Antioxidative Defense System, Pigment Composition, and Photosynthetic Efficiency in Two Wheat Cultivars Subjected to Drought1

We analyzed antioxidative defenses, photosynthesis, and pigments (especially xanthophyll-cycle components) in two wheat (Triticum durum Desf.) cultivars, Adamello and Ofanto, during dehydration and rehydration to determine the difference in their sensitivities to drought and to elucidate the role of different protective mechanisms against oxidative stress. Drought caused a more pronounced inhibition in growth and photosynthetic rates in the more sensitive cv Adamello compared with the relatively tolerant cv Ofanto. During dehydration the glutathione content decreased in both wheat cultivars, but only cv Adamello showed a significant increase in glutathione reductase and hydrogen peroxide-glutathione peroxidase activities. The activation states of two sulfhydryl-containing chloroplast enzymes, NADP+-dependent glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase and fructose-1,6-bisphosphatase, were maintained at control levels during dehydration and rehydration in both cultivars. This indicates that the defense systems involved are efficient in the protection of sulfhydryl groups against oxidation. Drought did not cause significant effects on lipid peroxidation. Upon dehydration, a decline in chlorophyll a, lutein, neoxanthin, and β-carotene contents, and an increase in the pool of de-epoxidized xanthophyll-cycle components (i.e. zeaxanthin and antheraxanthin), were evident only in cv Adamello. Accordingly, after exposure to drought, cv Adamello showed a larger reduction in the actual photosystem II photochemical efficiency and a higher increase in nonradiative energy dissipation than cv Ofanto. Although differences in zeaxanthin content were not sufficient to explain the difference in drought tolerance between the two cultivars, zeaxanthin formation may be relevant in avoiding irreversible damage to photosystem II in the more sensitive cultivar.

Re-Aeration following Hypoxia or Anoxia Leads to Activation of the Antioxidative Defense System in Roots of Wheat Seedlings1

The response of the ascorbate-glutathione cycle was investigated in roots of young wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) seedlings that were deprived of oxygen either by subjecting them to root hypoxia or to entire plant anoxia and then re-aerated. Although higher total levels of ascorbate and glutathione were observed under hypoxia, only the total amount of ascorbate was increased under anoxia. Under both treatments a significant increase in the reduced form of ascorbate and glutathione was found, resulting in increased reduction states. Upon the onset of re-aeration the ratios started to decline rapidly, indicating oxidative stress. Hypoxia caused higher activity of ascorbate peroxidase, whereas activities of monodehydroascorbate reductase, dehydroascorbate reductase, and glutathione reductase were diminished or only slightly influenced. Under anoxia, activities of ascorbate peroxidase and glutathione reductase decreased significantly to 39 and 62%, respectively. However, after re-aeration of hypoxically or anoxically pretreated roots, activity of enzymes approached the control levels. This corresponds with the restoration of the high reduction state of ascorbate and glutathione within 16 to 96 h of re-aeration, depending on the previous duration of anoxia. Apparently, anoxia followed by re-aeration more severely impairs entire plant metabolism compared with hypoxia, thus leading to decreased viability.

Organizational maintenance manual : automatic data processor equipment maintenance, guided missile air defense system AN/TSQ-73.

Includes index.

Operator's manual : displays, ARO, and alert definitions : guided missile air defense system AN/TSQ-73.

"October 1978."

Organizational maintenance manual : electronic circuit plug-in unit test set TS-3317, Guided Missile Air Defense System AN/TSQ-73.

Includes index.

Operator's manual for Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement System (MILES), simulator system, firing laser, M76, (NSN 1265-01-159-0483) for VULCAN/Product Improved VULCAN Air Defense System, Towed.

Includes index.

Operator's manual for Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement System (MILES), simulator system, firing, laser, M75 (NSN 1265-01-159-0484) for VULCAN/Product Improved VULCAN Air Defense System, self-propelled.

"August 1988."

List of Applicable Publications (LOAP) for Guided Missile Air Defense System AN/TSQ-73.

"December 1984."

The Complex Unified Evolutionary Approach to the Creation of the Multilevel Distributed Control System of a Gas-transport Company

The objects of a large-scale gas-transport company (GTC) suggest a complex unified evolutionary approach, which covers basic building concepts, up-to-date technologies, models, methods and means that are used in the phases of design, adoption, maintenance and development of the multilevel automated distributed control systems (ADCS).. As a single methodological basis of the suggested approach three basic Concepts, which contain the basic methodological principles and conceptual provisions on the creation of distributed control systems, were worked out: systems of the lower level (ACS of the technological processes based on up-to-date SCADA), of the middle level (ACS of the operative-dispatch production control based on MES-systems) and of the high level (business process control on the basis of complex automated systems ERP).

DIMUSE: An integrated framework for distributed multimedia system with database management and security support

With the recent explosion in the complexity and amount of digital multimedia data, there has been a huge impact on the operations of various organizations in distinct areas, such as government services, education, medical care, business, entertainment, etc. To satisfy the growing demand of multimedia data management systems, an integrated framework called DIMUSE is proposed and deployed for distributed multimedia applications to offer a full scope of multimedia related tools and provide appealing experiences for the users. This research mainly focuses on video database modeling and retrieval by addressing a set of core challenges. First, a comprehensive multimedia database modeling mechanism called Hierarchical Markov Model Mediator (HMMM) is proposed to model high dimensional media data including video objects, low-level visual/audio features, as well as historical access patterns and frequencies. The associated retrieval and ranking algorithms are designed to support not only the general queries, but also the complicated temporal event pattern queries. Second, system training and learning methodologies are incorporated such that user interests are mined efficiently to improve the retrieval performance. Third, video clustering techniques are proposed to continuously increase the searching speed and accuracy by architecting a more efficient multimedia database structure. A distributed video management and retrieval system is designed and implemented to demonstrate the overall performance. The proposed approach is further customized for a mobile-based video retrieval system to solve the perception subjectivity issue by considering individual user's profile. Moreover, to deal with security and privacy issues and concerns in distributed multimedia applications, DIMUSE also incorporates a practical framework called SMARXO, which supports multilevel multimedia security control. SMARXO efficiently combines role-based access control (RBAC), XML and object-relational database management system (ORDBMS) to achieve the target of proficient security control. A distributed multimedia management system named DMMManager (Distributed MultiMedia Manager) is developed with the proposed framework DEMUR; to support multimedia capturing, analysis, retrieval, authoring and presentation in one single framework.

The Effect of Mobile Technology as an Active Student Response System on the Acquisition of U.S. History Content of Secondary Students with Specific Learning Disabilities

Students with specific learning disabilities (SLD) typically learn less history content than their peers without disabilities and show fewer learning gains. Even when they are provided with the same instructional strategies, many students with SLD struggle to grasp complex historical concepts and content area vocabulary. Many strategies involving technology have been used in the past to enhance learning for students with SLD in history classrooms. However, very few studies have explored the effectiveness of emerging mobile technology in K-12 history classrooms. This study investigated the effects of mobile devices (iPads) as an active student response (ASR) system on the acquisition of U.S. history content of middle school students with SLD. An alternating treatments single subject design was used to compare the effects of two interventions. There were two conditions and a series of pretest probesin this study. The conditions were: (a) direct instruction and studying from handwritten notes using the interactive notebook strategy and (b) direct instruction and studying using the Quizlet App on the iPad. There were three dependent variables in this study: (a) percent correct on tests, (b) rate of correct responses per minute, and (c) rate of errors per minute. A comparative analysis suggested that both interventions (studying from interactive notes and studying using Quizlet on the iPad) had varying degrees of effectiveness in increasing the learning gains of students with SLD. In most cases, both interventions were equally effective. During both interventions, all of the participants increased their percentage correct and increased their rate of correct responses. Most of the participants decreased their rate of errors. The results of this study suggest that teachers of students with SLD should consider a post lesson review in the form of mobile devices as an ASR system or studying from handwritten notes paired with existing evidence-based practices to facilitate students’ knowledge in U.S. history. Future research should focus on the use of other interactive applications on various mobile operating platforms, on other social studies subjects, and should explore various testing formats such as oral question-answer and multiple choice.

The effect of mobile technology as an active student response system on the acquisition of U.S. history content of secondary students with specific learning disabilities

Students with specific learning disabilities (SLD) typically learn less history content than their peers without disabilities and show fewer learning gains. Even when they are provided with the same instructional strategies, many students with SLD struggle to grasp complex historical concepts and content area vocabulary. Many strategies involving technology have been used in the past to enhance learning for students with SLD in history classrooms. However, very few studies have explored the effectiveness of emerging mobile technology in K-12 history classrooms. ^ This study investigated the effects of mobile devices (iPads) as an active student response (ASR) system on the acquisition of U.S. history content of middle school students with SLD. An alternating treatments single subject design was used to compare the effects of two interventions. There were two conditions and a series of pretest probesin this study. The conditions were: (a) direct instruction and studying from handwritten notes using the interactive notebook strategy and (b) direct instruction and studying using the Quizlet App on the iPad. There were three dependent variables in this study: (a) percent correct on tests, (b) rate of correct responses per minute, and (c) rate of errors per minute. ^ A comparative analysis suggested that both interventions (studying from interactive notes and studying using Quizlet on the iPad) had varying degrees of effectiveness in increasing the learning gains of students with SLD. In most cases, both interventions were equally effective. During both interventions, all of the participants increased their percentage correct and increased their rate of correct responses. Most of the participants decreased their rate of errors. ^ The results of this study suggest that teachers of students with SLD should consider a post lesson review in the form of mobile devices as an ASR system or studying from handwritten notes paired with existing evidence-based practices to facilitate students’ knowledge in U.S. history. Future research should focus on the use of other interactive applications on various mobile operating platforms, on other social studies subjects, and should explore various testing formats such as oral question-answer and multiple choice. ^

Protect grids from DDoS attacks

Recently a number of highly publicised incidents of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks have made people aware of the importance of providing available securely the grids’ data and services to users. This paper introduces the vulnerability of grids to DDoS attacks, and proposes a distributed defense system that has a mixture deployment of sub-systems to protect grids from DDoS attacks. According to the simulation experiments, this system is effective to defend grids against attacks. It can avoid overall network congestion and provide more resources to legitimate grid users.

Implementing distributed concurrent constraint execution in the CIAO system

This paper describes the current prototype of the distributed CIAO system. It introduces the concepts of "teams" and "active modules" (or active objects), which conveniently encapsulate different types of functionalities desirable from a distributed system, from parallelism for achieving speedup to client-server applications. The user primitives available are presented and their implementation described. This implementation uses attributed variables and, as an example of a communication abstraction, a blackboard that follows the Linda model. Finally, the CIAO WWW interface is also briefly described. The unctionalities of the system are illustrated through examples, using the implemented primitives.

Distributed concurrent constraint execution in the CIAO system

This paper describes the current prototype of the distributed CIAO system. It introduces the concepts of "teams" and "active modules" (or active objects), which conveniently encapsulate different types of functionalities desirable from a distributed system, from parallelism for achieving speedup to client-server applications. It presents the user primitives available and describes their implementation. This implementation uses attributed variables and, as an example of a communication abstraction, a blackboard that follows the Linda model. The functionalities of the system are illustrated through examples, using the implemented primitives. The implementation of most of the primitives is also described in detail.