Some aspects of the biology and behaviour of Sesamia nonagrioides botanephaga Tams and Bowden (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae), a major stem borer pest of maize in Southern Ghana

Studies were conducted on the stemborer, Sesamia nonagrioides botanephaga Tams and Bowden (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae), which is a pest of increasing importance on maize in Ghana, to elucidate some aspects of its biology and behaviour in southern Ghana. The pest was more abundant in the minor season than in the major season. The life cycle revealed 10 developmental stages, namely the egg, six larval instars, prepupa and pupa. A female S. n. botanephaga laid eggs within a period of 5 days. The eggs were deposited on the inner side of the leaf sheath fitting tightly onto the maize stem. The mated females laid more eggs per female (330 + 17.7 eggs) than the virgin females (268 + 9.2 eggs). The incubation period of the eggs was 5.23 + 0.03 (5-7) days. The mean larval duration was 29 days and the prepupal period lasted for 1–3 days. The first instar larvae dispersed within 1–3 days after hatching. The third, fourth, fifth, and sixth instar larvae fed actively on maize stalk producing large quantities of frass. The pupal period varied from 6 to 10 days. The life cycle was completed in an average of 35.2 (26-51) days. Adults of S. n. botanephaga lived for between 4–10 days. The adults reared in the laboratory showed a sex ratio of 2:3 (male : female), which was significantly different from the expected ratio (1:1). The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the effective management of the pest in Ghana

Muppet: MapReduce-Style Processing of Fast Data

MapReduce has emerged as a popular method to process big data. In the past few years, however, not just big data, but fast data has also exploded in volume and availability. Examples of such data include sensor data streams, the Twitter Firehose, and Facebook updates. Numerous applications must process fast data. Can we provide a MapReduce-style framework so that developers can quickly write such applications and execute them over a cluster of machines, to achieve low latency and high scalability? In this paper we report on our investigation of this question, as carried out at Kosmix and WalmartLabs. We describe MapUpdate, a framework like MapReduce, but specifically developed for fast data. We describe Muppet, our implementation of MapUpdate. Throughout the description we highlight the key challenges, argue why MapReduce is not well suited to address them, and briefly describe our current solutions. Finally, we describe our experience and lessons learned with Muppet, which has been used extensively at Kosmix and WalmartLabs to power a broad range of applications in social media and e-commerce.Comment: VLDB201

The role of elective neck dissection during surgical salvage for recurrent nasopharyngeal carcinoma

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Induction of the stringent response in staphylococcus aureus by mupirocin and its effect on global transcription and virulence factors

Staphylococcus aureus is a major pathogen in both hospital and community settings and it causes infections ranging from mild skin and wound infections to life-threatening systemic illness and, together with the emergence of antibiotic resistance, has been a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. The stringent response, is a stress response that bacteria display to avoid death when subjected to amino-acid starvation. This phenomenon has been observed in different species among Gram positive and Gram negative bacteria but relatively few studies have observed the stress response in Staphylococcus aureus. The stringent response can be triggered by treatment with mupirocin, an antibiotic that mimics amino-acid starvation by inhibiting isoleucyl tRNA synthetase.In this project S. aureus 8325-4 was exposed to sub-inhibitory concentrations of mupirocin (0.5 MIC = 0.25µg/ml-1) to investigate the ability of this concentration to trigger the stringent response. The treatment with mupirocin was continued up to 24 h as previous studies only examined short periods of treatment. Growth was inhibited and the stringent response nucleotide ppGpp was detected 1 h after treatment which slowly decreased in concentration for up to 4 h combined with significant growth inhibition. However, ppGpp could not be detected at 12 or 24 h whereas growth resumed.In addition, the effect of sub-inhibitory concentrations of mupirocin was observed on the TSST-1 producing S. aureus clinical strain (B49). Q-PCR showed up-regulation of tst gene, codes for TSST-1, and its regulator RNAIII transcription up to 8 h of exposure relative to controls, the toxin was not detected by Reverse Passive Latex Assay.Further, RNA-seq analysis was used to observe the global transcriptional alterations caused by the stringent response in S. aureus at 1, 12 and 24 h. From the whole transcriptome profile, differentially expressed genes relative to control as well as from comparisons between treated cell time points were observed concentrating on 60 virulence genes and stress related genes that were significantly increased through stringent response status (1 h). Although ppGpp was not detected at 12 h, cells were still under the influence of the stringent response. However, cell growth had resumed by 24 h which indicates recovery after exposure to sub-lethal concentrations of mupirocin. The effect of the sub-inhibitory concentration of mupirocin on global gene expression in S. aureus is discussed in relation to global control of gene expression and clinical use. In addition, a scenario for S. aureus recovery from stringent response has been suggested here which might open doors for drug target determination in the future

Expression of Epstein-Barr virus-encoded BamH1-A rightward transcript 7 microRNA in nasopharyngeal carcinoma cells modulates the responsive to irradiation treatment

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Hypoxia in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma

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mTOR pathway and mTOR inhibitors in head and heck cancer

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mTOR pathway and mTOR inhibitors in head and heck cancer

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