Δ14C PEAKS APPEARING IN EARLYWOOD AND LATEWOOD TREE RINGS (AD 770–780) IN NORTHEASTERN ARIZONA

ABSTRACT The AD 775 peak in Δ14C (henceforth, M12) was first measured by Miyake et al. and has since been confirmed globally. Here we present earlywood and latewood Δ14C values from tree rings of pinyon pine (Pinus edulis) from Mummy Cave, Canyon de Chelly National Monument, Chinle, Arizona, USA, for the period AD 770–780. These data reconfirm the timing of M12 and show a small rise in Δ14C in AD 774 latewood. Allowing for the delay in lateral transfer of radiocarbon produced at high latitude, this suggests that 14C peak production occurred in late winter or spring of AD 774. Additionally, Δ14C decreased slightly in the earlywood of AD 775 and increased in the latewood of AD 775 to a higher level than that observed in AD 774.

How Does Immigration Affect Wages and the Unemployment Rate in Malaysia? A Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) Approach

Malaysia had approximately 2 million migrants in 2018, and this number was increasing dramatically by 25 percent in 2019. Parallels with the aims of country policy to reduce migrant workers' dependency in 2020, managing the workers needs to be clarified. At the same time, the country still needs to keep them for specific sectors. These issues motivate us to analyze the migrant worker's requirements at different levels of skills and wages. Using Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) modeling, at four-level nested CES production function, this study found high skilled migrants will harm wages for the high skilled and skilled groups while the opposite effect was observed for the semiskilled and low-skilled groups. However, when the migrant stock increases slightly below 1 percent, it will reduce the wages for semiskilled workers due to substitution effects. This study also found that the influx of low-skilled migrant workers will reduce salaries for semiskilled and low-skilled workers. The analysis also indicates that a small rise in high skilled immigrant labour will reduce the unemployment rate; likewise, increasing more than 4 percent will increase the unemployment rate. The results provide the policymaker guidelines to employ foreign workers' best skills to control the inequality of wages among skilled and low-skilled workers.

Biodiversity Soup II: A bulk-sample metabarcoding pipeline emphasizing error reduction

Despite widespread recognition of its great promise to aid decision-making in environmental management, the applied use of metabarcoding requires improvements to reduce the multiple errors that arise during PCR amplification, sequencing, and library generation. We present a co-designed wet-lab and bioinformatic workflow for metabarcoding bulk samples that removes both false-positive (tag jumps, chimeras, erroneous sequences) and false-negative (‘dropout’) errors. However, we find that it is not possible to recover relative-abundance information from amplicon data, due to persistent species-specific biases.To present and validate our workflow, we created eight mock arthropod soups, all containing the same 248 arthropod morphospecies but differing in absolute and relative DNA concentrations, and we ran them under five different PCR conditions. Our pipeline includes qPCR-optimized PCR annealing temperature and cycle number, twin-tagging, multiple independent PCR replicates per sample, and negative and positive controls. In the bioinformatic portion, we introduceBegum, which is a new version ofDAMe(Zepeda-Mendozaet al. 2016.BMC Res. Notes9:255) that ignores heterogeneity spacers, allows primer mismatches when demultiplexing samples, and is more efficient. LikeDAMe, Begumremoves tag-jumped reads and removes sequence errors by keeping only sequences that appear in more than one PCR above a minimum copy number per PCR. The filtering thresholds are user-configurable.We report that OTU dropout frequency and taxonomic amplification bias are both reduced by using a PCR annealing temperature and cycle number on the low ends of the ranges currently used for the Leray-FolDegenRev primers. We also report that tag jumps and erroneous sequences can be nearly eliminated withBegumfiltering, at the cost of only a small rise in dropouts. We replicate published findings that uneven size distribution of input biomasses leads to greater dropout frequency and that OTU size is a poor predictor of species input biomass. Finally, we find no evidence for ‘tag-biased’ PCR amplification.To aid learning, reproducibility, and the design and testing of alternative metabarcoding pipelines, we provide our Illumina and input-species sequence datasets, scripts, a spreadsheet for designing primer tags, and a tutorial.

Numerical Modelling and Dynamic Response Analysis of Curved Floating Bridges with a Small Rise-Span Ratio

As a potential option for transportation applications in coastal areas, curved floating bridges with a same small specified rise to span ratio of 0.134, supported by multiple pontoons, are investigated in this paper. Two conceptual curved bridges are proposed following a circular arc shape with different span lengths (500 and 1000 m). Both bridges are end-connected to the shoreline without any underwater mooring system, while the end-connections can be either all six degrees of freedom (D.O.F) fixed or two rotational D.O.F released. Eigen value analysis is carried out to identify the modal parameters of the floating bridge system. Static and dynamic analysis under extreme environmental conditions are performed to study the pontoon motions as well as structural responses of the bridge deck. Deflections and internal forces (axial forces, shear forces, and bending moment) are thoroughly studied with the variation of the span length and end support conditions in terms of the same specified small rise-span ratio. The ratio of axial force to horizontal bending moment are presented. From the study, it is found that the current parameters for the bridge are relatively reasonable regarding responses. However, the small rise-span does not provide enough arch effects. A higher rise-span ratio or stiffer bridge cross-sectional property is preferred, especially for the long bridge. In addition, the flexible end connections are preferred considering the structural responses at the end regions.

China to see more systemic financial risk in the 2020s

Subject China corporate bond defaults. Significance The deleveraging campaign that the Chinese authorities have conducted since 2016 has left many more companies struggling to refinance their debt as the economy slows. Tougher financing conditions are affecting more industries, not just those with excess capacity. In the decade to 2014, the state implicitly guaranteed that it would bail out firms in danger of defaulting on their debts. However, the rise in defaults among private, state and local government firms since 2014 suggests that even state-owned firms can no longer rely on such a guarantee. Impacts Further easing measures are likely as the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) wishes to minimise systemic risk. An expanding pool of delinquent debt, along with investors’ searching for high yields, is fuelling China's junk bond market. Foreign investors will continue to allocate more funds to China’s corporate bonds but will be increasingly mindful of rising credit risks. Regulatory change will aid Chinese firms’ scope to restructure debt or recover from default, boosting the corporate debt market. The PBoC has said that it will tolerate a "small" rise in bad loans, but coronavirus disruption could test its definition of small.

Structure and function of the pulmonary circulation

The normal pulmonary circulation distributes deoxygenated blood at low pressure and high flow to the pulmonary capillaries for the purposes of gas exchange. The structure of pulmonary blood vessels varies with their function—from large elastic conductance arteries, to small muscular arteries, to thin-walled vessels involved in gas exchange. Pulmonary vascular resistance is about one-tenth of systemic vascular resistance, with the small muscular and partially muscular arteries of 50–150 µm diameter being the site of the greatest contribution to resistance. In the normal pulmonary circulation, a large increase in cardiac output causes only a small rise in mean pulmonary arterial pressure because pulmonary vascular resistance falls on exercise. Pulmonary blood flow is heterogeneous: gravity causes increased blood flow in the more dependent parts of the lung; within a horizontal region—or within an acinus—blood-flow heterogeneity is imposed by the branching pattern of the vessels.

Prediksi Kurs Rupiah Terhadap Dolar Dengan FTS-Markov Chain Dan Hidden Markov Model

Hidden Markov model is a development of the Markov chain where the state cannot be observed directly (hidden), but can only be observed, a set of other observations and combination of fuzzy logic and Markov chain to predict Rupiah exchange rate against the Dollar. The exchange rate of purchasing and exchange rate of saling is divided into four states, namely down large, down small, small rise, and large rise are symbolized respectively S1, S2, S3, and S4. Probability of sequences of observation for 3 days later is computed by forwarding and Backward Algorithm, determine the hidden state sequence using the viterbi algorithm and estimate the HMM parameters using the Baum Welch algorithm. The MAPE result exchange rate of purchase of FTS-Markov Chain is 1,355% and the exchange rate of sale of FTS-Markov Chain is 1,317%. The sequences of observation which optimized within exchange rate of purchase is X* = {S3,S3,S3}, within exchange rate of sale is also X* = {S3,S3,S3}. Keywords: Exchange rate, FTS-Markov Chain, Hidden Markov Model

Production of light flavored charged hadron in pp collisions at 900 GeV with hadron production models

Differential yields of light flavored charged hadrons in [Formula: see text] collision at 0.9 TeV in the transverse momentum [Formula: see text] ranging from 0.1–2.5 GeV/c with pseudorapidity [Formula: see text] are presented here. The spectra obtained by Monte Carlo simulations with event generators — EPOS 1.99, EPOS-LHC, QGSJETII-04 and Sibyll2.3c — are compared with the ALICE measurements. For [Formula: see text] mesons, EPOS1.99, EPOS-LHC and QGSJETII-04 described the ALICE measurement very well almost in the entire [Formula: see text] range except QGSJETII-04 which underpredicts with [Formula: see text] below 0.4 GeV/c. The Sibyll2.3c model slightly overpredicts for [Formula: see text] GeV/c and underpredicts afterwards. For [Formula: see text] mesons, all models describe the experimental data qualitatively, except at high [Formula: see text], where the models slightly underpredict. The EPOS-LHC and QGSJETII-04 models, at low [Formula: see text], describe the distribution of the experimental measurements very well in both cases of protons and anti-protons, whereas the former underpredicts and the latter overpredicts at higher [Formula: see text]. The EPOS1.99 overpredicts at low [Formula: see text] below 1 GeV/c, whereas it reproduces the results well above it. Sibyll2.3c overpredicts the distribution over the entire range of [Formula: see text]. Models described the average transverse momentum [Formula: see text] of these hadron species as a function of their mass, showing small rise in the average [Formula: see text] with the mass of the particles. The same has been observed by the STAR collaboration with measurements in [Formula: see text] reactions at [Formula: see text] = 200 GeV and also in [Formula: see text] collisions at [Formula: see text] = 900 GeV.

Pengaruh Dosis Pemupukan N terhadap Kualitas Biji Kakao di Punung Pacitan

<p>Punung is a village in Pacitan Regency which potentiall for cultivating of cocoa, on the contrary it produces low seeds quality. This condition is caused by unintensive fertilization and low light intensity caused by shading. The effort to increase cocoa seed quality was by light compensation and the use of nitrogen (N) fertilizer. The purpose of this reseach was to determine of optimum N dosage fertilizer for inproving seed quality. The research was arranged in Completely Randomized Block Design with one factor which is the varies N dosages (0 as control, 820, 870, and 920 gram plant-1 year-1), level of radiation represented as blocks. Nitrogen fertilization was applicated three times. Fertilization of P (SP36) and K (KCl), 1390 and 1000 gram tree-1 year-1 respectively. The observation variables are soil character, micro climate, leaf anatomi, physical and chemical seed quality. The result showed that N fertilizer influenced positively toward increasing potassium (K) content in leaf tissue on the first and second month, while on the third month no significant influence toward N, P and K content. However there was preference of increased N, P and K content in leaf tissue on each month although in small rise number. In the leaves tissue, there was detected that nitrogen proportion was larger than potassium and phosphorus. N fertilizer increased the physical and chemical seed quality (protein and fat content). Optimum dosage was 870 gram tree-1 year-1, highest weight of 100 seed (146 gram) and seed quality was categorized as grade 1.</p>