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Siderophores are low molecular weight secondary metabolites produced by microorganisms under low iron stress as a specific iron chelator. In the present study, a rhizospheric bacterium was isolated from the rhizosphere of sesame plants from Salem district, Tamil Nadu, India and later identified as Bacillus subtilis LSBS2. It exhibited multiple plant-growth-promoting (PGP) traits such as hydrogen cyanide (HCN), ammonia, and indole acetic acid (IAA), and solubilized phosphate. The chrome azurol sulphonate (CAS) agar plate assay was used to screen the siderophore production of LSBS2 and quantitatively the isolate produced 296 mg/L of siderophores in succinic acid medium. Further characterization of the siderophore revealed that the isolate produced catecholate siderophore bacillibactin. A pot culture experiment was used to explore the effect of LSBS2 and its siderophore in promoting iron absorption and plant growth of Sesamum indicum L. Data from the present study revealed that the multifarious Bacillus sp. LSBS2 could be exploited as a potential bioinoculant for growth and yield improvement in S. indicum.

Building, bridge or wind turbine maintenance requires manual dexterity tasks by a specialist rope-access trained workforce via two principal means: harness suspension of individual workers from above, or deployment of a suspended platform or cradle from which workers access the structure to be maintained. Currently no published research compares accuracy and efficiency of simulated maintenance tasks between these modalities. This study investigated manual dexterity task performance of peg placement and shape delineation in seated, standing and suspended environments in 16 healthy controls and 26 professional rope-access trained individuals. Both seated and standing assessments were superior to those suspended, and height of suspension, total mass and years of experience had no influence on the task outcome. These findings suggest that, where feasible, cradle suspension mechanisms which permit standing maintenance are favourable in terms of task efficacy and where feasible, should be considered for deployment in wind energy and other engineering applications.

Breathing and oxygenation were monitored in 78 asymptomatic volunteers on two successive nights of sleep. Four groups of subjects were recruited: 20 young men, 20 young women, 20 men older than 40 years, and 18 postmenopausal women. In random order, subjects ingested either 2 ml/kg (body weight) of 100-proof vodka in orange juice or a similar amount of water in orange juice before bedtime. Alcohol ingestion shortened sleep in the older men and in the postmenopausal women. No effect of alcohol ingestion on breathing or oxygenation during sleep was seen in any group of women. In men, alcohol ingestion increased the numbers of desaturation episodes and caused more severe oxygen desaturation during sleep. The effect of alcohol ingestion on breathing and oxygenation during the sleep of asymptomatic volunteers appears to be limited to men.

Corruption has found very fertile ground in the health sector. Many studies demonstrate the negative relationship between sustainability and corruption. However, relatively little is known at this time about how to prevent corruption in healthcare organizations (HCOs), and thus to recover the important sustainability of the entire healthcare system. After noticing this gap in the literature, the authors’ aim in undertaking this study was twofold: first, to analyze the current state of knowledge about how Italian HCOs adopt corruption prevention plans in compliance with the National Plan issued by the National Anti-Corruption Authority; second, to identify some clusters of HCOs which represent different adoption patterns of corruption prevention interventions and to classify these HCOs. For these purposes, the authors studied 68 HCOs along 13 dimensions that characterized the corruption prevention plans. The empirical results showed that the HCOs were not fully compliant with the anti-corruption legislation. At the same time, the authors identified three clusters of HCOs with different patterns of anti-corruption prevention interventions. The clusters that adopted some specific interventions seemed to be more sustainable than others.

Abstract. Regional land carbon budgets provide insights on the spatial distribution of the land uptake of atmospheric carbon dioxide, and can be used to evaluate carbon cycle models and to define baselines for land-based additional mitigation efforts. The scientific community has been involved in providing observation-based estimates of regional carbon budgets either by downscaling atmospheric CO2 observations into surface fluxes with atmospheric inversions, by using inventories of carbon stock changes in terrestrial ecosystems, by upscaling local field observations such as flux towers with gridded climate and remote sensing fields or by integrating data-driven or process-oriented terrestrial carbon cycle models. The first coordinated attempt to collect regional carbon budgets for nine regions covering the entire globe in the RECCAP-1 project has delivered estimates for the decade 2000–2009, but these budgets were not comparable between regions, due to different definitions and component fluxes reported or omitted. The recent recognition of lateral fluxes of carbon by human activities and rivers, that connect CO2 uptake in one area with its release in another also requires better definition and protocols to reach harmonized regional budgets that can be summed up to the globe and compared with the atmospheric CO2 growth rate and inversion results. In this study, for the international initiative RECCAP-2 coordinated by the Global Carbon Project, which aims as an update of regional carbon budgets over the last two decades based on observations, for 10 regions covering the globe, with a better harmonization that the precursor project, we provide recommendations for using atmospheric inversions results to match bottom-up carbon accounting and models, and we define the different component fluxes of the net land atmosphere carbon exchange that should be reported by each research group in charge of each region. Special attention is given to lateral fluxes, inland water fluxes and land use fluxes.

AbstractObjective: The marked increase in the prevalence of obesity in the United States has recently been attributed to the increased fructose consumption. To determine if and how fructose might promote obesity in an animal model, we measured body composition, energy intake, energy expenditure, substrate oxidation, and several endocrine parameters related to energy homeostasis in mice consuming fructose.Research Methods and Procedures: We compared the effects of ad libitum access to fructose (15% solution in water), sucrose (10%, popular soft drink), and artificial sweetener (0% calories, popular diet soft drink) on adipogenesis and energy metabolism in mice.Results: Exposure to fructose water increased adiposity, whereas increased fat mass after consumption of soft drinks or diet soft drinks did not reach statistical significance (n = 9 each group). Total intake of energy was unaltered, because mice proportionally reduced their caloric intake from chow. There was a trend toward reduced energy expenditure and increased respiratory quotient, albeit not significant, in the fructose group. Furthermore, fructose produced a hepatic lipid accumulation with a characteristic pericentral pattern.Discussion: These data are compatible with the conclusion that a high intake of fructose selectively enhances adipogenesis, possibly through a shift of substrate use to lipogenesis.

The formation and decay of excited states of light‐harvesting bacteriochlorophyll (BChl) molecules and primary charge separation in reaction centres (RCs) of pigment‐protein complex B890 of the purple bacterium Chromatium minutissimum were studied as a function of excitation wavelength by means of picosecond absorbance difference spectroscopy. Selective excitation in the RC absorption band (at 800 nm) induced rapid bleaching of the absorption band of the RC BChl dimer (τ ∼ 1 ps) without absorption changes due to excited light‐harvesting BChl. It is concluded that excitation energy transfer from the BChl dimer of the RC to light‐harvesting BChl molecules is considerably slower than RC charge separation. Therefore, energy transfer from the light‐harvesting antenna to the RC in bacterial photosynthesis may be described as a ‘migration‐limited model’.