Species- and organ-specificity of secretory proteins derived from human prostate and seminal vesicles

Polyclonal antibodies against semenogelin (SG) isolated from human seminal vesicle secretion and acid phosphatase (PAP), β‐microseminoprotein (β‐MSP), and Prostate‐Specific Antigen (PSA) derived from human prostatic fluid, as well as a monoclonal antibody against β‐MSP were used for immunocytochemical detection of the respective antigens in different organs from different species. SG immunoreactivity was detected in the epithelium of the pubertal and adult human and in monkey seminal vesicle, ampulla of the vas deferens, and ejaculatory duct. PAP, β‐MSP, and PSA immunoreactivities were detected in the pubertal and adult human prostate and the cranial and caudal monkey prostate. With the exception of a weak PSA immunoreactivity in the proximal portions of the ejaculatory duct, none of the latter antisera reacted with seminal vesicle, ampullary, and ejaculatory duct epithelium. Among the non‐primate species studied (dog, bull, rat, guinea pig) only the canine prostatic epithelium displayed a definite immunoreactivity with the PAP antibody and a moderate reaction with the PSA antibody. No immunoreaction was seen in bull and rat seminal vesicle and canine ampulla of the vas deferens with the SG antibody. The same was true for the (ventral) prostate of rat, bull, and dog for β‐MSP. The epithelium of the rat dorsal prostate showed a slight cross‐reactivity with the monoclonal antibody against β‐MSP and one polyclonal antibody against PSA. The findings indicate a rather strict species‐dependent expression of human seminal proteins which show some similarities in primates, but only marginal relationship to species with different physiology of seminal fluid

Adhesion of K88 positive E. coli to the small intestine of swedish Landrace × Swedish Yorkshire pigs

International audienc

Immune response to some E. coli antigens in swine

International audienc

Impact of participatory natural resource management research in cassava-based cropping systems in Vietnam and Thailand

In South-east Asia, many of the poorest farmers live in areas with limited potential for crop production. Cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz) is an important crop on these soils, because it is easy to grow, requires few external inputs and its roots and leaves can be used as human or animal feed. Cassava is also planted as an industrial crop for the production of animal feed and starch where market conditions are developed. The wide variety of end uses makes it a popular crop and an effective vehicle for improving the livelihood of poor upland farmers

Human capital accumulation and productivity improvements in Asian cassava systems: are participatory research approaches beneficial?

Recently, discussion had reemerged over the value of integrated pest and crop management training, through intensive approaches such as farmer field schools or participatory training, as a development approach (Feder et al, 2004). This paper develops a model of human capital accumulation through participatory research and tests several hypotheses on the effectiveness of this approach to increase the adoption of soil conservation and fertility management innovations and improve farm productivity in southeast Asia. Bivariate Probit models with treatment effects are estimated using full information maximum likelihood (Evans and Schwab, 1995: Trost and Lee, 1984) and covariates related to changes in land allocation and productivity, measured before project and after project intervention, are investigates. We follow Greene (1998) to control for simultaneity between adoption and impact by using the predicted adoption decision from the second set of regressions to calculate productivity differentials. Overall, we find that treatment affects associated with the participatory research activities are significant and positive in explaining the differential adoption rates of intercropping, hedgerows, contour ridging, the usage of farm yard manure and chemical fertilizer. The positive relationship between the adoption of soil conservation and fertility management techniques and participation, given very limited productivity impact, may indicated the "value" of the participatory approach to illustrate the social costs of land degradation, sensitize participants towards internalizing these costs, and demonstrate the importance of long-run strategies to preserve land productivity, or both. Secondly, we find that there are additional benefits to participatory research activities that are not embodied in the adoption of soil conservation or fertility management techniques

SPIA review of: Impact of participatory natural resource management research in cassava-based cropping systems in Vietnam and Thailand

Between 1994 and 2003, the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), in collaboration with national agricultural research partners in Thailand and Vietnam implemented a Nippon Foundation funded project titled “Improving the Sustainability of Cassava-based Cropping Systems in Asia.” The purpose of the project was to address the problem of the observed widespread non-adoption of soil conservation and fertility management technologies in cassava production in Asia. Aside from conservation technologies such as contour lines, hedgerows and management technologies including inter cropping, use of manure and mineral fertilizer also genetic improvement technologies, i.e. improved cassava varieties were included in the project. Hence, the nature of the NRM research was that of an applied, adaptive research for already existing NRM technologies and principles but where adoption by farmers was low. Together with NARS researchers and extension agents CIAT was working with farmers in selected project villages. The “farmer participatory research” (FPR) methodology included the joint conduct of on-farm experiments to identify, test and adjust promising natural resource conservation and productivity enhancement cassava technologies. The project therefore encompassed a broader research paradigm that falls under the category of INRM as described in chapter 1.2

Understanding Soft Errors in Uncore Components

The effects of soft errors in processor cores have been widely studied. However, little has been published about soft errors in uncore components, such as memory subsystem and I/O controllers, of a System-on-a-Chip (SoC). In this work, we study how soft errors in uncore components affect system-level behaviors. We have created a new mixed-mode simulation platform that combines simulators at two different levels of abstraction, and achieves 20,000x speedup over RTL-only simulation. Using this platform, we present the first study of the system-level impact of soft errors inside various uncore components of a large-scale, multi-core SoC using the industrial-grade, open-source OpenSPARC T2 SoC design. Our results show that soft errors in uncore components can significantly impact system-level reliability. We also demonstrate that uncore soft errors can create major challenges for traditional system-level checkpoint recovery techniques. To overcome such recovery challenges, we present a new replay recovery technique for uncore components belonging to the memory subsystem. For the L2 cache controller and the DRAM controller components of OpenSPARC T2, our new technique reduces the probability that an application run fails to produce correct results due to soft errors by more than 100x with 3.32% and 6.09% chip-level area and power impact, respectively.Comment: to be published in Proceedings of the 52nd Annual Design Automation Conferenc