Phenotypic Screening of Drought-Tolerant Lines for Brown Planthopper, Blast and Phytic Acid Content Assay of Rice (Oryza sativa L.)

Advanced drought tolerant lines were analysed for blast disease, brown planthopper (BPH), and phytic acid content. Thirsty lines of BC2F4 derived from OMCS2000/ IR75499-73-1 were used to screen for BPH and blast resistance. Three good resistant lines were screened against blast (45, 54, and 310) under greenhouse condition. As eight lines were identified to be resistant to BPH. The results further reveal that BC2F4-45 was the best line resistant to both BPH and blast disease. These lines will be useful in reducing grain phytic acid and improving the nutritional value of rice grain. Based on an assay for high phosphate germination stage of rice, the lowest content was found in the I5 variety (line 45). Hence, this line provides the urgent objective for breeders in cultivars of these crops to genetically enhance a healthy and functional diet. These characters will then need to be incorporated into high yield under drought stress with others such as disease and insect resistance

Mapping Exoplanets

The varied surfaces and atmospheres of planets make them interesting places to live, explore, and study from afar. Unfortunately, the great distance to exoplanets makes it impossible to resolve their disk with current or near-term technology. It is still possible, however, to deduce spatial inhomogeneities in exoplanets provided that different regions are visible at different times---this can be due to rotation, orbital motion, and occultations by a star, planet, or moon. Astronomers have so far constructed maps of thermal emission and albedo for short period giant planets. These maps constrain atmospheric dynamics and cloud patterns in exotic atmospheres. In the future, exo-cartography could yield surface maps of terrestrial planets, hinting at the geophysical and geochemical processes that shape them.Comment: Updated chapter for Handbook of Exoplanets, eds. Deeg & Belmonte. 17 pages, including 6 figures and 4 pages of reference

Assessing decentralised policy implementation in Vietnam : The case of land recovery and resettlement in the Vung Ang Economic Zone

From 2006 plans were implemented to create a deep-sea water port linked to an Economic Zone in the coastal Province of Ha Tinh, located in north central Vietnam. The multi-purpose Zone entitled ‘Vung Ang’, was to attract foreign investors, while the port would provide a link to nearby Laos and Thailand. The project obviously had large implications for the administrations at various levels of governance from Hanoi to the coastal communes and villages, but even more serious impacts on the people living in the affected areas. A large area of about 23,000 hectares was to be cleared, affecting the people of 9 communes, in some of which all inhabitants had to leave their houses and homesteads, to be relocated to completely new settlements about 10 miles inland. These tightly knit communities were not too happy with the prospect to leave their homes and land, the burial places of their ancestors, and the long term comforts of community support networks. While initial decision making process started at the highest levels of Vietnam Governance, the implementation of port and industrial park construction and the related relocation policy was delegated to Ha Tinh province, which is consistent with current decentralisation policies in Vietnam. Actual implementation was carried out by the affected District and Commune level officials – with support from the Communist Party led Mass Organisations – who were in charge of the planning and implementation of the relocation process. This entailed a complex and sensitive series of steps to inform affected households, prepare relocation areas and allocate compensation and alternative housing. This paper describes the implementation dynamics of relocation by depicting and assessing the roles of all stakeholders involved, including the impacts - for better or for worse – of the relocated households. It brings out the way local authorities dealt with affected people, including efforts linked to the ideal of grass-roots democracy. Key areas of contestation are uncovered, such as inadequate infrastructure and low compensation rates. The paper has a second objective to assess the degree to which decentralisation in Vietnam has been actually implemented, and how this affects policy making processes such as the Vung Ang port/industrial zone project. The paper concludes that the relocation policy was implemented in a fairly efficient and harmonious way – with a very intensive engagement of the entire provincial administrative machinery, but that it is too early to assess the livelihood opportunities of the relocated households

Total flow of N and P in Vietnam urban wastes

The amount of organic matters, N and P, is quite significant in urban wastes, especially in wastewater and solid wastes. It was found from this study that their production was about 302,241 ton of TN/day and 54,682 ton of TP/day. During the urbanization and industrialization, these numbers continue to increase. These nutrient matters can be used in agriculture as well as in other practices. Nevertheless, they will become pollutants when being discharged to surrounding environment (rivers, lakes, etc.) as they cause water eutrophication and increase risks for water supply

Counter-current chromatography for the separation of terpenoids: A comprehensive review with respect to the solvent systems employed

Copyright @ 2014 The Authors.This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are credited.Natural products extracts are commonly highly complex mixtures of active compounds and consequently their purification becomes a particularly challenging task. The development of a purification protocol to extract a single active component from the many hundreds that are often present in the mixture is something that can take months or even years to achieve, thus it is important for the natural product chemist to have, at their disposal, a broad range of diverse purification techniques. Counter-current chromatography (CCC) is one such separation technique utilising two immiscible phases, one as the stationary phase (retained in a spinning coil by centrifugal forces) and the second as the mobile phase. The method benefits from a number of advantages when compared with the more traditional liquid-solid separation methods, such as no irreversible adsorption, total recovery of the injected sample, minimal tailing of peaks, low risk of sample denaturation, the ability to accept particulates, and a low solvent consumption. The selection of an appropriate two-phase solvent system is critical to the running of CCC since this is both the mobile and the stationary phase of the system. However, this is also by far the most time consuming aspect of the technique and the one that most inhibits its general take-up. In recent years, numerous natural product purifications have been published using CCC from almost every country across the globe. Many of these papers are devoted to terpenoids-one of the most diverse groups. Naturally occurring terpenoids provide opportunities to discover new drugs but many of them are available at very low levels in nature and a huge number of them still remain unexplored. The collective knowledge on performing successful CCC separations of terpenoids has been gathered and reviewed by the authors, in order to create a comprehensive document that will be of great assistance in performing future purifications. © 2014 The Author(s)

The thalamic mGluR1-PLC??4 pathway is critical in sleep architecture

The transition from wakefulness to a nonrapid eye movement (NREM) sleep state at the onset of sleep involves a transition from low-voltage, high-frequency irregular electroencephalography (EEG) waveforms to large-amplitude, low-frequency EEG waveforms accompanying synchronized oscillatory activity in the thalamocortical circuit. The thalamocortical circuit consists of reciprocal connections between the thalamus and cortex. The cortex sends strong excitatory feedback to the thalamus, however the function of which is unclear. In this study, we investigated the role of the thalamic metabotropic glutamate receptor 1 (mGluR1)-phospholipase C ??4 (PLC??4) pathway in sleep control in PLC??4-deficient (PLC??4-/-) mice. The thalamic mGluR1-PLC??4 pathway contains synapses that receive corticothalamic inputs. In PLC??4-/- mice, the transition from wakefulness to the NREM sleep state was stimulated, and the NREM sleep state was stabilized, which resulted in increased NREM sleep. The power density of delta (??) waves increased in parallel with the increased NREM sleep. These sleep phenotypes in PLC??4-/- mice were consistent in TC-restricted PLC??4 knockdown mice. Moreover, in vitro intrathalamic oscillations were greatly enhanced in the PLC??4-/- slices. The results of our study showed that thalamic mGluR1-PLC??4 pathway was critical in controlling sleep architecture.ope

Potential reuse of coal mine wastewater: a case study in Quang Ninh, Vietnam

In Vietnam, the local regulation and environmental impact are driving coal mining industry to reuse the large volume of wastewater it produces. The co-research project between National University of Civil Engineering (NUCE) and Mitsubishi Rayon Corporation (MRC) has started early 2013 to evaluate if the MRC membranes could be a great tool for treatment of coal mine wastewater for reuse. The experiment were conducted at one of coal mine plants in Quang Ninh province, Vietnam. It was found that pre-treatment of coal mine wastewater was an important part in the treatment process. The MRC membrane was a significant barrier to maintain stable and high quality effluent to meet the requirement of Vietnam national technical standard for domestic use

Intensified Antituberculosis Therapy in Adults with Tuberculous Meningitis

BACKGROUND Tuberculous meningitis is often lethal. Early antituberculosis treatment and adjunctive treatment with glucocorticoids improve survival, but nearly one third of patients with the condition still die. We hypothesized that intensified antituberculosis treatment would enhance the killing of intracerebral Mycobacterium tuberculosis organisms and decrease the rate of death among patients. METHODS We performed a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial involving human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected adults and HIV-uninfected adults with a clinical diagnosis of tuberculous meningitis who were admitted to one of two Vietnamese hospitals. We compared a standard, 9-month antituberculosis regimen (which included 10 mg of rifampin per kilogram of body weight per day) with an intensified regimen that included higher-dose rifampin (15 mg per kilogram per day) and levofloxacin (20 mg per kilogram per day) for the first 8 weeks of treatment. The primary outcome was death by 9 months after randomization. RESULTS A total of 817 patients (349 of whom were HIV-infected) were enrolled; 409 were randomly assigned to receive the standard regimen, and 408 were assigned to receive intensified treatment. During the 9 months of follow-up, 113 patients in the intensified-treatment group and 114 patients in the standard-treatment group died (hazard ratio, 0.94; 95% confidence interval, 0.73 to 1.22; P=0.66). There was no evidence of a significant differential effect of intensified treatment in the overall population or in any of the subgroups, with the possible exception of patients infected with isoniazid-resistant M. tuberculosis. There were also no significant differences in secondary outcomes between the treatment groups. The overall number of adverse events leading to treatment interruption did not differ significantly between the treatment groups (64 events in the standard-treatment group and 95 events in the intensified-treatment group, P=0.08). CONCLUSIONS Intensified antituberculosis treatment was not associated with a higher rate of survival among patients with tuberculous meningitis than standard treatment. (Funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Li Ka Shing Foundation; Current Controlled Trials number, ISRCTN61649292.)

Targeting cancer metabolism: a therapeutic window opens

Genetic events in cancer activate signalling pathways that alter cell metabolism. Clinical evidence has linked cell metabolism with cancer outcomes. Together, these observations have raised interest in targeting metabolic enzymes for cancer therapy, but they have also raised concerns that these therapies would have unacceptable effects on normal cells. However, some of the first cancer therapies that were developed target the specific metabolic needs of cancer cells and remain effective agents in the clinic today. Research into how changes in cell metabolism promote tumour growth has accelerated in recent years. This has refocused efforts to target metabolic dependencies of cancer cells as a selective anticancer strategy.Burroughs Wellcome FundSmith Family FoundationStarr Cancer ConsortiumDamon Runyon Cancer Research FoundationNational Institutes of Health (U.S.