BLOOD RESPIRATORY PARAMETERS IN THREE SPECIES OF CULTIVATED FISH

The study was oarried out on three species of fish which are commerciallyimportant and presently cultivated in Sri Lanka. These are Oreochromismossambicus, Oreochromis niloticus and Chanos chanos. Blood parametersmeasured in the resting state for the three species were haematocrit, erythrocytecounts and haemoglobin concentrations. From these findings the followingwere calculated. The Hb content per single erythrocyte, the Hb concentration per single erythrocyte and volume of a single erythrocyte. It wasfound that all these values were higher in the Oreochromis species comparedto Chanos. Inverse relationships between erythrocyte count and volume ofa single erythrocyte and between cell count and Hb content per single erythrocyte were observed. O2 capacities and O2 dissociation curves were also determined. The effect of pH on 0. affinity was also studied. In vivo experimentswere conducted to measure rates of 02 consumption in the resting state of fish

Effects of low water PH on some heamatological and physiological parameters of oreochromis mossambicus

In this study tolerance to acid water pollution and the effects of acid waterpollution on some haematological and physiological parameters were investigatedin Oreochromis mossambicus, a species of fish which is well establishedand widely distributed in the inland waters of Sri Lanka. From the tolerancetests it was found that the maximum toleran.ce level, with 100% survivaloccurred at pH 4. Therefore in this study the fish were acclimated to pH(H2So4) 4.0 ± 0.1 for a period of two weeks before the changes in bloodparameters were determined. Water in the control tanks had a pH of 7.0-7.2.Acid exposure caused significant disturbances in haematological parameters.The haematocrit, red blood cell count and haemaglobin concentrationincreased while the three haematological indices; haemaglobin content ofa single erythrocyte, haemaglobin concentration of a single erythrocyte andcell volume of single erythrocyte decreased. The blood pH also decreased.But 02 capacity, 02 consumption, metabolic rate and plasma Na- concentrationremained unaltered.This study reveals that O. mossambicus can tolerate a water pH downto pH 4 with little or no difficulty for extended periods, and is able to regulateits physiolobical status to compensate the body's 02 demands. This is incontrast with reports for many other species whose survival is limited at thislevel of pH

Portable performance on heterogeneous architectures

Trends in both consumer and high performance computing are bringing not only more cores, but also increased heterogeneity among the computational resources within a single machine. In many machines, one of the greatest computational resources is now their graphics coprocessors (GPUs), not just their primary CPUs. But GPU programming and memory models differ dramatically from conventional CPUs, and the relative performance characteristics of the different processors vary widely between machines. Different processors within a system often perform best with different algorithms and memory usage patterns, and achieving the best overall performance may require mapping portions of programs across all types of resources in the machine. To address the problem of efficiently programming machines with increasingly heterogeneous computational resources, we propose a programming model in which the best mapping of programs to processors and memories is determined empirically. Programs define choices in how their individual algorithms may work, and the compiler generates further choices in how they can map to CPU and GPU processors and memory systems. These choices are given to an empirical autotuning framework that allows the space of possible implementations to be searched at installation time. The rich choice space allows the autotuner to construct poly-algorithms that combine many different algorithmic techniques, using both the CPU and the GPU, to obtain better performance than any one technique alone. Experimental results show that algorithmic changes, and the varied use of both CPUs and GPUs, are necessary to obtain up to a 16.5x speedup over using a single program configuration for all architectures.United States. Dept. of Energy (Award DE-SC0005288)United States. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Award HR0011-10-9-0009)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Award CCF-0632997

A genome scale metabolic network for rice and accompanying analysis of tryptophan, auxin and serotonin biosynthesis regulation under biotic stress

Background Functional annotations of large plant genome projects mostly provide information on gene function and gene families based on the presence of protein domains and gene homology, but not necessarily in association with gene expression or metabolic and regulatory networks. These additional annotations are necessary to understand the physiology, development and adaptation of a plant and its interaction with the environment. Results RiceCyc is a metabolic pathway networks database for rice. It is a snapshot of the substrates, metabolites, enzymes, reactions and pathways of primary and intermediary metabolism in rice. RiceCyc version 3.3 features 316 pathways and 6,643 peptide-coding genes mapped to 2,103 enzyme-catalyzed and 87 protein-mediated transport reactions. The initial functional annotations of rice genes with InterPro, Gene Ontology, MetaCyc, and Enzyme Commission (EC) numbers were enriched with annotations provided by KEGG and Gramene databases. The pathway inferences and the network diagrams were first predicted based on MetaCyc reference networks and plant pathways from the Plant Metabolic Network, using the Pathologic module of Pathway Tools. This was enriched by manually adding metabolic pathways and gene functions specifically reported for rice. The RiceCyc database is hierarchically browsable from pathway diagrams to the associated genes, metabolites and chemical structures. Through the integrated tool OMICs Viewer, users can upload transcriptomic, proteomic and metabolomic data to visualize expression patterns in a virtual cell. RiceCyc, along with additional species-specific pathway databases hosted in the Gramene project, facilitates comparative pathway analysis. Conclusions Here we describe the RiceCyc network development and discuss its contribution to rice genome annotations. As a case study to demonstrate the use of RiceCyc network as a discovery environment we carried out an integrated bioinformatic analysis of rice metabolic genes that are differentially regulated under diurnal photoperiod and biotic stress treatments. The analysis of publicly available rice transcriptome datasets led to the hypothesis that the complete tryptophan biosynthesis and its dependent metabolic pathways including serotonin biosynthesis are induced by taxonomically diverse pathogens while also being under diurnal regulation. The RiceCyc database is available online for free access at http://www.gramene.org/pathway

Variational study of two-nucleon systems with lattice QCD

The low-energy spectrum and scattering of two-nucleon systems are studied with lattice quantum chromodynamics using a variational approach. A wide range of interpolating operators are used: dibaryon operators built from products of plane-wave nucleons, hexaquark operators built from six localized quarks, and quasilocal operators inspired by two-nucleon bound-state wave functions in low-energy effective theories. Sparsening techniques are used to compute the timeslice-to-all quark propagators required to form correlation-function matrices using products of these operators. Projection of these matrices onto irreducible representations of the cubic group, including spin-orbit coupling, is detailed. Variational methods are applied to constrain the low-energy spectra of two-nucleon systems in a single finite volume with quark masses corresponding to a pion mass of 806 MeV. Results for S- and D-wave phase shifts in the isospin singlet and triplet channels are obtained under the assumption that partial-wave mixing is negligible. Tests of interpolating-operator dependence are used to investigate the reliability of the energy spectra obtained and highlight both the strengths and weaknesses of variational methods. These studies and comparisons to previous studies using the same gauge-field ensemble demonstrate that interpolating-operator dependence can lead to significant effects on the two-nucleon energy spectra obtained using both variational and nonvariational methods, including missing energy levels and other discrepancies. While this study is inconclusive regarding the presence of two-nucleon bound states at this quark mass, it provides robust upper bounds on two-nucleon energy levels that can be improved in future calculations using additional interpolating operators and is therefore a step toward reliable nuclear spectroscopy from the underlying Standard Model of particle physics

Storage of Carbon Dioxide in Saline Aquifers: Physicochemical Processes, Key Constraints, and Scale-Up Potential

Full text available at: https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-chembioeng-093020-091447CO2 storage in saline aquifers offers a realistic means of achieving globally significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions at the scale of billions of tonnes per year. We review insights into the processes involved using well-documented industrial-scale projects, supported by a range of laboratory analyses, field studies, and flow simulations. The main topics we address are (a) the significant physicochemical processes, (b) the factors limiting CO2 storage capacity, and (c) the requirements for global scale-up.Although CO2 capture and storage (CCS) technology can be considered mature and proven, it requires significant and rapid scale-up to meet the objectives of the Paris Climate Agreement. The projected growth in the number of CO2 injection wells required is significantly lower than the historic petroleum industry drill rates, indicating that decarbonization via CCS is a highly credible and affordable ambition for modern human society. Several technology developments are needed to reduce deployment costs and to stimulate widespread adoption of this technology, and these should focus on demonstration of long-term retention and safety of CO2 storage and development of smart ways of handling injection wells and pressure, cost-effective monitoring solutions, and deployment of CCS hubs with associated infrastructure.Bureau of Economic Geolog

Relation between Sectoral Distribution of Commercial Bank Credit and Economic Growth in Sri Lanka

This study investigates the impact of sectoral distribution of commercial bank credit on economic growth in Sri Lanka based on data from 2005 to 2017. The Auto-regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model is used to investigate short and long run impact of sectoral distribution of commercial bank credit on Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The findings of the ARDL Error Correction model indicate that the commercial bank sectoral credit distribution is significantly explaining the short run economic growth. Moreover, ARDL long run form and bounds test shows that there is a long run relation between the variables. The industrial sector has a long run positive relationship with GDP while the other sectors are insignificant in explaining long run economic growth. According to the results, the government can motivate banks to distribute credit facilities to the industry sector to boost GDP in the long-run. This is the first study that discusses the sectoral distribution of commercial bank credit on economic growth of Sri Lanka as per the best of the authors‟ knowledge. Keywords Commercial bank, Credit, Economic growth, Gross Domestic Produc

Nuclear-localized human respiratory syncytial virus NS1 protein modulates host gene transcription

Human respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a common cause of lower respiratory tract infections in the pediatric, elderly, and immunocompromised individuals. RSV non-structural protein NS1 is a known cytosolic immune antagonist, but how NS1 modulates host responses remains poorly defined. Here, we observe NS1 partitioning into the nucleus of RSV-infected cells, including the human airway epithelium. Nuclear NS1 coimmunoprecipitates with Mediator complex and is chromatin associated. Chromatin-immunoprecipitation demonstrates enrichment of NS1 that overlaps Mediator and transcription factor binding within the promoters and enhancers of differentially expressed genes during RSV infection. Mutation of the NS1 C-terminal helix reduces NS1 impact on host gene expression. These data suggest that nuclear NS1 alters host responses to RSV infection by binding at regulatory elements of immune response genes and modulating host gene transcription. Our study identifies another layer of regulation by virally encoded proteins that shapes host response and impacts immunity to RSV

Electrospun amplified fiber optics

A lot of research is focused on all-optical signal processing, aiming to obtain effective alternatives to existing data transmission platforms. Amplification of light in fiber optics, such as in Erbium-doped fiber amplifiers, is especially important for an efficient signal transmission. However, the complex fabrication methods, involving high-temperature processes performed in highly pure environment, slow down the fabrication and make amplified components expensive with respect to an ideal, high-throughput and room temperature production. Here, we report on near infrared polymer fiber amplifiers, working over a band of about 20 nm. The fibers are cheap, spun with a process entirely carried out at room temperature, and show amplified spontaneous emission with good gain coefficients as well as low optical losses (a few cm^-1). The amplification process is favoured by the high fiber quality and low self-absorption. The found performance metrics promise to be suitable for short-distance operation, and the large variety of commercially-available doping dyes might allow for effective multi-wavelength operation by electrospun amplified fiber optics.Comment: 27 pages, 8 figure