Molybdenum in soils and plants and its potential importance to livestock nutrition, with special reference to sub-Saharan Africa

Summarises the role of molybdenum in soils and plants and its potential importance in livestock nutrition in sub-Saharan Africa. Discusses the functions of molybdenum in plants and animals, diagnosis including deficiency symptoms, soil testing & leaf analysis, molybdenum content of soils, factors affecting availability of molybdenum to plants, molybdenum responses, and molybdenum-copper-sulphur inter-relationships in livestock

Pairing of a trapped resonantly-interacting fermion mixture with unequal spin populations

We consider the phase separation of a trapped atomic mixture of fermions with unequal spin populations near a Feshbach resonance. In particular, we determine the density profile of the two spin states and compare with the recent experiments of Partridge et al. (cond-mat/0511752). Overall we find quite good agreement. We identify the remaining discrepancies and pose them as open problems.Comment: 4 figures, 4+ pages, revtex

Forage legumes in African crop-livestock production systems

Examines ILCA's research on forage legumes in the past few years; discusses the potential role of forage legumes in increasing crop-livestock productivity in sub-Saharan Africa; and outlines priorities for future research

Forage legume-cereal systems: Improvement of soil fertility and agricultural productivity with special reference to sub-Saharan Africa

Examines the potential of forage legume-cereal intercrops in enhancing soil fertility and increasing crop and livestock production in sub-Saharan Africa. Discusses inter/relay cropping systems, forage legumes in cereal systems, improvement of feed quality and enhancement of soil fertility and competition in forage legume cereal systems

Nitrogen fixation by forage legumes in sub-Saharan Africa: Potential and limitations

Reviews the present state of knowledge about the biological contribution of nitrogen by forage legumes in sub-Saharan Africa; indicates the main factors limiting the contribution of biological N by forage legumes; highlights the potentials of legume - food crop - livestock interactions in various production systems; suggests areas where intensified research is justified in terms of scientific knowledge and practical benefits

Comparison of Compressive Strength and Flexural Capacity between Engineered Cementitious Composites (Bendable Concrete) and Conventional Concrete used in Bangladesh

The Engineered Cementitious Composites (ECC) is made of the same ingredients as in regular concrete. The coarse aggregate is replaced with tiny Polyvinyl Alcohol fibres. This structure offers maximum flexibility and it is expected to cost less. It looks exactly like normal concrete, but under excessive strain, the ECC concrete allows, the specially coated network of fibre in the cement to slide within the cement, thus avoiding the inflexibility that causes brittleness and breakage. As this is a special type of concrete there are no defined codes for it, thus for these reasons, the parameters needed are to be obtained using trial and error method. During the composite preparation, sieve analysis was carried out. Composites were reinforced with Polyvinyl Alcohol (PVA) at the following ratios: 0 % (control), 0.5 %, 1 % and 1.5 %. The cylindrical specimens were subjected to compression and the slab specimens were subjected to flexural test using a Universal Testing Machine, while acquiring data with GOM Correlation Software. Test results reveal that fibre ratio 1% is most acceptable for attaining best compressive strength along with high flexural value. Even though 1% fibre content concrete in the flexural strength test showed 33% less strength of what 1.5% fibre content concrete gained, in the long run, for having the highest compressive strength value (almost 62% more than of 0% fibre content concrete and 15% more than of 1.5% fibre content concrete), 1% fibre content concrete is most suited for constructions

Conserved Density Fluctuation and Temporal Correlation Function in HTL Perturbation Theory

Considering recently developed Hard Thermal Loop perturbation theory that takes into account the effect of the variation of the external field through the fluctuations of a conserved quantity we calculate the temporal component of the Euclidian correlation function in the vector channel. The results are found to be in good agreement with the very recent results obtained within the quenched approximation of QCD and small values of the quark mass ($\sim 0.1T$) on improved lattices of size $128^3\times N_\tau$ at ($N_\tau=40, \ T=1.2T_C$), ($N_\tau=48, \ T=1.45T_C$), and ($N_\tau=16, \ T=2.98T_C$), where $N_\tau$ is the temporal extent of the lattice. This suggests that the results from lattice QCD and Hard Thermal Loop perturbation theory are in close proximity for a quantity associated with the conserved density fluctuation.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figures; One para added in introduction, Fig 1 modified; Accepted in Phys. Rev.

Toxicity induced by Solanapyrone A in Chickpea shoots and its metabolism through Glutathione/Glutathione-S-Transferase system

Solanapyrone A and C were isolated from a Pakistani isolate of Ascochyta rabiei, Pk-1. Two experiments were conducted to investigate the phytotoxic effects of the most potent toxin, solanapyrone A on chickpea cultivars and its subsequent detoxification through glutathion/glutathion-s-transferase(GST) system. When the shoots of cultivars were fed solanapyrone A, symptoms mimicking to Ascochyta blight appeared and extent of manifestation of symptoms varied with the cultivar. In the first experiment, the effect of three different plant ages of 2 cultivars with different levels of resistance to toxin was determined in terms of GST activity unit. GST activity in Balkasar-2000 (a resistant cultivar) increased 1.92 times, 1.72 and 1.65 times in two-week-old seedling, eight-week-old and adult plants (all treated) respectively as compared to their respective controls. In the highly susceptible cultivar, AUG-424, a slight increase (1.14 times) over control was noticed in GST activity at all the three ages. In the second experiment, where shoots of three cultivars were tested against 2 doses of the toxin, an increase in GST activity in Noor-91 (a moderately susceptible cultivar) and AUG-424 was significantly less than resistant cultivar, Balkasar-2000 showing direct relationship between resistance and activity of the enzyme. It may be concluded that it is a reason for difference in response of cultivars to the disease

Entanglement entropy in fermionic Laughlin states

We present analytic and numerical calculations on the bipartite entanglement entropy in fractional quantum Hall states of the fermionic Laughlin sequence. The partitioning of the system is done both by dividing Landau level orbitals and by grouping the fermions themselves. For the case of orbital partitioning, our results can be related to spatial partitioning, enabling us to extract a topological quantity (the `total quantum dimension') characterizing the Laughlin states. For particle partitioning we prove a very close upper bound for the entanglement entropy of a subset of the particles with the rest, and provide an interpretation in terms of exclusion statistics.Comment: 4+ pages, 3 figures. Minor changes in v

Entropy and Exact Matrix Product Representation of the Laughlin Wave Function

An analytical expression for the von Neumann entropy of the Laughlin wave function is obtained for any possible bipartition between the particles described by this wave function, for filling fraction nu=1. Also, for filling fraction nu=1/m, where m is an odd integer, an upper bound on this entropy is exhibited. These results yield a bound on the smallest possible size of the matrices for an exact representation of the Laughlin ansatz in terms of a matrix product state. An analytical matrix product state representation of this state is proposed in terms of representations of the Clifford algebra. For nu=1, this representation is shown to be asymptotically optimal in the limit of a large number of particles