PGPR in Managing Root Rot Disease and Enhancing Growth in Mandarin (Citrus reticulata Blanco.) Seedlings

Decline in general plant-health and fruit production in mandarin influenced by abiotic and biotic factors is a major threat to cultivars grown in Darjeeling and Sikkim hills. Fusarium root rot, caused by F. oxysporum, is one of the most serious diseases afflicted during early plant growth stage in Citrus. To address this, seven PGPR isolates - Pseudomonas poae (RMK03), Bacillus stratosphericus (RHS/CL-01), Ochrobactrum anthropi, Paenibacillus lentimorbus, Bacillus pumilus, Bacillus megaterium and Bacillus amyloliquefaciens were isolated from the rhizosphere of Citrus reticulata, C. limonia and Camellia sinensis, and used for evaluating their effect on growth of mandarin seedlings. Pseudomonas poae showed in vitro antagonism to Fusarium oxysporum. Better growth enhancement was noticed with P. poae, B. stratosphericus, O. anthropi and B. pumilus. Enhanced activity of chlorophyll, total protein, phenol, four major defense enzymeschitinase, β-1, 3-glucanase, peroxidase and phenyalanine ammonia lyase was observed upon application of PGPR. P. poae also suppressed root rot caused by Fusarium oxysporum. Use of PGPR, which promote growth besides reducing disease severity to some extent, may lead to use of eco-friendly approaches for controlling plant diseases

On the Complexity of Temporal-Logic Path Checking

Given a formula in a temporal logic such as LTL or MTL, a fundamental problem is the complexity of evaluating the formula on a given finite word. For LTL, the complexity of this task was recently shown to be in NC. In this paper, we present an NC algorithm for MTL, a quantitative (or metric) extension of LTL, and give an NCC algorithm for UTL, the unary fragment of LTL. At the time of writing, MTL is the most expressive logic with an NC path-checking algorithm, and UTL is the most expressive fragment of LTL with a more efficient path-checking algorithm than for full LTL (subject to standard complexity-theoretic assumptions). We then establish a connection between LTL path checking and planar circuits, which we exploit to show that any further progress in determining the precise complexity of LTL path checking would immediately entail more efficient evaluation algorithms than are known for a certain class of planar circuits. The connection further implies that the complexity of LTL path checking depends on the Boolean connectives allowed: adding Boolean exclusive or yields a temporal logic with P-complete path-checking problem

Spin Polarizations at and about the Lowest Filled Landau Level

The spin polarization versus temperature at or near a fully filled lowest Landau level is explored for finite-size systems in a periodic rectangular geometry. Our results at $\nu=1$ which also include the finite-thickness correction are in good agreement with the experimental results. We also find that the interacting electron system results are in complete agreement with the results of the sigma model, i.e., skyrmions on a torus have a topological charge of $Q \ge 2$ and the Q=1 solution is like a single spin-flip excitation. Our results therefore provide direct evidence for the skyrmionic nature of the excitations at this filling factor.Comment: 4 pages, REVTEX, and 4 .ps files, To be published in Europhysics Letter

Magnetic properties of interacting, disordered electron systems in d=2 dimensions

We compute the magnetic susceptibilities of interacting electrons in the presence of disorder on a two-dimensional square lattice by means of quantum Monte Carlo simulations. Clear evidence is found that at sufficiently low temperatures disorder can lead to an enhancement of the ferromagnetic susceptibility. We show that it is not related to the transition from a metal to an Anderson insulator in two dimensions, but is a rather general low temperature property of interacting, disordered electronic systems.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figure

Temperature dependence of spin polarizations at higher Landau Levels

We report our results on temperature dependence of spin polarizations at $\nu=1$ in the lowest as well as in the next higher Landau level that compare well with recent experimental results. At $\nu=3$, except having a much smaller magnitude the behavior of spin polarization is not much influenced by higher Landau levels. In sharp contrast, for filling factor $\nu=\frac83$ we predict that unlike the case of $\nu=\frac23$ the system remains fully spin polarized even at vanishingly small Zeeman energies.Comment: 4 pages, REVTEX, and 3 .ps files, To be published in Physical Review Letter