Chickpea

The narrow genetic base of cultivated chickpea warrants systematic collection, documentation and evaluation of chickpea germplasm and particularly wild Cicer species for effective and efficient use in chickpea breeding programmes. Limiting factors to crop production, possible solutions and ways to overcome them, importance of wild relatives and barriers to alien gene introgression and strategies to overcome them and traits for base broadening have been discussed. It has been clearly demonstrated that resistance to major biotic and abiotic stresses can be successfully introgressed from the primary gene pool comprising progenitor species. However, many desirable traits including high degree of resistance to multiple stresses that are present in the species belonging to secondary and tertiary gene pools can also be introgressed by using special techniques to overcome pre- and post-fertilization barriers. Besides resistance to various biotic and abiotic stresses, the yield QTLs have also been introgressed from wild Cicer species to cultivated varieties. Status and importance of molecular markers, genome mapping and genomic tools for chickpea improvement are elaborated. Because of major genes for various biotic and abiotic stresses, the transfer of agronomically important traits into elite cultivars has been made easy and practical through marker-assisted selection and marker-assisted backcross. The usefulness of molecular markers such as SSR and SNP for the construction of high-density genetic maps of chickpea and for the identification of genes/QTLs for stress resistance, quality and yield contributing traits has also been discussed

MonSLAR : a middleware for monitoring SLA for RESTFUL services in cloud computing

Measuring the quality of cloud computing provision from the client's point of view is important in order to ensure that the service conforms to the level specified in the service level agreement (SLA). With a view to avoid SLA violation, the main parameters should be determined in the agreement and then used to evaluate the fulfillment of the SLA terms at the client's side. Current studies in cloud monitoring only handle monitoring the provider resources with little or no consideration to the client's side. This paper presents MonSLAR, a User-centric middleware for Monitoring SLA for Restful services in SaaS cloud computing environments. MonSLAR uses a distributed architecture that allows SLA parameters and the monitored data to be embedded in the requests and responses of the REST protocol

Influence of silica nanoparticles on the functionality of water-based drilling fluids

Using nanoparticles into a drilling fluid (mud) is a promising technique that could solve a range of problems presently encountered during drilling operations. This paper reports the development of a novel drilling fluid using a biopolymer/nanoparticle mixture to improve the performance of a water-based mud (WBM) formulation, enhancing rheological, filtration and lubrication properties. The xanthan gum- SiO 2 mixture developed is proposed as a solution to operating challenges in drilling operation, with the synergistic properties of nanoparticles and polymer offering desirable properties. The novel nanofluids characterised by scanning electron microscope, X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and thermal-gravimetric analysis. The modified drilling fluids were found to have higher yield point, beneficial for hole cleaning, showed less filtrate loss and more bit lubrication than conventional WBM formulations. Properly engineered, nanoparticles could improve the performance of presently deployed drilling fluids significantly

Newton-Kantorovich Method for Solving One of the Non-Linear Sturm-Liouville Problems

نظراً لأهميتها في علوم الفيزياء والرياضيات التطبيقية فإن مسائل شتورم – ليوفيل غير الخطية شهدت إهتماماً ملحوظاً منذ عام 1960. واحدة من أهم التقنيات في علم الرياضيات وهي طريقة نيوتن - كانتروفيتش تم تطبيقها في هذا البحث على واحده من مسائل شتورم – ليوفيل غير الخطية. على حد علم المؤلفين لهذا البحث فإن طريقة نيوتن - كانتروفيتش لم يسبق أن تم تطبيقها لحد الآن لحل هذا النوع المهم من مسائل شتورم – ليوفيل غير الخطية التي يتم مناقشة حلها في هذا البحث. وبناءً على ذلك فإن الهدف في هذا البحث هو توضيح أمكانية تطبيق هذه الطريقة المعروفه لحل هذا النوع المهم من مسائل شتورم – ليوفيل غير الخطية. ولتوضيح كفاءة هذه الطريقة في حل هذا النوع من المسائل فقد تم عمل مقارنة في هذا البحث بين تطبيق طريقة نيوتن – كانتروفيتش وتطبيق طريقة تجزئة أدومين لحل المسائل نفسها التي يتناولها هذا البحث وكنتيجة لهذه المقارنة تبين أن النتائج التي حصلنا عليها من كلا الطريقتين متوافقه مع بعضها البعض.Due to its importance in physics and applied mathematics, the non-linear Sturm-Liouville problems witnessed massive attention since 1960. A powerful Mathematical technique called the Newton-Kantorovich method is applied in this work to one of the non-linear Sturm-Liouville problems. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this technique of Newton-Kantorovich has never been applied before to solve the non-linear Sturm-Liouville problems under consideration. Accordingly, the purpose of this work is to show that this important specific kind of non-linear Sturm-Liouville differential equations problems can be solved by applying the well-known Newton-Kantorovich method. Also, to show the efficiency of applying this method to solve these problems, a comparison is made in this paper between the Newton-Kantorovich method and the Adomian decomposition method applied to the same non-linear Sturm-Liouville problems under consideration in this work. As a result of this comparison, the results of the Newton-Kantorovich method agreed with the results obtained by applying Adomian’s decomposition method

MALDI-TOF typing highlights geographical and fluconazole resistance clusters in Candida glabrata2188

Utilizing matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight (MALDI-TOF) mass spectra for Candida glabrata typing would be a cost-effective and easy-to-use alternative to classical DNA-based typing methods. This study aimed to use MALDI-TOF for the typing of C. glabrata clinical isolates from various geographical origins and test its capacity to differentiate between fluconazole-sensitive and -resistant strains. Both microsatellite length polymorphism (MLP) and MALDI-TOF mass spectra of 58 C. glabrata isolates originating from Marseilles (France) and Tunis (Tunisia) as well as collection strains from diverse geographic origins were analyzed. The same analysis was conducted on a subset of C. glabrata isolates that were either susceptible (MIC &lt;/= 8 mg/l) or resistant (MIC &gt;/= 64 mg/l) to fluconazole. According to the seminal results, both MALDI-TOF and MLP classifications could highlight C. glabrata population structures associated with either geographical dispersal barriers (p &lt; 10-5) or the selection of antifungal drug resistance traits (&lt;10-5). In conclusion, MALDI-TOF geographical clustering was congruent with MPL genotyping and highlighted a significant population genetic structure according to fluconazole susceptibility in C. glabrata. Furthermore, although MALDI-TOF and MLP resulted in distinct classifications, MALDI-TOF also classified the isolates with respect to their fluconazole susceptibility profile. Further prospective studies are required to evaluate the capacity of MALDI-TOF typing to investigate C. glabrata infection outbreaks and predict the antifungal susceptibility profile of clinical laboratory isolates</p