A model towards hurricane preparedness communication in the state of Florida, USA

Hurricanes are hazards that become disasters when they interact with the human environment. It is critical to elucidate how the minimally investigated hurricane preparedness communication paradigm impacts vulnerable populations. This study was conducted in a hurricane-prone U.S. region: Central and West Florida. The aim was to develop a model for hurricane-focused Disaster Management professionals that informs social-centric hurricane preparedness communication that is tailored to high-risk building occupants in Florida, and verify its accuracy. The research design was derived from the literature review and document review covering Disaster Management, hurricanes, hurricane preparedness plans, high-risk buildings, and communication. Interviews were conducted with six Disaster Management professionals and 12 high-risk building occupants. Five linguistic analysis techniques guided the data collection and analysis: Personal Experience Narrative, frame analysis, paradigmatic analysis, discourse analysis, and template analysis. Research results, including 10 exemplars and 27 themes, were synthesised to develop a model that incorporates hurricane preparedness language input from these stakeholders: Disaster Management professionals, high-risk building occupants, and academic institutions. Three Disaster Management professionals and four high-risk building occupants reviewed the model and found that it accurately represented their interview responses; the model was refined further based on these responses. This collaborative model offers a framework to generate holistic hurricane preparedness language by combining prescriptive language used by Disaster Management professionals and academic institutions with descriptive language used by high-risk building occupants. The hurricane preparedness language from this model can be utilised by Disaster Management professionals to optimise hurricane preparedness communication for high-risk building occupants in Florida

An integrated, bottom-up approach to evaluate the role of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) in achieving net-zero energy systems

Early-stage deployment of BECCS, supported by integrated policies and financing mechanisms to suit the socioeconomic and environmental context, could help achieve net-zero energy systems at small scales and further evaluate their feasibility in the long run

Factors Affecting Male Pink Bollworm Moth Catches in Gossyplure Baited Traps

In an experiment conducted in cotton fields at Hissar, Haryana (India) during the year 1978–79, it was observed that the most effective trap for the capture of male pink bolworm moths using sex pheromone "gossyplure" was metal trap in which either rubber stopper or plastic tube was used as pheromone dispenser and either liquid paraffiIl or cottOl1 seed oil was used as moth sticking material. Maximum moths were captured when the traps were kept at the plant canopy level and at a distance of 60 or 40 metres

Role of acute viral hepatitis as a confounding factor in antituberculosis treatment induced hepatotoxicity

Background & Objective: Drug induced hepatotoxicity (DIH) is an important and commonly encountered adverse effect with antituberculosis (anti-TB) treatment. Acute viral hepatitis (AVH) is an important confounding reason which clinically, biochemically and histologically mimics DIH. Methods: The contributory role of acute viral hepatitis as a confounding factor in patients with normal baseline liver functions who developed acute hepatitis while receiving short-course anti-TB treatment was prospectively studied. The sera of all patients who developed acute hepatitis were analysed for markers for hepatitis A, B, C and E viruses. Results: Viral hepatitis was present in 15 of the 102 (14.7%) patients who developed acute hepatitis while receiving anti-TB treatment with hepatitis E virus being the most common cause Later onset of acute hepatitis [58 (5-133) vs. 26 (3-221) days; P=0.04], large elevations in aspartate aminotransferase (AST) [371 (30-2643) vs. 212 (63-1990 IU/l); P=0.03] and alanine aminotransferase (ALT) [388 (31-2997) vs. 225 (52- 1670 IU/l); P= 0.002] and a longer time for normalization of deranged liver functions [36.7 ± 13.3 vs. 24.5 ± 19.3 days; P=0.02] indicated acute viral hepatitis as the cause of liver function derangement. Interpretation & Conclusion: Our findings showed AVH in 14.7 per cent patients who developed hepatotoxicity while an anti-TB treatment. Therefore, in endemic areas, viral hepatitis should be sought after and excluded in all patients suspected to have DIH before attributing the hepatotoxic effect to the anti-TB drugs

Litterfall guided soil nutrient return in Eucalyptus based agroforestry system

544-549Here, the arrangement of litterfall and nutrient return to the soil by the seven-year-old plantations of Eucalyptus under different spacings established on sodic wastelands in northern India was determined. The litterfall was sorted into leaf wood and miscellaneous. Further, the seasonal variation of litterfall obtained under three different spacings was recorded. Maximum leaf litter production was observed in 3×3 m spacing followed by 6×1.5 m during the winter season. Whereas, the minimum leaf litter was recorded in 17×1×1 m spacing. Similarly, the maximum wood litter production was observed at the spacing of 3×3 m spacing in rainy season followed by 6×1.5 m.The weights of nutrients returned through annual litterfall in 3×3 spacing returned the highest amount of N (2.16 g/m2 year) followed by 6×1.5 and 17×1×1 spacing.. Whereas, two-year data of litterfall of E. tereticornis showed the 17×1×1 spacing returned the highest amount of P in next year through leaf litter followed by 6×1.5 and minimum 3×3 spacing. Overall, this study provides important information regarding the litterfall guided soil nutrient return to the soil under North Indian conditions

Litterfall guided soil nutrient return in Eucalyptus based agroforestry system

Here, the arrangement of litterfall and nutrient return to the soil by the seven-year-old plantations of Eucalyptus under different spacings established on sodic wastelands in northern India was determined. The litterfall was sorted into leaf wood and miscellaneous. Further, the seasonal variation of litterfall obtained under three different spacings was recorded. Maximum leaf litter production was observed in 3×3 m spacing followed by 6×1.5 m during the winter season. Whereas, the minimum leaf litter was recorded in 17×1×1 m spacing. Similarly, the maximum wood litter production was observed at the spacing of 3×3 m spacing in rainy season followed by 6×1.5 m.The weights of nutrients returned through annual litterfall in 3×3 spacing returned the highest amount of N (2.16 g/m2 year) followed by 6×1.5 and 17×1×1 spacing.. Whereas, two-year data of litterfall of E. tereticornis showed the 17×1×1 spacing returned the highest amount of P in next year through leaf litter followed by 6×1.5 and minimum 3×3 spacing. Overall, this study provides important information regarding the litterfall guided soil nutrient return to the soil under North Indian conditions

An Evolutionary Reduction Principle for Mutation Rates at Multiple Loci

A model of mutation rate evolution for multiple loci under arbitrary selection is analyzed. Results are obtained using techniques from Karlin (1982) that overcome the weak selection constraints needed for tractability in prior studies of multilocus event models. A multivariate form of the reduction principle is found: reduction results at individual loci combine topologically to produce a surface of mutation rate alterations that are neutral for a new modifier allele. New mutation rates survive if and only if they fall below this surface - a generalization of the hyperplane found by Zhivotovsky et al. (1994) for a multilocus recombination modifier. Increases in mutation rates at some loci may evolve if compensated for by decreases at other loci. The strength of selection on the modifier scales in proportion to the number of germline cell divisions, and increases with the number of loci affected. Loci that do not make a difference to marginal fitnesses at equilibrium are not subject to the reduction principle, and under fine tuning of mutation rates would be expected to have higher mutation rates than loci in mutation-selection balance. Other results include the nonexistence of 'viability analogous, Hardy-Weinberg' modifier polymorphisms under multiplicative mutation, and the sufficiency of average transmission rates to encapsulate the effect of modifier polymorphisms on the transmission of loci under selection. A conjecture is offered regarding situations, like recombination in the presence of mutation, that exhibit departures from the reduction principle. Constraints for tractability are: tight linkage of all loci, initial fixation at the modifier locus, and mutation distributions comprising transition probabilities of reversible Markov chains.Comment: v3: Final corrections. v2: Revised title, reworked and expanded introductory and discussion sections, added corollaries, new results on modifier polymorphisms, minor corrections. 49 pages, 64 reference

Measures of Association for Identifying MicroRNA-mRNA Pairs of Biological Interest

MicroRNAs are a class of small non-protein coding RNAs that play an important role in the regulation of gene expression. Most studies on the identification of microRNA-mRNA pairs utilize the correlation coefficient as a measure of association. The use of correlation coefficient is appropriate if the expression data are available for several conditions and, for a given condition, both microRNA and mRNA expression profiles are obtained from the same set of individuals. However, there are many instances where one of the requirements is not satisfied. Therefore, there is a need for new measures of association to identify the microRNA-mRNA pairs of interest and we present two such measures. The first measure requires expression data for multiple conditions but, for a given condition, the microRNA and mRNA expression may be obtained from different individuals. The new measure, unlike the correlation coefficient, is suitable for analyzing large data sets which are obtained by combining several independent studies on microRNAs and mRNAs. Our second measure is able to handle expression data that correspond to just two conditions but, for a given condition, the microRNA and mRNA expression must be obtained from the same set of individuals. This measure, unlike the correlation coefficient, is appropriate for analyzing data sets with a small number of conditions. We apply our new measures of association to multiple myeloma data sets, which cannot be analyzed using the correlation coefficient, and identify several microRNA-mRNA pairs involved in apoptosis and cell proliferation

Quantification of miRNA-mRNA Interactions

miRNAs are small RNA molecules (′ 22nt) that interact with their corresponding target mRNAs inhibiting the translation of the mRNA into proteins and cleaving the target mRNA. This second effect diminishes the overall expression of the target mRNA. Several miRNA-mRNA relationship databases have been deployed, most of them based on sequence complementarities. However, the number of false positives in these databases is large and they do not overlap completely. Recently, it has been proposed to combine expression measurement from both miRNA and mRNA and sequence based predictions to achieve more accurate relationships. In our work, we use LASSO regression with non-positive constraints to integrate both sources of information. LASSO enforces the sparseness of the solution and the non-positive constraints restrict the search of miRNA targets to those with down-regulation effects on the mRNA expression. We named this method TaLasso (miRNA-Target LASSO)

Identification of microRNA-mRNA modules using microarray data

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are post-transcriptional regulators of mRNA expression and are involved in numerous cellular processes. Consequently, miRNAs are an important component of gene regulatory networks and an improved understanding of miRNAs will further our knowledge of these networks. There is a many-to-many relationship between miRNAs and mRNAs because a single miRNA targets multiple mRNAs and a single mRNA is targeted by multiple miRNAs. However, most of the current methods for the identification of regulatory miRNAs and their target mRNAs ignore this biological observation and focus on miRNA-mRNA pairs.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We propose a two-step method for the identification of many-to-many relationships between miRNAs and mRNAs. In the first step, we obtain miRNA and mRNA clusters using a combination of miRNA-target mRNA prediction algorithms and microarray expression data. In the second step, we determine the associations between miRNA clusters and mRNA clusters based on changes in miRNA and mRNA expression profiles. We consider the miRNA-mRNA clusters with statistically significant associations to be potentially regulatory and, therefore, of biological interest.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our method reduces the interactions between several hundred miRNAs and several thousand mRNAs to a few miRNA-mRNA groups, thereby facilitating a more meaningful biological analysis and a more targeted experimental validation.</p