INTRODUCTION The development of viable bio-based energy systems offers many potential benefits relative to energy availability, national security, a cleaner environment, and associated economic rewards (DOE 2000). Largescale bioenergy use will require the deployment of environmentally acceptable energy crops and cropping systems for producing large quantities of low-cost, high-quality biomass f...

Heras, J.M., M.L. Marina, and M.C. Garcia, Development of a Perfusion Ion-Exchange Chromatography Method for the Separation of Soybean Proteins and Its Application to Cultivar Identification, J. Chromatogr. A 1153:97–103, 2007. Fractionation of soybean proteins has been obtained using a developed method of perfusion ion-exchange chromatography. The method comprises a two-step gradient optimized...

Nutritional indices of Helicoverpa armigera (Hübner) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) on different host plants including chickpea (cultivars Arman, Hashem, Azad, and Binivich), common bean (cultivar Khomein), white kidney bean (cultivar Dehghan), red kidney bean (cultivar Goli), cowpea (cultivar Mashhad), tomato (cultivar Meshkin) and potato (cultivars Agria and Satina) were studied under laboratory co...

Cassava roots have a low-protein content (0.7-2%). Amino acids such as lysine and methionine are also low, and some research reports have indicated the absence of methionine. The amino acid profiles of a common cassava cultivar and an interspecific hybrid, namely ICB 300, were determined using the computerized amino acid analyzer Hitachi L-8500. The interspecific hybrid has 10 times more lysine...

Molecular typing of 377 female date palm trees belonging to 18 Libyan cultivars and representing common genotypes in the central Libyan oasis of Al Jufrah was performed using 16 highly polymorphic microsatellite or SSR loci. A total of 110 alleles with an average of 6.88 alleles per locus were scored indicating the high level of polymorphism existing among the cultivars thus allowing their gene...

A well-saturated molecular linkage map is a prerequisite for modern plant breeding. Several genetic maps have been developed for soybean with various types of molecular markers. Simple sequence repeats (SSRs) are single-locus markers with high allelic variation and are widely applicable to different genotypes. We have now mapped 1810 SSR or sequence-tagged site markers in one or more of three r...

Cotton is one of the most important crops for its natural textile fibers in the world. However, it often suffered from drought stress during its growth and development, resulting in a drastic reduction in cotton productivity. Therefore, study on molecular mechanism of cotton drought-tolerance is very important for increasing cotton production. To investigate molecular mechanism of cotton drough...

In this paper we explore the relationship between “preference elicitation”, a learning-style problem that arises in combinatorial auctions, and the problem of learning via queries studied in computational learning theory. Preference elicitation is the process of asking questions about the preferences of bidders so as to best divide some set of goods. As a learning problem, it can be thought of ...

In this paper, we show that personalized levels can be automatically generated for platform games. We build on previous work, where models were derived that predicted player experience based on features of level design and on playing styles. These models are constructed using preference learning, based on questionnaires administered to players after playing different levels. The contributions o...

We propose a versatile framework for combining knowledge bases in modular systems with preferences. In our formalism, each module (knowledge base) can be specified in a different language. We define the notion of a preference-based modular system that includes a formalization of metapreferences. We prove that our formalism is robust in the sense that the operations for combining modules preserv...