The control of sea lice in Atlantic salmon by selective breeding

Sea lice threaten the welfare of farmed Atlantic salmon and the sustainability of fish farming across the world. Chemical treatments are the major method of control but drug resistance means that alternatives are urgently needed. Selective breeding can be a cheap and effective alternative. Here, we combine experimental trials and diagnostics to provide a practical protocol for quantifying resistance to sea lice. We then combined quantitative genetics with epidemiological modelling to make the first prediction of the response to selection, quantified in terms of reduced need for chemical treatments. We infected over 1400 young fish with Lepeophtheirus salmonis, the most important species in the Northern Hemisphere. Mechanisms of resistance were expressed early in infection. Consequently, the number of lice per fish and the ranking of families were very similar at 7 and 17 days post infection, providing a stable window for assessing susceptibility to infection. The heritability of lice numbers within this time window was moderately high at 0.3, confirming that selective breeding is viable. We combined an epidemiological model of sea lice infection and control on a salmon farm with genetic variation in susceptibility among individuals. We simulated 10 generations of selective breeding and examined the frequency of treatments needed to control infection. Our model predicted that substantially fewer chemical treatments are needed to control lice outbreaks in selected populations and chemical treatment could be unnecessary after 10 generations of selection. Selective breeding for sea lice resistance should reduce the impact of sea lice on fish health and thus substantially improve the sustainability of Atlantic salmon production.     

硬件锁中的无线USB

无线USB的前途似乎无与伦比——它能消除那些把大家桌面弄得像鼠窝一样小小的不怎么灵便的电缆。但事实上,只有需要大量的外设时无线USB设备才有优势,而且它必须非常微型而廉价,否则带来的麻烦远多于缠绕的电缆。因此,插在PC USB端口作为无线基站的硬件锁就必须有尽可能高的集成度。但一片芯片中要包含USB有线接口、控制器、无线基带和RF电路,技术上还无法实现。下面我们将看到一家供应商Wisalr的一种可量产参考设计,它是如何接近于解决这个问题的。     

Space-dependent color gamut mapping: a variational approach.

Gamut mapping deals with the need to adjust a color image to fit into the constrained color gamut of a given rendering medium. A typical use for this tool is the reproduction of a color image prior to its printing, such that it exploits best the given printer/medium color gamut, namely the colors the printer can produce on the given medium. Most of the classical gamut mapping methods involve a pixel-by-pixel mapping and ignore the spatial color configuration. Recently proposed spatial-dependent approaches for gamut mapping are either based on heuristic assumptions or involve a high computational cost. In this paper, we present a new variational approach for space-dependent gamut mapping. Our treatment starts with the presentation of a new measure for the problem, closely related to a recent measure proposed for Retinex. We also link our method to recent measures that attempt to couple spectral and spatial perceptual measures. It is shown that the gamut mapping problem leads to a quadratic programming formulation, guaranteed to have a unique solution if the gamut of the target device is convex. An efficient numerical solution is proposed with promising results.     

对电压参考进行滤波以获得低噪声性能

输出电压相对于电压参考的短期变化即为噪声。参考电压噪声一般发生在以下两个频段：短期噪声在0．1Hz～10Hz，宽带噪声在10Hz～1kHz。由于噪声电压一般与参考电压成正比，故常用每百万分之一（ppm）来表示噪声，并借此使每百万分之一值恒定。能隙（或带隙）电压参考具有介于3ppm～16ppm之间的噪声电压，但埋入式齐纳电压参考的噪声更低，介于0．1ppm～0．5ppm之间。噪声随参考电流的增加而减小，但增加参考电流并不是大多数电压参考的选项。     

Learning Automata from Ordered Examples

Connectionist learning models have had considerable empirical success, but it is hard to characterize exactly what they learn. The learning of finite-state languages (FSL) from example strings is a domain which has been extensively studied and might provide an opportunity to help understand connectionist learning. A major problem is that traditional FSL learning assumes the storage of all examples and thus violates connectionist principles. This paper presents a provably correct algorithm for inferring any minimum-state deterministic finite-state automata (FSA) from a complete ordered sample using limited total storage and without storing example strings. The algorithm is an iterative strategy that uses at each stage a current encoding of the data considered so far, and one single sample string. One of the crucial advantages of our algorithm is that the total amount of space used in the course of learning for encoding any finite prefix of the sample is polynomial in the size of the inferred minimum state deterministic FSA. The algorithm is also relatively efficient in time and has been implemented. More importantly, there is a connectionist version of the algorithm that preserves these properties. The connectionist version requires much more structure than the usual models and has been implemented using the Rochester Connectionist Simulator. We also show that no machine with finite working storage can iteratively identify the FSL from arbitrary presentations.     

Complete forward displacement solutions for a class of three-branch parallel manipulators

Forward displacement solutions are presented for a class of spatial parallel manipulators. In particular, considered are manipulators consisting of a platform supported through passive spherical joints by three branches, each branch having three-revolute joints forming its main arm. Solutions are described for arbitrary main-arm layouts and for all possible cases of redundant (nine, eight, and seven sensors) and non-redundant (six sensors) sensing of branch main-arm joint displacements. It is demonstrated that closed-form forward displacement solutions can be found for all cases of redundant sensing. Furthermore, it is shown that a closed-form solution can be obtained for one of the two possible cases of non-redundant sensing of the main-arm joint displacements. The only case of joint displacement sensing not allowing a closed-form forward displacement solution is two joints sensed per branch, a case that can be expressed as a 16th-order polynomial of a single variable. Due to the importance of having efficient and failure-safe solutions for the forward displacement problem, it is suggested that appropriate redundancy in displacement sensing should be an important consideration in the design of parallel manipulation devices. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

混合信号SoC设计的现状与未来

从消费电子市场最容易得到的经验是集成为王。移动型战胜便携型,掌上型战胜移动型,而衬衫口袋型又超过掌上型。即使像游戏机这类桌面设备,时髦的外形和低制造成本目标也要靠更高集成度才能实现。这一趋势并不限于低成本的消费电子产品。军用、汽     

Associations among milk yield, yield persistency, conception, and culling of Israeli Holstein dairy cattle

Genetic correlations among Predicted Differences for milk yield corrected for economic value of fat content, annualized yield, yield persistency, conception rate, and culling rate were estimated. Correlations were .43 between yield persistency and annualized yield, .42 between yield persistency and conception rate, and .1 between annualized yield and conception rate. For Predicted Differences for these traits computed separately for each of first three parities, correlations between pairs were highest for annualized yield and lowest for culling rate. Regression coefficients for conception rate from cow insemination records on daily yield preceding insemination and on absolute change of yield during month of insemination were significantly negative for the first three parities. A positive pleiotropic effect for yield, yield persistency, and conception rate was suggested; therefore, progeny testing for yield persistency may improve yield and conception rate. High yields and large changes of yield during month of insemination adversely affected conception rate of cows within herds.     

Performance analysis of a class of transient detection algorithms-aunified framework

The detection of short-duration nonstationary signals, which are commonly referred to as transients, is often performed in the time-frequency-transform domain. An analytical framework within which the performance of different detectors based on linear transforms can be easily compared, for different classes of signals, is developed. A given class of transients is modeled as a signal existing in a linear subspace, plus a mismatch signal. Closed-form expressions are derived for the best and the worst detection performance for all possible transients in a given class. Using this framework, the performance of detectors based on the Gabor transform and on the short-time Fourier transform is evaluated and compared