Chitosanase may enhance anti-fungal defense responses in transgenic tobacco

Chitosanase is an enzyme, similar to chitinase, capable of hydrolyzing the β-1,4-linkages between N-acetyl-D-glucosamine and D-glucosamine residues in partially acetylated chitosan polymers found in fungal cell walls. When attacked by pathogenic fungi, many plants exploit this hydrolytic action as a component of a larger post-attack defense response, but these enzymes may also play a role in the initial plant-pathogen interaction via the generation of elicitors resulting from the hydrolysis of fungal cell walls. To gain insight into these mechanisms, a Paenbacillus chitosanase was cloned, sequenced, and modified for plant expression. The modified gene was delivered to tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum L. cv. Xanthine) leaf disks via Agrobacterium tumenfaciensmediated transformation. Whole plants were regenerated from the transformed cells. The putative transformants were tested for transgene integration, transcription, and translation. Confirmed transformants were then screened for enhanced responses to a Rhizoctonia solani cellwall preparation by measuring time-course production of hydrogen peroxide, phenylalanine ammonia lyase, and peroxidase. These compounds play roles at different points in a pathogenesis-related signal transduction pathway and thus allow for an initial assessment of the global defense response. Preliminary data suggest that transgenic tobacco constitutively expressing a Paenbacillus chitosanase may activate pathogenesis-related defense responses more quickly than wild type tobacco

Consumer acceptance of pork chops

This is a report on Animal Husbandry Project 348, 'Improving Meat, ' Agricultural Economics Project 350, 'Improving Meat Acceptability, ' and Home Economics Project 349, 'Meat Preparation and Acceptance'--P. [2].Digitized 2007 AES.Includes bibliographical references (pages 23-24)

Effects of Teacher Degree and Teacher Experience on Literacy Achievement for Students Grades 3-6 in Arkansas

The purpose of this dissertation was to determine the effects of teacher degree and teacher experience on student achievement in literacy for Grades 3-6. School leaders are under pressure from state and national legislation to improve student achievement continuously. At the times hiring and teaching assignment decisions are made, often there is little verifiable data available about individual teacher applicants. Throughout most of the history of public education, teacher degree and teacher experience have been thought to have an impact on school quality and student achievement, so much so that nearly all teacher pay models are based on those two characteristics. Through. this study I examined the effects of teacher experience, defined as 3 or less years of experience or 4 or more years of experience, and teacher degree, defined as bachelor’s degree or master’s degree or higher on literacy achievement measured by the literacy portion of the ACTAAP exam in Arkansas. There were no significant interaction effects between the t2 independent variables for the 4 hypotheses. Similarly, the main effect for teacher experience on student achievement was also not significant for all grade levels. However, regarding teacher degree, 2 main effect hypotheses were significant in Grades 4 and 6. vi One interesting finding was that in these grades, students of teachers with bachelor’s degrees outperformed students of teachers with master’s degrees, with small effect sizes. For the other 2 grade levels (third and fifth), no significant effect was found. More research is needed with regard to student achievement at other grade levels, other subject areas, and as measured by other assessments. However, implications of this study indicate that colleges of education should consider why studies have revealed that students of teachers with master’s or higher degrees do not outperform students of teachers with bachelor\u27s degrees. In addition, administrators should determine the weight placed on characteristics such as teacher degree and teacher experience in the process of hiring, assigning, and paying new teachers to their districts

Asymmetric synthesis of arylglycines, The

1992 Summer.Includes bibliographical references.The asymmetric synthesis of several arylglycines is discussed. Several methods for the coupling of an aromatic group to the chiral bromoglycinates (171, 172) were developed. It was found that the cuprate and Friedel-Crafts couplings provided the desired aryl-coupled glycinates in the greatest yield with excellent selectivity. An oxidative protocol was employed to unmask the oxazinone chiral auxiliary which provided the desired free α-amino acids. A reductive deprotection method was also employed in two unique cases which efficiently gave the arylglycine products. The % ee's ranged from 82 to 94 %. This methodology was further utilized in an approach to the asymmetric synthesis of the bis-arylglycine, actinoidic acid. This study explored the scope of the Stille biphenyl cross-coupling reaction and produced methodology for the synthesis of biphenyl amino acid precursors

The Efforts To Reopen The African Slave Trade In Louisiana

With the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the United States government quickly moved to prohibit the further importation of African slaves into the newly acquired territory. This closing of the foreign slave trade was extended to the national level by a Federal law which became effective January 1, 1808. Protests emanated from Louisiana almost immediately after the trade was closed in 1803, but initially they were infrequent and mild. A general Southern effort to reopen the foreign slave trade began to develop in the early 1850\u27s, largely in the Southern commercial conventions. This movement reached its peak in 1859 when a resolution was passed advocating the reopening of the African traffic. A majority of Louisiana\u27s delegates to the convention sided with those favoring reopening. At the state level Louisiana confined its interest in reopening the trade to the commercial conventions until the late 1850\u27s. In 1858 and 1859 both Houses of the legislature took under consideration African apprentice schemes. These bills would have provided for the importation of indentured African apprentices, rather than slaves, into Louisiana, v and was simply a means of circumventing the Federal law of 1808. Heated debate took place in both years and public reaction was active. The efforts in 1859 the movement to reopen the slave trade in support waned and other issues associated the Civil War overshadowed the movement

Opportunities, barriers, and recommendations in down syndrome research

BACKGROUND: Recent advances in medical care have increased life expectancy and improved the quality of life for people with Down syndrome (DS). These advances are the result of both pre-clinical and clinical research but much about DS is still poorly understood. In 2020, the NIH announced their plan to update their DS research plan and requested input from the scientific and advocacy community. OBJECTIVE: The National Down Syndrome Society (NDSS) and the LuMind IDSC Foundation worked together with scientific and medical experts to develop recommendations for the NIH research plan. METHODS: NDSS and LuMind IDSC assembled over 50 experts across multiple disciplines and organized them in eleven working groups focused on specific issues for people with DS. RESULTS: This review article summarizes the research gaps and recommendations that have the potential to improve the health and quality of life for people with DS within the next decade. CONCLUSIONS: This review highlights many of the scientific gaps that exist in DS research. Based on these gaps, a multidisciplinary group of DS experts has made recommendations to advance DS research. This paper may also aid policymakers and the DS community to build a comprehensive national DS research strategy

The Purpose and Techniques of Supervisory Evaluation of Instruction with Particular Reference to Secondary Mathematics

The purpose of this study is to investigate the purposes and techniques of supervisory evaluation of instruction with particular reference to secondary mathematics

Static Hand Gesture Recognition for American Sign Language using Neuromorphic Hardware

In this paper, we develop four spiking neural network (SNN) models for two static American Sign Language (ASL) hand gesture classification tasks, i.e., the ASL Alphabet and ASL Digits. The SNN models are deployed on Intel's neuromorphic platform, Loihi, and then compared against equivalent deep neural network (DNN) models deployed on an edge computing device, the Intel Neural Compute Stick 2 (NCS2). We perform a comprehensive comparison between the two systems in terms of accuracy, latency, power consumption, and energy. The best DNN model achieves an accuracy of 99.93% on the ASL Alphabet dataset, whereas the best performing SNN model has an accuracy of 99.30%. For the ASL-Digits dataset, the best DNN model achieves an accuracy of 99.76% accuracy while the SNN achieves 99.03%. Moreover, our obtained experimental results show that the Loihi neuromorphic hardware implementations achieve up to 20.64x and 4.10x reduction in power consumption and energy, respectively, when compared to NCS2.Comment: Authors MohammedReza Mohammadi, and Peyton Chandarana contributed equall