Canker disease in Corymbia calophylla (Marri) in the south west of Western Australia

Cankering of marri in the southern forests of Western Australia is causing concern as it is increasing considerably in severity and geographic range. The contribution of canker fungi to stem, branch and tree death has not been studied in detail, and the causal agent(s) is yet to be determined (1). This project examined disease incidence and associated pathogens

Hybrid and Orbitally Excited Mesons in Full QCD

We present results for the hybrid meson spectrum produced by gluonic excitations in full QCD using Wilson fermions. For the spin-exotic mesons with J^{PC}=1^{-+}, 0^{+-}, and 2^{+-} we find the lightest state to be 1^{-+} with a mass of 1.9(2) GeV. Results obtained for orbitally excited mesons are also presented.Comment: LATTICE98(spectrum),3 pages, LaTeX2e File, 4 PS Figure

Root hair-endophyte stacking (RHESt) in an ancient Afro-Indian crop creates an unusual physico-chemical barrier to trap pathogen(s)

WKM was supported by generous scholarships from the Government of Egypt and the University of Guelph (International Graduate Student Scholarships, 2012, 2014). This research was supported by grants to MNR by the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA), Grain Farmers of Ontario (GFO), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the CIFSRF program funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC, Ottawa) and Canadian Department of Global Affairs.The objectives of this study were to isolate bacterial endophytes from finger millet, assay for anti-Fusarium activity and characterize the underlying cellular, molecular and biochemical mechanisms. We report an unusual symbiosis between the host and a root-inhabiting bacterial endophyte

Knowledge discOvery And daTa minINg inteGrated (KOATING) Moderators for collaborative projects

This article was published in the serial, International Journal of Production Research [© Taylor and Francis]. The definitive version is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00207543.2010.532166A major issue in any multidiscipline collaborative project is how to best share and simultaneously exploit different types of expertise, without duplicating efforts or inadvertently causing conflicts or loss of efficiency through misunderstanding of individual or shared goals. Moderators are knowledge based systems designed to support collaborative teams by raising awareness of potential problems or conflicts. However, the functioning of a Moderator is limited by the knowledge it has about the team members. Knowledge acquisition, learning and updating of knowledge are the major challenges for a Moderator's implementation. To address these challenges a Knowledge discOvery And daTa minINg inteGrated (KOATING) framework is presented for Moderators to enable them to continuously learn from the operational databases of the company and semi-automatically update their knowledge about team members. This enables the reuse of discovered knowledge from operational databases within collaborative projects. The integration of knowledge discovery in database (KDD) techniques into the existing Knowledge Acquisition Module of a moderator enables hidden data dependencies and relationships to be utilised to facilitate the moderation process. The architecture for the Universal Knowledge Moderator (UKM) shows how Moderators can be extended to incorporate a learning element which enables them to provide better support for virtual enterprises. Unified Modelling Language diagrams were used to specify the ways to design and develop the proposed system. The functioning of a UKM is presented using an illustrative example

PRIMA1 mutation: A new cause of nocturnal frontal lobe epilepsy

Objective Nocturnal frontal lobe epilepsy (NFLE) can be sporadic or autosomal dominant; some families have nicotinic acetylcholine receptor subunit mutations. We report a novel autosomal recessive phenotype in a single family and identify the causative gene. Methods Whole exome sequencing data was used to map the family, thereby narrowing exome search space, and then to identify the mutation. Results Linkage analysis using exome sequence data from two affected and two unaffected subjects showed homozygous linkage peaks on chromosomes 7, 8, 13, and 14 with maximum LOD scores between 1.5 and 1.93. Exome variant filtering under these peaks revealed that the affected siblings were homozygous for a novel splice site mutation (c.93+2T>C) in the PRIMA1 gene on chromosome 14. No additional PRIMA1 mutations were found in 300 other NFLE cases. The c.93+2T>C mutation was shown to lead to skipping of the first coding exon of the PRIMA1 mRNA using a minigene system. Interpretation PRIMA1 is a transmembrane protein that anchors acetylcholinesterase (AChE), an enzyme hydrolyzing acetycholine, to membrane rafts of neurons. PRiMA knockout mice have reduction of AChE and accumulation of acetylcholine at the synapse; our minigene analysis suggests that the c.93+2T>C mutation leads to knockout of PRIMA1. Mutations with gain of function effects in acetylcholine receptor subunits cause autosomal dominant NFLE. Thus, enhanced cholinergic responses are the likely cause of the severe NFLE and intellectual disability segregating in this family, representing the first recessive case to be reported and the first PRIMA1 mutation implicated in disease

Analysis of fracture induced scattering of microseismic shear-waves

Fractures are pervasive features within the Earth’s crust and have a significant influence on the multi-physical response of the subsurface. The presence of coherent fracture sets often leads to observable seismic scattering enabling seismic techniques to remotely locate and characterise fracture systems. In this study, we confirm the general scale-dependence of seismic scattering and provide new results specific to shear-wave propagation. We do this by generating full waveform synthetics using finite-difference wave simulation within an isotropic background model containing explicit fractures. By considering a suite of fracture models having variable fracture density and fracture size, we examine the widening effect of wavelets due to scattering within a fractured medium by using several different approaches, such as root-mean-square envelope analysis, shear-wave polarisation distortion, differential attenuation analysis and peak frequency shifting. The analysis allows us to assess the scattering behavior of parametrised models in which the propagation direction is either normal or parallel to the fracture surfaces. The quantitative measures show strong observable deviations for fractures size on the order of or greater than the dominant seismic wavelength within the Mie and geometric scattering regime for both propagation normal and parallel to fracture strike. The results suggest that strong scattering is symptomatic of fractures having size on the same order of the probing seismic wave