Permanent Genetic Resources added to Molecular Ecology Resources Database 1 August 2010-30 September 2010

This article documents the addition of 229 microsatellite marker loci to the Molecular Ecology Resources Database. Loci were developed for the following species: Acacia auriculiformis x Acacia mangium hybrid, Alabama argillacea, Anoplopoma fimbria, Aplochiton zebra, Brevicoryne brassicae, Bruguiera gymnorhiza, Bucorvus leadbeateri, Delphacodes detecta, Tumidagena minuta, Dictyostelium giganteum, Echinogammarus berilloni, Epimedium sagittatum, Fraxinus excelsior, Labeo chrysophekadion, Oncorhynchus clarki lewisi, Paratrechina longicornis, Phaeocystis antarctica, Pinus roxburghii and Potamilus capax. These loci were cross-tested on the following species: Acacia peregrinalis, Acacia crassicarpa, Bruguiera cylindrica, Delphacodes detecta, Tumidagena minuta, Dictyostelium macrocephalum, Dictyostelium discoideum, Dictyostelium purpureum, Dictyostelium mucoroides, Dictyostelium rosarium, Polysphondylium pallidum, Epimedium brevicornum, Epimedium koreanum, Epimedium pubescens, Epimedium wushanese and Fraxinus angustifolia.

Divergencies of Perception : The Possibilities of Merleau-Pontian Phenomenology in Analyses of Contemporary Art

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) has been known as the philosopher of painting. His interest in the theory of perception intertwined with the questions concerning the artist s perception, the experience of an artwork and the possible interpretations of the artwork. For him, aesthetics was not a sub-field of philosophy, and art was not simply a subject matter for the aesthetic experience, but a form of thinking. This study proposes an opening for a dialogue between Merleau-Pontian phenomenology and contemporary art. The thesis examines his phenomenology through certain works of contemporary art and presents readings of these artworks through his phenomenology. The thesis both shows the potentiality of a method, but also engages in the critical task of finding the possible limitations of his approach. The first part lays out the methodological and conceptual points of departure of Merleau-Ponty s phenomenological approach to perception as well as the features that determined his discussion on encountering art. Merleau-Ponty referred to the experience of perceiving art using the notion of seeing with (voir selon). He stressed a correlative reciprocity described in Eye and Mind (1961) as the switching of the roles of the visible and the painter. The choice of artworks is motivated by certain restrictions in the phenomenological readings of visual arts. The examined works include paintings by Tiina Mielonen, a photographic work by Christian Mayer, a film by Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno, and an installation by Monika Sosnowska. These works resonate with, and challenge, his phenomenological approach. The chapters with case studies take up different themes that are central to Merleau-Ponty s phenomenology: space, movement, time, and touch. All of the themes are interlinked with the examined artworks. There are also topics that reappear in the thesis, such as the notion of écart and the question of encountering the other. As Merleau-Ponty argued, the sphere of art has a particular capability to address our being in the world. The thesis presents an interpretation that emphasises the notion of écart, which refers to an experience of divergence or dispossession. The sudden dissociation, surprise or rupture that is needed in order for a meeting between the spectator and the artwork, or between two persons, to be possible. Further, the thesis suggests that through artworks it is possible to take into consideration the écart, the divergence, that defines our subjectivity.

Asymmetric synthesis of steroidal Tröger's base analogues. X-Ray molecular structure of methyl 3?,12?-{6H,12H-5,11-methanodibenzo[b,f][1,5]diazocine-2,8-bisacetoxy}-5?-cholan-24-oate

Cyclization of compound 5c in trifluoroacetic acid/hexamethylenetetramine produces Tröger's base analogue 6c in 75% yield with 70% diastereoselectivity.

Contractive Hilbert modules and their dilations

In this note, we show that a quasi-free Hilbert module R defined over the polydisk algebra with kernel function k(z,w) admits a unique minimal dilation (actually an isometric co-extension) to the Hardy module over the polydisk if and only if S (-1)(z, w)k(z, w) is a positive kernel function, where S(z,w) is the Szego kernel for the polydisk. Moreover, we establish the equivalence of such a factorization of the kernel function and a positivity condition, defined using the hereditary functional calculus, which was introduced earlier by Athavale [8] and Ambrozie, Englis and Muller [2]. An explicit realization of the dilation space is given along with the isometric embedding of the module R in it. The proof works for a wider class of Hilbert modules in which the Hardy module is replaced by more general quasi-free Hilbert modules such as the classical spaces on the polydisk or the unit ball in a'', (m) . Some consequences of this more general result are then explored in the case of several natural function algebras.

Averting biodiversity collapse in tropical forest protected areas

The rapid disruption of tropical forests probably imperils global biodiversity more than any other contemporary phenomenon(1-3). With deforestation advancing quickly, protected areas are increasingly becoming final refuges for threatened species and natural ecosystem processes. However, many protected areas in the tropics are themselves vulnerable to human encroachment and other environmental stresses(4-9). As pressures mount, it is vital to know whether existing reserves can sustain their biodiversity. A critical constraint in addressing this question has been that data describing a broad array of biodiversity groups have been unavailable for a sufficiently large and representative sample of reserves. Here we present a uniquely comprehensive data set on changes over the past 20 to 30 years in 31 functional groups of species and 21 potential drivers of environmental change, for 60 protected areas stratified across the world's major tropical regions. Our analysis reveals great variation in reserve `health': about half of all reserves have been effective or performed passably, but the rest are experiencing an erosion of biodiversity that is often alarmingly widespread taxonomically and functionally. Habitat disruption, hunting and forest-product exploitation were the strongest predictors of declining reserve health. Crucially, environmental changes immediately outside reserves seemed nearly as important as those inside in determining their ecological fate, with changes inside reserves strongly mirroring those occurring around them. These findings suggest that tropical protected areas are often intimately linked ecologically to their surrounding habitats, and that a failure to stem broad-scale loss and degradation of such habitats could sharply increase the likelihood of serious biodiversity declines.

Unzipping Carbon Nanotubes at High Impact

The way nanostructures behave and mechanically respond to high impact collision is a topic of intrigue. For anisotropic nanostructures, such as carbon nanotubes, this response will be complicated based on the impact geometry. Here we report the result of hypervelocity impact of nanotubes against solid targets and show that impact produces a large number of defects in the nanotubes, as well as rapid atom evaporation, leading to their unzipping along the nanotube axis. Fully atomistic reactive molecular dynamics simulations are used to gain further insights of the pathways and deformation and fracture mechanisms of nanotubes under high energy mechanical impact. Carbon nanotubes have been unzipped into graphene nanoribbons before using chemical treatments but here the instability of nanotubes against formation, fracture, and unzipping is revealed purely through mechanical impact. defect

Low-density three-dimensional foam using self-reinforced hybrid two-dimensional atomic layers

Low-density nanostructured foams are often limited in applications due to their low mechanical and thermal stabilities. Here we report an approach of building the structural units of three-dimensional (3D) foams using hybrid two-dimensional (2D) atomic layers made of stacked graphene oxide layers reinforced with conformal hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) platelets. The ultra-low density (1/400 times density of graphite) 3D porous structures are scalably synthesized using solution processing method. A layered 3D foam structure forms due to presence of h-BN and significant improvements in the mechanical properties are observed for the hybrid foam structures, over a range of temperatures, compared with pristine graphene oxide or reduced graphene oxide foams. It is found that domains of h-BN layers on the graphene oxide framework help to reinforce the 2D structural units, providing the observed improvement in mechanical integrity of the 3D foam structure.

Genomic mapping of cAMP receptor protein (CRPMt) in Mycobacterium tuberculosis: relation to transcriptional start sites and the role of CRPMt as a transcription factor

Chromatin immunoprecipitation identified 191 binding sites of Mycobacterium tuberculosis cAMP receptor protein (CRPMt) at endogenous expression levels using a specific alpha-CRPMt antibody. Under these native conditions an equal distribution between intragenic and intergenic locations was observed. CRPMt binding overlapped a palindromic consensus sequence. Analysis by RNA sequencing revealed widespread changes in transcriptional profile in a mutant strain lacking CRPMt during exponential growth, and in response to nutrient starvation. Differential expression of genes with a CRPMt-binding site represented only a minor portion of this transcriptional reprogramming with similar to 19% of those representing transcriptional regulators potentially controlled by CRPMt. The subset of genes that are differentially expressed in the deletion mutant under both culture conditions conformed to a pattern resembling canonical CRP regulation in Escherichia coli, with binding close to the transcriptional start site associated with repression and upstream binding with activation. CRPMt can function as a classical transcription factor in M. tuberculosis, though this occurs at only a subset of CRPMt-binding sites.

Trace Formulae for Curvature of Jet Bundles over Planar Domains

For a domain Omega in C and an operator T in B-n(Omega), Cowen and Douglas construct a Hermitian holomorphic vector bundle E-T over Omega corresponding to T. The Hermitian holomorphic vector bundle E-T is obtained as a pull-back of the tautological bundle S(n, H) defined over by Gr(n, H) a nondegenerate holomorphic map z bar right arrow ker(T - z), z is an element of Omega. To find the answer to the converse, Cowen and Douglas studied the jet bundle in their foundational paper. The computations in this paper for the curvature of the jet bundle are rather intricate. They have given a set of invariants to determine if two rank n Hermitian holomorphic vector bundle are equivalent. These invariants are complicated and not easy to compute. It is natural to expect that the equivalence of Hermitian holomorphic jet bundles should be easier to characterize. In fact, in the case of the Hermitian holomorphic jet bundle J(k)(L-f), we have shown that the curvature of the line bundle L-f completely determines the class of J(k)(L-f). In case of rank Hermitian holomorphic vector bundle E-f, We have calculated the curvature of jet bundle J(k)(E-f) and also obtained a trace formula for jet bundle J(k)(E-f).

An estimate of the number of tropical tree species

The high species richness of tropical forests has long been recognized, yet there remains substantial uncertainty regarding the actual number of tropical tree species. Using a pantropical tree inventory database from closed canopy forests, consisting of 657,630 trees belonging to 11,371 species, we use a fitted value of Fisher's alpha and an approximate pantropical stem total to estimate the minimum number of tropical forest tree species to fall between similar to 40,000 and similar to 53,000, i.e., at the high end of previous estimates. Contrary to common assumption, the Indo-Pacific region was found to be as species-rich as the Neotropics, with both regions having a minimum of similar to 19,000-25,000 tree species. Continental Africa is relatively depauperate with a minimum of similar to 4,500-6,000 tree species. Very few species are shared among the African, American, and the Indo-Pacific regions. We provide a methodological framework for estimating species richness in trees that may help refine species richness estimates of tree-dependent taxa.

变形介质双渗模型非线性流动模拟

在碳酸盐油藏和低渗油藏的渗流问题研究中,传统的研究方法都是假设地层渗透率是常数,然而对于地层渗透率是压力敏感的,这样的假设,对压力的变化将导致较大的误差.研究了应力敏感地层中双渗流动模型的压力不稳定响应,不仅考虑了储层的双渗特征,而且考虑了应力敏感地层中介质的变形,建立了应力敏感地层双孔隙度、双渗透率流动的数学模型,渗透率依赖于孔隙压力变化的流动方程是强非线性的,采用Douglas-Jones预估-校正法获得了圆井定产量生产和定压生产时无限大地层情况下的数值解,并探讨了变形参数和双重介质参数变化时压力变化规律,给出了典型压力曲线图版和应用实例.

Caracterización de la curva de lactancia y el comportamiento reproductivo de vaquillas Holstein bajo implementación de medidas de manejo en el período pre-parto

Con el objetivo de caracterizar la curva de lactancia y evaluar el comportamiento reproductivo se analizaron los registros mensuales (N=10) de vaquillas Holstein bajo la implementación y falta de implementación de medidas de manejo pre-parto en la Empresa Agropecuaria “San Ignacio” Mateare, Nicaragua. Para caracterizar la curva de lactancia, se utilizó el modelo de Wood (1967) de forma linealizada Ln Yx = Lna + b Lnx - ex , donde Yx es la producción diaria en el período x, a representa la producción inicial, b el ascenso al pico, c el descenso de producción, a partir del mismo se generaron la Persistencia (S), Rendimiento al pico (RP), Tiempo al pico (TP), también se evaluó el Intervalo parto - concepción (IPC) y el Número de servicios por concepción (NSPC) . Al presentar problemas reproductivos la proporción de curvas atípicas encontradas en este Trabajo fue de 40%. Al analizar la curva de lactancia del grupo experimental se observa un a= 11.00212 kg, b = 0.083528 kg, e = 0.00407148 kg, RP = 12.790 kg, TP = 29.54 días, S = 6.126. El grupo testigo presenta un a = 6.4384 kg, b = 0.193048 kg, e = 0.00466974 kg, RP = 9.49 kg, TP = 34.32 días, S = 6.421. En el análisis de varianza se encontró que el RP tiene diferencia significativa entre los tratamientos a un nivel de significancia (P<0.05). Los parámetros reproductivos IPC y NSPC para el grupo experimental fueron de 243.6 días y 3 servicios respectivamente, el grupo testigo presentó un IPC = 221.8 días y NSPC = 3.6 servicios .

Evaluation of manufacturing techniques for a minifluidics demonstrator system

A multi-disciplinary team based at Heriot-Watt University and other Universities has been set up to tackle the design and manufacturing of lab-on-a-chip for industries as one of the demonstrators of the EPSRC Grand Challenge project "3D-Mintegration". The team focuses on the analysis of foetal genetic material extracted from maternal blood as a smart alternative to invasive prenatal testing such as amniocentesis. The first module of the microsystem envisaged achieves a separation of blood cells from plasma. This system permits the testing of different manufacturing techniques.

Evaluación preliminar de la colección de frijol común (Phaseolus vulgaris L) del Banco de Germoplasma del Regen; en época de postrera en la Estación Experimental La Compañía, Carazo

El presente trabajo se realizó en la época de postrera (Octubre-Diciembre) de 1995, en la Estación Experimental La Compañía en el departamento de Carazo, con los objetivos de evaluar preliminarmente la colección de germoplasma de frijol común (Phaseolus vulgaris L.), encontrar material promisorio a ser utilizados en programas de mejoramientos y mostrar tendencias en la respuestas del material evaluado a la fertilización. Las accesiones objeto de estudios fueron colectadas en diferentes regiones geográficas del país y almacenadas en el banco de germoplasma del Programa de Recursos Genéticos Nicaraguenses (REGEN). Se utilizaron dos testigos, la variedad mejorada DOR-364 y Compañía 93, el diseño consistió en un ensayo preliminar con dos repeticiones una fertilizada y la otra sin fertilizar, los análisis estadísticos realizados a los datos fueron: Media, Desviación Standar, distribución de frecuencias y correlaciones fenotípicas Pearson entre los caracteres evaluados, se midieron trece variables ocho sobre fenología cuatro sobre rendimientos y sus componentes y enfermedades dentro de las cuales se evaluaron mancha angular, roya y bacteríosis. Se observaron amplíos rangos de comportamiento sobre fenología. rendimiento y sus componentes y enfermedades. 195 accesiones fueron más precoces que e1 testigo Compañía 9J y 244 más que el DOR-364 bajo sistema no fertilizado. En el sistema fertilizado 184 accesiones mostraron mayor precocidad que Compañía 93 y 220 más que DOR-364. Como accesiones altamente productivas se pueden señalar: 1740, 3145, 1793 y la 2145, ya que superaron a ambos testigos en los dos sistemas evaluados. Se observó que existen accesiones con tendencias a responder al fertilizante, de los componentes del rendimiento, vainas por planta presentó las mayores diferencias entre sistemas. En cuanto a enfermedades, mancha angular presenta los mayores niveles de severidad 2 y 3.

Estudio del comportamiento de plagas y enfermedades en el cultivo de cafe, mediante el uso de recuento integral Masatepe, Masaya

El estudio se realizó en el Centro de Capacitación y Servicio Regional Pacífico (Jardín Botánico) ubicado en la ciudad de Masatepe, Masaya, en el periodo comprendido entre Marzo del 2001 a Febrero del 2002. El objetivo fue evaluar la utilidad del recuento integral de plagas en el fortalecimiento de la toma de decisiones de manejo de plagas y enfermedades, de acuerdo al comportamiento que estas presentan en cada lote. Para la realización del trabajo se tomaron 10 lotes ya establecidos y en plena producción con diferentes manejo, distancias de siembra, niveles de sombra y variedades distintas. La metodología contempló 5 puntos por lote y 1O plantas por punto; tomando a cada una, variables de: número de hojas totales, número de hojas enfermas, número de frutos totales, número de frutos dañados. Las plagas y enfermedades con menor porcentaje de incidencia en general fueron: Minador (Leucoptera co.ffel/a Guerin), Cochinilla (Planoccocus citri L) y Antracnosis (Collectotrichum sp). Las acciones de manejo se establecerían de acuerdo a los niveles presentados, para los cuales se tomo el criterio de 10% para enfermedades foliares; 5% para enfermedades que afectan hojas y frutos; y el 5% para la Broca. Las plagas y enfermedades que se presentaron durante el estudio fueron: Roya, Mancha de Hierro, Antracnosis, Broca, Minador. Considerando a la mancha de Hierro y Broca como las de mayor importancia. El lote Catuai Rojo presentó la mayor incidencia de enfermedades afectado por: Roya (Hemileia Vastatrix, Berk y Br.) y Mancha de hierro (Cercospora co.ffeico/a Berk y cook.), el manejo implementado fue preventivo (podas sanitarias, selectivas y de recepo ). El lote con mayor incidencia de plaga, fue Salchicha Vegetal (SV), la acción de manejo implementadas fueron: la utilización de trampas semioquímicas y endosulfan.