The emerging oilseed crop Sesamum indicum enters the “Omics” era

Sesame (Sesamum indicum L.) is one of the oldest oilseed crops widely grown in Africa and Asia for its high-quality nutritional seeds. It is well adapted to harsh environments and constitutes an alternative cash crop for smallholders in developing countries. Despite its economic and nutritional importance, sesame is considered as an orphan crop because it has received very little attention from science. As a consequence, it lags behind the other major oil crops as far as genetic improvement is concerned. In recent years, the scenario has considerably changed with the decoding of the sesame nuclear genome leading to the development of various genomic resources including molecular markers, comprehensive genetic maps, high-quality transcriptome assemblies, web-based functional databases and diverse daft genome sequences. The availability of these tools in association with the discovery of candidate genes and quantitative trait locis for key agronomic traits including high oil content and quality, waterlogging and drought tolerance, disease resistance, cytoplasmic male sterility, high yield, pave the way to the development of some new strategies for sesame genetic improvement. As a result, sesame has graduated from an “orphan crop” to a “genomic resource-rich crop.” With the limited research teams working on sesame worldwide, more synergic efforts are needed to integrate these resources in sesame breeding for productivity upsurge, ensuring food security and improved livelihood in developing countries. This review retraces the evolution of sesame research by highlighting the recent advances in the “Omics” area and also critically discusses the future prospects for a further genetic improvement and a better expansion of this crop. (Résumé d'auteur

Sesame (Sesame indicum L.) Crop Production in Ethiopia: Trends, Challenges and Future Prospects

The Aim of this paper is to review the importance of sesame (Sesamum indicum L.) oil crop, production status in Ethiopia, constraints, potentials and future opportunities. Sesame is one of the most important high value oil crops in Ethiopia contributing high foreign currency. Sesame oil is useful edible oil and has wide applications. Different reports indicate that the sesame production is increasing from year to year which is mainly driven by high current market demand and suitability of environmental factors.For instance, the recent five years data indicated that the production is growing at the rate of about 54% in parallel with an increased area  coverage of about 45% during the same years indicating a yield gain from extensive farming system. The production is concentrated in South western and north western parts of Ethiopian. The three commonly used sesame commercial varieties in these areas are known by their brand name as Humera, Gondar and Wollega types. The presence of genetic diversity insesame genetic resources, proximity of Ethiopia to the international market, an increased demand for Ethiopian sesame, the presence of relatively high oil content of sesame cultivars and suitability of  environmental condition for sesame growth will give high opportunity for Ethiopia to improve the crop. Therefore, to increase yield potential and quality of sesame crop and achieve better profit requires the collaborative efforts of all stake holders in capacity building on sesame crop  improvement and post harvest handling of the crop, development of high yielding widely adapted cultivars with better resistance to diseases and pests, development of improved agronomic and managemental practices, environmental clustering for high oil quality and creating a capacity to process the sesame and/or oil seeds in the country

A Teacher in the Living Room? Educational Media for Babies, Toddlers, and Preschoolers

Examines available research, and arguments by proponents and critics, of electronic educational media use by young children. Examines educational claims in marketing and provides recommendations for developing research and product standards

SESAME, a third generation synchrotron light source for the Middle East region

Developed under the auspices of UNESCO, SESAME is being established as an autonomous international research centre in the Middle East/Mediterranean region. It will have as its centrepiece a 2.5 GeV third Generation synchrotron light source with 13 straight sections for insertion devices and an emittance of 26.6 nm-rad. It will provide intense radiation from the IR to hard X-rays to a community that is expected to exceed 1000 users a few years after the start of operation in 2008

Systemic barriers to scaling private sector driven climate-smart agricultural innovations in East Africa’s potato, sesame and common bean value chains

The CRAFT project (2018-2023) promotes a bottom-up market-driven scaling agenda that supports inclusive business models to enhance climate-resilient farming systems through sustainable intensification along selected oilseed, pulse and potato agricultural value chains. The selection criteria for these crops includes sufficient private sector interest and capacity for coinvestment; adequate domestic consumption to drive market development opportunities; and ample evidence of climate change risks projected to face the value chains. Across East Africa, unfavorable climate change patterns involving rising temperatures, increased variability of seasonal rainfall and a higher frequency and intensity of extreme weather events such as droughts and floods are aggravating food insecurity and pose further challenges for rural development (Government of Kenya 2018)

Game Changer: Investing in Digital Play to Advance Children's Learning and Health

Based on a literature review and interviews with digital learning experts, explores how digital games can foster skills and knowledge for better academic performance and health. Makes recommendations for government research, partnerships, and media

System architecture and deployment scenarios for SESAME: small cEllS coordinAtion for Multi-tenancy and Edge services

The surge of the Internet traffic with exabytes of data flowing over operators’ mobile networks has created the need to rethink the paradigms behind the design of the mobile network architecture. The inadequacy of the 4G UMTS Long term Evolution (LTE) and even of its advanced version LTE-A is evident, considering that the traffic will be extremely heterogeneous in the near future and ranging from 4K resolution TV to machine-type communications. To keep up with these changes, academia, industries and EU institutions have now engaged in the quest for new 5G technology. In this paper we present the innovative system design, concepts and visions developed by the 5G PPP H2020 project SESAME (Small cEllS coordinAtion for Multi-tenancy and Edge services). The innovation of SESAME is manifold: i) combine the key 5G small cells with cloud technology, ii) promote and develop the concept of Small Cells-as-a-Service (SCaaS), iii) bring computing and storage power at the mobile network edge through the development of non-x86 ARM technology enabled micro-servers, and iv) address a large number of scenarios and use cases applying mobile edge computing

Research Of Quality Indicators Of Protein-fat Mixture From Flax And Sesame Seeds For Nutrition Of Athletes

The aim of the research is to determine the microbiological stability of a protein-fat mixture of flax and sesame seeds that allows to correct its storage life. A protein-fat mixture has a high content of irreplaceable amino acids ВСАА and polyunsaturated fatty acids of w-3group, so it may be positioned as a component of nutrition for athletes. Flax and sesame seeds, cultivated in Ukraine, were used as research materials. The product was created, based on comminuted flax and sesame seeds in ratio 1:1. There were determined organoleptic (outlook, taste, smell, color) and physical-chemical (mass share of moisture, ash, protein, fat, acidic, peroxide, anisidine number) parameters of the product. There was determined the microbiological stability of the protein-fat mixture of the increased food value for athletes nutrition after 6 months. It has been proved, that as opposite to the control sample, the protein-fat mixture of the developed composition manifests its microbiological stability by the following parameters: content of mesophilic aerobic and facultative anaerobic microorganisms, molds, yeast, bacteria of the colon bacillus group and pathogenic microorganisms. The control sample that is comminuted flax seeds doesn\u27t manifest at the end of the storage term any correspondence of microbiological parameters by the content of mesophilic aerobic and facultative anaerobic microorganisms, molds, and bacteria of the colon bacillus group. This regularity is explained by the presence of lignans, sesamol and sesamoline, with preservative properties in the developed product. The obtained data may be used for reasoning recipes of products, based on the protein-fat mixture and correction of the food supplements ratio in them

Design and implementation of a filter engine for semantic web documents

This report describes our project that addresses the challenge of changes in the semantic web. Some studies have already been done for the so-called adaptive semantic web, such as applying inferring rules. In this study, we apply the technology of Event Notification System (ENS). Treating changes as events, we developed a notification system for such events