The root morphology of some legume spp. in the south-western Cape and the relationship of vesicular-arbuscular mycorrhizas with dry mass and phosphorus content of Acacia saligna seedlings

The root systems of Acacia saligna (Labill.) Wendl. have more extensive laterals than those examples of the Fabaceae indigenous to the Cape. Aspalathus flexuosa Thunb. and Rafnia angulata Thunb. had lateral roots infected with vesicular-arbuscular (VA) mycorrhizal fungi whereas those of Aspalathus albens L. were non-mycorrhizal. VA mycorrhizal fungi were found in the roots of seedlings of A. saligna. Chlamydospores of the genus Glomus and three types of Gigaspora auxiliary cells were identified. VA mycorrhizal colonization was correlated with the dry mass and phosphorus content of A. saligna seedlings. Seedling dry mass, phosphorus content, nodule production and VA mycorrhizal colonization decreased with increased sowing density. The more extensive root system and abundance of root nodules and VA mycorrhizas apparently contribute to the success of A. saligna as an invasive weed of the fynbos vegetation

Investigation into immunization of cattle against rinderpest in Tanganyika territory

Experiments were done at Mbosi, in Southern Tanganyika, to determine the efficiency and safety of formalinized spleen vaccine and attenuated goat virus as agents of conferring immunity to cattle in the area. The results, conclusions and practical application of these experiments have been recorded. Under five months was spent on the work and a number of aspects, particularly on duration of immunity, remained uninvestigated.The articles have been scanned in colour with a HP Scanjet 5590; 300dpi. Adobe Acrobat XI Pro was used to OCR the text and also for the merging and conversion to the final presentation PDF-format

The manufacture of anti-rinderpest spleen vaccine under field conditions in Tanganyika Territory

Although the method described served its purpose it is considered that the technique is too complicated. The reduction of the spleen tissue to a very fine pulp is important if blockage of needles with consequent delay and considerable annoyance in the field is to be obviated. This might be accomplished by leading the pulp through a second mincer prior to delivery into pulp tank. A more thorough mincing might make a second filtration unnecessary in spite of the large amount of fibrous tissue in the spleen particularly if a more efficient method of filtration in the pulp tanks was devised. Too many metal taps were used in setting up the apparatus. These taps clog easily and are difficult to clean and sterilize. It is suggested that all connections should be rubber and glass which are far more easily cleaned. Although the use of hypertonic saline subsequently brought back to normality by the addition of 9 times the volume of water may be regarded almost as a standard laboratory procedure a detailed investigation is desirable to determine whether it is actually effective in bringing about rupture of the tissue cells, more particularly when 50 per cent. glycerine water is used as the final diluting fluid. The technique was introduced because if it did not actually assist in the process it did not in interfere with it. In the "open" method glass beads were shaken up with the vaccine to disintegrate the tissue. The sterilization plant was totally inadequate to cope efficiently with the constant demands made upon it. It is essential to have large capacity autoclaves heated by paraffin burners to deal with bottles, corks and other portions of the equipment.The articles have been scanned in colour with a HP Scanjet 5590; 300dpi. Adobe Acrobat XI Pro was used to OCR the text and also for the merging and conversion to the final presentation PDF-format

Further investigations into immunization of cattle against rinderpest

1. Kabete goat virus was not transmitted from reacting to susceptible cattle under conditions of close contact. 2. A single doubtful transmission was recorded under conditions of open grazing. 3. A febrile condition of unknown aetiology transmissible from cattle to goats was encountered. 4. Urine from reacting animals was non-infective, but faeces in one out of two cases was infective by drenching. 5. Immunity produced by a single injection of formal-glycerine spleen-vaccine had completely disappeared after 8 months. 6. Immunity produced by triple vaccination with formal-saline vaccine had diminished considerably after 8 months. 7. Triple vaccination followed by a single injection of formal-glycerine spleen vaccine 9 months later produced an immunity which persisted for at least 20 months. 8. The rapid production of immunity induced by a single injection of formal-glycerine spleen-vaccine could be used to control the reaction to K.G.V. An interval of 7 days between vaccine and virus appeared to be the optimum. 9. Spleen-vaccine prepared from cattle reacting to K.G.V. has an inferior antigenic potency. 10. The reaction produced by K.G.V. in grade cattle (British breeds of cattle x Zebu) are severe but usually non-fatal. A durable immunity follows the reaction.The articles have been scanned in colour with a HP Scanjet 5590; 300dpi. Adobe Acrobat XI Pro was used to OCR the text and also for the merging and conversion to the final presentation PDF-format

Urginea capitata Baker - the berg slangkop, its toxic effects on ruminants, with a brief botanical survey of area

The green leaves proved poisonous when fed, mixed with lucerne, to cattle. The symptoms preceding death were " tucked up" appearance, sunken eyeballs, loss of appetite and profuse diarrhoea with blood stained faeces. The minimum fatal dose for an average sized animal is given as 6-8 lb. of the green material.The articles have been scanned in colour with a HP Scanjet 5590; 600dpi. Adobe Acrobat XI Pro was used to OCR the text and also for the merging and conversion to the final presentation PDF-format.mn201

Patient-Reported Outcomes in Cancer Clinical Trials: Measuring Symptomatic Adverse Events With the National Cancer Institute's Patient-Reported Outcomes Version of the Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events (PRO-CTCAE)

Systematic capture of the patient perspective can inform the development of new cancer therapies. Patient-reported outcomes (PROs) are commonly included in cancer clinical trials; however, there is heterogeneity in the constructs, measures, and analytic approaches that have been used making these endpoints challenging to interpret. There is renewed effort to identify rigorous methods to obtain high-quality and informative PRO data from cancer clinical trials. In this setting, PROs are used to address specific research objectives, and an important objective that spans the product development life cycle is the assessment of safety and tolerability. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Office of Hematology and Oncology Products (OHOP) has identified symptomatic adverse events (AEs) as a central PRO concept, and a systematic assessment of patient-reported symptomatic AEs can provide data to complement clinician reporting. The National Cancer Institute's Patient-Reported Outcomes version of the Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events (PRO-CTCAE) is being evaluated by multiple stakeholders, including the FDA, and is considered a promising tool to provide a standard yet flexible method to assess symptomatic AEs from the patient perspective. In this article, we briefly review the FDA OHOP's perspective on PROs in cancer trials submitted to the FDA and focus on the assessment of symptomatic AEs using PRO-CTCAE. We conclude by discussing further work that must be done to broaden the use of PRO-CTCAE as a method to provide patient-centered data that can complement existing safety and tolerability assessments across cancer clinical trials

Preceding rule induction with instance reduction methods

A new prepruning technique for rule induction is presented which applies instance reduction before rule induction. An empirical evaluation records the predictive accuracy and size of rule-sets generated from 24 datasets from the UCI Machine Learning Repository. Three instance reduction algorithms (Edited Nearest Neighbour, AllKnn and DROP5) are compared. Each one is used to reduce the size of the training set, prior to inducing a set of rules using Clark and Boswell's modification of CN2. A hybrid instance reduction algorithm (comprised of AllKnn and DROP5) is also tested. For most of the datasets, pruning the training set using ENN, AllKnn or the hybrid significantly reduces the number of rules generated by CN2, without adversely affecting the predictive performance. The hybrid achieves the highest average predictive accuracy

An eco-climatic framework for evaluating the resilience of vegetation to water deficit

The surge in global efforts to understand the causes and consequences of drought on forest ecosystems has tended to focus on specific impacts such as mortality. We propose an ecoclimatic framework that takes a broader view of the ecological relevance of water deficits, linking elements of exposure and resilience to cumulative impacts on a range of ecosystem processes. This ecoclimatic framework is underpinned by two hypotheses: (i) exposure to water deficit can be represented probabilistically and used to estimate exposure thresholds across different vegetation types or ecosystems; and (ii) the cumulative impact of a series of water deficit events is defined by attributes governing the resistance and recovery of the affected processes. We present case studies comprising Pinus edulis and Eucalyptus globulus, tree species with contrasting ecological strategies, which demonstrate how links between exposure and resilience can be examined within our proposed framework. These examples reveal how climatic thresholds can be defined along a continuum of vegetation functional responses to water deficit regimes. The strength of this framework lies in identifying climatic thresholds on vegetation function in the absence of more complete mechanistic understanding, thereby guiding the formulation, application and benchmarking of more detailed modelling