Seed priming is a physiological seed enhancement method. Hydroor osmotic priming can advance germination under adequate moisture conditions. During direct seeding on well-drained paddy and upland fields, rice seeds occasionally encounter low soil moisture conditions. Under these conditions, rice seeds need to undergo rapid germination and secure emergence through improved water absorption capac...

Crystal soaking is widely performed in biological crystallography. This paper reports time-resolved X-ray crystallographic and microtomographic analyses of tetragonal crystals of chicken egg-white lysozyme soaked in mother liquor containing potassium hexachloroplatinate. The microtomographic analysis showed that X-ray attenuation spread from the superficial layer of the crystal and then to the ...

Soaking of cereal grains has been suggested as a method to reduce their phytate content and hence increase their mineral availability. Whole and milled wholegrain, normal and low phytate sorghum and normal maize were studied. Soaking of unmilled sorghum and maize did not result in substantial reductions in phytate or mineral contents. With milled grains, phytate solubilisation was somewhat grea...

A finite element analysis was conducted to determine the effect of moisture diffusion and hygroscopic swelling in rice. A parallel simple stochastic modeling was performed to predict the number of grains cracked as a result of moisture absorption and hygroscopic swelling. Rice grains were soaked in thermally (25C) controlled water and then tested for compressive stress. The destructive compress...

Black willow ( Salix nigra ) uses periodic flood events for dispersal of vegetative propagules, subjecting them to periods of soaking before their deposition along the streambank. It was hypothesized that this life history trait results in optimal conditions for willow growth and survival. To test this hypothesis, a greenhouse experiment was conducted using 1.2-m-long black willow cuttings (pos...

Administering high concentrations of fructan to horses has resulted in laminitis. Cool season grasses accumulate fructan, which is estimated as the difference between water soluble carbohydrates (WSC; sucrose, fructose, glucose, fructans) and ethanol soluble carbohydrates (ESC; sucrose, fructose, glucose). Reducing fructan content in hay is critical for susceptible horses. The objective was to ...

The individualistic effect of unit operations of production, at household level, on some antinutritional factors in selected cowpea-based food products (moin-moin, akara, and gbegiri) was investigated. Four cowpea types (IT93K-452-1, IT95K-499s-35, IT97K-568-18, and market sample) were used for the study, whereas the three traditional food products were produced from each of the cowpea types, r...

Text by Rabiya S. Tuma [email protected] Soaking up stress O n page 115, Ku and Omary add one more function to keratin’s expanding repertoire. In addition to acting as a structural protein in liver cells, keratin 8 (K8) apparently absorbs excess phosphorylation during stress and thus reduces the likelihood of apoptosis. Humans who carry a G61C polymorphism in K8 are predisposed to liver disease w...

With continuous technical improvements at synchrotron facilities, data-collection rates have increased dramatically. This makes it possible to collect diffraction data for hundreds of protein-ligand complexes within a day, provided that a suitable crystal system is at hand. However, developing a suitable crystal system can prove challenging, exceeding the timescale of data collection by several...