The Victorian soldier in Africa

'The Victorian soldier in Africa' re-examines the campaign experience of British soldiers in Africa during the period, 1874-1902 - the zenith of the Victorian imperial expansion - and does so from the perspective of the regimental soldier. Focusing on eight different encounters, the book utilises an unprecedented number of letters and diaries, written by regimental officers and other ranks, to allow soldiers to speak for themselves about their experience of colonial campaigning of the late nineteenth century. The sources demonstrate the adaptability of the British army in fighting in different climates, over demanding terrain and against a diverse array of enemies, including the Asante, Xhosa, Zulus, Egyptians, Mahdists and Boers. They also reveal soldiers' responses to army reforms of the era and the effectiveness of shifts from long-service to short-service terms of enlistment, the abolition of purchase and flogging as well as monitoring responses to the introduction of new technologies of warfare in the form of the machine gun, the smokeless rifle and the dum dum bullet. The book provides commentary on soldiers' views of commanding officers and politicians alongside assessment of war correspondents, colonial auxiliaries and African natives in their roles as bearers, allies and enemies. Overall, the book examines the relationship between how soldiers thought about and recorded their own private experiences of warfare and how this was conveyed to the wider world - to friends and family at home and to the wider newspaper-reading public. Essential reading for specialists in military history and British colonialism this book reveals new insights on imperial and racial attitudes within the army, on relations between soldiers and the media and on the production of information and knowledge and its transmission from frontline to homefront

Predicting the minimum liquid surface tension activity of pseudomonads expressing biosurfactants

Bacteria produce a variety of biosurfactants capable of significantly reducing liquid (aqueous) surface tension (γ) with a range of biological roles and biotechnological uses. In order to determine the lowest achievable surface tension (γMin), we tested a diverse collection of Pseudomonas-like isolates from contaminated soil and activated sludge, and identified those expressing biosurfactants by drop-collapse assay. Liquid surface tension reducing ability was quantitatively determined by tensiometry, with 57 isolates found to significantly lower culture supernatant surface tensions to 24.5 – 49.1 mN m−1. Differences in biosurfactant behaviour determined by foaming, emulsion and oil-displacement assays, was also observed amongst isolates producing surface tensions of 25 – 27 mN m−1, suggesting that a range of structurally-diverse biosurfactants were being expressed. Individual distribution identification (IDI) analysis was used to identify the theoretical probability distribution that best fitted the surface tension data, which predicted a γMin of 24.24 mN m−1. This was in agreement with predictions based on earlier work of published mixed–bacterial spp. data, suggesting a fundamental limit to the ability of bacterial biosurfactants to reduce surface tensions in aqueous systems. This implies a biological restriction on the synthesis and export of these agents or a physical-chemical restriction on their functioning once produced

The results of an agricultural analysis of the ERTS-1 MSS data at the Johnson Space Center

The initial analysis of the ERTS-1 multispectral scanner (MSS) data at the Johnson Space Center (JSC), Houston, Texas is discussed. The primary data set utilized was the scene over Monterey Bay, California, on July 25, 1972, NASA ERTS ID No. 1002-18134. It was submitted to both computerized and image interpretative processing. An area in the San Joaquin Valley was submitted to an intensive evaluation of the ability of the data to (1) discriminate between crop types and (2) to provide a reasonably accurate area measurement of agricultural features of interest. The results indicate that the ERTS-1 MSS data is capable of providing the identifications and area extent of agricultural lands and field crop types

Sleep targets highly connected global and local nodes to aid consolidation of learned graph networks

Much of our long-term knowledge is organised in complex networks. Sleep is thought to be critical for abstracting knowledge and enhancing important item memory for long-term retention. Thus, sleep should aid the development of memory for networks and the abstraction of their structure for efficient storage. However, this remains unknown because past sleep studies have focused on discrete items. Here we explored the impact of sleep (night-sleep/day-wake within-subject paradigm with 25 male participants) on memory for graph-networks where some items were important due to dense local connections (degree centrality) or, independently, important due to greater global connections (closeness/betweenness centrality). A network of 27 planets (nodes) sparsely interconnected by 36 teleporters (edges) was learned via discrete associations without explicit indication of any network structure. Despite equivalent exposure to all connections in the network, we found that memory for the links between items with high local connectivity or high global connectivity were better retained after sleep. These results highlight that sleep has the capacity for strengthening both global and local structure from the world and abstracting over multiple experiences to efficiently form internal networks of knowledge

Priming winter wheat seeds with the bacterial quorum sensing signal N-hexanoyl-L-homoserine lactone (C6-HSL) shows potential to improve plant growth and seed yield

Several model plants are known to respond to bacterial quorum sensing molecules with altered root growth and gene expression patterns and induced resistance to plant pathogens. These compounds may represent novel elicitors that could be applied as seed primers to enhance cereal crop resistance to pathogens and abiotic stress and to improve yields. We investigated whether the acyl-homoserine lactone N-hexanoyl-L-homoserine lactone (C6-HSL) impacted winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) seed germination, plant development and productivity, using two Ukrainian varieties, Volodarka and Yatran 60, in both in vitro experiments and field trials. In vitro germination experiments indicated that C6-HSL seed priming had a small but significant positive impact on germination levels (1.2x increase, p < 0.0001), coleoptile and radicle development (1.4x increase, p < 0.0001). Field trials over two growing seasons (2015-16 and 2016-17) also demonstrated significant improvements in biomass at the tillering stage (1.4x increase, p < 0.0001), and crop structure and productivity at maturity including grain yield (1.4 – 1.5x increase, p < 0.0007) and quality (1.3x increase in good grain, p < 0.0001). In some cases variety effects were observed (p ≤ 0.05) suggesting that the effect of C6-HSL seed priming might depend on plant genetics, and some benefits of priming were also evident in F1 plants grown from seeds collected the previous season (p ≤ 0.05). These field-scale findings suggest that bacterial acyl-homoserine lactones such as C6-HSL could be used to improve cereal crop growth and yield and reduce reliance on fungicides and fertilisers to combat pathogens and stress

SPLINE MODELS FOR ESTIMATING HEAT STRESS THRESHOLDS IN CATTLE

Studies of the relationship between animal body temperature and air temperature suggest body temperature is essentially unresponsive until a threshold is reached, then it responds dramatically to increasing air temperature. The goal is to estimate the threshold between the thermoneutral plateau and the beginning of the heat stress challenge. One approach is to fit a polynomial to estimate the knot position and use spline functions to perform linear least squares piecewise polynomial fitting. Another alternative is to use nonlinear regression to estimate the knot or an inflection point of a nonlinear function. In both approaches the cyclic nature of body temperature is ignored. This paper explores the use of nonlinear regression to estimate the knot position and handles the hysteresis effect resulting from the cyclic nature of body temperature. Models are fit to data collected from cattle in chambers subjected to semicontrolled sinusoidal air temperature at the University of Missouri-Columbia Animal Science department and a procedure for estimating the heat stress threshold is proposed

Study of diffusion weighted MRI as a predictive biomarker of response during radiotherapy for high and intermediate risk squamous cell cancer of the oropharynx: The MeRInO study

Introduction and background: A significant proportion of patients with intermediate and high risk squamous cell cancer of the oropharynx (OPSCC) continue to relapse locally despite radical chemoradiotherapy (CRT). The toxicity of the current combination of intensified dose per fraction radiotherapy and platinum based chemotherapy limits further uniform intensification. If a predictive biomarker for outcomes from CRT can be identified during treatment then individualised and adaptive treatment strategies may be employed. Methods/design: The MeRInO study is a prospective observational imaging study of patients with intermediate and high risk, locally advanced OPSCC receiving radical RT or concurrent CRT Patients undergo diffusion weighted MRI prior to treatment (MRI_1) and during the third week of RT (MRI_2). Apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) measurements will be made on each scan for previously specified target lesions (primary and lymph nodes) and change in ADC calculated. Patients will be followed up and disease status for each target lesion noted. The primary aim of the MeRInO study is to determine the threshold change in ADC from baseline to week 3 of RT that may identify the sub-group of non-responders during treatment. Discussion: The use of DW-MRI as a predictive biomarker during RT for SCC H&N is in its infancy but studies to date have found that response to treatment may indeed be predicted by comparison of DW-MRI carried out before and during treatment. However, previous studies have included all sub-sites and biological sub-types. Establishing ADC thresholds that predict for local failure is an essential step towards using DW-MRI to improve the therapeutic ratio in treating SCC H&N. This would be done most robustly in a specific H&N sub-site and in sub-types with similar biological behaviour. The MeRInO study will help establish these thresholds in OPSCC