Comment on "Dynamic Opinion Model and Invasion Percolation"

In J. Shao et al., PRL 103, 108701 (2009) the authors claim that a model with majority rule coarsening exhibits in d=2 a percolation transition in the universality class of invasion percolation with trapping. In the present comment we give compelling evidence, including high statistics simulations on much larger lattices, that this is not correct. and that the model is trivially in the ordinary percolation universality class.Comment: 1 pag

Pharmacokinetics of Oral Taurine in Healthy Volunteers

Taurine, a sulfur-containing amino acid, is a normal constituent of the human diet. Little is known of the pharmacokinetics of taurine in man after oral administration. We studied the pharmacokinetics of 4 g taurine in eight healthy male volunteers (median age 27.5, range 22–45) following orally administration in the fasting state in the morning. Blood samples were taken at regular intervals and plasma taurine concentration was measured by a modified HPLC method. Data were subjected to noncompartmental analysis. Maximum plasma taurine concentration (Cmax) was measured at 1.5 ± 0.6 hr after administration as 86.1 ± 19.0 mg/L (0.69 ± 0.15 mmol). Plasma elimination half-life (T1/2) and the ratio of clearance/bioavailability (Cl/F) were 1.0 ± 0.3 hr and 21.1 ± 7.8 L/hr, respectively. Since taurine is occasionally used in therapeutics as a medicine, the pharmacokinetics and effects of oral taurine in healthy volunteers would be useful in the future studies of taurine in pharmacology and nutrition

Loss Tomography in General Topologies with Network Coding

Network tomography infers internal network characteristics by sending and collecting probe packets from the network edge. Traditional tomographic techniques for general topologies typically use a mesh of multicast trees and/or unicast paths to cover the entire graph, which is suboptimal from the point of view of bandwidth efficiency and estimation accuracy. In this paper, we investigate an active probing method for link loss inference in a general topology, where multiple sources and receivers are used and intermediate nodes are equipped with network coding, in addition to unicast and multicast, capabilities. With our approach, each link is traversed by exactly one packet, which is in general a linear combination of the original probes. The receivers infer the loss rate on all links by observing not only the number but also the contents of the received probes. In this paper: (i) we propose an orientation algorithm that creates an acyclic graph with the maximum number of identifiable edges (ii) we define probe combining coding schemes and discuss some of their properties and (iii) we present simulation results over realistic topologies using Belief-Propagation (BP) algorithms

Functional characterization of the PHT1 family transporters of foxtail millet with development of a novel Agrobacterium-mediated transformation procedure

Phosphate is an essential nutrient for plant growth and is acquired from the environment and distributed within the plant in part through the action of phosphate transporters of the PHT1 family. Foxtail millet (Setaria italica) is an orphan crop essential to the food security of many small farmers in Asia and Africa and is a model system for other millets. A novel Agrobacterium-mediated transformation and direct plant regeneration procedure was developed from shoot apex explants and used to downregulate expression of 3 members of the PHT1 phosphate transporter family SiPHT1;2 SiPHT1;3 and SiPHT1;4. Transformants were recovered with close to 10% efficiency. The downregulation of individual transporters was confirmed by RT-PCR. Downregulation of individual transporters significantly reduced the total and inorganic P contents in shoot and root tissues and increased the number of lateral roots and root hairs showing they have non-redundant roles. Downregulation of SiPHT1;2 had the strongest effect on total and inorganic P in shoot and root tissues. Complementation experiments in S. cerevisiae provide evidence for the ability of SiPHT1;1, 1;2, 1;3, 1;7 and 1;8 to function as high affinity Pi transporters. This work will aid development of improved millet varieties for global food security

The N-P-K soil nutrient balance of portuguese cropland in the 1950s: the transition from organic to chemical fertilization

Agricultural nutrient balances have been receiving increasing attention in both historical and nutrient management research. The main objectives of this study were to further develop balance methodologies and to carry out a comprehensive assessment of the functioning and nutrient cycling of 1950s agroecosystems in Portugal. Additionally, the main implications for the history of agriculture in Portugal were discussed from the standpoint of soil fertility. We used a mass balance approach that comprises virtually all nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) inputs and outputs from cropland topsoil for average conditions in the period 1951–56. We found a consistent deficit in N, both for nationwide (−2.1 kg.ha−1.yr−1) and arable crops (−1.6 kg.ha−1.yr−1) estimates, that was rectified in the turn to the 1960 decade. P and K were, in contrast, accumulating in the soil (4.2–4.6 kg.ha−1.yr−1 and 1.0–3.0 kg.ha−1.yr−1, respectively). We observed that the 1950s is the very moment of inflection from an agriculture fertilized predominantly through reused N in biomass (livestock excretions plus marine, plant and human waste sources) to one where chemical fertilizers prevailed. It is suggested that N deficiency played an important role in this transitioninfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Ultrasound-assisted lipase catalyzed hydrolysis of aspirin methyl ester

Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ultsonch.2017.08.004.The ultrasound-assisted hydrolysis of aspirin methyl ester (AME) was investigated using immobilized Candida antarctica lipase B (CALB) (1%) in the presence of solvents like triolein, chloroform (CHCl3) and dichloromethane (DCM). The effect of ultrasound and the role of water on the conversion rates have also been investigated. Proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopic (1H NMR) was chosen to calculate hydrolysis convertion rates. We observed that lipase-ultrasound assisted hydrolysis of AME in the presence of triolein and water showed the highest hydrolysis conversion rate (65.3%). Herein low water amount played an important role as a nucleophile being crucial for the hydrolysis yields obtained. Lipase activity was affected by the conjugated action of ultrasound and solvents (35.75% of decrease), however not disturbing its hydrolytic efficiency. It was demonstrated that lipase is able to hydrolyse AME to methyl 2-hydroxy benzoate (methyl salicylate), which applications include fragrance agents in food, beverages and cosmetics, or analgesic agent in liniments.All authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided by International Joint Research Laboratory for Textile and Fibre Bioprocesses at Jiangnan University. The authors are also thankful to the Department of Oils, Oleochemicals and Surfactants technology, Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai, India and to the Bioprocess and Bio nanotechnology Research Group (BBRG) of University of Minho. Authors would like also to acknowledge the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) under the scope of the strategic funding of UID/BIO/04469/2013 unit and COMPETE 2020 (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006684) and BioTecNorte operation (NORTE01-0145-FEDER-000004) funded by European Regional Development Fund under the scope of Norte2020 – Programa Operacional Regional do Norte and to the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. JUSRP51622 A and No. JUSRP115A03), and to the Jiangsu Province Scientific Research Innovation Project for Academic Graduate Students in 2016 (No. KYLX16_0788).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Mantle Pb paradoxes : the sulfide solution

Author Posting. © Springer, 2006. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Springer for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology 152 (2006): 295-308, doi:10.1007/s00410-006-0108-1.There is growing evidence that the budget of Pb in mantle peridotites is largely contained in sulfide, and that Pb partitions strongly into sulfide relative to silicate melt. In addition, there is evidence to suggest that diffusion rates of Pb in sulfide (solid or melt) are very fast. Given the possibility that sulfide melt ‘wets’ sub-solidus mantle silicates, and has very low viscosity, the implications for Pb behavior during mantle melting are profound. There is only sparse experimental data relating to Pb partitioning between sulfide and silicate, and no data on Pb diffusion rates in sulfides. A full understanding of Pb behavior in sulfide may hold the key to several long-standing and important Pb paradoxes and enigmas. The classical Pb isotope paradox arises from the fact that all known mantle reservoirs lie to the right of the Geochron, with no consensus as to the identity of the “balancing” reservoir. We propose that long-term segregation of sulfide (containing Pb) to the core may resolve this paradox. Another Pb paradox arises from the fact that the Ce/Pb ratio of both OIB and MORB is greater than bulk earth, and constant at a value of 25. The constancy of this “canonical ratio” implies similar partition coefficients for Ce and Pb during magmatic processes (Hofmann et al. 1986), whereas most experimental studies show that Pb is more incompatible in silicates than Ce. Retention of Pb in residual mantle sulfide during melting has the potential to bring the bulk partitioning of Ce into equality with Pb if the sulfide melt/silicate melt partition coefficient for Pb has a value of ~ 14. Modeling shows that the Ce/Pb (or Nd/Pb) of such melts will still accurately reflect that of the source, thus enforcing the paradox that OIB and MORB mantles have markedly higher Ce/Pb (and Nd/Pb) than the bulk silicate earth. This implies large deficiencies of Pb in the mantle sources for these basalts. Sulfide may play other important roles during magmagenesis: 1). advective/diffusive sulfide networks may form potent metasomatic agents (in both introducing and obliterating Pb isotopic heterogeneities in the mantle); 2). silicate melt networks may easily exchange Pb with ambient mantle sulfides (by diffusion or assimilation), thus ‘sampling’ Pb in isotopically heterogeneous mantle domains differently from the silicate-controlled isotope tracer systems (Sr, Nd, Hf), with an apparent ‘de-coupling’ of these systems.Our intemperance should not be blamed on the support we gratefully acknowledge from NSF: EAR- 0125917 to SRH and OCE-0118198 to GAG