Characterization of CMR5c and CMR12a, novel fluorescent Pseudomonas strains from the cocoyam rhizosphere with biocontrol activity

Aim: To screen for novel antagonistic Pseudomonas strains producing both phenazines and biosurfactants that are as effective as Pseudomonas aeruginosa PNA1 in the biocontrol of cocoyam root rot caused by Pythium myriotylum. Material and Results: Forty pseudomonads were isolated from the rhizosphere of healthy white and red cocoyam plants appearing in natural, heavily infested fields in Cameroon. In vitro tests demonstrated that Py. myriotylum antagonists could be retrieved from the red cocoyam rhizosphere. Except for one isolate, all antagonistic isolates produced phenazines. Results from whole-cell protein profiling showed that the antagonistic isolates are different from other isolated pseudomonads, while BOX-PCR revealed high genomic similarity among them. 16S rDNA sequencing of two representative strains within this group of antagonists confirmed their relatively low similarity with validly described Pseudomonas species. These antagonists are thus provisionally labelled as unidentified Pseudomonas strains. Among the antagonists, Pseudomonas CMR5c and CMR12a were selected because of their combined production of phenazines and biosurfactants. For strain CMR5c also, production of pyrrolnitrin and pyoluteorin was demonstrated. Both CMR5c and CMR12a showed excellent in vivo biocontrol activity against Py. myriotylum to a similar level as Ps. aeruginosa PNA1. Conclusion: Pseudomonas CMR5c and CMR12a were identified as novel and promising biocontrol agents of Py. myriotylum on cocoyam, producing an arsenal of antagonistic metabolites. Significance and Impact of the Study: Present study reports the identification of two newly isolated fluorescent Pseudomonas strains that can replace the opportunistic human pathogen Ps. aeruginosa PNA1 in the biocontrol of cocoyam root rot and could be taken into account for the suppression of many plant pathogens

Effect of plant domestication on the rhizosphere microbiome of common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) .

Plant domestication was a pivotal achievement for human civilization and subsequent plant improvement increased crop productivity and quality. However, domestication also caused a strong reduction in the genetic diversity of modern cultivars compared to their wild relatives. It is known that plants rely, in part, on the rhizosphere microbial community for wreowth, development and tolerance to (a)biotic stresses. Hence, plant domestication events may have adversely affected the bacterial diversity of the rhizosphere of two wild relatives, three landraces and three modern cultivars of common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris). These different lines belong to the Mesoamerican bean gene pool of Colombia and were selected amongst more than 37,000 accessions kept in the Genetic Resources Program of the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT, Colombia). The eight accessions were grown in both native and in agricultural soils collected in the province of Antioquia (Colombia). At different plant growth stages, DNA was extracted from rhizospheric soil and bacterial taxonomic diversity was analysed by metagenomic sequencing of the V3-V4 region of the 16S rRNA. Our Approach of going ?back to the roots? using native soils togheter with wild relatives provides new fundamental insights in host genotype-mediated recruitment of beneficial microbes and in the functional and metabolic potential of the rhizosphere microbiome of native soils and wild relatives of modern crop cultivars

Overview of VideoCLEF 2009: New perspectives on speech-based multimedia content enrichment

VideoCLEF 2009 offered three tasks related to enriching video content for improved multimedia access in a multilingual environment. For each task, video data (Dutch-language television, predominantly documentaries) accompanied by speech recognition transcripts were provided. The Subject Classification Task involved automatic tagging of videos with subject theme labels. The best performance was achieved by approaching subject tagging as an information retrieval task and using both speech recognition transcripts and archival metadata. Alternatively, classifiers were trained using either the training data provided or data collected from Wikipedia or via general Web search. The Affect Task involved detecting narrative peaks, defined as points where viewers perceive heightened dramatic tension. The task was carried out on the “Beeldenstorm” collection containing 45 short-form documentaries on the visual arts. The best runs exploited affective vocabulary and audience directed speech. Other approaches included using topic changes, elevated speaking pitch, increased speaking intensity and radical visual changes. The Linking Task, also called “Finding Related Resources Across Languages,” involved linking video to material on the same subject in a different language. Participants were provided with a list of multimedia anchors (short video segments) in the Dutch-language “Beeldenstorm” collection and were expected to return target pages drawn from English-language Wikipedia. The best performing methods used the transcript of the speech spoken during the multimedia anchor to build a query to search an index of the Dutch language Wikipedia. The Dutch Wikipedia pages returned were used to identify related English pages. Participants also experimented with pseudo-relevance feedback, query translation and methods that targeted proper names

Data protection, safeguarding and the protection of children's privacy: exploring local authority guidance on parental photography at school events

Should parents be allowed to take photographs at school events? Media reports suggest that increasingly schools are answering no to this question, either prohibiting or imposing stringent restrictions upon such photography. The legal justifications for such restrictions are, however, unclear. Accordingly, in 2013 freedom of information requests were sent to local education authorities across England, Scotland and Wales, the aim being to determine what advice local education authorities provide to schools in relation to parental photography at school events, and to identify how education authorities’ understandings of the law influence the advice they offer. That research reveals that local education authorities’ understandings of the law vary significantly and that where authorities do not fully appreciate the extent of the legal obligations arising this may have significant repercussions for the children concerned

Artificial Intelligence And Digital Forensics

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a well-established branch of computer science concerned with making machines smart enough to perform computationally large or complex tasks that normally require human intelligence; furthermore, it comprises a combination of technologies that can obtain insights and patterns from a massive amount of data which is a crucial element of forensic analysis. This chapter focuses on AI and its subfields: machine learning and deep learning ”in general ”and also details AI and data mining techniques pertaining to digital forensics. In highlighting the current shortcomings of prevailing approaches, we propose a new approach to offer a clearer insight into potential data, and/or detect variables of interest, as well as assess the future of digital forensics in the concluding section