toxicity and oviposition deterrent activities of ethereal extracts of exocarp and kernel of ginkgo biloba seed were evaluated on various life stages of two spotted spider mite tetranychus urticae. petroleum ether was used for extraction. bioassay was conducted using three replicates for testing five concentrations 35, 45, 60, 75 and 100 g/l of pure extracts. lc50 was measured by pri-probit soft...

Soybean physical and chemical properties changed by size (from 4.8 to 8.8 mm diameter), but soybean size and seed density did not affect the protein and oil determination accuracy of three near-infrared transmission analyzers. Corn samples were also separated by size and kernel density. Changes in corn kernel density and size introduced small errors in near-infrared transmission protein, oil, a...

We describe a method for independently verifying the dose distributions from pre- and post-implant brachytherapy source distributions. Monte Carlo calculations have been performed to characterize the three-dimensional dose distribution in water phantom from a low-energy brachytherapy source. The calculations are performed in a voxelized, Cartesian coordinate geometry and normalized based upon a...

Drying temperature and time effect on oil quality parameters of both seed and kernel from a sunflower hybrid of potential high oil content was evaluated. Drying tests were carried through two treatments of thin layer drying, consisting the first in getting the equilibrium moisture content and the second a safe storage moisture value, both in a range of temperatures from 25 °C to 90 °C. Prolonge...

This paper presents AutoDJ: a system for automatically generating music playlists based on one or more seed songs selected by a user. AutoDJ uses Gaussian Process Regression to learn a user preference function over songs. This function takes music metadata as inputs. This paper further introduces Kernel Meta-Training, which is a method of learning a Gaussian Process kernel from a distribution o...

Genomic sequencing is rapidly becoming a premier generator of Big Data, posing great computational challenges. Hence, acceleration of the algorithms used is of utmost importance. This paper presents a GPU-accelerated implementation of BWA-MEM, a widely used algorithm to map genomic sequences onto a reference genome. BWA-MEM contains three main computational functions: Seed Generation, Seed Exte...

Improving grain quality of maize (Zea mays L.), including endospermhardness and density, is often a breeding objective.Dense seed is preferred by dry millers and for alkaline processing, and can command a price premium at market. This study attempted to increase kernel density in a backcrossing program for two inbreds of maize using two selection techniques, specific gravity of kernels and the ...

Kernel size is an important component of grain yield in maize breeding programs. To extend the understanding on the genetic basis of kernel size traits (i.e., kernel length, kernel width and kernel thickness), we developed a set of four-way cross mapping population derived from four maize inbred lines with varied kernel sizes. In the present study, we investigated the genetic basis of natural v...

Neutral community models have shown that limited migration can have a pervasive influence on the taxonomic composition of local communities even when all individuals are assumed of equivalent ecological fitness. Notably, the spatially implicit neutral theory yields a single parameter I for the immigration-drift equilibrium in a local community. In the case of plants, seed dispersal is considere...