Effectiveness of fungicidal seed treatments applied to smooth or shrivelled soybean seeds contaminated by Diaporthe phaseolorum

On a examiné l'effet de 11 fongicides sur six lots de semences de soja (Glycinemax) provenant de l'Ontario en 1986-1987 et contaminés par le Diaporthe phaseolorum var. caulivora (7-76 %) et le D. phaseolorum var. sojae(5-19 %). Le Phomopsis longicolla a également contaminé trois de ces lots à de faibles taux (1-2 %). Le fongicide Vitaflo-280®, un mélange de carbathiine et de thirame, appliqué à trois lots de semences décolorées et ridées, a augmenté l'émergence des plantules de soja, la densité du peuplement à la récolte et le rendement en grain, et a diminué la gravité de l'infection des tiges. Il a été inefficace lorsqu'appliqué à trois lots de semences brillantes et lisses. Il n'existait pas de rapport entre l'efficacité de ce produit et le degré de contamination des semences. Dix autres produits fongicides ont aussi été respectivement efficaces et inefficaces lorsqu'appliqués à des lots de semences ridées et lisses. Les matières actives les plus efficaces ont été le thirame, la carbathiine le bénomyl et le captane, et les produits commerciaux les plus efficaces disponibles en Ontario ont été le Vitaflo-280®, le Vitavax P®, le Thiram 320F® et l'Anchor®. L'augmentation maximale du rendement en grain a été 60,5 %.The effect of 11 fungicides on six lots of soybean (Glycine max) seed produced in Ontario in 1986-1987 and contaminated with Diaporthe phaseolorum var. caulivora (7-76%) and D. phaseolorum var. sojae (5-19%) was examined. Phomopsis longicolla also contaminated three of these seed lots at low rates (1-2%). The fungicide Vitaflo-280®, a mix of carbathiin and thiram, increased soybean seedling emergence, plant stand at harvest and seed yield, and decreased the severity of stem infection when applied to three lots of discolored and shrivelled seed, but was ineffective when applied to three lots of bright and smooth seed. The effectiveness of this product was not related to the incidence of contaminated seed. A further 10 fungicidal products were similarly effective and ineffective when applied to shrivelled and smooth seed lots, respectively. The most effective active ingredients were thiram, carbathiin, benomyl and captan, and the most effective commercial products available in Ontario were Vitaflo-280®, Vitavax P®, Thiram 320F®, and Anchor®. The maximum increase in seed yield was 60.5%

Designing a web-application to support home-based care of childhood CKD stages 3-5: Qualitative study of family and professional preferences

Background: There is a lack of online, evidence-based information and resources to support home-based care of childhood CKD stages 3-5. Methods. Qualitative interviews were undertaken with parents, patients and professionals to explore their views on content of the proposed online parent information and support (OPIS) web-application. Data were analysed using Framework Analysis, guided by the concept of Self-efficacy. Results: 32 parents, 26 patients and 12 professionals were interviewed. All groups wanted an application that explains, demonstrates, and enables parental clinical care-giving, with condition-specific, continously available, reliable, accessible material and a closed communication system to enable contact between families living with CKD. Professionals advocated a regularly updated application to empower parents to make informed health-care decisions. To address these requirements, key web-application components were defined as: (i) Clinical care-giving support (information on treatment regimens, video-learning tools, condition-specific cartoons/puzzles, and a question and answer area) and (ii) Psychosocial support for care-giving (social-networking, case studies, managing stress, and enhancing families' health-care experiences). Conclusions: Developing a web-application that meets parents' information and support needs will maximise its utility, thereby augmenting parents' self-efficacy for CKD caregiving, and optimising outcomes. Self-efficacy theory provides a schema for how parents' self-efficacy beliefs about management of their child's CKD could potentially be promoted by OPIS. © 2014 Swallow et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd

Effects of pressure on glucose transport in human erythrocytes

AbstractThe operation of the human red cell glucose transporter has been studied at normal and high hydrostatic pressure to identify the step(s) which involve a volume change. Pressure inhibited zero-trans and equilibrium exchange influx to similar extents, by decreasing the Vmax but not significantly changing the Km. The Bmax and Kd of specific [3H]cytochalasin B binding were unaffected by pressure indicating no change to the number or affinity of functional transporters at pressure. Passive glucose transport was inhibited by pressure in a manner consistent with permeation across the lipid bilayer. These data indicate that there is a major change in volume during the translocation step of the glucose transporter which is rate-limiting for transport

Alberta field survey of herbicide-resistant weeds

Non-Peer ReviewedIn 2001, 236 fields were randomly selected throughout the ecoregions of Alberta and surveyed for grass and broadleaf weeds resistant to Group 1 (ACCase inhibitor) or Group 2 (ALS inhibitor) herbicides. Nearly 20% of surveyed fields had a herbicide-resistant weed biotype. Only 5% of producers with resistant biotypes were aware of their occurrence. This survey serves as a baseline for determining future trends in weed resistance in Alberta

Optimal sequencing of a set of positive numbers with the variance of the sequence's partial sums maximized

We consider the problem of sequencing a set of positive numbers. We try to find the optimal sequence to maximize the variance of its partial sums. The optimal sequence is shown to have a beautiful structure. It is interesting to note that the symmetric problem which aims at minimizing the variance of the same partial sums is proved to be NP-complete in the literature.Comment: 12 pages;Accepted for publication in Optimization Lette

Charged Higgs bosons in the Next-to MSSM (NMSSM)

The charged Higgs boson decays $H^\pm\to W^\pm A_1$ and $H^\pm\to W^\pm h_i$ are studied in the framework of the next-to Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (NMSSM). It is found that the decay rate for $H^\pm\to W^\pm A_1$ can exceed the rates for the $\tau^\pm\nu$ and $tb$ channels both below and above the top-bottom threshold. The dominance of $H^\pm\to W^\pm A_1$ is most readily achieved when $A_1$ has a large doublet component and small mass. We also study the production process $pp\to H^\pm A_1$ at the LHC followed by the decay $H^\pm\to W^\pm A_1$ which leads to the signature $W^\pm A_1 A_1$. We suggest that $p p\to H^\pm A_1$ is a promising discovery channel for a light charged Higgs boson in the NMSSM with small or moderate $\tan\beta$ and dominant decay mode $H^\pm \to W^\pm A_1$. This $W^\pm A_1 A_1$ signature can also arise from the Higgsstrahlung process $pp\to W^\pm h_1$ followed by the decay $h_1\to A_1 A_1$. It is shown that there exist regions of parameter space where these processes can have comparable cross sections and we suggest that their respective signals can be distinguished at the LHC by using appropriate reconstruction methods.Comment: 20 pages, 22 eps figures, more reference adde

Metabolic engineering of flavonoids in tomato (Solanum lycopersicum): the potential for metabolomics

Flavonoids comprise a large and diverse group of polyphenolic plant secondary metabolites. In plants, flavonoids play important roles in many biological processes such as pigmentation of flowers, fruits and vegetables, plant-pathogen interactions, fertility and protection against UV light. Being natural plant compounds, flavonoids are an integral part of the human diet and there is increasing evidence that dietary polyphenols are likely candidates for the observed beneficial effects of a diet rich in fruits and vegetables on the prevention of several chronic diseases. Within the plant kingdom, and even within a single plant species, there is a large variation in the levels and composition of flavonoids. This variation is often due to specific mutations in flavonoid-related genes leading to quantitative and qualitative differences in metabolic profiles. The use of such specific flavonoid mutants with easily scorable, visible phenotypes has led to the isolation and characterisation of many structural and regulatory genes involved in the flavonoid biosynthetic pathway from different plant species. These genes have been used to engineer the flavonoid biosynthetic pathway in both model and crop plant species, not only from a fundamental perspective, but also in order to alter important agronomic traits, such as flower and fruit colour, resistance, nutritional value. This review describes the advances made in engineering the flavonoid pathway in tomato (Solanum lycopersicum). Three different approaches will be described; (I) Increasing endogenous tomato flavonoids using structural or regulatory genes; (II) Blocking specific steps in the flavonoid pathway by RNA interference strategies; and (III) Production of novel tomato flavonoids by introducing novel branches of the flavonoid pathway. Metabolite profiling is an essential tool to analyse the effects of pathway engineering approaches, not only to analyse the effect on the flavonoid composition itself, but also on other related or unrelated metabolic pathways. Metabolomics will therefore play an increasingly important role in revealing a more complete picture of metabolic perturbation and will provide additional novel insights into the effect of the introduced genes and the role of flavonoids in plant physiology and development

Herbicide-use trends in prairie canola production systems

Non-Peer Reviewe

Some Properties of the Speciation Model for Food-Web Structure - Mechanisms for Degree Distributions and Intervality

We present a mathematical analysis of the speciation model for food-web structure, which had in previous work been shown to yield a good description of empirical data of food-web topology. The degree distributions of the network are derived. Properties of the speciation model are compared to those of other models that successfully describe empirical data. It is argued that the speciation model unifies the underlying ideas of previous theories. In particular, it offers a mechanistic explanation for the success of the niche model of Williams and Martinez and the frequent observation of intervality in empirical food webs.Comment: 23 pages, 6 figures, minor rewrite