry was used to resolve individual target and nontarget bacteria (1 to 5 microns) via probe-conferred fluorescence. Target cells were quantified in an excess of nontarget cells. The intensity of fluorescence was increased additively by the combined use of two or three fluorescent probes complementary to different regions of the same 16S rRNA.

Summary Free‐air CO 2 enrichment (FACE) experiments allow study of the effects of elevated [CO 2 ] on plants and ecosystems grown under natural conditions without enclosure. Data from 120 primary, peer‐reviewed articles describing physiology and production in the 12 large‐scale FACE experiments (475–600 ppm) were collected and summarized using meta‐analytic techniques. The results confirm some results from previous chamber experiments: light‐saturated carbon uptake, diurnal C assimilation, growth and above‐ground production increased, while specific leaf area and stomatal conductance decreased in elevated [CO 2 ]. There were differences in FACE. Trees were more responsive than herbaceous species to elevated [CO 2 ]. Grain crop yields increased far less than anticipated from prior enclosure studies. The broad direction of change in photosynthesis and production in elevated [CO 2 ] may be similar in FACE and enclosure studies, but there are major quantitative differences: trees were more responsive than other functional types; C 4 species showed little response; and the reduction in plant nitrogen was small and largely accounted for by decreased Rubisco. The results from this review may provide the most plausible estimates of how plants in their native environments and field‐grown crops will respond to rising atmospheric [CO 2 ]; but even with FACE there are limitations, which are also discussed. Contents Summary 351 I. What is FACE? 352 II. Materials and methods 352 III. Photosynthetic carbon uptake 353 IV. Acclimation of photosynthesis 356 V. Growth, above‐ground production and yield 358 VI. So, what have we learned? 360 Acknowledgements 361 References 361 Appendix 1. References included in the database for meta‐analyses 364 Appendix 2. Results of the meta‐analysis of FACE effects 368

Learning visual models of object categories notoriously requires hundreds or thousands of training examples. We show that it is possible to learn much information about a category from just one, or a handful, of images. The key insight is that, rather than learning from scratch, one can take advantage of knowledge coming from previously learned categories, no matter how different these categories might be. We explore a Bayesian implementation of this idea. Object categories are represented by probabilistic models. Prior knowledge is represented as a probability density function on the parameters of these models. The posterior model for an object category is obtained by updating the prior in the light of one or more observations. We test a simple implementation of our algorithm on a database of 101 diverse object categories. We compare category models learned by an implementation of our Bayesian approach to models learned from by Maximum Likelihood (ML) and Maximum A Posteriori (MAP) methods. We find that on a database of more than 100 categories, the Bayesian approach produces informative models when the number of training examples is too small for other methods to operate successfully.

This article surveyed the major results in iterative learning control (ILC) analysis and design over the past two decades. Problems in stability, performance, learning transient behavior, and robustness were discussed along with four design techniques that have emerged as among the most popular. The content of this survey was selected to provide the reader with a broad perspective of the important ideas, potential, and limitations of ILC. Indeed, the maturing field of ILC includes many results and learning algorithms beyond the scope of this survey. Though beginning its third decade of active research, the field of ILC shows no sign of slowing down.

Journal Article BIOSYS-1: a FORTRAN program for the comprehensive analysis of electrophoretic data in population genetics and systematics Get access David L. Swofford, David L. Swofford Graduate student and professor Department of Genetics and Development at the University of IllinoisUrbana, IL 61801 Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Richard B. Selander Richard B. Selander Graduate student and professor Department of Genetics and Development at the University of IllinoisUrbana, IL 61801 Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Journal of Heredity, Volume 72, Issue 4, July 1981, Pages 281–283, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.jhered.a109497 Published: 01 July 1981

This review summarizes current understanding of the mechanisms that underlie the response of photosynthesis and stomatal conductance to elevated carbon dioxide concentration ([CO2]), and examines how downstream processes and environmental constraints modulate these two fundamental responses. The results from free-air CO2 enrichment (FACE) experiments were summarized via meta-analysis to quantify the mean responses of stomatal and photosynthetic parameters to elevated [CO2]. Elevation of [CO2] in FACE experiments reduced stomatal conductance by 22%, yet, this reduction was not associated with a similar change in stomatal density. Elevated [CO2] stimulated light-saturated photosynthesis (Asat) in C3 plants grown in FACE by an average of 31%. However, the magnitude of the increase in Asat varied with functional group and environment. Functional groups with ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (Rubisco)-limited photosynthesis at elevated [CO2] had greater potential for increases in Asat than those where photosynthesis became ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate (RubP)-limited at elevated [CO2]. Both nitrogen supply and sink capacity modulated the response of photosynthesis to elevated [CO2] through their impact on the acclimation of carboxylation capacity. Increased understanding of the molecular and biochemical mechanisms by which plants respond to elevated [CO2], and the feedback of environmental factors upon them, will improve our ability to predict ecosystem responses to rising [CO2] and increase our potential to adapt crops and managed ecosystems to future atmospheric [CO2].

Fluorescent-dye-conjugated oligonucleotides were used to classify 14 Fibrobacter strains by fluorescence microscopy. On the basis of partial 16S rRNA sequences of six Fibrobacter strains, four hybridization probes were designed to discriminate between the species Fibrobacter succinogenes and Fibrobacter intestinalis and to identify F. succinogenes subsp. succinogenes. After in situ hybridization to whole cells of the six sequenced strains, epifluorescence microscopy confirmed probe specificity. The four probes were then used to make presumptive species and subspecies assignments of eight additional Fibrobacter strains not previously characterized by comparative sequencing. These assignments were confirmed by comparative sequencing of the 16S rRNA target regions from the additional organisms. Single-mismatch discrimination between certain probe and nontarget sequences was demonstrated, and fluorescent intensity was shown to be enhanced by hybridization to multiple probes of the same specificity. The direct detection of F. intestinalis in mouse cecum samples demonstrated the application of this technique to the characterization of complex natural samples.

This paper presents a formal probabilistic framework for seismic design and assessment of structures and its application to steel moment-resisting frame buildings. This is the probabilistic basis for the 2000 SAC Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) steel moment frame guidelines. The framework is based on realizing a performance objective expressed as the probability of exceeding a specified performance level. Performance levels are quantified as expressions relating generic structural variables “demand” and “capacity” that are described by nonlinear, dynamic displacements of the structure. Common probabilistic analysis tools are used to convolve both the randomness and uncertainty characteristics of ground motion intensity, structural “demand,” and structural system “capacity” in order to derive an expression for the probability of achieving the specified performance level. Stemming from this probabilistic framework, a safety-checking format of the conventional “load and resistance factor” kind is developed with load and resistance terms being replaced by the more generic terms “demand” and “capacity,” respectively. This framework also allows for a format based on quantitative confidence statements regarding the likelihood of the performance objective being met. This format has been adopted in the SAC/FEMA guidelines.

Increasing the yield potential of the major food grain crops has contributed very significantly to a rising food supply over the past 50 years, which has until recently more than kept pace with rising global demand. Whereas improved photosynthetic efficiency has played only a minor role in the remarkable increases in productivity achieved in the last half century, further increases in yield potential will rely in large part on improved photosynthesis. Here we examine inefficiencies in photosynthetic energy transduction in crops from light interception to carbohydrate synthesis, and how classical breeding, systems biology, and synthetic biology are providing new opportunities to develop more productive germplasm. Near-term opportunities include improving the display of leaves in crop canopies to avoid light saturation of individual leaves and further investigation of a photorespiratory bypass that has already improved the productivity of model species. Longer-term opportunities include engineering into plants carboxylases that are better adapted to current and forthcoming CO 2 concentrations, and the use of modeling to guide molecular optimization of resource investment among the components of the photosynthetic apparatus, to maximize carbon gain without increasing crop inputs. Collectively, these changes have the potential to more than double the yield potential of our major crops.

A growing body of empirical evidence is revealing the value of nature experience for mental health. With rapid urbanization and declines in human contact with nature globally, crucial decisions must be made about how to preserve and enhance opportunities for nature experience. Here, we first provide points of consensus across the natural, social, and health sciences on the impacts of nature experience on cognitive functioning, emotional well-being, and other dimensions of mental health. We then show how ecosystem service assessments can be expanded to include mental health, and provide a heuristic, conceptual model for doing so.

The use of hand gestures provides an attractive alternative to cumbersome interface devices for human-computer interaction (HCI). In particular, visual interpretation of hand gestures can help in achieving the ease and naturalness desired for HCI. This has motivated a very active research area concerned with computer vision-based analysis and interpretation of hand gestures. We survey the literature on visual interpretation of hand gestures in the context of its role in HCI. This discussion is organized on the basis of the method used for modeling, analyzing, and recognizing gestures. Important differences in the gesture interpretation approaches arise depending on whether a 3D model of the human hand or an image appearance model of the human hand is used. 3D hand models offer a way of more elaborate modeling of hand gestures but lead to computational hurdles that have not been overcome given the real-time requirements of HCI. Appearance-based models lead to computationally efficient "purposive" approaches that work well under constrained situations but seem to lack the generality desirable for HCI. We also discuss implemented gestural systems as well as other potential applications of vision-based gesture recognition. Although the current progress is encouraging, further theoretical as well as computational advances are needed before gestures can be widely used for HCI. We discuss directions of future research in gesture recognition, including its integration with other natural modes of human-computer interaction.

Abstract: While use of synthetic antioxidants (such as butylated hydroxytoluene and butylated hydroxyanisole) to maintain the quality of ready‐to‐eat food products has become commonplace, consumer concern regarding their safety has motivated the food industry to seek natural alternatives. Phenolic antioxidants can inhibit free radical formation and/or interrupt propagation of autoxidation. Fat‐soluble vitamin E (α‐tocopherol) and water‐soluble vitamin C (L‐ascorbic acid) are both effective in the appropriate matrix. Plant extracts, generally used for their flavoring characteristics, often have strong H‐donating activity thus making them extremely effective antioxidants. This antioxidant activity is most often due to phenolic acids (gallic, protocatechuic, caffeic, and rosmarinic acids), phenolic diterpenes (carnosol, carnosic acid, rosmanol, and rosmadial), flavonoids (quercetin, catechin, naringenin, and kaempferol), and volatile oils (eugenol, carvacrol, thymol, and menthol). Some plant pigments (anthocyanin and anthocyanidin) can chelate metals and donate H to oxygen radicals thus slowing oxidation via 2 mechanisms. Tea and extracts of grape seeds and skins contain catechins, epicatechins, phenolic acids, proanthocyanidins, and resveratrol, all of which contribute to their antioxidative activity. The objective of this article is to provide an overview of natural antioxidants, their mechanisms of action, and potential applications.

Atmospheric CO(2) concentration ([CO(2)]) is now higher than it was at any time in the past 26 million years and is expected to nearly double during this century. Terrestrial plants with the C(3) photosynthetic pathway respond in the short term to increased [CO(2)] via increased net photosynthesis and decreased transpiration. In the longer term this increase is often offset by downregulation of photosynthetic capacity. But much of what is currently known about plant responses to elevated [CO(2)] comes from enclosure studies, where the responses of plants may be modified by size constraints and the limited life-cycle stages that are examined. Free-Air CO(2) Enrichment (FACE) was developed as a means to grow plants in the field at controlled elevation of CO(2) under fully open-air field conditions. The findings of FACE experiments are quantitatively summarized via meta-analytic statistics and compared to findings from chamber studies. Although trends agree with parallel summaries of enclosure studies, important quantitative differences emerge that have important implications both for predicting the future terrestrial biosphere and understanding how crops may need to be adapted to the changed and changing atmosphere.