Partial resistance to leaf rust in a collection of ancient Spanish barleys

A collection of 569 Spanish barley accessions was screened for resistance to leaf rust (Puccinia hordei Otth) in the field at Cordoba during the 2000-2001 season. The level of resistance ranged from very low to very high. In 14% of the accessions the relative AUDPC (L94 = 100 %) was lower than 10 %. Selected accessions that were most resistant in the field, were tested in the seedling stage under controlled conditions. Macroscopic components of resistance indicated that six lines had a high level of partial resistance close to check cv. Vada and one line a similar level of partial resistance. Histological studies indicated that the resistance was based on a high percentage of early aborted colonies and reduction in colony size without plant cell necrosis. Three of the selected lines showed high percentage of plant cell necrosis associated with established colonies, which indicates a combination of prehaustorial resistance with late acting incomplete posthaustorial resistance. Although the new barley varieties already incorporate some partial resistance, new sources of partial resistance like these are needed to improve durability of the resistance

Evolution of Mental Health Online Strategies from the Early Stage of the COVID-19 Pandemic to the Pre-Vaccination Period

Background: The COVID-19 outbreak and its consequent quarantines, containment measures and social distancing imposed by authorities worldwide has caused an increase of psychological responses such as depression, abuse use, insomnia, post-traumatic stress symptoms, anger, anxiety, grief or confusion. This situation has fostered the implementation of new strategies like remote therapy to maintain the continuity of mental health (MH) care. Several international organizations (World Health Organization, the United Nations and the American Psychiatric Association) are focused on addressing the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, ensuring availability of emergency MH services, strengthening social cohesion, reducing the isolation, and promoting psychological support, as well as protecting human rights. This research aims to assess the evolution of online MH strategies and recommendations to cope with psychological impact of COVID-19 since early stages of the pandemic to pre-vaccination period. Methods: A sample of 24 online documents was analysed to assess their structural evolution from April 2020 to June 2021. Each document was analysed separately by two researchers. The questionnaire, developed by Almeda et al. (2021), was used to assess the content of these documents. This instrument consists of 39 items organized in seven domains (D) D1) Symptoms, D2) Mental disorders, D3) COVID-19 general information, D4) MH strategies and MH topics, D5) MH strategies and MH-related topics, D6) MH recommendations and MH topics and D7) MH recommendations and MH-related topics. To assess the structural evolution of the document in the selected periods, a T-Student for related samples was used. Results: Statistically significant differences with a negligible effect size were found in D1+D2 domains (t(23) = 3, p = 0.006, d = 0.18). An increasing concern on bereavement, sleeping problems and loneliness symptoms has been highlighted together with a greater interest on schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, chronic pain and obsessivecompulsive disorder. Statistically significant differences with negligible size effect were also found when the questions related to COVID-19 have been analysed (D3-D7;t(23) = 2.24, p = 0.035, d = 0.19). All COVID-19 information items have increased (D3) as also happened in most of the MH strategies and MH-related topics (80%;D5). In D7, D4 and D6 domains, a small increase in the information provided is highlighted. From an international point of view, England, Australia, New Zealand and Mexico are the countries with the highest rate of improvement in their strategies, followed by Ireland and Spain with small improvements. Finally, the information in the online documents of the rest of the countries remains stable. Conclusions: Online MH strategies and recommendations have improved during the pandemic period only in specific countries, especially in Mexico. Due to the high rate of mortality, bereavement has played a key role in the set of symptoms included. Globally speaking, the analysed countries are making efforts to address MH remotely, as it is evidenced in their online strategies

Comparison of delensing methodologies and assessment of the delensing capabilities of future experiments

Most of the CMB experiments proposed for the next generation aim to detect the Primordial Gravitational Wave Background (PGWB). The fulfillment of this objective depends on our capacity to separate Galactic foreground emissions and to \emph{delens} the secondary B-mode component induced by weak gravitational lensing. Focusing on the latter of these efforts, in this work we briefly review the basic aspects of lensing, and exhaustively compare the performance of current delensing methodologies and implementations within the Born approximation as a preparation for the analysis of the data to come in the following years. Two of the main conclusions that can be drawn from our study are that, for next-generation experiments, delensing efficiency will still be limited by the quality of the data itself rather than by the limitations of current delensing methodologies, and that template delensing within the antilensing approximation will be the optimal (balancing accuracy and computational cost) technique to employ. We then evaluate the delensing capabilities of future experiments (like the Simons Observatory, the CMB Stage-IV, or the LiteBIRD and PICO satellites) by applying that methodology onto numerical simulations of the typical CMB and lensing potential reconstructions that they are expected to produce, and quantify how internal and external delensing will help them to improve their sensitivity to detect the PGWB. We also consider the benefits that a joint analysis of their data would provide.Comment: 37 pages, 12 figures, submitted to JCA

Resistance against barley leaf rust (Puccinia hordei) in West-European spring barley germplasm

The level and type of resistance against leaf rust (Puccinia hordei) was determined in modern spring barley germplasm. In field trials all over Europe most accessions were in some locations and years significantly less infected than the moderately resistant reference ‘Grit’. Differentiating P. hordei isolates indicated that most accessions carried hypersensitivity (Rph) genes. A virulence survey indicated that among the known resistance genes, only Rph7 is still fully effective in Europe. Some accessions carried undetermined hypersensitivity resistance gene(s) that were effective to all isolates tested. The level of non-hypersensitivity or partial resistance was assessed from the latency period of the fungus and the percentage of early aborted infection units not associated with plant cell necrosis. These parameters indicated that several accessions had a level of partial resistance higher than that of the highly partially resistant ‘Vada’. We concluded that barley breeders have achieved very high levels of partial resistance against P. hordei in spring barley germplasm

Smart toys designed for detecting developmental delays

In this paper,we describe the design considerations and implementation of a smart toy system,a technology for supporting the automatic recording and analysis for detecting developmental delays recognition when children play using the smart toy. To achieve this goal,we take advantage of the current commercial sensor features (reliability,low consumption,easy integration,etc.) to develop a series of sensor-based low-cost devices. Specifically,our prototype system consists of a tower of cubes augmented with wireless sensing capabilities and a mobile computing platform that collect the information sent from the cubes allowing the later analysis by childhood development professionals in order to verify a normal behaviour or to detect a potential disorder. This paper presents the requirements of the toy and discusses our choices in toy design,technology used,selected sensors,process to gather data from the sensors and generate information that will help in the decision-making and communication of the information to the collector system. In addition,we also describe the play activities the system supportsAuthors would like to thank the National Programme for Research, Development and Innovation, oriented to Societal Challenges, of the Spanish Ministry for Economy and Competitiveness that supported the results of this paper through EDUCERE project (TIN2013-47803-C2-2-R), and to Universidad de Alcala that supported them through EDUSENS project (CCG2014/EXP-008

Planck early results. XXVI. Detection with Planck and confirmation by XMM-Newton of PLCK G266.6–27.3, an exceptionally X-ray luminous and massive galaxy cluster at z ~ 1

7 páginas, 3 figuras, 2 tablas.-- Planck Collaboration: et al.We present first results on PLCKG266.6−27.3, a galaxy cluster candidate detected at a signal-to-noise ratio of 5 in the Planck All Sky survey. An XMM-Newton validation observation has allowed us to confirm that the candidate isa bona fide galaxy cluster. With these X-ray data we measure an accurate redshift, z = 0.94 ± 0.02, and estimate the cluster mass to be M500 = (7.8 ± 0.8) × 1014 M⊙. PLCKG266.6−27.3 is an exceptional system: its luminosity of LX [0.5−2.0 keV] = (1.4 ± 0.05) × 1045 erg s-1 equals that of the two most luminous known clusters in the z > 0.5 universe, and it is one of the most massive clusters at z ~ 1. Moreover, unlike the majority of high-redshift clusters, PLCKG266.6−27.3 appears to be highly relaxed. This observation confirms Planck’s capability of detecting high-redshift, high-mass clusters, and opens the way to the systematic study of population evolution in the exponential tail of the mass function.The Planck Collaboration acknowledges the support of: ESA; CNES and CNRS/INSU-IN2P3-INP (France); ASI, CNR, and INAF (Italy); NASA and DoE (USA); STFC and UKSA (UK); CSIC, MICINN and JA (Spain); Tekes, AoF and CSC (Finland); DLR and MPG (Germany); CSA (Canada); DTU Space (Denmark); SER/SSO (Switzerland); RCN (Norway); SFI (Ireland); FCT/MCTES (Portugal); and DEISA (EU).Peer reviewe

Planck intermediate results III.The relation between galaxy cluster mass and Sunyaev-Zeldovich signal

We examine the relation between the galaxy cluster mass M and Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) effect signal for a sample of 19 objects for which weak lensing (WL) mass measurements obtained from Subaru Telescope data are available in the literature. Hydrostatic X-ray masses are derived from XMM-Newton archive data, and the SZ effect signal is measured from Planck all-sky survey data. We find an relation that is consistent in slope and normalisation with previous determinations using weak lensing masses; however, there is a normalisation offset with respect to previous measures based on hydrostatic X-ray mass-proxy relations. We verify that our SZ effect measurements are in excellent agreement with previous determinations from Planck data. For the present sample, the hydrostatic X-ray masses at R500 are on average ~20 percent larger than the corresponding weak lensing masses, which is contrary to expectations. We show that the mass discrepancy is driven by a difference in mass concentration as measured by the two methods and, for the present sample, that the mass discrepancy and difference in mass concentration are especially large for disturbed systems. The mass discrepancy is also linked to the offset in centres used by the X-ray and weak lensing analyses, which again is most important in disturbed systems. We outline several approaches that are needed to help achieve convergence in cluster mass measurement with X-ray and weak lensing observations