Biological properties and fruit quality of sweet cherry (Prunus avium L.) cultivars from Romanian assortment

The paper presents a 4-year study of the valuable characteristics in 15 autochthonous and cosmopolitan sweet cherry cultivars grown in northeastern Romania, named Moldavia area. Tree’s vigour, resistance to frost and anthracnosis, the fructification phenophases, epidermis colour, organoleptic and quality traits of fruits and also fruit’s and stone’s size were evaluated. Weak tree vigour was find at ‘Tereza’, ‘Ştefan’ and ‘Golia’ cultivars. From end of flowering to harvesting time were determined 39–40 days for the early cultivars (‘Scorospelka’, ‘Cătălina’), while for the late cultivars as ‘Marina’ and ‘George’ were identified 71–83 days. Eight cultivars have presented fruits’ resistance to cracking with low values between 1.3–9.3% fruits cracked. Fruit’s weight have varied between 5.9 g (‘Scorospelka’) and 9.2 g (‘Andreiaş’), while fruit’s equatorial diameter have varied between 22.4 mm (‘George’) and 25.8 mm (‘Paulică’). The cultivars with the largest fruit’s size were ‘Andreiaş’, ‘Bucium’, ‘Ştefan’, ‘Paulică’, ‘Golia’, ‘Van’ and ‘Stella’. The values of the soluble solids content range between 14.4°Brix (‘Scorospelka’) to 20.0°Brix (‘Bucium’), the titratable acidity has been between 0.39 (‘Andreiaş’) and 0.87 (‘Cătălina’) mg malic acid 100-1 mL juice and the total content of polyphenols has recorded values between 314.93–584.95 mg GAE 100-1 mL of fruit juice. The studied sweet cherry cultivars showed high variability but some got remarked through earliness, low vigour of the tree, large fruit’s size or fruit’s resistance to cracking

THE EFFECT OF TiO2 NANOPARTICLES (DOPED OR NOT WITH Ag, ENCAPSULATED OR NOT IN LYPOSOMES), ON THE SPLEEN ULTRASTRUCTURE IN Mus musculus SPECIES, EXPOSED AT A STRESS FACTOR X-RAYS

The present experiment was performed on young females of Mus musculus, 22-24 g each, intraperitoneal injected with a suspension of titanium dioxide (five injections of 0.5 ml each, one at two days, with 0.01% TiO2 or TiO2-Ag suspension). The TiO2 nanoparticles of anatase crystallization form, 10-20 nm size, wereconjugated or not with 1% Ag, encapsulated or not in lyposome. A day after the third injection, half of theanimals received a sublethal dose of X-rays (2.58 Gy; the stress factor). A day after the last injection, the animals were sacrificed through the section of thecarotid artery. Ultrastructural investigations were performed at the spleen level. The analysis of the ultrastructural features from the spleen level enabledthe following observations: the single action of the TiO2 or TiO2-Ag nanoparticles induced an inflammatory process, but in the presence of X-rays, they manifested a slight protective effect; the TiO2-Ag nanoparticles, encapsulated in liposome, manifested a strong radioprotective effect, but the endocapsulation process is not optimal and has to be improved; the presence of a protective effect at the spleen level can suggest that the TiO2-Ag nanoparticles can be used to enhance the organism resistance in case of carcinogenic treatment (in animal or in homo)

THE VARIABILITY STUDY OF MORPHOLOGICAL CHARACTERS ON SOME SALIX SPP. GENOTYPES

The present study followed the analysis of some characters of 14 Romanian and Swedish genotypes of energy willow in different ecological conditions. Thus, they were analyzed the next characters: stem diameter on the base, total grow/pl., grow/stem, plant height and. no. of stems/pl. The analyzed factors were: the area and the genotype. The area factors had three levels: Radovan (medium fertility soil - Control), Tâmburești (sandy soil on irrigation) and Ișalnița (antropomorphic soil formed from coal ash). The recorded date showes the diversity and the genetic potential of the biological material, emphesizing the well beahivour of the local genotypes RO 1077, RO 1082 and RO 892 created on ICAS Bucharest in the three location. The foreign genotypes with good results were Inger siTorhild. Analyzing the averagre values recored in the three location, the best results were obtained in the Tamburesti area under irrigation conditions, no matter the studied character, the humidity level from the soil being a key factor for the success of the energy willow crop, no matter the soil type or genotype

ChaLearn LAP 2016: First Round Challenge on First Impressions - Dataset and Results

This paper summarizes the ChaLearn Looking at People 2016 First Impressions challenge data and results obtained by the teams in the first round of the competition. The goal of the competition was to automatically evaluate five “apparent” personality traits (the so-called “Big Five”) from videos of subjects speaking in front of a camera, by using human judgment. In this edition of the ChaLearn challenge, a novel data set consisting of 10,000 shorts clips from YouTube videos has been made publicly available. The ground truth for personality traits was obtained from workers of Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT). To alleviate calibration problems between workers, we used pairwise comparisons between videos, and variable levels were reconstructed by fitting a Bradley-Terry-Luce model with maximum likelihood. The CodaLab open source platform was used for submission of predictions and scoring. The competition attracted, over a period of 2 months, 84 participants who are grouped in several teams. Nine teams entered the final phase. Despite the difficulty of the task, the teams made great advances in this round of the challenge

Reading Scepticism Historically. Scepticism, Acatalepsia and the Fall of Adam in Francis Bacon

The first part of this paper will provide a reconstruction of Francis Bacon’s interpretation of Academic scepticism, Pyrrhonism, and Dogmatism, and its sources throughout his large corpus. It shall also analyze Bacon’s approach against the background of his intellectual milieu, looking particularly at Renaissance readings of scepticism as developed by Guillaume Salluste du Bartas, Pierre de la Primaudaye, Fulke Greville, and John Davies. It shall show that although Bacon made more references to Academic than to Pyrrhonian Scepticism, like most of his contemporaries, he often misrepresented and mixed the doctrinal components of both currents. The second part of the paper shall offer a complete chronological survey of Bacon’s assessment of scepticism throughout his writings. Following the lead of previous studies by other scholars, I shall support the view that, while he approved of the state of doubt and the suspension of judgment as a provisional necessary stage in the pursuit of knowledge, he rejected the notion of acatalepsia. To this received reading, I shall add the suggestion that Bacon’s criticism of acatalepsia ultimately depends on his view of the historical conditions that surround human nature. I deal with this last point in the third part of the paper, where I shall argue that Bacon’s evaluation of scepticism relied on his adoption of a Protestant and Augustinian view of human nature that informed his overall interpretation of the history of humanity and nature, including the sceptical schools

The effect of phytoprotection programs on the control of the main apple pests

In recent decades, positive changes have been occurred on the fruit crops protection, because of new synthetic or natural substances, more effective and less toxic. In 2011, at Fruit Growing Research and Development Station Iaşi, Romania, was tested a phitosanitary program that aimed especially to control the main pest of apple, being introduced the next generation of plant protection products, such as: Coragen, Proteus, Calypso, Decis 25 WG. The research was carried out for Idared, Golden delicious and Florina, on tow variants for each variety. Phytosanitary treatments applied for pest control were supplemented with fungicides used to combat major apple deseases. Until blooming tow treatments were applied for each variant, and after the petals fall, treatments were carried out at warning. Observation and measurements were performed after the treatments and they showed, at the end of each generation, the percentage of attacked fruits by the main apple pests. These produsts applied in a few treatments have provided a strong efficacy in combating major apple pests: codling moth (Cydia pomonella L.), fruit skin moth (Adoxophyes reticulana Hb.), leaf miner moth (Phyllonorycter sp.) and mites (Panonychus sp.). To combat lepidoptera, best result were obtained with Calypso 480 SC and Coragen insecticides, and also, products such as Decis 25 WG and Proteus, have ensured a good health in apple plantation