Plant profit maximisation improves predictions of European forest responses to drought

- Knowledge of how water stress impacts the carbon and water cycles is a key uncertainty in terrestrial biosphere models. - We tested a new profit maximisation model, where photosynthetic uptake of CO2 is optimally traded against plant hydraulic function, as an alternative to the empirical functions commonly used in models to regulate gas exchange during periods of water stress. We conducted a multi-site evaluation of this model at the ecosystem scale, before and during major droughts in Europe. Additionally, we asked whether the maximum hydraulic conductance in the soil-plant continuum

Relationship between health-related quality of life and respiratory health status among coal-based sponge iron plant workers in Barjora, India

Background: Many coal-based sponge iron plant workers have poor health-related quality of life in general, and specifically a poor respiratory health status. However, the relationship between their health-related quality of life and respiratory health status is unknown. Aim: This study investigated the relationship between health related quality of life, measured using the EuroQol- 5D (EQ5D), and respiratory health status, measured using the St. George’s Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ), among coal-based sponge iron plant workers in Barjora, India. Method: A cross-sectional study was conducted among coalbased sponge iron plant workers in Barjora, and complete data were available on 252 participants. Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients were reported to show the strength of relationship between health-related quality of life and respiratory health status. Results and conclusion: Significant correlations were found between all EQ5D dimensions/visual analogue scale (VAS) and all SGRQ scores except between EQ5D-VAS and SGRQ-activity. A range of correlations was found. They were moderate between EQ5D-anxiety/depression and SGRQ-symptom, EQ5D-VAS and SGRQ-symptom, and EQ5D-anxiety/depression and SGRQ-total, but weak between all the other factors

Investment-induced displacement in central India. A study in extractive capitalism

India’s abundant natural resources are a key feature of its new found status as ‘emerging market’ that attracts foreign investments. As India’s output of these metals and their ores increases, investments pour into India to secure deals over mineral deposits and manufacturing plants. Apart from direct funding for new projects, the new investments pay for a large increase in deployment of security forces, multi-layered ‘briberization’, and ‘protection money’ funding Maoist outfits, in yet another unending war which is fundamentally a resource war around mineral and metal production – primarily steel and aluminum as well as coal and water. In this paper, we examine the mining operations in Central India where Vedanta Resources, a corporation that has become symbolic of neoliberal capitalism in India today, elicits huge new foreign investments to exploit India’s resources under the logic of emerging markets. If a quarter of postcolonial India’s Scheduled Tribe population was displaced by ‘development’ projects, this time it is foreign investments that are causing large scale displacement of indigenous populations

Roles of Dicer-Like Proteins 2 and 4 in Intra- and Intercellular Antiviral Silencing

RNA silencing is an innate antiviral mechanism conserved in organisms across kingdoms. Such cellular defense involves DICER or DICER-LIKEs (DCLs) that process viral RNAs into small interfering (vsi)RNAs. Plants encode four DCLs which play diverse roles in cell-autonomous virus-induced RNA silencing (known as VIGS) against viral invasion. However, intracellular VIGS can spread between cells, and the genetic basis and involvement of vsiRNAs in non-cell autonomous VIGS remains poorly understood. Here using GFP as a reporter gene together with a suite of DCL RNAi transgenic lines, we show that in addition to well-established activities of DCLs in intracellular VIGS and vsiRNA biogenesis, DCL4 inhibits intercellular VIGS whilst DCL2 is required, likely along with DCL2-processed/dependent vsiRNAs and their precursor RNAs, for efficient VIGS trafficking from epidermal to adjacent cells. DCL4 imposed an epistatic effect on DCL2 to impede cell-to-cell spread of VIGS. Our results demonstrate previously unknown functions for DCL2 and DCL4 which may form a dual defensive frontier for intra- and intercellular silencing to double-protect cells from virus infection in Nicotiana benthamiana

産業自家発電のエネルギー効率と二酸化炭素排出率に関する研究

This study was intended to find the energy and environmental efficiencies of industrial power generation systems in Japan, based on the data of the Yearbook of the Current Survey of Energy Consumption, by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METD). Boiler-steam turbine systems account for the largest portion (73%) of the electricity produced on-site for factories\u27 power needs, and combined heat and power (CHP) systems (16%) follow them. The power efficiencies of boiler-steam turbine power generation systems installed in 9 types of industry are in a range of 26-44% (total average : 37%), and their CO_2 emission rates are in a wider rage of 0.47-1.19 CO_2-kg/kWh (total average : 0.66 CO_2-kg/kWh). Then, the total efficiencies of CHP systems are in a range of 34-77% (total average : 62%), and their C02 emission rates are in a rage of 0.62-1.18 CO_2-kg/kWh (total average : 0.72 CO_2-kg/kWh). These results indicated that industrial boiler-steam turbine systems were not so efficient in power generation, and had slightly larger CO_2 emission rates than ones of the public power generation companies. And also, although industrial CHP systems were made sure to be useful measures for the climate changes as a whole, certain types of industry with low heat-demands hardly achieved the high performance

Concrete materials research seminar 17-18 July 1990

Abstracts of presentations of the seminar held London (GB)SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:q92/13341(Concrete) / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

The exploitation of selected non-quota species in the English Channel

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:DXN031317 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo