Data are a crucial raw material of this century. The amount of data that have been created in materials science thus far and that continues to be created every day is immense. Without a proper infrastructure that allows for collecting and sharing data, the envisioned success of big data-driven materials science will be hampered. For the field of computational materials science, the NOMAD (Novel Materials Discovery) Center of Excellence (CoE) has changed the scientific culture toward comprehensive and findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) data, opening new avenues for mining materials science big data. Novel data-analytics concepts and tools turn data into knowledge and help in the prediction of new materials and in the identification of new properties of already known materials.

Leafy spurge (Euphorbia esula L.) is an invasive perennial weed infesting range and recreational lands of North America. Previous research and omics projects with E. esula have helped develop it as a model for studying many aspects of perennial plant development and response to abiotic stress. However, the lack of an assembled genome for E. esula has limited the power of previous transcriptomics studies to identify functional promoter elements and transcription factor binding sites. An assembled genome for E. esula would enhance our understanding of signaling processes controlling plant development and responses to environmental stress and provide a better understanding of genetic factors impacting weediness traits, evolution, and herbicide resistance. A comprehensive transcriptome database would also assist in analyzing future RNA-seq studies and is needed to annotate and assess genomic sequence assemblies. Here, we assembled and annotated 56,234 unigenes from an assembly of 589,235 RNA-seq-derived contigs and a previously published Sanger-sequenced expressed sequence tag collection. The resulting data indicate that we now have sequence for >90% of the expressed E. esula protein-coding genes. We also assembled the gene space of E. esula by using a limited coverage (18X) genomic sequence database. In this study, the programs Velvet and Trinity produced the best gene-space assemblies based on representation of expressed and conserved eukaryotic genes. The results indicate that E. esula contains as much as 23% repetitive sequences, of which 11% are unique. Our sequence data were also sufficient for assembling a full chloroplast and partial mitochondrial genome. Further, marker analysis identified more than 150,000 high-quality variants in our E. esula L-RNA–scaffolded, whole-genome, Trinity-assembled genome. Based on these results, E. esula appears to have limited heterozygosity. This study provides a blueprint for low-cost genomic assemblies in weed species and new resources for identifying conserved and novel promoter regions among coordinately expressed genes of E. esula.

There is little debate that the health workforce is a key component of the health care system. Since the training of doctors and nurses takes several years, and the building of new schools even longer, projections are needed to allow for the development of health workforce policies. Our work develops a projection model for the demand of doctors and nurses by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries in the year 2030. The model is based on a country’s demand for health services, which includes the following factors: per capita income, out-of-pocket health expenditures and the ageing of its population. The supply of doctors and nurses is projected using country-specific autoregressive integrated moving average models. Our work shows how dramatic imbalances in the number of doctors and nurses will be in OECD countries should current trends continue. For each country in the OECD with sufficient data, we report its demand, supply and shortage or surplus of doctors and nurses for 2030. We project a shortage of nearly 400,000 doctors across 32 OECD countries and shortage of nearly 2.5 million nurses across 23 OECD countries in 2030. We discuss the results and suggest policies that address the shortages.

Many philosophers have discussed the normative significance of personal relationships. The implicit focus of most of these discussions is on the normative significance of active, ongoing relationships. But, of course, all relationships end eventually. This article focuses on relationships that end through the death of one of the participants. A relationship that has ended in this way can still be a source of reasons for the surviving participant. This represents a different dimension of the normative significance of personal relationships, and it is a dimension that tends to become increasingly salient as one ages. Indeed, aging is in part a normative phenomenon, because it involves significant changes in the kinds of reasons people have. This article explores some of those changes and the distinctive questions to which they give rise.

The mixing of pigs unacquainted with each other in commercial pig production is a standard procedure which leads to agonistic interactions with a wide range of individual pig behaviour. Hence, the aims of the present study were to assess the heritabilities of agonistic behaviour and to estimate correlations between three different age groups (weaned pigs n = 1111, growing pigs n = 446 and breeding gilts n = 279). The behavioural observation analysis included a period of 17 h directly after mixing as weaned pigs, growing pigs and breeding gilts (220 days of age) whereby the following agonistic traits were observed: number of fights (NF), duration of fights (DF), initiated fights (IF), received fights (RF), fights won (FW) and fights lost (FL). The behaviour of the weaned and growing pigs was significantly influenced by cross-fostering, their weight at mixing and litter attributes. Cross-fostered animals showed fewer agonistic interactions as weaned pigs and as growing pigs than non-cross-fostered animals. The influence of weight revealed that heavier pigs had a higher NF score at weaning and as growing pigs. The random litter effect explained up to 0·08 of the total variance in weaned and 0·04 in growing pigs, whereby this could partly be explained by litter size. Pigs from larger litters tended to have more agonistic interactions. The heritabilities of the recorded traits were at a low to medium level but similar between the age groups. There were high correlations between NF and all other traits in weaned pigs. The trait IF showed that the more fights a pig initiated, the more it won. This was also found for growing pigs and breeding gilts. The relationships between the age groups provided no uniform trend. The phenotypic correlations were low and the genetic correlations varied widely, partly due to the small sample size.

Clean and As covered zinc-blende and wurtzite GaN surfaces have been investigated employing density-functional theory calculations. For clean GaN surfaces our calculations indicate the stability of several novel surface structures that are very different from those found on traditional III-V semiconductors. Adding impurities commonly present in significant concentrations during growth strongly modifies surface reconstructions and energies. In particular, we find that arsenic has a low solubility and significantly stabilizes the cubic GaN (001) surface making it interesting as a potential surfactant. Finally, we have studied the diffusion of Ga and N adatoms on both the equilibrium and non-equilibrium surfaces. Our calculations reveal a very different diffusivity for Ga and N adatoms: While Ga adatoms are very mobile at typical growth temperatures, the diffusion of N adatoms is slower by several orders of magnitude. These results give insight into the fundamental growth mechanisms and allow conclusions concerning optimum growth conditions.

La cueva de El Gigante en las tierras altas de Honduras fue ocupada tan temprano como 10,000 años a.P. y da información previamente desconocida sobre la prehistoria de Honduras. Las condiciones climáticas secas resultan en una excelente preservación de esta área residencial. Las excavaciones documentaron una clara secuencia de ocho estratos culturales bien definidos que contienen hogares, así como depósitos densos de lítica, y restos microbotánicos y faunísticos. Basándose en métodos de fechamiento de radiocarbon convencional y AMS, se identificaron tres horizontes culturales distintos. La ocupación más antigua es de la fase Esperanza, la cual representa ocupación del Arcaico Temprano que se extiende entre 10,040–9100 a.P. La segunda es la fase Marcala que corresponde al periodo Arcaico Medio, entre 7350–6050 a.P. La tercera y más reciente ocupación en estas cuevas es en la fase Estanzuela, entre 3900–1500 a.P. El Gigante fue usado como residencia durante los dos periodos del Arcaico. Varias puntas de proyectil largas fueron recuperadas en niveles estratigráficos claramente identificados como del Paleoindio. El examen de los datos faunísticos muestra que, mientras disminuyen los huesos de mamíferos grandes, aumentan los de mamíferos de menor tamaño y los de animales no mamíferos. Una gran cantidad de maíz (Zea sp.) está presente en el sitio durante el periodo Estanzuela. La variedad de materiales de comida encontrados entre la transición sugiere el mantenimiento a largo plazo de una amplitud dietética en el contexto de una economía flexible y mezclada. El Gigante es un sitio que revela información clave en relación a la colonización inicial de Centroamérica y la incorporación de especies domesticadas dentro de una base de forrajeo que acompaña a la transición a la agricultura.

This contribution presents the first description of crinoids from western margin of Parnaíba Basin. It also presents their first description in the Pimenteira Formation (Devonian of the Parnaíba Basin, state of Tocantins, Brazil). The material is represented by hundreds of columnals, pluricolumnals, as well as isolated calyx plates. Columnal and pluricolumnal morphology allowed the identification of Laudonomphalus aff. L. tuberosus, and Exaesiodiscus dimerocrinosus n. sp. Based upon calyx plate morphology a new Rhodocrinitidae species was erected, Monstrocrinus incognitus n. sp. The genera Exaesiodiscus, Laudonomphalus, and Monstrocrinus were previously described from the Devonian of Amazonas Basin. Exaesiodiscus dimerocrinosus is also identified from the northwest margin of Paraná Basin. The Monstrocrinus occurrence is rare in the Middle Devonian, until now known in Germany, Spain, and Algeria Lower Devonian (upper Emsian) and only in northern Brazil in the Middle Devonian (Eifelian.) These facts provide valuable arguments for paleogeographic interpretations regarding the pattern of distribution of invertebrates in this region of Gondwana and suggest potential migration routes in northern Gondwana during the Devonian.

The states of lowest energy have been calculated for iron-group (3d) transition-metal impurities in silicon. The donor and acceptor levels reproduce all experimentally observed transitions and trends. The theory predicts that the ground states of the early 3d interstitials and late 3d substitutionals have low spin. This is in conflict with the generally accepted model of Ludwig and Woodbury, if applied to these impurities, but not with existing experiments.

We show how self-consistent total-energy calculations can be used to identify the position of defects in semiconductors. Despite intensive experimental research on S, Se and Te point defects in Si, it has remained unclear whether these impurities occupy substitutional or Td-interstitial sites. Our Green-function total-energy calculations show that the substitutional site is favored by several eV and therefore the stable defect position is identified as substitutional. We further consider the formation energies of distant defect pairs consisting of a substitutional chalcogen and a Si self-interstitial and we study the reaction where the two constituents change places.

We investigate the influence of Rh-doping on electrical properties of InP and InGaAs. Deep level transient spectroscopy carried out on Rh-doped as well as undoped reference samples reveals a single Rh-related deep level in both semiconductors. While a Rh-related electron trap in InGaAs is situated at EC-0.38eV a Rh-related hole trap is found to exist in InP approximately 0.73 eV above the valence band edge. The internal reference rule for 3d transition metal deep levels is found to be valid for these 4d transition metal levels: their energy is constant across the InGaAs/InP heterojunction. We conclude these levels to be the single acceptor states of Rh substitutionally incorporated on cation sites.