The baryonic halos of isolated elliptical galaxies

Without the interference of a number of events, galaxies may suffer in crowded environments (e.g., stripping, harassment, strangulation); isolated elliptical galaxies provide a control sample for the study of galaxy formation. We present the study of a sample of isolated ellipticals using imaging from a variety of telescopes, focusing on their globular cluster systems as tracers of their stellar halos. Our main findings are: (a) GC color bimodality is common even in the most isolated systems; (b) the specific frequency of GCs is fairly constant with galaxy mass, without showing an increase towards high-mass systems like in the case of cluster ellipticals; (c) on the other hand, the red fraction of GCs follows the same inverted V shape trend with mass as seen in cluster ellipticals; and (d) the stellar halos show low S\'ersic indices which are consistent with a major merger origin.Comment: 5 pages. Published in the special issue of Galaxies, "On the Origin (and Evolution) of Baryonic Galaxy Halos

{UNIQORN}: {U}nified Question Answering over {RDF} Knowledge Graphs and Natural Language Text

Question answering over knowledge graphs and other RDF data has been greatly advanced, with a number of good systems providing crisp answers for natural language questions or telegraphic queries. Some of these systems incorporate textual sources as additional evidence for the answering process, but cannot compute answers that are present in text alone. Conversely, systems from the IR and NLP communities have addressed QA over text, but barely utilize semantic data and knowledge. This paper presents the first QA system that can seamlessly operate over RDF datasets and text corpora, or both together, in a unified framework. Our method, called UNIQORN, builds a context graph on the fly, by retrieving question-relevant triples from the RDF data and/or the text corpus, where the latter case is handled by automatic information extraction. The resulting graph is typically rich but highly noisy. UNIQORN copes with this input by advanced graph algorithms for Group Steiner Trees, that identify the best answer candidates in the context graph. Experimental results on several benchmarks of complex questions with multiple entities and relations, show that UNIQORN, an unsupervised method with only five parameters, produces results comparable to the state-of-the-art on KGs, text corpora, and heterogeneous sources. The graph-based methodology provides user-interpretable evidence for the complete answering process

Asphaltene detection using Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS)

Peer reviewedPostprin

Qualitative determination of chemical and nutritional composition of Parkia biglobosa (Jacq.) Benth

Qualitative determination of chemical and nutritional composition of Parkia biglobosa seeds an underexploited crop seed in Nigeria was carried out. Seeds of P. biglobosa were found to be rich in lipid, protein, carbohydrate, soluble sugars and ascorbic acid. The cotyledon was very nutritious, has less fibre and ash contents when compared to that of testa. The oil content was suitable for consumption since it contains very low acid and iodine contents. The oil has very high saponification value and hence would be useful in soap industry. Some simple reducing sugars, including lactose, were identified. Key words: Parkia bioglobosa, Qalitative determination, Industrial use, Saponification, underexploited.African Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 4 (8), pp. 812-81

TECHNICAL EFFICIENCY OF FAMILY POULTRY PRODUCTION IN NIGER-DELTA, NIGERIA

This study assessed the technical effi ciency of family poultry production in Niger- Delta, Nigeria. The technical efficiency estimate shows that the technical effi ciency of family poultry ranges between 0.09 and 0.63, with mean of 0.22. This indicates that on the average, the respondents are 22% effi cient in the use of combination of their inputs. The elasticity estimate of 12.29 indicates that the family poultry production is taking place at stage 1 (ineffi cient stage) in production curve. This study concludes that the output and technical effi ciency of the family poultry production can be increased by the use of more feed, capital, medicine/vaccine and adoption of more innovations

RELATIVE ECONOMIC VALUE OF MAIZE - OKRA INTERCROPS IN RAINFOREST ZONE, NIGERIA

This study determined the relative economic value of maize- okra intercrops in Edo State, Nigeria. The results of analysis show Land Equivalent Ratio (LER) of 0.82, Relative Value Total (RVT) of 0.99 and Relative Value of Intercropping (RVI) of 1.10. Although LER and RVT show that monocrops of maize and okra have advantage over intercrops, RVI shows that the profi t from intercrop is 10% higher than monocrops. This is because of the attendant reduction in variable costs of labour and fertilizer that are associated with intercrops. The economic implication of this study is that any strategy that reduces cost of production in maize/ okra intercrops will increase its profi tability and attractiveness to farmers

Olfactory responses of Sitophilus zeamais L. to bushmint leaf powder and methanol extract on stored maize

Bushmint ( Hyptis suaveolens Poit) is a weed with pesticidal properties that have been explored in managing pests of agricultural and medicinal importance. The objective of this study was to evaluate the repellence ability of Hyptis suaveolens to prevent infestation of stored maize grain seed. The study involved evaluation of the olfactory responses of adult weevil to maize ( Zea mays L.) grains treated with 5, 10, 15 and 20% concentrations of leaf powder (LP) and methanol extract (ME) of Hyptis suaveolens in the laboratory, with a static air four-chamber olfactometer. Also, the insecticidal effects of the substances on adult mortality and oviposition on maize grains treated with LP and ME were determined in a completely randomised design, with four replicates. The number of weevils in ME chambers decreased with increase in concentration of extracts; while the LP chambers had consistently fewer weevils with numbers, ranging from 2.5 to 3.75. Adult mortality in maize treated with LP was the least and varied between 0.00 (15% concentration) and 2.54% (20% concentration). Maize grains with ME caused significant mortalities that ranged from 65.50% at 15% concentration to 94.92% at 10% concentration. More eggs (3.5 to 5.75) were laid on maize with LP compared with ME treated maize. Generally, ME was richer in phytochemicals than LP. Hyptis suaveolens repellence manifested more in the form of LP than as ME; though ME caused more adult mortality and reduced oviposition than LP.La menthe de brousse ( Hyptis suaveolens Poit) est une adventice aux propri\ue9t\ue9s pesticides explor\ue9es dans la gestion des ravageurs en agriculture et en m\ue9dicine. Bien que des donn\ue9es sur son efficacit\ue9 contre les ravageurs de stocks soient disponibles, sa capacit\ue9 r\ue9pulsive contre les insectes de stocks n\u2019a pas \ue9t\ue9 suffisamment document\ue9e. Par cons\ue9quent, les r\ue9ponses olfactives du charan\ue7on du ma\uefs en stock trait\ue9 avec des concentrations de 5, 10, 15 et 20% de poudre de feuilles d\u2019H. suaveolens (LP) et de son extrait m\ue9thanolique (ME) ont \ue9t\ue9 \ue9tudi\ue9es au laboratoire \ue0 l\u2019aide d\u2019olfactom\ue8tre \ue0 quatre compartiments \ue0 air statique. De m\ueame, les effets insecticides des substances sur la mortalit\ue9 des adultes et la ponte sur les grains de ma\uefs trait\ue9s avec LP et ME ont \ue9t\ue9 d\ue9termin\ue9s suivant un dispositif compl\ue8tement al\ue9atoire \ue0 quatre r\ue9p\ue9titions. Le LP et le ME ont \ue9t\ue9 analys\ue9s pour leurs compos\ue9s phytochimiques. Le nombre de charan\ue7ons dans les compartiments ME diminuait avec l\u2019augmentation de la concentration d\u2019extrait, tandis que les compartiments LP avaient constamment moins de charan\ue7ons avec des nombres variant entre 2,5 \ue0 3,75. Le pourcentage de mortalit\ue9 d\u2019adultes dans le ma\uefs trait\ue9 avec LP \ue9tait le plus faible et variait entre 0,00 (concentration 15%) et 2,54% (concentration 20%). Le ma\uefs trait\ue9 avec ME causait des mortalit\ue9s significatives allant de 65,50% pour une concentration de 15% \ue0 94,92% pour 10% de concentration. Le nombre le plus \ue9lev\ue9 d\u2019\u153ufs (3,5 \ue0 5,75) a \ue9t\ue9 pondu sur du ma\uefs trait\ue9 avec LP, tandis que le nombre le plus faible (1,0) a \ue9t\ue9 enregistr\ue9 sur celui trait\ue9 au ME. Des concentrations significativement \ue9lev\ue9es de compos\ue9s phytochimiques \ue9taient obtenues dans ME comparativement \ue0 LP. Le ma\uefs trait\ue9 avec LP \ue9tait hautement r\ue9pulsif pour Sitophilus zeamais, tandis que celui trait\ue9 avec ME causait la mortalit\ue9 des adultes et r\ue9duisait la ponte

Characterization of cucumber mosaic virus isolated from yam (Dioscorea spp.) in West Africa

Millions of people in the West African sub-region depend on yam for food and income. In 2008, cucumber mosaic virus (CMV), one of the most economically important plant viruses was detected in yam fields in Ghana, Benin and Togo, three of the five topmost yam producing countries in the world. Some strains of CMV are reportedly more virulent than others thus the need to characterise the strain isolated from yam. Sap inoculation of the yam strain induced systemic mosaic on Cucumis sativus and systemic chlorosis, necrotic lesions and leaf distortion on Nicotiana glutinosa. Sequence analysis of the 3' end of the coat protein gene and C-terminal noncoding region revealed 98 to 99, 93 to 98 and 78 to 79% nucleotide homology with members of the subgroups IA, IB and II, respectively. This analysis further revealed the absence of the EcoR1 restriction site characteristic of subgroup II strains and the presence of 15 nucleotide deletions dispersed along the C-terminal noncoding region of subgroup IA strains. At the amino acid level, the virus had 99 to 100% homology with subgroup I strains and 89% homology with subgroup II strains. Phylogenetic analysis of the amino acid confirms that the yam strain of CMV belongs to subgroup I while nucleotide sequence phylogeny confirms its placement in subgroup IA