Feasibility of Late Transplanted Summer Pearl Millet for Prolonged rabi Season With Integrated Nitrogen Management Under Indian Coastal Region

Experiments were conducted in coastal South Gujarat region of India to evaluate the feasibility of late transplanted summer pearl millet under prolonged rabi season with integrated nitrogen management (INM) during 2014, 2015 and 2016. INM treatments were consisted of four combinations of biocompost and inorganic nitrogen fertilizers. Two planting methods were evaluated, namely drilling and transplanting. Premature heading in transplanted pearl millet was observed up to 8-10% population during all the three experimental years, the possible causes for this are slow nitrogen availability, weather conditions, the thickness of the seedlings, root pruning and seedling age at transplanting. Application of 100% Recommended Dose of Fertilizer (RDF) + 5 t biocompost had significantly increased growth, yield (3862 kg ha-1), benefit-cost ratio (B:C ratio) (3.52) and quality of parameters of pearl millet followed by 75% Recommended Dose of Nitrogen (RDN) + 25% RDN through biocompost. Late transplanted summer pearl millet was little feasible to grow over timely drilled pearl millet as it had reduced pearl millet grain yield by 6.07% and also reduced the net profit by 72.46 US $ ha-1. However, overall, it was feasible to grow late transplanted pearl millet and gave yield up to 3150 kg ha-1 in prolonged rabi season condition for brining summer season well in time

Performance Evaluation and Experimental Studies on Metallised Gel Propellants

Metallised gel propellants offer higher specific impulse and volumetric loading, reduced vaporisation loss, spillage and slosh problems and easy storage in comparison to the conventional liquid propellants. Theoretical performance analysis of gel propellant containing Al in unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine-dinitrogen tetroxide (UDMH-N/sub 2/O/sub 4} system shows peak Isp (vacuum condition) of 316.7 s and 318.3 s at oxidiser/fuel (O/f) ratios of 1.5 and 1.0, respectively for 30 per cent and 40 per cent UDMH-Al gel propellants, under standard conditions. The effect of other parameters like area ratio and chamber pressure on performance has been brought out in view of mission oriented applications. Aluminium has been found to be a better choice over magnesium in metallised gel propellants. Experimental studies on UDMH gellation using propellant grade (15 micrometer)and pyrotechnic grade (1.5 micrometer)Al in 500g batch level show that gellant(methyl cellulose) concentration could be reduced by 50 percent using pyrotechnic grade Al. The pseudoplastic-thixotropic behaviour, flow rate through die holes, burst pressure tests and bulk density are studied. UDMH -25 to 30 per cent Al gels with both grades of Al are found to be stable, pseudoplastic (shear thinning) and thixotropic (time-dependent shear thinning), but their flow pattern through die holes differ in nature

Aequatus: An open-source homology browser

Background: Phylogenetic information inferred from the study of homologous genes helps us to understand the evolution of genes and gene families, including the identification of ancestral gene duplication events as well as regions under positive or purifying selection within lineages. Gene family and orthogroup characterisation enables the identification of syntenic blocks, which can then be visualised with various tools. Unfortunately, currently available tools display only an overview of syntenic regions as a whole, limited to the gene level, and none provide further details about structural changes within genes, such as the conservation of ancestral exon boundaries amongst multiple genomes. Findings: We present Aequatus, a standalone web-based tool that provides an in-depth view of gene structure across gene families, with various options to render and filter visualisations. It relies on pre-calculated alignment and gene feature information typically held in, but not limited to, the Ensembl Compara and Core databases. We also offer Aequatus.js, a reusable JavaScript module that fulfils the visualisation aspects of Aequatus, available within the Galaxy web platform as a visualisation plugin, which can be used to visualise gene trees generated by the GeneSeqToFamily workflow. Availability: Aequatus is an open-source tool freely available to download under the GNU General Public License v3.0 at https://github.com/TGAC/Aequatus. A demo server is available at http://aequatus.earlham.ac.uk/. A publicly available instance of the GeneSeqToFamily workflow to generate gene tree information and visualise it using Aequatus is available on the Galaxy EU server at https://usegalaxy.eu

Morphological Classification of Galaxies by Shapelet Decomposition in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

We describe application of the `shapelet' linear decomposition of galaxy images to morphological classification using images of $\sim$ 3000 galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. After decomposing the galaxies we perform a principal component analysis to reduce the number of dimensions of the shapelet space to nine. We find that each of these nine principal components contains unique morphological information, and give a description of each principal component's contribution to a galaxy's morphology. We find that galaxies of differing Hubble type separate cleanly in the shapelet space. We apply a Gaussian mixture model to the 9-dimensional space spanned by the principal components and use the results as a basis for classification. Using the mixture model, we separate galaxies into seven classes and give a description of each class's physical and morphological properties. We find that several of the mixture model classes correlate well with the traditional Hubble types both in their morphology and their physical parameters (e.g., color, velocity dispersions, etc.). In addition, we find an additional class of late-type morphology but with high velocity dispersions and very blue color; most of these galaxies exhibit post-starburst activity. This method provides an objective and quantitative alternative to traditional and subjective visual classification.Comment: 21 pages, 16 figures, accepted by AJ, minor changes per the referee's comment

Development of ‘super-early’ pigeonpeas with good yield potential from early × early crosses

To enhance the adaptability of pigeonpea at higher latitude and altitude, a breeding program was initiated at ICRISAT involving different sources of early-maturity. A full diallel mating design involving 11 early-maturing lines were used as parents. In F2–F5 generations, selection was followed for early flowering and maturity, grain yield and 100-seed weight by pedigree method. Four brown seeded (ICPX 060064-4-6-10, ICPX 060077-6-5-14, ICPX 060064-4-6-2 and ICPX 060063-11-8-4) and one cream seeded (ICPX 060036-13-4-8) F4/F5 indeterminate super-early progenies that matured, respectively 25 and 23 days earlier than the control cultivar ICPL 88039 were recovered. ICPX 060036-13-4-8 recorded 107% and 34% grain yield advantage over the checks ICPL 86022 and ICPL 88039, respectively. These super-early lines were derived from crosses involving AL 1518-2 × ICPL 85010, AL 1621 × MN 5, AL 1518-2 × MN 8 and MN 8 × AL 1518-2. Other super-early progenies [ICPX 060016-10-8-1 (from MN 1 × AL 1518-2 cross) and ICPX 060017-12-12-20 (from MN 1 × AL 1621 cross)] with greater 100-seed weight were also recovered. Besides serving as excellent donors for earliness, these lines may be photo/thermo insensitive. These super-early pigeonpea lines may open new niches for this crop and help in intensification of farming system

The spatio-relational nature of urban innovation systems: Universities, knowledge intensive business service firms, and collaborative networks

The need to better identify the spatio-relational nature of urban innovation systems and spaces is increasingly acknowledged. The aim of this paper, therefore, is to provide an enhanced understanding of the knowledge networks existing between urban Knowledge Intensive Business Services firms (KIBS) and universities, which are often key components of such systems and spaces. Drawing on an analysis of urban KIBS firms and universities in the UK, it is found that the nature of firms, the location in which they are based, and the research intensity of their university partners are important determinants of the spatiality and localisation of the networks they form. The results show that the smallest urban KIBS firms have the highest propensity to engage in local links with universities, suggesting that they rely most significantly on their own urban innovation system for collaborative network ties. Keywords : innovation systems; urban innovation spaces; knowledge-based development; proximity; networks; KIBS; universities

Getting in, getting on, getting out? Women as career scramblers in the UK film and television industries

This article looks at the predominance of freelancing in the film and television industries as a lens to examine the persistence of gender inequalities within these fields. Previous research has indicated that women fare better in larger organizations with more stable patterns of employment, and in this article we explore why that might be the case, by focusing on the experiences of female freelancers at a moment when project-based, precarious work and informal recruitment practices are increasing in the UK film and television sector. We highlight in particular the ways in which gender inequality is mediated by age and parental status, and the impact of intersectional identities on women's ability to sustain a career in film and television

The InterPro protein families and domains database: 20 years on

The InterPro database (https://www.ebi.ac.uk/interpro/) provides an integrative classification of protein sequences into families, and identifies functionally important domains and conserved sites. InterProScan is the underlying software that allows protein and nucleic acid sequences to be searched against InterPro's signatures. Signatures are predictive models which describe protein families, domains or sites, and are provided by multiple databases. InterPro combines signatures representing equivalent families, domains or sites, and provides additional information such as descriptions, literature references and Gene Ontology (GO) terms, to produce a comprehensive resource for protein classification. Founded in 1999, InterPro has become one of the most widely used resources for protein family annotation. Here, we report the status of InterPro (version 81.0) in its 20th year of operation, and its associated software, including updates to database content, the release of a new website and REST API, and performance improvements in InterProScan

CDD: a Conserved Domain Database for the functional annotation of proteins

NCBI’s Conserved Domain Database (CDD) is a resource for the annotation of protein sequences with the location of conserved domain footprints, and functional sites inferred from these footprints. CDD includes manually curated domain models that make use of protein 3D structure to refine domain models and provide insights into sequence/structure/function relationships. Manually curated models are organized hierarchically if they describe domain families that are clearly related by common descent. As CDD also imports domain family models from a variety of external sources, it is a partially redundant collection. To simplify protein annotation, redundant models and models describing homologous families are clustered into superfamilies. By default, domain footprints are annotated with the corresponding superfamily designation, on top of which specific annotation may indicate high-confidence assignment of family membership. Pre-computed domain annotation is available for proteins in the Entrez/Protein dataset, and a novel interface, Batch CD-Search, allows the computation and download of annotation for large sets of protein queries. CDD can be accessed via http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Structure/cdd/cdd.shtml