Crop physiology of elephant foot yam (Amorphophallus paeoniifolius (Dennst. Nicolson)

Amorphophallus paeoniifolius (Dennst. Nicolson), syn. A. campanulatus (Roxb.) BL. exDence (also elephant foot yam) is largely cultivated in the Philippines, Java, Indonesia, Sumatra, Malaysia, Bangladesh, India and China. In India, it is cultivated in the states of Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Gujarat, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Jarkhand. Sree Padma, Gajendra, Sree Athira (a hybrid), Bidhan Kusum and NDA-9 are some of the high yielding Amorphophallus varieties released for cultivation. The corm production potential of this crop is 50-80 t ha-1 and net economic return is about 2000 – 3000 US$ per ha. Plant growth and corm yield is influenced by the size of planting material (corms/cormels/corm pieces), plant spacing, nutrient management and water availability. Nevertheless, the production aspect of this crop is less understood as scanty research has been conducted in this crop. The available literature on growth and productivity of elephant foot yam is briefly described in this article

Measurement of prompt D0^{0} and D‾\overline{D}0^{0} meson azimuthal anisotropy and search for strong electric fields in PbPb collisions at root SNN\sqrt{S_{NN}} = 5.02 TeV

The strong Coulomb field created in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions is expected to produce a rapiditydependent difference (Av2) in the second Fourier coefficient of the azimuthal distribution (elliptic flow, v2) between D0 (uc) and D0 (uc) mesons. Motivated by the search for evidence of this field, the CMS detector at the LHC is used to perform the first measurement of Av2. The rapidity-averaged value is found to be (Av2) = 0.001 ? 0.001 (stat)? 0.003 (syst) in PbPb collisions at ?sNN = 5.02 TeV. In addition, the influence of the collision geometry is explored by measuring the D0 and D0mesons v2 and triangular flow coefficient (v3) as functions of rapidity, transverse momentum (pT), and event centrality (a measure of the overlap of the two Pb nuclei). A clear centrality dependence of prompt D0 meson v2 values is observed, while the v3 is largely independent of centrality. These trends are consistent with expectations of flow driven by the initial-state geometry. ? 2021 The Author. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY licens

Observation of electroweak production of Wγ with two jets in proton-proton collisions at √s = 13 TeV

A first observation is presented for the electroweak production of a W boson, a photon, and two jets in proton-proton collisions. The W boson decays are selected by requiring one identified electron or muon and an imbalance in transverse momentum. The two jets are required to have a high dijet mass and a large separation in pseudorapidity. The measurement is based on data collected with the CMS detector at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 35.9 fb$^{-1}$. The observed (expected) significance for this process is 4.9 (4.6) standard deviations. After combining with previously reported CMS results at 8 TeV, the observed (expected) significance is 5.3 (4.8) standard deviations. The cross section for the electroweak W$_{γjj}$ production in a restricted fiducial region is measured as 20.4 +/- 4.5 fb and the total cross section for W$_{γ}$ production in association with 2 jets in the same fiducial region is 108 +/- 16 fb. All results are in good agreement with recent theoretical predictions. Constraints are placed on anomalous quartic gauge couplings in terms of dimension-8 effective field theory operators

Measurements of production cross sections of polarized same-sign W boson pairs in association with two jets in proton-proton collisions at s=13 TeV

The first measurements of production cross sections of polarized same-sign W±W±boson pairs in proton-proton collisions are reported. The measurements are based on a data sample collected with the CMS detector at the LHC at a center-of-mass energy of 13TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 137fb−1. Events are selected by requiring exactly two same-sign leptons, electrons or muons, moderate missing transverse momentum, and two jets with a large rapidity separation and a large dijet mass to enhance the contribution of same-sign W±W±scattering events. An observed (expected) 95% confidence level upper limit of 1.17 (0.88)fbis set on the production cross section for longitudinally polarized same-sign W±W±boson pairs. The electroweak production of same-sign W±W±boson pairs with at least one of the Wbosons longitudinally polarized is measured with an observed (expected) significance of 2.3 (3.1) standard deviations.SCOAP

Cassava breeding and varietal dissemination in India: Major achievements during the past 25-30 years

Cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz) has been grown in India for more than a century. Although cassava breeding was initiated during the 1940s in Kerala, intensive research on breeding of superior varieties began only after the establishment of the Central Tuber Crops Research Institute (CTCRI) in 1963 in Trivandrum, Kerala. The Institute has an immense wealth of cassava germplasm, both indigenous and exotic. Nine superior varieties were released by CTCRI, three of them developed by selection, five by intervarietal hybridization and one by triploidy breeding. The high yielding hybrids not only increased cassava cultivation but also spread the crop outside Kerala. At present cassava is cultivated in 12 states and two union territories of the country, but the major producer is Kerala followed by the neighboring states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. The hybrids H-226 and H-165 are the most popular varieties in the industrial areas of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, but the recently released triploid hybrid ‘Sree Harsha’, with its high yield, high starch and good culinary quality, holds great potential for both industrial use and human consumption. The three short-duration varieties are highly preferred by farmers as a rotation crop in the paddy-based cropping system. Very recently, two superior top-cross hybrids, having high yield and good culinary quality, were developed from in breds and are ready for formal release. In recent years the spread of cassava outside Kerala has been quite substantial. In Tamil Nadu and Andra Pradesh, where cassava is mainly used as an industrial crop for starch and sago manufacture, cassava area and production are expanding. In the northeastern states, where it is used mainly as a food crop, cultivation is also gradually increasing. In non-traditional areas of central India, the crop is being introduced through the true seed program. Nevertheless, the total area and production of cassava in India is declining, especially in Kerala, due to the prominence gained by plantation crops like rubber, black pepper, coffee etc. which provide more cash income. Therefore, the future increase in cassava production seems possible only by increasing the productivity in the existing areas of cultivation, expanding its adoption in different cropping systems and introducing the crop to new, non-traditional areas. To fulfil this goal, a new challenge in cassava breeding would be the development of gene pools with adaptation to the main biological and physical environmental stresses, development of varieties having resistance to CMD and red mite as well as drought tolerance, the nutritional improvement of cassava roots by protein enrichment, as well as the development of high-yielding, high-starch and high eating-quality hybrids, which will be acceptable to farmers, processors and consumers. Among the conventional breeding techniques, triploidy and top crossing are probably better tools for this. However, biotechnological approaches through gene transfer might tackle the challenges in a shorter time, but this will require coordinated research efforts among international and national agricultural institutions

Mononuclear and binuclear ruthenium(II) complexes with 4-(phenyl) thiosemicarbazone of benzaldehyde: a discussion on the relative stabilities of the four-membered and five-membered chelate rings formed by the ligand

Three new ruthenium complexes of the formulae cis-[Ru(PPh3)(2)(BzTscbz)(2)] (1a), [Ru-2(PPh3)(2)(BzTscbz)(4)] (1b) and [Ru(PPh3)(2)(BzTscHbz)(2)](ClO4)(2) (2) [BzTscHbz = 4-(phenyl) thiosemicarbazone of benzaldehyde] have been synthesized and characterized by various physicochemical methods including X-ray structure determinations for 1a and 1b. The relative stabilities of the four-membered versus five-membered chelate rings formed by the deprotonated ligand BzTscbz are discussed on the basis of the experimental results and some semi-empirical as well as DFT calculations. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Synthesis, spectroscopic and redox properties of some ruthenium(II) thiosemicarbazone complexes: structural description of four of these complexes

Sixteen neutral mixed ligand thiosemicarbazone complexes of ruthenium having general formula [Ru(PPh3)(2)L-2], where LH = 1-(arylidine)4-aryl thiosemicarbazones, have been synthesized and characterized. All complexes are diamagnetic and hence ruthenium is in the +2 oxidation state (low-spin d(6), S = 0). The complexes show several intense peaks in the visible region due to allowed metal to ligand charge transfer transitions. The structures of four of the complexes have been determined by single-crystal X-ray diffraction and they show that thiosemicarbazone ligands coordinate to the ruthenium center through the hydrazinic nitrogen and sulfur forming four-membered chelate rings with ruthenium in N2S2P2 coordination environment. In dichloromethane solution, the complexes show two quasi-reversible oxidative responses corresponding to loss of electron from HOMO and HOMO - 1. The E-0 values of the above two oxidations shows good linear relationship with Hammett substituents constant (sigma) as well as with the HOMO energy of the molecules calculated by the EHMO method. A DFT calculation on one representative complex suggests that there is appreciable contribution of the sulfur p-orbitals to the HOMO and HOMO - 1. Thus, assignment of the oxidation state of the metal in such complexes must be made with caution. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Structural and spectroscopic properties of Ru(II) complexes of 4-(aryl)thiosemicarbazones of thiophen-2-carbaldehyde

Six Ru(II) complexes of formula [Ru(L)(2)(PPh3)(2)] have been prepared where LH = 4-(aryl)thiosemicarbazones of thiophen-2-carbaldehyde. X-ray crystal structures of five of the complexes are reported. In all the complexes ruthenium is six coordinate with a distorted octahedral cis-P-2, cis-N-2, trans-S-2 donor environment, and each of the two thiosemicarbazone ligands are coordinated in a bidentate fashion forming a four membered chelate ring. The complexes undergo a one-electron oxidation at similar to 0.5 V vs. Ag/AgCl. The EPR spectrum of the electrochemically oxidized solution at 100 K shows a rhombic signal, with transitions at g(1) = 2.27, g(2) = 2.00 and g(3) = 1.80. DFT calculations on one of the complexes suggest that there is 35% ruthenium and 17% sulfur orbital contribution to the HOMO. These results suggest that the assignment of metal atom oxidation states in these compounds is not unambiguous. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Dependency relations as source context in phrase-based SMT

The Phrase-Based Statistical Machine Translation (PB-SMT) model has recently begun to include source context modeling, under the assumption that the proper lexical choice of an ambiguous word can be determined from the context in which it appears. Various types of lexical and syntactic features such as words, parts-of-speech, and supertags have been explored as effective source context in SMT. In this paper, we show that position-independent syntactic dependency relations of the head of a source phrase can be modeled as useful source context to improve target phrase selection and thereby improve overall performance of PB-SMT. On a Dutch—English translation task, by combining dependency relations and syntactic contextual features (part-of-speech), we achieved a 1.0 BLEU (Papineni et al., 2002) point improvement (3.1% relative) over the baseline