Production risks in Bulgarian peanut production

As farmers in a transition economy search for new crop enterprises with a potential for income enhancement they are faced with increased risks in the process of resource allocation. It has been noted that biased estimation of production function estimates results from the lack of accountability of risks. Since peanut production in Bulgaria has increased at a varying rate since 1989 it is important that we examine the risks associated with input use. The data for this study were collected from farmers from 18 villages in the southern part of Bulgaria. A total of 205 farmers were surveyed for this study. Peanut yield in Bulgaria is positively related to the quantity of seed used, fungicide, manual labor, investment level and mechanized labor used. Peanut yield is negatively influenced by investment levels but positively by the increase of manual labor. The response of yield to quantity of seed used is elastic, and an addition of a kg of peanut seeds may increase yield by 32kg. However, as the quantity of seeds used per ha increases the risk is expected to increase, hence farmers may be cautious in increasing the quantity of seeds used. Investment capital, manual labor and mechanized labor are positively related to yield and there will be a reduction in yield if the optimal levels of those inputs are surpassed. Thus farmers may increase yield and production by augmenting the seeding rate, other factors remaining constant.Agricultural and Food Policy,

A review of sustainable approaches in transport infrastructure geotechnics

Transportation geotechnics associated with constructing and maintaining properly functioning transportation infrastructure is a very resource intensive activity. Large amounts of materials and natural resources are required, consuming proportionately large amounts of energy and fuel. Thus, the implementation of the principles of sustainability is important to reduce energy consumption, carbon footprint, greenhouse gas emissions, and to increase material reuse/recycling, for example. This paper focusses on some issues and activities relevant to sustainable earthwork construction aimed at minimising the use of energy and the production of CO2 while improving the in-situ ground to enable its use as a foundation without the consumption of large amounts of primary aggregate as additional foundation layers. The use of recycled materials is discussed, including steel slag and tyre bales, alongside a conceptual framework for evaluating the utility of applications for recycled materials in transportation infrastructure.This work is financed by FEDER funds through the Competitivity Factors Operational Programme - COMPETE and by national funds through FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology within the scope of the project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-00763

Experimental and Numerical Evaluation of Reinforcement Mechanism of Geocells

Geocells is a commonly adopted reinforcement element for foundation and pavement applications. It is inferred from the existing literature that the geocell offers an all-round confinement to the infill material in addition to the lateral restraint and bearing support as a reinforcement mechanism. However, quantification of the confinement effect provided by the mattress is a challenge. To quantify and demonstrate the geocell reinforcement mechanism, an extensive experimental and numerical studies were undertaken. In the experimental study, a large test tank was adopted to build test sections with and without geocell reinforced granular bases over weak subgrades. Several earth pressure cells were installed along the interface of the geocell reinforced base and weak subgrade layers, and within the geocell pockets. A monotonic loading was applied to understand the reinforcement behavior of the geocell mattress. In this paper, the actual three dimensional honeycomb shape of the geocells is modeled using Fast Lagrangian Analysis of Continua in 3D (FLAC3D), a finite difference software and the geocell-soil mechanism is studied from the stresses and strains developed within the geocell mattress. The numerical models have predicted the experimental pressure-rut depth responses with about 95% accuracy. The confining stresses developed within the geocell mattress and at the interface were recorded to understand the mechanism of geocell reinforcement. It is observed that the confining stress in the geocell mattress is not uniform throughout the mattress, however, it decreases linearly from the point of loading

Fortification Support Access Control Manipulate Procedure Intended for Relational Data

Present days majorly concentrated  on meticulous speculation on data.  Access control systems are every  time touch with  Safe and secrecy  maintenance of data but now a days  hackers acting like reliance. Then they are remove info from the user. Last few decades we are fight for the  accuracy privacy preserving on data  but however we not solved this type  of issue. The Access control mechanism avoids the unauthorized access of sensitive information. It protects the user information from the unauthorized access. The privacy protection mechanism is a much important concern in the case of sharing the sensitive information. The privacy protection mechanism provides better privacy for the sensitive information which is to be shared. The generally used privacy protection mechanism uses the generalization and suppression of the sensitive data. It prevents the privacy disclosure of the sensitive data. The privacy protection mechanism avoids the identity and attributes disclosure. The privacy is achieved by the high accuracy and consistency of the user information, ie., the precision of the user information. In this paper, it proposes a privacy persevered access control mechanism for relational data. The literature survey  might provide techniques for workload –aware anonymization for selection predicates, as the problem of satisfying the accuracy constraints for multiple roles has not been studied before. The purpose of the present project is to propose  heuristics for anonymization algorithms and to show the viability of the proposed approach for empirically  satisfying the imprecision bounds for more permission

The Peanut Genome

This book presents the current state of the art in peanut genomics, focusing particularly on the latest genomic findings, tools and strategies employed in genome sequencing, transcriptomes and analysis, availability of public and private genomic resources, and ways to maximize the use of this information in peanut breeding programs. Further, it demonstrates how advances in plant genomics can be used to improve crop breeding. The peanut or groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L. Millsp) is a globally important grain legume and oilseed crop, cultivated in over 100 countries and consumed in the form of roasted seeds, oil and confectionary in nearly every country on Earth. The peanut contributes towards achieving food and nutritional security, in addition to financial security through income generation; as such, it is also vital to the livelihood of the poor in the developing world. There have been significant advances in peanut research, especially in the last five years, including sequencing the genome of both diploid progenitors, and the availability of tremendous transcriptome resources, large-scale genomic variations that can be used as genetic markers, genetic populations (bi- and multiparent populations and germplasm sets), marker-trait associations and molecular breeding products. The immediate availability of the genome sequence for tetraploid cultivated peanuts is the most essential genomic resource for achieving a deeper understanding of peanut traits and their use in breeding programs

Future Prospects for Peanut Improvement

Evolution in sequencing technologies led to reduction in costs and increase in speed for generating sequence data. The affordability of low-cost sequencing is expected to make other genotyping platforms obsolete in next couple of years. The concept of “single genome sequence” in a crop has evolved to sequencing of multiple genomes to assemble pangenomes. Sequencing combined with precise phenotyping of segregating populations and germplasm collections is expected to measure the accurate genetic diversity present in the germplasm as well as to identify the gene/nucleotide associated with the trait(s). It is time now to move toward using multi-parents populations from bi-parental populations for trait discovery and identify superior haplotypes. Availability of information on functional variation for genes controlling traits of interest will eventually help in manipulating genes more routinely using appropriate technologies such as marker-assisted selection/backcrossing, genomic selection, and genome editing. This chapter provides expected use of genome sequence and allied information on peanut for accelerating biology research as well as peanut improvement

Evaluating the Ability of Swell Prediction Models to Predict the Swell Behavior of Excessively High Plastic Soils

Lightly loaded structures underneath expansive soils encounter severe damage due to the swell/shrink nature of expansive soils resulting from moisture variations. Billions of dollars are spent every year to repair the damages caused by these soils in the U.S. and worldwide. Designing structures to accommodate the swelling strains is a major challenge as predicting the swelling potential of these soils accurately is not easy. A wide variety of swell prediction models have been introduced by various researchers to predict the behavior of these often-problematic expansive soils. These models include various properties of soils such as, plasticity characteristics, compaction conditions, consolidation characteristics, moisture content variations, matric suction, and clay mineralogical characteristics. However, these models are generally developed with typical moderate to high plastic soils in mind whose plasticity indices range from 25 to 45. Their applicability to soils that have liquid limits in the order of 200% is not well understood. In this paper, the ability of these models to predict the behavior of excessively high plastic soils with plasticity indices ranging from 45 to 85 were evaluated. For this purpose, four existing analytical prediction models that use combinations of above-mentioned properties were selected and used to predict the one-dimensional and three-dimensional swelling strains on three high swelling soils. These predictions were verified by conducting one-dimensional and three-dimensional swell tests on the three soil types. The swell tests were conducted at three different initial moisture contents to observe how well the models could predict different levels of moisture absorption. The ability of each of the four selected methods in predicting both 1D and 3D swell strains was discussed and their relative merits and demerits are highlighted. In addition, finite element modeling was performed to simulate one-dimensional and three-dimensional swell tests by using material models that use volumetric and suction changes with moisture contents to simulate expansive soil behavior within the finite element model. The results indicated that while the analytical prediction models gave reasonable results the finite element analysis predicted results were closest to the laboratory measure soils in case both 1D and 3D analyses. Among other analytical models the ones that incorporated mineralogical and suction data exhibited better results

Hantzsch synthesis of 1,4-dihydropyridine derivatives over ZnO/ZrO2 catalyst under solvent free condition

1055-1063Hantzsch synthesis of 1,4-dihydropyridine derivatives is accomplished using novel and efficient ZnO/ZrO2 catalyst. The catalysts prepared by facile precipitation and wet impregnation method have been characterized by using techniques like XRD, SEM, EDS, UV-diffuse reflectance spectra, FTIR, XPS, BET surface area. Ex situ Pyridine absorption FTIR spectroscopy is used to determine the Bronsted and Lewis acidic sites. Enhanced activity of the zirconia supported zinc catalyst is attributed to tetragonal phase, more acidic sites and high surface area of the catalyst. The products attained in good to excellent yields in short duration under solvent free condition, minimizing the disposal problem and energy dissipation. The catalyst can be reused umpteen times without significant loss in activity

Genome-wide transcriptome and physiological analyses provide new insights into peanut drought response mechanisms

Drought is one of the main constraints in peanut production in West Texas and eastern New Mexico regions due to the depletion of groundwater. A multi-seasonal phenotypic analysis of 10 peanut genotypes revealed C76-16 (C-76) and Valencia-C (Val-C) as the best and poor performers under deficit irrigation (DI) in West Texas, respectively. In order to decipher transcriptome changes under DI, RNAseq was performed in C-76 and Val-C. Approximately 369 million raw reads were generated from 12 different libraries of two genotypes subjected to fully irrigated (FI) and DI conditions, of which ~329 million (90.2%) filtered reads were mapped to the diploid ancestors of peanut. The transcriptome analysis detected 4,508 differentially expressed genes (DEGs), 1554 genes encoding transcription factors (TFs) and a total of 514 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) among the identified DEGs. The comparative analysis between the two genotypes revealed higher and integral tolerance in C-76 through activation of key genes involved in ABA and sucrose metabolic pathways. Interestingly, one SNP from the gene coding F-box protein (Araip.3WN1Q) and another SNP from gene coding for the lipid transfer protein (Aradu.03ENG) showed polymorphism in selected contrasting genotypes. These SNPs after further validation may be useful for performing early generation selection for selecting drought responsive genotypes

The Arg59Trp variant in ANGPTL8 (betatrophin) is associated with total and HDL-cholesterol in American Indians and Mexican Americans and differentially affects cleavage of ANGPTL3

We previously identified a locus linked to total cholesterol (TC) concentration in Pima Indians on chromosome 19p. To characterize this locus, we genotyped \u3e2000 SNPs in 1838 Pimas and assessed association with log(TC). We observed evidence for association with log(TC) with rs2278426 (3.5% decrease/copy of the T allele; P=5.045×10(-6)) in the ANGPTL8 (angiopoietin-like 8) gene. We replicated this association in 2413 participants of the San Antonio Mexican American Family Study (SAMAFS: 2.0% decrease per copy of the T allele; P=0.005842). In a meta-analysis of the combined data, we found the strongest estimated effect with rs2278426 (P=2.563×10(-7)). The variant T allele at rs2278426 predicts an Arg59Trp substitution and has previously been associated with LDL-C and HDL-C. In Pimas and SAMAFS participants, the T allele of rs2278426 was associated with reduced HDL-C levels (P=0.000741 and 0.00002, respectively), and the combined estimated effect for the two cohorts was -3.8% (P=8.526×10(-8)). ANGPTL8 transcript and protein levels increased in response to both glucose and insulin. The variant allele was associated with increased levels of cleaved ANGPTL3. We conclude that individuals with the variant allele may have lower TC and HDL-C levels due to increased activation of ANGPTL3 by ANGPTL8