Assessment of physiological indices and energetics under different system of rice intensification in north western Himalayas

Field experiment was conducted at the research farm of CSK Himachal Pradesh Krishi Vishvavidyalaya, Rice and Wheat Research Centre, Malan during kharif 2013 with the objective to select the best seedling age and spacing of rice under system of rice intensification in terms of energetic and employment generation for mid hill con-dition of Himachal Pradesh. The experiment was laid out in 3 times replicated split plot design, assigning of three seedling ages (10, 17 and 24 days) and two spacings (20 cm x 20 cm and 20 cm x 15 cm) in main plots and four seedling vigours corresponding to four seeding rates (25, 30, 35 and 40 g/m2) in sub plots. The leaf area per plant was significantly greater in 10 days seedling age and decreased with increase in age (P=0.05). Seedling rate did not affect leaf area index in all stages except 40 DAS when 35 g/m2 seeding rate had maximum LAI. Seedling age did not significantly influence crop growth rate at any interval but it did relative growth rate and net assimilation rate between 40-70 and 70-100 DAS (P=0.05). 24 days old seedling resulted in significantly higher relative growth rate and net assimilation rate between 40-70 DAS followed by 17 days old seedlings. Maximum value of energy input (13.23) was recorded in 24 days seedling. The energy use efficiency (Energy output: input) varied from 10.6 to 11.1 under different treatments. Wider spacing supporting less plant population consumed 10 man days less than closer spac-ing of 20 cm x 15 cm

Evaluation of seeding rates of rice nursery on seedling vigour and its effect on crop productivity under system of rice intensification

Four seeding rates (25, 30, 35 and 40 g/m2) of rice in nursery were tested for seedling vigour recorded at 10, 17 and 24 DAS at Malan during 2013 and 2014. The seedling vigour so obtained in nursery was subsequently evaluated in field during kharif 2013. Thus twenty four treatments comprised of combinations of three seedling ages (10, 17 and 24 days) and two spacings (20 × 20 cm and 20 × 15 cm) in main plots and four seedling vigour from four seeding rates (25, 30, 35 and 40 g/m2) in sub plots were evaluated in split plot design. Seedling shoot length under all seeding rates (25-35 g/m2) was significantly higher compared to check (40 g/m2) during 2013. In the next year, shoot and root length (30-35 g/m2), tiller per seedling and leaves per seedling (25-30 g/m2) of 24 days nursery was significantly higher over check (40 g/m2). Plant height, tillers, leaves and dry matter accumulation were significantly higher when younger seedlings aged 10 and 17 days were used. The crop raised using 10 days old seedlings matured 3-5 days earlier than 24 days old seedlings. Wider spacing resulted in more plant height, tillers, leaves and dry matter accumulation. Seedlings from 25, 30 and 35 g seed/m2 resulted in significantly taller plants than 40 g/m2. The seeding rate, seedling age and plant spacing did not significantly influence rice productivity thereby permitting flexibility to the rice farmers in the adoption of these factors

Predicting Energy Requirement for Cooling the Building Using Artificial Neural Network

This paper explores total cooling load during summers and total carbon emissions of a six storey building by using artificial neural network (ANN). Parameters used for the calculation were conduction losses, ventilation losses, solar heat gain and internal gain. The standard back-propagation learning algorithm has been used in the network. The energy performance in buildings is influenced by many factors, such as ambient weather conditions, building structure and characteristics, the operation of sub-level components like lighting and HVAC systems, occupancy and their behavior. This complex situation makes it very difficult to accurately implement the prediction of building energy consumption. The calculated cooling load was 0.87 million kW per year. ANN application showed that data was best fit for the regression coefficient of 0.9955 with best validation performance of 0.41231 in case of conduction losses. To meet out this energy demand various fuel options are presented along with their cost and carbon emission

Heart rot of Australian pineapples caused by Dickeya zeae

Pineapple plants (hybrid MD2) with bacterial heart rot were detected in a commercial plantation at Glasshouse Mountains, Queensland, in November 2015. The bacterial strain BRIP64263 isolated from infected tissue was shown to be a Gram negative soft-rotting bacterium capable of growth at 41 ºC, and based on its culture properties was provisionally identified as Dickeya. This strain was compared with other putative Dickeya strains affecting banana (BRIP64262) and potato (BRIP29490). Sequence analysis of the recombinase A genes of the pineapple strain placed it in phylotype I of D. zeae, whereas the banana strain was placed in phylotype II. This was confirmed by sequence comparisons for the phosphofructose kinase, RNA polymerase and aconitase genes which showed that the pineapple strain BRIP64263 is distinct from other strains that infect pineapples and other hosts in Australia and overseas. Furthermore, phylogenetic analysis of the replication initiation factor gene showed that strains affecting pineapples were distributed among both phylotypes of D. zeae, indicating multiple acquisitions or opportunistic infections of pineapple from this group of pathogens. The potato isolate, BRIP29490, was shown to be Rahnella aquatica, and is not likely to be pathogenic. It is not known whether the new isolate represents an incursion or whether it has long been associated with pineapples in Australia. Further study is required to determine the epidemiological characteristics of this strain, and what threat it poses to Australian pineapple production

Heart rot of Australian pineapples caused by Dickeya zeae

Pineapple plants (hybrid MD2) with bacterial heart rot were detected in a commercial plantation at Glasshouse Mountains, Queensland, in November 2015. The bacterial strain BRIP64263 isolated from infected tissue was shown to be a Gram negative soft-rotting bacterium capable of growth at 41 ºC, and based on its culture properties was provisionally identified as Dickeya. This strain was compared with other putative Dickeya strains affecting banana (BRIP64262) and potato (BRIP29490). Sequence analysis of the recombinase A genes of the pineapple strain placed it in phylotype I of D. zeae, whereas the banana strain was placed in phylotype II. This was confirmed by sequence comparisons for the phosphofructose kinase, RNA polymerase and aconitase genes which showed that the pineapple strain BRIP64263 is distinct from other strains that infect pineapples and other hosts in Australia and overseas. Furthermore, phylogenetic analysis of the replication initiation factor gene showed that strains affecting pineapples were distributed among both phylotypes of D. zeae, indicating multiple acquisitions or opportunistic infections of pineapple from this group of pathogens. The potato isolate, BRIP29490, was shown to be Rahnella aquatica, and is not likely to be pathogenic. It is not known whether the new isolate represents an incursion or whether it has long been associated with pineapples in Australia. Further study is required to determine the epidemiological characteristics of this strain, and what threat it poses to Australian pineapple production

Impact of health education on knowledge and practices about menstruation among adolescent school girls of rural part of district Ambala, Haryana

Background: This study was undertaken to assess the impact of health education on knowledge regarding menstruation, misconceptions related to it as the prevalence of RTI is still very high in India.  Aims: To study the existing level of status of hygiene, knowledge and practices regarding menstruation among adolescent school girls and to assess the change in their knowledge level and practices after health education. Materials A community-based pre and post interventional study was conducted among 200 adolescents’ girls of class IX and X of rural part of district Ambala. Multistage random sampling technique was used to draw the representative sample. A pre-tested questionnaire was administered and later health education regarding menstruation and healthy menstrual practices was imparted to the girls. Post-test was done after 3 months to assess the impact of health education. Pre- and post-intervention, data were compared using the paired t test, z test for proportions, chi-squared test for paired proportions. Difference between Proportions of the pre-post data and its 95% confidence interval has been calculated of the findings. SPSS for Windows software version 20 (IBM, Chicago, USA) have been used for data analysis. The level of significance has been considered at p value < 0.05. Results: In the pre-test, menstrual perceptions amongst them were found to be poor and practices incorrect while in the post-test, there was a significant difference in the level of knowledge (P<0.05). There was no significant difference in pre and post-test with regard to restrictions followed during menses (P>0.05) while in the post-test preceding health education, significant improvements were observed in their practices. Conclusion: Overall significant improvement was found in knowledge and practices regarding menstruation among adolescent school girls

CoMeT: An Integrated Interval Thermal Simulation Toolchain for 2D, 2.5 D, and 3D Processor-Memory Systems

Processing cores and the accompanying main memory working in tandem enable the modern processors. Dissipating heat produced from computation, memory access remains a significant problem for processors. Therefore, processor thermal management continues to be an active research topic. Most thermal management research takes place using simulations, given the challenges of measuring temperature in real processors. Since core and memory are fabricated on separate packages in most existing processors, with the memory having lower power densities, thermal management research in processors has primarily focused on the cores. Memory bandwidth limitations associated with 2D processors lead to high-density 2.5D and 3D packaging technology. 2.5D packaging places cores and memory on the same package. 3D packaging technology takes it further by stacking layers of memory on the top of cores themselves. Such packagings significantly increase the power density, making processors prone to heating. Therefore, mitigating thermal issues in high-density processors (packaged with stacked memory) becomes an even more pressing problem. However, given the lack of thermal modeling for memories in existing interval thermal simulation toolchains, they are unsuitable for studying thermal management for high-density processors. To address this issue, we present CoMeT, the first integrated Core and Memory interval Thermal simulation toolchain. CoMeT comprehensively supports thermal simulation of high- and low-density processors corresponding to four different core-memory configurations - off-chip DDR memory, off-chip 3D memory, 2.5D, and 3D. CoMeT supports several novel features that facilitate overlying system research. Compared to an equivalent state-of-the-art core-only toolchain, CoMeT adds only a ~5% simulation-time overhead. The source code of CoMeT has been made open for public use under the MIT license.Comment: https://github.com/marg-tools/CoMe

Performance, Power and Cooling Trade-Offs with NCFET-based Many-Cores

Negative Capacitance Field-Effect Transistor (NCFET) is an emerging technology that incorporates a ferroelectric layer within the transistor gate stack to overcome the fundamental limit of sub-threshold swing in transistors. Even though physics-based NCFET models have been recently proposed, system-level NCFET models do not exist and research is still in its infancy. In this work, we are the first to investigate the impact of NCFET on performance, energy and cooling costs in many-core processors. Our proposed methodology starts from accurate physics models all the way up to the system level, where the performance and power of a many-core are widely affected. Our new methodology and system-level models allow, for the first time, the exploration of the novel trade-offs between performance gains and power losses that NCFET now offers to system-level designers. We demonstrate that an optimal ferroelectric thickness does exist. In addition, we reveal that current state-of-the-art power management techniques fail when NCFET (with a thick ferroelectric layer) comes into play

FMDV replicons encoding green fluorescent protein are replication competent

The study of replication of viruses that require high bio-secure facilities can be accomplished with less stringent containment using non-infectious 'replicon' systems. The FMDV replicon system (pT7rep) reported by Mclnerney et al. (2000) was modified by the replacement of sequences encoding chloramphenicol acetyl-transferase (CAT) with those encoding a functional L proteinase (Lpro) linked to a bi-functional fluorescent/antibiotic resistance fusion protein (green fluorescent protein/puromycin resistance, [GFP-PAC]). Cells were transfected with replicon-derived transcript RNA and GFP fluorescence quantified. Replication of transcript RNAs was readily detected by fluorescence, whilst the signal from replication-incompetent forms of the genome was >2-fold lower. Surprisingly, a form of the replicon lacking the Lpro showed a significantly stronger fluorescence signal, but appeared with slightly delayed kinetics. Replication can, therefore, be quantified simply by live-cell imaging and image analyses, providing a rapid and facile alternative to RT-qPCR or CAT assays

Multi-omic Profiling Reveals Dynamics of the Phased Progression of Pluripotency

Pluripotency is highly dynamic and progresses through a continuum of pluripotent stem cell states. The two states that bookend the pluripotency continuum, naive and primed, are well characterized, but our understanding of the intermediate states and transitions between them remains incomplete. Here, we dissect the dynamics of pluripotent state transitions underlying pre- to post-implantation epiblast differentiation. Through comprehensive mapping of the proteome, phosphoproteome, transcriptome, and epigenome of embryonic stem cells transitioning from naive to primed pluripotency, we find that rapid, acute, and widespread changes to the phosphoproteome precede ordered changes to the epigenome, transcriptome, and proteome. Reconstruction of the kinase-substrate networks reveals signaling cascades, dynamics, and crosstalk. Distinct waves of global proteomic changes mark discrete phases of pluripotency, with cell-state-specific surface markers tracking pluripotent state transitions. Our data provide new insights into multi-layered control of the phased progression of pluripotency and a foundation for modeling mechanisms regulating pluripotent state transitions (www.steamcellatlas.org)