Intracranial meningioma causing internal ophthalmoparesis in a dog

A 10-year-old, spayed female, Irish water spaniel was presented with a 2-week history of anisocoria characterized by mydriasis of the right eye compared to the left eye in ambient light. Ophthalmic and neurological examinations, combined with pharmacological testing, identified a disease process affecting the right parasympathetic nucleus of cranial nerve 3 (CN III) and/or the parasympathetic component of CN III. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) identified a mass involving the right midbrain and extending caudally to the rostral border of the medulla oblongata. The dog became comatose within 12 h following MRI and was euthanized. Histopathology identified the intracranial mass as a meningioma.     

Manganese toxicity alleviated by mycorrhizae in soybean

Abstract

Soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merr.) plants nodulated with Bradyrhizobium japonicum. Nitragin strain 61A118, were grown with or without the vesicular‐arbuscular mycorrhizal (VAM) fungus Glomus mosseae (Nicol. Gerd.) Gerd. and Trappe in pot cultures in soil high (40.4 μg/g) in available Mn. Leaves of the nonVAM plants showed severe symptoms of Mn toxicity and had toxic (314 μg/g) concentrations of Mn in the foliage. NonVAM plants had significantly lower dry weights and nodule mass than VAM plants. Concentrations of Mn in the VAM plants were significantly (P<0.05) lower than in the nonVAM plants, and there were no symptoms of Mn toxicity. Both VAM and nonVAM plants had a significant negative correlation between shoot dry mass and leaf Mn concentration. Since levels of Mn increased with increasing VAM‐fungal colonization, we conclude that it was not the VAM condition per se which alleviated Mn toxicity. We suggest that the significantly higher levels of Mn in the leaves (P<0.05) and the roots (P<0.001) of nonVAM plants was due to increased uptake of Mn by the nonVAM plants. This exudation, which are generally observed in nonVAM plants, and to the role of such exudates in solubilizing MnO₂ and chelating the resulting Mn²? for facilitated absorption.     

Land cover monitoring by fractal analysis of digital images

Quantitative information about the land cover is a fundamental issue for any soil management practice. The use of high-resolution remote sensing for this purpose is still questionable because of some poorly measurable or unknown parameters involved in the interaction between the electromagnetic waves and the soil surface. The recorded heterogeneous, highly variable and multi-temporal numerical databases require new analytical tools for signal's pattern recognition and space/time interpretation. In this research we use a novel and versatile low-cost technique (Fractal Image Informatics) for indirect measurement of the soil cover by in situ digital imagery and fractal interpretation. The roughness of gray level distribution across the images is measured in terms of Hurst exponent (H) computed at the global (“firmagram”) and local (“reference lines”) scales and correlated with some direct physical measurements of the residues' weight and the degree of surface covering. The comparative analysis of six contrasting tillage systems was carried out on Mollic Andosol of Michoacan State, Mexico. The results show that H extracted from the soil surface images reveals the differences in land cover in a statistically significant manner. The image roughness, and therefore its Hurst exponent, had a negative correlation with the total weight of plant residues (R² = 0.80) as well as with the degree of soil covering (R² = 0.92). Strong positive correlation (R² = 0.86) was observed between the local H (extracted from the reference lines of the image) and global H (determined from the firmagram), confirming the scale invariance of the studied Andosol and the fractal nature of its digital images. All results are in qualitative and quantitative agreement with the in situ visualized patterns of residue distribution across the experimental plots. We conclude that Fractal Image Informatics is a precise and low-cost technique suitable to monitor the land cover in real time/space by digital imaging.     

Formation of hollow nanocrystals through the nanoscale Kirkendall effect

Hollow nanocrystals can be synthesized through a mechanism analogous to the Kirkendall Effect, in which pores form because of the difference in diffusion rates between two components in a diffusion couple. Starting with cobalt nanocrystals, we show that their reaction in solution with oxygen and either sulfur or selenium leads to the formation of hollow nanocrystals of the resulting oxide and chalcogenides. This process provides a general route to the synthesis of hollow nanostructures of a large number of compounds. A simple extension of the process yielded platinum-cobalt oxide yolk-shell nanostructures, which may serve as nanoscale reactors in catalytic applications.     

A comparison of whole-genome shotgun-derived mouse chromosome 16 and the human genome

The high degree of similarity between the mouse and human genomes is demonstrated through analysis of the sequence of mouse chromosome 16 (Mmu 16), which was obtained as part of a whole-genome shotgun assembly of the mouse genome. The mouse genome is about 10% smaller than the human genome, owing to a lower repetitive DNA content. Comparison of the structure and protein-coding potential of Mmu 16 with that of the homologous segments of the human genome identifies regions of conserved synteny with human chromosomes (Hsa) 3, 8, 12, 16, 21, and 22. Gene content and order are highly conserved between Mmu 16 and the syntenic blocks of the human genome. Of the 731 predicted genes on Mmu 16, 509 align with orthologs on the corresponding portions of the human genome, 44 are likely paralogous to these genes, and 164 genes have homologs elsewhere in the human genome; there are 14 genes for which we could find no human counterpart.     

Weed species composition of conventional soyabean crops in Hungary is determined by environmental,cultural, weed management and site variables

The goal of this study was to identify factors determining weed species composition in soyabean crops in Hungary, where its expanding production faces difficult weed problems. The abundance of weed flora was measured in 262 fields across the country, along with 38 background variables. Using a minimal adequate model containing 24 terms with significant net effects, 21.6% of the total variation in weed species data could be explained. Plot location (edge vs core position, the single site variable in our analysis) was found to be the most important explanatory variable that was followed by a set of environmental (temperature, precipitation, altitude, soil texture, pH, Ca, K, Na and humus content), cultural (cultivar maturity, organic manure, fertiliser P and N, row spacing) and weed management (flumioxazin, pendimethalin, dimethenamid, propaquizafop, bentazone, quizalofop‐p‐ethyl, quizalofop‐p‐tefuril, linuron, thifensulfuron) factors. Variation partitioning revealed that environmental variables accounted for about four times more variance than cultural and about two and half times more than weed management variables. Chenopodium album, Ambrosia artemisiifolia, Hibiscus trionum, Echinochloa crus‐galli and Convolvulus arvensis were the most dominant and frequent weeds, but their abundance was influenced by different factors. The responses of weed species to the studied variables provide new information about their ecological behaviour, and our findings also can be used to develop better weed management strategies.     

Holography

Research on holography has now grown to such dimensions that we have not been able to mention each of the numerous authors who have made significant contributions to it. Investigators from Bell Telephone Laboratories, the RCA, Xerox, and Westinghouse laboratories, Conductron Corporation, GC-Optronics, IBM, TRW Systems, the University of Michigan, and Stanford University have made particularly significant early contributions in the United States. Especially notable were the efforts of R. J. Collier, L. Lin, K. S. Pennington, D. Ansley, L. Siebert, R. M. Grant, A. Lohmann, R. F. Wuerker, K. Stetson, R. Powell, J. Goodman, and their co-workers, in addition to those already mentioned, among many others. Early work in many parts of the world also includes that in France by S. Lowenthal, G. Nomarski, and J. Viepsilonnot; in Germany by H. Nassenstein; in Great Britain by J. M. Burch; in Japan by J. Tsujiuchi and T. Tsuruta; and in the Soviet Union by Yu. Y. N. Denisyuk, I. Nalimov, and L. M. Soroko. For a fuller account of these developments, see (42) and other references.     

Dicoumarol toxicity in neonatal calves associated with the feeding of sweet vernal (Anthoxanthum odoratum) hay

Neonatal calves from a seasonal dairy herd in North Western Tasmania were presented for veterinary care due to mortalities and bleeding from multiple orifices. Necropsy examination revealed free blood throughout the parenchymatous organs, body cavities and connective tissues. There was no history of anticoagulant exposure, however, high quantities of dicoumarol were found in samples from hay fed to recently calved cows. No Australian cases of dicoumarol toxicity in neonatal calves have been previously documented, and dicoumarol toxicity in adult cattle would appear to be less common than in colder farming regions of the Northern Hemisphere.