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The influence of abiotic factors on microbial community diversity in acidic thermal springs is examined. Principal-component analysis has shown that chemistry and temperature explain 95% of the genetic diversity, with most of the variance attributed to mineral chemistry and a small portion attributed to temperature.

The article focuses on the National Union of Australian University Students' (NUAUS) establishment of Intervarsities (IVs) debate programs in Australia. It notes that all Australian universities are owned and operated by the federal government and all of their students are members of the national student organization NUAUS. It states that the Australian government operates and finances all of the universities in the country including the NUAUS.

The author discusses aspects of the English-language debate exchange program with Japan. He explores the English speaking debate programs of English-speaking societies at Japanese universities that are eager to debate native speakers of English across the U.S. since 1928. The author believes that cultural differences could place debating teams under pressure, and agrees with professor Bower Aly to send visitors only to institutions that honor them as guests and friends, not as mere lecturers.

The article presents a study that investigates the effectiveness of debate judges in judging debates in the U.S. The author mentions that study was made due to numerous complaints of debaters, especially neophyte debaters, on poor decisions of judges. Results of the study show that less than five percent of the 92 judges questioned manifested inconsistent decisions, while 75% of them claimed to be highly informed of the debate topic.

Presents information on a study which developed a paper-and-pencil, machine scorable, college placement test in the area of public address. Description of the pilot study; Analysis of the items in the experimental form of the test; Development of a scoring key; Validation of the test.

Detecting very minor (< 1%) subpopulations using next-generation sequencing is a critical need for multiple applications including detection of drug resistant pathogens and somatic variant detection in oncology. To enable these applications, wet lab enhancements and bioinformatic error correction methods have been developed for 'sequencing by synthesis' technology to reduce its inherent sequencing error rate. A recently available sequencing approach termed 'sequencing by binding' claims to have higher base calling accuracy data "out of the box." This paper evaluates the utility of using 'sequencing by binding' for the detection of ultra-rare subpopulations down to 0.001%., Competing Interests: Competing interests: Pacific Biosciences provided early access to the SBB sequencing reagents and platform, as well as technician and data analysis support (see Acknowledgements). The authors declare no other competing interests for this study.