Climate-Smart Agriculture in Rwanda

The climate-smart agriculture (CSA) concept reflects an ambition to improve the integration of agriculture development and climate responsiveness. It aims to achieve food security and broader development goals under a changing climate and increasing food demand. CSA initiatives sustainably increase productivity, enhance resilience, and reduce/remove greenhouse gases (GHGs), and require planning to address tradeoffs and synergies between these three pillars: productivity, adaptation, and mitigation [1]. The priorities of different countries and stakeholders are reflected to achieve more efficient, effective, and equitable food systems that address challenges in environmental, social, and economic dimensions across productive landscapes. While the concept is new, and still evolving, many of the practices that make up CSA already exist worldwide and are used by farmers to cope with various production risks [2]. Mainstreaming CSA requires critical stocktaking of ongoing and promising practices for the future, and of institutional and financial enablers for CSA adoption. This country profile provides a snapshot of a developing baseline created to initiate discussion, both within countries and globally, about entry points for investing in CSA at scale

Bonding in MgSi and AlMgSi Compounds Relevant to AlMgSi Alloys

The bonding and stability of MgSi and AlMgSi compounds relevant to AlMgSi alloys is investigated with the use of (L)APW+(lo) DFT calculations. We show that the $\beta$ and $\beta''$ phases found in the precipitation sequence are characterised by the presence of covalent bonds between Si-Si nearest neighbour pairs and covalent/ionic bonds between Mg-Si nearest neighbour pairs. We then investigate the stability of two recently discovered precipitate phases, U1 and U2, both containing Al in addition to Mg and Si. We show that both phases are characterised by tightly bound Al-Si networks, made possible by a transfer of charge from the Mg atoms.Comment: 11 pages, 30 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

International Circumpolar Surveillance System for Invasive Pneumococcal Disease, 1999–2005

Disease rates are high among indigenous persons in Arctic countries, and PCV7 has resulted in decreased rates in North American children

The human secretome

The proteins secreted by human cells (collectively referred to as the secretome) are important not only for the basic understanding of human biology but also for the identification of potential targets for future diagnostics and therapies. Here, we present a comprehensive analysis of proteins predicted to be secreted in human cells, which provides information about their final localization in the human body, including the proteins actively secreted to peripheral blood. The analysis suggests that a large number of the proteins of the secretome are not secreted out of the cell, but instead are retained intracellularly, whereas another large group of proteins were identified that are predicted to be retained locally at the tissue of expression and not secreted into the blood. Proteins detected in the human blood by mass spectrometry-based proteomics and antibody-based immuno-assays are also presented with estimates of their concentrations in the blood. The results are presented in an updated version 19 of the Human Protein Atlas in which each gene encoding a secretome protein is annotated to provide an open-access knowledge resource of the human secretome, including body-wide expression data, spatial localization data down to the single-cell and subcellular levels, and data about the presence of proteins that are detectable in the blood

Phenotypic characterization of the Francisella tularensis ΔpdpC and ΔiglG mutants

Several bacterial pathogens interact with their host through protein secretion effectuated by a type VI secretion system (T6SS). Francisella tularensis is a highly pathogenic intracellular bacterium that causes the disease tularemia. Proteins encoded by the Francisella pathogenicity island (FPI), which constitute a type VI secretion system, are essential for the virulence of the bacterium and a key mechanism behind this is the escape from the phagosome followed by productive cytosolic replication. It has been shown that T6SS in Francisella is distinct since all putative substrates of F. tularensis T6SS, except for VgrG, are unique to the species. Many of the FPI proteins are secreted into the macrophage cytosol and this is dependent on the functional components of DotU, VgrG, IglC and IglG. In addition, PdpC seems to have a regulatory role for the expression of iglABCD. Since previous results showed peculiar phenotypes of the ΔpdpC and ΔiglG mutants in mouse macrophages, their unique behavior was characterized in human monocyte-derived macrophages (HMDM) in this study. Our results show that both ΔpdpC and ΔiglG mutants of the live vaccine strain (LVS) of F. tularensis did not replicate within HMDMs. The ΔpdpC mutant did not escape from the Francisella containing phagosome (FCP), neither caused cytopathogenicity in primary macrophages and was attenuated in a mouse model. Interestingly, the ΔiglG mutant escaped from the HMDMs FCP and also caused pathological changes in the spleen and liver tissues of intradermally infected C57BL/6 mice. The ΔiglG mutant, with its unique phenotype, is a potential vaccine candidate

Virulence comparison in mice of distinct isolates of type A Francisella tularensis

Francisella tularensis subspecies tularensis (type A F. tularensis) is considered to be one of the most virulent of all bacterial pathogens. Mice are extremely susceptible to infection with this subspecies (LD(100) via various inoculation routes is <10cfu). However, it has not been established whether overt virulence differences exist amongst type A strains of F. tularensis. To this end, the present study compared the virulence of two distinct type A strains, FSC033 and SCHU S4, for naive mice and mice immunized with the live vaccine strain of the pathogen, F. tularensis LVS. One nominal isolate of SCHU S4 was found to be completely avirulent. Another isolate was highly virulent, but all examined cases appeared somewhat less virulent than FSC033. The implication of these findings for future infection and immunity studies is discussedNRC publication: Ye