Assessing stomatal response to live bacterial cells using whole leaf imaging.

Stomata are natural openings in the plant epidermis responsible for gas exchange between plant interior and environment. They are formed by a pair of guard cells, which are able to close the stomatal pore in response to a number of external factors including light intensity, carbon dioxide concentration, and relative humidity (RH). The stomatal pore is also the main route for pathogen entry into leaves, a crucial step for disease development. Recent studies have unveiled that closure of the pore is effective in minimizing bacterial disease development in Arabidopsis plants; an integral part of plant innate immunity. Previously, we have used epidermal peels to assess stomatal response to live bacteria (Melotto et al. 2006); however maintaining favorable environmental conditions for both plant epidermal peels and bacterial cells has been challenging. Leaf epidermis can be kept alive and healthy with MES buffer (10 mM KCl, 25 mM MES-KOH, pH 6.15) for electrophysiological experiments of guard cells. However, this buffer is not appropriate for obtaining bacterial suspension. On the other hand, bacterial cells can be kept alive in water which is not proper to maintain epidermal peels for long period of times. When an epidermal peel floats on water, the cells in the peel that are exposed to air dry within 4 hours limiting the timing to conduct the experiment. An ideal method for assessing the effect of a particular stimulus on guard cells should present minimal interference to stomatal physiology and to the natural environment of the plant as much as possible. We, therefore, developed a new method to assess stomatal response to live bacteria in which leaf wounding and manipulation is greatly minimized aiming to provide an easily reproducible and reliable stomatal assay. The protocol is based on staining of intact leaf with propidium iodide (PI), incubation of staining leaf with bacterial suspension, and observation of leaves under laser scanning confocal microscope. Finally, this method allows for the observation of the same live leaf sample over extended periods of time using conditions that closely mimic the natural conditions under which plants are attacked by pathogens

Quantifying Corn Deterioration Due to Fungal Growth by Use of CO2-Sensitive Gel

Carbon dioxide (CO2) generation is a useful measure of aerobic respiration of the microbes that decompose organic materials. Woods End Labs markets the Solvita. test kit to measure CO2 generated by samples of compost or soil. A procedure was developed to use the Solvita. kit to quantify the storage condition of shelled corn. The ISU-Solvita. Corn Testing Procedure uses shelled corn stored at 20.C. After a 24-h incubation period, a CO2-sensitive gel coated paddle is sealed in a jar containing 100 g of corn. After 4 h, the CO2 level in the jar is indicated by the color of the gel. The ISU-Solvita. Corn Testing Procedure was shown to be capable of quantifying the storage state of corn over a range of moistures and durations of incubation after re-wetting. A linear relation was observed between corn moisture and measured %CO2 for moistures between 18% and 22%. An exponential relation was observed between measured %CO2 and storage times of 20% moisture corn from 3 to 12 days at 27.C. In other tests in which samples were rewetted to 20% moisture and incubated 24 h, there was no relationship between corn with visible mechanical damage or corn bulk density and measured CO2

Coronatine Facilitates Pseudomonas syringae Infection of Arabidopsis Leaves at Night.

In many land plants, the stomatal pore opens during the day and closes during the night. Thus, periods of darkness could be effective in decreasing pathogen penetration into leaves through stomata, the primary sites for infection by many pathogens. Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato (Pst) DC3000 produces coronatine (COR) and opens stomata, raising an intriguing question as to whether this is a virulence strategy to facilitate bacterial infection at night. In fact, we found that (a) biological concentration of COR is effective in opening dark-closed stomata of Arabidopsis thaliana leaves, (b) the COR defective mutant Pst DC3118 is less effective in infecting Arabidopsis in the dark than under light and this difference in infection is reduced with the wild type bacterium Pst DC3000, and (c) cma, a COR biosynthesis gene, is induced only when the bacterium is in contact with the leaf surface independent of the light conditions. These findings suggest that Pst DC3000 activates virulence factors at the pre-invasive phase of its life cycle to infect plants even when environmental conditions (such as darkness) favor stomatal immunity. This functional attribute of COR may provide epidemiological advantages for COR-producing bacteria on the leaf surface

Electrical structure of the Himalaya of Central Nepal: high conductivity around the mid-crustal ramp along the MHT

Twelve broadband magnetotelluric (MT) soundings were performed across the Himalaya of Central Nepal in 1996 in order to determine the electrical structure of the crust and its relation to geological structures and active tectonics. The MT impedance tensors were obtained for frequencies between 0.001 and 500 Hz. The 2‐D section, derived from joint inversion of TE‐ and TM mode after RRI and Groom/Bailey decomposition, shows high conductivity in the foreland basin (∼30 Ω.m) that contrasts with the resistive Indian basement (>300 Ω.m) and Lesser Himalaya (>1000 Ω.m). In addition, our MT sounding reveals a major conductive feature beneath the front of the Higher Himalaya, also characterized by intense microseismic activity, and the position of a mid‐crustal ramp along the major active thrust fault (MHT). This high conductivity zone probably reflects metamorphic fluids, released during underthrusting of the Indian basement and pervading well connected microcracks induced by interseismic stress build‐up, or distributed brittle deformation around the ramp

A unified Method For The Design Of Circular Bolted Flange Plate Connections

The use of steel tubular structures for transmission and distribution poles is increasing widely in the U.S as they are easy to construct and install, require less land space and has aesthetic benefits. In these steel tubular structures, the use of bolted flange plate connection is common. The bolted flange-plate connection is used to connect tubular element and transfer load from one element to the other and then to the foundation. The size and thickness of flange-plate connection depend on the applied loads, number of bolts and material type. For the industrial manufacturing purpose, the simplified and unified design method for circular bolted flange-plate connection is not documented properly. Many investigations focused on the design of flange-plate due to axial load only or due to bending moment only, while some on the effect of prying action. The objective of this study is to propose a unified simplified design steps for unstiffened circular bolted flange-plate connections integrating the studies done and methods proposed in the past. A detailed study of literature on circular bolted flange plate was done. From integrating the steps of three papers, a complete design steps mitigating the limitations of past analytical methods was proposed. A theoretical parametric study was conducted to study the behavior of connections due to variable parameters. To support the analysis of the theoretical parametric study, FEA analysis was done and it showed similar results as the theoretical parametric study. Furthermore, since this study was based on the results of research work done in the past, the results of the proposed method was compared with the three methods that were considered while proposing simplified design steps. To verify the results of the proposed method, FEA analysis was done and the results were in good agreement with the theoretical results. This study combine previous design steps and bring together the conclusions eliminating the limitations of the present studies

Design and numerical analysis of a horizontal axis wind turbine

In this paper, mathematical design of a 20 kW horizontal axis wind turbine is conducted along with computational analysis to verify the performance of the designed blade. Blade Element Momentum (BEM) theory is used for the design of blades, empirical BEM relations for geometry calculations for twist distribution and chord distribution are included. The computational analysis on the performance of the geometric design is done using both BEM and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) through Qblade BEM code and ANSYS CFX tool respectively. The rotational periodicity based domain is used for CFD computation and k- ϵ turbulence model is considered. The analysis is done in variable speed conditions (constant tip speed ratio of 6) for wind speed range 2-12 m/s, and change of pitch angles from 1 to 4°. The optimum pitch is obtained as 3° from CFD analysis. The results of torque, Cp/Power, velocity streamlines, and pressure contours are obtained from CFD. Torque curve obtained from BEM and CFD analysis over wind speeds 2-12 m/s showed good agreement, supporting the HAWT geometric design. A maximum Cp of 0.399 was obtained at 12 m/s

Approximate search with constraints on indels with application in SPAM filtering

-Finding distorted occurrences of search pattern(s) in the search string by applying constraints on elementary edit operations (indels (insertions/deletions) and substitutions) is a new category of the approximate string search problem that we introduce in this paper. The constraint on the total number of indels can improve the search efficiency when one knows the probabilities of these edit operations for the distorted pattern/text. Two approximate search algorithms with such a constraint, CRBP-Indels and Sankoff-Indels, are presented here and their performances are evaluated for different probabilities of insertions, deletions, and substitutions. The experimental results show that CRBP-Indels has better performance over Sankoff-Indels when the number of indels is greater than the number of substitutions. However, the Sankoff- Indels algorithm is better if the number of substitutions is greater than the number of indels. Possible application of these algorithms is in SPAM filtering for detection of deliberately distorted SPAM-words. In such a scenario, the number of indels applied on the original SPAM-words must be limited in order to maintain their intelligibility

EFFICACY OF JYOTISHMATI OIL WITH PRANAYAMA ON I.Q. (INTELLIGENCE QUOTIENT)

Aim of the Study: To evaluate the efficacy of Jyotishmati Oil with Pranayam on I.Q. (Intelligence Quotient). Objectives of the Study: To evaluate efficacy of Jyotishmati oil on mental age. To evaluate efficacy of Jyotishmati oil with Pranayama on mental age. To understand and explain precisely the concept of Jyotishmati oil as a Medha, Buddhi and Smruti enhancer by using modern parameter I.Q. Materials and Methods: Jyotishmati oil was procured from authorised pharmacy. Drug Authentification and Fingerprint analysis of Jyotishmati oil by HPTLC method was done from Certified Laboratory. The selected children were grouped in three groups, 30 children in each group. Group A and Group B considered as experimental group. In-group C no intervention was done. Route of administration - oral, Dose - 0.25ml twice a day, Anupan- Milk, Kala- After morning breakfast and after dinner. Duration- 180 days. Type of Study: Open Randomised Controlled Clinical Study. Assessment Criteria: The scores were taken before the trial (0th day) & after the completion of treatment schedule (180th day). All the groups were subjected to BKT or I.Q. and M.A. scores. Statistical Analysis: Student Paired t - test & Repeated measures ANOVA were used for statistical analysis. Result: The results were statistically analyzed for better interpretation. In comparison of both experimental group A and B and control group C, improvement in I.Q. and Mental Age were significant than control group C. In all the groups, Group B showed maximum improvement in Mental Age (M.A.).&nbsp

Analyzing Digital Evidence Using Parallel k-means with Triangle Inequality on Spark

Analyzing digital evidence has become a big data problem, which requires faster methods to handle them on a scalable framework. Standard k-means clustering algorithm is widely used in analyzing digital evidence. However, it is a hill-climbing method and it becomes slower with the increase of data, its dimension, and the number of cluster centers. This paper presents a framework to implement parallel k-means with triangle inequality (k-meansTI) algorithm on Spark, which is supposed to improve the speed of the standard k-means algorithm by skipping many point-center distance computations, giving the same clustering results. Our experimental results show that the parallel implementation of k-meansTI on Spark can be faster than the Spark ML k-means when a data set is large, does not contain many sparse data, and is high dimensional. These results are based on the experiments performed on six different data sets that have variations on the number of features and the number of data instances.acceptedVersion© 2019 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works