Farmers' agronomic and social evaluation of productivity yield and N2-fixation in different cowpea varieties and their subsequent residual N effects on a succeeding maize crop

Cowpea-maize rotations form an important component of the farming systems of smallholder farmers in the forest/savannah transitional agro-ecological zone of Ghana. We evaluated five cowpea varieties for grain yield, N-2-fixation, biomass production, and contribution to productivity of subsequent maize grown in rotation. We further analyzed the interrelationship between these technical dimensions and the social acceptability of these cowpea varieties for farmers. Cowpea grain yield ranged between 1.1 and 1.4 t ha(-1) with no significant yield differences among the different varieties. Using the N-15 natural abundance technique, the average proportion of N-2 fixed ranged between 61% for Ayiyi and 77% for Legon prolific. This resulted in average amounts of N-2 fixed in above-ground biomass ranging between 32 and 67 kg N ha(-1), respectively. Variation in estimates due to differences in delta N-15 among reference plants were larger than differences between cowpea varieties. The amount of soil-derived N ranged from 15 to 20 kg N ha(-1). The above-ground net N contribution of the cowpea varieties to the soil (after adjusting for N export in grains) was highest for Legon Prolific (31 kg N ha(-1)) due to high N-2-fixation and high leaf biomass production. Maize grain yield after cowpea without application of mineral N fertilizer ranged between 0.4 t ha(-1) with maize after maize to 1.5 t ha(-1) with Legon Prolific. The N fertilizer equivalence values for the cowpea varieties ranged between 18 and 60 kg N ha(-1). IT810D-1010 was ranked by the farmers as the most preferred cowpea variety due to its white seed type, short-duration, ease of harvesting and good market value. Despite the high leaf biomass production and high amount of N-2 fixed by Legon Prolific, it was generally the least preferred variety due to lower market price, late maturity, least potential cash income (due to the red mottled seed type) and difficulty in harvesting. Although farmers recognized the contribution of cowpea to soil fertility and yields of subsequent maize, they did not consider this as an important criterion for varietal selection. Soil fertility improvement must be considered as an additional benefit rather than a direct selection criterion when designing more sustainable smallholder farming systems

Economic assessment of use of pond ash in pavements

The paper introduces a new type of industrial waste-based subbase material which can replace conventional subbase material (CSM) in pavement construction. Utilisation of this industrial waste, namely pond coal ash produced from a thermal power plant in road construction will help to reduce the disposal problem of this waste and also will help to reduce the problem of scarcity of CSM. Lime and fibre were also added to the pond ash at various percentages to improve the suitability of this type of mix as subbase material. The optimum service life of pavement is studied with the help of numerical modelling and the cost benefit is also presented in the current study. The study reveals that stabilisation of the coal ash with 2% lime may produce an optimal material and, even though a greater thickness may be required to deliver the same pavement performance, direct cost savings of around 10% may be achieved in addition to less easily quantifiable environmental benefits. Design charts are provided to exploit the findings

Search for direct production of charginos and neutralinos in events with three leptons and missing transverse momentum in √s = 7 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for the direct production of charginos and neutralinos in final states with three electrons or muons and missing transverse momentum is presented. The analysis is based on 4.7 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data delivered by the Large Hadron Collider and recorded with the ATLAS detector. Observations are consistent with Standard Model expectations in three signal regions that are either depleted or enriched in Z-boson decays. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set in R-parity conserving phenomenological minimal supersymmetric models and in simplified models, significantly extending previous results

Jet size dependence of single jet suppression in lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s(NN)) = 2.76 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

Measurements of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions at the LHC provide direct sensitivity to the physics of jet quenching. In a sample of lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s) = 2.76 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of approximately 7 inverse microbarns, ATLAS has measured jets with a calorimeter over the pseudorapidity interval |eta| < 2.1 and over the transverse momentum range 38 < pT < 210 GeV. Jets were reconstructed using the anti-kt algorithm with values for the distance parameter that determines the nominal jet radius of R = 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5. The centrality dependence of the jet yield is characterized by the jet "central-to-peripheral ratio," Rcp. Jet production is found to be suppressed by approximately a factor of two in the 10% most central collisions relative to peripheral collisions. Rcp varies smoothly with centrality as characterized by the number of participating nucleons. The observed suppression is only weakly dependent on jet radius and transverse momentum. These results provide the first direct measurement of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions and complement previous measurements of dijet transverse energy imbalance at the LHC.Comment: 15 pages plus author list (30 pages total), 8 figures, 2 tables, submitted to Physics Letters B. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at http://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/HION-2011-02

Ubiquitin and Parkinson's disease through the looking glass of Genetics

Biochemical alterations found in the brains of Parkinson's disease (PD) patients indicate that cellular stress is a major driver of dopaminergic neuronal loss. Oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, and ER stress lead to impairment of the homeostatic regulation of protein quality control pathways with a consequent increase in protein misfolding and aggregation and failure of the protein degradation machinery. Ubiquitin signalling plays a central role in protein quality control; however, prior to genetic advances, the detailed mechanisms of how impairment in the ubiquitin system was linked to PD remained mysterious. The discovery of mutations in the α-synuclein gene, which encodes the main protein misfolded in PD aggregates, together with mutations in genes encoding ubiquitin regulatory molecules, including PTEN-induced kinase 1 (PINK1), Parkin, and FBX07, has provided an opportunity to dissect out the molecular basis of ubiquitin signalling disruption in PD, and this knowledge will be critical for developing novel therapeutic strategies in PD that target the ubiquitin system

Accounting for nature: assessing habitats in the UK countryside.

Countryside Survey 2000 (CS2000) and the Northern Ireland Countryside Survey 2000 (NICS2000) have been designed to provide detailed information about the habitats and landscape features that are important elements of our countryside. They can tell us about the ‘stock’ of these resources, that is how much of them we have and where they are to be found, and they can give us an insight into their condition based on the variety and abundance of the plant species associated with them. Using information from previous surveys, we can also gain an understanding of how the stock and condition of these habitats and landscape features are changing over time. We can build up a sort of balance sheet or an account of natural assets in the UK countryside. In this report we look in particular at the period between the last two surveys, 1990 and 1998

The apobec mutational activity in multiple myeloma: from diagnosis to cell lines

Next generation sequencing (NGS) studies have highlighted the role of aberrant activity of APOBEC DNA deaminases in generating the mu- tational repertoire of multiple myeloma (MM). However, the contribu- tion of this mutational process across the landscape of plasma cell dyscrasias, or its prognostic role, has never been investigated in detail. To answer these unexplored aspects of MM biology, we used published NGS data from our own work as well as others, including the large CoMMpass trial for a total of 1153 whole-exomes of MM. Furthermore, we investigated 5 MGUS, 6 primary plasma cell leukemias (pPCL) and 18 MM cell lines (MMCL). Overall, we identified signatures of two mu- tational processes, one related to spontaneous deamination of methy- lated cytosines (30% of variants, range 0-100%) and one attributed to aberrant APOBEC activity (70% of variants, range 0-100%). APOBEC contribution was extremely heterogeneous among MM patients, but was correlated with a higher mutational burden (r=0.71, p=<0.0001) and with MAF gene translocations t(14;16) and t(14;20). The activity of APOBEC increased from MGUS to MM to pPCL, both in terms of ab- solute number of mutations and as percentage contribution. In MMCL we instead observed a bi-modal distribution whereby 8 cell lines showed the highest numbers of mutations caused by APOBEC (5/8 car- ried MAF translocations), while 10 where virtually devoid of APOBEC mutations (0/10 carried MAF translocations). The contribution of APOBEC to the total mutational repertoire in MM had a clear prognos- tic impact. MM patients with APOBEC mutations in the lowest quartile had a survival advantage over patients with APOBEC mutations in the highest quartile both in terms of progression-free survival (3-y PFS 46% vs 67% months, p=<0.0001) and overall survival (3-y OS 52% vs 83%, p=0.0084). This association was retained in a multivariate model that included age, gender, cytogenetic class, ISS, and quartiles of mutational load both in PFS [p=0.02, HR 2.06 (95IC 1.11-3.81] and OS [p=0.02, HR 2.88 (95IC 1.17-7.09)]. Interestingly we found that APOBEC mutations in the 4th quartile retained its independent prognostic respect to high mutational load and presence of MAF translocations. Overall, our data suggest that APOBEC-mediated mutagenesis is strongly involved in MM pathogenesis and its activity persists during different phases of evolution, playing a critical role in MM genomic complexity, and im- pacting prognosis of the patients

AD51B in Familial Breast Cancer

Common variation on 14q24.1, close to RAD51B, has been associated with breast cancer: rs999737 and rs2588809 with the risk of female breast cancer and rs1314913 with the risk of male breast cancer. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of RAD51B variants in breast cancer predisposition, particularly in the context of familial breast cancer in Finland. We sequenced the coding region of RAD51B in 168 Finnish breast cancer patients from the Helsinki region for identification of possible recurrent founder mutations. In addition, we studied the known rs999737, rs2588809, and rs1314913 SNPs and RAD51B haplotypes in 44,791 breast cancer cases and 43,583 controls from 40 studies participating in the Breast Cancer Association Consortium (BCAC) that were genotyped on a custom chip (iCOGS). We identified one putatively pathogenic missense mutation c.541C&gt;T among the Finnish cancer patients and subsequently genotyped the mutation in additional breast cancer cases (n = 5259) and population controls (n = 3586) from Finland and Belarus. No significant association with breast cancer risk was seen in the meta-analysis of the Finnish datasets or in the large BCAC dataset. The association with previously identified risk variants rs999737, rs2588809, and rs1314913 was replicated among all breast cancer cases and also among familial cases in the BCAC dataset. The most significant association was observed for the haplotype carrying the risk-alleles of all the three SNPs both among all cases (odds ratio (OR): 1.15, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.11–1.19, P = 8.88 x 10−16) and among familial cases (OR: 1.24, 95% CI: 1.16–1.32, P = 6.19 x 10−11), compared to the haplotype with the respective protective alleles. Our results suggest that loss-of-function mutations in RAD51B are rare, but common variation at the RAD51B region is significantly associated with familial breast cancer risk