Combining ability analysis in bitter gourd (Momordica charantia L.) for potential quality improvement

Combining ability analysis provides useful information for the selection of parents, also information regarding the nature and magnitude of involved gene actions. Crops improvement involves strategies for enhancing yield potentiality and quality components. Targeting the improvement of respective characters in bitter gourd, combining ability and genetic parameters for 19 characters were estimated from a 6×6 full diallel analysis technique. The results revealed that the variances due to general combining ability (GCA) and specific combining ability (SCA) were highly significant for most of the important characters. It indicated the importance of both additive and non-additive gene actions. GCA variances were higher in magnitude than SCA variances for all the characters studied indicating the predominance of the additive gene effects in their inheritance. The parent P2 (BG 009) appeared as the best general combiner for earliness; P1 (BG 006) for number of fruits, average single fruit weight and fruit yield; P4 (BG 027) for node number of first female flower and days to seed fruit maturity; P3 (BG 011) for fruit length and thickness of the fruit flesh; P5 (BG 033) for 100-seed weight; and P6 for number of nodes per main vine. The SCA effect as well as reciprocal effect was also significant for most of the important characters in different crosses.

Free Vibration of Composite Cylindrical Shells Based on Third-Order Shear Deformation Theory

The focus of this study is to analyse the free vibration of cylindrical shells under third-order shear deformation theory (TSDT). The constitutive equations of the cylindrical shells are obtained using third-order shear deformation theory (TSDT). The surface and traverse displacements are expected to have cubic and quadratic variation. Spline approximation is used to approximate the displacements and transverse rotations. The resulting generalized eigenvalue problem is solved for the frequency parameter to get as many eigenfrequencies as required starting from the least. From the eigenvectors, the spline coefficients are computed from which the mode shapes are constructed. The frequency of cylindrical shells is analysed by varying circumferential node number, length dimension, layer number, and different materials. The authenticity of the present formulation is established by comparing with the available FEM results.

Exploration of Genetic Parameters of Pea Genotypes Using Different Environmental Conditions

The estimate of genetic variability was observed for fifteen traits on fifty two genotypes. The ANOVA indicated that the mean sum of squares due to genotypes were highly significant for all the traits, respectively in all the environmental conditions. High magnitude of phenotypic coefficient of variation was observed than the genotypic coefficient of variation for all the characters under study. High genotypic and phenotypic coefficient of variations were exhibited for number of secondary branches/plant, Pod bearing length, number of primary branches/plant, number of pods/plants, number of seeds/plant, seed yield/plant (gm), biological yield/plant (gm), First flowering node and harvest index (%) in all six and pooled over environments. The above finding revealed the presence of substantial amount of genetic variability for the traits, which exhibited high magnitudes as well as less influence of environment on the expression of concerned traits. Day to first flowering node, number of seed/pods , hundred seed weight (gm), harvest index and days to flower initiation exhibited moderate genotypic and phenotypic coefficient variation in all the environments. Low genotypic and phenotypic coefficient of variation was observed for pod bearing length in all the environments, this reveled high influence of environment.

Comparison of Four Lymph Node Stage Methods for Predicting the Prognosis of Distal Cholangiocarcinoma Patients After Surgery

BackgroundThe metastatic status of regional lymph nodes is an effective risk factor for the prognosis of distal cholangiocarcinoma (dCCA). But existing lymph node staging is not accurate enough and is susceptible to interference. This study aims to explore the predictive ability of the log odds of positive lymph nodes (LODDS) staging system of dCCA compared with existing lymph node staging systems.MethodsA total of 928 dCCA patients were selected from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database as the training cohort, and 207 dCCA patients from West China Hospital who underwent surgery were reviewed as the validation cohort. The least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) and multivariate Cox regression were conducted to identify the most meaningful factors relevant to prognosis. The performance of four lymph node stage systems was compared by a model-based approach.ResultAge at diagnosis, pathological grade, American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) tumor 7th T stage, tumor size, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, and lymph node stage system were independent prognostic factors. The model with the LODDS system had a better model fit with the highest C-index (0.679) and 1-/3-/5- area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) (0.739/0.671/0.658) as well as the lowest Akaike information criterion (AIC) (5,020.52). External validation results from 207 dCCA patients showed a C-index of 0.647 and 1-/3-/5-AUC of 0.740/0.683/0.589. Compared with the lymph node ratio (LNR), AJCC 8th N system, and 7th N system, the 5-year net reclassification improvement (NRI) of the LODDS system was 0.030 (95% CI: −0.079 to 0.147), 0.042 (95% CI: −0.062 to 0.139), and 0.040 (95% CI: −0.057 to 0.146), respectively. The integrated discrimination improvement (IDI) of LODDS improved compared with the LNR model (0.016; 95% CI: −0.001 to 0.036), AJCC 8th N system (0.020; 95% CI: 0.003–0.037), and AJCC 7th N system (0.019; 95% CI: 0.002–0.036). Decision curve analysis (DCA) also shows a greater net benefit of LODDS. In lymph node-negative patients, LODDS reveals a positive linear relationship with the hazard ratio (HR). The stage capacity of LODDS in a subgroup analysis stratified by examined lymph node number (ELNN) was consistent.ConclusionsThe LODDS lymph node stage system has superior predictive performance as compared with the LNR, AJCC 7th, and 8th lymph node stage systems. Meanwhile, LODDS has a more detailed staging ability and good stability.

On the evaluation of the IEEE 802.11ac WLAN performance with QoS deployment

The increase in the number of users on wireless local area networks (WLAN) and the development of large size applications have increased the demand for high-speed data rate and low latency. The IEEE 802.11ac was developed to provide very high throughput WLANs. Many enhancements are added to the medium access control (MAC) and physical (PHY) layers to increase data rate and improve network performance, these features enable the IEEE 802.11ac standard to provide quality of service (QoS) for multimedia applications. This paper concentrates on the impact of QoS on the system performance in term of delay and throughput. Four scenarios are proposed to investigate the network performance with different (from 1 up to 8) spatial stream (SS). The objective modular network testbed in C++ (OMNet++ modeler v5.5.1) is used to simulate and model these scenarios. For 8×8 SS, the results of simulation show the best throughput (maximum) and delay (minimum) values of (622, 484, 399.3, 382.96 Mbps) and (0.0211, 0.0589, 0.1037, 0.1202 sec) for 5, 15, 30 and 45 node number scenarios respectively. Although the number of nodes increases, the system performance decreases, however when QoS is deployed the performance is enhanced and its best improvement is obtained at the highest (45) node number scenario with values of 94.4% and 56.1% for throughput and delay respectively.

Effects of Water Stress on Vegetative and Reproductive Traits of Three Commercial Cotton Varieties in Field Conditions in Central Iran

Backgroundwater scarcity is one of the most important factors that restricts crop production specially, cotton which must planted in areas without cold temperature limitation. Most of such area in Iran encounters drought events, hot temperatures and high atmospheric evaporative demand. So, understanding of stress severity and cultivar responses will help to better management of crop in stress conditions. Our previous study showed that cultivar responses in view of some physiological and morphological aspects were highly different in water stress condition. In this study we focused on yield formatting traits.Results Three cotton commercial varieties; Khorshid, Khordad and Varamin studied in sever, mild and without water stress. In normal condition zero type cultivar, the khorshid, produced the highest seed cotton yield. Varamin cultivar had more and longer sympodial branches which could raise it’s yield. Also, Varamin cultivar’s seed cotton yield was higher than the others (3617 kg -1 ha compared with 2477 and 3060 for khordad and khorshid, respectively). Khorshid was superior to the others at sever water stress.ConclusionSeed cotton yield showed high correlation whit boll number and boll weight and vegetative aspects such as plant height, node number and sympodial branches number. Management for developing more sympodial branches results in higher bud and flower and will increase the yield. Totally, we recommend Khorshid and Varamin cultivars for normal condition and Khorshid for sever stress conditions.

A Laparoscopic Radical Inguinal Lymphadenectomy Approach Partly Preserving Great Saphenous Vein Branches Can Benefit for Patients with Penile Carcinoma

Background: Inguinal lymphadenectomy (iLAD) is effective for penile carcinoma treatment, but usually results in many complications. This study aims to clinically evaluate the feasibility and clinical significance of a laparoscopic radical iLAD approach partly preserving great saphenous vein branches for penile carcinoma patients. Methods: A total of 48 patients with penile cancer who underwent laparoscopic radical iLAD with retention of the great saphenous vein in Henan Cancer Hospital from 2012 Jan to 2020 Dec was included in this study. Sixteen penile carcinoma patients who underwent laparoscopic radical iLAD preserving parts of superficial branches of the great saphenous vein were identified as the sparing group, and the matched 32 patients who incised those branches were identified as control group. This new procedure was performed by laparoscopy, preserving parts of superficial branches of the great saphenous vein, superficial lateral and medial femoral veins. Clinicopathological features and perioperative variables were recorded. Postoperative complications, including skin flap necrosis, lymphorrhagia, and lower extremity edema were analyzed retrospectively. Results: We found that the operative time of the sparing group is significantly longer than the control group (p = 0.011). There was no statistical difference in intraoperative blood loss, the lymph node number per side, average time to remove the drainage tube and postoperative hospital stay between the two groups. Compared to the control group, the sparing group showed a significantly decreased incidence of lower extremity edema (p = 0.018). The preservation of parts of superficial branches of the great saphenous vein was mainly decreased the incidence of edema below ankle (p = 0.034). Conclusions: This study demonstrated that the iLAD with preserving parts of superficial branches of the great saphenous vein, with a decreased incidence of postoperative complications, is a safe and feasible approach for penile cancer.

Genetic Diversity Analysis in Cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.) Based on Morphological Traits

Evaluation of fifteen diverse genotypes of cucumber was carried out in a randomized complete block design for studying genetic divergence. Presence of wide genetic diversity, among the genotypes studied was confirmed by using Mahalanobis D2 statistics. Based on the interactions genetic distances of cucumber genotypes had grouped into five separate clusters inferring that the genetic divergence between them was quite high. The germplasm were so divergent, that only six genotypes were grouped in cluster V and three genotypes in each cluster I and III. The two genotypes SKY/AC-270-613481 and JB/11-091-613462 were grouped as cluster II and the genotype Tripura local was so divergent in all the characters that they were allotted as a separate group as cluster IV. Cluster mean analysis proclaimed that, genotypes in cluster I recorded maximum value for vine length (3.36 m), number of leaves per plant (43.85), number of branches per plant (12.98), leaf area (144.71 cm2), number of female flowers per plant (20.30), fruiting period (52.20 days), fruit set (89.10 %), average fruit weight (214.72 g), number of fruits per plant (19.00), fruit yield per plant (2.50 kg), fruit yield per ha (31.23 t/ha), rind thickness (2.79 mm) and flesh thickness (3.02 cm), whereas, same cluster I recorded minimum value for traits viz., internodal length (6.55 cm), days to appearance of first male flower (30.34 days), days to appearance of first female flower (31.81 days), node number at which first female flower appeared (4.00), days to first harvest (41.22 days) and number of seeds per fruit (211.69) which are negatively desirable characters in the crop production and crop improvement programme.