Exploring the combined effect of heavy metals on accumulation efficiency of Salix alba raised on lead and cadmium contaminated soils.

The present study illustrated that Salix alba can accumulate high level of Pb and Cd in different plant parts, with maximum accumulation in roots followed by stem and leaves in the order Cd > Pb > Cd + Pb. The phytoremediation evaluation factors such as bioconcentration factor (BCF) and translocation factor (TF) was higher for Cd over Pb in all plant parts, further the BCF for both Pb and Cd was maximum in root (BCF > 1) followed by stem and leaves. Higher accumulation of Cd over the Pb was observed inside the plant tissues due to Cd mimics with other elements and gets transported through respective transporters. The combined treatment of Pb and Cd affected the bioaccumulation at every treatment level suggesting the negative effect among both elements. Higher survival rate (>85%) was recorded up to 200mgPb/kg and 15mgCd/kg, while further increase in metal concentration reduced the plant efficiency to remediate contaminated soils, hence results in declined survival rate. The FTIR analysis revealed that Pb and Cd accumulation in plants induced changes in carboxy, amino, hydroxyl and phosphate groups that ultimately caused alteration in physiological and biochemical processes of plant and thus provided an insight to the interaction, binding and accumulation of heavy metals.

The present study conferred that Salix alba is a heavy metal (Pb and Cd) excluder plant on the basis of phytoremediation efficiency evaluation factors such BCF >1 (root) and TF <1. The correlation studies suggested the negative correlation among Pb and Cd accumulation and morphological traits. Physiological studies indicated that Pb and Cd accumulation negatively affect chlorophyll concentration and the antioxidant mechanism of plants gets activated, further these results are confirmed with FTIR studies, which reported the alteration in functional groups and associated compounds in plant tissues under Pb and Cd stress.

Male Genital Injuries in Infants Caused by the Bite of Pet Pups: Case Series and Literature Review.

Injuries to male genitalia of infants due to bite of a pet pup are a rare occurrence. Few dog bite injuries to the genitalia of male infants have been reported, however, similar injuries have not been reported by the bite of pet puppies. Male genital injury in three male infants aged 8, 10, and 11 months, by the bite of pet puppies aged 1-2 months, ranged from avulsion of penile and part of scrotal skin with loss of both testes in case 1, a near circumferential laceration of penile skin at the base of penis with scrotal laceration in case 2, and laceration in mid penile shaft resulting in degloving and complete transaction of distal penile urethra with scrotal laceration in case 3. All these infants were appropriately managed surgically (case 1 and 3) and conservatively (case 2) and were given thorough toileting of wound, antibiotics, prophylaxis for tetanus and rabies. Some of these injuries may require complex surgical procedures to reconstruct the male genitalia. Timely management with aggressive intent and conserving the local tissue is the key to success. We describe a case series of injury to the external genitalia of three male infants by the bite of pet puppies, their possible predisposing factors, treatment, and follow-up. A case report and series like this have not been reported in literature so far to the best of our knowledge.

Growth dynamics of different half-sib families of Melia azedarach Linn.

The genetic diversity and growth dynamics of fifty-three half-sib families of eleven provenance sources and one bulk seed mixed population of fast growing forest tree species i.e. Melia azedarach were studied at two stand ages viz., fourth year (mid-rotation) and eighth year (end-rotation) to determine the selection stage in northern India. Significant variations were reported between and within seed provenances in all growth characters at both rotational ages. The broad sense heritability was higher at mid-rotational age. This revealed the growth is genetically controlled but with the time environmental effects escort the growth pattern. Growth pattern was different at each stand age. Growth is diameter dependent and the pattern was crown growth type. Families maintained their superiority over the time for tree height, basal diameter and diameter at breast height, which indicated a strong potential to identify good performing families for future plantation program. This study concluded that early stage selection is appropriate that later stage selection for all parameters studied except clear bole height that is much influenced by management practice and environment factors also. Neighbor-joining clustering with similarity index revealed that it is not necessary that the families, originated in one region were distributed in one cluster, indicating that families with same geographic origin could have undergone changes for different characters under selection.

Discrete-time dynamic network model for the spread of susceptible-infective-recovered diseases.

We propose a discrete-time dynamic network model describing the spread of susceptible-infective-recovered diseases in a population. We consider the case in which the nodes in the network change their links due to social mixing dynamics as well as in response to the disease. The model shows the behavior that, as we increase social mixing, disease spread is inhibited in certain cases, while in other cases it is enhanced. We also extend this dynamic network model to take into account the case of hidden infection. Here we find that, as expected, the disease spreads more readily if there is a time period after contracting the disease during which an individual is infective but is not known to have the disease.

A network function-based definition of communities in complex networks.

We consider an alternate definition of community structure that is functionally motivated. We define network community structure based on the function the network system is intended to perform. In particular, as a specific example of this approach, we consider communities whose function is enhanced by the ability to synchronize and/or by resilience to node failures. Previous work has shown that, in many cases, the largest eigenvalue of the network's adjacency matrix controls the onset of both synchronization and percolation processes. Thus, for networks whose functional performance is dependent on these processes, we propose a method that divides a given network into communities based on maximizing a function of the largest eigenvalues of the adjacency matrices of the resulting communities. We also explore the differences between the partitions obtained by our method and the modularity approach (which is based solely on consideration of network structure). We do this for several different classes of networks. We find that, in many cases, modularity-based partitions do almost as well as our function-based method in finding functional communities, even though modularity does not specifically incorporate consideration of function.

Spectral properties of networks with community structure.

In this paper, we discuss the eigenspectra of networks with community structure. It is shown that in many cases, the spectrum of eigenvalues of the adjacency matrix of a network with community structure gives a clear indication of the number of communities in the network. In particular, for a network with N nodes and N_(c) communities, there will typically be N_(c) eigenvalues that are significantly larger than the magnitudes of all the other (N-N_(c)) eigenvalues. We discuss this property as well as its use and limitations for determining N_(c) .