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By: Kandil AA, AE Sharief, Ola S.A. Shereif Key Words: Canola, Cultivars, Salinity stress, seedlings characters. Int. J. Agr. Agri. Res. 8(2), 10-18, February 2016. Abstract To study the effect of salinity concentrations on seedlings parameters of some canola cultivars, a laboratory experiment was conducted at Agronomy Department Laboratory of Seed Testing, Faculty of Agriculture, Mansoura University, Egypt, during December 2013. The experiment included two factor, the first factor included three cultivars of canola i.e. Serw 4, Serw 6 and Serw 51 and the second factor included ten concentrations of salinity as NaCl i.e. 0.0 (control treatment), 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0, 1.2, 1.4, 1.6, and 1.8 % NaCl). The results showed that Serw 6 cultivar significantly exceeded the other studied cultivars in root and shoot lengths and shoot fresh and dry weights. Whilst, Serw 51 cultivar significantly exceeded the other studied cultivars in root fresh and dry weights, seedling height reduction (SHR), relative dry weight and chlorophyll content in leaves. Salinity stress significantly affected seedlings characters of canola. Due to increasing salinity levels from 0 (control) to 1.8% NaCl, seedlings characters of canola was significantly decreased. It could be concluded that for maximizing canola seedlings parameters, germinated seeds of Serw 6 or Serw 51 cultivars under control treatment (without salinity stress) or under conditions of 0.2% NaCl.

ScienceDaily (Dec. 22, 2010) - Two researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have found that our 98.6° F (37° C) body temperature strikes a perfect balance: warm enough to ward off fungal infection but not so hot that we need to eat nonstop to maintain our metabolism.

Das Vogelweibchen gibt den Ton an, Current Biology http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2812%2901125-6 "Vogeleltern und andere Artgenossen, die bei der Brutpflege helfen, füttern den Nachwuchs nur dann, wenn der Bettelruf der Jungen das gelernte Passwort enthält", erklärt Studienautorin Sonia Kleindorfer von der Flinders University in Australien. Sie und ihr Team entdeckten den Coderuf eher zufällig, als sie Nester des Prachtstaffelschwanzes beobachteten. Ursprünglich untersuchten die Forscher Alarmrufe, welche die Singvögel im Angesicht von Nesträubern von sich geben. Dabei fiel ihnen das seltsame Verhalten der brütenden Vögel auf: Die Mütter sangen dem ungeschlüpften Nachwuchs einen bestimmten Ton vor. Der spätere Bettelgesang des Nachwuchses ähnelte offenbar dem Ruf der Mütter."

"Lauren Brent: The discovery of friendship in animals Primatologist and evolutionary biologist Lauren Brent has spent over 6 years researching monkeys in the hopes of explaining how social behaviors evolved in our closest living relative"

Introduction to Computer Science and Programming

Many newly diagnosed prostate cancers present as low Gleason score tumors that require no treatment intervention. Distinguishing the many indolent tumors from the minority of lethal ones remains a major clinical challenge. We now show that low Gleason score prostate tumors can be distinguished as indolent and aggressive subgroups on the basis of their expression of genes associated with aging and senescence. Using gene set enrichment analysis, we identified a 19-gene signature enriched in indolent prostate tumors. We then further classified this signature with a decision tree learning model to identify three genes-FGFR1, PMP22, and CDKN1A-that together accurately predicted outcome of low Gleason score tumors. Validation of this three-gene panel on independent cohorts confirmed its independent prognostic value as well as its ability to improve prognosis with currently used clinical nomograms. Furthermore, protein expression of this three-gene panel in biopsy samples distinguished Gleason 6 patients who failed surveillance over a 10-year period. We propose that this signature may be incorporated into prognostic assays for monitoring patients on active surveillance to facilitate appropriate courses of treatment.

"Christian Hilbe, Maria Abou Chakra, Philipp M. Altrock, Arne Traulsen, The evolution of strategic timing in collective-risk dilemmas. PLoS ONE 8(6): e66490, 14. Juni 2013, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0066490 Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften e.V. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0066490"

A new study in The Lancet rates the harmfulness of 20 psychoactive drugs according to 16 criteria and finds that alcohol comes out on top. Although that conclusion is generating headlines, it is not at all surprising, since alcohol is, by several important measures (including acute toxicity, impairment of driving ability, and the long-term health effects of heavy use), the most dangerous widely used intoxicant, and its abuse is also associated with violence, family breakdown, and social estrangement. A group of British drug experts gathered by the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs (ISCD) rated alcohol higher than most or all of the other drugs for health damage, mortality, impairment of mental functioning, accidental injury, economic cost, loss of relationships, and negative impact on community. Over all, alcohol rated 72 points on a 100-point scale, compared to 55 for heroin, 54 for crack cocaine, and 33 for methamphetamine. Cannabis got a middling score of 20, while MDMA (Ecstasy), LSD, and psilocybin mushrooms were at the low end, with ratings of 9, 7, and 6, respectively.

Looking almost 11 billion years into the past, astronomers have measured the motions of stars for the first time in a very distant galaxy and clocked speeds upwards of one million miles per hour, about twice the speed of our Sun through the Milky Way. The fast-moving stars shed new light on how these distant galaxies, which are a fraction the size of our Milky Way, may have evolved into the full-grown galaxies seen around us today. The results will be published in the August 6, 2009 issue of the journal Nature, with a companion paper in the Astrophysical Journal.

"It's the early 1980s, and you're an equipment manufacturer for the fledgling personal-computer market. For years, modems that send data over the telephone lines have been stuck at a maximum rate of 9.6 kilobits per second: if you try to increase the rate, an intolerable number of errors creeps into the data."

ScienceDaily (Jan. 6, 2011) - For parents wanting to reduce the negative influence of TV on their children, the first step is normally to switch off the television set. But a new study suggests that might not be enough. It turns out indirect media exposure, i.e., having friends who watch a lot of TV, might be even more damaging to a teenager's body image.

Many Mistakes managers do

"The online encyclopedia reinvented for the modern age. Everipedia is the next generation encyclopedia rebuilt for the modern age. With over 6 million articles and counting, it's already the world's largest English encyclopedia by content. Everipedia is free from ads and free to use for everyone under creative commons."

ScienceDaily (Sep. 12, 2011) - The HARPS spectrograph on the 3.6-metre telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile is the world's most successful planet finder [1]. The HARPS team, led by Michel Mayor (University of Geneva, Switzerland), have announced the discovery of more than 50 new exoplanets orbiting nearby stars, including sixteen super-Earths [2]. This is the largest number of such planets ever announced at one time [3]. The new findings are being presented at a conference on Extreme Solar Systems where 350 exoplanet experts are meeting in Wyoming, USA.

"Among the five ape species tested, the "universal" primers detected an average of 6 species per animal. The Archaea-specific primers revealed an average of 95.... By simply looking more closely and more specifically for Archaea, Raymann and her colleagues revealed a conspicuous gap in microbiome research"

"Abstract: Babys können rechnen / zählen Six-month-old infants discriminate between large sets of objects on the basis of numerosity when other extraneous variables are controlled, provided that the sets to be discriminated differ by a large ratio (8 vs. 16 but not 8 vs. 12). The capacities to represent approximate numerosity found in adult animals and humans evidently develop in human infants prior to language and symbolic counting."

MITx will offer a portfolio of MIT courses for free to a virtual community of learners around the world. It will also enhance the educational experience of its on-campus students, offering them online tools that supplement and enrich their classroom and laboratory experiences.