Flavonoids released by carrot (Daucus carota) seedlings stimulate hyphal development of vesicular-arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi in the presence of optimal CO2 enrichment

Carbon dioxide has been previously identified as a critical volatile factor that stimulates hyphal growth ofGigaspora margarita, a vesiculararbuscular mycorrhizal fungus, and we determined the optimal concentration at 2.0%. The beneficial effect of CO₂ on fungal development is also visible in the presence of stimulatory (quercetin, myricetin) or inhibitory (naringenin) flavonoids. Sterile root exudates from carrot seedlings stimulate the hyphal development ofG. margarita in the presence of optimal CO₂ enrichment. Three flavonols (quercetin, kaempferol, rutin or quercetin 3-rutinoside) and two flavones (apigenin, luteolin) were identified in carrot root exudates by means of HPLC retention time. Flavonols like quercetin and kaempferol are known to have stimulatory effects on hyphal growth ofG. margarita.     

Interactions Between Ozone,Halogens and Organic Compounds

During drinking-water treatment, ozone used as a preoxidant and chlorine required for final disinfection, lead to competing chemical reactions, in the case of raw water containing both organic compounds and inorganic salts (such as bromides and ammonia).

The study of the interactions between those reactants has been made according to the following main topics :

As for THM formation, experiments conducted on simple organic compounds or on natural fulvic acids show important decreases in THM or TCAA formation after ozonation. It may be noticed, however, that the ozonation of surface waters may induce the formation of haloform precursors, usually with a low level of reactivity.

In water supplies containing bromide ions, oxidation of the latter through hypobromous acid may take place during the ozonation stage. Failing preozonation treatment, hypobromous acid is generated very rapidly during chlorination, thus inducing the formation of chloro- brominated organic compounds.

During the ozonation of fulvic acid solutions, the presence of small amounts of bicarbonate was found to improve precursor removal significantly.

It can be concluded that the partial analogy of the action of ozone or chlorine on aromatic structures, whether simple or complex (such as humic and fulvic acids), seems to indicate that the consequence of preozonation is the destruction, at least in part, of the most reactive sites for THM production, thus leading to a decrease of the volatile organochlorinated compounds formed during the post-chlorination. However, some ozonation products of natural waters are THM precursors, though of low reactivity. Then, in the presence of bromide ions, the formation of volatile organobrominated compounds may be observed during ozonation.     

Relation of socioeconomic and environmental indicators to the nutritional status of preschool children in a community of Sierra Norte de Puebla, México

A brief discussión on "the social" approach in nutritional research is presented. The relevance that socioeconomic factors have acquired in recent years for this type of studies, is also discussed. The main purpose of our communication was to identify and validate some socioeconomic and environmental indicators and their association with the nutritional status of preschool children in a Mexican indigenous community (Sierra Norte de Puebla). A total of 89 children below five years of age were studied and classified according to their nutritional status. A socioeconomic questionnaire was applied to their parents. Results revealed ample correlation between the degree of malnutrition of the preschool child and the following indicators: housing conditions, father's main occupation, land tenure, income, etc. It is argued that the analysis of these indicators is relevant, emphasizing the importance that the combination of anthropometrical, food consumption and socioeconomic data have for detecting population groups vulnerable to malnutrition. The obtention of these indicators is therefore highly recommended, but should not imply great obstacles; on the contrary, they should be highly sensitive and easy to detect.     

Study of UAV tracking based on CNN in noisy environment

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Recently, there are lots of tracking methods proposed to improve the performance of visual tracking in videos with challenging situations, such as background...     

Handling causality and schedulability when designing and prototyping cyber-physical systems

Software and Systems Modeling - Cyber physical systems are built upon digital and analog circuits, making it necessary to handle different models of computation during their design and verification...     

A computational fluid dynamic analysis of gas and particle flow in flame spraying

The flame spraying process, which is a common industrial thermal spraying application, has been analyzed by means of three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. The process used at the Volvo Aero Corporation for the coating of fan and compressor housings has been modeled. The process uses the Metco 6P torch (Metco, Westbury, NY), which ejects a mixture of acetylene and oxygen at high speed through a ring of 16 orifices to form the flame. A stream of argon gas flowing through an orifice in the center of the ring carries a powder of nickel-covered bentonite through the flame to the spray substrate. The torch is cooled by a flow of air through an outer ring of 9 orifices. The simulation emulated reality closely by including the individual inlets for fuel, cooling air, and injected particles. The gas combustion was simulated as a turbulent, multicomponent chemically reacting flow. The standard, two-equation k-ε turbulence model was used. The chemical reaction rates appeared as source terms in the species transport equations. They were computed from the contributions of the Arrhenius rate expressions and the Magnussen and Hjertager eddy dissipation model. The first simulations included several intermediate chemical substances whose predicted concentration agreed favorably with measurements. Later, more simplified simulations incorporated only the global chemical reaction involving the initial and the final products, with corrections to the thermal properties being made to account for the missing intermediaries. The gas velocity and temperature fields predicted by the later simulations compared satisfactorily to those predicted by the earlier, more elaborate, ones. Therefore, the final simulations, which incorporated injected particles, were conducted employing the simplified model with only the global reaction. An in-house finite difference code was developed to calculate particle properties. Allowance was made for elliptical shapes, phase changes, and internal heat transfer with regard to the composite material. The particle velocities and temperatures predicted by the final simulations compared fairly well with experimental results obtained with the optical DPV2000 system.     

A linear algebra approach to OLAP

Inspired by the relational algebra of data processing, this paper addresses the foundations of data analytical processing from a linear algebra perspective. The paper investigates, in particular, how aggregation operations such as cross tabulations and data cubes essential to quantitative analysis of data can be expressed solely in terms of matrix multiplication, transposition and the Khatri–Rao variant of the Kronecker product. The approach offers a basis for deriving an algebraic theory of data consolidation, handling the quantitative as well as qualitative sides of data science in a natural, elegant and typed way. It also shows potential for parallel analytical processing, as the parallelization theory of such matrix operations is well acknowledged.     

Note: The intermodulation lockin analyzer

Nonlinear systems can be probed by driving them with two or more pure tones while measuring the intermodulation products of the drive tones in the response. We describe a digital lockin analyzer which is designed explicitly for this purpose. The analyzer is implemented on a field-programmable gate array, providing speed in analysis, real-time feedback, and stability in operation. The use of the analyzer is demonstrated for intermodulation atomic force microscopy. A generalization of the intermodulation spectral technique to arbitrary drive waveforms is discussed.