Intraoperative dosimetric quality assurance in prostate brachytherapy critically depends on discerning the three-dimensional (3D) locations of implanted seeds. The ability to reconstruct the implanted seeds intraoperatively will allow us to make immediate provisions for dosimetric deviations from the optimal implant plan. A method for seed reconstruction from segmented C-arm fluoroscopy images ...

Delivering improved seeds to smallholder farmers in the developing world is an efficient and sustainable method of increasing crop yields and quality. Unlike fertilizers, pesticides and equipment, seeds can be produced locally for distribution to farmers or self-saved. Furthermore, improved varieties of horticultural crops often reduce dependence on synthetic pesticides, improve food safety, re...

Medicinal herbs are moving from fringe to mainstream use with a greater number of people seeking for remedies and health approaches from side effects caused by synthetic chemicals. This has aggravated the search for antimicrobials from plants sources. In this study, aqueous extracts of Moringa oleifera samples from different areas of India were screened for antimicrobial activity against two ye...

The leading partitional clustering technique, k-means, is one of the most computationally efficient clustering methods. However, it produces a local optimal solution that strongly depends on its initial seeds. Bad initial seeds can also cause the splitting or merging of natural clusters even if the clusters are well separated. In this paper, we propose, ROBIN, a novel method for initial seed se...

Hybridisation and polyploidy are major forces contributing to plant speciation. Homoploid (2x) and heteroploid (3x) hybrids, however, represent critical stages for evolution due to disturbed meiosis and reduced fertility. Apomixis--asexual reproduction via seeds--can overcome hybrid sterility, but requires several concerted alterations of developmental pathways to result in functional seed form...

After a conditioning period, seed dormancy in obligate root parasitic plants is released by a chemical stimulus secreted by the roots of host plants. Using Phelipanche ramosa as the model, experiments conducted in this study showed that seeds require a conditioning period of at least 4 d to be receptive to the synthetic germination stimulant GR24. A cDNA-AFLP procedure on seeds revealed 58 tran...

In our endeavor to improve the nitrogen fixation efficiency of a soil diazotroph that would be unaffected by synthetic nitrogenous fertilizers, we have deleted a part of the negative regulatory gene nifL and constitutively expressed the positive regulatory gene nifA in the chromosome of Azotobacter chroococcum CBD15, a strain isolated from the local field soil. No antibiotic resistance gene or ...

High use of synthetic pesticides has detrimental effects on the environment. An alternative option is application of natural pesticide compounds. The aim of this study was to evaluate the possibility of replacing Vitavax with savory essential oil to inhibit physiological damages to wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) seeds caused by Fusarium oxysprum. A pot experiment was carried out on wheat seeds as...