Exploring the link between more negative osmotic potential and ryegrass summer performance

This paper outlines recent research studying within-population variation in selected New Zealand perennial ryegrass cultivars, for traits related to tolerance of summer moisture deficit. Two clonal replicates of 220 genotypes from ‘Grasslands Nui’ (Nui, n=50), ‘Grasslands Samson’ Samson, n=80), and ‘Trojan’ (n=90) were exposed to a 1 month of moisture deficit challenge, with plant water relations measurements performed to evaluate putative drought-response mechanisms. Water use of individual genotypes ranged from 1000 g water/g DM indicating large within-population variation for this trait. Mean WUE for Nui, Samson, and Trojan was, respectively, 424±16, 412±10, and 319±9 g water/g DW (P<0.001), suggesting that commercial plant breeding may have indirectly reduced water use in modern cultivars without specific focus on water relations. Principal component analysis indicated more negative osmotic potential may contribute to reduced water use while maintaining yield under water deficit, giving a potential focus for future breeding selection targeting summer water deficit tolerance.fals

Unsupervised Feature Selection with Adaptive Structure Learning

The problem of feature selection has raised considerable interests in the past decade. Traditional unsupervised methods select the features which can faithfully preserve the intrinsic structures of data, where the intrinsic structures are estimated using all the input features of data. However, the estimated intrinsic structures are unreliable/inaccurate when the redundant and noisy features are not removed. Therefore, we face a dilemma here: one need the true structures of data to identify the informative features, and one need the informative features to accurately estimate the true structures of data. To address this, we propose a unified learning framework which performs structure learning and feature selection simultaneously. The structures are adaptively learned from the results of feature selection, and the informative features are reselected to preserve the refined structures of data. By leveraging the interactions between these two essential tasks, we are able to capture accurate structures and select more informative features. Experimental results on many benchmark data sets demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms many state of the art unsupervised feature selection methods

Evolution of superconductivity by oxygen annealing in FeTe0.8S0.2

Oxygen annealing dramatically improved the superconducting properties of solid-state-reacted FeTe0.8S0.2, which showed only a broad onset of superconducting transition just after the synthesis. The zero resistivity appeared and reached 8.5 K by the oxygen annealing at 200\degree C. The superconducting volume fraction was also enhanced from 0 to almost 100%. The lattice constants were compressed by the oxygen annealing, indicating that the evolution of bulk superconductivity in FeTe0.8S0.2 was correlated to the shrinkage of lattice.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figure

Extragalactic Point Source Search in WMAP 61 and 94 GHz Data

We report the results of an extragalactic point source search using the 61 and 94 GHz (V- and W-band) temperature maps from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). Applying a method that cancels the ``noise'' due to the CMB anisotropy signal, we find in the |b| > 10\degr region 31 sources in the first-year maps and 64 sources in the three-year co-added maps, at a $5\sigma$ level. The 1$\sigma$ position uncertainties are 1.6' and 1.4' each. The increased detections and improved positional accuracy are expected from the higher signal-to-noise ratio of WMAP three-year data. All sources detected in the first-year maps are repeatedly detected in the three-year maps, which is a strong proof of the consistency and reliability of this method. Among all the detections, 21 are new, i.e. not in the WMAP three-year point source catalog. We associate all but two of them with known objects. The two unidentified sources are likely to be variable or extended as observations through VLA, CARMA and ATCA all show non-detection at the nominal locations. We derive the source count distribution at WMAP V-band by combining our verified detections with sources from the WMAP three-year catalog. Assuming the effect of source clustering is negligible, the contribution to the power spectrum from faint sources below 0.75 Jy is estimated to be $(2.4\pm0.8) \times 10^{-3} \mu K^2$ sr for V-band, which implies a source correction amplitude $A = 0.012\pm0.004 \mu K^2$ sr.Comment: 22 pages, 10 figures, submitted to ApJ; Typo corrected in the uncertainty of kappa in the Discussion, and a correction to the description of the smoothing function in Methodolog

Expression of polyhedrin-hEGF fusion protein in cultured cells and larvae of Bombyx mori

For mass production of human epidermal growth factor (hEGF), silkworm baculovirus expression vector system (BEVS) was adopted in this study. hEGF gene was in-frame fused with polyhedrin (Ph) gene under the control of Ph promoter and was used to co-transfect BmN cell with the modifiedBombyx mori baculovirus DNA to obtained recombinant virus. The ELISA showed a maximum expression on day 4 in larvae and pupae. Both cellular extracts and haemolymph of silkworm larvae infected with rBacPh-EGF could all support the proliferation of Balb/c 3T3 cell. The correspondingmaterials from BmN cell and silkworm larvae infected with wild virus also indicated a weak effect of upregulation on 3T3 cells proliferation. The animal study showed that both pupae infected with rBacPh-EGF virus and wild virus protected the gastric mucosa against ethanol-induced damage in rats,although the protection from pupae infected with wild virus was slightly weak. The mechanism is under investigatin

Self-reported chronic kidney disease and the risk of all-cause and cause-specific mortality: Outcome-wide association study of 54 causes of death in the National Health Interview Survey

Background: A diagnosis of chronic kidney disease has been strongly associated with cardiovascular disease and mortality in a number of studies, but the association with specific causes of death has not been assessed in detail. We analysed the association between chronic kidney disease and all-cause mortality and 54 causes of death in the National Health Interview Survey, a prospective study of 210,748 US adults. Methods: We used multivariable Cox regression models to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for all-cause and cause-specific mortality associated with self-reported chronic kidney disease. Men and women aged 18–84 years were recruited between 1997 and 2004 and followed up for mortality through December 31, 2006. Results: During an average of 6 years follow-up, 9564 deaths occurred. A history of chronic kidney disease vs. no chronic kidney disease was associated with increased risk of all-cause mortality (HR = 2.69, 95% CI: 2.38–3.04), and mortality from septicemia (5.65, 2.84–11.25), viral hepatitis (10.67, 2.43–46.95), other infectious parasitic diseases (10.58, 3.59–31.21), total cancer (1.48, 1.05–2.09), lung cancer (1.94, 1.10–3.44), kidney cancer (4.74, 1.81–12.41), diabetes mellitus (8.57, 5.60–13.11), circulatory disease overall (3.36, 2.70–4.18) and 11 specific circulatory diseases with the strongest associations observed for primary hypertension/renal disease (13.60, 6.42–28.84), hypertensive heart/renal disease (10.72, 2.47–46.49), and other diseases of circulatory system (7.36, 3.22–16.81). Elevated risk was also observed for alcoholic liver disease (5.63, 1.90–16.66), other chronic liver disease (4.41, 1.74–11.17), kidney failure (13.07, 8.23–20.77), and five other causes of death. Conclusions: A history of chronic kidney disease was associated with increased risk of all-cause mortality and 27 out of 54 causes of death. Further studies are needed to clarify associations with less common causes of death

Interspecific hybridization between Mauremys reevesii and Mauremys sinensis: Evidence from morphology and DNA sequence data

Turtle hybrids have been found in some taxa, but so far, studies on interspecific hybridization between Mauremy reevesii and Mauremy sinensis have not been reported. Recently, we obtained three specimens (Hy1, Hy2, Hy3）with unusual morphological characteristics from pet trade Market, which are suspected to be hybrids rather than new species, because they were morphologies intermediate between M. reevesii and M. sinensis. In further study, we analyzed two aspects; morphological characteristics and molecular data, separately. The morphological characteristics showed that the pattern of the carapace, the plastron and neck stripes of the three specimens was between that of M. reevesii and M. sinensis (the morphological features of Hy1 and Hy2 have more resemblance with those of M. sinensis, and those of Hy3 have more resemblance with those of M. reevesii). In molecular analyses, two mitochondrial genes (12S, cytb) and two nuclear genes (RAG-1, R35) were respectively cloned from each suspected specimen. One sequence was obtained for each mitochondrial gene, while two different sequences were obtained for each nuclear gene. Phylogenetic analyses revealed that mitochondrial genes sequences from each suspected specimen clustered into the corresponding sequences of their putative female parents, while the two pairs nuclear parental alleles sequences were strongly paraphyletic, for they were included in two different genetic lineages (M. reevesii and M. sinensis). Therefore, we concluded that the three suspected specimens are hybrids (Hy1 and Hy2: M. reevesii♂ × M. sinensis♀; Hy3: M. sinensis♂ × M. reevesii♀). It is the first report that interspecies hybridization of M. reevesii and M. sinensis can cross completely.Key words: Mauremys reevesii, Mauremys sinensis, hybridization, morphology, DNA sequence