Primary and secondary somatic embryogenesis in Jatropha curcas L. From leaf transverse thin cell layers

An efficient method for plant regeneration in Jatropha curcas L. via primary and secondary somatic embryogenesis culture from ex vitro leaves of 6-month-old plants was presented in this study. Leaves were cut into transverse thin cell layers (tTCLs) and cultured on MS medium supplemented with kinetin (KIN) at 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0 mg/l in combination with indole-3-butyric acid (IBA) at 0.1, 0.5, and 1.0 mg/l or 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) at 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 mg/l . The highest embryogenic callus formation rate (89.3%) was obtained on medium supplemented with 1.0 mg/l KIN and 1.5 mg/l 2,4-D. The calli were selected for the study of primary somatic embryogenesis on MS medium containing 2,4-D (0.01, 0.03, 0.05, and 0.07 mg/l) or KIN (0.5, 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0 mg/l). The highest primary somatic embryos formation rate (76.67%) was achieved on MS medium supplemented with 1.0 mg/l KIN. The primary embryos were cultured on medium supplemented with KIN (0.1, 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0 mg/l) combined with 0.2 mg/l indole-3-butyric acid (IBA) or 0.05 mg/l 2,4-D. The combination of 1.5 mg/l KIN and 0.05 mg/l 2,4-D was suitable for secondary embryos formation. Embryos proliferated rapidly, and the highest number of secondary embryos (77.5 embryos) wasobtained from a single primary embryos inoculated. Results also showed that the addition of proline (0.75 g/l) or spermidine (0.15 mM) to the culture medium increased the number of secondary embryos considerably. The fully developed plantlets exhibiting healthy roots and shoots were obtained when somatic embryos were sub-cultured onto B5 medium containing 1.5 mg/l IBA

Acute toxicity evaluation of methanol, ethanol and aqueous extracts of Balanophora latisepala (V.Tiegh.) Lec.

Balanophora latisepala has been used in traditional medicine in Vietnam for many years with both proven and unproven scientific proofs. This study aimed to evaluate the acute toxicity effects of B. latisepala by testing safety parameters of hot water, ethanol and methanol extracts of B. latisepala in Mus musculus. The acute toxicity was studied according to the World Health Organisations guideline for the evaluation of the safety and efficacy of herbal medicines. During study, a single dose of 1000, 2000 and 5000 mg/kg of each extract was orally administered to Swiss mice. To determine the median lethal dose, experimental mice were observed in behavior and mortality for 72 hours. Data of organ weight, histopathology,biochemical and hematology were also collected. The results showed that hot water, ethanol and methanol extracts at a dose of 5000 mg/kg did not induce mortality in experimental mice; therefore, LD50 is not determined. Insignificant changes were found in relative organ weight at dose 5000 mg/kg for all of the extracts. Similarly, no significant differences were observed in biochemical indices and organ histology. However, changes in hematological indices in both male and female mice were noticed. In male mice, it is likely that all B. latisepala extracts induced anemia. Moreover, clotting or bleeding abnormalities were also observed in female mice. Methanol extracts had the highest effect to hematology indices (p<0.05). Therefore, B.latisepala in different doses was shown its safety under acute toxicity studies with promising applications in drug therapy

TextANIMAR: Text-based 3D Animal Fine-Grained Retrieval

3D object retrieval is an important yet challenging task, which has drawn more and more attention in recent years. While existing approaches have made strides in addressing this issue, they are often limited to restricted settings such as image and sketch queries, which are often unfriendly interactions for common users. In order to overcome these limitations, this paper presents a novel SHREC challenge track focusing on text-based fine-grained retrieval of 3D animal models. Unlike previous SHREC challenge tracks, the proposed task is considerably more challenging, requiring participants to develop innovative approaches to tackle the problem of text-based retrieval. Despite the increased difficulty, we believe that this task has the potential to drive useful applications in practice and facilitate more intuitive interactions with 3D objects. Five groups participated in our competition, submitting a total of 114 runs. While the results obtained in our competition are satisfactory, we note that the challenges presented by this task are far from being fully solved. As such, we provide insights into potential areas for future research and improvements. We believe that we can help push the boundaries of 3D object retrieval and facilitate more user-friendly interactions via vision-language technologies.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2304.0573

FIRST - Flexible interactive retrieval SysTem for visual lifelog exploration at LSC 2020

Lifelog can provide useful insights of our daily activities. It is essential to provide a flexible way for users to retrieve certain events or moments of interest, corresponding to a wide variation of query types. This motivates us to develop FIRST, a Flexible Interactive Retrieval SysTem, to help users to combine or integrate various query components in a flexible manner to handle different query scenarios, such as visual clustering data based on color histogram, visual similarity, GPS location, or scene attributes. We also employ personalized concept detection and image captioning to enhance image understanding from visual lifelog data, and develop an autoencoderlike approach for query text and image feature mapping. Furthermore, we refine the user interface of the retrieval system to better assist users in query expansion and verifying sequential events in a flexible temporal resolution to control the navigation speed through sequences of images

Socializing One Health: an innovative strategy to investigate social and behavioral risks of emerging viral threats

In an effort to strengthen global capacity to prevent, detect, and control infectious diseases in animals and people, the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Emerging Pandemic Threats (EPT) PREDICT project funded development of regional, national, and local One Health capacities for early disease detection, rapid response, disease control, and risk reduction. From the outset, the EPT approach was inclusive of social science research methods designed to understand the contexts and behaviors of communities living and working at human-animal-environment interfaces considered high-risk for virus emergence. Using qualitative and quantitative approaches, PREDICT behavioral research aimed to identify and assess a range of socio-cultural behaviors that could be influential in zoonotic disease emergence, amplification, and transmission. This broad approach to behavioral risk characterization enabled us to identify and characterize human activities that could be linked to the transmission dynamics of new and emerging viruses. This paper provides a discussion of implementation of a social science approach within a zoonotic surveillance framework. We conducted in-depth ethnographic interviews and focus groups to better understand the individual- and community-level knowledge, attitudes, and practices that potentially put participants at risk for zoonotic disease transmission from the animals they live and work with, across 6 interface domains. When we asked highly-exposed individuals (ie. bushmeat hunters, wildlife or guano farmers) about the risk they perceived in their occupational activities, most did not perceive it to be risky, whether because it was normalized by years (or generations) of doing such an activity, or due to lack of information about potential risks. Integrating the social sciences allows investigations of the specific human activities that are hypothesized to drive disease emergence, amplification, and transmission, in order to better substantiate behavioral disease drivers, along with the social dimensions of infection and transmission dynamics. Understanding these dynamics is critical to achieving health security--the protection from threats to health-- which requires investments in both collective and individual health security. Involving behavioral sciences into zoonotic disease surveillance allowed us to push toward fuller community integration and engagement and toward dialogue and implementation of recommendations for disease prevention and improved health security

Disinfection of foods by low energy X-Ray irradiation : Thesis submitted for the degree of nuclear engineering engineer

39 tr. : ill (some col.); 29 cm

Selection of salt tolerant embryogenic line in Jatropha curcas L., which has potentiality of biodiesel: Research article

The embryogenic calli were grown on MS medium containing NaCl with concentrations from 50 to 300 mM. After 2 weeks of culture, salinity tolerance threshold was identified at 150 mM NaCl. Higher concentrations of NaCl stimulated a significant reduction in the calli survival rate and the highest rate was 78.67% at 50 mM. After subculturing callus to the embryo culture medium containing NaCl, the growth and embryogenesis were not affected at the concentrations of 50 – 100 mM. Especially, at 50 mM NaCl the embryogenesis rate reached 83.33%. In contrast, 150 mM NaCl inhibited the somatic embryogenesis. After 4 weeks, culturing somatic embryos on medium MS with addition of 0.07 mg/l spermidin at 50 – 100 mM NaCl, the embryogenesis was considered good and embryos developed through several stages: globular, heart, torpedo and cotyledonary. However, at 150 mM NaCl the globular stage appeared in the culture process. The process of morphohistology and using dye carmine – iod and acridine orange observed the structure of generative callus and embryos at several stages.Mô sẹo có khả năng phát sinh phôi được nuôi cấy trong môi trường có chứa muối NaCl với nồng độ thay đổi từ 50 – 300 mM. Sau 2 tuần nuôi cấy, chúng tôi xác định được ngưỡng chịu mặn của mô sẹo có khả năng sinh phôi cây Cọc rào là 150 mM. Nồng độ muối NaCl càng cao thì tỷ lệ sống của mô sẹo giảm dần và đạt giá trị cao nhất là 78,67% tại nồng độ 50 mM NaCl. Khi chuyển mô sẹo sang môi trường phát sinh phôi có chứa muối NaCl với nồng độ thay đổi, chúng tôi thấy ở nồng độ muối NaCl 50 – 100 mM không ảnh hưởng đến khả năng sinh trưởng và phát sinh phôi, đặc biệt là tại nồng độ 50 mM NaCl giúp kích thích sự hình thành phôi từ mô sẹo với tỷ lệ hình thành phôi đạt 83,33%. Ngược lại, nồng độ từ 150 mM NaCl gây ức chế quá trình hình thành phôi soma từ mô sẹo. Tiếp tục khảo sát ảnh hưởng của muối đến khả năng phát triển và nảy mầm của phôi soma. Ghi nhận kết quả sau 4 tuần nuôi cấy phôi soma trong môi trường MS có bổ sung 0.07 mg/l spermidin, tại nồng độ 50 – 100 mM NaCl khả năng hình thành phôi tốt và phôi phát triển qua các giai đoạn phôi hình cầu, hình tim, hình thủy lôi và hình lá mầm. Đặc biệt ở nồng độ 50 mM số lượng phôi lá mầm đạt giá trị cao với 13,33 phôi. Nồng độ muối NaCl 150 mM chỉ xuất hiện phôi hình cầu trong suốt thời gian nuôi cấy. Quá trình giải phẫu hình thái phôi và sử dụng thuốc nhuộm 2 màu carmin – iod và acridine orange đã cho thấy rõ hơn về cấu trúc mô sẹo có khả năng sinh phôi và phôi hình thái

Selection of salt tolerant embryogenic line in Jatropha curcas L., which has potentiality of biodiesel: Research article

The embryogenic calli were grown on MS medium containing NaCl with concentrations from 50 to 300 mM. After 2 weeks of culture, salinity tolerance threshold was identified at 150 mM NaCl. Higher concentrations of NaCl stimulated a significant reduction in the calli survival rate and the highest rate was 78.67% at 50 mM. After subculturing callus to the embryo culture medium containing NaCl, the growth and embryogenesis were not affected at the concentrations of 50 – 100 mM. Especially, at 50 mM NaCl the embryogenesis rate reached 83.33%. In contrast, 150 mM NaCl inhibited the somatic embryogenesis. After 4 weeks, culturing somatic embryos on medium MS with addition of 0.07 mg/l spermidin at 50 – 100 mM NaCl, the embryogenesis was considered good and embryos developed through several stages: globular, heart, torpedo and cotyledonary. However, at 150 mM NaCl the globular stage appeared in the culture process. The process of morphohistology and using dye carmine – iod and acridine orange observed the structure of generative callus and embryos at several stages.Mô sẹo có khả năng phát sinh phôi được nuôi cấy trong môi trường có chứa muối NaCl với nồng độ thay đổi từ 50 – 300 mM. Sau 2 tuần nuôi cấy, chúng tôi xác định được ngưỡng chịu mặn của mô sẹo có khả năng sinh phôi cây Cọc rào là 150 mM. Nồng độ muối NaCl càng cao thì tỷ lệ sống của mô sẹo giảm dần và đạt giá trị cao nhất là 78,67% tại nồng độ 50 mM NaCl. Khi chuyển mô sẹo sang môi trường phát sinh phôi có chứa muối NaCl với nồng độ thay đổi, chúng tôi thấy ở nồng độ muối NaCl 50 – 100 mM không ảnh hưởng đến khả năng sinh trưởng và phát sinh phôi, đặc biệt là tại nồng độ 50 mM NaCl giúp kích thích sự hình thành phôi từ mô sẹo với tỷ lệ hình thành phôi đạt 83,33%. Ngược lại, nồng độ từ 150 mM NaCl gây ức chế quá trình hình thành phôi soma từ mô sẹo. Tiếp tục khảo sát ảnh hưởng của muối đến khả năng phát triển và nảy mầm của phôi soma. Ghi nhận kết quả sau 4 tuần nuôi cấy phôi soma trong môi trường MS có bổ sung 0.07 mg/l spermidin, tại nồng độ 50 – 100 mM NaCl khả năng hình thành phôi tốt và phôi phát triển qua các giai đoạn phôi hình cầu, hình tim, hình thủy lôi và hình lá mầm. Đặc biệt ở nồng độ 50 mM số lượng phôi lá mầm đạt giá trị cao với 13,33 phôi. Nồng độ muối NaCl 150 mM chỉ xuất hiện phôi hình cầu trong suốt thời gian nuôi cấy. Quá trình giải phẫu hình thái phôi và sử dụng thuốc nhuộm 2 màu carmin – iod và acridine orange đã cho thấy rõ hơn về cấu trúc mô sẹo có khả năng sinh phôi và phôi hình thái

Nimbandiolactone-21 and nimbandioloxyfuran, two new 28-norlimonoids from the leaves of <i>Azadirachta indica</i> (Meliaceae)

<p>From an EtOAc-soluble fraction of the leaves of <i>Azadirachta indica</i>, two new 28-norlimonoids named nimbandiolactone-21 (<b>1</b>) and nimbandioloxyfuran (<b>2</b>), together with nimbandiolactone-23 (<b>3</b>), were isolated. Their relative structures were elucidated based on NMR spectroscopic interpretation and biosynthetic consideration. Nimbandioloxyfuran (<b>2</b>) and nimbandiolactone-23 (<b>3</b>) showed potent <i>α</i>-glucosidase inhibitory activity, with the IC₅₀ values of 46.2 and 38.7 <i>μ</i>M, respectively.</p