Macquarie University

About: Macquarie University is a education organization based out in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Laser. The organization has 14075 authors who have published 47673 publications receiving 1416184 citations. The organization is also known as: Macquarie uni.

Which is a better predictor of plant traits: temperature or precipitation?

Abstract: Question: Are plant traits more closely correlated with mean annual temperature, or with mean annual precipitation? Location: Global. Methods: We quantified the strength of the relationships between temperature and precipitation and 21 plant traits from 447,961 species-site combinations worldwide. We used meta-analysis to provide an overall answer to our question.

New directions in analyses of parenting contributions to children's acquisition of values.

Abstract: Traditional theories of how children acquire values or standards of behavior have emphasized the importance of specific parenting techniques or styles and have acknowledged the importance of a responsive parent-child relationship, but they have failed to differentiate among forms of responsiveness, have stressed internalization of values as the desired outcome, and have limited their scope to a small set of parenting strategies or methods. This paper outlines new directions for research. It acknowledges the central importance of parents and argues for research that (1) demonstrates that parental understanding of a particular child's characteristics and situation rather than use of specific strategies or styles is the mark of effective parenting; (2) traces the differential impact of varieties of parent responsiveness; (3) assesses the conditions surrounding the fact that parents have goals other than internalization when socializing their children, and evaluates the impact of that fact; and (4) considers a wider range of parenting strategies.

Durable Complete Response After Discontinuation of Pembrolizumab in Patients With Metastatic Melanoma

Abstract: PurposePembrolizumab provides durable antitumor activity in metastatic melanoma, including complete response (CR) in about 15% of patients. Data are limited on potential predictors of CR and patient disposition after pembrolizumab discontinuation after CR. We describe baseline characteristics and long-term follow-up in patients who experienced CR with pembrolizumab in the KEYNOTE-001 study (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT01295827).Patients and MethodsPatients with ipilimumab-naive or -treated advanced/metastatic melanoma received one of three dose regimens of pembrolizumab. Eligible patients who received pembrolizumab for ≥ 6 months and at least two treatments beyond confirmed CR could discontinue therapy. Response was assessed every 12 weeks by central Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors version 1.1. For this analysis, CR was defined per investigator assessment, immune-related response criteria, and potential predictors of CR were evaluated using univariate and multivariate analyses.ResultsOf...

Global coal gap between Permian-Triassic extinction and Middle Triassic recovery of peat-forming plants

Abstract: Early Triassic coals are unknown, and Middle Triassic coals are rare and thin. The Early Triassic coal gap began with extinction of peat-forming plants at the end of the Permian (ca. 250 Ma), with no coal known anywhere until Middle Triassic (243 Ma). Permian levels of plant diversity and peat thickness were not recovered until Late Triassic (230 Ma). Tectonic and climatic explanations for the coal gap fail because deposits of fluctuating sea levels and sedimentary facies and paleosols commonly found in coal-bearing sequences are present also in Early Triassic rocks. Nor do we favor explanations involving evolutionary advances in the effectiveness of fungal decomposers, insects or tetrapod herbivores, which became cosmopolitan and much reduced in diversity across the Permian-Triassic boundary. Instead, we favor explanations involving extinction of peat-forming plants at the Permian-Triassic boundary, followed by a hiatus of some 10 m.y. until newly evolved peat-forming plants developed tolerance to the acidic dysaerobic conditions of wetlands. This view is compatible not only with the paleobotanical record of extinction of swamp plants, but also with indications of a terminal Permian productivity crash from {delta}{sup 13}C{sub org} and total organic carbon of both nonmarine and shallow marine shales. 205 refs., 3 figs.,more » 3 tabs.« less

Efficient Public Key Encryption Based on Ideal Lattices

Abstract: We describe public key encryption schemes with security provably based on the worst case hardness of the approximate Shortest Vector Problem in some structured lattices, called ideal lattices. Under the assumption that the latter is exponentially hard to solve even with a quantum computer, we achieve CPA-security against subexponential attacks, with (quasi-)optimal asymptotic performance: if n is the security parameter, both keys are of bit-length ${\widetilde{O}}(n)$ and the amortized costs of both encryption and decryption are ${\widetilde{O}}(1)$ per message bit. Our construction adapts the trapdoor one-way function of Gentry et al. (STOC'08), based on the Learning With Errors problem, to structured lattices. Our main technical tools are an adaptation of Ajtai's trapdoor key generation algorithm (ICALP'99) and a re-interpretation of Regev's quantum reduction between the Bounded Distance Decoding problem and sampling short lattice vectors.