13 research outputs found
Evaluating Rockefeller Foundation research on drought tolerant rice in China
No full textThis research utilizes economic surplus model and cost-benefit analysis to investigate the justifiability and profitability of drought tolerant (DT) rice research investments by Rockefeller Foundation together with Chinese Government. The research focuses on a sample of 160 rice farmers in Guangxi and Zhejiang who were instructed to plant DT rice. Then another 144 amongst them planted both DT rice and Non-DT rice in the same plot. The impacts of DT rice on yield, irrigation, and farmer’s income are evaluated using both nonparametric and regression analyses. Results show that DT rice variety significantly increases the yield while decreasing the irrigation. This allows farmers to minimize cost and maximize their income. The research investment has paid off and consumers benefit more than producers from development of drought-tolerant rice variety.M.S.Includes bibliographical referencesby Shuchi Zhan
Adsorption of CO and O2 molecules on Li metal adsorbed graphene: Search for graphene based gas sensors
No full textIn-vitro efficacy analysis of aqueous extract of Zingiber officinale, Boswellia serrata and Coleus aromaticus against pathogenic Staphylococcus aureus
No full textIn the present study aqueous extracts of Zingiber officinale, Boswellia serrata and Coleus aromaticus were investigated for the presence of various phytochemicals. Their antioxidant and antimicrobial activities were also determined against Staphylococcus aureus. Phytochemical analyses revealed the presence of phenols, flavonoids, terpenoids, proteins, carbohydrates and saponins in different extracts. The susceptibility of bacterial strain against the aqueous extracts was determined using the well diffusion method. The zone of inhibition of different concentrations of the aqueous extracts against microbe was found to be in the range of 7-27 mm. The results showed that the aqueous extract taken in the concentrations of 50μg/ml (Coleus aromaticus), 100μg/ml (Boswellia serrata) and 200μg/ml (Zingiber officinale) were effective in antimicrobial activity against the test pathogen. Highest antibacterial activity was observed with Coleus aromaticus extract with 27 mm diameter of zone of inhibition while minimum activity was observed with aqueous extract of Zingiber officinale. The antioxidant activity was revealed by reducing power assay method and showed that aqueous extract of Coleus aromaticus has good reducing power which leads to potential antioxidant activity
Methyl Laurate Production in Synechocystis
No full textabstract: To efficiently produce biofuels and meet the planet’s rising energy demands, different biofuel production methods need to be developed and improved. One of the ways is to produce fatty acid methyl esters (FAMEs) in Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803, a versatile strain of cyanobacteria. In this thesis, Synechocystis was engineered to produce and excrete methyl laurate. In this pathway, first, lauroyl-ACP from fatty acid biosynthesis is converted to laurate by a thioesterase (TE) from Umbellularia californica. Then, the laurate is methylated to methyl laurate by a juvenile hormone acid O-methyltransferase (DmJHAMT) from Drosophila melanogaster. The TE/∆slr1609 strain of Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 contains the TE gene and lacks the slr1609 gene encoding an acyl–acyl carrier protein synthetase, which functions in free fatty acid reuptake. The DmJHAMT gene was introduced into this strain for FAME production.
The DmJHAMT gene was cloned into a vector that contains neutral sites from the Synechocystis genome, making it suitable for homologous recombination, and a kanamycin resistance gene, for selection. The obtained plasmid was verified using restriction digests and Sanger sequencing. The sequence analysis and comparison of the cDNA in the obtained plasmid and the mRNA transcript of the same gene revealed three amino acid differences. Subsequent comparison with homologous genes in other Drosophila species revealed the differences in the cDNA match those of the other species, and thus, the gene most likely is functional.
The plasmid was transformed into Synechocystis, and PCRs were used to confirm proper integration and segregation. The TE/∆slr1609/DmJHAMT strain produced 62 mg/L methyl laurate in 12 days under a light intensity of 150 µmol photons m-2 s-1, bubbled with 0.5% CO2 at a rate of 30 mL/min, and supplemented with 0.5 mM methionine. The laurate levels did not decrease over time, but instead, remained stagnant after day 3. When the strain was grown in the same conditions without methionine, the laurate concentrations continued to increase above 400 µM, suggesting minimal methyl laurate production and thus a strong need for methionine supplementation. This work provides further evidence of the viability and success of the introduced FAME production pathway, and improved efficiency may be gained in the future
Esophageal Foreign Body Masquerading as Myocardial Infarction with Atrioventricular Block
No full textAn unanticipated difficult airway in Lesch-Nyhan syndrome
No full textAn 11-year-old boy with Lesch-Nyhan syndrome presented to the emergency for fixation of a fractured femur. During induction of general anesthesia, unexpected difficult intubation was encountered with a 6.5-mm ID endotracheal tube and successively smaller tubes, also failing to pass 1 cm beyond the vocal cords. Intubation was finally achieved with a 4.5-mm ID tube. The surgery was completed uneventfully. A tracheal diverticulum was found in the computerized tomography (CT) scan performed postoperatively to account for this unexpected difficult intubation. This case highlights the anesthetic concerns in Lesch-Nyhan syndrome and also reports the rare occurrence of a tracheal diverticulum associated with it
Predicting Emerging Trends on Social Media by Modeling it as Temporal Bipartite Networks
No full textThe behavior of peoples' request for a post on online social media is a stochastic process that makes post's ranking highly skewed in nature. We mean peoples interest for a post can grow/decay exponentially or linearly. Considering this nature of the evolutionary peoples' interest, this paper presents a Growth-based Popularity Predictor (GPP) model for predicting and ranking the web-contents. Three different kinds of web-based real datasets namely Movielens, Facebook-wall-post and Digg are used to evaluate the performance of the proposed model. This performance is measured based on four information-retrieval metrics Area Under receiving operating Characteristic (AUC), Novelty, Precision, and Kendal's Tau. The obtained results show that the prediction performance can be further improved if the score is mapped onto a cumulative predicted item's ranking.https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2020.297613
Thermal conductivity in self-assembled CoFe2O4/BiFeO3 vertical nanocomposite films
No full text© 2018 Author(s). The thermal conductivity of self-assembled nanocomposite oxide films consisting of cobalt ferrite (CFO) spinel pillars grown within a single-crystal bismuth ferrite (BFO) perovskite matrix is described as a function of the volume fraction of the spinel. Single phase BFO and CFO had cross-plane thermal conductivities of 1.32 W m-1 K-1 and 3.94 W m-1 K-1, respectively, and the thermal conductivity of the nanocomposites increased with the CFO volume fraction within this range. A small increase (∼5%) in thermal conductivity for the pure CFO phase in the AC-demagnetized state was observed, suggesting possible magnon contributions. Steady state gray-medium based variance-reduced Monte Carlo simulations show consistent trends with experimental data on the dependence of thermal conductivity with the CFO volume fraction
Author Correction: Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the kidney community: lessons learned and future directions.
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