IN SUPPORT OF THE AMERICAN GEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE

Geophysics ◽  
1955 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 683-687 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chester R. Longwell

Last year the number of member societies in the American Geological Institute was increased to 13 by admission of the Association of Geology Teachers. The youthful AGI, therefore, reminds us of our country at an early stage, when 13 independent colonies came to realize the advantage of standing together. What exactly is the AGI, and what are the prospects that it will improve the status of all earth science?

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (10) ◽  
pp. 751-767
Author(s):  
Pobitra Borah ◽  
Sangeeta Hazarika ◽  
Satyendra Deka ◽  
Katharigatta N. Venugopala ◽  
Anroop B. Nair ◽  
...  

The successful conversion of natural products (NPs) into lead compounds and novel pharmacophores has emboldened the researchers to harness the drug discovery process with a lot more enthusiasm. However, forfeit of bioactive NPs resulting from an overabundance of metabolites and their wide dynamic range have created the bottleneck in NP researches. Similarly, the existence of multidimensional challenges, including the evaluation of pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, and safety parameters, has been a concerning issue. Advancement of technology has brought the evolution of traditional natural product researches into the computer-based assessment exhibiting pretentious remarks about their efficiency in drug discovery. The early attention to the quality of the NPs may reduce the attrition rate of drug candidates by parallel assessment of ADMET profiling. This article reviews the status, challenges, opportunities, and integration of advanced technologies in natural product research. Indeed, emphasis will be laid on the current and futuristic direction towards the application of newer technologies in early-stage ADMET profiling of bioactive moieties from the natural sources. It can be expected that combinatorial approaches in ADMET profiling will fortify the natural product-based drug discovery in the near future.


Author(s):  
Tino Walther ◽  
Marianne Pieper ◽  
Hans-Joachim Bargstädt

<p>The construction industry is essentially determined by digital transformation and an increasingly complex market environment. Project controlling and monitoring is of high importance for construction site activities to achieve the project goals. Digital planning and recording methods make it possible to identify deviations at an early stage and to ensure the profitability of the project. To discuss the current practice of construction performance measurement as well as digital approaches in this domain, a qualitative study was carried out. The results of this empirical analysis examine the status quo of the construction performance measurement in civil engineering companies to illustrate the currently used methods and trends. Findings for the future use of digital planning and recording methods were obtained from the investigation. Based on empirical hypotheses, recommendations for action as well as for an improved process model are given.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shumpei Hisamoto ◽  
Koichi Goka ◽  
Yoshiko Sakamoto

Abstract Efforts to eradicate invasive alien species commonly use simulations to calculate the cost-effectiveness of surveys. Although eradication of Solenopsis invicta in the early stages of an invasion is important, few simulations are available to calculate the cost-effectiveness of surveys when a single colony has been detected. In the case of S. invicta, it is difficult to determine from the status of the detected colony whether new queens have dispersed, so it is necessary to consider dispersal as a probabilistic event and calculate its probability. We therefore first constructed a mathematical model in which we used Bayesian statistics to estimate the probability of dispersal as a function of the results of the survey. This mathematical model revealed that the efficacy of the survey and the associated cost differed greatly between cases depending on whether dispersal was or was not confirmed. Next, we developed a simulation that incorporated this mathematical model to inform the determination of the survey area when a single colony had been detected. The simulation showed how ecological parameters and geographical information could be used to identify an efficacious survey area, even in heterogeneous landscapes such as international ports where invasions occur sporadically. Finally, we used this simulation to assess the efficacy of a survey in the case of an S. invicta outbreak at the Port of Tokyo, Japan. The results suggested that the survey covered a sufficiently wide area but that it could have been designed in a more efficacious manner.


Author(s):  
Eric Schickler

This chapter examines the status quo before the start of the civil rights realignment, showing that civil rights was simply not viewed as part of the standard “liberal program” as of the early 1930s. Although African Americans were vocal in attacking Franklin D. Roosevelt's weak civil rights record, they were largely alone. When whites on the left pushed Roosevelt to be a more forthright liberal or progressive, they criticized him for inadequate support for labor, weak business regulation, and insufficient recovery spending—but not for his failure to back civil rights. At this early stage, the “enemies” of a liberal Democratic Party generally were not identified with the South but instead were probusiness Democrats from the Northeast, associated with Al Smith of New York. Economic questions were the key battleground in the eyes of white liberals, and civil rights did not figure in these debates.


2020 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 142-161
Author(s):  
Alexander M. Dorozhkin ◽  
Anna V. Sakharova ◽  

The article is devoted to the analysis of some specific characteristics of the language of normal science described by Thomas Kuhn. We would like to draw attention to two problems associated with some features of the concept of paradigms. The first problem relates to the question, how scientists belonging to one paradigm record the position of a group of scientists adhering to another paradigm. Precisely, the article examines how the problem of “synchronous fragmentation of knowledge” is solved in the language of science. The second issue concerns the age of “normal” knowledge and the question, how the anomalous content of knowledge can appear and accumulate, and what is the status of scientists developing the “anomalous” knowledge. We reveal some possible parameters by which we can determine the early stage of the functioning of normal science, the periods of its heyday and decline. In this article, we try to find an approach to these problems by examining the natural language of scientists, using techniques of content analysis, as well as complex linguistic analysis, including discursive, semantic and pragmatic components. Linguistic analysis can’t finally solve the problems of philosophical analysis of scientific knowledge, in particular, the state of the paradigm concept by Thomas Kuhn. But it helps us to identify the boundaries of paradigms, as well as the state of normal knowledge. The problem of fragmentation of knowledge by paradigms, as well as the problem of “aging” of knowledge inside a “normal science” are not directly expressed by scientists. But they can be recorded by analysis of everyday language, which often becomes entangled with the language of science. The high rate of words that semantically indicate the “obvious” knowledge in scientific texts points to a “good” state of the paradigm. And vice versa, the words denoting “improbable” indirectly indicate its crisis state or express an attitude to the knowledge belonging to a different paradigm. The analysis of the data shows that the alleged complete replacement of Kuhn's concept of a paradigm by the concept of “trading zones” by Peter Galison does not appear to be accomplished. Just as the concept of scientific paradigm did not completely replace the falsificationalism, the Galison’s “trading zones” do not fully reflect the real state of affairs in science. Therefore, the Kuhnian paradigms are recorded at the lexical level in the communication of scientists.


Author(s):  
Daniela Thurnherr

This chapter discusses the reception of the ECHR in Austria and Switzerland. Topics covered include the accession and ratification of the ECHR in both countries, the status of the ECHR in national law, an overview of the activity of the European Court of Human Rights, and the ECtHR's case law and its effects on the national legal order. Although both countries joined the ECHR at a relatively early stage, this starting position led to different outcomes. The main reason is because the common denominators of neutrality and federalism in these two countries are actually rather small: as Austria follows a very different concept of neutrality, it did not face any (political) difficulties before and during the ratification process. Switzerland, on the other hand, was very reluctant to join the Council of Europe and careful to avoid any concessions with regard to neutrality.


Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 1256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luca Patané

Bio-inspired solutions are often taken into account to solve problems that nature took millions of years to deal with. In the field of robotics, when we need to design systems able to perform in unstructured environments, bio-inspiration can be a useful instrument both for mechanical design and for the control architecture. In the proposed work the problem of landslide monitoring is addressed proposing a bio-inspired robotic structure developed to deploy a series of smart sensors on target locations with the aim of creating a sensor network capable of acquiring information on the status of the area of interest. The acquired data can be used both to create models and to generate alert signals when a landslide event is identified in the early stage. The design process of the robotic system, including dynamic simulations and robot experiments, will be presented here.


Biomolecules ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 866 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piotr Fabian ◽  
Katarzyna Stapor ◽  
Irena Roterman

The model, describing a method of determining the structure of an early intermediate in the process of protein folding to analyze nonredundant PDB protein bases, allows determining the relationship between the sequence of tetrapeptides and their structural forms expressed by structural codes. The contingency table expressing such a relationship can be used to predict the structure of polypeptides by proposing a structural form with a precision limited to the structural code. However, by analyzing structural forms in native forms of proteins based on the fuzzy oil drop model, one can also determine the status of polypeptide chain fragments with respect to the assumptions of this model. Whether the probability distributions for both compliant and noncompliant forms were similar or whether the tetrapeptide sequences showed some differences at a level of a set of structural codes was investigated. The analysis presented here indicated that some sequences in both forms revealed differences in probability distributions expressed as a negative statistically significant correlation coefficient. This meant that the identified sections (tetrapeptides) took different forms against the fuzzy oil drop model. It may suggest that the information of the final status with respect to hydrophobic core formation is already carried by the structure of the early-stage intermediate.


2019 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wejdan Alakaleek

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the developmental level of entrepreneurship education within the context of Jordanian higher education. The level of development in such education is investigated based on two areas: the educational courses and programs themselves and the formal structures within which they are embedded. Design/methodology/approach The quantitative approach is based on a survey scan of all 29 Jordanian universities, including their course plans, educational programs, departments and centers. A list of entrepreneurship centers, programs and course subjects is provided and analyzed. Findings The main findings of study are: in Jordan, entrepreneurship education is still at an early stage of development, and its offerings are limited to a few courses covering some introductory subjects in small business and entrepreneurship courses. Of the Jordanian universities, one university offers a major educational graduate program in entrepreneurship and 27.5 percent have centers for innovation and entrepreneurship, but lack any entrepreneurship departments. Entrepreneurship education is new in Jordan: the first provided course was a small business management; the first center was established in 2004 and later in 2012, it offered the first educational programs in entrepreneurship. Research implications This paper assists all stakeholders in higher education to build an understanding of the nature of entrepreneurship education in Jordan and supports the design of appropriate strategies for encouraging entrepreneurial subjects to be incorporated into the country’s universities educational programs. Originality/value The value of this study stems from its aim to provide an overview of the status of entrepreneurship education in Jordanian universities. It also makes a contribution to knowledge as the first nationwide study in this context.


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