Alleviating health risks associated with rainwater harvesting

Perceived and real public health risks associated with the quality of water from alternative water sources and supply systems, such as rainwater harvesting (RWH) and grey water reuse, continue to restrict their uptake in many countries. One option to alleviate these health risks is to treat alternative water to potable standard at the point of use (POU) as opposed to the point of supply, as undertaken in centralised systems. This paper presents the results of three international empirical field trials of a novel POU RWH treatment device. The results indicate that where the harvested rainwater did not contain elevated levels of pesticides or physico-chemical determinands, the POU device was able to reduce levels in outlet water to meet UK, EU and World Health Organization potable standards. Regarding microbiological determinands, such as total viable counts and coliforms, and microbial pathogens, such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Legionella spp., the device achieved reduction to potable standard and full pathogen removal, respectively. Thus, while it is possible to treat harvested rainwater to potable standard with a POU device, whether it is desirable to do so to alleviate risks for all end uses remains a question for further debate

Photography-based taxonomy is inadequate, unnecessary, and potentially harmful for biological sciences

The question whether taxonomic descriptions naming new animal species without type specimen(s) deposited in collections should be accepted for publication by scientific journals and allowed by the Code has already been discussed in Zootaxa (Dubois & Nemésio 2007; Donegan 2008, 2009; Nemésio 2009a–b; Dubois 2009; Gentile & Snell 2009; Minelli 2009; Cianferoni & Bartolozzi 2016; Amorim et al. 2016). This question was again raised in a letter supported by 35 signatories published in the journal Nature (Pape et al. 2016) on 15 September 2016. On 25 September 2016, the following rebuttal (strictly limited to 300 words as per the editorial rules of Nature) was submitted to Nature, which on 18 October 2016 refused to publish it. As we think this problem is a very important one for zoological taxonomy, this text is published here exactly as submitted to Nature, followed by the list of the 493 taxonomists and collection-based researchers who signed it in the short time span from 20 September to 6 October 2016

Arabidopsis tic62 trol Mutant Lacking Thylakoid-Bound FerredoxinNADP Oxidoreductase Shows Distinct Metabolic Phenotype

Ferredoxin-NADP(+) oxidoreductase (FNR), functioning in the last step of the photosynthetic electron transfer chain, exists both as a soluble protein in the chloroplast stroma and tightly attached to chloroplast membranes. Surface plasmon resonance assays showed that the two FNR isoforms, LFNR1 and LFNR2, are bound to the thylakoid membrane via the C-terminal domains of Tic62 and TROL proteins in a pH-dependent manner. The tic62 trol double mutants contained a reduced level of FNR, exclusively found in the soluble stroma. Although the mutant plants showed no visual phenotype or defects in the function of photosystems under any conditions studied, a low ratio of NADPH/NADP(+) was detected. Since the CO2 fixation capacity did not differ between the tic62 trol plants and wild-type, it seems that the plants are able to funnel reducing power to most crucial reactions to ensure survival and fitness of the plants. However, the activity of malate dehydrogenase was down-regulated in the mutant plants. Apparently, the plastid metabolism is able to cope with substantial changes in directing the electrons from the light reactions to stromal metabolism and thus only few differences are visible in steady-state metabolite pool sizes of the tic62 trol plants

Constructing IDL Views on Relational Databases

. Data collections are distributed at many different sites and stored in numerous different database management systems. The industry standard CORBA can help to alleviate the technical problems of distribution and diverging data formats. In a CORBA environment, data structures can be represented using the Interface Definition Language IDL. Manually coding a server, which implements the IDL through calls to the underlying database, is tedious. On the other hand, it is in general impossible to automatically generate the CORBA server because the IDL is not only determined by the schema of the database but also by other factors such as performance requirements. We therefore have developed a method for the semi-automatic generation of CORBA wrappers for relational databases. A declarative language is presented, which is used to describe the mapping between relations and IDL constructs. Using a set of such mapping rules, a CORBA server is generated together with the IDL. Additio..

The phylogenetic relationships of the charismatic poster frogs, Phyllomedusinae (Anura, Hylidae)

The leaf or monkey frogs of the hylid subfamily Phyllomedusinae are a unique group of charismatic anurans. We present a molecular phylogenetic analysis that includes 45 of the 60 species of phyllomedusines using up to 12 genes and intervening tRNAs. The aims were to gain a better understanding of the phylogenetic position of Phrynomedusa, test the monophyly and explore the relationships among several putative lineages (Hylomantis, the H. buckleyi Group, Phasmahyla, the four species groups of Phyllomedusa, and the species of Phyllomedusa that remain unassigned to any group), and to examine the implications of our phylogeny for the evolution of several characters in phyllomedusines. The analyses resulted in a well-supported phylogenetic hypothesis that provides a historical framework for a discussion of the evolution of characters associated with reproductive biology, gliding behaviour, the physiology of waterproofing, and bioactive peptides. Implications include an earlier origin for eggless capsules than for leaf-folding behaviour during amplexus, two independent origins of gliding, and an earlier origin of reduction in evaporative water loss than uricotelism, which is a result that originally was predicted on the basis of physiology alone. Furthermore, our results support the prediction that bioactive peptides from different peptide families are to be expected in all species of Phyllomedusinae. Hylomantis (as recently redefined) is shown to be paraphyletic and the synonymy of Agalychnis is revised to remedy this problem by including both Hylomantis and Pachymedusa.(C) The Willi Hennig Society 2009.Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq