Agricultural Producers\u27 Motivations and Challenges With Improving Soil Health in Utah

The Utah Soil Health Program (USHP) developed a five-year project to increase understanding of how best to implement soil health practices into Utah’s diverse farming systems. Fifteen producers were selected to participate in the USHP On-Farm Soil Health Demonstration Project. During 2022, the trial’s first year, the participating farmers and ranchers were interviewed. We begin by discussing participant demographics and operation characteristics. Next, we turn to challenges the producers faced in implementing soil health practices in the IMW and then turn to motivations for the producers to enroll in the USHP trial. This will help (1) document what is currently known about soil health efforts in the IMW and (2) provide information to other producers interested in pursuing soil health on their agricultural land

A Systematic Review: Learning Emotion Regulation With Virtual Reality

This systematic review explored how immersive virtual reality (IVR) can help people manage emotions like stress and anxiety by analyzing existing studies. It highlighted therapies such as mindfulness, compassion therapy, and exposure therapy, showing how IVR can teach effective emotion-regulation skills. Researchers also identified innovative tools, like biofeedback, which uses physical signals such as heart rate to help people understand and control their emotional responses. Interactive and gamified approaches, like Stressjam and Deep, demonstrated practical uses of IVR for mental health support. While the review confirmed IVR\u27s potential in therapy, it also revealed gaps in research, particularly in applying learning theories like flow theory. Future studies should integrate these theories and game design methods to make IVR therapies even more effective

Grow Your Own Microgreens

This fact sheet reviews the steps and materials needed to grow microgreens, such as radish, broccoli, sunflower, or pea shoots. Microgreens are fast and easy to grow and a healthy addition to your diet

Strategies for Increasing Methane Removal in Methanotroph Bench-scale Systems for the Production of Ectoine

Anthropogenic methane emissions contribute to the greenhouse gas profile which is the chief cause of climate change. One significant source of methane emissions is biogas produced from bacteria in wastewater facilities and landfills. Methane rich biogas has the potential to be valorized into high value bioproducts by using methanotrophs (microbes that use methane as their primary carbon source). Methylotuvimicrobium alcaliphilum 20Z was selected for this study as it can generate ectoine when grown in highly saline environments. Ectoine has been proven to have many benefits such as it prevents protein denaturation, it has hydration properties, and is a UV protectant. For these reasons ectoine is used as a cosmetic ingredient valued at approximately $1000 per kg. Previous research has demonstrated that M. alcaliphilum 20Z can be grown in a reactor set-up where methane is bubbled in and ectoine is successfully collected. One of the biggest challenges of methane valorization into ectoine is the low solubility of methane in water, which decreases the availability of it to the methanotrophic culture. This research analyzed factors such as temperature, bubble diameter, and gas input method to determine if the factors had an effect on methane removal. It was determined that all of the considered factors did indeed have an effect on methane removal

Measurement Uncertainty

This text is based on the graduate Measurements course notes from BLS at Utah State University. It is intended as a textbook for graduate students in engineering or physics or as a reference text. If one collects several texts on measurement uncertainty, it quickly becomes clear that the measurement uncertainty community lacks a consistent language or nomenclature. This can be confusing to a new reader who may view measurement uncertainty as a very old and settled topic. The lack of consensus on nomenclature likely stems from the lack of a clear winner–a paradigm and nomenclature set sufficiently superior to be adopted by everyone. It is our hope that this book will improve on previous texts. In addition, this text will attempt to move beyond traditional thinking about measurement uncertainty that is limited to point measurements and uncertainties that are either fixed or linearly related to the reading. With a special focus on camera-based measurements and their unique issues, it is our ambition to write the first modern measurement uncertainty text. The authors wish to acknowledge a debt to Hugh Coleman and Glenn Steele and their 3rd edition text [1], which made progress in the directions that we hope to continue; towards a richer and more realistic uncertainty analysis that considers material property uncertainties as well as the positive and negative impacts of correlated uncertainties. This text was later revised into the 4th edition [2], which added some small but significant changes. Additionally, the authors would like to thank many individuals who gave specific input. Steve Beresh and Randy Hurd were kind enough to provide a very comprehensive review of the text. Geordie Richards guided us through several issues with respect to statistics. Alan Nathan reviewed some of the baseball examples and Bill Zwolinski engaged in many fruitful conversation about instrument specifications. Finally, BLS would have never been interested in this topic without the excellent mentorship of Dr. Greg Swift of Los Alamos National Laboratories

Starting Vegetable Seeds Indoors: II. Materials

This second of four fact sheets in this series explores materials needed to start seeds indoors—specifically, seeds, containers, soilless mix (potting soil), lights, water, fertilizer, a heat source, fans, labels, and a general growing space. Our focus is mainly starting vegetables. However, the principles discussed apply to starting herbs and other ornamental annuals and perennials. Online propagation protocols, books on plant propagation, and other Utah State University (USU) Extension resources discuss how to start other unique and less common plants

Weed Incursion of Irrigated Forage–Forb Mixtures Under Mob Grazing or Mowing in the Mountain West USA

Improving the quality of irrigated pastures can increase the profitability of ruminant production systems. Increasing pasture plant biodiversity is beneficial for ruminants, pollinators, and soil health, but it is challenging to manage weed incursion in seeded mixed-species pastures. This study assessed the weed incursion that resulted when forage legumes or grasses were seeded as binary mixtures with one of four non-legume forbs. Defoliation occurred at 6-week intervals as either mowing or mob grazing. Forbs were chicory, plantain, Lewis flax, or small burnet and forages were alfalfa, birdsfoot trefoil, creeping foxtail, intermediate wheatgrass, kura clover, meadow bromegrass, orchardgrass, perennial ryegrass, reed canarygrass, sainfoin, smooth bromegrass, tall fescue, and white clover. Four defoliations per year occurred between May and September for two years. Eight replications were grouped into four blocks and each pair in a block was randomly assigned to the two defoliation treatments, mob grazing or mowing. Plots were 1.5 m2 and were assessed visually before each defoliation for the percentage of forage, forb, and weed. Chicory was the most dominant of the four forbs, and relative to legumes, most grasses suppressed both forb establishment and weed incursion under both grazing and mowing. There were no statistically significant effects of defoliation treatment on weed incursion

Caregiver Mand Training: Evaluating the Effects of Using Bug-In-Ear Coaching Via Telehealth

Applied Behavior Analysis has been seen to be an effective way to help teach skills to children with autism. Caregivers\u27 involvement in teaching these skills is beneficial for their child\u27s progress. Using Bug-in-Ear coaching, which provides in-the-moment instructions and feedback to caregivers via Bluetooth headphones, has been demonstrated to be a potential way to train caregivers to teach skills to their children. This current study aimed to evaluate if the use of Bug-in-Ear coaching via telehealth was an effective way to teach caregivers to train their children how to ask for wanted foods using picture cards. The results of this study provide further evidence for using Bug-in-Ear coaching to train caregivers to teach skills to their children

A Model of Changeover Behavior in Concurrent Schedules of Reinforcement

Animals in the wild have access to a variety of food sources, and they must allocate their time between them in an efficient manner. This requires deciding when to depart from the source currently being exploited to travel to a different one. A general model of this decision process can be derived from three assumptions well supported by the learning literature. The first one is the so-called matching law, which says that the proportion of time allocated to any one behavior equals the proportion of total value obtained from that option. The second one is that the dwell times (i.e., the length of time spent at a food source before departing) follow an exponential distribution; that is, the probability of departing at any moment remains constant across time. The last assumption is that the sum of the leaving rates (i.e., the number of departures from a food source per unit of time) depends only on the total food rate produced by all the available sources. This thesis provides an overview of a first version of this model and its assessment using two large datasets from published experiments. It also describes an experiment with rats that was designed to refine the model based on the limitations noted during the assessment. Rats were placed in operant chambers where they could press two levers to produce food at rates chosen in a pseudorandom fashion at the beginning of each daily session. The results were consistent with the assumptions of the model, and suggested ways in which its equations could be improved. The updated version of the model accurately described the data while also suggesting ways to incorporate other factors known to affect how animals make decisions. Ways in which the model could be applied to other situations, both at the basic and applied level, are discussed

Aerobic Biodegradation of Algae-Derived Bioplastics Under Controlled Composting Conditions

Plastics are versatile polymers that have become critically important materials in many industries. Although plastics are important and useful materials, they account for vast amounts of environmental pollution and climate change contribution. Sustainable bioproducts are becoming increasingly important in the effort to mitigate the impacts of pollution and climate change. The scale of environmental damage caused by plastic pollution highlights the need to implement sustainably sourced biodegradable plastics within the global economy. Bioplastics are materials that may be manufactured from biological materials or can biodegrade under certain conditions. Algae are microorganisms that can be grown using nutrient-rich municipal wastewater; the algae can be used to make bioplastics. Algix, a company based in Meridian, Mississippi, specializes in manufacturing bioplastic products from algae. Algix manufactures bioplastics for many products, including shoes and agricultural mulch films. The Sustainable Waste-to-Bioproducts Engineering Center in Logan, Utah has partnered with Algix and Central Valley Water Reclamation Facility in Salt Lake City, Utah to create a bioplastic using algae grown during a wastewater treatment process. However, Algix has not quantified the biodegradation characteristics of this bioplastic. The purpose of this research is to generate, analyze, and present data concerning the biodegradation of these algae-based bioplastics under composting conditions. In this experiment, bioplastic samples were exposed to a laboratory-scale aerobic composting process for 45 days. The carbon dioxide produced from the biodegradation process was used to measure the biodegradation of the samples. The bioplastic samples were also exposed to industrial-scale aerobic composting conditions for 12 weeks at Central Valley Water Reclamation Facility; in this test, the compost was processed through a sieve to capture remnants of the samples, which were weighed to measure their biodegradation. Under laboratory conditions, approximately 13% of the bioplastic degraded; under industrial-scale conditions, thin-film samples of the plastics completely disintegrated after 12 weeks of aerobic composting. This research will assist in quantifying the biodegradation characteristics of algae-based bioplastics in laboratory-scale and industrial-scale conditions. Furthermore, this research will assist in the integration of renewable and carbon-neutral materials into society