Feasibility of Late Transplanted Summer Pearl Millet for Prolonged rabi Season With Integrated Nitrogen Management Under Indian Coastal Region

Experiments were conducted in coastal South Gujarat region of India to evaluate the feasibility of late transplanted summer pearl millet under prolonged rabi season with integrated nitrogen management (INM) during 2014, 2015 and 2016. INM treatments were consisted of four combinations of biocompost and inorganic nitrogen fertilizers. Two planting methods were evaluated, namely drilling and transplanting. Premature heading in transplanted pearl millet was observed up to 8-10% population during all the three experimental years, the possible causes for this are slow nitrogen availability, weather conditions, the thickness of the seedlings, root pruning and seedling age at transplanting. Application of 100% Recommended Dose of Fertilizer (RDF) + 5 t biocompost had significantly increased growth, yield (3862 kg ha-1), benefit-cost ratio (B:C ratio) (3.52) and quality of parameters of pearl millet followed by 75% Recommended Dose of Nitrogen (RDN) + 25% RDN through biocompost. Late transplanted summer pearl millet was little feasible to grow over timely drilled pearl millet as it had reduced pearl millet grain yield by 6.07% and also reduced the net profit by 72.46 US $ ha-1. However, overall, it was feasible to grow late transplanted pearl millet and gave yield up to 3150 kg ha-1 in prolonged rabi season condition for brining summer season well in time

InterPro in 2017-beyond protein family and domain annotations

InterPro (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/interpro/) is a freely available database used to classify protein sequences into families and to predict the presence of important domains and sites. InterProScan is the underlying software that allows both protein and nucleic acid sequences to be searched against InterPro's predictive models, which are provided by its member databases. Here, we report recent developments with InterPro and its associated software, including the addition of two new databases (SFLD and CDD), and the functionality to include residue-level annotation and prediction of intrinsic disorder. These developments enrich the annotations provided by InterPro, increase the overall number of residues annotated and allow more specific functional inferences

InterPro in 2017-beyond protein family and domain annotations

InterPro (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/interpro/) is a freely available database used to classify protein sequences into families and to predict the presence of important domains and sites. InterProScan is the underlying software that allows both protein and nucleic acid sequences to be searched against InterPro's predictive models, which are provided by its member databases. Here, we report recent developments with InterPro and its associated software, including the addition of two new databases (SFLD and CDD), and the functionality to include residue-level annotation and prediction of intrinsic disorder. These developments enrich the annotations provided by InterPro, increase the overall number of residues annotated and allow more specific functional inferences

Knowledge networks and universities : locational and organisational aspects of knowledge transfer interactions

This paper explores the nature of the significant knowledge networks universities form with external organisations through knowledge transfer activities. Focussing on the UK higher education system, the analysis focuses on examining the extent to which organisational and locational characteristics are associated with the nature of these networks, finding that the nature of the networks universities form through knowledge transfer are related to both characteristics. In particular, we find that the institution’s status is important with more established universities are likely to have a more diverse range of organisations with which they interact, as well as a higher number of non-local interactions. In terms of geographic location, we find that universities within lagging regions tend to have more locally focused networks than universities in more leading regions. Overall, the knowledge transfer networking capacity of universities is found to be associated with the regional business environment within which they are situated, with the results going someway to confirming the importance of the role of universities in regional innovation systems, However, it also the case that more established, research focussed, universities are more likely to form part of wider , and possibly even more globalised, knowledge networks. Therefore, both the flow and stock of knowledge within regions is likely to be influenced by the networks formed by its universities, which has implications for both regional innovation capability and regional competitiveness

Edible bio-based nanostructures: delivery, absorption and potential toxicity

The development of bio-based nanostructures as nanocarriers of bioactive compounds to specific body sites has been presented as a hot topic in food, pharmaceutical and nanotechnology fields. Food and pharmaceutical industries seek to explore the huge potential of these nanostructures, once they can be entirely composed of biocompatible and non-toxic materials. At the same time, they allow the incorporation of lipophilic and hydrophilic bioactive compounds protecting them against degradation, maintaining its active and functional performance. Nevertheless, the physicochemical properties of such structures (e.g., size and charge) could change significantly their behavior in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. The main challenges in the development of these nanostructures are the proper characterization and understanding of the processes occurring at their surface, when in contact with living systems. This is crucial to understand their delivery and absorption behavior as well as to recognize potential toxicological effects. This review will provide an insight into the recent innovations and challenges in the field of delivery via GI tract using bio-based nanostructures. Also, an overview of the approaches followed to ensure an effective deliver (e.g., avoiding physiological barriers) and to enhance stability and absorptive intestinal uptake of bioactive compounds will be provided. Information about nanostructures potential toxicity and a concise description of the in vitro and in vivo toxicity studies will also be given.Joana T. Martins, Oscar L. Ramos, Ana C. Pinheiro, Ana I. Bourbon, Helder D. Silva and Miguel A. Cerqueira (SFRH/BPD/89992/2012, SFRH/BPD/80766/2011, SFRH/BPD/101181/2014, SFRH/BD/73178/2010, SFRH/BD/81288/2011, and SFRH/BPD/72753/2010, respectively) are the recipients of a fellowship from the Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia (FCT, POPH-QREN and FSE, Portugal). The authors thank the FCT Strategic Project PEst-OE/EQB/LA0023/2013 and the project "BioInd-Biotechnology and Bioengineering for improved Industrial and Agro-Food processes," REF.NORTE-07-0124-FEDER-000028, co-funded by the Programa Operacional Regional do Norte (ON.2-O Novo Norte), QREN, FEDER. We also thank to the European Commission: BIOCAPS (316265, FP7/REGPOT-2012-2013.1) and Xunta de Galicia: Agrupamento INBIOMED (2012/273) and Grupo con potencial de crecimiento. The support of EU Cost Action FA1001 is gratefully acknowledged

Morphological Classification of Galaxies by Shapelet Decomposition in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

We describe application of the `shapelet' linear decomposition of galaxy images to morphological classification using images of $\sim$ 3000 galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. After decomposing the galaxies we perform a principal component analysis to reduce the number of dimensions of the shapelet space to nine. We find that each of these nine principal components contains unique morphological information, and give a description of each principal component's contribution to a galaxy's morphology. We find that galaxies of differing Hubble type separate cleanly in the shapelet space. We apply a Gaussian mixture model to the 9-dimensional space spanned by the principal components and use the results as a basis for classification. Using the mixture model, we separate galaxies into seven classes and give a description of each class's physical and morphological properties. We find that several of the mixture model classes correlate well with the traditional Hubble types both in their morphology and their physical parameters (e.g., color, velocity dispersions, etc.). In addition, we find an additional class of late-type morphology but with high velocity dispersions and very blue color; most of these galaxies exhibit post-starburst activity. This method provides an objective and quantitative alternative to traditional and subjective visual classification.Comment: 21 pages, 16 figures, accepted by AJ, minor changes per the referee's comment

Prophylactic Delivery of a Bacteriophage Cocktail in Feed Significantly Reduces Salmonella Colonization in Pigs

Nontyphoidal Salmonella spp. are a leading cause of human food poisoning and can be transmitted to humans via consuming contaminated pork. To reduce Salmonella spread to the human food chain, bacteriophage (phage) therapy could be used to reduce bacteria from animals' preslaughter. We aimed to determine if adding a two-phage cocktail to feed reduces Salmonella colonization in piglets. This first required spray drying phages to allow them to be added as a powder to feed, and phages were spray dried in different excipients to establish maximum recovery. Although laboratory phage yields were not maintained during scale up in a commercial spray dryer (titers fell from 3 × 108 to 2.4 × 106 PFU/g respectively), the phage titers were high enough to progress. Spray dried phages survived mixing and pelleting in a commercial feed mill, and sustained no further loss in titer when stored at 4°C or barn conditions over 6 months. Salmonella-challenged piglets that were prophylactically fed the phage-feed diet had significantly reduced Salmonella colonization in different gut compartments (P < 0.01). 16S rRNA gene sequencing of fecal and gut samples showed phages did not negatively impact microbial communities as they were similar between healthy control piglets and those treated with phage. Our study shows delivering dried phages via feed effectively reduces Salmonella colonization in pigs. Infections caused by Salmonella spp. cause 93.8 million cases of human food poisoning worldwide, each year of which 11.7% are due to consumption of contaminated pork products. An increasing number of swine infections are caused by multidrug-resistant (MDR) Salmonella strains, many of which have entered, and continue to enter the human food chain. Antibiotics are losing their efficacy against these MDR strains, and thus antimicrobial alternatives are needed. Phages could be developed as an alternative approach, but research is required to determine the optimal method to deliver phages to pigs and to determine if phage treatment is effective at reducing Salmonella colonization in pigs. The results presented in this study address these two aspects of phage development and show that phages delivered via feed prophylactically to pigs reduces Salmonella colonization in challenged pigs

Anatomy of BioJS, an open source community for the life sciences

BioJS is an open source software project that develops visualization tools for different types of biological data. Here we report on the factors that influenced the growth of the BioJS user and developer community, and outline our strategy for building on this growth. The lessons we have learned on BioJS may also be relevant to other open source software projects

Hip Hub? Class, race and gender in creative hubs

This chapter builds on a growing body of research about inequalities in the cultural and creative industries to ask how creative hubs are situated in relation to class, race and gender. Drawing on our research in London hubs, we examine whether hubs contribute to greater diversity in the CCI workforce or whether they could be said to entrench privilege. Our analysis revolves around two interrelated questions: first, we ask what contextualises and constitutes inequality in creative and cultural hubs; and second, does an emphasis upon ‘getting the community right’ in these types of spaces contribute to a heightening rather than a diminishing of inequalities, particularly as decision-making gets concentrated in the opaque process of ‘curation’