Fostering Community Preparedness to Cope with Drought: new initiatives and results from a study involving ODL and ICT from South Central India

Drought has emerged as a key concern in the context of climate variability induced by Climate Change processes and over a billion people are vulnerable, according to UN estimates. Drought preparedness is recognized as the preferred way to cope over relief, and information is the key. Improved access to contemporary ICT in the form of mobile phones and the Internet can help address the challenge of information deficiency in this matter. We have tried to develop an integrated approach for improving the capacity of rural communities by bringing together agricultural information with methods of ODL and effective exchange or delivery using video- conferencing. This has also enabled skill building among vulnerable rural communities in the use of color-coded maps derived from satellite imagery and GIS platforms. ICRISAT in partnership with a community based all- women micro-credit organization, the Adarsha Mahila Samaikhya (AMS), in South Central India has developed this blend of techniques to help the AMS and rural communities to anticipate how vulnerable their villages would be to drought in a season. This is an ongoing partnership, and we report here on joint studies carried out during March 2008- September 2009

A field-grown transgenic tomato line expressing higher levels of polyamines reveals legume cover crop mulch-specific perturbations in fruit phenotype at the levels of metabolite profiles, gene expression, and agronomic characteristics

Genetic modification of crop plants to introduce desirable traits such as nutritional enhancement, disease and pest resistance, and enhanced crop productivity is increasingly seen as a promising technology for sustainable agriculture and boosting food production in the world. Independently, cultural practices that utilize alternative agriculture strategies including organic cultivation subscribe to sustainable agriculture by limiting chemical usage and reduced tillage. How the two together affect fruit metabolism or plant growth in the field or whether they are compatible has not yet been tested. Fruit-specific yeast S-adenosylmethionine decarboxylase (ySAMdc) line 579HO, and a control line 556AZ were grown in leguminous hairy vetch (Vicia villosa Roth) (HV) mulch and conventional black polyethylene (BP) mulch, and their fruit analysed. Significant genotype×mulch-dependent interactions on fruit phenotype were exemplified by differential profiles of 20 fruit metabolites such as amino acids, sugars, and organic acids. Expression patterns of the ySAMdc transgene, and tomato SAMdc, E8, PEPC, and ICDHc genes were compared between the two lines as a function of growth on either BP or HV mulch. HV mulch significantly stimulated the accumulation of asparagine, glutamate, glutamine, choline, and citrate concomitant with a decrease in glucose in the 556AZ fruits during ripening as compared to BP. It enables a metabolic system in tomato somewhat akin to the one in higher polyamine-accumulating transgenic fruit that have higher phytonutrient content. Finally, synergism was found between HV mulch and transgenic tomato in up-regulating N:C indicator genes PEPC and ICDHc in the fruit

Development of a derivative spectrophotometric method for the determination of fungicide zinc ethylenebisdithiocarbamate using sodium molybdate

A derivative spectrophotometric procedure was developed for the determination of zinc(II) ethylenebisdithiocarbamate, Zineb, after formation of its blue colored complex with sodium molybdate in acidic medium. The Beer's law is obeyed up to 40 µg mL-1of Zineb at 956 nm. The detection limit was 0.006 µg mL-1 for Zineb when S/N ratio is 3 taking into account various parameters, such as the effect of acid concentration. The interference of a large number of ions on the determination of Zineb was evaluated. Most of the alkaline metals and metal salts did not interfere. The procedure presented proper sensitivity and it was applied for determining Zineb in food stuffs and commercial samples of Dithane Z 78 and Hexathane 75% W.P.. Results were compared with earlier reported methods. Zineb was successfully determined without any interferences in the presence of other dithiocarbamates like ziram, thiram, ferbam etc

A fluence convolution method to account for respiratory motion in three‐dimensional dose calculations of the liver: A Monte Carlo study

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/134815/1/mp1412.pd

Unexpected electric-field-induced antiferroelectric liquid crystal phase in the Sm C*α temperature range and the discrete flexoelectric effect

The unique nanometer-sized helical structure in SmCα∗ may sometimes evolve continuously to the micrometer-sized one in SmC∗; conceivably ferroelectric SmCα∗ is to be unwound by an applied electric field. By drawing electric-field-induced birefringence contours in the field-temperature phase diagram and by studying the superlattice structure of the field-induced subphase with resonant x-ray scattering, we established that an applied field unexpectedly stabilizes the well-known antiferroelectric four-layer biaxial subphase as well as the other prototypal ferrielectric three-layer one in the SmCα∗ temperature range; the effective long-range interlayer interaction due to the discrete flexoelectric effect actually plays an important role in stabilizing not only the biaxial subphases but also the optically uniaxial SmCα∗ subphase, contrary to the notion that the competition between the direct interactions of the nearest-neighbor layers and those of the next-nearest-neighbor layers should be required for the nanometer-sized helical structure

High Bone Mass Disorders : New Insights From Connecting the Clinic and the Bench

Monogenic high bone mass (HBM) disorders are characterized by an increased amount of bone in general, or at specific sites in the skeleton. Here, we describe 59 HBM disorders with 50 known disease-causing genes from the literature, and we provide an overview of the signaling pathways and mechanisms involved in the pathogenesis of these disorders. Based on this, we classify the known HBM genes into HBM (sub)groups according to uniform Gene Ontology (GO) terminology. This classification system may aid in hypothesis generation, for both wet lab experimental design and clinical genetic screening strategies. We discuss how functional genomics can shape discovery of novel HBM genes and/or mechanisms in the future, through implementation of omics assessments in existing and future model systems. Finally, we address strategies to improve gene identification in unsolved HBM cases and highlight the importance for cross-laboratory collaborations encompassing multidisciplinary efforts to transfer knowledge generated at the bench to the clinic. (c) 2022 The Authors. Journal of Bone and Mineral Research published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Society for Bone and Mineral Research (ASBMR).Peer reviewe

High Bone Mass Disorders: New Insights from Connecting the Clinic and the Bench

Monogenic high bone mass (HBM) disorders are characterized by an increased amount of bone in general, or at specific sites in the skeleton. Here, we describe 59 HBM disorders with 50 known disease-causing genes from the literature, and we provide an overview of the signaling pathways and mechanisms involved in the pathogenesis of these disorders. Based on this, we classify the known HBM genes into HBM (sub)groups according to uniform Gene Ontology (GO) terminology. This classification system may aid in hypothesis generation, for both wet lab experimental design and clinical genetic screening strategies. We discuss how functional genomics can shape discovery of novel HBM genes and/or mechanisms in the future, through implementation of omics assessments in existing and future model systems. Finally, we address strategies to improve gene identification in unsolved HBM cases and highlight the importance for cross-laboratory collaborations encompassing multidisciplinary efforts to transfer knowledge generated at the bench to the clinic.Acknowledgements: This publication is initiated upon work from the European Cooperation for Science and Technology (COST) Action GEMSTONE, supported by COST. COST is a funding agency for research and innovation networks. Our Actions help connect research initiatives across Europe and enable scientists to grow their ideas by sharing them with their peers. This boosts their research, career and innovation (www.cost.eu). We therefore thank current and former members of the COST GEMSTONE Working Group 3 (https://cost-gemstone.eu/working-groups/wg3-monogenic-conditions-human-ko-models/) for discussions and support during manuscript preparation. All figures in this manuscript were created with BioRender.com

Agrotags – A tagging scheme for agricultural digital objects

Keyword assignment is an important step towards semantic enablement of the web. In this paper we describe a taxonomy called Agrotags which is designed for tagging agriculture documents. Agrotags is a subset of Agrovoc and is much smaller: about 2100 as against 40,000. Agrotags is manually created by carefully examining each of the Agrovoc terms for their utility in tagging. This selected subset is further refined and validated by looking at the manually assigned keywords from Agris databases. Further extending the usage of Agrotags emerges the concept of Agrotagger which is a system for automatically generating keywords for agricultural documents. Agrotagger has been built by moving the learning (what keyword to assign) from the example (document) level to the model level. Agrotagger being a pluggable module can act as an add-on to any repositor