Eighteen Rootstock and Five Scion Tomato Varieties: Seedling Growth Rates Before Grafting and Success in Grafting the Ninety Variety Combinations

This is a compilation of 30 research trial reports from four land-grant universities in the Midwestern United States. Crops include cantaloupe, pickling cucumber, pepper, potato, pumpkin, summer squash and zucchini, sweet corn, tomato, and watermelon. Somecrops were evaluated in high tunnels or hoophouses. Most trials evaluated different cultivars or varieties. One report addressed plant spacing for sweet corn and one addressed soil block for production of tomato seedlings. A list of vegetable seed sources and a list of other online sources of vegetable trial reports are also included

Advances in non-invasive biosensing measures to monitor wound healing progression

Impaired wound healing is a significant financial and medical burden. The synthesis and deposition of extracellular matrix (ECM) in a new wound is a dynamic process that is constantly changing and adapting to the biochemical and biomechanical signaling from the extracellular microenvironments of the wound. This drives either a regenerative or fibrotic and scar-forming healing outcome. Disruptions in ECM deposition, structure, and composition lead to impaired healing in diseased states, such as in diabetes. Valid measures of the principal determinants of successful ECM deposition and wound healing include lack of bacterial contamination, good tissue perfusion, and reduced mechanical injury and strain. These measures are used by wound-care providers to intervene upon the healing wound to steer healing toward a more functional phenotype with improved structural integrity and healing outcomes and to prevent adverse wound developments. In this review, we discuss bioengineering advances in 1) non-invasive detection of biologic and physiologic factors of the healing wound, 2) visualizing and modeling the ECM, and 3) computational tools that efficiently evaluate the complex data acquired from the wounds based on basic science, preclinical, translational and clinical studies, that would allow us to prognosticate healing outcomes and intervene effectively. We focus on bioelectronics and biologic interfaces of the sensors and actuators for real time biosensing and actuation of the tissues. We also discuss high-resolution, advanced imaging techniques, which go beyond traditional confocal and fluorescence microscopy to visualize microscopic details of the composition of the wound matrix, linearity of collagen, and live tracking of components within the wound microenvironment. Computational modeling of the wound matrix, including partial differential equation datasets as well as machine learning models that can serve as powerful tools for physicians to guide their decision-making process are discussed

Activity of TSC2 is inhibited by AKT-mediated phosphorylation and membrane partitioning

Loss of tuberin, the product of TSC2 gene, increases mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) signaling, promoting cell growth and tumor development. However, in cells expressing tuberin, it is not known how repression of mTOR signaling is relieved to activate this pathway in response to growth factors and how hamartin participates in this process. We show that hamartin colocalizes with hypophosphorylated tuberin at the membrane, where tuberin exerts its GTPase-activating protein (GAP) activity to repress Rheb signaling. In response to growth signals, tuberin is phosphorylated by AKT and translocates to the cytosol, relieving Rheb repression. Phosphorylation of tuberin at serines 939 and 981 does not alter its intrinsic GAP activity toward Rheb but partitions tuberin to the cytosol, where it is bound by 14-3-3 proteins. Thus, tuberin bound by 14-3-3 in response to AKT phosphorylation is sequestered away from its membrane-bound activation partner (hamartin) and its target GTPase (Rheb) to relieve the growth inhibitory effects of this tumor suppressor

Liberal intervention in the foreign policy thinking of Tony Blair and David Cameron

David Cameron was a critic of Tony Blair’s doctrine of the international community, which was used to justify war in Kosovo and more controversially in Iraq, suggesting caution in projecting military force abroad while in opposition. However, and in spite of making severe cuts to the defence budget, the Cameron-led Coalition government signed Britain up to a military intervention in Libya within a year of coming into office. What does this say about the place liberal interventionism occupies in contemporary British foreign policy? To answer this question, this article studies the nature of what we describe as the ‘bounded liberal’ tradition that has informed British foreign policy thinking since 1945, suggesting that it puts a distinctly UK national twist on conventional conservative thought about international affairs. Its components are: scepticism of grand schemes to remake the world; instinctive Atlanticism; security through collective endeavour; and anti-appeasement. We then compare and contrast the conditions for intervention set out by Tony Blair and David Cameron. We explain the similarities but crucially also the vital differences between the two leaders’ thinking on intervention, with particular reference to Cameron’s perception that Downing Street needed to loosen its control over foreign policy-making after Iraq. Our argument is that policy substance, policy style and party political dilemmas prompted Blair and Cameron to reconnect British foreign policy with its ethical roots, ingraining a bounded liberal posture to British foreign policy after the moral bankruptcy of the John Major years. This return to a patient, pragmatic and ethically informed foreign policy meant that military operations in Kosovo and Libya were undertaken in quite different circumstances, yet came to be justified by similar arguments from the two leaders

Asymmetric patterns of recovery in two habitat forming seagrass species following simulated overgrazing by urchins

The persistence of seagrass meadows reflects variation in factors that influence their productivity and consumption. Sea urchins (Amblypneustes pallidus) can over-graze seagrass (Amphibolis antarctica) to create sparse meadows in South Australia, but this effect is not observed in adjacent Posidonia sinuosa meadows despite greater densities of inhabiting urchins. To test the effect of urchin grazing on seagrass biomass, we elevated the density of urchins in meadows of A. antarctica and P. sinuosa and quantified seagrass decline. Urchins removed similar amounts of biomass from both seagrass species, but the loss of leaf meristems was 11-times greater in A. antarctica than in P. sinuosa. In a second experiment to assess the recovery of seagrass, we simulated urchin grazing by clipping seagrass to mimic impacts measured in the first experiment, as well as completely removing all above ground biomass in one treatment. Following simulated grazing, P. sinuosa showed a rapid trajectory toward recovery, while A. antarctica meadows continued to decline relative to control treatments. While both A. antarctica and P. sinuosa were susceptible to heavy grazing loss, consumption of the exposed meristems of A. antarctica appears to reduce its capacity to recover, which may increase its vulnerability to long-term habitat phase-shifts and associated cascading ecosystem changes. © 2013 Elsevier B.V.Owen W. Burnell, Sean D. Connell, Andrew D. Irving, Bayden D. Russel

Social presence and dishonesty in retail

Self-service checkouts (SCOs) in retail can benefit consumers and retailers, providing control and autonomy to shoppers independent from staff, together with reduced queuing times. Recent research indicates that the absence of staff may provide the opportunity for consumers to behave dishonestly, consistent with a perceived lack of social presence. This study examined whether a social presence in the form of various instantiations of embodied, visual, humanlike SCO interface agents had an effect on opportunistic behaviour. Using a simulated SCO scenario, participants experienced various dilemmas in which they could financially benefit themselves undeservedly. We hypothesised that a humanlike social presence integrated within the checkout screen would receive more attention and result in fewer instances of dishonesty compared to a less humanlike agent. This was partially supported by the results. The findings contribute to the theoretical framework in social presence research. We concluded that companies adopting self-service technology may consider the implementation of social presence in technology applications to support ethical consumer behaviour, but that more research is required to explore the mixed findings in the current study.<br/

Single hadron response measurement and calorimeter jet energy scale uncertainty with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

The uncertainty on the calorimeter energy response to jets of particles is derived for the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). First, the calorimeter response to single isolated charged hadrons is measured and compared to the Monte Carlo simulation using proton-proton collisions at centre-of-mass energies of sqrt(s) = 900 GeV and 7 TeV collected during 2009 and 2010. Then, using the decay of K_s and Lambda particles, the calorimeter response to specific types of particles (positively and negatively charged pions, protons, and anti-protons) is measured and compared to the Monte Carlo predictions. Finally, the jet energy scale uncertainty is determined by propagating the response uncertainty for single charged and neutral particles to jets. The response uncertainty is 2-5% for central isolated hadrons and 1-3% for the final calorimeter jet energy scale.Comment: 24 pages plus author list (36 pages total), 23 figures, 1 table, submitted to European Physical Journal

Search for squarks and gluinos in events with isolated leptons, jets and missing transverse momentum at s√=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

The results of a search for supersymmetry in final states containing at least one isolated lepton (electron or muon), jets and large missing transverse momentum with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider are reported. The search is based on proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy s√=8 TeV collected in 2012, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 20 fb−1. No significant excess above the Standard Model expectation is observed. Limits are set on supersymmetric particle masses for various supersymmetric models. Depending on the model, the search excludes gluino masses up to 1.32 TeV and squark masses up to 840 GeV. Limits are also set on the parameters of a minimal universal extra dimension model, excluding a compactification radius of 1/R c = 950 GeV for a cut-off scale times radius (ΛR c) of approximately 30

Measurements of fiducial and differential cross sections for Higgs boson production in the diphoton decay channel at s√=8 TeV with ATLAS

Measurements of fiducial and differential cross sections are presented for Higgs boson production in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of s√=8 TeV. The analysis is performed in the H → γγ decay channel using 20.3 fb−1 of data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The signal is extracted using a fit to the diphoton invariant mass spectrum assuming that the width of the resonance is much smaller than the experimental resolution. The signal yields are corrected for the effects of detector inefficiency and resolution. The pp → H → γγ fiducial cross section is measured to be 43.2 ±9.4(stat.) − 2.9 + 3.2 (syst.) ±1.2(lumi)fb for a Higgs boson of mass 125.4GeV decaying to two isolated photons that have transverse momentum greater than 35% and 25% of the diphoton invariant mass and each with absolute pseudorapidity less than 2.37. Four additional fiducial cross sections and two cross-section limits are presented in phase space regions that test the theoretical modelling of different Higgs boson production mechanisms, or are sensitive to physics beyond the Standard Model. Differential cross sections are also presented, as a function of variables related to the diphoton kinematics and the jet activity produced in the Higgs boson events. The observed spectra are statistically limited but broadly in line with the theoretical expectations