cometadata/datacite-rtg-text-other-reclassification-records huggingface dataset:
Playing in the Pursuit of Reflexivity
Creators: Stielow, Malcolm Nicholas
Publisher: name: University of Alberta Library
Year: 2023

Pillow forts, rivers, shorelines, safety pins, anchor points, bathtubs, toilet paper, baking, Zelda, board games, tattoos, vast seas, marbles, plates,

This thesis is collection of reflections, teachings, learnings and personal creative outputs presented across an introduction and three separate, yet thematically connected, papers revolving around the central theme of personal applied reflexivity in practice that posits play, ambiguity and frivolity as significant for practitioners and makers of design and craft.

The words herein are probably best read like both a story and a poem; and it can be read in sequence or non-linearily, it is a gathering of joy, grief, passion, sadness, and an enduring sense of frivolousness, told as the sum of its three parts. Pillow Forts: Teaching Design Through Play and Making is a romp into the cozy centre of design education and theory through a material culture lens which proposes an introductory assignment for spatially oriented design fields. Before You Go: Ambiguous Play as a Reflexive Catalyst is a closer examination of the way that games and objects influence biases and proposes a game that illustrates how a reflexivity affects the things that people prioritize, and what they are willing to leave behind. Applied Reflexivity: Making Objects as Personal Reflexivity for Practice makes a case for the use of objects in reflexive practice, and proposes a personal, functional methodology for reflexivity that could benefit many fields that have material objects as their enduring product.

The methodology of this thesis is interdisciplinary and spans the fields of human ecology, material culture, design studies and studies on craft practices. The methods used are self-reflective, reflexive, and predominantly autoethnographic where reflection-in-action is used along the way. The themes explored are linked to creative embodied practices of making, various practices of teaching and learning, and notions around how humans play. While the three papers that make up this thesis provide the structure, this playful poetic thing would not tell the whole story if it didn’t gather all the pieces. This thesis is not a single study, it is not an answer, and it may not even be a good question. It came from uncertainty and ambiguities and represents great change and a kind of rebellion.
Role of roughness on the hydrodynamic homogeneous base state of inelastic spheres
Creators: name: Reyes, F. Vega
name: Santos, A.
name: Kremer, G. M.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2013
Subjects: subject: Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
subject: Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)
subject: Fluid Dynamics (physics.flu-dyn)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: A gas of inelastic rough spheres admits a spatially homogeneous base state which turns into a hydrodynamic state after a finite relaxation time. We show that this relaxation time is hardly dependent on the degree of inelasticity but increases dramatically with decreasing roughness. An accurate description of translational-rotational velocity correlations at all times is also provided. At a given inelasticity, the roughness parameter can be tuned to produce a huge distortion from the Maxwellian distribution function. The results are obtained from a Grad-like solution of the Boltzmann-Enskog equation complemented by Monte Carlo and molecular dynamics simulations.
description: 5+4 pages, 4+4 figures; v2: Molecular dynamics results added; Supplemental Material included as an Appendix
Entropy as a Measure of Puzzle Difficulty
Creators: Chen, You Chen Eugene
Publisher: name: University of Alberta Library
Year: 2023

Evaluating and ranking the difficulty and enjoyment of puzzles is important in game design. Typically, such rankings are constructed manually for each specific game, which can be time consuming, subject to designer bias, and requires extensive play testing. An approach to ranking that generalizes across multiple puzzle games is even more challenging because of their variation in factors like rules and goals. This thesis introduces two general approaches to compute puzzle entropy, and uses them to evaluate puzzles that players enjoy.  The resulting uncertainty score is equivalent to the number of bits of data necessary to communicate the solution of a puzzle to a player of a given skill level. We apply our new approaches to puzzles from the 2016 game, The Witness. The computed entropy scores largely reproduce the order of a set of puzzles that introduce a new mechanic in the game. The scores are also positively correlated with the user ratings of user-created Witness puzzles, providing evidence that our approach captures notions of puzzle difficulty and enjoyment. Our approach is designed to exploit game-specific knowledge in a general way and thus can extended to provide automatic rankings or curricula in a variety of applications.
Development of Re(I) Photocatalysts for the Photochemical Reduction of Atmospheric CO2
Creators: Murphy, Elizabeth A
Publisher: name: University of Alberta Library
Year: 2023

Three new Re(I) photocatalysts were prepared by synthesizing imidazole and imidazolium dyes based on carbazolyl dicyanobenzene derivatives and physically linking them to a Re metal centre for the photochemical reduction of CO2. The imidazolium dyes were of interest because they are precursors to free non-heterocyclic compounds which can be generated by deprotonation. All three photocatalysts, Re-2, Re-8, and Re-9, were successful in the reduction of CO2, yielding CO as a reduction product and methane as a side product. The CO2 reduction reactions with each catalyst began with an initial burst in activity followed by a decrease due to the precipitation of a solid in the reaction solution that reflected/blocked incident light. One of the Re-NHC photocatalysts, Re-8, resulted in the highest activity out of the three compounds, with an initial turnover frequency of 47 h–1. The source of the produced methane was identified as the cleavage of a methyl group from the electron donor, 1,3-dimethyl-2-phenyl-2,3-dihydro-1H-benzimidazole, by a radical reaction chain unrelated to the reduction of CO2. These compounds show promising results as photocatalysts for the reduction of CO2 to CO and can be translated to heterogeneous systems via electro-polymerization of the carbazole moieties on to indium-tin oxide and carbon electrodes.
Towards a Unified Description of the Intergalactic Medium at Redshift z~2.5
Creators: name: Prochaska, J. Xavier
name: Madau, Piero
name: O'Meara, John M.
name: Fumagalli, Michele
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2013
Subjects: subject: Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We examine recent measurements of the z~2.5 intergalactic medium (IGM) which constrain the HI frequency distribution f(N) and the mean free path MFP to ionizing radiation. We argue that line-blending and the clustering of strong absorption-line systems have led previous authors to systematically overestimate the effective Lyman limit opacity, yielding too small of a MFP for the IGM. We further show that recently published measurements of f(N) at log NHI ~ 16 lie in strong disagreement, implying underestimated uncertainty from sample variance and/or systematics like line-saturation. Allowing for a larger uncertainty in the f(N) measurements, we provide a new cubic Hermite spline model for f(N) which reasonably satisfies all of the observational constraints under the assumption of randomly distributed absorption systems. We caution, however, that this formalism is invalid in light of absorber clustering and use a toy model to estimate the effects. Future work must properly account for the non-Poissonian nature of the IGM.
description: v2; 10 pages, 10 figures; accepted to MNRAS in 2013
Mulching improved soil fertility, plant growth and productivity, and postharvest deficit irrigation reduced water use in sweet cherry orchards in a semi-arid region
Creators: name: Gebretsadikan, Tirhas
name: Munro, Paige
name: Forge, Tom A.
name: Jones, Melanie D.
name: Nelson, Louise M.
Publisher: name: Taylor & Francis
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: 59999 Environmental Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Earth and related environmental sciences
subject: 39999 Chemical Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Chemical sciences
subject: Ecology
subject: FOS: Biological sciences
subject: 69999 Biological Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: Plant Biology

description: In the Okanagan Valley, sweet cherry production has expanded to higher latitudes due to climate change, but the availability of irrigation water is limited in this semi-arid region. Postharvest deficit irrigation (PDI) and organic mulches can reduce water use in orchards, but their interactive effects on soil fertility, water relations, and crop performance in new orchard environments are unknown. In a randomized block split-plot design, full irrigation (100%) or PDI (72–76% of full irrigation) was applied to the main plots, and mulches (compost, woodchips, bare) were subplots at three sites. Compost increased soil organic matter, nutrients, pH, and electrical conductivity over three seasons at all sites. Woodchips increased tree growth and foliar P and Mn, while compost increased some fruit quality attributes, and foliar P compared to bare soil. Relative to full, PDI saved 24–28% irrigation water after harvest per season at each site without affecting soil moisture and chemical properties, stem water potential, or crop performance, or interacting with mulch effects. These results suggest that in this semi-arid cherry growing region mulches are a promising strategy to maintain soil moisture and improve soil fertility and crop performance, and PDI can reduce water use after harvest without affecting commercial production.
Striped phases in the holographic insulator/superconductor transition
Creators: name: Erdmenger, Johanna
name: Ge, Xian-Hui
name: Pang, Da-Wei
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2013
Subjects: subject: High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We study striped phases in holographic insulator/superconductor transition by considering a spatially modulated chemical potential in AdS soliton background. Generally striped phases can develop above a critical chemical potential. When the constant leading term in the chemical potential is set to zero, a discontinuity in the plot of charge density versus chemical potential is observed in the limit of large wave vector. We explain this discontinuity using an analytical approach. When the constant leading term in the chemical potential is present, the critical chemical potential is larger than in the case of a homogeneous chemical potential, which indicates that the spatially modulated chemical potential disfavors the phase transition. This behavior is also confirmed qualitatively by analytical calculations. We also calculate the grand canonical potential and find that the striped phase is favored.
description: 31 pages, 28 figures, 1 table, to appear in JHEP
“A New Saskatchewan?”: Political Culture Change in Saskatchewan Party-Era Saskatchewan
Creators: Hill, Lauren
Publisher: name: University of Alberta Library
Year: 2023

Since its founding as a province, Saskatchewan has been depicted by the academic literature as possessing a political culture that was distinctly collectivist, dirigiste, protectionist, and polarized, largely owed to the historical political dominance of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and the New Democratic Party (NDP) in the province. Such narratives have outlived the political fortunes of both the CCF and NDP, and have, until this point, persisted despite the rise of the right-wing Saskatchewan Party. This thesis aims to fill a scholarly gap, through considering the influence of prolonged Saskatchewan Party governance on the province’s politics and assessing the current state of Saskatchewan’s political culture. Specifically, I ask the following question: what is the dominant political culture strand in Saskatchewan Party-era Saskatchewan? Through a series of online focus group activities involving people from across the province, I assess and substantiate the influence of political culture pillars, such as collectivism, laissez-faire, heartland, and adversarialism, in shaping Saskatchewan’s provincial identity and contemporary political culture. This study demonstrates that Saskatchewan’s political culture has changed. Specifically, this thesis finds Saskatchewan’s contemporary political culture to be ‘blended’, containing components of both traditional and alternative political culture strands, although displaying a slight preference for the neoliberal and conservative alternative political culture. The findings suggest that the current Saskatchewan political culture has departed from its collectivist and hinterland traditions in favour of individualism and heartland. Meanwhile, the political orientations towards the provincial government’s role in the society and the economy (dirigisme or laissez-faire) or the attitudes Saskatchewanians possess towards political actors and the political system (adversarialism or pragmatism) are considerably more varied and lack ideological consistence. Ultimately, this study highlights the influence of political party shifts in serving as mechanisms and reflections of political culture change and provides an overview of Saskatchewan’s contemporary political culture under prolonged Saskatchewan Party governance. A concluding discussion highlights the value and significance of this research and suggests area of future exploration about Saskatchewan provincial politics and political culture.
Relativistic features and time delay of laser-induced tunnel-ionization
Creators: name: Yakaboylu, Enderalp
name: Klaiber, Michael
name: Bauke, Heiko
name: Hatsagortsyan, Karen Z.
name: Keitel, Christoph H.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2013
Subjects: subject: Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
subject: Atomic Physics (physics.atom-ph)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: The electron dynamics in the classically forbidden region during relativistic tunnel-ionization is investigated. The classical forbidden region in the relativistic regime is identified by defining a gauge invariant total energy operator. Introducing position dependent energy levels inside the tunneling barrier, we demonstrate that the relativistic tunnel-ionization can be well described by a one-dimensional intuitive picture. This picture predicts that, in contrast to the well-known nonrelativistic regime, the ionized electron wave packet arises with a momentum shift along the laser's propagation direction. This is compatible with results from a strong field approximation calculation where the binding potential is assumed to be zero-ranged. Further, the tunneling time delay, stemming from Wigner's definition, is investigated for model configurations of tunneling and compared with results obtained from the exact propagator. By adapting Wigner's time delay definition to the ionization process, the tunneling time is investigated in the deep-tunneling and in the near-threshold-tunneling regimes. It is shown that while in the deep-tunneling regime signatures of the tunneling time delay are not measurable at remote distance, it is detectable, however, in the latter regime.
description: 20 pages, 20 figures
Efficient substrates based on anaerobic sewage sludge biochar for tobacco seedlings in floating systems
Creators: name: Monteiro, Alex Becker
name: dos Santos Pereira, Ivan
name: Bamberg, Adilson Luís
name: Ribeiro, Pablo Lacerda
name: Stöcker, Cristiane Mariliz
name: Timm, Luís Carlos
name: Martinazzo, Rosane
name: Silveira, Carlos Augusto Posser
name: Pillon, Clenio Nailto
Publisher: name: Taylor & Francis
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Space Science
subject: 59999 Environmental Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Earth and related environmental sciences
subject: 39999 Chemical Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Chemical sciences
subject: Ecology
subject: FOS: Biological sciences
subject: Plant Biology

description: The objective was to develop efficient substrates, with increasing proportions of biochar derived from anaerobic sewage sludge (ASS-biochar) and regionally available raw materials, to produce tobacco seedlings (Nicotiana tabacum) in floating systems. Physical, hydraulic and chemical variables and the effects on tobacco plants were evaluated through an indoor experiment with seedling production. The experiment was conducted on trays in a floating hydroponic system in a randomized block design with four replications and eight plants per plot. The ASS-biochar showed environmental safety and agronomic efficiency in substrate composition, in particular with 50% to 90% ASS-biochar in the formulation. The best formulations positively affected the growth-related variables, showing similar or superior performance to the three commercial substrates (references). The ideal ranges of the substrate characteristics were: dry density: 420–520 kg m−3; total porosity: 60–75%; aeration space: 25–35%; easily available water: 9–12%; water buffering capacity: 3–5%; available water: 12–15%; remaining water: 20–25%; pH: 6.0–6.5; electrical conductivity: 1.4–2.3 mS cm−1. The development of substrates considering ASS-biochar, regional raw materials and ideal physical-chemical properties would prevent environmental pollution by generating value-added products to improve tobacco seedlings and expand the productivity and quality of tobacco worldwide.
Majorana fermions in quasi-1D and higher dimensional ultracold fermionic optical lattices
Creators: name: Qu, Chunlei
name: Gong, Ming
name: Xu, Yong
name: Tewari, Sumanta
name: Zhang, Chuanwei
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2013
Subjects: subject: Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We show that Majorana fermions (MFs) exist in two- and three-dimensional (2D,3D) fermionic optical lattices with strictly 1D spin-orbit coupling (SOC) which has already been realized in ex- periments. For a quasi-1D topological BCS superfluid, there are multiple MFs at each end which are topologically protected by a chiral symmetry. In the generalization to higher dimensions, the multiple MFs form a zero energy flat band. An additional experimentally tunable in-plane Zeeman field drives the system to a topological Fulde-Ferrell (FF) superfluid phase. We find that even though the multiple MFs are robust against the in-plane Zeeman field if the order parameters at the different chains are enforced to be identical, they are destroyed in the self-consistently obtained FF phase where the order parameters are inhomogeneous on the boundaries. Our results are useful to guide the experimentalists on searching for MFs in the context of ultracold fermionic atoms.
description: 7 pages with supplemental material, 7 figures
Weak-noise limit of a piecewise-smooth stochastic differential equation
Creators: name: Chen, Yaming
name: Baule, Adrian
name: Touchette, Hugo
name: Just, Wolfram
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2013
Subjects: subject: Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We investigate the validity and accuracy of weak-noise (saddle-point or instanton) approximations for piecewise-smooth stochastic differential equations (SDEs), taking as an illustrative example a piecewise-constant SDE, which serves as a simple model of Brownian motion with solid friction. For this model, we show that the weak-noise approximation of the path integral correctly reproduces the known propagator of the SDE at lowest order in the noise power, as well as the main features of the exact propagator with higher-order corrections, provided that the singularity of the path integral associated with the non-smooth SDE is treated with some heuristics. We also show that, as in the case of smooth SDEs, the deterministic paths of the noiseless system correctly describe the behaviour of the non-smooth SDE in the low-noise limit. Finally, we consider a smooth regularisation of the piecewise-constant SDE and study to which extent this regularisation can rectify some of the problems encountered when dealing with discontinuous drifts and singularities in SDEs.
Rice varieties with contrasting nitrogen use efficiency present different expression of amino acid transporters and ammonium transporters
Creators: name: Pereira, Erinaldo Gomes
name: Sperandio, Marcus Vinícius Loss
name: Santos, Leandro Azevedo
name: Bucher, Carlos Alberto
name: Coelho, Cassia Pereira
name: Fernandes, Manlio Silvestre
Publisher: name: Taylor & Francis
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Biochemistry
subject: Medicine
subject: Genetics
subject: FOS: Biological sciences
subject: Physiology
subject: 59999 Environmental Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Earth and related environmental sciences
subject: 39999 Chemical Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Chemical sciences
subject: Ecology
subject: Sociology
subject: FOS: Sociology
subject: 69999 Biological Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: Developmental Biology
subject: Plant Biology

description: We evaluated the effects of isoforms of ammonium transporters (AMT) and amino acid transporters (AAT) on three rice varieties cultivated with different levels of ammonium (NH4+) and its biochemical responses. The rice varieties used were IAC-47 (improved), Manteiga and Piauí (landraces), cultivated under 0.2 mM NH4+ (low N, LN), 1 mM NH4+ (sufficient N, SN) or resupply with 1 mM of NH4+ after three days without nitrogen (N). When cultivated with LN, the Piauí variety presented a higher expression of AAT (Lysine-Histidine Transporter 4 (OsLHT4) and GABA Transporters (OsGAT1)) in roots, while Manteiga and IAC-47 presented higher expression of the Amino Acid Permease 1 (OsAAP1) and Ammonium Transporter 1.1 (OsAMT1.1), respectively. Additionally, Piauí had the higher expression of glutamine synthetase (OsGS1.1 and OsGS1.3) in shoots cultivated with LN or resupply. The Piauí variety displayed higher glutamine synthetase activity and amino acid content under resupply. Manteiga and Piauí presented a lower reduction in fresh weight of leaves and sheaths under LN compared to IAC-47. The results suggest that the improved variety IAC-47 is more efficient when cultivated with SN, while, under LN or resupply, the landrace varieties were superior. Overall, the molecular responses were different among the varieties, which may affected their nitrogen metabolism.
Localization and real Jacobi forms
Creators: name: Ashok, Sujay K.
name: Doroud, Nima
name: Troost, Jan
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2013
Subjects: subject: High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We calculate the elliptic genus of two dimensional abelian gauged linear sigma models with (2,2) supersymmetry using supersymmetric localization. The matter sector contains charged chiral multiplets as well as Stueckelberg fields coupled to the vector multiplets. These models include theories that flow in the infrared to non-linear sigma models with target spaces that are non-compact Kahler manifolds with U(N) isometry and with an asymptotically linear dilaton direction. The elliptic genera are the modular completions of mock Jacobi forms that have been proposed recently using complementary arguments. We also compute the elliptic genera of models that contain multiple Stueckelberg fields from first principles.
description: 19+1 pages, LaTeX. Minor correction
Re-analysis of the $Λ(1520)$ photoproduction reaction
Creators: name: Xie, Ju-Jun
name: Wang, En
name: Nieves, J.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2013
Subjects: subject: Nuclear Theory (nucl-th)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: Based on previous studies that support the important role of the $N^*(2120) D_{13}$ resonance in the $γp \to K^+ Λ(1520)$ reaction, we make a re-analysis of this $Λ(1520)$ photoproduction reaction taking into account the recent CLAS differential cross-section data. In addition to the contact, $t-$channel $\bar K$ exchange, $s-$channel nucleon pole and $N^*(2120)$ [previously called $N^*(2080)$] resonance contributions, which have been already considered in previous works, we also study the $u-$channel $Λ(1115)$ hyperon pole term. The latter mechanism has always been ignored in all theoretical analysis, which has mostly relied on the very forward $K^+$ angular LEPS data. It is shown that when the contributions from the $N^*(2120)$ resonance and the $Λ(1115)$ hyperon are taken into account, both the new CLAS and the previous LEPS data can be simultaneously described. We also show that the contribution from the $u-$channel $Λ(1115)$ pole term produces an enhancement for large $K^+$ angles, and it becomes more and more relevant as the photon energy increases, being essential to describe the CLAS differential cross sections at backward angles. Furthermore, we find that the new CLAS data also favor the existence of the $N^*(2120)$ resonance, and that these measurements can be used to further constrain its properties.
description: 10 pages, 6 figures
D-JRP19-WP2.2 Report on the Foodborne Pathogens (FBPs) detected in metagenomics datasets by in silico analysis
Creators: name: Cacciò Simone Mario
name: Franssen Frits
name: Van Der Ark Kees,
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2022
Subjects: Cryptosporidium parvum
Giardia duodenalis
Metagenomics
In silico analyses

description: This is a report of the "OHEJP Project: PARADISE" that deals with the detection of Foodborne Pathogens (FBPs) in metagenomics datasets by in silico analysis (D-JRP19-WP2.2)
Variability of Massive Stars with Known Spectral Types in the Small Magellanic Cloud Using 8 Years of OGLE-III Data
Creators: name: Kourniotis, M.
name: Bonanos, A. Z.
name: Soszynski, I.
name: Poleski, R.
name: Krikelis, G.
name: Udalski, A.
name: Szymanski, M. K.
name: Kubiak, M.
name: Pietrzynski, G.
name: Wyrzykowski, L.
name: Ulaczyk, K.
name: Kozlowski, S.
name: Pietrukowicz, P.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2013
Subjects: subject: Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We present a variability study of 4646 massive stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) with known spectral types from the catalog of Bonanos et al. (2010) using the light curves from the OGLE-III database. The goal is to exploit the time domain information available through OGLE-III to gain insight into the processes that govern the evolution of massive stars. This variability survey of massive stars with known spectral types is larger than any previous survey by a factor of 7. We find that 60% of our sample (2766 stars) show no significant variability and 40% (1880 stars) exhibit variability distributed as follows: 807 stars display low-amplitude stochastic variability with fluctuations in I-band of up to 0.05 mag, 443 stars present irregular variability of higher amplitude (76% of these are reported as variables for the first time), 205 are eclipsing binaries (including 101 newly discovered systems), 50 are candidate rotating variables, 126 are classical Cepheids, 188 stars exhibit short-term sinusoidal periodicity (P < 3 days) making them candidate "slowly pulsating B stars" and non-radial Be pulsators, and 61 periodic stars exhibit longer periods. We demonstrate the wealth of information provided in the time domain, by doubling the number of known massive eclipsing binary systems and identifying 189 new candidate early-type Be and 20 Oe stars in the SMC. In addition, we find that ~80% of Be stars are photometrically variable in the OGLE-III time domain and provide evidence that short-term pulsating stars with additional photometric variability are rotating close to their break-up velocity.
description: 46 pages, 18 figures, 11 tables. A&A in press. See http://media.wix.com/ugd/d2ba94_1596d7db762b496c89f21d03891f46c3.pdf for a version with full resolution figures
Plant growth-promoting of olive and walnut actinobacteria: isolation, screening PGP traits, antifungal activities, identification, and hydroponic production of wheat
Creators: name: Dede, Alper
name: Güven, Kıymet
Publisher: name: Taylor & Francis
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Biochemistry
subject: Microbiology
subject: FOS: Biological sciences
subject: Biotechnology
subject: 59999 Environmental Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Earth and related environmental sciences
subject: 39999 Chemical Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Chemical sciences
subject: Ecology
subject: 69999 Biological Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: Developmental Biology
subject: Plant Biology

description: Bacteria are among the most frequently studied microorganisms in plant growth-promoting traits and fighting against different pathogens. Actinobacteria are prokaryotic organisms that produce mycelium, spores, and can form various secondary metabolites, especially antibiotics. In our study, free-living and endophytic Actinobacteria were isolated from rhizosphere soils and plant parts of olive (Olea europaea L.) and walnut (Juglans regia L.) trees, which are commercially essential agricultural products for Turkey. The study aimed to explore the plant growth-promoting activities of these Actinobacteria as biological fertilizers. Some of the properties of purified Actinobacteria that regulate the plant growth-promoting (PGP) traits; phosphate solubilization, indole-3-acetic acid, siderophore, ammonia, protease, beta-galactosidase, chitinase production, and antagonistic activities against various plant-pathogen fungi were investigated. As a result, 422 Actinobacteria were isolated, and 88 Actinobacteria determined to be possible plant bio-fertilizers were identified as Streptomyces spp. (70), Amycolatopsis spp. (12), Micromonospora spp. (four) and Nocardiopsis spp. (two) after the sequencing of their 16S rRNA genes. Moreover, four Streptomyces spp. and two Amycolatopsis spp. were used in hydroponic germination of wheat seeds (Triticum aestivum L.), and plant growth in terms of root and stem parts increased.
NeuroSketcher: Synthesizing Non-Differentiable Programs with Non-Differentiable Loss Functions
Creators: Emireddy, Thirupathi Reddy
Publisher: name: University of Alberta Library
Year: 2023

Programmatic hypotheses offer valuable properties, such as generalizability and interpretability. However, such hypotheses can be elusive, as one finds them by searching over large spaces of programs. Recent work showed that neural networks can be used to guide the search in the programmatic space by filling in the “holes” of the program sketches considered in the search. Despite its promising results, this approach requires that the synthesized programs and the loss function be differentiable, which can severely limit its use in practice. In this dissertation, we overcome this weakness with a two-step search. The first search uses an abstraction of the original language where non differentiable operations of the language are replaced with neural networks, thus resulting in a language of differentiable programs. The second search, which is not neural-guided, completes the promising sketches generated in the first search by searching in the original language space while optimizing for any loss function, including non-differentiable ones. We use our approach to synthesize programmatic heuristic functions for two permutation sorting problems: the Pancake and the Topspin puzzles. Our method discovered heuristic functions for the Pancake and Topspin puzzles that outperform some of the best known heuristics for these domains. Due to their programmatic representation, we can prove that search algorithms using our heuristic functions are guaranteed to find bounded-suboptimal solutions.
Designing resource efficient integrated crop management modules for direct seeded rice-zero till wheat rotation of north western India: Impacts on system productivity, energy-nutrient-carbon dynamics
Creators: name: Biswakarma, Niraj
name: Pooniya, Vijay
name: Zhiipao, R Rustum
name: Kumar, Dinesh
name: Shivay, Yashbir Singh
name: Meena, Mahesh Chand
name: Lama, Achal
name: Das, Kajal
name: Jat, Ram Dhan
name: Puniya, Manmohan
name: Babu, Subhash
Publisher: name: Taylor & Francis
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Space Science
subject: Medicine
subject: Pharmacology
subject: 59999 Environmental Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Earth and related environmental sciences
subject: 39999 Chemical Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Chemical sciences
subject: Ecology
subject: FOS: Biological sciences
subject: 69999 Biological Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: Plant Biology

description: Eight integrated crop management (ICM) practices were evaluated for six years consecutively, which are ICM1&2: ‘business-as-usual’ (conventional transplanted rice fb flatbed wheat), ICM3&4: conventional direct seeded rice (DSR) fb furrow irrigated raised-bed wheat without residues, ICM5&6: conservation agriculture (CA)-based zero-tilled (ZT) DSR fb ZT wheat with the wheat and rice residues and ICM7&8: CA-based ZTDSR fb ZT wheat with the wheat, mungbean and rice residues. ICM7-8 produced 9.6–16.4% and 9.4–9.9% greater system rice equivalent yield (REY) than the ICM1-4 and ICM5-6, respectively. Residue-retained CA-based ICM5-8 had 23.2% and 58.5% greater N and P balance, respectively, than the residue removed (ICM1-4); subsequently, negative K balance (–53 to –115.5 kg ha−1) was recorded in ICM1-4. ICM5-8 consumed ~60-78% of total energy and produced the highest energy output (Eo) in rice (11.5–12.6%)/wheat (7.3–13%) than ICM1-4. In contrast, ICM1-4 had a greater energy use efficiency (EUE) compared to ICM5-8 due to lesser energy input (EI) through indirect renewable sources. At a soil depth of 0.0–0.45 m, the ICM5-8 contributed 7.9% and 20.2% greater active and passive OC pools over the ICM1-4. Thus, CA-based ICM in rice-wheat rotation (RWR) could be a possible substitute for the positive nutrient balance, system yields and energy and carbon dynamics.
Diagnostics for insufficiencies of posterior calculations in Bayesian signal inference
Creators: name: Dorn, Sebastian
name: Oppermann, Niels
name: Enßlin, Torsten A.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2013
Subjects: subject: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
subject: Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability (physics.data-an)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We present an error-diagnostic validation method for posterior distributions in Bayesian signal inference, an advancement of a previous work. It transfers deviations from the correct posterior into characteristic deviations from a uniform distribution of a quantity constructed for this purpose. We show that this method is able to reveal and discriminate several kinds of numerical and approximation errors, as well as their impact on the posterior distribution. For this we present four typical analytical examples of posteriors with incorrect variance, skewness, position of the maximum, or normalization. We show further how this test can be applied to multidimensional signals.
Hidden sector monopole, vector dark matter and dark radiation with Higgs portal
Creators: name: Baek, Seungwon
name: Ko, P.
name: Park, Wan-Il
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2013
Subjects: subject: High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph)
subject: Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We show that the 't Hooft-Polyakov monopole model in the hidden sector with Higgs portal interaction makes a viable dark matter model, where monopole and massive vector dark matter (VDM) are stable due to topological conservation and the unbroken subgroup $U(1)_X$. We show that, even though observed CMB data requires the dark gauge coupling to be quite small, a right amount of VDM thermal relic can be obtained via $s$-channel resonant annihilation for the mass of VDM close to or smaller than the half of SM higgs mass, thanks to Higgs portal interaction. Monopole relic density turns out to be several orders of magnitude smaller than observed dark matter relic density. Direct detection experiments, particularly, the projected XENON1T experiment, may probe the parameter space where the dark Higgs is lighter than $\lesssim 60 {\rm GeV}$. In addition, the dark photon associated with unbroken $U(1)_X$ contributes to the radiation energy density at present, giving $ΔN_{\rm eff}^ν\sim 0.1$ as the extra relativistic neutrino species.
description: 17 pages, 10 figures, extended version submitted to a journal
Peering through the Mists of Time: Charles R. Knight and the Art of Imagining Dinosaurs
Creators: Anger, Karin
Publisher: name: University of Alberta Library
Year: 2023

This thesis examines Charles R. Knight’s images of dinosaurs produced around the turn of the nineteenth century in comparison to natural history images of living animals. Using a combination of scholarship from animal studies and an analysis of the side of production, it argues Knight used visual strategies and methodologies of depicting living animals to show dinosaurs as animals like those alive in the present moment. As well as putting forward specific theories about the dinosaur species in question, Knight’s images argue that dinosaurs were once alive, and that they were not that different from living animals. This thesis seeks to explore how Knight’s images articulate the idea of a dinosaur as a group of animals that were once alive, and how Knight constructed images of animals as living beings. I situate Knight in the history of paleontology while examining how the broader history of science and settler colonialism impacted that history. In the second section of the thesis, I place Knight’s work in the context of paleoart, natural history illustration, and his role with the American Museum of Natural History before comparing a selection of Knight’s illustrations of Mesozoic dinosaurs and living animals. My analysis centers on the ways in which these images navigate the tensions inherent in depicting extinct animals as though they are alive, as well as the flexibility, anxiety, and uncertainty inherent in creating images of the distant past. Furthermore, this thesis puts forward a suggestion to scholars to consider paleoart as it relates to animal art and animal studies
Light Sterile Neutrinos in Cosmology and Short-Baseline Oscillation Experiments
Creators: name: Gariazzo, S.
name: Giunti, C.
name: Laveder, M.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2013
Subjects: subject: High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph)
subject: Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO)
subject: High Energy Physics - Experiment (hep-ex)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We analyze the most recent cosmological data, including Planck, taking into account the possible existence of a sterile neutrino with a mass at the eV scale indicated by short-baseline neutrino oscillations data in the 3+1 framework. We show that the contribution of local measurements of the Hubble constant induces an increase of the value of the effective number of relativistic degrees of freedom above the Standard Model value, giving an indication in favor of the existence of sterile neutrinos and their contribution to dark radiation. Furthermore, the measurements of the local galaxy cluster mass distribution favor the existence of sterile neutrinos with eV-scale masses, in agreement with short-baseline neutrino oscillations data. In this case there is no tension between cosmological and short-baseline neutrino oscillations data, but the contribution of the sterile neutrino to the effective number of relativistic degrees of freedom is likely to be smaller than one. Considering the Dodelson-Widrow and thermal models for the statistical cosmological distribution of sterile neutrinos, we found that in the Dodelson-Widrow model there is a slightly better compatibility between cosmological and short-baseline neutrino oscillations data and the required suppression of the production of sterile neutrinos in the early Universe is slightly smaller.
description: 12 pages; final version published in JHEP 1311 (2013) 211
The squashed entanglement of a quantum channel
Creators: name: Takeoka, Masahiro
name: Guha, Saikat
name: Wilde, Mark M.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2013
Subjects: subject: Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
subject: Information Theory (cs.IT)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences

description: This paper defines the squashed entanglement of a quantum channel as the maximum squashed entanglement that can be registered by a sender and receiver at the input and output of a quantum channel, respectively. A new subadditivity inequality for the original squashed entanglement measure of Christandl and Winter leads to the conclusion that the squashed entanglement of a quantum channel is an additive function of a tensor product of any two quantum channels. More importantly, this new subadditivity inequality, along with prior results of Christandl, Winter, et al., establishes the squashed entanglement of a quantum channel as an upper bound on the quantum communication capacity of any channel assisted by unlimited forward and backward classical communication. A similar proof establishes this quantity as an upper bound on the private capacity of a quantum channel assisted by unlimited forward and backward public classical communication. This latter result is relevant as a limitation on rates achievable in quantum key distribution. As an important application, we determine that these capacities can never exceed log((1+eta)/(1-eta)) for a pure-loss bosonic channel for which a fraction eta of the input photons make it to the output on average. The best known lower bound on these capacities is equal to log(1/(1-eta)). Thus, in the high-loss regime for which eta << 1, this new upper bound demonstrates that the protocols corresponding to the above lower bound are nearly optimal.
description: v3: 25 pages, 3 figures, significant expansion of paper; v2: error in a prior version corrected (main result unaffected), cited Tucci for his work related to squashed entanglement; 5 + epsilon pages and 2-page appendix
Phenomenology of Dirac Neutralino Dark Matter
Creators: name: Buckley, Matthew R.
name: Hooper, Dan
name: Kumar, Jason
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2013
Subjects: subject: High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph)
subject: Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: In supersymmetric models with an unbroken R-symmetry (rather than only R-parity), the neutralinos are Dirac fermions rather than Majorana. In this article, we discuss the phenomenology of neutralino dark matter in such models, including the calculation of the thermal relic abundance, and constraints and prospects for direct and indirect searches. Due to the large elastic scattering cross sections with nuclei predicted in R-symmetric models, we are forced to consider a neutralino that is predominantly bino, with very little higgsino mixing. We find a large region of parameter space in which bino-like Dirac neutralinos with masses between 10 and 380 GeV can annihilate through slepton exchange to provide a thermal relic abundance in agreement with the observed cosmological density, without relying on coannihilations or resonant annihilations. The signatures for the indirect detection of Dirac neutralinos are very different than predicted in the Majorana case, with annihilations proceeding dominately to $τ^+ τ^-$, $μ^+ μ^-$ and $e^+ e^-$ final states, without the standard chirality suppression. And unlike Majorana dark matter candidates, Dirac neutralinos experience spin-independent scattering with nuclei through vector couplings (via $Z$ and squark exchange), leading to potentially large rates at direct detection experiments. These and other characteristics make Dirac neutralinos potentially interesting within the context of recent direct and indirect detection anomalies. We also discuss the case in which the introduction of a small Majorana mass term breaks the $R$-symmetry, splitting the Dirac neutralino into a pair of nearly degenerate Majorana states.
description: 14 pages, 4 figures. v2 contains minor revisions, additional citations
The Joy and Flavour of Being Cuban: An Ethnographic Study of Cuban Humour
Creators: Baker, Josephine M. K.
Publisher: name: University of Alberta Library
Year: 2023

This study explores the social functions of humour in present-day Cuba. Nine participants

located in the area of Santa Marta, Cuba, of varying age, sex, and occupation responded to ten

questions on a questionnaire related to humour and Cuban life. Transcripts of their answers were

analyzed using thematic analysis for major themes consistent across interviews. Eight themes

were identified related to humour in Cuba: Identity, Resilience, Enriching Relationships, Group

Bonding, Nicknames, Creativity, Undermining Authority, and Expression of Freedom. These

themes were analyzed using Austin and Butler’s Speech Act Theory, Goffman’s Frame Analysis

and Facework, and Bourdieu’s Forms of Capital. Information collected from participants was

supplemented by the researcher’s own lived experience in Cuba. Each theme was considered

individually and in combination to provide a picture of the social functions of humour usage in

Cuba. Humour is an integral part of Cuban identity, an essential component in the creation and

maintenance of relationships, and a tool for navigating the social and political dynamics within

Cuba.
D-JRP19-WP2.3 Report on limit of detection of amplicon-based and shotgun metagenomics
Creators: name: Cacciò Simone Mario
name: Franssen Frits
name: Van Der Ark Kees,
name: Stensvold C. Rune
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2022
Subjects: Cryptosporidium parvum
Giardia duodenalis
Shotgun metagenomics
Amplicon-based megatenomics
Limit of detection

description: This is a report of the OHEJP project: PARADISE that deals with the analysis of the limit of detection of amplicon-based and shotgun metagenomics (D-JRP19-WP2.3)
Real Time Recurrent Learning with Complex-Valued Trace Units
Creators: Elelimy, Esraa MMA
Publisher: name: University of Alberta Library
Year: 2023

Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) are typically used to learn representations in partially observable environments. Unfortunately, training RNNs is known to be difficult, and the difficulty increases for agents who learn online and continually interact with the environment. Two common strategies to overcome this difficulty are to approximate gradient-based algorithms for learning the recurrent state or to find a recurrent architecture for which a computationally cheap gradient-based learning algorithm exists. Methods in the second category often limit representational capacity, just as using linear activations or diagonal weight matrices. In this work, we propose a novel recurrent architecture called Recurrent Trace Units (RTUs). RTUs expand representation capacity, but remain inexpensive to train. We derive RT2, a real-time recurrent learning algorithm for RTUs that is tractable, exact, and has linear compute and memory complexities. We investigate performance on a diagnostic benchmark inspired by animal learning and across several partially observable control environments. We show the agents that use RT2 achieve overall better performance when faced with long-term prediction tasks and reach their goals faster in control tasks.