Identification of drought, heat and combined drought and heat tolerant donors in maize (Zea mays L.)

Low maize yields and the impacts of climate change on maize production highlight the need to improve yields in eastern and southern Africa. Climate projections suggest higher temperatures within drought-prone areas. Research in model species suggests that tolerance to combined drought and heat stress is genetically distinct from tolerance to either stress alone, but this has not been confirmed in maize. In this study we evaluated 300 maize inbred lines testcrossed to CML539. Experiments were conducted under optimal conditions, reproductive stage drought stress, heat stress and combined drought and heat stress. Lines with high levels of tolerance to drought and combined drought and heat stress were identified. Significant genotype x trial interaction and very large plot residuals were observed; consequently, the repeatability of individual managed stress trials was low. Tolerance to combined drought and heat stress in maize was genetically distinct from tolerance to individual stresses, and tolerance to either stress alone did not confer tolerance to combined drought and heat stress. This finding has major implications for maize drought breeding. Many current drought donors and key inbreds used in widely-grown African hybrids were susceptible to drought stress at elevated temperatures. Several donors tolerant to drought and combined drought and heat stress, notably La Posta Sequia C7-F64-2-6-2-2 and DTPYC9-F46-1-2-1-2, need to be incorporated into maize breeding pipelines

Nutritional Interventions May Improve Outcomes of Patients Operated on for Diabetic Foot Infections: A Single-Center Case-Control Study

Aim While a patient's nutritional status is known to generally have a role in postoperative wound healing, there is little information on its role as therapy in the multifaceted problem of diabetic foot infections (DFIs). Methods We assessed this issue by conducting a retrospective case-control cohort study using a multivariate Cox regression model. The nutrition status of the DFI patients was assessed by professional nutritionists, who also orchestrated the nutritional intervention (counselling, composition of the intrahospital food) during hospitalization. Results Among 1,013 DFI episodes in 586 patients (median age 67 years; 882 with osteomyelitis), 191 (19%) received a professional assessment of their nutrition accompanied by between 1 and 6 nutritional interventions. DFI cases who had professional nutritionists' interventions had a significantly shorter hospital stay, had shorter antibiotic therapies, and tended to fewer surgical debridements. By multivariate analysis, episodes with low Nutritional Risk Status- (NRS-) Scores 1-3 were associated with significantly lower failure rates after therapy for DFI (Cox regression analysis; hazard ratio 0.2, 95% confidence interval 0.1-0.7). Conclusions In this retrospective cohort study, DFI episodes with low NRS-Score were associated with lower rates of clinical failure after DFI treatment, while nutritional interventions improved the outcome of DFI. We need prospective interventional trials for this treatment, and these are underway

Emotions in context: examining pervasive affective sensing systems, applications, and analyses

Pervasive sensing has opened up new opportunities for measuring our feelings and understanding our behavior by monitoring our affective states while mobile. This review paper surveys pervasive affect sensing by examining and considering three major elements of affective pervasive systems, namely; “sensing”, “analysis”, and “application”. Sensing investigates the different sensing modalities that are used in existing real-time affective applications, Analysis explores different approaches to emotion recognition and visualization based on different types of collected data, and Application investigates different leading areas of affective applications. For each of the three aspects, the paper includes an extensive survey of the literature and finally outlines some of challenges and future research opportunities of affective sensing in the context of pervasive computing

Emotional ratings and skin conductance response to visual, auditory and haptic stimuli

The human emotional reactions to stimuli delivered by different sensory modalities is a topic of interest for many disciplines, from Human-Computer-Interaction to cognitive sciences. Different databases of stimuli eliciting emotional reaction are available, tested on a high number of participants. Interestingly, stimuli within one database are always of the same type. In other words, to date, no data was obtained and compared from distinct types of emotion-eliciting stimuli from the same participant. This makes it difficult to use different databases within the same experiment, limiting the complexity of experiments investigating emotional reactions. Moreover, whereas the stimuli and the participants’ rating to the stimuli are available, physiological reactions of participants to the emotional stimuli are often recorded but not shared. Here, we test stimuli delivered either through a visual, auditory, or haptic modality in a within participant experimental design. We provide the results of our study in the form of a MATLAB structure including basic demographics on the participants, the participant’s self-assessment of his/her emotional state, and his/her physiological reactions (i.e., skin conductance)

Yield gains in extra-early maize cultivars of three breeding eras under multiple environments

Open Access JournalAvailability of extra-early maize cultivars has facilitated the expansion of maize production into savannas of West and Central Africa (WCA). Fifty-six extra-early maize cultivars of three breeding eras;1995 to 2000, 2001 to 2006, and 2007 to 2012 were evaluated for 2 yr under 24 multiple-stress and 28 non-stress environments in WCA. Objectives of the study were to determine genetic improvement in grain yield of cultivars developed during the breeding eras, and identify high-yielding and s multiple-stress and non-stress environments. Yield gains from era 1 to era 3 under multiple stresses was associated with increased days to anthesis, reduced stalk lodging, and improved husk cover. Cultivars 2004 TZEE-Y Pop STR C4, TZEE-W Pop STR QPM C0, and TZEE-W Pop STR BC2 C0 of era 2; and TZEE-W STR 107 BC1, TZEE-W Pop STR C5, and 2012 TZEE-Y DT STR C5 of era 3 were high-yielding and stable across multiple-stress environments while 98 Syn EE-W from era 1, FERKE TZEE-W STR, TZEE-W Pop STR C3, and TZEE-Y Pop STR QPM C0 from era 2, and TZEE-W Pop STR C5, 2009 TZEE-OR2 STR QPM, 2009 TZEE-W STR, TZEE-Y STR 106, and TZEE-W DT C0 STR C5 from era 3 were outstanding across non-stress environments and should be tested extensively and commercialized. Considerable improvement has been made in breeding for multiple-stress tolerant extra-early maize cultivars

Psychophysiology in games

Psychophysiology is the study of the relationship between psychology and its physiological manifestations. That relationship is of particular importance for both game design and ultimately gameplaying. Players’ psychophysiology offers a gateway towards a better understanding of playing behavior and experience. That knowledge can, in turn, be beneficial for the player as it allows designers to make better games for them; either explicitly by altering the game during play or implicitly during the game design process. This chapter argues for the importance of physiology for the investigation of player affect in games, reviews the current state of the art in sensor technology and outlines the key phases for the application of psychophysiology in games.The work is supported, in part, by the EU-funded FP7 ICT iLearnRWproject (project no: 318803).peer-reviewe

The Contribution of Sound Intensity in Vocal Emotion Perception: Behavioral and Electrophysiological Evidence

Although its role is frequently stressed in acoustic profile for vocal emotion, sound intensity is frequently regarded as a control parameter in neurocognitive studies of vocal emotion, leaving its role and neural underpinnings unclear. To investigate these issues, we asked participants to rate the angry level of neutral and angry prosodies before and after sound intensity modification in Experiment 1, and recorded electroencephalogram (EEG) for mismatching emotional prosodies with and without sound intensity modification and for matching emotional prosodies while participants performed emotional feature or sound intensity congruity judgment in Experiment 2. It was found that sound intensity modification had significant effect on the rating of angry level for angry prosodies, but not for neutral ones. Moreover, mismatching emotional prosodies, relative to matching ones, induced enhanced N2/P3 complex and theta band synchronization irrespective of sound intensity modification and task demands. However, mismatching emotional prosodies with reduced sound intensity showed prolonged peak latency and decreased amplitude in N2/P3 complex and smaller theta band synchronization. These findings suggest that though it cannot categorically affect emotionality conveyed in emotional prosodies, sound intensity contributes to emotional significance quantitatively, implying that sound intensity should not simply be taken as a control parameter and its unique role needs to be specified in vocal emotion studies

Twenty bone-mineral-density loci identified by large-scale meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies

To access publisher full text version of this article. Please click on the hyperlink in Additional Links fieldBone mineral density (BMD) is a heritable complex trait used in the clinical diagnosis of osteoporosis and the assessment of fracture risk. We performed meta-analysis of five genome-wide association studies of femoral neck and lumbar spine BMD in 19,195 subjects of Northern European descent. We identified 20 BMD loci that reached genome-wide significance (GWS; P < 5 x 10(-8)), of which 13 map to regions not previously associated with this trait: 1p31.3 (GPR177), 2p21 (SPTBN1), 3p22 (CTNNB1), 4q21.1 (MEPE), 5q14 (MEF2C), 7p14 (STARD3NL), 7q21.3 (FLJ42280), 11p11.2 (LRP4, ARHGAP1, F2), 11p14.1 (DCDC5), 11p15 (SOX6), 16q24 (FOXL1), 17q21 (HDAC5) and 17q12 (CRHR1). The meta-analysis also confirmed at GWS level seven known BMD loci on 1p36 (ZBTB40), 6q25 (ESR1), 8q24 (TNFRSF11B), 11q13.4 (LRP5), 12q13 (SP7), 13q14 (TNFSF11) and 18q21 (TNFRSF11A). The many SNPs associated with BMD map to genes in signaling pathways with relevance to bone metabolism and highlight the complex genetic architecture that underlies osteoporosis and variation in BMD

Wnt signalling and cancer stem cells

[Abstract] Intracellular signalling mediated by secreted Wnt proteins is essential for the establishment of cell fates and proper tissue patterning during embryo development and for the regulation of tissue homeostasis and stem cell function in adult tissues. Aberrant activation of Wnt signalling pathways has been directly linked to the genesis of different tumours. Here, the components and molecular mechanisms implicated in the transduction of Wnt signal, along with important results supporting a central role for this signalling pathway in stem cell function regulation and carcinogenesis will be briefly reviewed.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación; SAF2008-0060