CATTLE MANURE AND POTASSIUM IN THE MINERAL COMPOSITION OF NONI PLANTS

O noni tem sido utilizado desde a antiguidade para o tratamento de uma s\ue9rie de doen\ue7as tais como, alergia, artrite, asma, c\ue2ncer, depress\ue3o, diabetes, m\ue1-digest\ue3o, hipertens\ue3o e ins\uf4nia e utilizado como suplemento alimentar. Apesar dessas propriedades e da sua adaptabilidade intercontinental, as informa\ue7\uf5es a respeito das exig\ueancias nutricionais e do manejo agron\uf4mico da cultura ainda s\ue3o pouco frequentes na literatura internacional e nacional. Nesse sentido, o trabalho teve como objetivo avaliar os efeitos do esterco bovino e da aduba\ue7\ue3o pot\ue1ssica no estado nutricional de plantas de noni. O experimento foi desenvolvido no per\uedodo de julho de 2009 a julho de 2010, na Ch\ue1cara Pau Brasil, S\ue3o Lu\ueds \u2013 MA. O delineamento experimental foi em blocos casualizados com tr\ueas repeti\ue7\uf5es e duas plantas por parcela. Os tratamentos foram distribu\ueddos em arranjo fatorial 2 x 4, referente \ue0 aus\ueancia e presen\ue7a de aduba\ue7\ue3o pot\ue1ssica (130 kg ha-1 de K2O) no solo com quatro doses de esterco bovino (0, 1,7, 6,6 e 11,6 kg planta-1) fornecidas em cobertura na \ue1rea de proje\ue7\ue3o da copa das plantas. Pelos resultados, exceto sobre c\ue1lcio e magn\ue9sio, a intera\ue7\ue3o mat\ue9ria org\ue2nica e pot\ue1ssio contribuiu para aumentos dos teores foliares dos demais macro e micronutrientes nas plantas de noni. O estabelecimento de faixas de interpreta\ue7\ue3o com teores de nutrientes adequados para noni se faz necess\ue1rio para auxiliar as discuss\uf5es de futuros estudos de aduba\ue7\ue3o e nutri\ue7\ue3o da cultura.Noni fruit has been used since antiquity for treatment of many diseases such as allergy, arthritis, asthma, cancer, depression, diabetes, digestion, hypertension, and insomnia and is used as food supplement. Although these properties and its intercontinental adaptability, information about nutrient exigency and crop management is still little frequent in international and national literature. In this direction an experiment was carried out, during the period of July/2009 to July/2010, in S\ue3o Luis, Maranh\ue3o state, Brazil, in order to evaluate effects of manure and potassium fertilization of the soil on mineral composition in leaves dry matter of noni plants. The treatments were arranged in randomized blocks 2 x 4 referring to absence and presence potassium fertilization (130 kg ha-1 K2O) in soil with bovine manure levels (0, 1.7, 6.6 e 11.6 kg plant-1) applied in the area of plant projection . From the results, except in calcium and magnesium, the interaction bovine manure x K2O proportioned increment on the content of other macro and micronutrients in dry matter leaf of noni plants. The establishment of levels interpreting nutrient content suitable for noni is needed to assist the discussions of future studies of fertilization and crop nutrition

GROWTH RATE OF TREE SPECIES IN A TERRA FIRME NATURAL FOREST AFTER LOGGING AND SILVICULTURAL TREATMENTS, IN THE MUNICIPALITY OF PARAGOMINAS, PAR\uc1, BRAZIL

Este trabalho teve como objetivo avaliar os efeitos de tratamentos silviculturais sobre o crescimento de uma floresta natural de terra firme explorada usando t\ue9cnicas de impacto reduzido. A pesquisa foi conduzida na \uc1rea de Manejo Florestal (AMF) da Fazenda Rio Capim, pertencente \ue0 empresa Cikel Brasil Verde Madeiras Ltda., localizada no munic\uedpio de Paragominas, Estado do Par\ue1. A \ue1rea experimental correspondeu a 500 ha, nos quais foram estabelecidos cinco tratamentos (100 ha cada) com quatro repeti\ue7\uf5es (25 ha cada) seguindo um delineamento completamente ao acaso. As repeti\ue7\uf5es foram distribu\ueddas aleatoriamente na amostra de 500 ha na AMF. Foram avaliados os seguintes tratamentos: T1 \u2013 explora\ue7\ue3o de impacto reduzido (EIR) + desbaste de libera\ue7\ue3o cl\ue1ssico e corte de cip\uf3s; T2 \u2013 EIR + desbaste de libera\ue7\ue3o modificado e corte de cip\uf3s; T3 \u2013 EIR + corte de cip\uf3s; T6 \u2013 apenas EIR; T7 - floresta n\ue3o explorada (testemunha). Nos quatro anos de monitoramento da floresta, ap\uf3s a colheita de madeira e aplica\ue7\ue3o dos tratamentos silviculturais, T2 e T3 tiveram as maiores taxas de crescimento em di\ue2metro. Contudo, o per\uedodo de quatro anos n\ue3o \ue9 suficiente para indicar o tratamento \u201cmais adequado\u201d, com base no crescimento em di\ue2metro, em resposta \ue0 anelagem de \ue1rvores e corte de cip\uf3s. Em n\uedvel de esp\ue9cie, o crescimento variou entre e dentro dos tratamentos experimentais. Em geral, as menores taxas de crescimento em di\ue2metro ocorreram na floresta n\ue3o explorada (T7).This paper deals with the effects of silvicultural treatments on growth rates of a terra firme natural forest after reduced impact logging (RIL). The study was carried out in the Rio Capim Forest Management Unit, which belongs to Cikel Brasil Verde Madeiras Ltda., located in the municipality of Paragominas, PA. The experimental area comprised 500 ha, where five treatments (100 ha each) each with four replications (25 ha each) were established. The replications were randomly distributed in the 500 ha sample area. The following treatments were applied: T1 \u2013 RIL + classical liberation thinning (girdling of competing trees) and climber cutting; T2 \u2013 RIL + modified liberation thinning (girdling of competing trees) and climber cutting; T3 \u2013 RIL + climber cutting; T6 - only RIL; T7 - unlogged forest (control). In the four years of monitoring forest, after logging and silvicultural treatments, T2 and T3 had the highest diameter growth rates. But the four-year period is not enough to suggest the best treatment, based on diameter growth rate, in response to girdling trees and climber cutting. At species level, growth rate varied between treatments and within treatments. In general, the lower diameter growth rates were observed in the unlogged forest

Impact of safety-related dose reductions or discontinuations on sustained virologic response in HCV-infected patients: Results from the GUARD-C Cohort

BACKGROUND: Despite the introduction of direct-acting antiviral agents for chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, peginterferon alfa/ribavirin remains relevant in many resource-constrained settings. The non-randomized GUARD-C cohort investigated baseline predictors of safety-related dose reductions or discontinuations (sr-RD) and their impact on sustained virologic response (SVR) in patients receiving peginterferon alfa/ribavirin in routine practice. METHODS: A total of 3181 HCV-mono-infected treatment-naive patients were assigned to 24 or 48 weeks of peginterferon alfa/ribavirin by their physician. Patients were categorized by time-to-first sr-RD (Week 4/12). Detailed analyses of the impact of sr-RD on SVR24 (HCV RNA <50 IU/mL) were conducted in 951 Caucasian, noncirrhotic genotype (G)1 patients assigned to peginterferon alfa-2a/ribavirin for 48 weeks. The probability of SVR24 was identified by a baseline scoring system (range: 0-9 points) on which scores of 5 to 9 and <5 represent high and low probability of SVR24, respectively. RESULTS: SVR24 rates were 46.1% (754/1634), 77.1% (279/362), 68.0% (514/756), and 51.3% (203/396), respectively, in G1, 2, 3, and 4 patients. Overall, 16.9% and 21.8% patients experienced 651 sr-RD for peginterferon alfa and ribavirin, respectively. Among Caucasian noncirrhotic G1 patients: female sex, lower body mass index, pre-existing cardiovascular/pulmonary disease, and low hematological indices were prognostic factors of sr-RD; SVR24 was lower in patients with 651 vs. no sr-RD by Week 4 (37.9% vs. 54.4%; P = 0.0046) and Week 12 (41.7% vs. 55.3%; P = 0.0016); sr-RD by Week 4/12 significantly reduced SVR24 in patients with scores <5 but not 655. CONCLUSIONS: In conclusion, sr-RD to peginterferon alfa-2a/ribavirin significantly impacts on SVR24 rates in treatment-naive G1 noncirrhotic Caucasian patients. Baseline characteristics can help select patients with a high probability of SVR24 and a low probability of sr-RD with peginterferon alfa-2a/ribavirin

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Integrating ecosystem services in power analysis in forest governance: A comparison across nine European countries

Within forest governance research, the transfer of power from governmental actors to civil society and market actors has been subject to intense scientific debate. We move forward on this debate by analyzing how ongoing transformations and power shifts in forest governance affect the power relations of actors with interest in various ecosystem services (ESs) in nine countries (Germany, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Portugal, Slovakia, Sweden, the Netherlands, Turkey). In order to examine power resources of actors, we triangulated 220 qualitative interviews, document analysis, and participatory observations. Governmental actors (with various interests in ESs) were the most powerful actors in most countries, and thus drove forest management. Our analysis shows that the power relations of actors with interest in different forest ESs, varied within the nine countries, though many similarities existed. Governmental, market, and civil society actors differed in their capacity to apply the power strategies \u201ccoercion\u201d, \u201c(dis)incentives\u201d, and \u201cdominant information\u201d, to realize their interests in ESs. In Lithuania, Slovakia and Turkey, governmental actors relied mostly on coercion; in the Netherlands on incentives; and in Sweden on dominant information. In Germany, Ireland, Italy and Portugal governmental actors relied on a mix of coercion, incentives, and dominant information. Market actors in all countries relied mostly on incentives, and civil society actors on dominant information as their power strategy

Power analysis as a tool to analyse trade-offs between ecosystem services in forest management: A case study from nine European countries

Forests are of major importance to people, providing fundamental ecosystem services (ESs). Increasing the supply of an ES might negatively affect the supply of another ES. For example, increasing game densities might reduce timber production. Such trade-offs among ESs may lead to conflicts between actors interested in prioritizing different ESs. This study describes which actors dominated conflicts about ES trade-offs, and which power strategies they used to do so. Forest management practices and resulting trade-offs between ESs differ widely among the studied countries: Germany, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Portugal, Slovakia, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Turkey. We triangulated 220 qualitative interviews, literature review, document analysis, and participatory observations. We mapped the interests of actors in ESs and identified conflicts between interests. We tested three hypotheses about which actors were more or less powerful, enabling them to be winners and losers in ES conflicts. Cultural and regulating and maintenance ESs played an important role in conflicts about forest ES trade-offs. We identified the power relations of actors with different interests in ES. Local interests often dominated national interests. Actors interested in provisioning ESs had strong power resources but because of specific bio-geophysical, political or economic conditions, actors with interest in regulating and maintenance ES or cultural ESs can have equal or stronger power resources. The study highlights the relevance of including power analysis in ES research

Reduced Cancer Incidence in Huntington's Disease: Analysis in the Registry Study

Background: People with Huntington's disease (HD) have been observed to have lower rates of cancers. Objective: To investigate the relationship between age of onset of HD, CAG repeat length, and cancer diagnosis. Methods: Data were obtained from the European Huntington's disease network REGISTRY study for 6540 subjects. Population cancer incidence was ascertained from the GLOBOCAN database to obtain standardised incidence ratios of cancers in the REGISTRY subjects. Results: 173/6528 HD REGISTRY subjects had had a cancer diagnosis. The age-standardised incidence rate of all cancers in the REGISTRY HD population was 0.26 (CI 0.22-0.30). Individual cancers showed a lower age-standardised incidence rate compared with the control population with prostate and colorectal cancers showing the lowest rates. There was no effect of CAG length on the likelihood of cancer, but a cancer diagnosis within the last year was associated with a greatly increased rate of HD onset (Hazard Ratio 18.94, p < 0.001). Conclusions: Cancer is less common than expected in the HD population, confirming previous reports. However, this does not appear to be related to CAG length in HTT. A recent diagnosis of cancer increases the risk of HD onset at any age, likely due to increased investigation following a cancer diagnosis

Health-status outcomes with invasive or conservative care in coronary disease

BACKGROUND In the ISCHEMIA trial, an invasive strategy with angiographic assessment and revascularization did not reduce clinical events among patients with stable ischemic heart disease and moderate or severe ischemia. A secondary objective of the trial was to assess angina-related health status among these patients. METHODS We assessed angina-related symptoms, function, and quality of life with the Seattle Angina Questionnaire (SAQ) at randomization, at months 1.5, 3, and 6, and every 6 months thereafter in participants who had been randomly assigned to an invasive treatment strategy (2295 participants) or a conservative strategy (2322). Mixed-effects cumulative probability models within a Bayesian framework were used to estimate differences between the treatment groups. The primary outcome of this health-status analysis was the SAQ summary score (scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating better health status). All analyses were performed in the overall population and according to baseline angina frequency. RESULTS At baseline, 35% of patients reported having no angina in the previous month. SAQ summary scores increased in both treatment groups, with increases at 3, 12, and 36 months that were 4.1 points (95% credible interval, 3.2 to 5.0), 4.2 points (95% credible interval, 3.3 to 5.1), and 2.9 points (95% credible interval, 2.2 to 3.7) higher with the invasive strategy than with the conservative strategy. Differences were larger among participants who had more frequent angina at baseline (8.5 vs. 0.1 points at 3 months and 5.3 vs. 1.2 points at 36 months among participants with daily or weekly angina as compared with no angina). CONCLUSIONS In the overall trial population with moderate or severe ischemia, which included 35% of participants without angina at baseline, patients randomly assigned to the invasive strategy had greater improvement in angina-related health status than those assigned to the conservative strategy. The modest mean differences favoring the invasive strategy in the overall group reflected minimal differences among asymptomatic patients and larger differences among patients who had had angina at baseline

Initial invasive or conservative strategy for stable coronary disease

BACKGROUND Among patients with stable coronary disease and moderate or severe ischemia, whether clinical outcomes are better in those who receive an invasive intervention plus medical therapy than in those who receive medical therapy alone is uncertain. METHODS We randomly assigned 5179 patients with moderate or severe ischemia to an initial invasive strategy (angiography and revascularization when feasible) and medical therapy or to an initial conservative strategy of medical therapy alone and angiography if medical therapy failed. The primary outcome was a composite of death from cardiovascular causes, myocardial infarction, or hospitalization for unstable angina, heart failure, or resuscitated cardiac arrest. A key secondary outcome was death from cardiovascular causes or myocardial infarction. RESULTS Over a median of 3.2 years, 318 primary outcome events occurred in the invasive-strategy group and 352 occurred in the conservative-strategy group. At 6 months, the cumulative event rate was 5.3% in the invasive-strategy group and 3.4% in the conservative-strategy group (difference, 1.9 percentage points; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.8 to 3.0); at 5 years, the cumulative event rate was 16.4% and 18.2%, respectively (difference, 121.8 percentage points; 95% CI, 124.7 to 1.0). Results were similar with respect to the key secondary outcome. The incidence of the primary outcome was sensitive to the definition of myocardial infarction; a secondary analysis yielded more procedural myocardial infarctions of uncertain clinical importance. There were 145 deaths in the invasive-strategy group and 144 deaths in the conservative-strategy group (hazard ratio, 1.05; 95% CI, 0.83 to 1.32). CONCLUSIONS Among patients with stable coronary disease and moderate or severe ischemia, we did not find evidence that an initial invasive strategy, as compared with an initial conservative strategy, reduced the risk of ischemic cardiovascular events or death from any cause over a median of 3.2 years. The trial findings were sensitive to the definition of myocardial infarction that was used