We have developed a menu-selection-based Japanese input method for a pen device. To obtain user-input kanji-form text rapidly, the system requires sequence of consonant. Following this, the user selects kanji-form candidates inferred by the system. In some situations, consonant sequences can trigger an explosion of kanji-form candidates. Therefore, we have implemented a method for reducing cand...

This survey paper is based on the lecture notes for the mini course in the summer school at Yau Mathematics Science Center, Tsinghua University, 2014. We describe and characterize all random subsets K of simply connected domain which satisfy the “conformal restriction” property. There are two different types of random sets: the chordal case and the radial case. In the chordal case, the random s...

Probabilistically constrained problems, in which the random variables are finitely distributed, are nonconvex in general and hard to solve. The p-efficiency concept has been widely used to develop efficient methods to solve such problems. Those methods require the generation of p-efficient points (pLEPs) and use an enumeration scheme to identify pLEPs. In this paper, we consider a random vector...

This paper studies the effect of fixing the length of the selected feature subsets on the performance of ant colony optimization (ACO) for feature selection (FS) for supervised learning. It addresses this concern by investigating: (1) determining the optimal feature subset from datamining perspective, (2) demonstrating the solution convergence in case of fixing the length of the selected featur...

To improve their nutrition, most plants associate with soil microorganisms, particularly fungi, to form mycorrhizae. A few lineages, including actinorhizal plants and legumes are also able to interact with nitrogen-fixing bacteria hosted intracellularly inside root nodules. Fossil and molecular data suggest that the molecular mechanisms involved in these root nodule symbioses (RNS) have been pa...

Plant growth-promoting bacteria –PGPB– are microorganisms that can grow in, on, or around plant tissues and stimulate plant growth by numerous mechanisms (Vessey 2003). Within this group, nitrogen-fixing bacteria play a remarkable role in plant nutritition. They can take N2 from atmosphere and make it available for plant uptake (Halbleib and Ludden 2000). Azotobacter, a nitrogen-fixing bacteria...

Two new diazotrophic bacteria, Listonella anguillarum and Vibrio campbellii, and one nonnitrogen-fixing bacterium, Staphylococcus sp., were isolated from the rhizosphere of mangrove trees. Strains of these newly-defined diazotrophs are known as pathogenic bacteria in fish and shellfish. During the purification of diazotrophic species from the entire rhizosphere population, N2 -fixation of the b...

The dynamics of a model of a free-living nitrogen-fixing population, grown in a chemostat alone or in competition with a non-nitrogen-fixing population, was studied through bifurcation analysis. It is demonstrated that the ability of the nitrogen-fixing population to survive depends on the ammonia and carbon source concentrations and the kinetics parameters of the system. Under competitive cond...

Symbiotic nitrogen (N)-fixing trees can drive N and carbon cycling and thus are critical components of future climate projections. Despite detailed understanding of how climate influences N-fixation enzyme activity and physiology, comparatively little is known about how climate influences N-fixing tree abundance. Here, we used forest inventory data from the USA and Mexico (>125,000 plots) along...

Excessive anthropogenic nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) inputs have caused an alarming increase in harmful cyanobacterial blooms, threatening sustainability of lakes and reservoirs worldwide. Hypertrophic Lake Taihu, China's third largest freshwater lake, typifies this predicament, with toxic blooms of the non-N2 fixing cyanobacteria Microcystis spp. dominating from spring through fall. Previou...