A review on plant growth promoting rhizobacteria acting as bioinoculants and their biological approach towards the production of sustainable agriculture

Plant growth promoting rhizobacteria are the soil bacteria inhabiting around/on the root surface and are directly or indirectly involved in promoting plant growth and development via production and secretion of various regulatory chemicals in the vicinity of rhizosphere. There has been much research interest in PGPB and there is now an increasing number of PGPB being commercialized for various crops. Today a lot of efforts have been made for searching and investigating the PGPB and their mode of action, so that they can be exploited commercially as biofertilizers. Because of the various challenges faced in screening, formulation, and application, PGPB have yet to fulfill their promise and potential as commercial inoculants. Recent progress in our understanding of their diversity, colonization ability, mechanisms of action, formulation, and application should facilitate their development as reliablecomponents in the management of sustainable agricultural systems. Several reviews have discussed specific aspects of PGPB as bioinoculants. We have tried to critically evaluate the current status of bacterial inoculants for contemporary agriculture in developed and developing countries. This review focuses on some important information regarding the biofertilizing potential of some important group of microbes, their formulations, their application for the development of sustainable technology, scope of improvement by genetic engineering, steps to be undertaken for their commercialization and their future prospects

Vaginal cuff recurrence after radical cystectomy: an under - studied site of bladder cancer relapse

Vaginal cuff recurrence of tumor following radical cystectomy is a rare site of disease recurrence, however it has never been specifically studied. The aim of the study is to evaluate incidence, risk factors, and long-term oncologic outcomes of vaginal cuff recurrence in a cohort of female patients treated with radical cystectomy for invasive urothelial carcinoma of the bladder

Modified FGP approach and MATLAB program for solving multi-level linear fractional programming problems

In this paper, we present modified fuzzy goal programming (FGP) approach and generalized MATLAB program for solving multi-level linear fractional programming problems (ML-LFPPs) based on with some major modifications in earlier FGP algorithms. In proposed modified FGP approach, solution preferences by the decision makers at each level are not considered and fuzzy goal for the decision vectors is defined using individual best solutions. The proposed modified algorithm as well as MATLAB program simplifies the earlier algorithm on ML-LFPP by eliminating solution preferences by the decision makers at each level, thereby avoiding difficulties associate with multilevel programming problems and decision deadlock situation. The proposed modified technique is simple, efficient and requires less computational efforts in comparison of earlier FGP techniques. Also, the proposed coding of generalizedMATLAB program based on this modified approach for solving ML-LFPPs is the unique programming tool toward dealing with such complex mathematical problems with MATLAB. This software based program is useful and user can directly obtain compromise optimal solution of MLLFPPs with it. The aim of this paper is to present modified FGP technique and generalizedMATLAB program to obtain compromise optimal solution of ML-LFP problems in simple and efficient manner. A comparative analysis is also carried out with numerical example in order to show efficiency of proposed modified approach and to demonstrate functionality of MATLAB program

Expression of genes related to Na⁺ exclusion and proline accumulation in tolerant and susceptible wheat genotypes under salt stress

In the present investigation, expression of genes related to Na+ exclusion such as salt overly sensitive (TaSOS1) and Na+/H+ antiporter (TaNHX1) and proline accumulation such as pyrroline-5-carboxylate reductase (P5CR) and glutamate synthase (GOGAT) was studied in seedlings of Kharchia 65 (Kh 65, salt tolerant) and HD 2009 (sensitive) under salt stress (ECe, 12 dSm–1) and controlled conditions. As compared to HD 2009, Kh 65 showed significantly lower accumulation of Na+ (p + exclusion in root and compartmentation in leaf and increased proline concentration are associated with tolerance to salinity stress in wheat. The information will be useful for improving wheat genotypes for salt tolerance

Cross-Layer Design in Dynamic Spectrum Sharing Systems

We consider a dynamic spectrum sharing system consisting of a primary user, whose licensed spectrum is allowed to be accessed by a secondary user as long as it does not violate the prescribed interference limit inflicted on the primary user. Assuming the Nakagami-m block-fading environment, we aim at maximizing the performance of secondary user's link in terms of average spectral efficiency (ASE) and error performance under the specified packet error rate (PER) and average interference limit constraints. To this end, we employ a cross-layer design policy which combines adaptive power and coded discrete M-QAM modulation scheme at the physical layer with a truncated automatic repeat request (ARQ) protocol at the data link layer, and simultaneously satisfies the aforementioned constraints. Numerical results affirm that the secondary link of spectrum sharing system combining ARQ with adaptive modulation and coding (AMC) achieves significant gain in ASE depending on the maximum number of retransmissions initiated by the ARQ protocol. The results further indicate that the ARQ protocol essentially improves the packet loss rate performance of the secondary link

Molecular characterization of pearl millet [Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R. Br] inbreds using microsatellite markers

Studies on genetic diversity in Pennisetum germplasm are the promising opportunities for the use of un-domesticated materials for improving pearl millet varieties. DNA based markers have now emerged as a potential genomic tool for estimation of genetic diversity among various cultivars and varietal identification. In present study, genetic diversity among 49 stay green inbreds of pearl millet was studied using simple sequence repeats (SSRs). Twenty nine polymorphic SSR primers, identified after initial screening of 70, were used to study diversity among these lines. A total of 108 alleles were amplified, collectively yielding unique SSR profiles for all the 49 inbreds. The average number of SSR alleles per locus was 3.72, with a range from 2 to 13. Polymorphic information content (PIC) values of various SSR loci across all the 49 inbreds ranged from 0.14 to 0.87 with an average of 0.51 per lo-cus. This indicated sufficient diversity among the 49 pearl millet inbreds and total 5 out of 29 polymorphic SSR loci, namely Xpsmp2070, Xpsmp2001, Xpsmp2008, Xpsmp2066, Xpsmp2072 revealed PIC values above 0.70, can be considered highly useful for differentiation of pearl millet inbred lines. The lowest PIC value (0.47) for linkage group 7 showed comparatively conserved nature of this linkage group A dendrogram obtained using WARD’s minimum variance method further delineates 49 inbreds into 8 major clusters, and the clustering pattern corroborated with their pedigree and characteristics traits

Psychosocial aspects of epilepsy: a wider approach.

SUMMARY: Epilepsy is one of the most serious neurological conditions and has an impact not only on the affected individual but also on the family and, indirectly, on the community. A global approach to the individual must take into account cognitive problems, psychiatric comorbidities and all psychosocial complications that often accompany epilepsy. We discuss psychosocial issues in epilepsy with special focus on the relationship between stigma and psychiatric comorbidities. Social barriers to optimal care and health outcomes for people with epilepsy result in huge disparities, and the public health system needs to invest in awareness programmes to increase public knowledge and reduce stigma in order to minimise such disparities. DECLARATIONS OF INTEREST: J.W.S. receives research support from the Dr Marvin Weil Epilepsy Research Fund, Eisai, GlaxoSmithKline, the World Health Organization and the EU's FP7 programme, and has been consulted by, and has received fees for lectures from, GlaxoSmithKline, Eisai, Lundbeck, Teva and UCB. COPYRIGHT AND USAGE: © The Royal College of Psychiatrists 2016. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Non-Commercial, No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) license

Generalized overlap quantum state tomography

We propose and experimentally demonstrate a quantum state tomography protocol that generalizes the Wallentowitz-Vogel-Banaszek-W\'odkiewicz point-by-point Wigner function reconstruction. The full density operator of an arbitrary quantum state is efficiently reconstructed in the Fock basis, using semidefinite programming, after interference with a small set of calibrated coherent states. This new protocol is resource- and computationally efficient, is robust against noise, does not rely on approximate state displacements, and ensures the physicality of results.Comment: 19 pages, 10 Figure