Phosphorus Fertility Relationships of Central Washington Irrigated Soils (with special emphasis on exposed calcareous subsoils)

To facilitate irrigation in central Washington, land is leveled or smoothed on a broad scale. As a result, the calcareous and extremely infertile subsoils are exposed and used directly as a medium for plant growth. Phosphorus fertilizer requirements of exposed subsoils were determined by measuring crop yield and P uptake on plots that were fertilized in the current and one, two or three preceding seasons. Annual crops used as indicators of P availability at three sites were field beans, Sudangrass and sugar beets. A supplementary experiment involved fertilization of a previously established alfalfa crop. Crop growth and P uptake results were correlated with sodium bicarbonate soil testin

CD4-T Cells as a Predictor of Immune Status and Its Outcomes Following Second-Line Combination Antiretroviral Therapy in Adult HIV-1 Infected Patients Attending Apin/Juth HIV Clinic in Jos, Plateau State, Nigeria

Deficiency in immune cell number or activity is a cardinal feature of HIV.  Second line antiretroviral therapy is geared towards improving immune cell activity and improving treatment outcomes. More people are now accessing free combination antiretroviral therapy through public health programmes in resource limited settings. There is currently no third line therapy for patients failing second line therapy in most of these programmes and data on effectiveness of second line antiretroviral therapy are limited. To adequately address and prepare for this scenario, critical assessments of the outcomes of second-line cART are needed. This is a retrospective cohort study of patients accessing second line cART at the APIN/ JUTH, Jos adult HIV clinic from 2004 to 2018, to determine the proportion of patients failing second line cART, to evaluate time to immunologic failure, time to lost to follow up and time to death using Kaplan Meier estimates. Immunological failure occurs when there is a fall of CD4 counts to pre-therapy baseline (or below) or 50% fall from the on-treatment peak value (if known) or persistent CD4 levels below 100 cells/mm3 6 months after ART initiation. A total of 285 patients were included in the study, with a mean age of 45±9.5 years. Females where 194 (68.1%) All the patients were on boosted protease inhibitor, the predominant combination antiretroviral therapy for second line regimen was Lopinavir boosted with ritonavir in combination with Tenofovir, Lamivudine and Zidovudine (43.9%). The baseline CD4 count was 134 (IQR 54-272). The CD4 count increased to 339 (IQR213-498) at 72 weeks.   In conclusion, Second line cART immunologic failure rates are low in our cohort and patient stay longer on cART before failure. Keywords: CD4 cells, Immunologic failure, Antiretroviral therapy DOI: 10.7176/JHMN/107-02 Publication date: April 30th 202

Can One-Run-Fixed-Arrhenius Kerogen Analysis Provide Comparable Organofacies Results to Detailed Palynological Analysis? A Case Study from a Prospective Mississippian Source Rock Reservoir (Bowland Shale, UK)

Organofacies analysis, a fundamental component within source rock appraisal based on the study of kerogen within a source rock, is typically produced from microscopy (palynological) and geochemical (kerogen kinetic) data, both of which are costly to acquire. One-Run-Fixed-Arrhenius (ORFA) kerogen kinetic analysis based on Rock–Eval pyrolysis offers a substantially cheaper kinetic dataset. Here, ORFA and palynological analyses are compared in organofacies characterization of a prospective Mississippian source rock reservoir (Bowland Shale, UK). Two-end-member organofacies were determined based on the abundance of the 56 kcal/mol activation energy peak derived from ORFA data: absence ( 15%) indicating ‘organofacies B’ containing the highest proportion of sporomorphs (Type II kerogen). A mud-dominated slope setting for the rock reservoir was also used to test the accuracy of organofacies analysis in determining depositional environment. Organofacies A found within lithofacies deposited from dilute waning density flows and hemipelagic suspension settling occurred between shelf edge, slope and basin. Organofacies B found within lithofacies deposited from dilute waning density flows, and low-strength cohesive debrites occurred only within the lower slope. This study demonstrates that ORFA kerogen kinetic analysis provides comparable net results to palynological analysis, enabling cheaper and faster organic characterization during initial source rock appraisal. However, caution must be exercised in drawing interpretations as to biological source(s), organic matter mixing and preservation state(s) without additional investigation using data from detailed palynological analysis

Cooperation between the Russian Federation and the United States to enhance the existing nuclear-material protection, control, and accounting systems at Mayak Production Association

The Ministry of the Russian Federation for Atomic Energy (MINATOM) and the US Department of Energy (DOE) are engaged in joint, cooperative efforts to reduce the likelihood of nuclear proliferation by enhancing Material Protection, Control and Accounting (MPC&A) systems in both countries. Mayak Production Association (MPA) is a major Russian nuclear enterprise within the nuclear complex that is operated by MINATOM. This paper describes the nature, scope, and status of the joint, cooperative efforts to enhance existing MPC&A systems at MPA. Current cooperative efforts are focused on enhancements to the existing MPC&A systems at four plants that are operated by MPA and that produce, process, handle and/or store proliferation-sensitive nuclear materials

A constructive approach to the soliton solutions of integrable quadrilateral lattice equations

Scalar multidimensionally consistent quadrilateral lattice equations are studied. We explore a confluence between the superposition principle for solutions related by the Backlund transformation, and the method of solving a Riccati map by exploiting two kn own particular solutions. This leads to an expression for the N-soliton-type solutions of a generic equation within this class. As a particular instance we give an explicit N-soliton solution for the primary model, which is Adler's lattice equation (or Q4).Comment: 22 page

Perspectives on safety culture

Overviewing selected elements from the literature, this paper locates the notion of safety culture within its parent concept of organisational culture. A distinction is drawn between functionalist and interpretive perspectives on organisational culture. The terms ‘culture’ and ‘climate’ are clarified as they are typically applied to organisations and to safety. A contrast is drawn between strategic top down and data-driven bottom up approaches to human factors as an illustrative aspect of safety. A safety case study is used to illustrate two measurement approaches. Key issues for future study include valid measurement of safety culture and developing methods to adequately represent mechanisms through which safety culture might influence, and be influenced by, other safety factors

Angular Momentum Mixing in Crystalline Color Superconductivity

In crystalline color superconductivity, quark pairs form at non-zero total momentum. This crystalline order potentially enlarges the domain of color superconductivity in cold dense quark matter. We present a perturbative calculation of the parameters governing the crystalline phase and show that this is indeed the case. Nevertheless, the enhancement is modest, and to lowest order is independent of the strength of the color interaction.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures, Revte

The flip side of Cell Talk in Exercise: Cell Noise

The article makes an effort to study, assess, and bring additional depth to the concept of cell talk, crosstalk, and cell noise -highlighting molecular-level occurrences such as signaling activity that affect different metabolic processes, gene expression, and protein synthesis. It also establishes the idea of "cell noise," or "dysregulated cell signaling," which is defined as cell activity that may worsen or result in cellular injury, oxidative stress, and inflammation. There is abundant evidence that consistent, lifelong exercise extends lifespan and delays the onset of chronic illnesses like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, hypertension, obesity, depression, and osteoporosis. The aforementioned highlights the need for metered or regulated physical training that takes into account genetic and environmental variances among individuals. Everyone is advised to engage in structured, well-chosen workouts that will promote longevity of life and result in the human body functioning at its best. Keywords: Cell Talk in Exercise, Cell Noise DOI: 10.7176/JBAH/13-8-05 Publication date:May 31st 202

Quantum inference of states and processes

The maximum-likelihood principle unifies inference of quantum states and processes from experimental noisy data. Particularly, a generic quantum process may be estimated simultaneously with unknown quantum probe states provided that measurements on probe and transformed probe states are available. Drawbacks of various approximate treatments are considered.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

The excitation spectrum of mesoscopic proximity structures

We investigate one aspect of the proximity effect, viz., the local density of states of a superconductor-normal metal sandwich. In contrast to earlier work, we allow for the presence of an arbitrary concentration of impurities in the structure. The superconductor induces a gap in the normal metal spectrum that is proportional to the inverse of the elastic mean free path l_N for rather clean systems. For a mean free path much shorter than the thickness of the normal metal, we find a gap size proportional to l_N that approaches the behavior predicted by the Usadel equation (diffusive limit). We also discuss the influence of interface and surface roughness, the consequences of a non-ideal transmittivity of the interface, and the dependence of our results on the choice of the model of impurity scattering.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figures (included), submitted to PR