90 research outputs found
Formas de uréia e doses de nitrogênio em cobertura na qualidade fisiológica de sementes de trigo.
A adubação nitrogenada, além de aumentar a produtividade, pode favorecer a qualidade fisiológica das sementes. O trigo no Paraná é geralmente cultivado após a cultura da soja, com isso a palha da soja e outros fatores do solo podem minimizar o efeito do nitrogênio no trigo. O objetivo do trabalho foi avaliar o efeito de doses de adubação nitrogenada em cobertura e de diferentes formas de ureia, na qualidade fisiológica de sementes de genótipos de trigo. Os experimentos foram conduzidos em Londrina e Ponta Grossa-PR. As áreas experimentais são manejadas no sistema de plantio direto com rotação de culturas, sendo a soja a cultura anterior. Foram avaliadas sementes de três genótipos de trigo (BRS 208, BRS Pardela e IWT 04008) cultivados sob quatro doses de nitrogênio em cobertura (0, 40, 80 e 120 kg ha-1), provenientes de três formas de ureia (convencional, com inibidor de urease e protegida). A adubação nitrogenada de cobertura foi realizada durante o estádio de perfilhamento, aos 20 dias após a emergência. Avaliou-se o teor de nitrogênio nas sementes, a massa de 1000 sementes, a germinação e o vigor (primeira contagem, frio, emergência, massa seca de plântulas, envelhecimento acelerado e condutividade elétrica). Os genótipos de trigo foram analisados conjuntamente para cada local. A linhagem IWT 04008 e a cultivar BRS Pardela apresentam sementes com qualidade fisiológica superior a cultivar BRS 208. Somente em Londrina, em consequência do acamamento, as doses de nitrogênio influenciaram negativamente a massa de 1000 grãos e a condutividade elétrica e, positivamente o teor de proteína. As formas de ureia e as doses de nitrogênio não alteram a qualidade fisiológica das sementes de diferentes genótipos de trigo
Use of Shotgun Metagenomics and Metabolomics to Evaluate the Impact of Glyphosate or Roundup MON 52276 on the Gut Microbiota and Serum Metabolome of Sprague-Dawley Rats
Background:
There is intense debate on whether glyphosate can inhibit the shikimate pathway of gastrointestinal microorganisms, with potential health implications.
Objectives:
We tested whether glyphosate or its representative EU herbicide formulation Roundup MON 52276 affects the rat gut microbiome.
Methods:
We combined cecal microbiome shotgun metagenomics with serum and cecum metabolomics to assess the effects of glyphosate [0.5, 50, 175 mg/kg body weight (BW) per day] or MON 52276 at the same glyphosate-equivalent doses, in a 90-d toxicity test in rats.
Results:
Glyphosate and MON 52276 treatment resulted in ceca accumulation of shikimic acid and 3-dehydroshikimic acid, suggesting inhibition of 5-enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase of the shikimate pathway in the gut microbiome. Cysteinylglycine, γ-glutamylglutamine, and valylglycine levels were elevated in the cecal microbiome following glyphosate and MON 52276 treatments. Altered cecum metabolites were not differentially expressed in serum, suggesting that the glyphosate and MON 52276 impact on gut microbial metabolism had limited consequences on physiological biochemistry. Serum metabolites differentially expressed with glyphosate treatment were associated with nicotinamide, branched-chain amino acid, methionine, cysteine, and taurine metabolism, indicative of a response to oxidative stress. MON 52276 had similar, but more pronounced, effects than glyphosate on the serum metabolome. Shotgun metagenomics of the cecum showed that treatment with glyphosate and MON 52276 resulted in higher levels of Eggerthella spp., Shinella zoogleoides, Acinetobacter johnsonii, and Akkermansia muciniphila. Shinella zoogleoides was higher only with MON 52276 exposure. In vitro culture assays with Lacticaseibacillus rhamnosus strains showed that Roundup GT plus inhibited growth at concentrations at which MON 52276 and glyphosate had no effect.
Discussion:
Our study highlights the power of multi-omics approaches to investigate the toxic effects of pesticides. Multi-omics revealed that glyphosate and MON 52276 inhibited the shikimate pathway in the rat gut microbiome. Our findings could be used to develop biomarkers for epidemiological studies aimed at evaluating the effects of glyphosate herbicides on humans
Trial wave functions for High-Pressure Metallic Hydrogen
Many body trial wave functions are the key ingredient for accurate Quantum
Monte Carlo estimates of total electronic energies in many electron systems. In
the Coupled Electron-Ion Monte Carlo method, the accuracy of the trial function
must be conjugated with the efficiency of its evaluation. We report recent
progress in trial wave functions for metallic hydrogen implemented in the
Coupled Electron-Ion Monte Carlo method. We describe and characterize several
types of trial functions of increasing complexity in the range of the coupling
parameter . We report wave function comparisons for
disordered protonic configurations and preliminary results for thermal
averages.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, submitted to Computer Physics Communication
Momentum distributions in ^3He-^4He liquid mixtures
We present variational calculations of the one-body density matrices and
momentum distributions for ^3He-^4He mixtures in the zero temperature limit, in
the framework of the correlated basis functions theory. The ground-state wave
function contains two- and three-body correlations and the matrix elements are
computed by (Fermi)Hypernetted Chain techniques. The dependence on the ^3He
concentration (x_3) of the ^4He condensate fraction and of the
^3He pole strength (Z_F) is studied along the P=0 isobar. At low ^3He
concentration, the computed ^4He condensate fraction is not significantly
affected by the ^3He statistics. Despite of the low x_3 values, Z_F is found to
be quite smaller than that of the corresponding pure ^3He because of the strong
^3He-^4He correlations and of the overall, large total density \rho. A small
increase of along x_3 is found, which is mainly due to the decrease
of \rho respect to the pure ^4He phase.Comment: 23 pages, 7 postscript figures, Revte
Progress in Monte Carlo calculations of Fermi systems: normal liquid 3He
The application of the diffusion Monte Carlo method to a strongly interacting
Fermi system as normal liquid He is explored. We show that the fixed-node
method together with the released-node technique and a systematic method to
analytically improve the nodal surface constitute an efficient strategy to
improve the calculation up to a desired accuracy. This methodology shows
unambiguously that backflow correlations, when properly optimized, are enough
to generate an equation of state of liquid He in excellent agreement with
experimental data from equilibrium up to freezing.Comment: 14 pages, 3 eps figure
The Path Integral Monte Carlo Calculation of Electronic Forces
We describe a method to evaluate electronic forces by Path Integral Monte
Carlo (PIMC). Electronic correlations, as well as thermal effects, are included
naturally in this method. For fermions, a restricted approach is used to avoid
the ``sign'' problem. The PIMC force estimator is local and has a finite
variance. We applied this method to determine the bond length of H and the
chemical reaction barrier of H+HH+H. At low
temperature, good agreement is obtained with ground state calculations. We
studied the proton-proton interaction in an electron gas as a simple model for
hydrogen impurities in metals. We calculated the force between the two protons
at two electronic densities corresponding to Na () and Al
() using a supercell with 38 electrons. The result is compared to
previous calculations. We also studied the effect of temperature on the
proton-proton interaction. At very high temperature, our result agrees with the
Debye screening of electrons. As temperature decreases, the Debye theory fails
both because of the strong degeneracy of electrons and most importantly, the
formation of electronic bound states around the protons.Comment: 18 pages, 10 figure
Multi-omics phenotyping of the gut-liver axis reveals metabolic perturbations from a low-dose pesticide mixture in rats.
Health effects of pesticides are not always accurately detected using the current battery of regulatory toxicity tests. We compared standard histopathology and serum biochemistry measures and multi-omics analyses in a subchronic toxicity test of a mixture of six pesticides frequently detected in foodstuffs (azoxystrobin, boscalid, chlorpyrifos, glyphosate, imidacloprid and thiabendazole) in Sprague-Dawley rats. Analysis of water and feed consumption, body weight, histopathology and serum biochemistry showed little effect. Contrastingly, serum and caecum metabolomics revealed that nicotinamide and tryptophan metabolism were affected, which suggested activation of an oxidative stress response. This was not reflected by gut microbial community composition changes evaluated by shotgun metagenomics. Transcriptomics of the liver showed that 257 genes had their expression changed. Gene functions affected included the regulation of response to steroid hormones and the activation of stress response pathways. Genome-wide DNA methylation analysis of the same liver samples showed that 4,255 CpG sites were differentially methylated. Overall, we demonstrated that in-depth molecular profiling in laboratory animals exposed to low concentrations of pesticides allows the detection of metabolic perturbations that would remain undetected by standard regulatory biochemical measures and which could thus improve the predictability of health risks from exposure to chemical pollutants
The Coupled Electron-Ion Monte Carlo Method
In these Lecture Notes we review the principles of the Coupled Electron-Ion
Monte Carlo methods and discuss some recent results on metallic hydrogen.Comment: 38 pages, 6 figures, Lecture notes for the International School of
Solid State Physics, 34th course: "Computer Simulation in Condensed Matter:
from Materials to Chemical Biology", 20 July-1 August 2005 Erice (Italy). To
appear in Lecture Notes in Physics (2006
A Constrained Path Monte Carlo Method for Fermion Ground States
We describe and discuss a recently proposed quantum Monte Carlo algorithm to
compute the ground-state properties of various systems of interacting fermions.
In this method, the ground state is projected from an initial wave function by
a branching random walk in an over-complete basis of Slater determinants. By
constraining the determinants according to a trial wave function
, we remove the exponential decay of signal-to-noise ratio
characteristic of the sign problem. The method is variational and is exact if
is exact. We illustrate the method by describing in detail its
implementation for the two-dimensional one-band Hubbard model. We show results
for lattice sizes up to and for various electron fillings and
interaction strengths. Besides highly accurate estimates of the ground-state
energy, we find that the method also yields reliable estimates of other
ground-state observables, such as superconducting pairing correlation
functions. We conclude by discussing possible extensions of the algorithm.Comment: 29 pages, RevTex, 3 figures included; submitted to Phys. Rev.
Momentum distribution of liquid helium
We have obtained the one--body density matrix and the momentum distribution
of liquid He at K from Diffusion Monte Carlo (DMC)
simulations, using trial functions optimized via the Euler Monte Carlo (EMC)
method. We find a condensate fraction smaller than in previous calculations.
Though we do not explicitly include long--range correlations in our
calculations, we get a momentum distribution at long wavelength which is
compatible with the presence of long--range correlations in the exact wave
function. We have also studied He, using fixed--node DMC, with nodes and
trial functions provided by the EMC. In particular, we analyze the momentum
distribution with respect to the discontinuity as well as the
singular behavior, at the Fermi surface. We also show that an approximate
factorization of the one-body density matrix
holds, with and respectively the density matrix of the
ideal Fermi gas and the density matrix of a Bose He.Comment: 10 pages, REVTeX, 12 figure
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