Effect of pH on nitrogen immobilization in two California soils

Summary The effect of pH on nitrogen immobilization from tagged NH₄Cl and KNO₃ was investigated in two soils. Although the ammonium source was utilized by the soil population preferentially at all pH levels in both soils, there was a marked influence of pH on the quantity immobilized. Nitrogen immobilized from the ammonium source increased, as pH increased, whereas the reverse was true of the nitrate source. These results appear to be related to the physiological acidity or alkalinity of the nitrogen source.Most of the nitrogen incorporated into the organic fraction was present in the amino form.Contribution from the Department of Soils and Plant Nutrition University of California, Davis, and the Department of Vegetable Crops, University of California, Riverside. This work was supported in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation.     

Estimating and interpreting secondary attack risk: Binomial considered biased

The household secondary attack risk (SAR), often called the secondary attack rate or secondary infection risk, is the probability of infectious contact from an infectious household member A to a given household member B, where we define infectious contact to be a contact sufficient to infect B if he or she is susceptible. Estimation of the SAR is an important part of understanding and controlling the transmission of infectious diseases. In practice, it is most often estimated using binomial models such as logistic regression, which implicitly attribute all secondary infections in a household to the primary case. In the simplest case, the number of secondary infections in a household with m susceptibles and a single primary case is modeled as a binomial(m, p) random variable where p is the SAR. Although it has long been understood that transmission within households is not binomial, it is thought that multiple generations of transmission can be neglected safely when p is small. We use probability generating functions and simulations to show that this is a mistake. The proportion of susceptible household members infected can be substantially larger than the SAR even when p is small. As a result, binomial estimates of the SAR are biased upward and their confidence intervals have poor coverage probabilities even if adjusted for clustering. Accurate point and interval estimates of the SAR can be obtained using longitudinal chain binomial models or pairwise survival analysis, which account for multiple generations of transmission within households, the ongoing risk of infection from outside the household, and incomplete follow-up. We illustrate the practical implications of these results in an analysis of household surveillance data collected by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health during the 2009 influenza A (H1N1) pandemic.     

THE EFFECT OF ULTRA-VIOLET,X-RAY,AND RADIUM RADIATION ON THE TOXICITY OF NORMAL BLOOD

While the number of experiments performed is perhaps somewhat limited the results obtained were quite definite and warrant the following conclusions. The toxicity of normal blood for living plant protoplasm as studied on the growth of Lupinus albus seedlings is definitely influenced by various radiations. Ultra-violet rays produce no effect on normal blood or may even render it slightly less toxic. Roentgen rays render normal blood more toxic. The toxicity is greater in the case of the blood plasma as compared with the blood cells and a more toxic effect is produced with the Coolidge tube as compared with the gas tube. Radium emanations in the few experiments performed produced changes very much the same as those given by the x-rays.     

Tempo and mode of evolutionary radiation in Diabroticina beetles (genera Acalymma,Cerotoma, and Diabrotica)

Adaptive radiation is an aspect of evolutionary biology encompassing microevolution and macroevolution, for explaining the principles of lineage divergence. There are intrinsic as well as extrinsic factors that can be postulated to explain that adaptive radiation has taken place in specific lineages. The Diabroticina beetles are a prominent example of differential diversity that could be examined in detail to explain the diverse paradigms of adaptive radiation. Macroevolutionary analyses must present the differential diversity patterns in a chronological framework. The current study reviews the processes that shaped the differential diversity of some Diabroticina lineages (i.e. genera Acalymma, Cerotoma, and Diabrotica). These diversity patterns and the putative processes that produced them are discussed within a statistically reliable estimate of time. This was achieved by performing phylogenetic and coalescent analyses for 44 species of chrysomelid beetles. The data set encompassed a total of 2,718 nucleotide positions from three mitochondrial and two nuclear loci. Pharmacophagy, host plant coevolution, competitive exclusion, and geomorphological complexity are discussed as putative factors that might have influenced the observed diversity patterns. The coalescent analysis concluded that the main radiation within Diabroticina beetles occurred between middle Oligocene and middle Miocene. Therefore, the radiation observed in these beetles is not recent (i.e. post-Panamanian uplift, 4 Mya). Only a few speciation events in the genus Diabrotica might be the result of the Pleistocene climatic oscillations.     

A survey of potato aphides in north-west Derbyshire, 1945

Counts of aphides infesting potato crops in north-west Derbyshire at altitudes between 340 and 1360 ft. were made during the summer of 1945. Mysus persicae was abundant on almost all crops, and peak figures on some reached over 1500 per 100 lower leaves. In many fields two peaks were noted, one towards the end of July and the second in mid-September, and in some fields there were still heavy infestations when the haulms died. The number of aphides varied considerably from field to field; sheltered fields were the least infested. In this area in 1945 there was no evidence to support the contention that the altitude and aspect of the field have any influence on the intensity of infestation. Tuber samples from six fields showed that there was a considerable spread of leaf roll.