Effects of salicylic acid and spermine foliar application on some morphological and physiological characteristics of isabgol (Plantago ovata Forsk) under water stress

ArticleYield as well as concentration of relevant component in many medical plants are influenced by growing condition water stress. Field experiment was done based on a randomized complete block design with 18 treatments and three replications, at Gonbad Kavous University, Golestan, Iran in winter 2016. Irrigation treatment with three levels (normal irrigation, water stress imposed at flowering stage or at seed filling stage) was placed in main plot. Salicylic acid (SA) with three levels (control, 0.4 and 0.8 mM) and spermine (Spm) with two levels (control and 0.02 mM) were assigned in sub-plots. Result showed the foliar application SA and Spm treatments under normal irrigation and cutoff irrigation at seed filling stage have significantly affected relative water content, electrolyte leakage and membrane stability index, but under cutoff irrigation at flowering stage did not significantly affected measured traits. Exogenous applications of SA and Spm applied increased the plant height, 1,000 grain weight and biological yield in compared to the non-use product at normal irrigation regime. Foliar spraying SA and Spm under cutoff irrigation at flowering stage did not significantly affected measured traits. Application product especially SA0.8 mM and Spm0.02 mM under cutoff irrigation at seed filling stage increased the most characteristics in compared to control. Foliar application of phenolic compounds such as salicylic acid and polyamines like spermine can be considered as an effective measure to reduce the adverse effects of water stress and ultimately increase the yield and yield components of isabgol

Formal methods with a touch of magic

Machine learning and formal methods have complimentary benefits and drawbacks. In this work, we address the controller-design problem with a combination of techniques from both fields. The use of black-box neural networks in deep reinforcement learning (deep RL) poses a challenge for such a combination. Instead of reasoning formally about the output of deep RL, which we call the wizard, we extract from it a decision-tree based model, which we refer to as the magic book. Using the extracted model as an intermediary, we are able to handle problems that are infeasible for either deep RL or formal methods by themselves. First, we suggest, for the first time, a synthesis procedure that is based on a magic book. We synthesize a stand-alone correct-by-design controller that enjoys the favorable performance of RL. Second, we incorporate a magic book in a bounded model checking (BMC) procedure. BMC allows us to find numerous traces of the plant under the control of the wizard, which a user can use to increase the trustworthiness of the wizard and direct further training

Combined use of platelet-rich plasma and adipose tissue-derived mesenchymal stem cells shows a synergistic effect in experimental spinal cord injury

Spinal cord injury (SCI) as a crippling disability causes tissue degeneration via neuron loss and fiber disruption. Some researchers have tried to reverse or minimize these changes. Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) is a biological product derived from peripheral blood containing a variety of growth factors. PRP has been extensively used in regenerative medicine. On the other hand, via secreting neuroprotective growth factors, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have shown a promising potential in repairing central nervous system deficits. This study investigated the therapeutic effect of the combined use of MSCs and PRP in a rat model of SCI. We used real time-PCR method for evaluation of Bcl-2, Bax and caspase 3 expressions, TUNEL test for apoptotic cell death assessment, and neurofilament NF200 immunohistochemistry for examination of axonal regeneration. The results showed that co-treatment with MSCs and PRP efficiently alleviated the evaluated categories. Significant differences were observed in expression of Bcl-2 and caspase3, but not Bax, apoptotic index and the number of NF200 positive axons (for all P </= 0.01) between co-treatment animals compared with those treated with only MSCs or PRP. In conclusion, this study showed that combination of MSCs and PRP synergistically promotes their therapeutic effects in the SCI

Application of Queuing Analytic Theory to Decrease Waiting Times in Emergency Department: Does it Make Sense?

Background: Patients who receive care in an emergency department (ED), are usually unattended while waiting in queues. Objectives: This study was done to determine, whether the application of queuing theory analysis might shorten the waiting times of patients admitted to emergency wards. Patients and Methods: This was an operational study to use queuing theory analysis in the ED. In the first phase, a field study was conducted to delineate the performance of the ED and enter the data obtained into simulator software. In the second phase, "ARENA" software was used for modeling, analysis, creating a simulation and improving the movement of patients in the ED. Validity of the model was confirmed through comparison of the results with the real data using the same instrument. The third phase of the study concerned modeling in order to assess the effect of various operational strategies, on the queue waiting time of patients who were receiving care in the ED. Results: In the first phase, it was shown that 47.7% of the 3000 patient records were cases referred for trauma treatment, and the remaining 52.3% were referred for non-trauma services. A total of 56% of the cases were male and 44% female. Maximum input was 4.5 patients per hour and the minimum input was 0.5 per hour. The average length of stay for patients in the trauma section was three hours, while for the non-trauma section it was four hours. In the second phase, modeling was tested with common scenarios. In the third phase, the scenario with the addition of one or more senior emergency resident(s) on each shift resulted in a decreased length of stay from 4 to 3.75 hours. Moreover, the addition of one bed to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and/or Critical Care Unit (CCU) in the study hospital, reduced the occupancy rate of the nursing service from 76% to 67%. By adding another clerk to take electrocardiograms (ECG) in the ED, the average time from a request to performing the procedure is reduced from 26 to 18 minutes. Furthermore, the addition of 50% more staff to the laboratory and specialist consultations led to a 90 minute reduction in the length of stay. It was also shown that earlier consultations had no effect on the length of stay. Conclusions: Application of queuing theory analysis can improve movement and reduce the waiting times of patients in bottlenecks within the ED throughput

Model predictive control for spacecraft rendezvous.

The current paper addresses the problem of Spacecraft Rendezvous using Model Predictive Control (MPC). The Clohessy-Wiltshire-Hill equations are used to model the spacecraft relative motion. Here the rendezvous problem is discussed by trajectory control using MPC method. Two different scenarios are addressed in trajectory control. The first scenario consist of position control with fuel constraint, secondly the position control is performed in the presence of obstacles. Here the problem of fuel consumption and obstacle avoidance is addressed directly in the cost function. The proposed methods are successfully analysed through simulations

Euclidean Greedy Drawings of Trees

Greedy embedding (or drawing) is a simple and efficient strategy to route messages in wireless sensor networks. For each source-destination pair of nodes s, t in a greedy embedding there is always a neighbor u of s that is closer to t according to some distance metric. The existence of greedy embeddings in the Euclidean plane R^2 is known for certain graph classes such as 3-connected planar graphs. We completely characterize the trees that admit a greedy embedding in R^2. This answers a question by Angelini et al. (Graph Drawing 2009) and is a further step in characterizing the graphs that admit Euclidean greedy embeddings.Comment: Expanded version of a paper to appear in the 21st European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2013). 24 pages, 20 figure