The effects of boron management on soil microbial population and enzyme activities

Boron is an essential micronutrient required for plant growth. Soil microorganisms directly influence boron content of soil as maximum boron release corresponds with the highest microbial activity. The objective of this study is to determine the effects of different levels of boron fertilizer on microbial population, microbial respiration and soil enzyme activities in different soil depths in cultivated wheat soils. A randomized block design with three replications was used in this experiment. Field experiments were conducted to evaluate the effects of B levels (0, 1, 3, 6 and 9 kg ha–1 B) on soil microbial population in cultivated wheat (Triticum vulgare cultivar Dogu-88) soils. Statistical results showed a significant (p < 0.01) differences between B applications and microbial population and between B applications and microbial respiration in 0 to 30 and 30 to 60 cm soil depths. The highest population of bacteria, fungi, actinomycetes and CO2-C production were observed at 3 kg ha-1 B level in different growing periods of the plant and in different soil depths. Urease, phosphatase and dehydrogenase enzyme activities showed a significant (p < 0.01) positive correlation with B applications. The highest urease activity was observed in 6 kg ha-1 B level and the highest phosphatase and dehydrogenase enzyme activities were observed in 3 kg ha-1 B level in harvest period in both soil depths.Key words: Boron management, soil microbial population, urease activity, phosphatase activity, dehydrogenase activity

Pancytopenýa and Sepsýs due to Meropenem: A Case Report

Meropenem is one of the most commonly used antibacterial agents with relatively few side effects. Serious adverse reactions reported with meropenem are rare with an incidence of 1 %. Recently we came across two rare adverse effects of meropenem in one patient with acute renal failure. There was pancytopenia and sepsis, respectively. To the best of ourknowledge, a only few cases have been reported in the literature that document an association between meropenem administration and pancytopenia, and about half of these cases were sepsis. With the use of meropenem becoming more widespread, these two rare but fatal complications of meropenem should be borne in mind.Keywords: Meropenem, Pancytopenia, Sepsis, Fatal complication

Accelerating Self-Supervised Learning via Efficient Training Strategies

Recently the focus of the computer vision community has shifted from expensive supervised learning towards self-supervised learning of visual representations. While the performance gap between supervised and self-supervised has been narrowing, the time for training self-supervised deep networks remains an order of magnitude larger than its supervised counterparts, which hinders progress, imposes carbon cost, and limits societal benefits to institutions with substantial resources. Motivated by these issues, this paper investigates reducing the training time of recent self-supervised methods by various model-agnostic strategies that have not been used for this problem. In particular, we study three strategies: an extendable cyclic learning rate schedule, a matching progressive augmentation magnitude and image resolutions schedule, and a hard positive mining strategy based on augmentation difficulty. We show that all three methods combined lead up to 2.7 times speed-up in the training time of several self-supervised methods while retaining comparable performance to the standard self-supervised learning setting

Can the delta neutrophil ındex be used as a preliminary biomarker ın the evaluation of periodontal disease: a pilot study

Objective: Tissue destruction in periodontal diseases is related to inflammatory mediators in the host. However, it is unknown whether a relationship between delta neutrophil index (DNI) and neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) in Stage 3 Grade A patients occurs. This cross-sectional study aimed to investigate the relationship between periodontal disease and DNI and NLR. Methodology: The study included 74 systemically healthy, non-smoking adults separated into 3 groups. Group 1: 26 subjects with good periodontal health, Group 2: 26 subjects with gingivitis, and Group 3: 22 subjects with Stage 3 Grade A periodontitis. After determining which group the patient will be included in, a clinical periodontal examination was made of each patient and pocket depth (PD), clinical attachment level (CAL), gingival index (GI), bleeding on probing (BOP) and plaque index (PI) parameters were measured. Venous blood samples were taken and examined with an automatic hematology analyzer for DNI, immature granulocytes (IG), NLR, C-reactive protein (CRP), procalcitonin, neutrophil count and lymphocyte count. Results: DNI, IG, CRP, and neutrophil count were observed to be highest in Group 3, followed by Group 2, and the difference between the groups in these parameters was determined to be statistically significant (p<0.001, p<0.001, p=0.046, p=0.016). DNI, IG, CRP and neutrophil count were observed to be positively correlated with periodontal parameters. Conclusion: The findings of this study support the role of DNI as a new biomarker for periodontal diseases. DNI may better reflect the systemic level of stage 3 grade A periodontitis than traditional inflammatory markers

Symmetry Violation of Quantum Multifractality: Gaussian fluctuations versus Algebraic Localization

Quantum multifractality is a fundamental property of systems such as non-interacting disordered systems at an Anderson transition and many-body systems in Hilbert space. Here we discuss the origin of the presence or absence of a fundamental symmetry related to this property. The anomalous multifractal dimension $\Delta_q$ is used to characterize the structure of quantum states in such systems. Although the multifractal symmetry relation \mbox{$\Delta_q=\Delta_{1-q}$} is universally fulfilled in many known systems, recently some important examples have emerged where it does not hold. We show that this is the result of two different mechanisms. The first one was already known and is related to Gaussian fluctuations well described by random matrix theory. The second one, not previously explored, is related to the presence of an algebraically localized envelope. While the effect of Gaussian fluctuations can be removed by coarse graining, the second mechanism is robust to such a procedure. We illustrate the violation of the symmetry due to algebraic localization on two systems of very different nature, a 1D Floquet critical system and a model corresponding to Anderson localization on random graphs.Comment: Closest to published versio

Morphological malformations of the sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax): Comparison between hormone injected and non-injected fish

In this study, fertilization, hatching and deformation rate of the eggs, and larvae obtained from hormone injected (HI) and non-injected broodstock (NHI), were determined. In the experiment, no differences were observed in the groups’ fertilization rates (p>0.05). Hatching rate was found higher in the HI group (p<0.05). During the experiment, malformations such as spinal fluid accumulation, saddleback, air-bladder deformation and general body deformations were observed in both groups. For the NHI group, saddleback rate was found 5.13±0.55%, air-bladder deformation rate was found 1.43±0.13%, spinal fluid accumulation was found 2.33±1.33% and general body deformation rate was found 3.76±0.23% (p<0.05). As a result, it was determined that the deformation rate increased with hormone injection (p<0.05)

Implementation of a Space Communications Cognitive Engine

Although communications-based cognitive engines have been proposed, very few have been implemented in a full system, especially in a space communications system. In this paper, we detail the implementation of a multi-objective reinforcement-learning algorithm and deep artificial neural networks for the use as a radio-resource-allocation controller. The modular software architecture presented encourages re-use and easy modification for trying different algorithms. Various trade studies involved with the system implementation and integration are discussed. These include the choice of software libraries that provide platform flexibility and promote reusability, choices regarding the deployment of this cognitive engine within a system architecture using the DVB-S2 standard and commercial hardware, and constraints placed on the cognitive engine caused by real-world radio constraints. The implemented radio-resource allocation-management controller was then integrated with the larger spaceground system developed by NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC)