Agronomic gain: Definition, approach, and application.

Meeting future global staple crop demand requires continual productivity improvement. Many performance indicators have been proposed to track and measure the increase in productivity while minimizing environmental degradation. However, their use has lagged behind theory, and has not been uniform across crops in different geographies. The consequence is an uneven understanding of opportunities for sustainable intensification. Simple but robust key performance indicators (KPIs) are needed to standardize knowledge across crops and geographies. This paper defines a new term 'agronomic gain' based on an improvement in KPIs, including productivity, resource use efficiencies, and soil health that a specific single or combination of agronomic practices delivers under certain environmental conditions. We apply the concept of agronomic gain to the different stages of science-based agronomic innovations and provide a description of different approaches used to assess agronomic gain including yield gap assessment, meta-data analysis, on-station and on-farm studies, impact assessment, panel studies, and use of subnational and national statistics for assessing KPIs at different stages. We mainly focus on studies on rice in sub-Saharan Africa, where large yield gaps exist. Rice is one of the most important staple food crops and plays an essential role in food security in this region. Our analysis identifies major challenges in the assessment of agronomic gain, including differentiating agronomic gain from genetic gain, unreliable in-person interviews, and assessment of some KPIs at a larger scale. To overcome these challenges, we suggest to (i) conduct multi-environment trials for assessing variety × agronomic practice × environment interaction on KPIs, and (ii) develop novel approaches for assessing KPIs, through development of indirect methods using remote-sensing technology, mobile devices for systematized site characterization, and establishment of empirical relationships among KPIs or between agronomic practices and KPIs.

Exact Three-Point Functions of Determinant Operators in Planar N=4 Supersymmetric Yang-Mills Theory.

We introduce a nonperturbative approach to correlation functions of two determinant operators and one nonprotected single-trace operator in planar N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. Based on the gauge-string duality, we propose that they correspond to overlaps on the string world sheet between an integrable boundary state and a state dual to the single-trace operator. We determine the boundary state using the symmetry and integrability of the dual superstring σ model and write expressions for the correlators at finite coupling, which we conjecture to be valid for operators of arbitrary size. The proposal is put to the test at weak coupling.

Handling Handles: Nonplanar Integrability in N=4 Supersymmetric Yang-Mills Theory.

We propose an integrability setup for the computation of correlation functions of gauge-invariant operators in N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory at higher orders in the large N_{c} genus expansion and at any order in the 't Hooft coupling g_{YM}^{2}N_{c}. In this multistep proposal, one polygonizes the string world sheet in all possible ways, hexagonalizes all resulting polygons, and sprinkles mirror particles over all hexagon junctions to obtain the full correlator. We test our integrability-based conjecture against a nonplanar four-point correlator of large 1/2 Bogomol'nyi-Prasad-Sommerfield operators at one and two loops.

De novo synthesized estradiol protects against methylmercury-induced neurotoxicity in cultured rat hippocampal slices.

BACKGROUND: Estrogen, a class of female sex steroids, is neuroprotective. Estrogen is synthesized in specific areas of the brain. There is a possibility that the de novo synthesized estrogen exerts protective effect in brain, although direct evidence for the neuroprotective function of brain-synthesized estrogen has not been clearly demonstrated. Methylmercury (MeHg) is a neurotoxin that induces neuronal degeneration in the central nervous system. The neurotoxicity of MeHg is region-specific, and the molecular mechanisms for the selective neurotoxicity are not well defined. In this study, the protective effect of de novo synthesized 17ß-estradiol on MeHg-induced neurotoxicity in rat hippocampus was examined. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Neurotoxic effect of MeHg on hippocampal organotypic slice culture was quantified by propidium iodide fluorescence imaging. Twenty-four-hour treatment of the slices with MeHg caused cell death in a dose-dependent manner. The toxicity of MeHg was attenuated by pre-treatment with exogenously added estradiol. The slices de novo synthesized estradiol. The estradiol synthesis was not affected by treatment with 1 µM MeHg. The toxicity of MeHg was enhanced by inhibition of de novo estradiol synthesis, and the enhancement of toxicity was recovered by the addition of exogenous estradiol. The neuroprotective effect of estradiol was inhibited by an estrogen receptor (ER) antagonist, and mimicked by pre-treatment of the slices with agonists for ERα and ERß, indicating the neuroprotective effect was mediated by ERs. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Hippocampus de novo synthesized estradiol protected hippocampal cells from MeHg-induced neurotoxicity via ERα- and ERß-mediated pathways. The self-protective function of de novo synthesized estradiol might be one of the possible mechanisms for the selective sensitivity of the brain to MeHg toxicity.

Social isolation stimulates hippocampal estradiol synthesis.

17beta-estradiol is synthesized de novo in the rat hippocampus. However, the regulatory mechanism of hippocampal estradiol synthesis has remained unclear. We investigated the effects of social isolation on rat hippocampal estradiol synthesis. Rats were divided into two groups: social isolation and pair housed group. Socially isolated rats were housed individually while pair housed rats were housed two per cage for 8 weeks. Social isolation activated the transcription of neurosteroidogenic molecules, including steroidogenic acute regulatory protein (StAR) and CYP19 (cytochrome P450arom). These two molecules are involved in the regulatory step for steroidogenesis and final step of estradiol synthesis. In contrast, the mRNA levels were not affected in rat olfactory bulb. The hippocampal estradiol content was increased in accordance with the increased mRNA levels. The hippocampal estradiol content exhibited correlations with the StAR and P450arom mRNA levels. These data suggest that social isolation may enhance de novo estradiol synthesis in the hippocampus.