Prospects and retrospects of land use system through agroforestry practices in Meherpur district, Bangladesh

The study aims to explore the prospects and retrospects of land use system through agroforestry practices in Meherpur district, Bangladesh. It particularly focuses on some aspects of land uses of the study area like land use pattern, land ownership, choices of species for agroforestry, farmers’ perceptions towards agroforestry, status and prospects of agroforestry practices. This study was carried out by using mixed method followed by a semi-structure questionnaire. A total of 100 respondents were selected by using snowball purposive sampling method. The study revealed that agriculture was the major occupation (50%) of the selected respondents. Of the total land used by selected respondents, 21% land were used for agroforestry, 69% for agriculture and remaining 10% for homestead purposes. Most of the farmers (60%) were small landholders (1 to 5 acres) and 18% had lesser than 1 acre land. Among them 76% had their own land followed by 8% leased land and 16% both own and leased land. They preferred agroforestry in their homestead (92%), agricultural land (65%), water body (31%) and fallow land (18%). The farmers were practicing different types of agroforestry such as cropland, homestead and aquaculture with boundary plantation by mixing trees, agricultural crops and vegetables in their farmlands to receive diversified outcomes. A remarkable change in land use pattern was found after adopting agroforestry practices in this study area. Maximum respondents practiced agro-forestry in their homestead and croplands. Most of the land (67%) was used for agriculture cultivation while a very small amount of land was used as agroforestry in the study area.Int. J. Agril. Res. Innov. & Tech. 7 (2): 1-6, December, 201

Protocells realize their potential

How the first metabolic network was organized to power a cell remains an enigma. Now, simple iron–sulfur peptides have been used to generate a pH-gradient across a protocell membrane by catalysing hydrogen peroxide reduction. This indicates that short peptides could have fulfilled the role of redox active metalloproteins in early life

Prebiotic Systems Chemistry: Complexity Overcoming Clutter

Living organisms are the most complex chemical system known to exist, yet exploit only a small constellation of universally conserved metabolites to support indefinite evolution. The conserved chemical simplicity belying biological diversity strongly indicates a unified origin of life. Thus, the chemical relationship between metabolites suggests that a simple set of predisposed chemical reactions predicated the appearance of life on Earth. Conversely, if prebiotic chemistry produces highly complex mixtures, this then implies that the feasibility of elucidating life’s origins is an insurmountable task. Prebiotic systems chemistry, however, has recently been exploiting the chemical links between different metabolites to provide unprecedented scope for exploration of the origins of life, and an exciting new perspective on a 4 billion-year-old problem. At the heart of the systems approach is an understanding that individual classes of metabolites cannot be considered in isolation. This review highlights several recent advances suggesting that the canonical nucleotides and proteinogenic amino acids are predisposed chemical structures

Comparative Evaluation of Operational Land Imager sensor on board Landsat 8 and Landsat 9 for Land use Land Cover Mapping over a Heterogeneous Landscape

Since its advent in 1972, the Landsat satellites have witnessed consistent improvements in sensor characteristics, which have significantly improved accuracy. In this study, a comparison of the accuracy of Landsat OLI and OLI-2 satellites in land use land cover (LULC) mapping has been made. For this, image fusion techniques have been applied to enhance the spatial resolution of both OLI and OLI-2 multispectral images, and then a support vector machine (SVM) classifier has been used for LULC mapping. The results show that LULC classification from OLI-2 has better accuracy (83.4%) than OLI (92.4%). The validation of classified LULC maps shows that the OLI-2 data is more accurate in distinguishing dense and sparse vegetation as well as darker and lighter objects. The relationship between LULC maps and surface biophysical parameters using Local Moran’s I also shows better performance of the OLI-2 sensor in LULC mapping than the OLI sensor

Topologically Protected Quantum State Transfer in a Chiral Spin Liquid

Topology plays a central role in ensuring the robustness of a wide variety of physical phenomena. Notable examples range from the robust current carrying edge states associated with the quantum Hall and the quantum spin Hall effects to proposals involving topologically protected quantum memory and quantum logic operations. Here, we propose and analyze a topologically protected channel for the transfer of quantum states between remote quantum nodes. In our approach, state transfer is mediated by the edge mode of a chiral spin liquid. We demonstrate that the proposed method is intrinsically robust to realistic imperfections associated with disorder and decoherence. Possible experimental implementations and applications to the detection and characterization of spin liquid phases are discussed.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figure

Genome wide association mapping of grain arsenic, copper, molybdenum and zinc in rice (Oryza sativa L.) grown at four international field sites

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Intracellular expression of toll-like receptor 4 in neuroblastoma cells and their unresponsiveness to lipopolysaccharide

BACKGROUND: Recently it has been reported that, toll-like receptors (TLRs) are expressed on a series of tumor cells, such as colon cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, melanoma and lung cancer. Although some cancer cells like melanoma cells are known to respond to lipopolysaccharide (LPS) via TLR4, not all cancer cells are positive for TLR4. There is little information on the expression and function of TLR4 in neuroblastoma cells. In this study, we investigated the expression of TLR4 in human neuroblastoma NB-1 cell line. METHODS: Expression and localization of TLR4 were detected by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and flow cytometric analysis, respectively. Activation of nuclear factor (NF)-κB by LPS was detected by degradation of IκB-α and NF-κB luciferase assay. Activation and expression of mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase and interferon regulatory factor (IRF)-3 was detected by immunoblot analysis. RESULTS: Human NB-1 neuroblastoma cells expressed intracellular form of TLR4, but not the cell surface form. Further, NB-1 cells express CD14, MD2 and MyD88, which are required for LPS response. However, LPS did not significantly induce NF-κB activation in NB-1 cells although it slightly degraded IκB-α. NB-1 cells expressed no IRF-3, which plays a pivotal role on the MyD88-independent pathway of LPS signaling. Collectively, NB-1 cells are capable to avoid their response to LPS. CONCLUSION: Although human NB-1 neuroblastoma cells possessed all the molecules required for LPS response, they did not respond to LPS. It might be responsible for intracellular expression of TLR4 or lack of IRF-3

Risk practices for animal and human anthrax in Bangladesh: an exploratory study

From August 2009 to October 2010, International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh and the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research together investigated 14 outbreaks of anthrax which included 140 animal and 273 human cases in 14 anthrax-affected villages. Our investigation objectives were to explore the context in which these outbreaks occurred, including livestock rearing practices, human handling of sick and dead animals, and the anthrax vaccination program

Anti- Japanese-Encephalitis-Viral Effects of Kaempferol and Daidzin and Their RNA-Binding Characteristics

Background: New therapeutic tools and molecular targets are needed for treatment of Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV) infections. JEV requires an a-1 translational frameshift to synthesize the NS1 ’ protein required for viral neuroinvasiveness. Several flavonoids have been shown to possess antiviral activity in vitro against a wide spectrum of viruses. To date, the antiviral activities of flavonol kaempferol (Kae) and isoflavonoid daidzin (Dai) against JEV have not been described. Methodology/Principal Findings: The 50 % cytotoxic concentration (CC50) and 50 % effective concentration (EC50) against JEV were investigated in BHK21 cells by MTS reduction. Activity against viral genomic RNA and proteins was measured by real-time RT-PCR and western blotting. The frameshift site RNA-binding characterization was also determined by electrospray ionization mass spectrometry, isothermal titration calorimetry and autodocking analysis. EC 50 values of Kae and Dai were 12.6 and 25.9 mM against JEV in cells pretreated before infection, whereas in cells infected before treatment, EC50 was 21.5 and 40.4 mM, respectively. Kae exhibited more potent activity against JEV and RNA binding in cells following internalization through direct inhibition of viral replication and protein expression, indicating that its antiviral activity was principally due to direct virucidal effects. The JEV frameshift site RNA (fsRNA) was selected as a target for assaying Kae and Dai. ITC of fsRNA revealed an apparent Kb value for Kae that was nine fold stronger than that for Dai. This binding was confirmed and localized to the RNA using ESI-MS and autodock analysis. Kae could form non-covalent complexes wit