Reaction cured glass and glass coatings

The invention relates to reaction cured glass and glass coatings prepared by reacting a compound selected from the group consisting of silicon tetraboride, silicon hexaboride, other boron silicides, boron and mixtures with a reactive glass frit composed of a porous high silica borosilicate glass and boron oxide. The glassy composites of the present invention are useful as coatings on low density fibrous porous silica insulations used as heat shields and for articles such as reaction vessels that are subjected to high temperatures with rapid heating and cooling and that require resistance to temperature and repeated thermal shock at temperatures up to about 1482C (2700PF)

Toughened uni-piece fibrous insulation

A porous body of fibrous, low density silica-based insulation material is at least in part impregnated with a reactive boron oxide containing borosilicate glass frit, a silicon tetraboride fluxing agent and a molybdenum silicide emittance agent. The glass frit, fluxing agent and emittance agent are separately milled to reduce their particle size, then mixed together to produce a slurry in ethanol. The slurry is then applied to the insulation material and sintered to produce the porous body

Fenoldapam for Acute Kidney Injury in Children

We report two cases of children with severe cardiomyopathy requiring treatment with ventricular assist devices who developed acute kidney injury and were treated with fenoldopam. Therapy with fenoldopam appeared successful in one case in that renal replacement therapy was avoided with improvement in urine output and renal function. These are the first reported cases of fenoldopam use in children with acute kidney injury receiving mechanical circulatory support

Landrace sorghum lines- potential sources for male sterility maintainers in hybrid parent development

The potential of hybrid sorghum to provide yield advantages under drought stressed conditions in semiarid areas was shown several authors ( Haussmann, et al., 1998, 2000, Rattunde et al., 2013). Higher yield advantages were shown with Nigerian germplasm in preliminary on-station testing (Andrews, 1975), though the parental materials have since been lost. The objective of this work is to identify suitable seed parents towards developing hybrid sorghum for the Nigerian environment, constrained most particularly by non-appropriate indigenous sources of stable malesterility maintenance on the female parents, within the diversesorghum landraces

Morphological Diversity Assessment of Nigeria Sorghum Landraces for Utilization in Hybrid Parent Development

Challenge in hybrid sorghum development for the Nigerian environment remains the identification of suitable seed parents, constrained most particularly by non-appropriate indigenous sources of stable male-sterility maintenance on the female parents. To achieve this goal, defined “functional” heterotic parental-pools is required to create new and diverse hybrid parents for sustainable hybrid development. To explore availability of male–sterility inducing cytoplasm, an exploratory landrace Sorghum collection across some states of Nigeria 2014 and 2015 were carried out and evaluated for target hybrid parent traits. 388 testcrosses generated from 40 randomly selected landraces collections using 2 male sterile lines (ICS38A and ICS24005A), were evaluated for sterility maintainer to identify lines that are suitable for conversion to male sterile lines and restorers. Preliminary characterization during 2014 cropping season evaluation showed that most of the sorghum landraces grown in the Sudan Savannah are white or yellow grain with compact elliptic panicle forms (caudatum type) accounting for 46% as compared to those in Guinea Savannah cultivating white or red grain with loose dropping panicle forms (guinea type). Result from the genomic analysis revealed wide genetic diversity with 5 major distinct clusters at 0.2 Euclidian distances. The genetic materials used as parents in the testcrosses showed high potential of genetic male sterility maintainers and were diverse, where 3 of the landrace parents were mapped to cluster 1, 13 to cluster 2, 1 to cluster 3 and 3 to cluster 5. Given that the collection areas are diverse with heterogeneous agro-ecologies, the landraces observed could be used as important sources of novel alleles for developing hybrid parents

Misexpression of a transcriptional repressor candidate provides a molecular mechanism for the suppression of awns by Tipped 1 in wheat.

Awns are bristle-like structures formed at the tip of the lemma on the florets of some cereal grasses. Wild-type wheat is awned, but awnletted and awnless variants have been selected and nowadays all forms are cultivated. In this study, we dissected the genetic control underlying variation of this characteristic feature by association mapping in a large panel of 1110 winter wheat cultivars of worldwide origin. We identified the B1 (Tipped 1) locus on chromosome 5A as the major determinant of awnlessness globally. Using a combination of fine-mapping and expression analysis, we identified a putative C2H2 zinc finger protein with an EAR domain, characteristic of transcriptional repressors, as a likely candidate for Tipped 1. This gene was found to be up-regulated in awnless B1 compared with awned b1 plants, indicating that misexpression of this transcriptional regulator may contribute to the reduction of awn length in B1 plants. Taken together, our study provides an entry point towards a better molecular understanding of the evolution of morphological features in cereals through selection and breeding

Phosphorus uptake and use efficiency of diverse West and Central African sorghum genotypes under field conditions in Mali

Aims Sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench], a staple crop in West and Central Africa (WCA), is mostly cultivated on soils with low phosphorus (P) availability and thus adaptation to those conditions is vital for food security. Assessment of genotypic variation of WCA sorghum for P uptake and P use efficiency is undertaken to understand the diversity available and opportunities for its use. Method We assessed mature plant yield, P uptake and P use efficiency traits of 70 diverse WCA sorghum genotypes under –P (no P fertilization) and + P field conditions in Mali in 2010, to discover differences among all genotypes tested and between and within specific genotype groups. Results Large significant genotypic variation for P uptake and P use efficiency traits were observed for all genotypes among and within landrace and researcher bred pools under –P conditions. P uptake traits had a larger genotypic variation than P use efficiency traits. Landrace genotypes showed generally higher P uptake and grain P concentration while formally bred genotypes exhibited a higher P use efficiency. Photoperiod sensitivity was related to higher P uptake. Conclusion Genotypic selection for P uptake and P use efficiency traits to improve adaptation to low P soils is possible in sorghum. Use and further study of WCA sorghums for adaptation to low P availability is appropriate as this germplasm shows large variation for P uptake and use efficiency and higher levels of P use efficiency than other important cereals

Evaluation of T2Candida Panel for detection of Candida in peritoneal dialysates

Fungal peritonitis in the peritoneal dialysis population is difficult to diagnose promptly due to the inherently slow cultivation-based methods currently required for identification of peritonitis pathogens. Because of the moderate risk for severe complications, the need for rapid diagnostics is considerable. One possible solution to this unmet need is the T2Candida Panel, a new technology designed to detect the most common pathogenic Candida spp. directly from whole blood specimens in as little as a few hours. We hypothesized that this technology could be applied to the detection of Candida in peritoneal dialysate, a matrix not currently approved by the Food and Drug Administration for testing by this system. Remnant dialysate samples from three healthy (noninfected) pediatric peritoneal dialysis patients were spiked with Candida glabrata, serially diluted, and tested in triplicate with unaltered dialysate specimens. The assay detected C. glabrata in 100% of spiked dialysate samples across the full spectrum of dilutions tested, and no assay inhibition or cross-reactivity was noted. These findings suggest one of possibly more applications of this technology. The positive clinical implications of this test will continue to be realized as its use is validated in peritoneal dialysate and other patient specimen types