Population dynamics of soil microbes and diversity of Bacillus thuringiensis in agricultural and botanic garden soils of India

Different microbial guilds of three rice fields (aerobic (dry or wet) laterite and red sandy, and anaerobic (flooded), clay-loam), a botanical garden (wet, aerobic, humus) and a sorghum (dry, aerobic, sandy) soil were investigated. Population (x106 cfu/g dr. soil) of the aerobic (3.8 - 26.2) and anaerobic (0.91 - 13.6) heterotrophic, aerobic (1.1 - 3.7) and anaerobic (0.8 - 1.3) spore forming, Gram (-)ve (0.3 - 0.7), phosphate solubilizing (0.01 - 0.06), asymbiotic N2-fixing (0.26 - 0.88), sulfur oxidizing (0.13 - 0.75), sulfate reducing (0.01 - 0.1), nitrifying (0.1 - 0.23) and denitrifying (0.04 - 0.25) bacteria; actinomycetes (0.01x104 cfu/g dr. soil), fungi (0.01 - 0.05x105 cfu/g dr. soils) and Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) (0.13- 0.25x106 cfu/g dr. soil) population were variable in different soils. Nevertheless, proportions of Bt in relation to spore forming bacteria were comparable (index (5-9) x10-4) and they produced either monotypic (bipyramidal or spherical) or heterotypic (polymorphic-bipyramidal or bipyramidalrhomboidal) crystals although the bipyramidal crystal producing Bt were predominant in the soils. The bipyramidal crystal producing Bt were diverse in different ecologies, resistant to penicillin group of antibiotics and tolerated 5 - 6% NaCl. Phenotypic characters allowed to group the Bt isolates of botanic garden as B. thuringiensis subsp. coreanensis and as B. thuringiensis subsp. thompsoni/coreanensis, sorghum fields as B. thuringiensis subsp. finitimus and but those of rice fields as B. thuringiensis subsp. thuringiensis/ shandongiensis, finitimus and thompsoni/coreanensis. The isolates produced 25.78, 25.78, 86.26, 24.73, 68.0, 26.8 and 26.8 kDa proteins and equivalent to Cyt, Cry5 and Cry2 toxins effective against the insects of Diptera and Lepidoptera/Coleoptera

The Pragmatics Interpretation of The Indeterminacy of Legal Construction

面对既成的法律文本，如何在尽量不偏离“原意”的基础上权衡或者化解各种外部因素的碰撞，将一般正义与个别正义尽量统一起来，得出合法合理的判决结果，这是法律解释的重要使命——即使其不确定性是无法避免的。所以本文的研究目标就是：从语用学的角度对法律解释的不确定性进行解读，并在此基础上寻求规制这种不确定性的方法论。 文章的内容分三部分，按照问题的切入——问题的分析——问题的解决这样的研究进路展开。 第一部分：即导言，属于引论。主要内容包括本文的研究意旨、相关的研究现状，以及本研究的基本思路和研究进路。 第二部分：即第一章。任何专门性的课题研究首先要界定的就是研究对象的问题，以作为整篇文章的讨论范围...Facing with the existing legal text, one of the important mission of legal construction is to balance value collisions of various kinds of external elements, integrate individual justice with general justice and obtain legal and reasonable decision in the base of not deviation from the original intention as far as possible, even if the indeterminacy is inevitable. So this paper aims to interpret a...学位：法学硕士院系专业：法学院法律系_法学理论学号：1292007115034

Nucleosynthesis in Advective Accretion Disks Around Galactic and Extra-Galactic Black Holes

We compute the nucleosynthesis of materials inside advective disks around black holes. We show that composition of incoming matter can change significantly depending on the accretion rate and accretion disks. These works are improvements on the earlier works in thick accretion disks of Chakrabarti, Jin & Arnett (1987) in presence of advection in the flow.Comment: Latex pages including figures. Kluwer Style files included. Appearing in `Observational Evidence for Black Holes in the Universe', ed. Sandip K. Chakrabarti, Kluwer Academic Publishers (DORDRECHT: Holland

Impact of COVID-19 induced lockdown on environmental quality in four Indian megacities Using Landsat 8 OLI and TIRS-derived data and Mamdani fuzzy logic modelling approach

© 2020 by the authors. The deadly COVID-19 virus has caused a global pandemic health emergency. This COVID-19 has spread its arms to 200 countries globally and the megacities of the world were particularly affected with a large number of infections and deaths, which is still increasing day by day. On the other hand, the outbreak of COVID-19 has greatly impacted the global environment to regain its health. This study takes four megacities (Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, and Chennai) of India for a comprehensive assessment of the dynamicity of environmental quality resulting from the COVID-19 induced lockdown situation. An environmental quality index was formulated using remotely sensed biophysical parameters like Particulate Matters PM10 concentration, Land Surface Temperature (LST), Normalized Different Moisture Index (NDMI), Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), and Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI). Fuzzy-AHP, which is a Multi-Criteria Decision-Making process, has been utilized to derive the weight of the indicators and aggregation. The results showing that COVID-19 induced lockdown in the form of restrictions on human and vehicular movements and decreasing economic activities has improved the overall quality of the environment in the selected Indian cities for a short time span. Overall, the results indicate that lockdown is not only capable of controlling COVID-19 spread, but also helpful in minimizing environmental degradation. The findings of this study can be utilized for assessing and analyzing the impacts of COVID-19 induced lockdown situation on the overall environmental quality of other megacities of the world

How and When Socially Entrepreneurial Nonprofit Organizations Benefit From Adopting Social Alliance Management Routines to Manage Social Alliances?

Social alliance is defined as the collaboration between for-profit and nonprofit organizations. Building on the insights derived from the resource-based theory, we develop a conceptual framework to explain how socially entrepreneurial nonprofit organizations (SENPOs) can improve their social alliance performance by adopting strategic alliance management routines. We test our framework using the data collected from 203 UK-based SENPOs in the context of cause-related marketing campaign-derived social alliances. Our results confirm a positive relationship between social alliance management routines and social alliance performance. We also find that relational mechanisms, such as mutual trust, relational embeddedness, and relational commitment, mediate the relationship between social alliance management routines and social alliance performance. Moreover, our findings suggest that different types of social alliance motivation can influence the impact of social alliance management routines on different types of the relational mechanisms. In general, we demonstrate that SENPOs can benefit from adopting social alliance management routines and, in addition, highlight how and when the social alliance management routines–social alliance performance relationship might be shaped. Our study offers important academic and managerial implications, and points out future research directions

How managers can build trust in strategic alliances: a meta-analysis on the central trust-building mechanisms

Trust is an important driver of superior alliance performance. Alliance managers are influential in this regard because trust requires active involvement, commitment and the dedicated support of the key actors involved in the strategic alliance. Despite the importance of trust for explaining alliance performance, little effort has been made to systematically investigate the mechanisms that managers can use to purposefully create trust in strategic alliances. We use Parkhe’s (1998b) theoretical framework to derive nine hypotheses that distinguish between process-based, characteristic-based and institutional-based trust-building mechanisms. Our meta-analysis of 64 empirical studies shows that trust is strongly related to alliance performance. Process-based mechanisms are more important for building trust than characteristic- and institutional-based mechanisms. The effects of prior ties and asset specificity are not as strong as expected and the impact of safeguards on trust is not well understood. Overall, theoretical trust research has outpaced empirical research by far and promising opportunities for future empirical research exist

A patient with metastatic melanoma presenting with gastrointestinal perforation after dacarbazine infusion: a case report

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Introduction</p> <p>We report a rare case of gastrointestinal perforation following dacarbazine infusion for metastatic melanoma. The condition is attributed to a responding malignant melanoma in the gastrointestinal tract.</p> <p>Case presentation</p> <p>A 52-year-old Caucasian man presented with abdominal pain and distension, malaise, night sweats, dysphagia and early satiety. A computed tomography scan showed massive ascites, lymphadenopathy and liver lesions suspect for metastases. An upper gastrointestinal endoscopy was performed and revealed multiple dark lesions of 5 mm to 10 mm in his stomach and duodenum.</p> <p>When his skin was re-examined, an irregular pigmented lesion over the left clavicle measuring 15 mm × 8 mm with partial depigmentation was found. Histological examination of a duodenal lesion was consistent with a diagnosis of metastatic melanoma. The patient deteriorated and his level of lactate dehydrogenase rapidly increased. The patient was started on systemic treatment with dacarbazine 800 mg/m²every three weeks and he was discharged one day after the first dose. On the sixth day he was readmitted with severe abdominal pain. A chest X-ray showed the presence of free intraperitoneal air that was consistent with gastrointestinal perforation. His lactate dehydrogenase level had fallen from 6969U/L to 1827U/L, supporting the conclusion that the response of gastrointestinal metastases to dacarbazine had resulted in the perforation of the patient's bowel wall. A laparotomy was discussed with the patient and his family but he decided to go home with symptomatic treatment. He died 11 days later.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Melanoma can originate in, as well as metastasize to, the gastrointestinal tract. Gastrointestinal perforations due to responding tumors are a well-known complication of systemic treatment of gastrointestinal lymphomas. However, as the response rate of metastatic melanoma to dacarbazine is only 10% to 20%, and responses are usually only partial, perforation due to treatment response in metastatic melanoma is rare.</p> <p>Medical oncologists should be aware of the risk of bowel perforation after starting cytotoxic chemotherapy on patients with gastrointestinal metastases.</p