Assessing the climate impacts of Chinese dietary choices using a telecoupled global food trade and local land use framework

Global emissions trajectories developed to meet the 2⁰C temperature target are likely to rely on the widespread deployment of negative emissions technologies and/or the implementation of substantial terrestrial carbon sinks. Such technologies include afforestation, carbon capture and storage (CCS) and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), but mitigation options for agriculture appear limited. For example, using the Global Calculator tool (http://www.globalcalculator.org/), under a 2⁰C pathway, the ‘forests and other land use’ sector is projected to become a major carbon sink, reaching -15 GtCO2e yr-1 by 2050, compared to fossil emissions of 21 GtCO2e yr-1. At the same time, rates of agricultural emissions remain static at about 6 GtCO2e yr-1, despite increasing demands for crop and livestock production to meet the forecast dietary demands of the growing and increasingly wealthy global population. Emissions in the Global Calculator are sensitive to the assumed global diet, and particularly to the level and type of meat consumption, which in turn drive global land use patterns and agricultural emissions. Here we assess the potential to use a modified down-scaled Global Calculator methodology embedded within the telecoupled global food trade framework, to estimate the agricultural emissions and terrestrial carbon stock impacts in China and Brazil, arising from a plausible range of dietary choices in China. These dietary choices are linked via telecoupling mechanisms to Brazilian crop production (e.g. Brazilian soy for Chinese animal feed provision) and drive land and global market dynamics. ‘Spill-over’ impacts will also be assessed using the EU and Malawi as case studies

Rapamycin induces transactivation of the EGFR and increases cell survival.

The mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) signaling network regulates cell growth, proliferation and cell survival. Deregulated activation of this pathway is a common event in diverse human diseases such as cancers, cardiac hypertrophy, vascular restenosis and nephrotic hypertrophy. Although mTOR inhibitor, rapamycin, has been widely used to inhibit the aberrant signaling due to mTOR activation that plays a major role in hyperproliferative diseases, in some cases rapamycin does not attenuate the cell proliferation and survival. Thus, we studied the mechanism(s) by which cells may confer resistance to rapamycin. Our data show that in a variety of cell types the mTOR inhibitor rapamycin activates extracellularly regulated kinases (Erk1/2) signaling. Rapamycin-mediated activation of the Erk1/2 signaling requires (a) the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), (b) its tyrosine kinase activity and (c) intact autophosphorylation sites on the receptor. Rapamycin treatment increases tyrosine phosphorylation of EGFR without the addition of growth factor and this transactivation of receptor involves activation of c-Src. We also show that rapamycin treatment triggers activation of cell survival signaling pathway by activating the prosurvival kinases Erk1/2 and p90RSK. These studies provide a novel paradigm by which cells escape the apoptotic actions of rapamycin and its derivatives that inhibit the mTOR pathway

Aspects of mutually unbiased bases in odd prime power dimensions

We rephrase the Wootters-Fields construction [Ann. Phys., {\bf 191}, 363 (1989)] of a full set of mutually unbiased bases in a complex vector space of dimensions $N=p^r$, where $p$ is an odd prime, in terms of the character vectors of the cyclic group $G$ of order $p$. This form may be useful in explicitly writing down mutually unbiased bases for $N=p^r$.Comment: 3 pages, latex, no figure

Introduction of structured oral examination in formative assessment of pharmacology for 2nd professional MBBS students

Background: Conventional Oral Examination (COE) is criticized for being too subjective and being influenced by academic and non-academic factors. Another pitfall of COE is unequal distribution of time. Different examiners use a different set of questions with varying difficulty levels. Student related factors include gender, accent, vocabulary used and ability to pick nonverbal cues. These factors make COE less reliable and valid assessment tool. To overcome the limitations of this useful tool, SOE can be implement instead of COE.Methods: It is a prospective and non-randomized study comprising 79 students of pharmacology appeared for two forms of viva i.e. COE and SOE. Three sets of questionnaires - Must know, should know and nice to know were prepared, each having 15 items with increasing difficulty levels and were validated by subject experts and pretested. Ten minutes were allotted for each student for each form of viva. Feedback of students about the novel method was obtained by using semi-structured questionnaire comprising of 19 closed ended questions and one open-ended question.Results: Structured oral examination (SOE) yielded significantly higher marks as compared to COE. There were significant inter-examiner variations in marks awarded in SOE and COE. Other factors influencing implementation were difficulty in structuring viva, rigid time limits, lack of flexibility in knowledge content, monotony and fatigue. The students perceived this format not different from COE but felt that it required in depth preparation of topic.Conclusions: Conducting SOE is a resource-intensive exercise. Despite structuring, inter-examiner variability was not completely eliminated. The student’s performance was depended on factors related to examiners such as teaching experience, vernacular language used, and lack of training. Orientation and training of examiners in assessment strategies is necessary. Standardization of questionnaire is necessary before the implementation of SOE for summative assessment

Quantum phase space distributions in thermofield dynamics

It is shown that the the quantum phase space distributions corresponding to a density operator $\rho$ can be expressed, in thermofield dynamics, as overlaps between the state $\mid \rho >$ and "thermal" coherent states. The usefulness of this approach is brought out in the context of a master equation describing a nonlinear oscillator for which exact expressions for the quantum phase distributions for an arbitrary initial condition are derived.Comment: 17 pages, revtex, no figures. number of pages were incorrectly stated as 3 instead of 17. No other correction

Restoration of mine spoil in a dry tropical region: a review

Surface mining extensively alters the physical, chemical and biological characteristics of the soil, and therefore, the revegetation of mine spoil through natural process takes a very long time and poses a major problem because nutritionally it is a recalcitrant medium for plant growth. We review important studies on the restoration of mine spoils in the tropical dry region of India. Through this communication, we suggest that the microbial biomass of soil is a critical factor in the recovery of mine spoils because it plays a major role in the re-establishment of nutrient cycling. The levels of microbial biomass C, N and P can be treated as functional indexes for soil re-development. Tree plantations have been reported to significantly accelerate the re-development process. Ground seeding of the mine spoils with suitable tree and grass species together with NPK fertilization has been reported to promote growth, and consequently leads to increase in biomass production. Species-specific variations are reported to occur in the response to fertilization. Relatively, greater variation has been reported for non-leguminous, rather than for leguminous species. Furthermore, leguminous species exhibit higher growth rates as compared to non-leguminous species. Our review also suggests that the microsite conditions on the mine spoils exhibit differences and should be given more consideration for accelerating the process of re-vegetation and fulfilling the post-mining land use objectives