The effects of lithium on reticulo-rumen motility of sheep and goats

Lithium salts are used experimentally to induce food aversions and as a marker for measuring the intake of supplements (Ralphs, 1992)

A SWEET solution to rice blight

Bacterial blight is an important disease of rice that is particularly destructive in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, exacerbated by the heavy rains of the monsoon seasons. Estimated crop loss due to bacterial blight may be as high as 75%, with millions of hectares of rice affected annually. In this issue, an international team of researchers describes the use of CRISPR editing to generate rice plants that are broadly resistant to the main pathogen that causes rice blight, Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae (Xoo)1. To enhance the durability and management of resistance, the team has also developed a kit to trace the disease, and its virulence and resistance alleles2

Emission Line Galaxies in the STIS Parallel Survey I: Observations and Data Analysis

In the first three years of operation STIS obtained slitless spectra of approximately 2500 fields in parallel to prime HST observations as part of the STIS Parallel Survey (SPS). The archive contains almost 300 fields at high galactic latitude (|b|>30) with spectroscopic exposure times greater than 3000 seconds. This sample contains 220 fields (excluding special regions and requiring a consistent grating angle) observed between 6 June 1997 and 21 September 2000, with a total survey area of about 160 square arcminutes. At this depth, the SPS detects an average of one emission line galaxy per three fields. We present the analysis of these data, and the identification of 131 low to intermediate redshift galaxies detected by optical emission lines. The sample contains 78 objects with emission lines that we infer to be redshifted [OII]3727 emission at 0.43<z<1.7. The comoving number density of these objects is comparable to that of H-alpha emitting galaxies in the NICMOS parallel observations. One quasar and three probable Seyfert galaxies are detected. Many of the emission-line objects show morphologies suggestive of mergers or interactions. The reduced data are available upon request from the authors.Comment: 58 preprint pages, including 26 figures; accepted for publication in ApJ

New Insights Into the Anticonvulsant Effects of Essential Oil From Melissa officinalis L. (Lemon Balm)

Melissa officinalis L. is used in traditional European and Iranian folk medicines to treat a plethora of neurological diseases including epilepsy. We utilized the in vitro and in vivo models of epilepsy to probe the anticonvulsant potentials of essential oil from M. officinalis (MO) to gain insight into the scientific basis for its applications in traditional medicine for the management of convulsive disorders. MO was evaluated for effects on maximal electroshock (MES) and pentylenetetrazole (PTZ) -induced seizures in mice, on 4–aminopyridine (4-AP)-brain slice model of epilepsy and sustained repetitive firing of current clamped neurons; and its ameliorative effects were examined on seizure severity, anxiety, depression, cognitive dysfunction, oxidative stress and neuronal cell loss in PTZ-kindled rats. MO reversibly blocked spontaneous ictal-like discharges in the 4-AP-brain slice model of epilepsy and secondary spikes from sustained repetitive firing, suggesting anticonvulsant effects and voltage-gated sodium channel blockade. MO protected mice from PTZ– and MES–induced seizures and mortality, and ameliorated seizure severity, fear-avoidance, depressive-like behavior, cognitive deficits, oxidative stress and neuronal cell loss in PTZ–kindled rats. The findings warrant further study for the potential use of MO and/or its constituent(s) as adjunctive therapy for epileptic patients

Genomic interventions for sustainable agriculture

Agricultural production faces a Herculean challenge to feed the increasing global population. Food production systems need to deliver more with finite land and water resources while exerting the least negative influence on the ecosystem. The unpredictability of climate change and consequent changes in pests/pathogens dynamics aggravate the enormity of the challenge. Crop improvement has made significant contributions towards food security, and breeding climate-smart cultivars are considered the most sustainable way to accelerate food production. However, a fundamental change is needed in the conventional breeding framework in order to respond adequately to the growing food demands. Progress in genomics has provided new concepts and tools that hold promise to make plant breeding procedures more precise and efficient. For instance, reference genome assemblies in combination with germplasm sequencing delineate breeding targets that could contribute to securing future food supply. In this review, we highlight key breakthroughs in plant genome sequencing and explain how the presence of these genome resources in combination with gene editing techniques has revolutionized the procedures of trait discovery and manipulation. Adoption of new approaches such as speed breeding, genomic selection and haplotype-based breeding could overcome several limitations of conventional breeding. We advocate that strengthening varietal release and seed distribution systems will play a more determining role in delivering genetic gains at farmer’s field. A holistic approach outlined here would be crucial to deliver steady stream of climate-smart crop cultivars for sustainable agriculture

Aspects of structural health and condition monitoring of offshore wind turbines

Wind power has expanded significantly over the past years, although reliability of wind turbine systems, especially of offshore wind turbines, has been many times unsatisfactory in the past. Wind turbine failures are equivalent to crucial financial losses. Therefore, creating and applying strategies that improve the reliability of their components is important for a successful implementation of such systems. Structural health monitoring (SHM) addresses these problems through the monitoring of parameters indicative of the state of the structure examined. Condition monitoring (CM), on the other hand, can be seen as a specialized area of the SHM community that aims at damage detection of, particularly, rotating machinery. The paper is divided into two parts: in the first part, advanced signal processing and machine learning methods are discussed for SHM and CM on wind turbine gearbox and blade damage detection examples. In the second part, an initial exploration of supervisor control and data acquisition systems data of an offshore wind farm is presented, and data-driven approaches are proposed for detecting abnormal behaviour of wind turbines. It is shown that the advanced signal processing methods discussed are effective and that it is important to adopt these SHM strategies in the wind energy sector

The stellar population histories of early-type galaxies. III. The Coma Cluster

We present stellar population parameters of twelve early-type galaxies (ETGs) in the Coma Cluster based on spectra obtained using the Low Resolution Imaging Spectrograph on the Keck II Telescope. Our data allow us to examine in detail the zero-point and scatter in their stellar population properties. Our ETGs have SSP-equivalent ages of on average 5-8 Gyr with the models used here, with the oldest galaxies having ages of ~10 Gyr old. This average age is identical to the mean age of field ETGs. Our ETGs span a large range in velocity dispersion but are consistent with being drawn from a population with a single age. Specifically, ten of the twelve ETGs are consistent within their formal errors of having the same age, 5.2+/-0.2 Gyr, over a factor of more than 750 in mass. We therefore find no evidence for downsizing of the stellar populations of ETGs in the core of the Coma Cluster. We suggest that Coma Cluster ETGs may have formed the majority of their mass at high redshifts but suffered small but detectable star formation events at z~0.1-0.3. Previous detections of 'downsizing' from stellar populations of local ETGs may not reflect the same downsizing seen in lookback studies of RSGs, as the young ages of the local ETGs represent only a small fraction of their total masses. (abridged)Comment: 49 pages, 20 figures (19 EPS, 1 JPEG). MNRAS, in press. For version with full resolution of Fig. 1 see http://www.astro.rug.nl/~sctrager/coma.pdf; for Table 2, see http://www.astro.rug.nl/~sctrager/coma_table2.pdf; for Table B3, see http://www.astro.rug.nl/~sctrager/coma_tableB3.pd

Internal color gradients and the color-magnitude relation of early-type galaxies

The traditional use of fixed apertures in determining the well known color-magnitude (CM) relation of early type galaxies, coupled with the presence of radial color gradients within these systems, introduces a bias in the CM relation itself. The effect of this bias is studied here deriving a CM relation which is based on color measurements carried out homogeneously within an aperture of radius equal to that of the galaxy effective radius. A sample of 48 giant early-type galaxies in the Coma cluster, with CCD observations in the U- and V-band, is used for this derivation. It is found that internal radial color gradients in early-type galaxies cannot be neglected when discussing the colors of these systems, and that the CM relation derived using color measurements within the effective radius is significantly flatter than those based on fixed-aperture color measurements. With the presently available data it is impossible to determine whether the relation is completely flat, or whether a small correlation is still present between galaxy color and luminosity.Comment: 18 pages, with 5 figures; to appear in the May 2001 issue of A