Selecting for Feed Efficient Cows Will Help to Reduce Methane Gas Emissions

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Open-path dual-frequency comb spectroscopy of methane from livestock production

Doctor of PhilosophyDepartment of PhysicsBrett D DePaolaBrian R WashburnThis project focuses on providing outdoor open-path spectroscopic measurements for detection of methane and other agriculturally significant gases over long periods of time in an agricultural setting. The use of dual-comb spectroscopy for remote sensing on agricultural sites has led to an aptly named system, the Agrocombs. The decomposition and fermentation of food performed by microbes in the stomach of ruminants, known as enteric fermentation, is one of the largest sources of anthropogenic methane emissions in the US due in large part by the dense population of livestock such as cattle. Several long-range open-path remote sensing techniques, such as Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy or tunable laser absorption spectroscopy, could be considered to detect and identify methane in an agricultural setting, but limitations in these techniques prove to be deterrents in their applications. Dual-comb spectroscopy provides a unique advantage of simultaneously measuring several significant gases (such as CH4, NH3, CO2, and H2O) with no external reference system or large structural support. Applying this method to agricultural processes began the journey of the Agrocombs system, a dual-comb pulsed laser system designed to be mobile and noninvasive enough to be placed on a site without disruption of operations, while performing long-term measurements of significant agricultural gases to result in concentration data. To prove the merit of this system, the Agrocombs research group performed a 2019 measurement at a KSU operated beef stocker site in parallel to a closed-path cavity ring-down system commonly used for trace gas measurements. The results of this experiment show an agreement between the two systems of 6% for methane, with the Agrocombs system providing a concentration precision of 1.25 ppm·m at 900 s. Additionally, the Agrocombs system was able to record concentrations for carbon dioxide, ammonia, and water vapor simultaneously without additional equipment. After a successful measurement in a feedlot system, where the cattle are confined in pens and present in large numbers, the next step has been to move towards a pasture to capture measurements of cattle in another important lifestyle, grazing. Grazing cattle in a pasture system provide a unique measurement potential for the Agrocombs system due to the low animal density and the presence of methane sinks that can detract from overall methane production and discharge, otherwise known as emissions. Traditional models for cattle emissions tend to lean towards the assumption that cattle contribute uniformly based on number of cattle in a system, but often neglect the complexity of a system’s additional factors to the gas cycle. Pastures provide more area for less animals, allowing for free roaming and independent grazing, which differs greatly from our previous measurement. Additionally, microbial activity in the soil may prove to act as a methane sink in native grasslands, reducing the overall contributions of the grazing system. While feedlot emissions were found to be approximately 137±86 µg/m2 /s, we expect that the contributing factors of less cattle in a larger area of interest, combined with the methane sink of microbial activity in the soil, will garner us a net methane emission in a pasture of an order of magnitude less than the feedlot. In order to measure emissions from a pasture, the Agrocombs project must achieve a precision of approximately 0.2 parts per billion (ppb), significantly smaller than the approximate 3 ppb in our feedlot measurement, determined through simulation. To test our precision and work towards this goal, we will conduct a controlled release experiment to mimic cattle in a pasture. This also allows for testing a newly packaged system and its accompanying equipment, as well as techniques to handle the ever-moving cattle and their large area of mobility. This thesis details the beginnings and preliminary results of a controlled release in a pasture, as well as the steps taken to achieve such precision needed for this difficult sensing measurement

Recent Advances in Volatile Organic Compound Analysis as Diagnostic Biomarkers

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are a diverse group of carbon-based molecules that are volatile at ambient temperatures and are emitted by an organism as a result of metabolic processes of cells and associated microbiome. The qualitative and quantitative profile of VOCs in biological fluids can vary depending on the physiological changes. Therefore, the pattern of volatile metabolites may reflect the presence of several diseases. This has been intensively investigated in the last few decades, resulting in an increasing number of studies focused on new volatile biomarker discovery.This reprint aimed to summarize the recent findings related to VOCs detected in various biological fluids such as breath, urine and feces for biomedical applications. The content covers various topics, including but not limited to biomedical/medical application of VOC analysis, biomarker discovery, and novel approaches for sampling and analyzing VOCs

Interchangeability between methane measurements in dairy cows assessed by comparing precision and agreement of two non-invasive infrared methods

In this study we assess the interchangeability and statistical agreement of two prevalent instruments from the non-invasive "sniffer" method and compare their precision. Furthermore, we develop and validate an effective algorithm for aligning time series data from multiple instruments to remove the effects of variable and fixed time shifts from the instrument comparison. The CH4 and CO2 gas concentrations for both instruments were found to differ for population means (P < 0.05) and intra-cow variation (precision) (P < 0.05) and for inter-cow variation (P < 0.05). The CH4 and CO2 gas concentrations from both instruments can be used interchangeably to increase statistical power for example, in genetic evaluations, provided sources of disagreement are corrected through calibration and standardisation. Additionally, averaging readings of cows over a longer period of time (one week) is an effective noise reduction technique which provides phenotypes with considerable inter-cow variation

Agriculture: A Glossary of Terms, Programs, and Laws, 2005 Edition

This report includes a glossary of approximately 2,500 agriculture and related terms (e.g., food programs, conservation, forestry, environmental protection, etc.). Besides defining terms and phrases with specialized meanings for agriculture, the glossary also identifies acronyms, agencies, programs, and laws related to agriculture

Continuing professional development - challenge for professional organization

Professions, as one of key sectors of social systems, bear a leading role in the existing social work organization. Free professions take up a special place and significance, all the way from Roman artes liberales to our times. Pharmaceutical profession, as one of the oldest, led by ethical principles, is regulated by postulates accepted by the profession members, and in modern times established through legislations. Typical determinants of the regulated professions, which also refer to pharmacists, as chamber members, are as follows: following ethical principles, specific skills and knowledge, professional development, autonomy at work, continuing improvement, competencies development, professional associations, licensing

Safety and Reliability - Safe Societies in a Changing World

The contributions cover a wide range of methodologies and application areas for safety and reliability that contribute to safe societies in a changing world. These methodologies and applications include: - foundations of risk and reliability assessment and management - mathematical methods in reliability and safety - risk assessment - risk management - system reliability - uncertainty analysis - digitalization and big data - prognostics and system health management - occupational safety - accident and incident modeling - maintenance modeling and applications - simulation for safety and reliability analysis - dynamic risk and barrier management - organizational factors and safety culture - human factors and human reliability - resilience engineering - structural reliability - natural hazards - security - economic analysis in risk managemen