Induced Resistance Using Nonpathogenic Fusarium Oxysporum for Biological Control of Banana Fusarium Wilt

Banana (Musa spp. Linn.) is the second most important fruit crops in Malaysia. It is easily attacked by the fungus Fusarium oxysporum Schlect. fsp. cubense (E.F.Smith) Snyder and Hansen (FOC), causing terminal wilt in the field. Chemical and cultural methods were not effective in controlling the disease. Therefore, alternative control measures have to be developed. In recent years, nonpathogenic Fusaria was being considered for plant disease control and could be the most promising approach for biological control of Fusarium wilt in banana through induced systemic resistance. Isolates of nonpathogenic F oxysporum (FO: F01, F02, F03, F04, F05 and F06) were isolated from healthy roots and rhizospheres of bananas vars. Berangan and Rastali, and were identified to the species level based on cultural and morphological characteristics. Random amplified polymorphic (RAPD-PCR) analysis was able to establish variability within F. oxy.\porom isolates and between saprophytic and pathogenic fonns (FOe race 1 and race 4), using ope 11 and ope 14 primers. All 6 isolates of FO were antagonistic to both pathogenic race 1 and race 4 of FOe with values of the % of inhibition of radial growth (PIRG) exceeding 50% in a series of dual culture test. F04 was found to be the most antagonistic against FOC' race 4 with PIRGof65%. Infectivity studies on six-weeks-old tissue cultured banana seedlings var. Berangan cv. intan, con finned that FO1, F02, F03, F04, F05 or F06 were not pathogenic to banana seedlings. No visible foliar or internal symptoms were observed both on inoculated and control seedlings. Seedlings inoculated with FOC' race 4 produced foliar symptoms as yellowing of the older leaves followed by necrosis and wilting. F04 conferred some degree of resistance to the host when challenged with FOe race I suggesting the possible role of induced resistance against Fusarium wilt

Studies of Minerals, Organic and Biogenic Materials through Time-Resolved Raman Spectroscopy

A compact remote Raman spectroscopy system was developed at NASA Langley Research center and was previously demonstrated for its ability to identify chemical composition of various rocks and minerals. In this study, the Raman sensor was utilized to perform time-resolved Raman studies of various samples such as minerals and rocks, Azalea leaves and a few fossil samples. The Raman sensor utilizes a pulsed 532 nm Nd:YAG laser as excitation source, a 4-inch telescope to collect the Raman-scattered signal from a sample several meters away, a spectrograph equipped with a holographic grating, and a gated intensified CCD (ICCD) camera system. Time resolved Raman measurements were carried out by varying the gate delay with fixed short gate width of the ICCD camera, allowing measurement of both Raman signals and fluorescence signals. Rocks and mineral samples were characterized including marble, which contain CaCO3. Analysis of the results reveals the short (approx.10-13 s) lifetime of the Raman process, and shows that Raman spectra of some mineral samples contain fluorescence emission due to organic impurities. Also analyzed were a green (pristine) and a yellow (decayed) sample of Gardenia leaves. It was observed that the fluorescence signals from the green and yellow leaf samples showed stronger signals compared to the Raman lines. Moreover, it was also observed that the fluorescence of the green leaf was more intense and had a shorter lifetime than that of the yellow leaf. For the fossil samples, Raman shifted lines could not be observed due the presence of very strong short-lived fluorescence

Optimization of exopolysaccharide production by pleurotus ostreatus using diffrent cultivation strategies

Pleurotus ostreatus or known as oyster mushroom was regarded as one of the most cultivated mushroom around the world. One of the qualities it has is it able to produced exopolysaccharide called pleuran which secreted into the medium during submerged fermentation. The polysaccharide composed mainly of ß-(1/3)-D glucose and ß-(1/6)-D glucose linked by glycosidic bond. It has molecular weight of 2.4 X 104 Da with molecular formula of (C6H10O5)x The importance of pleuran is that it has the immunomodulatory properties that associated in triggering our immune system response. Nowadays, submerged fermentation is considered as the best method in cultivation this kind of mushroom. However, the production process of this kind of mushroom and its exopolysaccharide production especially in term of medium component is still unclear. In this research, the objectives were to optimize the medium composition and to find the optimum carbon to nitrogen (C: N) ratio for high exopolysaccharide production. Eight different media was screened and followed by factor by factor optimization of the medium component. The factors that been studied were ideal concentration of glucose, yeast extract, ammonium sulfate and dipotassium phosphate. Media number six which contain glucose 60.0 g L-1, yeast extract 2.0 g L-1, (NH4)2SO4 5.0 g L-1, MgSO4.7H2O 0.2 g L-1, K2HPO4 1.0 g L-1 was selected as best media production for P. ostreatus cultivation . The experiment then was further with different concentration of each component in the medium six excluding magnesium sulfate heptahydrate which maintained at 0.2 g L-1 throughout all the experiment stage. The range concentration for glucose, yeast extract, ammonium sulfate and dipotassium phosphate was setup between 0 – 120 g L-1, 0 – 4 g L-1, 0 – 5 g L-1 and 0 – 2 g L-1 respectively. In order to get the best C: N ratio for highest exopolysaccharide production, eleven ratio of carbon to nitrogen was experimented ranging from 15:1 to 65:1.Result shown that the optimum concentration for glucose, yeast extract, ammonium sulfate and dipotassium phosphate was 80.0, 4.0, 2.5 and 1.0 g L-1 respectively whiles the optimal C: N ratio recorded was 40: 1. The optimized medium also produced 2.83 g L-1 of exopolysaccharide increasingly up to 49 % when compared with un-optimized medium which only produced 1.9 g L-1 of exopolysaccharide

Design and Build a Compact Raman Sensor for Identification of Chemical Composition

A compact remote Raman sensor system was developed at NASA Langley Research Center. This sensor is an improvement over the previously reported system, which consisted of a 532 nm pulsed laser, a 4-inch telescope, a spectrograph, and an intensified charge-coupled devices (CCD) camera. One of the attractive features of the previous system was its portability, thereby making it suitable for applications such as planetary surface explorations, homeland security and defense applications where a compact portable instrument is important. The new system was made more compact by replacing bulky components with smaller and lighter components. The new compact system uses a smaller spectrograph measuring 9 x 4 x 4 in. and a smaller intensified CCD camera measuring 5 in. long and 2 in. in diameter. The previous system was used to obtain the Raman spectra of several materials that are important to defense and security applications. Furthermore, the new compact Raman sensor system is used to obtain the Raman spectra of a diverse set of materials to demonstrate the sensor system's potential use in the identification of unknown materials

Estimation of Modified Measure of Skewness

It is well known that the classical measures of skewness are not reliable and their sampling distributions are not known for small samples. Therefore, we consider the modified measure of skewness that is defined in terms of cumulative probability function. The main advantage of this measure is that its sampling distribution is derived from sample data as the sum of dependent Bernoulli random variables. Moreover, its variance and confidence interval are obtained based on multiplicative binomial distribution. Comparison with classical measures using simulation and an application to actual data set are given

Extracellular Superoxide Dismutase Protects Cardiomyocytes During Hyperoxia

Reactive oxygen species are implicated in tissue damage in many cardiovascular diseases. The current study was designed to test the hypothesis that exposure to high inspired oxygen concentrations (100%) damages cardiac mitochondria and that a biogenic response is needed for cell survival. The study was done in mice with a transgene (TG) for extracellular superoxide dismutase (EC-SOD) or with the EC-SOD gene knockout (KO). Adult EC-SOD mice and their wild type littermates and EC-SOD KO mice and their wild type littermates were exposed to 100% oxygen for 6 hours and for 72 hours, and the hearts were subsequently removed under deep anesthesia. The mortality rate in KO mice after 72 hours (25%) was significantly higher than wild type littermates (10%) and TG mice (4.2%). In the EC-SOD TG mice, 6 hours of exposure to hyperoxia activated the transcription of nuclear genes important for mitochondrial biogenesis---nuclear respiratory factors (NRF-1 and NRF-2) and their co-regulator PGC-1α---leading to expression of mitochondrial transcription factor A (Tfam), which regulates mitochondrial transcription and replication. Hyperoxia also induced activation of NRF-1 and NRF-2 in EC-SOD KO mice after 6 hours but down-regulated Tfam and PGC1α transcripts. But after 72 hours, mRNA expression for NRF-2, PGC-1α and Tfam increased in these mice. The protein expression of the pro-survival Protein Kinase B (Akt) was significantly increased by hyperoxia in the TG hearts after 6 hours (ppp In conclusion, systemic hyperoxia consistently increases mitochondrial biogenesis markers in the mouse heart, most prominently in EC-SOD TG mice, and co-incidentally with increases in Akt, p-Bad and p-GSK-3 R. This suggests that extracellular reactive oxygen products activate mitochondrial biogenesis and the pro-survival pathway in TG mice. Also, hyperoxia decreased the activation of Tfam and PGC-1α transcription after 6 hours and increased it again after 72 hours in KO mice. This was associated with a decrease in expression of Akt, p-Bad and p-GSK-3β and an increase in p38, indicating that either hyperoxia activated mitochondrial biogenesis and pro-survival pathways through p38 or that hyperoxia produced more oxidative damage to the mitochondria in the KO. In the latter case, the increase in p38 may be a signal for activation of apoptotic pathways

Advanced Water Vapor Lidar Detection System

In the present water vapor lidar system, the detected signal is sent over long cables to a waveform digitizer in a CAMAC crate. This has the disadvantage of transmitting analog signals for a relatively long distance, which is subjected to pickup noise, leading to a decrease in the signal to noise ratio. Generally, errors in the measurement of water vapor with the DIAL method arise from both random and systematic sources. Systematic errors in DIAL measurements are caused by both atmospheric and instrumentation effects. The selection of the on-line alexandrite laser with a narrow linewidth, suitable intensity and high spectral purity, and its operation at the center of the water vapor lines, ensures minimum influence in the DIAL measurement that are caused by the laser spectral distribution and avoid system overloads. Random errors are caused by noise in the detected signal. Variability of the photon statistics in the lidar return signal, noise resulting from detector dark current, and noise in the background signal are the main sources of random error. This type of error can be minimized by maximizing the signal to noise ratio. The increase in the signal to noise ratio can be achieved by several ways. One way is to increase the laser pulse energy, by increasing its amplitude or the pulse repetition rate. Another way, is to use a detector system with higher quantum efficiency and lower noise, on the other hand, the selection of a narrow band optical filter that rejects most of the day background light and retains high optical efficiency is an important issue. Following acquisition of the lidar data, we minimize random errors in the DIAL measurement by averaging the data, but this will result in the reduction of the vertical and horizontal resolutions. Thus, a trade off is necessary to achieve a balance between the spatial resolution and the measurement precision. Therefore, the main goal of this research effort is to increase the signal to noise ratio by a factor of 10 over the current system, using a newly evaluated, very low noise avalanche photo diode detector and constructing a 10 MHz waveform digitizer which will replace the current CAMAC system

Prognostic significance of CD20 expression and Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) association in classical Hodgkin lymphoma in Japan: A clinicopathologic study

名古屋大学Nagoya University博士(医学)doctoral thesi

Remote Raman Sensor System for Testing of Rocks and Minerals

Recent and future explorations of Mars and lunar surfaces through rovers and landers have spawned great interest in developing an instrument that can perform in-situ analysis of minerals on planetary surfaces. Several research groups have anticipated that for such analysis, Raman spectroscopy is the best suited technique because it can unambiguously provide the composition and structure of a material. A remote pulsed Raman spectroscopy system for analyzing minerals was demonstrated at NASA Langley Research Center in collaboration with the University of Hawaii. This system utilizes a 532 nm pulsed laser as an excitation wavelength, and a telescope with a 4-inch aperture for collecting backscattered radiation. A spectrograph equipped with a super notch filter for attenuating Rayleigh scattering is used to analyze the scattered signal. To form the Raman spectrum, the spectrograph utilizes a holographic transmission grating that simultaneously disperses two spectral tracks on the detector for increased spectral range. The spectrum is recorded on an intensified charge-coupled device (ICCD) camera system, which provides high gain to allow detection of inherently weak Stokes lines. To evaluate the performance of the system, Raman standards such as calcite and naphthalene are analyzed. Several sets of rock and gemstone samples obtained from Ward s Natural Science are tested using the Raman spectroscopy system. In addition, Raman spectra of combustible substances such acetone and isopropanol are also obtained. Results obtained from those samples and combustible substances are presented