‘How to’ guide for measuring fan performance and efficiency in meat chicken sheds

This ‘how to’ guide provides readers with method to measure fan performance and energy efficiency of fans installed in meat chicken sheds. These methods are also useful for identifying fans that are under-performing or require maintenance. For more information about fan energy efficiency, a complementary report is available on the RIRDC website ‘Review of fan efficiency in meat chicken sheds’ (RIRDC Publication No. 15/018). A spreadsheet was also developed under this project for comparing and ranking fans against others in terms of energy efficiency, air flow and costs (‘Tunnel Ventilation Fan Comparison Spreadsheet’), and is available on the RIRDC website.

Consensus statement on the role of Accredited Exercise Physiologists within the treatment of mental disorders: A guide for mental health professionals

- Objective The aim is to identify the role and scope of Accredited Exercise Physiologist (AEP) services in the mental health sector and to provide insight as to how AEPs can contribute to the multidisciplinary mental health team. - Methods A modified Delphi approach was utilised. Thirteen AEPs with experience in mental health contributed to the iterative development of a national consensus statement. Six mental health professionals with expertise in psychiatry, mental health nursing, general practice and mental health research participated in the review process. Reviewers were provided with a template to systematically provide feedback on the language, content, structure and relevance to their professional group. - Results This consensus statement outlines how AEPs can contribute to the multidisciplinary mental health team, the aims and scope of AEP-led interventions in mental health services and examples of such interventions, the range of physical and mental health outcomes possible through AEP-led interventions and common referral pathways to community AEP services. - Outcome AEPs can play a key role in the treatment of individuals experiencing mental illness. The diversity of AEP interventions allows for a holistic approach to care, enhancing both physical and mental health outcomes.

A hitchhiker's guide to a crowded syconium: how do fig nematodes find the right ride?

P>1Organisms with low mobility, living within ephemeral environments,need to find vehicles that can disperse them reliably to new environments. The requirement for specificity in this passenger-vehicle relationship is enhanced within a tritrophic interaction when the environment of passenger and vehicle is provided by a third organism. Such relationships pose many interesting questions about specificity within a tritrophic framework. 2. Central to understanding how these tritrophic systems have evolved, is knowing how they function now. Determining the proximal cues and sensory modalities used by passengers to find vehicles and to discriminate between reliable and non-reliable vehicles is, therefore, essential to this investigation. 3. The ancient, co-evolved and highly species-specific nursery pollination mutualism between figs and fig wasps is host to species-specific plant-parasitic nematodes which use fig wasps to travel between figs. Since individual globular fig inflorescences, i.e. syconia, serve as incubators for hundreds of developing pollinating and parasitic wasps, a dispersal-stage nematode within such a chemically,complex and physically crowded environment is faced with the dilemma of choosing the right vehicle for dispersal into a new fig. Such a system therefore affords excellent opportunities to investigate mechanisms that contribute to the evolution of specificity between the passenger and the vehicle. 4. In this study of fig-wasp-nematode tritrophic interactions in Ficus racemosa within which seven wasp species can breed, we demonstrate using two-choice as well as cafeteria assays that plant-parasitic nematodes (Schistonchus racemosa) do not hitch rides randomly on available eclosing wasps within the fig syconium, but are specifically attracted, at close range, i.e. 3 mm distance, to only that vehicle which can quickly, within a few hours, reliably transfer it to another fig. This vehicle is the female pollinating wasp. Male wasps and female parasitic wasps are inappropriate vehicles since the former are wingless and die within the fig, while the latter never enter another fig. Nematodes distinguished between female pollinating wasps and other female parasitic wasps using volatiles and cuticular hydrocarbons. Nematodes could not distinguish between cuticular hydrocarbons of male and female pollinators but used other cues, such as volatiles, at close range, to find female pollinating wasps with which they have probably had a long history of chemical adaptation. 5. This study opens up new questions and hypotheses about the evolution and maintenance of specificity in fig-wasp-nematode tritrophic interactions.

Analysis of short interproton distances in proline peptides as a guide in the interpretation of nuclear overhauser effects

The conformational dependence of interproton distances in model proline peptides has been investigated in order to facilitate interpretation of the results of Nuclear Overhauser Effect (NOE) studies on such peptides. For this purpose two model systems, namely, Ac-Pro-NHMe and Ac-Pro-X-NHMe have been chosen and used. In the former, short interproton distances detectable in NOE experiments permit a clear distinction between conformations with Pro ψ = -300 (helical region) and those in which ψ is around 1200 (polyproline region). For the latter, the variation of distances between the protons of methyl amide and the Pro ring have been studied by superimposing on the Ramachandran map in the (φ3, ψ3) plane. The results show that β-turns and non-β-turn conformations can be readily distinguished from NOE data and such long range NOEs should be detectable for specific non-β-turn conformations. NOEs involving Cβ and Cγ protons are particularly sensitive to the state of pyrrolidine ring puckering.

The Guide-Dog Approach:

In ecology the central problem is not the lack of theory or the lack of data but the lack of research able to link them systematically and critically. The description and analysis of such an integrated research process is the focus of the present study. Our approach is called the Guide-Dog approach, because we hope that it is able to guide all those who are blinded or perplexed by the increasing technical sophistication and fragmentation of modern science.

Propagation Of Vlf Electromagnetic-Waves In An Idealized Earth-Crust Wave-Guide With Overburden

Theoretical study of propagation characteristics of VLF electromagnetic waves through an idealised parallel-plane earth-crust waveguide with overburden, experimental verification of some of these characteristics with the aid of a model tank and use of range equation reveal the superiority of radio communication between land and a deeply submerged terminal inside a ocean via the earth-crust over direct link communication through the ocean.

Q-Band beam wave-guide

Consideration is given to a 25-foot long Q-band (8 mm) confocal, zoned dielectric lens beam waveguide. Numerical expressions for the axial and radial fields are presented. The experimental set-up consisted of uniformly spaced zoned dielectric lenses, a transmitting horn and a receiving horn. It was found that: (1) the wave beam is reiterated when confocal, zoned dielectric lenses act as phase transformers in place of smooth surfaced transformers in beam waveguides; (2) the axial field is oscillatory near the source and the oscillation persists for about 25 cm from the source; (3) the oscillation disappears after one lens is used; (4) higher order modes with higher attenuation rates die out faster than fundamental modes; (5) phase transformers do not alter beam modes; (6) without any lens the beam cross-section broadens significantly in the Z-direction; (7) with one lens the beam exhibits the reiteration phenomenon; and (8) inserting a second lens on the axial and cross-sectional field distribution shows further the reiteration principle.

The potential of microbial ecological indicators to guide ecosophisticated management of hydrocarbon-contaminated soils

Soil is an unrenewable natural resource under increasing anthropogenic pressure. One of the main threats to soils, compromising their ability to provide us with the goods and ecosystem services we expect, is pollution. Oil hydrocarbons are the most common soil contaminants, and they disturb not just the biota but also the physicochemical properties of soils. Indigenous soil micro-organisms respond rapidly to changes in the soil ecosystem, and are chronically in direct contact with the hydrophobic pollutants on the soil surfaces. Soil microbial variables could thus serve as an intrinsically relevant indicator of soil quality, to be used in the ecological risk assessment of contaminated and remediated soils. Two contrasting studies were designed to investigate soil microbial ecological responses to hydrocarbons, together with parallel changes in soil physicochemical and ecotoxicological properties. The aim was to identify quantitative or qualitative microbiological variables that would be practicable and broadly applicable for the assessment of the quality and restoration of oil-polluted soil. Soil bacteria commonly react on hydrocarbons as a beneficial substrate, which lead to a positive response in the classical microbiological soil quality indicators; negative impacts were accurately reflected only after severe contamination. Hydrocarbon contaminants become less bioavailable due to weathering processes, and their potentially toxic effects decrease faster than the total concentration. Indigenous hydrocarbon degrader bacteria, naturally present in any terrestrial environment, use specific mechanisms to improve access to the hydrocarbon molecules adsorbed on soil surfaces. Thus when contaminants are unavailable even to the specialised degraders, they should pose no hazard to other biota either. Change in the ratio of hydrocarbon degrader numbers to total microbes was detected to predictably indicate pollutant effects and bioavailability. Also bacterial diversity, a qualitative community characteristic, decreased as a response to hydrocarbons. Stabilisation of community evenness, and community structure that reflected clean reference soil, indicated community recovery. If long-term temporal monitoring is difficult and appropriate clean reference soil unavailable, such comparison could possibly be based on DNA-based community analysis, reflecting past+present, and RNA-based community analysis, showing exclusively present conditions. Microbial ecological indicators cannot replace chemical oil analyses, but they are theoretically relevant and operationally practicable additional tools for ecological risk assessment. As such, they can guide ecologically informed and sustainable ecosophisticated management of oil-contaminated lands.

The variants of the protein toxins abrin and ricin A useful guide to understanding the processing events in the toxin transport

Kinetic data on inhibition of protein synthesis in thymocyte by three abrins and ricin have been obtained. The intrinsic efficiencies of A chains of four toxins to inactivate ribosomes, as analyzed by k1-versus-concentration plots were abrin II, III > ricin > abrin I. The lag times were 90, 66, 75 and 105 min at a 0.0744 nM concentration of each of abrin I, II, III and ricin, respectively. To account for the observed differences in the dose-dependent lag time, functional and structural variables of toxins such as binding efficiency of B chains to receptors and low-pH-induced structural alterations have been analyzed. The association constants obtained by stopped flow studies showed that abrin-I (4.13 × 105 M−1 s−1) association with putative receptor (4-methylumbelliferyl-α-D-galactoside) is nearly two times more often than abrin III (2.6 × 105 M−1 s−1) at 20°C. Equillibrium binding constants of abrin I and II to thymocyte at 37°C were 2.26 × 107 M−1 and 2.8 × 107 M−1 respectively. pH-induced structural alterations as studied by a parallel enhancement in 8-anilino-L-naphthalene sulfonate fluorescence revealed a high degree of qualitative similarity. These results taken with a nearly identical concentration-independent lag time (minimum lag of 41–42 min) indicated that the binding efficiencies and internalization efficiencies of these toxins are the same and that the observed difference in the dose-dependent lag time is causally related to the proposed processing event. The rates of reduction of inter-subunit disulfide bond, an obligatory step in the intoxication process, have been measured and compared under a variety of conditions. Intersubunit disulfide reduction of abrin I is fourfold faster than that of abrin II at pH 7.2. The rate of disulfide reduction in abrin I could be decreased 1 I-fold by adding lactose, compared to that without lactose. The observed differences in the efficiencies of A chains, the dose-dependent lag period, the modulating effect of lactose on the rates of disulfide reduction and similarity in binding properties make the variants a valuable tool to probe the processing events in toxin transport in detail.

Pictorial Guide to Frogs and Toads of the Western Ghats

A unique colour pictorial guide exclusively on frogs and toads of the Western Ghats of India. The guide illustrates 73 species with quality photographs, pointers to key features, pictograms, distribution maps, habitat photographs and with minimal text. Scientific and common names, museum record, actual and relative sizes, habitats and current IUCN status of each species are also provided. Species are grouped on their habitat preferences, making it easy to use in the field.

An overview of recent advances in structural bioinformatics of protein-protein interactions and a guide to their principles

Rich data bearing on the structural and evolutionary principles of protein protein interactions are paving the way to a better understanding of the regulation of function in the cell. This is particularly the case when these interactions are considered in the framework of key pathways. Knowledge of the interactions may provide insights into the mechanisms of crucial `driver' mutations in oncogenesis. They also provide the foundation toward the design of protein protein interfaces and inhibitors that can abrogate their formation or enhance them. The main features to learn from known 3-D structures of protein protein complexes and the extensive literature which analyzes them computationally and experimentally include the interaction details which permit undertaking structure-based drug discovery, the evolution of complexes and their interactions, the consequences of alterations such as post-translational modifications, ligand binding, disease causing mutations, host pathogen interactions, oligomerization, aggregation and the roles of disorder, dynamics, allostery and more to the protein and the cell. This review highlights some of the recent advances in these areas, including design, inhibition and prediction of protein protein complexes. The field is broad, and much work has been carried out in these areas, making it challenging to cover it in its entirety. Much of this is due to the fast increase in the number of molecules whose structures have been determined experimentally and the vast increase in computational power. Here we provide a concise overview. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.