Antifeedant and Toxic Effect of Crude Extract from Flourensia oolepis and their Impact on Nutritional Parameters of Helicoverpa gelotopoeon

Botanical insecticides are one of the environmentally acceptable options for pest management. Extract of Flourensia oolepis (known as chilca), a plant endemic to the province of Córdoba, Argentina, has shown insecticidal activity. The aim of this work was to study the effect of crude extract of this F. oolepis on the nutritional parameters of Helicoverpa gelotopoeon, a polyphagous species recently reported as one of the most serious pests of chickpea. Choice tests were conducted using different doses of extract (1 to 10%) and acetone (control), and no-choice tests, feeding larvae for 10 days with chickpea leaves treated with extract (1 to 5%), with controls (water and acetone). We used three third instar larvae per replica and 8 repetitions of each. The variables measured were: consumption, fresh and dry weight of larvae, of feces and of the leaves given every 48 hours. We calculated the feeding inhibition and nutrition indices, and survival. In choice bioassays using the 10% dose, larvae preferred the control leaves, with the extract acting as a feeding inhibitor (92%). In the nochoice test, leaf consumption was markedly reduced with extract, affecting larval growth in a dose-dependent manner (p < 0.05), as well as feed utilization and lepidoptera survival. © JASEMKeywords: Helicoverpa gelotopoeon; Flourensia oolepis; Botanical insecticides; Pest; Food utilizatio

The Kondo effect in ferromagnetic atomic contacts

Iron, cobalt and nickel are archetypal ferromagnetic metals. In bulk, electronic conduction in these materials takes place mainly through the $s$ and $p$ electrons, whereas the magnetic moments are mostly in the narrow $d$-electron bands, where they tend to align. This general picture may change at the nanoscale because electrons at the surfaces of materials experience interactions that differ from those in the bulk. Here we show direct evidence for such changes: electronic transport in atomic-scale contacts of pure ferromagnets (iron, cobalt and nickel), despite their strong bulk ferromagnetism, unexpectedly reveal Kondo physics, that is, the screening of local magnetic moments by the conduction electrons below a characteristic temperature. The Kondo effect creates a sharp resonance at the Fermi energy, affecting the electrical properties of the system;this appears as a Fano-Kondo resonance in the conductance characteristics as observed in other artificial nanostructures. The study of hundreds of contacts shows material-dependent lognormal distributions of the resonance width that arise naturally from Kondo theory. These resonances broaden and disappear with increasing temperature, also as in standard Kondo systems. Our observations, supported by calculations, imply that coordination changes can significantly modify magnetism at the nanoscale. Therefore, in addition to standard micromagnetic physics, strong electronic correlations along with atomic-scale geometry need to be considered when investigating the magnetic properties of magnetic nanostructures.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure

Advances in prevention and therapy of neonatal dairy calf diarrhoea : a systematical review with emphasis on colostrum management and fluid therapy

Neonatal calf diarrhoea remains the most common cause of morbidity and mortality in preweaned dairy calves worldwide. This complex disease can be triggered by both infectious and non-infectious causes. The four most important enteropathogens leading to neonatal dairy calf diarrhoea are Escherichia coli, rota-and coronavirus, and Cryptosporidium parvum. Besides treating diarrhoeic neonatal dairy calves, the veterinarian is the most obvious person to advise the dairy farmer on prevention and treatment of this disease. This review deals with prevention and treatment of neonatal dairy calf diarrhoea focusing on the importance of a good colostrum management and a correct fluid therapy

Co-opetition models for governing professional football

In recent years, models for co-creating value in a business-to-business context have often been examined with the aim of studying the strategies implemented by and among organisations for competitive and co-operative purposes. The traditional concepts of competition and co-operation between businesses have now evolved, both in terms of the sector in which the businesses operate and in terms of the type of goods they produce. Many researchers have, in recent times, investigated the determinants that can influence the way in which the model of co-opetition can be applied to the football world. Research interest lies in the particular features of what makes a good football. In this paper, the aim is to conduct an analysis of the rules governing the “football system”, while also looking at the determinants of the demand function within football entertainment. This entails applying to football match management the co-opetition model, a recognised model that combines competition and co-operation with the view of creating and distributing value. It can, therefore, be said that, for a spectator, watching sport is an experience of high suspense, and this suspense, in turn, depends upon the degree of uncertainty in the outcome. It follows that the rules ensuring that both these elements can be satisfied are a fertile ground for co-operation between clubs, as it is in the interest of all stakeholders to offer increasingly more attractive football, in comparison with other competing products. Our end purpose is to understand how co-opetition can be achieved within professional football

"I am your mother and your father!": In vitro derived gametes and the ethics of solo reproduction

In this paper, we will discuss the prospect of human reproduction achieved with gametes originating from only one person. According to statements by a minority of scientists working on the generation of gametes in vitro, it may become possible to create eggs from men’s non-reproductive cells and sperm from women’s. This would enable, at least in principle, the creation of an embryo from cells obtained from only one individual: ‘solo reproduction’. We will consider what might motivate people to reproduce in this way, and the implications that solo reproduction might have for ethics and policy. We suggest that such an innovation is unlikely to revolutionise reproduction and parenting. Indeed, in some respects it is less revolutionary than in vitro fertilisation as a whole. Furthermore, we show that solo reproduction with in vitro created gametes is not necessarily any more ethically problematic than gamete donation—and probably less so. Where appropriate, we draw parallels with the debate surrounding reproductive cloning. We note that solo reproduction may serve to perpetuate reductive geneticised accounts of reproduction, and that this may indeed be ethically questionable. However, in this it is not unique among other technologies of assisted reproduction, many of which focus on genetic transmission. It is for this reason that a ban on solo reproduction might be inconsistent with continuing to permit other kinds of reproduction that also bear the potential to strengthen attachment to a geneticised account of reproduction. Our claim is that there are at least as good reasons to pursue research towards enabling solo reproduction, and eventually to introduce solo reproduction as an option for fertility treatment, as there are to do so for other infertility related purposes

White matter changes in microstructure associated with a maladaptive response to stress in rats

In today's society, every individual is subjected to stressful stimuli with different intensities and duration. This exposure can be a key trigger in several mental illnesses greatly affecting one's quality of life. Yet not all subjects respond equally to the same stimulus and some are able to better adapt to them delaying the onset of its negative consequences. The neural specificities of this adaptation can be essential to understand the true dynamics of stress as well as to design new approaches to reduce its consequences. In the current work, we employed ex vivo high field diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to uncover the differences in white matter properties in the entire brain between Fisher 344 (F344) and Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats, known to present different responses to stress, and to examine the effects of a 2-week repeated inescapable stress paradigm. We applied a tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS) analysis approach to a total of 25 animals. After exposure to stress, SD rats were found to have lower values of corticosterone when compared with F344 rats. Overall, stress was found to lead to an overall increase in fractional anisotropy (FA), on top of a reduction in mean and radial diffusivity (MD and RD) in several white matter bundles of the brain. No effect of strain on the white matter diffusion properties was observed. The strain-by-stress interaction revealed an effect on SD rats in MD, RD and axial diffusivity (AD), with lower diffusion metric levels on stressed animals. These effects were localized on the left side of the brain on the external capsule, corpus callosum, deep cerebral white matter, anterior commissure, endopiriform nucleus, dorsal hippocampus and amygdala fibers. The results possibly reveal an adaptation of the SD strain to the stressful stimuli through synaptic and structural plasticity processes, possibly reflecting learning processes.We thank Neurospin (high field MRI center CEA Saclay) for providing its support for MRI acquisition. JB was supported by grants from Fondation pour la Recherche Médicale (FRM) and Groupe Pasteur Mutualité (GPM). This work was supported by a grant from ANR (SIGMA). This work was performed on a platform of France Life Imaging (FLI) network partly funded by the grant ANR-11-INBS-0006. This work and RM were supported by a fellowship of the project FCT-ANR/NEU-OSD/0258/2012 founded by FCT/MEC (www.fct.pt) and by Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional (FEDER). AC was supported by a grant from the Fondation NRJ.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Computational Biology in Costa Rica: The Role of a Small Country in the Global Context of Bioinformatics

Introduction: The successful development of high throughput methods for DNA sequencing, transcriptomics, proteomics, and other –omics, has contributed to the emergence of novel possibilities for the examination of complex biological systems through computational analysis. These fields have witnessed unprecedented advances in high income countries. Nevertheless, the role of other nations needs to be examined in order to delineate their contribution within the global context of bioinformatics. Previous articles have focused on the expansion of Computational Biology in Brazil and Mexico [1],[2], two of the largest Latin American countries, and which have shown political commitment to foster their scientific development. Costa Rica is a small Central American country with a population of 4 million, with its territory 164 and 38 times smaller than Brazil and Mexico, respectively. Thus, it is interesting to visualize the possibilities and challenges of this low-income country in the context of the global bioinformatics endeavor.UCR::Vicerrectoría de Investigación::Unidades de Investigación::Ciencias de la Salud::Instituto Clodomiro Picado (ICP

CTLA4CT60 gene polymorphism is not associated with differential susceptibility to pemphigus foliaceus

Pemphigus foliaceus is an organ-specific autoimmune disease characterized by autoantibodies against the extracellular region of desmoglein 1, a protein that mediates intercellular adhesion in desmosomes. Cytotoxic T-lymphocyte-associated protein 4 (CTLA-4) is a key negative regulator of the T cell immune response, playing an important role in T cell homeostasis and maintenance of peripheral tolerance. Polymorphisms in the CTLA4 gene have been associated with autoimmune diseases and the functional CT60 single nucleotide polymorphism (rs3087243, also named 6230G > A) has been proposed to be a casual variant in several of these diseases. The aim of this study was to ascertain whether this polymorphism is associated with inter-individual variation in susceptibility to pemphigus foliaceus. The population sample in this case-control association study comprised 248 patient and 367 controls. We did not found a significant association of pemphigus foliaceus with the CT60 variants. We conclude that the CTLA4CT60 polymorphism is not an important factor for pemphigus foliaceus pathogenesis in the population analyzed

Can Jupiters be found by monitoring Galactic Bulge microlensing events from northern sites?

In 1998 the EXPORT team monitored microlensing event lightcurves using a CCD camera on the IAC 0.8m telescope on Tenerife to evaluate the prospect of using northern telescopes to find microlens anomalies that reveal planets orbiting the lens stars. The high airmass and more limited time available for observations of Galactic Bulge sources makes a northern site less favourable for microlensing planet searches. However, there are potentially a large number of northern 1m class telescopes that could devote a few hours per night to monitor ongoing microlensing events. Our IAC observations indicate that accuracies sufficient to detect planets can be achieved despite the higher airmass.Comment: 8 pages, 14 figures, 1 bbl file, based on EXPORT observations, accepted by MNRA

Social sciences research in neglected tropical diseases 2: A bibliographic analysis

The official published version of the article can be found at the link below.Background There are strong arguments for social science and interdisciplinary research in the neglected tropical diseases. These diseases represent a rich and dynamic interplay between vector, host, and pathogen which occurs within social, physical and biological contexts. The overwhelming sense, however, is that neglected tropical diseases research is a biomedical endeavour largely excluding the social sciences. The purpose of this review is to provide a baseline for discussing the quantum and nature of the science that is being conducted, and the extent to which the social sciences are a part of that. Methods A bibliographic analysis was conducted of neglected tropical diseases related research papers published over the past 10 years in biomedical and social sciences. The analysis had textual and bibliometric facets, and focussed on chikungunya, dengue, visceral leishmaniasis, and onchocerciasis. Results There is substantial variation in the number of publications associated with each disease. The proportion of the research that is social science based appears remarkably consistent (<4%). A textual analysis, however, reveals a degree of misclassification by the abstracting service where a surprising proportion of the "social sciences" research was pure clinical research. Much of the social sciences research also tends to be "hand maiden" research focused on the implementation of biomedical solutions. Conclusion There is little evidence that scientists pay any attention to the complex social, cultural, biological, and environmental dynamic involved in human pathogenesis. There is little investigator driven social science and a poor presence of interdisciplinary science. The research needs more sophisticated funders and priority setters who are not beguiled by uncritical biomedical promises