Ms. Penn is a pioneering figure in applied merchandising techniques for auction marketplaces

Biopharma shares have outperformed the broader market year-to-date, giving rise to apprehension over whether a pullback is in the offing. An analyst at BofA Securities said Friday that now is the time to go from defensive to offensive in the sector, as quarantines are winding down in several parts of the globe.The Biopharma Analyst Analyst Geoff Meacham shortlisted Eli Lilly And Co (NYSE: LLY), Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated (NASDAQ: VRTX), Bristol-Myers Squibb Co (NYSE: BMY), BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc. (NASDAQ: BMRN) and Amgen, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMGN) as biopharma stocks where he would put his money to work.The analyst has the following ratings and price targets for the shares: * Lilly: Buy/$165 * Vertex: Buy/$300 * Bristol-Myers Squibb: Buy/raised the price target from $75 to $80 * BioMarin: Buy/lifted price target from $110 to $120 * Amgen: Buy/price target increased from $265 to $2755 Reasons For BofA's Bullish Disposition BofA is increasingly bullish on the biopharma group due to the following factors, Meacham said: * Expectations for robust revenue growth of 6% in the second half of 2020 compared to the first-half, which is double that of the S&P 500's revenue growth. * Reasonable price-earnings for the stocks in the sector. * Many value-creating events lined up for the second half. * Lower policy risk stemming from goodwill earned from the COVID-19 pipeline. * A consistently positive FDA backdrop.Q1 Earnings Get 'A' Grade All of the big biotechs and major pharma companies reported both revenue and adjusted EPS beats in the first quarter, with Lilly and Vertex even raising some parts of their 2020 guidance, Meacham said.Citing slower new starts and forex headwinds, Bristol-Myers Squibb and BioMarin lowered their 2020 revenue guidance, but maintained their EPS guidance, the analyst said. Meacham expressed surprise at Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE: MRK) and Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: ALXN) lowering their 2020 revenue and adjusted EPS guidance, given his belief that oncology or orphan diseases wouldn't be as sensitive to COVID-19 disruption.See also: Attention Biotech Investors: Mark Your Calendar For These May PDUFA Dates Lilly One of The Higher Quality Stocks In BofA's Coverage Lilly is a source of differentiated growth given its early product cycle and diversified base business, including diabetes, immunology and immunotoxicology and migraine, and an advancing late-stage pipeline of potentially best-in-class or first-in-class therapies, Meacham said.The analyst said he likes Lily's potential for additional earnings growth in 2020-2021 and views Lilly as one of the higher quality stocks in his coverage despite its higher valuation. The prospects for 2021 look attractive, with selpercatinib potentially launching in non-small cell lung cancer and thyroid cancer by year's end, and tirzepatide approval in 2021 representing a "step change" for the diabetes franchise, he said. Consensus For Vertex To Move Higher? Vertex has a richer -- though well-deserved -- valuation, due to its differentiated growth profile, Meacham said.Given that Vertex's commercial execution is largely unaffected by the COVID-19 pandemic, the analyst said investors will begin to look forward to 2021 sooner than for other companies with more commercial risk.BofA expects consensus estimates to continue to move higher, making Vertex's valuation even more attractive.Bristol-Myers Has Highly Differentiated Growth With an estimated 8% revenue growth and 19% EPS growth in 2021 compared to 5-6% and 12%, respectively, for peers, and with six new launches expected this year, 2020 is shaping up to be a very robust period for Bristol-Myers despite the ongoing COVID-19 headwinds, Meacham said. The analyst said the company's growth looks highly differentiated.An increasingly diversified product mix and beatable launch expectations position the company for meaningful upside to consolidated P&L, with improving synergies, he said. BioMarin's 'Game-Changing' Late-Stage Pipeline BioMarin's late-stage pipeline in valrox and vosoritide have improved its growth outlook, Meacham said.The analyst termed the company's late-stage pipeline as "game-changing." The second-half launch of Roctavian is the most important catalyst for the company this year, with the product likely to accelerate the company's already above-average growth profile, he said. "We see BioMarin as one of the higher quality names in our coverage universe given its clean growth story and it remains our SMid cap top pick." Amgen Looks To New Product Growth To Compensate For Legacy Product Erosion The long-term outlook for Amgen's Otezla is improving given the recently announced Phase 3 data for mild-to-moderate psoriasis, Meacham said.The company rapidly refocused its story from legacy product erosion to new product growth with the acquisition of Otezla from the Bristol/Celgene deal, the analyst said. "Since then Amgen's growth profile has only improved, led by an expanded addressable market for Otezla, outperforming Amgen Biosimilars and Evenity franchises, aggressive formulary negotiation for Aimovig, and an exciting pipeline in AMG 510 and tezepelumab looking to contribute as soon as 2021." The Price Action The iShares NASDAQ Biotechnology Index (NASDAQ: IBB) was last seen trading up 1.25% to 128.76, adding to its 5.6% year-to-date gain. Related Link: The Week Ahead In Biotech: Smid-Cap Earnings News Flow Picks Up Pace See more from Benzinga * The Daily Biotech Pulse: Ayala IPO, Pluristem Starts Phase 2 Trial Of COVID Treatment, European Nod For Takeda * The Daily Biotech Pulse: FDA Approves Novartis Lung Cancer Drug, 2-Way Contest Emerging For Tetraphase Pharma, Dexcom To Join S&P 500 * The Daily Biotech Pulse: FDA Nod For AstraZeneca, AbbVie-Allergan Deal Clears Antitrust Hurdle(C) 2020 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

Biostatisticians use statistical techniques that your current everyday data scientists have probably never heard of. This is a great example where lack of domain knowledge exposes you as someone that does not know what they are doing and are merely hopping on a trend.

So in this article, we will interpret, analyze the COVID-19 DNA sequence data and try to get as many insights regarding the proteins that made it up. Later will compare COVID-19 DNA with MERS and SARS and we’ll understand the relationship among them.

Gregory Unruh, director and professor of the Lincoln Center for Ethics in Global Management at the Thunderbird School.

The Bike looks like an ordinary bicycle, but helps during rides like an electric bicycle with power assistance and strong pushes like an e-bike.

Faster authentication can reduce contact center costs, help eliminate the need for security questions, and contribute to an enhanced customer experience

Margaret Parker, MD, MCCM, speaks with Thomas V. Brogan, MD, about the article Variability in Antibiotic Use Across PICUs, published in the June 2018 issue of Pediatric Critical Care Medicine. Dr.

Stocks in news: IndiGo, Biocon, L&T and M&M

A federal jury in Salt Lake City, Utah, convicted California businessman Lev Aslan Dermen, also known as Levon Termendzhyan, of criminal charges today relating to a $1 billion renewable fuel tax credit fraud scheme, announced Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Richard E. Zuckerman of the Justice Department’s Tax Division, U.S. Attorney John W. Huber for the District of Utah, Don Fort Chief of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) - Criminal Investigation, Acting Special Agent-in-Charge Lance Ehrig for the Denver Area Office of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) - Criminal Investigation Division, and Special Agent-in-Charge Michael Mentavlos for the Denver Area Office of Defense Criminal Investigative Service.

The study ‘Sustainable biomass and bioenergy in the Netherlands’ was carried out by researchers Goh, Mai-Moulin and Junginger from Utrecht University in the framework of the Netherlands Programmes Sustainable Biomass. It looks at “biomass from the three major categories, i.e. woody biomass, oils and fats and carbohydrates used in different sectors in the Netherlands”.

For each of these three categories a Sankey diagram is presented, like for example this one for oils and fats.
[See image gallery at www.sankey-diagrams.com]
The diagram has a very clear structure. Import streams are from the top and exports leave to the bottom. Domestic Dutch production is from the left, use of oils and fats in the Netherlands is to the right. Flows are in million tons (MT) dry mass. Data is for the year 2014.

See the full report here.

The University of Washington in Seattle is a big place. It includes the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), which has produced a widely-circulated and widely-criticized coronavirus model. As we’ve discussed, the IHME model is essentially a curve-fitting exercise that makes projections using the second derivative of the time trend on the log scale. […]

Wildlife biologists will be putting GPS collars on ten adult elk between late August and October of this year to gather movement data of the elk at Grand Canyon National Park. The GPS collar information will be used to inform the development of a draft elk management plan. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/wildlife-biologists-to-begin-gathering-gps-data-for-elk-at-grand-canyon-np.htm

Bike stunts, pet birthdays and a baby names which stumped the world are some of the trending topics on social media in Australia.

Cofiring wood and coal at Fairbanks, Alaska, area electrical generation facilities represents an opportunity to use woody biomass from clearings within the borough's wildland-urban interface and from other sources, such as sawmill residues and woody material intended for landfills. Potential benefits of cofiring include air quality improvements, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, market and employment development opportunities, and reduction of municipal wood residues at area landfills. Important issues that must be addressed to enable cofiring include wood chip uniformity and quality, fuel mixing procedures, transportation and wood chip processing costs, infrastructure requirements, and long-term biomass supply. Additional steps in implementing successful cofiring programs could include test burns, an assessment of area biomass supply and treatment needs, and a detailed economic and technical feasibility study. Although Fairbanks North Star Borough is well positioned to use biomass for cofiring at coal burning facilities, long-term cofiring operations would require expansion of biomass sources beyond defensible-space-related clearings alone. Long-term sources could potentially include a range of woody materials including forest harvesting residues, sawmill residues, and municipal wastes.

The Chugach and Tongass National Forests are changing, possibly in response to global warming.

Resource managers have long mapped biophysical forest data. Often lacking, however, is relevant social science data for understanding the variety of human needs a given landscape fulfills.

Air quality is a critical issue affecting the health of billions of people worldwide, yet often little is known about what is in the air we breathe. To reduce air pollution’s health impacts, pollution sources must first be reliably identified. Otherwise, it is impossible to design and effectively enforce environmental standards. However, urban networks of air quality monitors are often too widely spaced to identify the sources of air pollutants, especially for pollutants that do not disperse far from their sources. Developing high-resolution pollution maps with data from these widely spaced monitors is problematic.

In rural Alaskan communities, high economic, social, and ecological costs are associated with fossil fuel use for power generation.

Increasingly large and severe wildfires threaten millions of forested acres throughout the West. Under certain conditions, mechanical thinning can address these hazardous conditions while providing opportunitiesto create renewable energy and reduce our carbon footprint but how do land managers decide whether thinning is a good idea? How do they decide where to begin, and what to do with the removed trees? Prioritizing treatment areas and determining the most effective techniques for fuel hazard reduction depends on various factors such as owner objectives, forest types, and the availability of processing facilities.

Woody biomass can be used for the generation of heat, electricity, and biofuels. In many cases, the technology for converting woody biomass into energy has been established for decades, but because the price of woody biomass energy has not been competitive with traditional fossil fuels, bioenergy production from woody biomass has not been widely adopted. However, current projections of future energy use and renewable energy and climate change legislation under consideration suggest increased use of both forest and agriculture biomass energy in the coming decades.

The Pacific Northwest Research Station launched a Biodiversity Initiative to assist natural resource professionals in integrating complex biodiversity concepts into natural resource management processes. We canvassed clients from various affiliations to determine the main challenges they face in biodiversity management, to define their information needs, and to understand how best to deliver biodiversity information within a collaborative framework. The biodiversity management challenges that emerged included (1) the lack of well-defined biodiversity management policies, (2) understanding and quantifying the interaction effects between a number of factors (e.g., disturbance types, management practices) and biodiversity, (3) the lack of applied biodiversity monitoring strategies, (4) difficulty in locating and accessing biodiversity information, and (5) balancing conflicting values relating to biodiversity. We also list the biodiversity information product needs of clients, as well as preferred technology transfer methods, and we discuss the future direction of the Biodiversity Initiative.

Participatory (collaborative, multiparty, citizen, volunteer) monitoring is a process that has been increasing in popularity and use in both developing and industrialized societies over the last several decades. It reflects the understanding that natural resource decisions are more effective and less controversial when stakeholders who have an interest in the results are involved in the process. An adequate number of such projects have now been organized, tried, and evaluated such that sufficient information exists to recommend a comprehensive approach to implementing such processes. This handbook was written for managers and scientists in the United States who are contemplating a participatory approach to monitoring biological resources, especially biodiversity. It is designed as a how-to manual with discussions of relevant topics, checklists of important considerations to address, and resources for further information. Worksheets for developing, implementing, and evaluating a monitoring plan are posted on a companion Web site. The subject matter is divided into 3 stages of a monitoring project encompassing a total of 22 topical modules. These modules can be used in any sequence on an ongoing basis. Stages and modules include (1) planning-documentation, goals, indicators, collaboration, decisions, context, organization, participants, communication, incentives, design, and resources; (2) implementation-training, safety, fieldwork, sampling, data, and quality; and (3) followthrough-analysis, reporting, evaluation, and celebrations. Collaboration always involves colearning, so documenting choices, plans, and activities with the Web site worksheets is integral to the manual's effectiveness.

The Fall River research site in coastal Washington is an affiliate installation of the North American Long-Term Soil Productivity (LTSP) network, which constitutes one of the world's largest coordinated research programs addressing forest management impacts on sustained productivity. Overall goals of the Fall River study are to assess effects of biomass removals, soil compaction, tillage, and vegetation control on site properties and growth of planted Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco). Biomass-removal treatments included removal of commercial bole (BO), bole to 5-cm top diameter (BO5), total tree (TT), and total tree plus all legacy woody debris (TT+). Vegetation control (VC) effects were tested in BO, while soil compaction and compaction plus tillage were imposed in BO+VC treatment. All treatments were imposed in 1999. The preharvest stand contained similar amounts of carbon (C) above the mineral soil (292 Mg/ha) as within the mineral soil to 80- cm depth including roots (298 Mg/ha). Carbon stores above the mineral soil ordered by size were live trees (193 Mg/ha), old-growth logs (37 Mg/ha), forest floor (27 Mg/ha), old-growth stumps and snags (17 Mg/ha), coarse woody debris (11 Mg/ha), dead trees/snags (7 Mg/ha), and understory vegetation (0.1 Mg/ha). The mineral soil to 80-cm depth contained 248 Mg C/ha, and roots added 41 Mg/ha. Total nitrogen (N) in mineral soil and roots (13 349 kg/ha) was more than 10 times the N store above the mineral soil (1323 kg/ha). Postharvest C above mineral soil decreased to 129, 120, 63, and 50 Mg/ha in BO, BO5, TT, and TT+, respectively. Total N above the mineral soil decreased to 722, 747, 414, and 353 Mg/ha in BO, BO5, TT, and TT+, respectively. The ratio of total C above the mineral soil to total C within the mineral soil was markedly altered by biomass removal, but proportions of total N stores were reduced only 3 to 6 percent owing to the large soil N reservoir on site.

Hemlock dwarf mistletoe (Arceuthobium tsugense [Rosendahl] G.N. Jones) is a small, inconspicuous parasite that has significant effects on tree growth and stand structure in coastal forest ecosystems of western North America. Most previous research focused on the effects of hemlock dwarf mistletoe on timber production. Previous clearcut harvesting of large areas that removed virtually all infected trees and forestry practices that established even-aged stands of trees effectively prevented or minimized future hemlock dwarf mistletoe impacts. Under this regime, further research on hemlock dwarf mistletoe was considered unnecessary. However, current forestry practices that restrict clearcut harvesting to small openings and retain live trees to preserve attributes of old-growth forests create conditions that appear highly favorable for enhanced seed production by hemlock dwarf mistletoe, early spread of the mistletoe to infect young trees, and, consequently, increased growth impacts to residual trees over time. More information is needed on the biology and impacts of hemlock dwarf mistletoe in coastal western hemlock retention harvested forests in the United States of America and Canada. Further work is recommended to develop sampling and monitoring procedures to determine hemlock dwarf mistletoe spread and impacts. We also need to investigate several unusual aspects of hemlock dwarf mistletoe biology and development such as long-distance seed dispersal and persistence in old-growth forests. Detailed tree, stand, and forest-level models are needed to monitor and project hemlock dwarf mistletoe effects over a wide range of ecological conditions and management regimes in coastal forests.

Lichens are highly valued ecological indicators known for their sensitivity to a wide variety of environmental stressors like air quality and climate change. This report summarizes baseline results from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) Lichen Community Indicator covering the first full cycle of data collection (1998-2001, 2003) for Washington, Oregon, and California. During this period, FIA conducted 972 surveys of epiphytic macrolichen communities for monitoring both spatial and long-term temporal trends in forest health. Major research findings are presented with emphasis on lichen biodiversity as well as bioindication of air quality and climate. Considerable effort is devoted to mapping geographic patterns and defining lichen indicator species suitable for estimating air quality and climate.

This paper synthesizes the existing literature about traditional and local ecological knowledge relating to biodiversity in Pacific Northwest forests in order to assess what is needed to apply this knowledge to forest biodiversity conservation efforts. We address four topics: (1) views and values people have relating to biodiversity, (2) the resource use and management practices of local forest users and their effects on biodiversity, (3) methods and models for integrating traditional and local ecological knowledge into biodiversity conservation on public and private lands, and (4) challenges to applying traditional and local ecological knowledge for biodiversity conservation. We focus on the ecological knowledge of three groups who inhabit the region: American Indians, family forest owners, and commercial nontimber forest product (NTFP) harvesters.

We examine the use of woody residues, primarily from forest harvesting or wood products manufacturing operations (and to a limited degree from urban wood wastes), as a feedstock for direct-combustion bioenergy systems for electrical or thermal power applications. We examine opportunities for utilizing biomass for energy at several different scales, with an emphasis on larger scale electrical power generation at stand-alone facilities, and on smaller scale facilities (thermal heating only) such as governmental, educational, or other institutional facilities. We then identify west-wide barriers that tend to inhibit bioenergy applications, including accessibility, terrain, harvesting costs, and capital costs. Finally, we evaluate the role of government as a catalyst in stimulating new technologies and new uses of biomass material.

Quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides Michx.) is a valuable species that is declining in the Blue Mountains of northeastern Oregon. This publication is a compilation of over 20 years of aspen management experience by USDA Forest Service workers in the Blue Mountains.

Timber availability, aboveground tree biomass, and changes in aboveground carbon pools are important consequences of landscape management.

Cofiring of biomass and coal at electrical generation facilities is gaining in importance as a means of reducing fossil fuel consumption, and more than 40 facilities in the United States have conducted test burns. Given the large size of many coal plants, cofiring at even low rates has the potential to utilize relatively large volumes of biomass. This could have important forest management implications if harvest residues or salvage timber are supplied to coal plants. Other feedstocks suitable for cofiring include wood products manufacturing residues, woody municipal wastes, agricultural residues, short-rotation intensive culture forests, or hazard fuel removals. Cofiring at low rates can often be done with minimal changes to plant handling and processing equipment, requiring little capital investment. Cofiring at higher rates can involve repowering entire burners to burn biomass in place of coal, or in some cases, repowering entire powerplants. Our research evaluates the current status of biomass cofiring in North America, identifying current trends and success stories, types of biomass used, coal plant sizes, and primary cofiring regions. We also identify potential barriers to cofiring. Results are presented for more than a dozen plants that are currently cofiring or have recently announced plans to cofire.

Moss growing on urban trees is a useful bio-indicator of cadmium air pollution in Portland, Oregon, a U.S. Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station-led study has found. The work—the first to use moss to generate a rigorous and detailed map of air pollution in a U.S. city—is published online in the journal Science of the Total Environment.

This handbook and financial app is a guide to help communities quickly determine if biomass energy projects might work for them so that this option is not overlooked. Its purpose is as a screening tool designed to save significant time, resources, and investment by weeding out those wood energy projects that may never come to fruition from those that have a chance of success. It establishes technical, financial, and social criteria and indicators to evaluate proposed biomass investment options. Through showcasing of successful projects using text, photos, video interviews, and diagrams, it facilitates virtual project planning and interaction with experts. The interactive wood energy financial app allows estimation of capital investment costs to facilitate project design and screening across a variety of wood energy options. The calculator can be accessed from the eBook or from the Web.

If you’re a local businessperson, an entrepreneur, a tribal partner, a community organizer; a decision-maker for a school district, college, or hospital; a government leader; a project developer; an industry leader; or an equipment manufacturer, the Alaska Community Handbook will be helpful to you.

This book is intended to help people better understand how wood energy is helping to revitalize rural Alaskan communities by reducing energy costs, creating jobs, and helping to educate the next generation.

The Community Biomass Handbook Volume 4: Enterprise Development for Integrated Wood Manufacturing is a guide for creating sustainable business enterprises using small diameter logs and biomass. This fourth volume is a companion to three Community Biomass Handbook volumes: Volume 1: Thermal Wood Energy; Volume 2: Alaska, Where Woody Biomass Can Work; and Volume 3: How Wood Energy is Revitalizing Rural Alaska. This volume is designed to help business partnerships, forest managers, and community groups rapidly explore and evaluate integrated manufacturing opportunities.

The Pacific Northwest Research Station launched a Biodiversity Initiative to assist natural resource professionals in integrating complex biodiversity concepts into natural resource management processes. We canvassed clients from various affiliations to determine the main challenges they face in biodiversity management, to define their information needs, and to understand how best to deliver biodiversity information within a collaborative framework. The biodiversity management challenges that emerged included (1) the lack of well-defined biodiversity management policies, (2) understanding and quantifying the interaction effects between a number of factors (e.g., disturbance types, management practices) and biodiversity, (3) the lack of applied biodiversity monitoring strategies, (4) difficulty in locating and accessing biodiversity information, and (5) balancing conflicting values relating to biodiversity. We also list the biodiversity information product needs of clients, as well as preferred technology transfer methods, and we discuss the future direction of the Biodiversity Initiative.

The Biodiversity Photography Contest has as main objective to promote the theme of biological natural heritage, namely the natural regions, the ecosystems, the habitats and [...]

The post The Biodiversity Photography Contest appeared first on Photocompete.

Tree balance plays an important role in different research areas like theoretical computer science and mathematical phylogenetics. For example, it has long been known that under the Yule model, a pure birth process, imbalanced trees are more likely than balanced ones. Therefore, different methods to measure the balance of trees were introduced. The Sackin index is one of the most frequently used measures for this purpose. In many contexts, statements about the minimal and maximal values of this index have been discussed, but formal proofs have never been provided. Moreover, while the number of trees with maximal Sackin index as well as the number of trees with minimal Sackin index when the number of leaves is a power of 2 are relatively easy to understand, the number of trees with minimal Sackin index for all other numbers of leaves was completely unknown. In this manuscript, we fully characterize trees with minimal and maximal Sackin index and also provide formulas to explicitly calculate the number of such trees.

A reaction-diffusion model was developed describing the spread of the COVID-19 virus considering the mean daily movement of susceptible, exposed and asymptomatic individuals. The model was calibrated using data on the confirmed infection and death from France as well as their initial spatial distribution. First, the system of partial differential equations is studied, then the basic reproduction number, R0 is derived. Second, numerical simulations, based on a combination of level-set and finite differences, shown the spatial spread of COVID-19 from March 16 to June 16. Finally, scenarios of unlockdown are compared according to variation of distancing, or partially spatial lockdown.

Classical studies on aspiration-based dynamics suggest that a dissatisfied individual changes strategy without taking into account the success of others. This promotes defection spreading. The imitation-based dynamics allow individuals to imitate successful strategies without taking into account their own-satisfactions. In this article, we propose to study a dynamic based on aspiration which takes into account imitation of successful strategies for dissatisfied individuals. This helps cooperative members to resist. Individuals compare their success to their desired satisfaction level before making a decision to update their strategies. This mechanism helps individuals with a minimum of self-satisfaction to maintain their strategies. If an individual is dissatisfied, it will learn from others by choosing successful strategies. We derive an exact expression of the fixation probability in well-mixed populations as in structured populations in networks. As a result, we show that selection may favor cooperation more than defection in well-mixed populations as in populations ranged over a regular graph. We show that the best scenario is a graph with small connectivity.

Hearing is often believed to be more sensitive than touch. This assertion is based on a comparison of sensitivities to weak stimuli. The respective stimuli, however, are not easily comparable since hearing is gauged using acoustic pressure and touch using skin displacement. We show that under reasonable assumptions the auditory and tactile detection thresholds can be reconciled on a level playing field. The results indicate that the capacity of touch and hearing to detect weak stimuli varies according to the size of a sensed object as well as to the frequency of its oscillations. In particular, touch is found to be more effective than hearing at detecting small and slow objects.

Histopathology is a reflection of the molecular changes and provides prognostic phenotypes representing the disease progression. In this study, we introduced feature scores generated from hematoxylin and eosin histology images based on deep learning (DL) models developed for prostate pathology. We demonstrated that these feature scores were significantly prognostic for time to event endpoints (biochemical recurrence and cancer-specific survival) and had simultaneously molecular biologic associations to relevant genomic alterations and molecular subtypes using already trained DL models that were not previously exposed to the datasets of the current study. Further, we discussed the potential of such feature scores to improve the current tumor grading system and the challenges that are associated with tumor heterogeneity and the development of prognostic models from histology images. Our findings uncover the potential of feature scores from histology images as digital biomarkers in precision medicine and as an expanding utility for digital pathology.

Due to the exponential growth of biomedical literature, event and relation extraction are important tasks in biomedical text mining. Most work only focus on relation extraction, and detect a single entity pair mention on a short span of text, which is not ideal due to long sentences that appear in biomedical contexts. We propose an approach to both relation and event extraction, for simultaneously predicting relationships between all mention pairs in a text. We also perform an empirical study to discuss different network setups for this purpose. The best performing model includes a set of multi-head attentions and convolutions, an adaptation of the transformer architecture, which offers self-attention the ability to strengthen dependencies among related elements, and models the interaction between features extracted by multiple attention heads. Experiment results demonstrate that our approach outperforms the state of the art on a set of benchmark biomedical corpora including BioNLP 2009, 2011, 2013 and BioCreative 2017 shared tasks.

By Evan H. DeLucia Courtesy of EOS Critics of biofuels like ethanol argue they are an unsustainable use of land. But with careful management, next-generation grass-based biofuels can net climate savings and improve their ecosystems. As the world seeks strategies … Continue reading →

By Jeff Mulhollem Penn State News The first harvest of 34 acres of fast-growing shrub willow from a Penn State demonstration field this winter is a milestone in developing a sustainable biomass supply for renewable energy and bio-based economic development, … Continue reading →

By The Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy Within 25 years, the United States could produce enough biomass to support a bioeconomy, including renewable aquatic and terrestrial biomass resources that could be used for energy and to develop products … Continue reading →

Biocidal compositions and their use in aqueous media, such as metalworking fluids, the compositions comprising a biocidal agent; and a non-biocidal primary amino alcohol compound of the formula (I); wherein R1, R2, R3, R4, and R5 are as defined herein.

Processes for continuous preparation of bioproducts are described herein. The processes include contacting fatty acid glycerides with alcohols in the presence of an acidic heterogeneous catalyst and separating the fatty acid alkyl esters from the reaction products.

A process for producing bio-oil from municipal solid waste, the process including: a) liquifying municipal solid waste, to obtain a mixture containing an oily phase containing bio-oil, a solid phase, and a first aqueous phase; b) treating the first aqueous phase from a) with an adsorbing material, to obtain a second aqueous phase; c) fermenting the second aqueous phase from b), to obtain a biomass; d) subjecting the biomass obtained in c) to the liquification a). The bio-oil obtained is advantageously used in the production of biofuels for motor vehicles or for the generation of electric energy or heat.