The Napus

The Napus
Author: Leon Daudet
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2013-04-25
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1434446514

In Paris, on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, an old man suddenly vanishes without a trace: a new plague has reached France, and will soon grow to terrible proportions. The event is witnessed by a cytologist working at the Aristotle Institute, who is also a Polyplast--the result of an experiment in selective breeding intended to produce pacifists, but which has also had perverse results. As a result of his presence at the crucial event, the Polyplast becomes a privileged observer of the entire tragedy, of which he naturally sets out to write a personalized history, explaining how the new plague became the casus belli of yet another war in an endless series, fought with the aid of "Archimedes": powerful, long-range weapons that would destroy the world in no time were it not for their habit of misfiring, and only killing tens of thousands of people instead of millions. The Napus, first published in 1927, remains one of the classics of absurdist science fiction.

The Radish Genome

The Radish Genome
Author: Takeshi Nishio
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2017-10-04
Genre: Science
ISBN: 331959253X

This book summarizes the latest information and the status quo of radish genome studies to stimulate innovations and improvements in breeding techniques and to promote further advances in the field. Radish (Raphanus sativus) is a member of the Brassicaceae family and is cultivated worldwide. Its varieties have been diversified in terms of size, shape, and the color of their roots and bio-components. Thanks to the development of high-throughput molecular techniques using next generation sequencers, complete genomes of cultivated and wild radish plants have been sequenced and published with annotations of predicted genes and single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) information between radish cultivars and accessions. These, together with the construction of a high-density genetic map of radish and profiling of expression sequences in radish organs, have accelerated genetic studies, such as the identification of genes or loci associated with root development, pungent components, and plant disease resistance. Providing an overview of these advances, this book is a valuable resource for scientists involved in plant genetic research and crop breeding.