Breeding for improved responsiveness to arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi in onion

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) play an important role in the uptake of nutrients and water from soil. Onions, Allium cepa L., are plants with a shallow root system. As a result, onion plants need a lot of fertiziler for their growth. Furthermore, onion plants are sensitive to drought. The aim of the current research project is to study the beneficial effect of mycorrhizal fungi on the growth and development of Allium species and to determine whether it is possible to improve onions for mycorrhizal responsiveness by means of breeding. Variation among Allium species and segregation observed in a interspecific tri-hybrid population indicate that selection and thus breeding for high responsiveness to AMF is possible

Using Parameter Constraints to Choose State Structures in Cost-Effectiveness Modelling.

BACKGROUND: This article addresses the choice of state structure in a cost-effectiveness multi-state model. Key model outputs, such as treatment recommendations and prioritisation of future research, may be sensitive to state structure choice. For example, it may be uncertain whether to consider similar disease severities or similar clinical events as the same state or as separate states. Standard statistical methods for comparing models require a common reference dataset but merging states in a model aggregates the data, rendering these methods invalid. METHODS: We propose a method that involves re-expressing a model with merged states as a model on the larger state space in which particular transition probabilities, costs and utilities are constrained to be equal between states. This produces a model that gives identical estimates of cost effectiveness to the model with merged states, while leaving the data unchanged. The comparison of state structures can be achieved by comparing maximised likelihoods or information criteria between constrained and unconstrained models. We can thus test whether the costs and/or health consequences for a patient in two states are the same, and hence if the states can be merged. We note that different structures can be used for rates, costs and utilities, as appropriate. APPLICATION: We illustrate our method with applications to two recent models evaluating the cost effectiveness of prescribing anti-depressant medications by depression severity and the cost effectiveness of diagnostic tests for coronary artery disease. CONCLUSIONS: State structures in cost-effectiveness models can be compared using standard methods to compare constrained and unconstrained models

Contact Hypersurfaces in Uniruled Symplectic Manifolds Always Separate

We observe that nonzero Gromov-Witten invariants with marked point constraints in a closed symplectic manifold imply restrictions on the homology classes that can be represented by contact hypersurfaces. As a special case, contact hypersurfaces must always separate if the symplectic manifold is uniruled. This removes a superfluous assumption in a result of G. Lu, thus implying that all contact manifolds that embed as contact type hypersurfaces into uniruled symplectic manifolds satisfy the Weinstein conjecture. We prove the main result using the Cieliebak-Mohnke approach to defining Gromov-Witten invariants via Donaldson hypersurfaces, thus no semipositivity or virtual moduli cycles are required.Comment: 24 pages, 1 figure; v.3 is a substantial expansion in which the semipositivity condition has been removed by implementing Cieliebak-Mohnke transversality; it also includes a new appendix to explain why the forgetful map in the Cieliebak-Mohnke context is a pseudocycle; v.4 has one short remark added; to appear in J. London Math. So

Benzodiazepine and z-hypnotic prescribing from acute psychiatric inpatient discharge to long-term care in the community

Background: Benzodiazepine and z-hypnotic prescribing has slowly decreased over the past 20 years, however long-term chronic prescribing still occurs and is at odds with prescribing guidance. Objectives: To identify the pattern of benzodiazepine and z-hypnotic prescribing in psychiatric inpatients at discharge and 12 months post-discharge. Methods: Retrospective observational longitudinal cohort study of patients admitted to two adult psychiatric wards between June and November 2012 (inclusive) who were discharged with a prescription for a benzodiazepine or z-hypnotic drug. Routinely collected prescription data available from NHS Scotland Prescribing Information System was used to identify and follow community prescribing of benzodiazepine and z-hypnotics for a 12 month period post-discharge. Data were entered in Excel® and further analysed using SPSS 23. Ethical approval was not required for this service evaluation however Caldicott Guardian approval was sought and granted. Results: Eighty patients were admitted during the study period however only those patients with a single admission were included for analysis (n=74). Thirty per cent (22/74) of patients were prescribed a benzodiazepine or z-hypnotics at discharge; 14 of whom received ‘long-term’ benzodiazepine and z-hypnotics i.e. continued use over the 12 month period. Seven patients received a combination of anxiolytics and hypnotics (e.g., diazepam plus temazepam or zopiclone). Long-term use was associated with a non-significant increase in median benzodiazepine or z-hypnotic dose, expressed as diazepam equivalents. Conclusions: One in three patients were prescribed a benzodiazepine or z-hypnotics at discharge with 1 in 5 receiving continuous long-term treatment (prescriptions) for 12 months post-discharge. As chronic long-term B-Z prescribing and use still remains an issue, future strategies using routine patient-level prescribing data may support prescribers to review and minimise inappropriate long-term prescribing

Design and Implementation of Swirl Brakes for Enhanced Rotordynamic Stability in an Off-shore Centrifugal Compressor

Technical BriefsRotordynamic stability of gas compressors at high speeds and operating pressures is a significant technical challenge. Dynamic instability must be avoided for the sake of safe, reliable and continuous operation of turbomachinery. Experience and literature have shown that one of the main sources of instability is the swirl within the secondary leakage path in shrouded impellers, especially the swirl entering the shroud seals. The technical brief presents the design and implementation of swirl brakes for centrifugal compressors with Teeth-on-Rotor seal configurations for shrouded impellers. Discussion includes (a) aerodynamic design of swirl brakes with the help of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), (b) sub-scale testing of the swirl brake design in an instrumented single-stage test rig to measure the inlet swirl ratio in a shrouded impeller, (c) full-scale prototype shop-testing and qualification, with and without the swirl brakes in a closedloop test facility, and (d) results of incorporating the swirl brakes at an off-shore compressor installation to improve rotordynamic stability

Homology Modeling and Molecular Docking for the Science Curriculum

DockoMatic 2.0 is a powerful open source software program (downloadable from sourceforge.net) that allows users to utilize a readily accessible computational tool to explore biomolecules and their interactions. This manuscript describes a practical tutorial for use in the undergraduate curriculum that introduces students to macromolecular structure creation, ligand binding calculations, and visualization of docking results. A student procedure is provided that illustrates the use of DockoMatic to create a homology model for the amino propeptide region (223 amino acids with two disulfide bonds) of collagen α1 (XI), followed by molecular docking of the commercial drug Arixtra® to the homology model of α1 (XI), and finally, analysis of the results of the docking experiment. The activities and Supporting Information described are intended to educate students in the use of computational tools to create and investigate homology models for other systems of interest and to train students to perform and analyze molecular docking studies. The tutorial also serves as a foundation for investigators seeking to explore the viability of using computational biochemistry to study their receptor–ligand binding motifs

Design and Implementation of Swirl Brakes for Enhanced Rotordynamic Stability in an Off-shore Centrifugal Compressor

Technical BriefsRotordynamic stability of gas compressors at high speeds and operating pressures is a significant technical challenge. Dynamic instability must be avoided for the sake of safe, reliable and continuous operation of turbomachinery. Experience and literature have shown that one of the main sources of instability is the swirl within the secondary leakage path in shrouded impellers, especially the swirl entering the shroud seals. The technical brief presents the design and implementation of swirl brakes for centrifugal compressors with Teeth-on-Rotor seal configurations for shrouded impellers. Discussion includes (a) aerodynamic design of swirl brakes with the help of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), (b) sub-scale testing of the swirl brake design in an instrumented single-stage test rig to measure the inlet swirl ratio in a shrouded impeller, (c) full-scale prototype shop-testing and qualification, with and without the swirl brakes in a closedloop test facility, and (d) results of incorporating the swirl brakes at an off-shore compressor installation to improve rotordynamic stability

Punitive restoration and restorative justice.

Criminal justice policy faces the twin challenges of improving our crime reduction efforts while increasing public confidence. These challenges are exacerbated by the fact that at least some measures popular with the public are counterproductive to greater crime reduction. How to achieve greater crime reduction without sacrificing public confidence? While restorative justice approaches offer a promising alternative to traditional sentencing with the potential to achieve these goals, they suffer from several serious obstacles, not least their relatively limited applicability, flexibility, and public support. Punitive restoration is a new and distinctive idea about restorative justice modeled on an important principle of stakeholding, which states that those who have a stake in penal outcomes should have a say about them. Punitive restoration is restorative insofar as it aims to achieve the restoration of rights infringed or threatened by criminal offences. Punitive restoration is punitive insofar as the available options for this agreement are more punitive than found in most restorative justice approaches, such as the option of some form of hard treatment. Punitive restoration sheds new light on how we may meet the twin challenges of improving our efforts to reduce reoffending without sacrificing public confidence, demonstrating how restorative practices can be embedded deeper within the criminal justice system

The Alliance of Genome Resources: Building a Modern Data Ecosystem for Model Organism Databases.

Model organisms are essential experimental platforms for discovering gene functions, defining protein and genetic networks, uncovering functional consequences of human genome variation, and for modeling human disease. For decades, researchers who use model organisms have relied on Model Organism Databases (MODs) and the Gene Ontology Consortium (GOC) for expertly curated annotations, and for access to integrated genomic and biological information obtained from the scientific literature and public data archives. Through the development and enforcement of data and semantic standards, these genome resources provide rapid access to the collected knowledge of model organisms in human readable and computation-ready formats that would otherwise require countless hours for individual researchers to assemble on their own. Since their inception, the MODs for the predominant biomedical model organisms [Mus sp (laboratory mouse), Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Drosophila melanogaster, Caenorhabditis elegans, Danio rerio, and Rattus norvegicus] along with the GOC have operated as a network of independent, highly collaborative genome resources. In 2016, these six MODs and the GOC joined forces as the Alliance of Genome Resources (the Alliance). By implementing shared programmatic access methods and data-specific web pages with a unified look and feel, the Alliance is tackling barriers that have limited the ability of researchers to easily compare common data types and annotations across model organisms. To adapt to the rapidly changing landscape for evaluating and funding core data resources, the Alliance is building a modern, extensible, and operationally efficient knowledge commons for model organisms using shared, modular infrastructure