Comparison of the effect of liquid humic fertilizers on yield of maize genotypes in Ardabil region

In order to investigate the response of maize genotypes against the  application of two types of liquid humic fertilizers (derived from peat and  leonardite), an experiment was conducted as factorial based on completely  randomized block design with three replications. The main factor was included three conditions (application of peat based and leonardite based humic  fertilizer, without the application of humic fertilizer) whereas the sub-factor  included six maize genotypes. Results indicate that there was a significant  difference between experimental conditions in terms of grain yield at 1% and biological yield at 5% probability levels. Results from mean comparison  indicate that ZP677 had the highest (20.89 ton/ha) biological yield, whereas OS 499 had the lowest (16.93 ton/ha). Application of leonardite based liquid humic fertilizer proved to be more productive than the two other conditions. This humic fertilizer produced the highest values for biological yield (21.99 ton/ha) and grain yield (7.09 ton/ha).Key words: Maize, humic, fertilizer, yield

High-dose thiamine supplementation may reduce resting energy expenditure in individuals with hyperglycemia: a randomized, double � blind cross-over trial

Background: Despite the crucial role of thiamine in glucose and energy metabolism pathways, there has been no published study examining the impact of thiamine on energy metabolism in humans. Objective: To assess the effects of thiamine supplementation on resting energy expenditure (REE) in individuals with hyperglycemia. Methods: Twelve hyperglycemic patients completed this double-blind, randomized trial, where all participants received both thiamine (300 mg/day) and matched placebo for 6 weeks in a cross-over manner. REE was assessed by indirect calorimetry. Anthropometric measurements, fasting and 2-h plasma glucose, and glucose-induced thermogenesis were also assessed at the beginning and on the completion of each six-week phase. Results: Participants consuming thiamine supplements experienced a significant decrease in the REE assessed at week six compared to the baseline mean (SE): 1478.93 (73.62) vs.1526.40 (73.46) kcal/d, p = 0.02, and the placebo arm (p = 0.002). These results did not change significantly after adjusting for the participants� body weight and physical activity as potential confounders. Six-week intervention had no significant effect on the participants� body weight or waist circumference, in either supplement or placebo arms (all p values>0.05). However, correlation analysis highlighted significant positive relationships between the changes in REE, and those in fasting (rs = 0.497, p = 0.019) and 2-h plasma glucose (rs = 0.498, p = 0.018) during the six-week intervention period. Conclusion: Supplementation with high-dose thiamine may attenuate REE in patients with impaired glucose regulation. Our findings suggest that the impact of thiamine on REE may in part be explained by improved glycemic control. Trial registration: Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry ACTRN12611000051943. https://www.anzctr.org.au/Trial/Registration/TrialReview.aspx?ACTRN=12611000051943. © 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG

Substitutional doping of Cu in diamond: Mott physics with pp orbitals

Discovery of superconductivity in the impurity band formed by heavy doping of boron into diamond (C:B) as well as doping of boron into silicon (Si:B) has provided a rout for the possibility of new families of superconducting materials. Motivated by the special role played by copper atoms in high temperature superconducting materials where essentially Cu $d$ orbitals are responsible for a variety of correlation induced phases, in this paper we investigate the effect of substitutional doping of Cu into diamond. Our extensive first principle calculations averaged over various geometries based on density functional theory, indicates the formation of a mid-gap band, which mainly arises from the $t_{2g}$ and $4p$ states of Cu. For impurity concentrations of more than $\sim 1$2p$bands of neighboring carbon atoms can be ignored. Based on our detailed analysis, we suggest a two band model for the mid-gap states consisting of a quarter-filled hole like$t_{2g}$band, and a half-filled band of$4p$states. Increasing the concentration of the Cu impurity beyond$\sim 5%, completely closes the spectral gap of the host diamond.Comment: 5 figure

Devil's staircase transition of the electronic structures in CeSb

Solids with competing interactions often undergo complex phase transitions with a variety of long-periodic modulations. Among such transition, devil's staircase is the most complex phenomenon, and for it, CeSb is the most famous material, where a number of the distinct phases with long-periodic magnetostructures sequentially appear below the Neel temperature. An evolution of the low-energy electronic structure going through the devil's staircase is of special interest, which has, however, been elusive so far despite the 40-years of intense researches. Here we use bulk-sensitive angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy and reveal the devil's staircase transition of the electronic structures. The magnetic reconstruction dramatically alters the band dispersions at each transition. We moreover find that the well-defined band picture largely collapses around the Fermi energy under the long-periodic modulation of the transitional phase, while it recovers at the transition into the lowest-temperature ground state. Our data provide the first direct evidence for a significant reorganization of the electronic structures and spectral functions occurring during the devil's staircase.Comment: 22 pages, 5 figure

Intravascular Ultrasound for Assessment of Residual Coarctation of the Aorta after Balloon Angioplasty in Infants

Intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) has been introduced as an accurate and minimally invasive diagnostic technique for the assessment of vascular anatomy and its abnormalities. We believe that IVUS can be used for clarifying the reasons for failure of balloon angiography in infantile coarctation of the aorta (CoA), because post-balloon angioplasty tearing, intimal flap, thrombosis and pseudoaneurysm of the aorta can be evaluated by IVUS with greater sensitivity and specificity. We aimed to assess the outcome of balloon angioplasty of CoA using angiography as the gold standard and IVUS as a new method in infants, comparing the two techniques for the evaluation of the diameter and area of CoA segment pre- and post-procedure. This cross-sectional study was performed on 18 infants hospitalized with a final diagnosis of CoA. All the infants underwent angiography and were also assessed by IVUS to measure the preoperative and postoperative diameter of the narrow segment in the two anterior�posterior and lateral views. In assessment by IVUS, the mean diameter of the coarctation site increased from 2.10 ± 0.30 mm to 4.50 ± 0.94 mm (P < 0.001). Similarly, the average minimum area of the coarctation level increased from 5.26 ± 1.50 mm2 to 13.77 ± 3.48 mm2 after angioplasty (P < 0.001). Comparing these findings, angiography and IVUS showed a high level of agreement. In the assessment of a dissection flap, there was a high level of agreement between angioplasty and IVUS before the procedure, but IVUS had higher accuracy after the procedure. Our study showed that IVUS was more reliable than angiography in the assessment of residual coarctation. IVUS yielded high sensitivity (58.3) and specificity (100) for discriminating the presence and absence of residual coarctation as well as the need for repeating the procedure. The assessment of coarctation before and after angioplasty procedures in children is possible using the IVUS method, with high accuracy. IVUS can offer greater accuracy than angiography in the evaluation of the coarctation area, detecting tears, dissection and flaps, and assessment of residual coarctation. © 2021, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature

Intravascular Ultrasound for Assessment of Residual Coarctation of the Aorta after Balloon Angioplasty in Infants

Intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) has been introduced as an accurate and minimally invasive diagnostic technique for the assessment of vascular anatomy and its abnormalities. We believe that IVUS can be used for clarifying the reasons for failure of balloon angiography in infantile coarctation of the aorta (CoA), because post-balloon angioplasty tearing, intimal flap, thrombosis and pseudoaneurysm of the aorta can be evaluated by IVUS with greater sensitivity and specificity. We aimed to assess the outcome of balloon angioplasty of CoA using angiography as the gold standard and IVUS as a new method in infants, comparing the two techniques for the evaluation of the diameter and area of CoA segment pre- and post-procedure. This cross-sectional study was performed on 18 infants hospitalized with a final diagnosis of CoA. All the infants underwent angiography and were also assessed by IVUS to measure the preoperative and postoperative diameter of the narrow segment in the two anterior�posterior and lateral views. In assessment by IVUS, the mean diameter of the coarctation site increased from 2.10 ± 0.30 mm to 4.50 ± 0.94 mm (P < 0.001). Similarly, the average minimum area of the coarctation level increased from 5.26 ± 1.50 mm2 to 13.77 ± 3.48 mm2 after angioplasty (P < 0.001). Comparing these findings, angiography and IVUS showed a high level of agreement. In the assessment of a dissection flap, there was a high level of agreement between angioplasty and IVUS before the procedure, but IVUS had higher accuracy after the procedure. Our study showed that IVUS was more reliable than angiography in the assessment of residual coarctation. IVUS yielded high sensitivity (58.3) and specificity (100) for discriminating the presence and absence of residual coarctation as well as the need for repeating the procedure. The assessment of coarctation before and after angioplasty procedures in children is possible using the IVUS method, with high accuracy. IVUS can offer greater accuracy than angiography in the evaluation of the coarctation area, detecting tears, dissection and flaps, and assessment of residual coarctation. © 2021, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature

An ontological framework for cooperative games

Social intelligence is an emerging property of a system composed of agents that consists of the ability of this system to conceive, design, implement and execute strategies to solve problems and thus achieve a collective state of the system that is concurrently satisfactory for all and each one of the agents that compose it. In order to make decisions when dealing with complex problems related to social systems and take advantage of social intelligence, cooperative games theory constitutes the standard theoretical framework. In the present work, an ontological framework for cooperative games modeling and simulation is presented

Localization and Superconductivity in Doped Semiconductors

Motivated by the discovery of superconductivity in boron-doped (B-doped) diamond, we investigate the localization and superconductivity in heavily doped semiconductors. The competition between Anderson localization and s-wave superconductivity is investigated from the microscopic point of view. The effect of microscopic inhomogeneity and the thermal fluctuation in superconductivity are taken into account using the self-consistent 1-loop-order theory with respect to superconducting fluctuation. The crossover from superconductivity in the host band to that in the impurity band is described on the basis of the disordered three-dimensional attractive Hubbard model for binary alloys. We show that superconductor-insulator transition (SIT) accompanies the crossover. We point out an enhancement of Cooper pairing in the crossover regime. Further localization of the electron wave function gives rise to incoherent Cooper pairs and the pseudogap above T_c. A global phase diagram is drawn for host band superconductivity, impurity band superconductivity, Anderson localization, Fermi liquid state, and pseudogap state. A theoretical interpretation is proposed for superconductivity in the doped diamond, SiC, and Si.Comment: Final version for publication. To appear in J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. (2009) No.

Modeling double strand break susceptibility to interrogate structural variation in cancer

Abstract Background Structural variants (SVs) are known to play important roles in a variety of cancers, but their origins and functional consequences are still poorly understood. Many SVs are thought to emerge from errors in the repair processes following DNA double strand breaks (DSBs). Results We used experimentally quantified DSB frequencies in cell lines with matched chromatin and sequence features to derive the first quantitative genome-wide models of DSB susceptibility. These models are accurate and provide novel insights into the mutational mechanisms generating DSBs. Models trained in one cell type can be successfully applied to others, but a substantial proportion of DSBs appear to reflect cell type-specific processes. Using model predictions as a proxy for susceptibility to DSBs in tumors, many SV-enriched regions appear to be poorly explained by selectively neutral mutational bias alone. A substantial number of these regions show unexpectedly high SV breakpoint frequencies given their predicted susceptibility to mutation and are therefore credible targets of positive selection in tumors. These putatively positively selected SV hotspots are enriched for genes previously shown to be oncogenic. In contrast, several hundred regions across the genome show unexpectedly low levels of SVs, given their relatively high susceptibility to mutation. These novel coldspot regions appear to be subject to purifying selection in tumors and are enriched for active promoters and enhancers. Conclusions We conclude that models of DSB susceptibility offer a rigorous approach to the inference of SVs putatively subject to selection in tumors