The Journey to R4D: An institutional history of an Australian Initiative on Food Security in Africa

Internal Revie

AFLP/SSR mapping of resistance genes to Alectra vogelii in cowpea (Vigna unguiculata l. Walp)

The parasite weed Alectra vogelii (Benth) causes significant yield reduction of cowpea in Africa. To find and map the resistance gene to A. vogelii in cowpea, a F2 population from a cross involving a resistant parent IT81D-994 and a susceptible TVX3236 was screened. Amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) in combination with Single Sequence Repeat (SSR) analysis was used to identify markers that may be linked to the gene Rav3 conferring resistance to A. vogelii in the cowpea cultivar IT81D-994. The analysis of F2 individuals scored for resistance showedthat a single dominant gene conditioned A. vogelii resistance in IT81D-994 with a probability of 30 to 50%. Sixty-six AFLP/SSR markers were identified. Using MAPMAKER, four linkage groups were found. The first group showed 33 markers linked to the susceptible gene. The closest identified marker was 21.4 centimorgans away from the susceptible gene. The primer combination that showed the closest linkage was 809ACG8 (E-ACG 8 + UBC-809). The second group indicated 4 markers linked together while the third and the fourth groups showed 2 markers linkedtogether respectively. No markers were found linked to the resistance gene Rav3 conferring the resistance in the cultivated cowpea cultivar IT81D-994.La plante parasite Alectra vogelii (Benth) provoque une réduction significative du rendement de niébé en Afrique. Pour repérer et cartographier le gène de résistance à A. vogelii, une population F2 issue d’un croisement impliquant le cultivar résistant IT81D-994 et le cultivar sensible TVX3236 a été criblée. La technique Amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) en combinaison avec des Séquences Simples Répétés (SSR) a été utilisée pour identifier les marqueurs qui seraient liés au gène Rav3 qui confère la résistance à A. vogelii chez le cultivar de niébé IT81D- 994. L’analyse des individus F2 montrant une résistance indique qu’un seul gène dominant conditionne la résistance à A. vogelii chez IT81D-994 avec une probabilité de 30 à 50 %. Soixante six marqueurs AFLP/SSR ont été identifiés. A l’aide de MAPMAKER, 4 groupes de liaison ont été trouvés. Le premier groupe montre 33 marqueurs liés au gène sensible. Le marqueur le plus proche identifié est à 21.4 centimorgans du gène sensible. La combinaison d’amorces ayant des liaisons les plus proches était 809ACG8 (E-ACG 8 + UBC-809). Le secondgroupe montre 4 marqueurs liés ensemble tandis que le troisième et le quatrième groupe montrent 2 marqueurs liés entre eux respectivement. Aucun marqueur n’a été trouvé lié au gène Rav3 qui confère la résistance au cultivar de niébé cultivé IT81D-994.Key words: Parasite, weeds, legumes, molecular marker

Global Journalist: President Bush visits Africa

In this July 10, 2003 episode of Global Journalist, host Stuart Loory leads a discussion on President Bush's visit to Africa and his effort to alleviate the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Host: Stuart Loory. Guests: David Ouma Balikowa, Winston Ojukutu Macauley, David E. Ahaneku, Raymond Lowe. Directors: Pat Akers. Producers: Yusuf Kalyango, Sarah Katan

Setting Priorities for Space Research: Opportunities and Imperatives

This report represents the first phase of a study by a task group convened by the Space Studies Board to ascertain whether it should attempt to develop a methodology for recommending priorities among the various initiatives in space research (that is, scientific activities concerned with phenomena in space or utilizing observations from space). The report argues that such priority statements by the space research community are both necessary and desirable and would contribute to the formulation and implementation of public policy. The report advocates the establishment of priorities to enhance effective management of the nation's scientific research program in space. It argues that scientific objectives and purposes should determine how and under what circumstances scientific research should be done. The report does not take a position on the controversy between advocates of manned space exploration and those who favor the exclusive use of unmanned space vehicles. Nor does the report address questions about the value or appropriateness of Space Station Freedom or proposals to establish a permanent manned Moon base or to undertake a manned mission to Mars. These issues lie beyond the charge to the task group

Ecological condition of coastal ocean waters along the U.S. Mid-Atlantic Bight: 2006

In May 2006, the NOAA National Ocean Service (NOS), in conjunction with the EPA National Health and Environmental Effects Laboratory (NHEERL), conducted an assessment of the status of ecological condition of soft-bottom habitat and overlying waters throughout the mid-Atlantic Bight (MAB) portion of the eastern U.S. continental shelf. The study area encompassed the region from Cape Cod, MA and Nantucket Shoals in the northeast to Cape Hatteras in the south, and was defined using a one nautical mile buffer of the shoreline extended seaward to the shelf break (~100-m depth contour). A total of 50 stations were targeted for sampling using standard methods and indicators applied in prior NOAA coastal studies and EPA’s Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP) and National Coastal Assessment (NCA). A key feature adopted from these studies was the incorporation of a random probabilistic sampling design. Such a design provides a basis for making unbiased statistical estimates of the spatial extent of ecological condition relative to various measured indicators and corresponding thresholds of concern. Indicators included multiple measures of water quality, sediment quality, and biological condition (benthic fauna). Through coordination with the NOAA Fisheries Service/Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NFS/NEFSC), samples of summer flounder (Paralichthys dentatus) also were obtained from 30 winter 2007 bottom-trawl survey stations in overlapping portions of the study area and used for analysis of chemical-contaminant body burdens

Advancing Pancreas Segmentation in Multi-protocol MRI Volumes using Hausdorff-Sine Loss Function

Computing pancreatic morphology in 3D radiological scans could provide significant insight about a medical condition. However, segmenting the pancreas in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) remains challenging due to high inter-patient variability. Also, the resolution and speed of MRI scanning present artefacts that blur the pancreas bound- aries between overlapping anatomical structures. This paper proposes a dual-stage automatic segmentation method: 1) a deep neural network is trained to address the problem of vague organ boundaries in high class-imbalanced data. This network integrates a novel loss function to rigorously optimise boundary delineation using the modified Hausdorff metric and a sinusoidal component; 2) Given a test MRI volume, the output of the trained network predicts a sequence of targeted 2D pan- creas classes that are reconstructed as a volumetric binary mask. An energy-minimisation approach fuses a learned digital contrast model to suppress the intensities of non-pancreas classes, which, combined with the binary volume performs a refined segmentation in 3D while reveal- ing dense boundary detail. Experiments are performed on two diverse MRI datasets containing 180 and 120 scans, in which the proposed ap- proach achieves a mean Dice score of 84.1 ± 4.6% and 85.7 ± 2.3%, respectively. This approach is statistically stable and outperforms state- of-the-art methods on MRI

Bostonia: 1993-1994, no. 2-3

Founded in 1900, Bostonia magazine is Boston University's main alumni publication, which covers alumni and student life, as well as university activities, events, and programs

Attorney on trial: When lawyers met phony lawyers in republican Beijing

China underwent tremendous changes in social systems during the Republican period. Among these changes was the government’s introduction into Chinese society of a new legal profession based on Western ideology. Relying mainly on Shanghai archival records, previous scholarship has suggested that, unlike the traditional litigation masters who had always been despised by the authorities, the new Chinese lawyers quickly rose to respectable social and economic status. However, the historical findings presented in the current article challenge this perception by showing that in a city with a more deeply rooted indigenous legal tradition and less influence from Western lawyers, as in Beijing, the new Chinese lawyers faced resistance from the legacy of the old legal culture that permeated the new system. For a considerable period of time after the establishment of the Republic, the people of Beijing still continued to hire unqualified, “phony” lawyers in lawsuits, and some of these phony lawyers had previously been litigation masters under the Qing dynasty. Although legal reform was instigated by the central government as a unified policy, its implementation was bound to vary in different regions according to the influence of the traditional legal culture. It is clear that the situation in Shanghai and other treaty ports does not represent the situation throughout the entire country, nor even in other coastal regions. Therefore, to make more sense of legal reform in China, one should evaluate the development of legal reform in a particular city or region against its social and ideological backdrop. This approach may provide insights not only into the legal reform of the Republican period, but also into the post-Mao era when once again a modern legal system based on the Western model has been introduced, this time within a socialist system.published_or_final_versio