HOW DO WE DETERMINE PLANT QUALITY OF ORGANIC CROPS?

Plants are photoautotrophic organisms being able to synthesize all metabolites and macro-molecules on the basis of light, CO2, H2O and 14 inorganic elements taken up from the soil. As plants are confined to the environment in which they germinate, this means that the plant ionome, metabolome and proteome are heavily influenced by soil mineralogy, climate and not least agricultural management. Organic plant products within the European Union are produced according to a specific set of regulations, which e.g. implicate that organic plants are cultivated without pesticides and synthetically produced nitrogen (N) fertilizers. In addition, N fertilizers are often used in lower amounts relative to conventional agriculture. Over more than a decade it has been intensively studied whether these marked agronomical differences lead to systematic differences in the chemical composition of plant tissue and whether this has an impact on selected plant quality attributes. From a theoretical point of view the marked differences in fertilization strategies between organic and conventional agriculture will cause systematic differences in the chemical composition of plants. The differences are expected to be very large when comparing plants representing the extremes of organic and conventional agriculture. Thus, if synthetic fertilizers are used exclusively for conventional plant production and in high amounts relative to organic production based on animal manure, green manures, compost etc., the conventional plants are likely to differ from the organic ones. However, in most cases plants are not produced with such extreme fertilization strategies and differences are often masked by natural variation caused by e.g. geographical locations and growth season and thereby little difference in plant quality is usually observed. Despite the fact that systematic differences in chemical composition between organic and conventional plants are usually overridden by natural variation it was recently found that the type of N fertilizers is reflected in the isotope ratios of plants and that the isotopic fingerprints are unbiased by geographical locations and growth season. However, the fundamental differences in isotope ratios are supposedly irrelevant regarding plant quality, but have shown to be a strong signature for authentication of organic plants products. In this lecture we will further explain how the fertilization strategy can affect the underlying biochemical mechanisms controlling the chemical composition of plants and discuss how these are related to organic plant quality. Special attention will be given to N fertilizer forms and quantity, as fertilization generally appears to be the single-most parameter with the strongest impact on metabolism when comparing plants from organic and conventional agricultural systems

Is it really organic? Authenticity testing of organic plant products using elemental and isotopic fingerprinting

The commercial market for high-value plant products is steadily increasing. Consumers are willingly paying premium prices for plants that originate from specific geographical regions or are produced according to certain agricultural management practices. This has significantly enhanced the market shares of organically grown plant products but has simultaneously increased the risk of food adulteration and fraudulent activities. Consequently, sophisticated analytical principles are currently being developed to enable discrimination of organic and conventional plants and ensure compliance with the regulations of organic agriculture. Some of the most promising principles for organic authentication are based on atomic spectroscopy which encompasses several analytical techniques suitable for analysis of the elemental and isotopic composition of plants (1). Analytical discrimination of organic and conventional plant products relies on an expectation of systematic differences in agricultural management practices. Thus, it has been hypothesized that the prohibition of pesticides and synthetically produced fertilizers in organic agriculture is reflected in the chemical composition of plants. This hypothesis was recently tested in a Danish research project called OrgTrace, in which analytical methods for elemental and isotopic fingerprinting were developed and combined with multivariate statistics for authenticity testing of organic crops (2-4). The unique experimental design of OrgTrace included numerous plant species grown either organically or conventionally at several geographical locations differing in soil type, climate etc. Furthermore, year-to-year variation was assessed by inclusion of two growth years. Results from the OrgTrace project will be presented at the seminar. Recently, the international research project AuthenticFood was initiated. In AuthenticFood novel analytical procedures will be tested and combined to enable authentication of selected organic plant products before and after processing of these. The main research hypotheses and methodologies of AuthenticFood will be presented

Unbound states in 12^{12}C populated by γ\gamma-decay of the (Jπ,T)=(2+,1)(J^{\pi},T) = (2^+,1) 16.11 MeV state

The reaction $^{11}\textrm{B}+p$ has been used to populate the $(J^\pi,T) = (2^+,1)$ state at an excitation energy of 16.11 MeV in $^{12}$C. $\gamma$-decay to unbound states in $^{12}$C are identified from analysis of the decay of the populated daughter states. Due to a new technique, $\gamma$-decay to the 10.8 MeV 1$^-$ state is observed for the first time, and transitions to the 9.64 MeV (3$^-$) and 12.71 MeV (1$^+$) are confirmed. Unresolved transitions to natural parity strength at 10 MeV and 11.5-13 MeV are also observed. For all transitions partial widths are deducedComment: Corrected small typographical errors and added more details on data analysi

Predicting interpersonal competence and self-worth from adolescent relationships and relationship networks: Variable-centered and person-centered perspectives

A two-year longitudinal investigation examined adolescents\u27 (N = 100 girls and 99 boys) perceptions of social support in relationships with mothers, close friends, and romantic partners from Grade 10 (ages 14-16) to Grade 12 (ages 16-18). Adolescents, mothers, and close friends also provided descriptions of the participants\u27 global self-worth and interpersonal competence. Variable-centered and person-centered analyses revealed that perceived social support tends to be similar across relationships and stable over time. Variable-centered analyses indicated that social support in mother-adolescent relationships was uniquely related to adolescent global self-worth; that social support in close friendships was uniquely related to social acceptance, friendship competence, and romantic competence; and that social support in romantic relationships was uniquely related to romantic competence. Person-centered analyses indicated that adolescents who reported high social support in all three relationships had higher selfworth and greater interpersonal competence than those who did not have a romantic relationship and who reported low social support in relationships with mothers and close friends; and that scores for adolescents who had a romantic relationship but who reported low social support in all three relationships fell in between these two groups. Taken together, variable-centered analyses suggest that different relationships influence different dimensions of competence, but person-centered analyses indicate that a sizable proportion of adolescents have relationships that act in concert with one another. Copyright © 2006 by Wayne State University Press

Gauge Theories with a Layered Phase

We study abelian gauge theories with anisotropic couplings in $4+D$ dimensions. A layered phase is present, in the absence as well as in the presence of fermions. A line of second order transitions separates the layered from the Coulomb phase, if $D\leq 3$.Comment: 17 pages+9 figures (in LATeX and PostScript in a uuencoded, compressed tar file appended at the end of the LATeX file) , CPT-94/P.303

Towards Error Handling in a DSL for Robot Assembly Tasks

This work-in-progress paper presents our work with a domain specific language (DSL) for tackling the issue of programming robots for small-sized batch production. We observe that as the complexity of assembly increases so does the likelihood of errors, and these errors need to be addressed. Nevertheless, it is essential that programming and setting up the assembly remains fast, allows quick changeovers, easy adjustments and reconfigurations. In this paper we present an initial design and implementation of extending an existing DSL for assembly operations with error specification, error handling and advanced move commands incorporating error tolerance. The DSL is used as part of a framework that aims at tackling uncertainties through a probabilistic approach.Comment: Presented at DSLRob 2014 (arXiv:cs/1411.7148

Supertertiary protein structure affects an allosteric network

The notion that protein function is allosterically regulated by structural or dynamic changes in proteins has been extensively investigated in several protein domains in isolation. In particular, PDZ domains have represented a paradigm for these studies, despite providing conflicting results. Furthermore, it is still unknown how the association between protein domains in supramodules, consitituting so-called supertertiary structures, affects allosteric networks. Here, we experimentally mapped the allosteric network in a PDZ:ligand complex, both in isolation and in the context of a supramodular structure, and show that allosteric networks in a PDZ domain are highly dependent on the supertertiary structure in which they are present. This striking sensitivity of allosteric networks to the presence of adjacent protein domains is likely a common property of supertertiary structures in proteins. Our findings have general implications for prediction of allosteric networks from primary and tertiary structures and for quantitative descriptions of allostery

Seeking allosteric networks in PDZ domains

Ever since Ranganathan and coworkers subjected the covariation of amino acid residues in the postsynaptic density-95/Discs large/Zonula occludens 1 (PDZ) domain family to a statistical correl- ation analysis, PDZ domains have represented a paradigmatic family to explore single domain protein allostery. Nevertheless, several theoretical and experimental studies in the past two dec- ades have contributed contradicting results with regard to structural localization of the allosteric networks, or even questioned their actual existence in PDZ domains. In this review, we first describe theoretical and experimental approaches that were used to probe the energetic network (s) in PDZ domains. We then compare the proposed networks for two well-studied PDZ domains namely the third PDZ domain from PSD-95 and the second PDZ domain from PTP-BL. Our analysis highlights the contradiction between the different methods and calls for additional work to better understand these allosteric phenomena

Initial results from the Caltech/DRSI balloon-borne isotope experiment

The Caltech/DSRI balloonborne High Energy Isotope Spectrometer Telescope (HEIST) was flown successfully from Palestine, Texas on 14 May, 1984. The experiment was designed to measure cosmic ray isotopic abundances from neon through iron, with incident particle energies from approx. 1.5 to 2.2 GeV/nucleon depending on the element. During approximately 38 hours at float altitude, 100,000 events were recorded with Z or = 6 and incident energies approx. 1.5 GeV/nucleon. We present results from the ongoing data analysis associated with both the preflight Bevalac calibration and the flight data