The effect of toxic Microcystis aeruginosa on four different populations of Daphnia

Cyanobacteria reduce the fitness of many Daphnia species, and blooms in eutrophic lakes may place strong selective pressure upon these primary consumers. This study examines the ability of daphnids to resist the deleterious effects of toxic Microcystis and determine if this resistance is related to the trophic conditions of their native lakes. Three populations of Daphnia pulex/pulicaria were examined; D. pulicaria from eutrophic Klamath Lake in Oregon, D. pulex from eutrophic Old Durham Reservoir in New Hampshire, and D. pulicaria from oligotrophic Russell Pond in New Hampshire. D. carinata from meso-oligotrophic Lake Rotoaira in New Zealand was used as a known cyanobacteria-sensitive species. Ten-day old 5th-6th instar animals were exposed to a mixture of Microcystis aeruginosa and Chlorella vulgaris (25% and 100% M. aeruginosa). Body length, lipid index, reproductive index and clearance rate were assessed for each population after 120 hours of treatment. A feeding bioassay response quantifying the energetic (feeding rate) cost of post abdominal rejections was also determined for a gradient of M. aeruginosa concentrations from 0% to 100%. The four populations of Daphnia exhibited different rates of decline in overall fitness when exposed to Microcystis. Populations exposed to Microcystis exhibited reduced thoracic beat rate, lower lipid and reproductive indexes, and higher cost of post abdominal rejections in comparison to daphnids in the control Chlorella. Length was not a sensitive indicator of fitness level. D. pulex from eutrophic Klamath Lake had a mean clearance rate in 100% Microcystis that was three to four times higher than D. pulicaria from oligotrophic Russell Pond. In general, daphnids from oligotrophic lakes exhibited a more drastic decline in fitness than daphnids from eutrophic lakes. This suggests that taxonomically related populations of Daphnia have evolved a suite of adaptations to Microcystis depending upon their history of exposure

Concrete Semantics with Coq and CoqHammer

The "Concrete Semantics" book gives an introduction to imperative programming languages accompanied by an Isabelle/HOL formalization. In this paper we discuss a re-formalization of the book using the Coq proof assistant. In order to achieve a similar brevity of the formal text we extensively use CoqHammer, as well as Coq Ltac-level automation. We compare the formalization efficiency, compactness, and the readability of the proof scripts originating from a Coq re-formalization of two chapters from the book

Interactive Simplifier Tracing and Debugging in Isabelle

The Isabelle proof assistant comes equipped with a very powerful tactic for term simplification. While tremendously useful, the results of simplifying a term do not always match the user's expectation: sometimes, the resulting term is not in the form the user expected, or the simplifier fails to apply a rule. We describe a new, interactive tracing facility which offers insight into the hierarchical structure of the simplification with user-defined filtering, memoization and search. The new simplifier trace is integrated into the Isabelle/jEdit Prover IDE.Comment: Conferences on Intelligent Computer Mathematics, 201

A Proof Strategy Language and Proof Script Generation for Isabelle/HOL

We introduce a language, PSL, designed to capture high level proof strategies in Isabelle/HOL. Given a strategy and a proof obligation, PSL's runtime system generates and combines various tactics to explore a large search space with low memory usage. Upon success, PSL generates an efficient proof script, which bypasses a large part of the proof search. We also present PSL's monadic interpreter to show that the underlying idea of PSL is transferable to other ITPs.Comment: This paper has been submitted to CADE2

ENIGMA: Efficient Learning-based Inference Guiding Machine

ENIGMA is a learning-based method for guiding given clause selection in saturation-based theorem provers. Clauses from many proof searches are classified as positive and negative based on their participation in the proofs. An efficient classification model is trained on this data, using fast feature-based characterization of the clauses . The learned model is then tightly linked with the core prover and used as a basis of a new parameterized evaluation heuristic that provides fast ranking of all generated clauses. The approach is evaluated on the E prover and the CASC 2016 AIM benchmark, showing a large increase of E's performance.Comment: Submitted to LPAR 201

Screening fungi isolated from historic Discovery Hut on Ross Island, Antarctica for cellulose degradation

To survive in Antarctica, early explorers of Antarctica's Heroic Age erected wooden buildings and brought in large quantities of supplies. The introduction of wood and other organic materials may have provided new nutrient sources for fungi that were indigenous to Antarctica or were brought in with the materials. From 30 samples taken from Discovery Hut, 156 filamentous fungi were isolated on selective media. Of these, 108 were screened for hydrolytic activity on carboxymethyl cellulose, of which 29 demonstrated activities. Endo-1, 4-β-glucanase activity was confirmed in the extracellular supernatant from seven isolates when grown at 4°C, and also when they were grown at 15°C. Cladosporium oxysporum and Geomyces sp. were shown to grow on a variety of synthetic cellulose substrates and to use cellulose as a nutrient source at temperate and cold temperatures. The research findings from the present study demonstrate that Antarctic filamentous fungi isolated from a variety of substrates (wood, straw, and food stuffs) are capable of cellulose degradation and can grow well at low temperatures

Environmental pollutants from the Scott and Shackleton expeditions during the ‘Heroic Age’ of Antarctic exploration

Early explorers to Antarctica built wooden huts and brought huge quantities of supplies and equipment to support their geographical and scientific studies for several years. When the expeditions ended and relief ships arrived, a rapid exodus frequently allowed only essential items to be taken north. The huts and thousands of items were left behind. Fuel depots with unused containers of petroleum products, asbestos materials, and diverse chemicals were also left at the huts. This investigation found high concentrations of polyaromatic hydrocarbons in soils under and around the historic fuel depots, including anthracene, benzo[b]fluoranthene, benzo[k]fluoranthene, chrysene, fluorene, and pyrene, as well as benzo[a]anthracene, benzo[a]pyrene, and fluoranthene, which are recognized carcinogens. Asbestos materials within the huts have been identified and extensive amounts of fragmented asbestos were found littering the ground around the Cape Evans hut. These materials are continually abraded and fragmented as tourists walk over them and the coarse scoria breaks and grinds down the materials. A chemical spill, within the Cape Evans hut, apparently from caustic substances from one of the scientific experiments, has caused an unusual deterioration and defibration on affected woods. Although these areas are important historic sites protected by international treaties, the hazardous waste materials left by the early explorers should be removed and remedial action taken to restore the site to as pristine a condition as possible. Recommendations are discussed for international efforts to study and clean up these areas, where the earliest environmental pollution in Antarctica was produced

Efficient Certified Resolution Proof Checking

We present a novel propositional proof tracing format that eliminates complex processing, thus enabling efficient (formal) proof checking. The benefits of this format are demonstrated by implementing a proof checker in C, which outperforms a state-of-the-art checker by two orders of magnitude. We then formalize the theory underlying propositional proof checking in Coq, and extract a correct-by-construction proof checker for our format from the formalization. An empirical evaluation using 280 unsatisfiable instances from the 2015 and 2016 SAT competitions shows that this certified checker usually performs comparably to a state-of-the-art non-certified proof checker. Using this format, we formally verify the recent 200 TB proof of the Boolean Pythagorean Triples conjecture

Efficient Certified RAT Verification

Clausal proofs have become a popular approach to validate the results of SAT solvers. However, validating clausal proofs in the most widely supported format (DRAT) is expensive even in highly optimized implementations. We present a new format, called LRAT, which extends the DRAT format with hints that facilitate a simple and fast validation algorithm. Checking validity of LRAT proofs can be implemented using trusted systems such as the languages supported by theorem provers. We demonstrate this by implementing two certified LRAT checkers, one in Coq and one in ACL2