Understanding the roles of beneficial microbe effectors in plant growth and stress resistance

Beneficial microbes have a mostly untapped potential to serve as bio-fertilizers and soil remediators in enhancing crop growth, yield and stress resistance. Understanding the molecular mechanisms of how microbes activate benefits in plants will be crucial for its application in larger-scale crop production systems. It is postulated that beneficial microbes could employ small secreted proteins (termed effectors) to reprogram and facilitate the transmission of those positive benefits in host plants. Recent studies have attempted to investigate the functions of ‘beneficial’ effectors in crop improvement. Serendipita indica, which is the beneficial fungus studied in the project, was used as a model to study the function of its effectors and reveal their beneficial activity in improving plant growth, abiotic and biotic stress resistance. The aim of this project was to investigate the roles of a selected set of S. indica effectors in single cell, whole plant and crop-based systems. In-planta analyses of S. indica effectors showed that some effectors such as SIE44, SIE76, SIE106 and SIE120 could enhance plant growth. In addition, SIE67 could be a candidate in improving plant stress resistance. In support of this, a conserved protein domain known to be important in stress resistance was identified in SIE67. In turn, SIE10 was identified as a potential effector that facilitates S. indica host colonization. To further investigate the roles of the effectors in a crop-based system, a barley transformation system was optimised to allow rapid functional analyses. This system was used to scrutinise effector functions in crucial crop improvement parameters such as abiotic and biotic stress resistance. While further confirmatory studies are needed, this research showed a first holistic functional view of effectors from beneficial microbes that could be important in sustaining crop productivity

Modeling of 2-D Computer Aided Drafting Application for Teaching and Learning Engineering Drawing

With non-availability of the required equipment, teaching engineering drawing to a class of over 1000 students and retaining their interests and attention from the beginning to the end of a lecture period was of big concern to the engineering drawing courses lecturers in the Faculty of Engineering, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka. This work is aimed at designing and developing animated Microsoft Office PowerPoint teaching applications named 2-D Computer-Aided Drafting Applications (2-D CADA) that eliminate this problem. This paper presents a sample of the Applications which demonstrates clearly to the audience’s pleasure how to mount, set and hold a drawing sheet on a drawing board before actual drawing commences. It also shows how to manually draw boarder lines on the drawing sheet. Similar programs can be written and used to show to engineering students how to manually draw most of the figures specified in their schools' curricula using engineering drawing instruments. Many of this Application have been written on various topics in engineering drawing in line with the global trend of drudgery reduction in man-machine systems. These Applications are already being deployed in teaching engineering drawing in the Faculty of Engineering, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria. The benefits of employing 2-D CADA in teaching and learning engineering drawing are overwhelming. 2D-CADA relieves a teacher the mental and physical stresses that go with manual production of drawings on a chalk board. It drastically improved the attention, interest and understanding of students during drawing lessons. A well written 2D-CADA can be replicated and deployed to a personal computer for self-study plans as well as to group-based students’ workstations for group teaching

Monitoring and Quantification of Carbon Dioxide Emissions and Impact of Sea Surface Temperature on Marine Ecosystems as Climate Change Indicators in the Niger Delta Using Geospatial Technology

The Niger Delta marine environment has experienced a series of environmental disasters since the inception of oil and gas exploration, which can be attributed to climate change. Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and sea surface temperature (T) ties associated with burning fossil fuels, such as gas flaring, vehicular traffic, and marine vessel movement along the sea, are increasing. Using data extracted from the NASA Giovanni satellite’s Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), this study mapped the carbon footprint and T along the coastline into the deep sea from 2003 to 2011, using ArcGIS software. The spatial distribution of CO2 and T concentrations determined by the inverse distance weighting (IDW) method reveals variations in the study area. The results show an increase in the quantity of the mean tropospheric CO2 from July 2003 to December 2011, from 374.5129 ppm to 390.7831 ppm annual CO2 emissions, which also reflects a continuous increase. The average Monthly sea surface temperature had a general increasing trend from 25.79 °C in July 2003 to 27.8 °C in December, with the Pearson correlation coefficient between CO2 and T indicating 50% strongly positive, 20% strongly negative, 20% weakly positive,and 10% weakly negative. CO2 levels, like temperature, follow a seasonal cycle, with a decrease during the wet season due to precipitation dissolving and plant uptake during the growing season, and then a rise during the dry season. Carbon capture and storage technologies must be implemented to benefit the marine ecosystem and human well-being

Young Adult Sexual Behavior in South Africa: How Important is Parental Social Support?

Risky sexual behavior exposes young adults to poor reproductive health outcomes. Parental social support is associated with reduced incidence of risky sexual behavior, but this association has not been adequately investigated in South Africa. We used data from Waves 1 and 3 of the Cape Area Panel Study (a longitudinal study of adolescents and young adults aged 14-22 years and living in the Cape Town metropolitan area) to investigate the associations between parental social support and young adult risky sexual behavior in South Africa. We conducted multivariable logistic regression analyses to assess whether lack of specific categories of parental social supports at wave 1 (baseline) are associated with higher risky sexual behaviors by young adults at wave 3 (follow-up). We found that young adults who never ate meals with their mothers and those who never discussed personal matters with their fathers had increased risks of multiple sexual partnerships. Also, young adults who never got pocket money or money for gifts from their mothers had increased risk to engage in unprotected sex during their first sexual encounter. Our findings suggest that eating family meals, discussing personal matters with youth, and providing them with pocket money, may protect young adults in South Africa from risky sexual behavior. Keywords: Young Adults, Sexual Debut, Multiple Partners, Unprotected Sex, Parents, and Social Support, South Afric

Therapeutic Properties of Honey

Honey has been used traditionally for ages to treat infectious diseases. These amazing properties of honey are complex as a result of the involvement of various bioactive compounds. Honey is becoming sustainable as a reputable and effective therapeutic agent to practitioners of conventional medicine and to the general public. Its beneficial role has been endorsed due to its antimicrobial, antiviral, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant activities as well as boosting of the immune system. Also, other medical conditions discussed here which can be treated with honey include but not limited to diarrhea, gastric ulcer, canine recurrent dermatitis, diabetics, tumor, and arthritis, and honey can also be used for skin disinfection and wound healing. Most of the known factors that give honey these properties include its acidity, high sugar, hydrogen peroxide, and other non-peroxide properties. Some factors may affect the therapeutic properties of honey such as exposure to heat and light

Mechanical and Structural Properties of Eastern Nigeria Tortoise Shell

Macro-structural and mechanical properties of tortoise shells of Nigeria indigenous specie were studied to reveal its evolution as a natural load-bearing protective amour. The shell is revealed in this study to be a natural sandwich composite made of keratin, dorsal cortex, porous bone and ventral cortex. Indications of delamination which help the tortoise to absorb shocks were seen in the keratin. The dorsal and ventral cortexes were seen to be load bearing members with distribution of fibers in a manner that sustain dead load. The porosity seen in the middle porous layer ensures that the carapace is not too heavy for the tortoise to carry thus guarantees ease of locomotion, strength and damping. The average porosity of the studied shells is determined to be 31.0425% which as expected is smaller than the value 48.9% reported for porosity of shell of the turtle Terrapene Carolina in literature. The suture of the shell is revealed to house a zigzag interlocking design that allow slight deformation of the shell under light loads required for respiration, locomotion and metabolism but stiffen under excessive deformation. Stiffness of two specimens was determined to be and for the shells with masses 0.2362 kg and 0.2764Kg respectively. These stiffness values were as expected higher the typical values for those of turtles. The stiffness to mass ratio(k/m) for the two shells were respectively calculated to be and . The conditions established for equivalent synthetic shells to have less stiffness to mass ratio were and respectively. These conditions were shown not to be because of problems of stress concentration and weakness at the joints and delamination of the biological shells

Familial adenomatous polyposis with synchronous invasive colonic carcinomas and metastatic jejunal adenocarcinoma in a Nigerian male

Familial adenomatous polyposis is rare. Three cases were previously reported in Nigeria. An intriguing feature of this case is an ulcerated jejunal carcinoma which was metastatic rather than synchronous carcinoma. This patient presented with partial large bowel obstruction and the pathological analysis revealed 4 invasive adenocarcinomas, 3 in the colon and 1 in the jejunum (Dukes stage D). Palliative pancolectomy and jejunal tumour resection with chemotherapy was offered to him. He died eight months after surgery from disease progression. The challenges of managing a hereditary cancer syndrome in a resource poor country are highlighted

Growth and yield response of selected improved soybean (Glycine max [L.] Merrill) varieties to varying weeding regimes under a tropical condition

The field trial was conducted at the Teaching and Research Farm, Abia State University, Umuahia Campus, Umudike to study the performance of three highly improved soybean varieties (‘TGX 1835-10E’, ‘TGX 1987-62F’ and ‘TGX 1448-2E’) to different weeding regimes (weed free, inweeded, weeded once, weeded twice and weeded three times) and to estimate character association and contribution toward seed yield per hectare. The experiment was a factorial combination of variety and weeding regimes in randomized complete block design with three replications. Vegetative data which included plant height, number of branches and number of leaves were taken at 10 weeks after planting (WAP) while at harvest, the following yield data: pod length, pod width, number of pods per plant, number of seeds per plant, pod weight per plant, 100 seed weight and seed yield per hectare were taken. The only phenological trait taken was number of days to 50 % flowering. The competing weeds were also identified, sampled, counted, dried, weighed and recorded at 9 WAP and at harvest. Data were analyzed using the procedure outlined for ANOVA and means separated by LSD (P=0.05). Correlation and Path coefficients analyses were also carried out. The results showed a highly significant difference (P<0.01) among the varieties in all the traits studied. ‘TGX 1835-10E’ variety gave the highest seed yield/ha while weed regimes like weed free, weeded twice and three times showed non significantly the best performance in all aspect. The results also showed that plots left inweeded and weeded once inevitably had the highest yield reduction in all the varieties. Plant height, number of branches, number of leaves at 10 WAP, number of seeds and pod weight per plant, 100 seed weight as well as soybean dry weight at 9 WAP showed high positive magnitude and significant (P<0.01) correlations with seed yield per hectare. The highest positive direct effect on yield was recorded in plant height at 10 WAP

Cross plot Analysis of Rock Properties from Well Log Data for gas detection in Soku Field, Coastal Swamp Depobelt, Niger Delta Basin

The cross plotting of rock properties for fluid and lithology discrimination was carried out in a Niger Delta oil field using well data X-26 from a given oil field in the coastal swamp depobelt. The data used for the analysis consisted of suites of logs, including gamma ray, resistivity, sonic and density logs only. The reservoir of interest Horizon 1, was identified using the available suite of logs on the interval where we have low gamma ray, high resistivity and low acoustic impedance specifically at depths 10,424ft (3177.24m) to 10 724ft (3268m). We first obtained other rock attributes from the available logs before cross plotting. The inverse of the interval transit times of the sonic logs were used to generate the compressional velocities and the S-wave data was generated from Castagna´s relation. Employing rock physics algorithm on Hampson Russell software (HRS), rock attributes including Vp/Vs ratio, Lambda-Rho and Mu-Rho were also extracted from the well data. Cross plotting was carried out and Lambda Rho (λρ) versus MuRho (μρ) crossplots proved to be more robust for lithology identification than Vp versus Vs crossplots, while λρ Versus Poisson impedance was more robust than Vp/Vs versus Acoustic impedance for fluid discrimination, as well as identification of gas sands. The crossplots were consistent with Rock Physics Templates (RPTs). This implies the possibility of further using the technique on data points of inverted sections of various AVO attributes within the field in areas not penetrated by wells within the area covered by the seismic

SEISMIC ANALYSIS OF THE TRANSGRESSIVE SYSTEMS TRACTS (TSTS) OF THE NIGER DELTA

One way of identifying our MFSs is to look out for shale tops of high acoustic properties within a shale interval that corresponds to the lowest resistivity values and widest separation between neutron and density values. The TSTs culminate to a MFS as it comprises the deposits accumulated from the onset of coastal transgression until the time of maximum transgression of the coast, just prior to renewed regression (SepmStrata, 20). The seismic character of the shales within these TSTs could vary factoring the effect of depth trends, hence a need to understand the trend with increasing depth and thereby increased compaction. From generated synthetic, using the seismic responses at interfaces within the lithologies cut across by one of our HP well in the Central Swamp depobelt, a study integrating Reflectivity Pattern Analysis (RPA) and Sequence Stratigraphic analysis was carried out to understand the behavior of our shales within the TSTs. Key bounding surfaces which subdivide the strata into contemporaneously deposited sediment packages were identified from well log responses from a complete suite of logs which included Gamma Ray, Resistivity and Porosity logs. It was observed that shales in the TSTs were of higher acoustic properties compared to sales in the HSTs