COP 26: Pavilion Proposals

There is considerable interest in having a Peatland Pavilion at the up-coming UNFCCC COP26 to be held in Glasgow in November 2021. The purpose of the pavilion would be to provide a focus for discussions about the increasingly recognised importance of peatlands and their role as major global stores of soil carbon but also, in their damaged state, as large sources of carbon emissions. UEL Architecture Masters students were set the task of developing potential designs for such a pavilion with the requirement that it incorporate an installation designed by the artist and UEL lecturer Michael Pinsky. The architectural concept drawn up by Hussein Ail Kassim and Mohammed Patel offers some thought-provoking ideas for such a Peatland Pavilion and thus opens up the debate about what form, both conceptually and architecturally, such a pavilion might take. It is worth highlighting that the themes of the different environment domes envisaged by Hussein and Mohammed can each be related to particular aspects of importance to peatlands

Influence of slip velocity on convective boundary layer flow of jeffrey fluid under convective boundary conditions

The problem on influence of slip velocity on convective boundary layer flow of Jeffery fluid with convective boundary conditions together with the effects of magnetohydrodynamic is investigated. The governing equations correspond to the discussed problem are first transformed into ordinary differential equations using similarity transformations before the computation process is done by Keller box method. It is found that, the magnetic parameter enhanced the fluid temperature and lowers the velocity of the fluid flow while the growth of the values of Prandtl and Deborah number weaken the distribution of the fluid temperature

Hormetic UV-C seed treatments for the control of tomato diseases

© 2019 British Society for Plant Pathology Hormesis is a dose response phenomenon in which low, non-damaging doses of a stressor bring about a positive response in the organism undergoing treatment. Evidence is provided here that hormetic UV-C treatments of tomato seed can control disease caused by Botrytis cinerea, Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. lycopersici (FOL) and f. sp. radicis-lycopersici (FORL) on tomato (Solanum lycopersicum). Treating seeds with a 4kJm−2 dose of UV-C significantly reduced both the disease incidence and progression of B.cinerea, with approximately 10% reductions in both on cv. Shirley. Disease severity assays for FOL and FORL on cv. Moneymaker showed dose-dependent responses: UV-C treatments of 4 and 6kJm−2 significantly reduced the disease severity scores of FOL, whilst only the 6kJm−2 showed significant reductions for FORL. To determine the effects of treatment on germination and seedling growth, UV-C doses of 4, 8 and 12kJm−2 were performed on cv. Shirley. No negative impacts on germination or seedling growth were observed for any of the treatments. However, the 8kJm−2 treatment showed significant biostimulation, with increases in seedling, root and hypocotyl dry weight of 11.4%, 23.1% and 12.0%, respectively, when compared to the control. Furthermore, significant increases in the root-mass fraction (10.6%) and root:shoot ratio (13.1%) along with a decrease in shoot-mass fraction (2.0%) indicates that the 8kJm−2 treatment stimulated root growth to the greatest extent. There was no effect on hypocotyl and primary root length or the number of lateral roots, indicating no adverse effects to basic root architecture or seedling growth

Plastic pollution in the ocean

Plastic pollution in the ocean was first reported by scientists in the 1970s, yet in recent years it has drawn tremendous attention from the media, the public, and an increasing number of scientists spanning diverse fields, including polymer science, environmental engineering, ecology, toxicology, marine biology, and oceanography. In the oceans, the threat to marine life comes in various forms, such as overexploitation and harvesting, dumping of waste, pollution, alien species, land reclamation, dredging and global climate change. The extremely visible nature of much of this contamination is easy to convey in shocking images of piles of trash on coastlines, marine mammals entangled in fishing nets, or seabird bellies filled with bottle caps, cigarette lighters, and colourful shards of plastic. Even without these images, anyone who has visited a beach has certainly encountered discarded cigarette butts, broken beach toys left behind, or pieces of fishing gear or buoys that have washed ashore

Shutdown of achaete-scute homolog-1 expression by heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein (hnRNP)-A2/B1 in hypoxia

The basic helix-loop-helix transcription factor hASH1, encoded by the ASCL1 gene, plays an important role in neurogenesis and tumor development. Recent findings indicate that the local oxygen tension is a critical determinant for the progression of neuroblastomas. Here we investigated the molecular mechanisms underlying the oxygen-dependent expression of hASH1 in neuroblastoma cells. Exposure of human neuroblastoma-derived Kelly cells to 1% O2 significantly decreased ASCL1 mRNA and hASH1 protein levels. Using reporter gene assays, we show that the response of hASH1 to hypoxia is mediated mainly by post-transcriptional inhibition via the ASCL1 mRNA 5'- and 3'-UTRs, while additional inhibition of the ASCL1 promoter was observed under prolonged hypoxia. By RNA pull-down experiments followed by MALDI/TOF-MS analysis, we identified heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein (hnRNP)-A2/B1 and hnRNP-R as interactors binding directly to the ASCL1 mRNA 5'- and 3'-UTRs and influencing its expression. We further demonstrate that hnRNP-A2/B1 is a key positive regulator of ASCL1, findings that were also confirmed by analysis of a large compilation of gene expression data. Our data suggest that a prominent down-regulation of hnRNP-A2/B1 during hypoxia is associated with the post-transcriptional suppression of hASH1 synthesis. This novel post-transcriptional mechanism for regulating hASH1 levels will have important implications in neural cell fate development and disease

Local protein structures to bridge sequence-structure knowledge

Protein sequences can be classified based on their structure similarity and/or common evolutionary origin called structural class. Information on structural class is readily available, easing the protein structure and protein function probing. SCOP and CATH are two prominent classification schemes used to assign the structural class of proteins. Both schemes determine the structural class manually base on known protein tertiary structures. However, the quantity of known protein sequences is growing exponentially with respect to the quantity of known tertiary proteins structures. Although SCOP and CATH are examples of well-established databases that contain more reliable information of structural class, yet the lack of known structural class of protein due to the laborious wet-lab experimental routine limits the high-throughput structural class assignment. The fact that this is a tedious and time-consuming manually-determined method has further limited the structural class assignment. As a consequence, the assignment of structural class by computational method suffers from the arbitrated statistical infer-ence. Thus, this study aims to provide a structural class prediction method that can acquire the knowledge of local protein structures, derived from known excessive primary sequences, in order to produce high-throughput sequence-structure class assignment instead of the laborious experimental based method. This structural class prediction method is termed as SVM-LpsSCPred

Rock bearing resistance of bored piles socketed into rock

In view of the large movement required to mobilise the base resistance of bored piles and difficulty in base cleaning, the end bearing resistance often ignored in current design practice that will result in excessive rock socket length. Many attempts have been made to correlate the end bearing resistance with the uniaxial compressive strength of intact rock and the RQD but it is uncertain how applicable they are to rock type in Malaysia. This paper attempts to review the applicability of the formulas from previous studies to rock type in Malaysia. A program of field tests for 13 bored piles with diameter varying from 1000 mm to 1500 mm constructed in granite was conducted to measure the axial response of bored piles, tested using static load test and high strain load dynamic test to verify its integrity and performance. The results were evaluated and compared to the predicted rock bearing resistance. Based on the result obtained, the method by AASHTO gives the best prediction of rock bearing resistance for granite in Malaysia. However the relationship between compressive strength and rock discontinuities with the rock bearing resistance showed scattered results

Dense plasma heating by crossing relativistic electron beams

Here we investigate, using relativistic fluid theory and Vlasov-Maxwell simulations, the local heating of a dense plasma by two crossing electron beams. Heating occurs as an instability of the electron beams drives Langmuir waves, which couple nonlinearly into damped ion-acoustic waves. Simulations show a factor 2.8 increase in electron kinetic energy with a coupling efficiency of 18%. Our results support applications to the production of warm dense matter and as a driver for inertial fusion plasmas

Tantangan Pengembangan Padi Dikabupaten Kepulauan Mentawai

This study aims to identify the problems and develop rice agribusiness in Mentawai Islands from upstream to downstream and formulate appropriate policy recommendations to be implemented. The research location determined by purposive namely in the village Makalo and Malakopa District of South Pagai, Sikakap subdistrict Taikako Village, Village Saumanganya District of North Pagai, Bosua Village and Village Beriulou District of South Sipora, Village Rogdog and Madobag District of South Siberut. Respondents in this study were 30 farmers. Respondents farmers selected by simple random sampling method. The results showed that the majority of rice paddies new openings in six districts consist of peatlands with a depth varying from 0.4- > 2.0 meter, fields new openings that have been implemented in the Mentawai Islands in general can not be expected to result in maximum productivity due to problems of land suitability diverse. Farmers also do not take action appropriate technical culture starting from land preparation, seed selection, weeding, fertilizing and water management. Behaviorally agriculture, farmers in Mentawai Islands is not a society that blends with the culture of rice fields, it is because basically their agricultural base is dry land agriculture with farming patterns. This will certainly give a great challenge and not easy for the cultivation of rice in the Mentawai Islands

Fishery, biology and stock assessment of small tunas

Fishery Survey of India has brought out publications on the results of the operations of chartered vessels in the oceanic tuna fishery (Sudarsan el. al., 1991; FSI, 1992) and a bibliography of tuna fisheries in Indian seas (John and Bhargava, 1992). These publications have updated our information on the coastal and oceanic tuna fishery resources from the Indian EEZ