This article employs the Bradley-Terry method of paired comparisons, previously used by Beard and Caudill (2007), to examine the 2007 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) football season. We find that the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) did get it right: Ohio State University (OSU) number one and Louisiana State University (LSU) number two. Our method also indicates that LSU played a much more difficult schedule than OSU and that the Southeastern Conference (SEC) is the strongest conference in the US.

Phylogenetic analyses based on ITS-LSU rDNA sequences dataset indicate that Leucopaxillus, as currently defined, is a highly polyphyletic genus. The new genera Giacomia, Notholepista and Pseudoclitopilus are introduced to accommodate Leucopaxillus mirabilis, L. subzonalis and L. rhodoleucus, respectively. Leucopaxillus subg. Aspropaxillus also seems to represent an independent evolutionary line in the /tricholomatoid clade, for which we suggest resurrecting the genus Aspropaxillus. Furthermore, the morphologically allied genus Porpoloma is also polyphyletic.

Tapeworms of the family Gryporhynchidae are endoparasites of fish-eating birds distributed worldwide. Currently the family contains 16 genera classified on the basis of the morphology of the rostellar apparatus, rostellar hooks and strobilar anatomy. However, the phylogenetic relationships among the genera are still unknown. In this study, sequences of the near complete 18S (SSU) and 28S (LSU) from rDNA of 13 species of gryporhynchids (adult specimens) representing eight genera (Cyclustera, Dendrouterina, Glossocercus, Gryporhynchidae gen. sp., Neovalipora, Paradilepis, Parvitaenia, Valipora) and one species of metacestode from fish (Neovalipora) were generated. Additionally, sequences of metacestodes of the genera Amirthalingamia, Neogryporhynchus, Paradilepis, Parvitaenia and Valipora from Africa recently added to the GenBank database were analysed. Phylogenetic relationships were inferred using maximum-likelihood (ML) and Bayesian inference of each (SSU and LSU) dataset. The phylogenetic analyses indicated that the family Gryporhynchidae is a well-supported monophyletic group within the Cyclophyllidea. The trees inferred with SSU and LSU datasets had similar topologies and suggested that the genera Glossocercus (two species sequenced) and Paradilepis (four spp.) are monophyletic. In contrast, Dendrouterina, Parvitaenia and Valipora are paraphyletic, suggesting that the species composition of these genera should be critically reviewed. Interestingly, species of the genera that use the same groups of definitive hosts such as herons (Ardeidae), cormorants (Phalacrocoracidae) and ibis (Threskiornithidae) are together in the phylogenetic tree, even though they differ markedly from each other in some morphological characters, especially shape and size of rostellar hooks.

Whether ribosomal genes can be used as DNA barcodes for molecular identification of Demodex (Acariformes: Demodicidae) is unclear. To examine this, Demodex folliculorum, D. brevis, D. canis, and D. caprae were collected for DNA extraction, rDNA fragments amplification, sequencing, and analysis. The V2 and V4 regions of SSU rDNA; D5, D6, and D8 regions of LSU rDNA; and ITS region were obtained from the four morphospecies. BLAST analysis showed that the obtained sequences matched those of Demodex or Aplonobia (Acariformes: Tetranychidae) in Raphignathae. Phylogenetic trees derived from V2, V4, D5, D6, and D8 regions, but not from ITS region, showed that the four species of Demodex clustered independently. Sequence divergence analysis further demonstrated that D5, D6, and D8 regions had obvious barcoding gap between intraspecific and interspecific divergences, with the gap of D5 (16.91%) larger than that of D6 (11.82%) and D8 (4.66%). The V2 and V4 regions did not have a barcoding gap, as the intraspecific and interspecific divergences partially overlapped. For the ITS region, intraspecific and interspecific divergences completely overlapped. These results suggest that the D5, D6, and D8 regions of LSU rDNA, especially D5, are suitable DNA barcodes for Demodex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intra-process memory isolation is a well-known technique to enforce least privilege within a process. In this paper, we propose a generic and efficient intra-process memory isolation technique named PANIC, by leveraging Privileged Access Never (PAN) and load/store unprivileged (LSU) instructions on AArch64. PANIC executes process code in kernel mode and compartments code into trusted and untrusted components. The untrusted code is restricted from accessing the isolated memory region, which is located on user pages, and the trusted code is allowed to access the isolated memory region by using LSU instructions. To mitigate threats induced by running user code in kernel mode, PANIC provides two novel security mechanisms: shim-based memory isolation and sensitive instruction emulation. PANIC provides a generic and efficient isolation primitive that can be applied in three different isolation scenarios: protecting sensitive data in CFI, creating isolated execution environments, and hardening JIT code cache. We have implemented a prototype of PANIC and experimental evaluation shows that PANIC incurs very low performance overhead, and performs better than existing methods.

Aspergillus, Penicillium, and Talaromyces spp. are commonly found worldwide and include industrially and medicinally important members. These genera are deeply related with life from soil to health hazards via their industrial products, surface proteins, biodiversity, food spoilage, mycotoxins, etc. These three genera progressively encounter important taxonomic revisions, such as the one fungus-one name concept, and various methods are available to establish their evolutionary and phylogenetic relationships. Besides morphological, microscopic, and extrolite analyses, nucleotide sequence analysis is the most preferred method. In particular, rDNA regions, such as the internal transcribed spacer (ITS), large subunit (LSU), and small subunit (SSU), are commonly used for taxonomic and phylogenetic studies. Although the ITS locus is accepted as the barcode gene for fungal identification, it has some limitations. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to compare ITS, LSU, and SSU loci in terms of ease of application, discrimination of species, and phylogeny by using 43 strains belonging to the above-mentioned three genera of fungi. The results indicated that the ITS and LSU loci were the most effective, exhibiting identical topology and species discrimination, while the SSU locus was the least effective, demonstrating lower species discrimination and the worst topology. Furthermore, the long and high-quality ITS, LSU, and SSU sequences obtained in the present study, which belong to the above-mentioned three genera of fungi, have been deposited in the NCBI database. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]