Linking farmers to markets through valorisation of local resources: the case for intellectual property rights of indigenous resources

Agribusiness,

Die verbrokkelende wêreld in die prosakuns van John Miles

Die meeste literêre kritici is dit eens dat John Miles met sy debuutbundel kort-kortverhale, Liefs nie op straat nie (1970) , en sy daaropvolgende roman, Okker bestel twee toebvoodjies (1973), iets nuut tot die Afrikaanse prosakuns toegevoeg het. Nuut dan in die sin dat sy dirékte betrokkenheid by en uitdieping van die "angs van menswees" in hierdie huidige bestek van geweld doelbewus wegbeweeg van die estetiek van 'n romankuns wat slegs in beperk te kring geldigheid het

Complexity of vaginal microflora as analyzed by PCR denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis in a patient with recurrent bacterial vaginosis.

OBJECTIVE: Gardnerella vaginalis has long been the most common pathogen associated with bacterial vaginosis (BV). We aimed to test our hypothesis that symptoms and signs of BV do not necessarily indicate colonization by this organism, and often will not respond to standard metronidazole or clindamycin treatment. METHODS: Using a relatively new molecular tool, PCR denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE), the vaginal microflora of a woman with recalcitrant signs and symptoms of BV was investigated over a 6-week timeframe. RESULTS: The vagina was colonized by pathogenic enterobacteriaceae, staphylococci and Candida albicans. The detection of the yeast by PCR-DGGE is particularly novel and enhances the ability of this tool to examine the true nature of the vaginal microflora. The patient had not responded to antifungal treatment, antibiotic therapy targeted at anaerobic Gram-negative pathogens such as Gardnerella, nor daily oral probiotic intake of Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG. The failure to find the GG strain in the vagina indicated it did not reach the site, and the low counts of lactobacilli demonstrated that therapy with this probiotic did not appear to influence the vaginal flora. CONCLUSIONS: BV is not well understood in terms of its causative organisms, and further studies appear warranted using non-culture, molecular methods. Only when the identities of infecting organisms are confirmed can effective therapy be devized. Such therapy may include the use of probiotic lactobacilli, but only using strains which confer a benefit on the vagina of pre- and postmenopausal women

The Origin and Universality of the Stellar Initial Mass Function

We review current theories for the origin of the Stellar Initial Mass Function (IMF) with particular focus on the extent to which the IMF can be considered universal across various environments. To place the issue in an observational context, we summarize the techniques used to determine the IMF for different stellar populations, the uncertainties affecting the results, and the evidence for systematic departures from universality under extreme circumstances. We next consider theories for the formation of prestellar cores by turbulent fragmentation and the possible impact of various thermal, hydrodynamic and magneto-hydrodynamic instabilities. We address the conversion of prestellar cores into stars and evaluate the roles played by different processes: competitive accretion, dynamical fragmentation, ejection and starvation, filament fragmentation and filamentary accretion flows, disk formation and fragmentation, critical scales imposed by thermodynamics, and magnetic braking. We present explanations for the characteristic shapes of the Present-Day Prestellar Core Mass Function and the IMF and consider what significance can be attached to their apparent similarity. Substantial computational advances have occurred in recent years, and we review the numerical simulations that have been performed to predict the IMF directly and discuss the influence of dynamics, time-dependent phenomena, and initial conditions.Comment: 24 pages, 6 figures. Accepted for publication as a chapter in Protostars and Planets VI, University of Arizona Press (2014), eds. H. Beuther, R. S. Klessen, C. P. Dullemond, Th. Hennin

A target repurposing approach identifies N-myristoyltransferase as a new candidate drug target in filarial nematodes

Myristoylation is a lipid modification involving the addition of a 14-carbon unsaturated fatty acid, myristic acid, to the N-terminal glycine of a subset of proteins, a modification that promotes their binding to cell membranes for varied biological functions. The process is catalyzed by myristoyl-CoA:protein N-myristoyltransferase (NMT), an enzyme which has been validated as a drug target in human cancers, and for infectious diseases caused by fungi, viruses and protozoan parasites. We purified Caenorhabditis elegans and Brugia malayi NMTs as active recombinant proteins and carried out kinetic analyses with their essential fatty acid donor, myristoyl-CoA and peptide substrates. Biochemical and structural analyses both revealed that the nematode enzymes are canonical NMTs, sharing a high degree of conservation with protozoan NMT enzymes. Inhibitory compounds that target NMT in protozoan species inhibited the nematode NMTs with IC50 values of 2.5-10 nM, and were active against B. malayi microfilariae and adult worms at 12.5 µM and 50 µM respectively, and C. elegans (25 µM) in culture. RNA interference and gene deletion in C. elegans further showed that NMT is essential for nematode viability. The effects observed are likely due to disruption of the function of several downstream target proteins. Potential substrates of NMT in B. malayi are predicted using bioinformatic analysis. Our genetic and chemical studies highlight the importance of myristoylation in the synthesis of functional proteins in nematodes and have shown for the first time that NMT is required for viability in parasitic nematodes. These results suggest that targeting NMT could be a valid approach for the development of chemotherapeutic agents against nematode diseases including filariasis

Variance Calculations and the Bessel Kernel

In the Laguerre ensemble of N x N (positive) hermitian matrices, it is of interest both theoretically and for applications to quantum transport problems to compute the variance of a linear statistic, denoted var_N f, as N->infinity. Furthermore, this statistic often contains an additional parameter alpha for which the limit alpha->infinity is most interesting and most difficult to compute numerically. We derive exact expressions for both lim_{N->infinity} var_N f and lim_{alpha->infinity}lim_{N->infinity} var_N f.Comment: 7 pages; resubmitted to make postscript compatibl

Relativistic Bohmian trajectories of photons via weak measurements

Bohmian mechanics is a nonlocal hidden-variable interpretation of quantum theory which predicts that particles follow deterministic trajectories in spacetime. Historically, the study of Bohmian trajectories has mainly been restricted to nonrelativistic regimes due to the widely held belief that the theory is incompatible with special relativity. Here we derive expressions for the relativistic velocity and spacetime trajectories of photons in a Michelson-Sagnac-type interferometer. The trajectories satisfy quantum-mechanical continuity and the relativistic velocity addition rule. Our new velocity equation is operationally defined in terms of weak measurements of momentum and energy. We finally propose a modified Alcubierre metric which could give rise to these trajectories within the paradigm of general relativity.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures. Published in Nature Communication

Finite-size effects and intermittency in a simple aging system

We study the intermittent dynamics and the fluctuations of the dynamic correlation function of a simple aging system. Given its size $L$ and its coherence length $\xi$, the system can be divided into $N$ independent subsystems, where $N=(\frac{L}{\xi})^d$, and $d$ is the dimension of space. Each of them is considered as an aging subsystem which evolves according to an activated dynamics between energy levels. We compute analytically the distribution of trapping times for the global system, which can take power-law, stretched-exponential or exponential forms according to the values of $N$ and the regime of times considered. An effective number of subsystems at age $t_w$, $N_{eff}(t_w)$, can be defined, which decreases as $t_w$ increases, as well as an effective coherence length, $\xi(t_w) \sim t_w^{(1-\mu)/d}$, where $\mu <1$ characterizes the trapping times distribution of a single subsystem. We also compute the probability distribution functions of the time intervals between large decorrelations, which exhibit different power-law behaviours as $t_w$ increases (or $N$ decreases), and which should be accessible experimentally. Finally, we calculate the probability distribution function of the two-time correlator. We show that in a phenomenological approach, where $N$ is replaced by the effective number of subsystems $N_{eff}(t_w)$, the same qualitative behaviour as in experiments and simulations of several glassy systems can be obtained.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figures, published versio

Low-rank multi-parametric covariance identification

We propose a differential geometric construction for families of low-rank covariance matrices, via interpolation on low-rank matrix manifolds. In contrast with standard parametric covariance classes, these families offer significant flexibility for problem-specific tailoring via the choice of "anchor" matrices for the interpolation. Moreover, their low-rank facilitates computational tractability in high dimensions and with limited data. We employ these covariance families for both interpolation and identification, where the latter problem comprises selecting the most representative member of the covariance family given a data set. In this setting, standard procedures such as maximum likelihood estimation are nontrivial because the covariance family is rank-deficient; we resolve this issue by casting the identification problem as distance minimization. We demonstrate the power of these differential geometric families for interpolation and identification in a practical application: wind field covariance approximation for unmanned aerial vehicle navigation