The Rise of Urban Agriculture: A Cautionary Tale – No Rules, Big Problems

This Note identifies the underlying cause of the collapse of the family farm, namely the failed effort of the U.S. Government to save it through the institution and ongoing promulgation of the Farm Bill. Through subsidy and direct payment regimes, federal legislation has enabled large commodity producers to enjoy protection from market risk while squeezing out smaller growers. Because of growing consumer distrust in large-scale agricultural production, the urban agriculture movement and nontraditional market systems continue to grow in popularity and footprint across the United States. Many municipalities have already recognized the vast benefits that an urban agriculture regime can provide by adopting regulations to support this worthwhile shift in the utility and usefulness of land. However, in the rapid passing of laws aimed at maximizing social utility, legislatures across the nation have ignored foundational laws relating to the sale and distribution of goods. These laws include inspection and labeling laws, labor and compensation laws, and in some instances, the creation and promotion of unconstitutional trade barriers. This Note analyzes these issues, raises a cautionary voice to government officials everywhere, and invites a thorough review of both the present benefits and the looming future consequences that may occur after the honeymoon with society’s fascination with the urban agriculture movement has ended

Can we monitor heart attack in the troponin era: evidence from a population-based cohort study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Troponins (highly sensitive biomarkers of myocardial damage) increase counts of myocardial infarction (MI) in clinical practice, but their impact on trends in admission rates for MI in National statistics is uncertain.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Cases coded as MI or other cardiac diagnoses in the Hospital Morbidity Data Collection (MI-HMDC) in Western Australia in 1998 and 2003 were classified using revised criteria for MI developed by an International panel convened by the American Heart Association (AHA criteria) using information on symptoms, ECGs and cardiac biomarkers abstracted from samples of medical notes. Age-sex standardized rates of MI-HMDC were compared with rates of MI based on AHA criteria including troponins (MI-AHA) or traditional biomarkers only (MI-AHAck).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Between 1998 and 2003, rates of MI-HMDC decreased by 3.5% whereas rates of MI-AHA increased by 17%, a difference largely due to increased false-negative cases in the HMDC associated with marked increased use of troponin tests in cardiac admissions generally, and progressively lower test thresholds. In contrast, rates of MI-AHA_ckdeclined by 18%.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Increasing misclassification of MI-AHA by the HMDC may be due to reluctance by clinicians to diagnose MI based on relatively small increases in troponin levels. These influences are likely to continue. Monitoring MI using AHA criteria will require calibration of commercially available troponin tests and agreement on lower diagnostic thresholds for epidemiological studies. Declining rates of MI-AHA_ckare consistent with long-standing trends in MI in Western Australia, suggesting that neither MI-HMDC nor MI-AHA reflect the true underlying population trends in MI.</p

Genomic Islands of Speciation in Anopheles gambiae

The African malaria mosquito, Anopheles gambiae sensu stricto (A. gambiae), provides a unique opportunity to study the evolution of reproductive isolation because it is divided into two sympatric, partially isolated subtaxa known as M form and S form. With the annotated genome of this species now available, high-throughput techniques can be applied to locate and characterize the genomic regions contributing to reproductive isolation. In order to quantify patterns of differentiation within A. gambiae, we hybridized population samples of genomic DNA from each form to Affymetrix GeneChip microarrays. We found that three regions, together encompassing less than 2.8 Mb, are the only locations where the M and S forms are significantly differentiated. Two of these regions are adjacent to centromeres, on Chromosomes 2L and X, and contain 50 and 12 predicted genes, respectively. Sequenced loci in these regions contain fixed differences between forms and no shared polymorphisms, while no fixed differences were found at nearby control loci. The third region, on Chromosome 2R, contains only five predicted genes; fixed differences in this region were also verified by direct sequencing. These “speciation islands” remain differentiated despite considerable gene flow, and are therefore expected to contain the genes responsible for reproductive isolation. Much effort has recently been applied to locating the genes and genetic changes responsible for reproductive isolation between species. Though much can be inferred about speciation by studying taxa that have diverged for millions of years, studying differentiation between taxa that are in the early stages of isolation will lead to a clearer view of the number and size of regions involved in the genetics of speciation. Despite appreciable levels of gene flow between the M and S forms of A. gambiae, we were able to isolate three small regions of differentiation where genes responsible for ecological and behavioral isolation are likely to be located. We expect reproductive isolation to be due to changes at a small number of loci, as these regions together contain only 67 predicted genes. Concentrating future mapping experiments on these regions should reveal the genes responsible for reproductive isolation between forms

LSST: from Science Drivers to Reference Design and Anticipated Data Products

(Abridged) We describe here the most ambitious survey currently planned in the optical, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). A vast array of science will be enabled by a single wide-deep-fast sky survey, and LSST will have unique survey capability in the faint time domain. The LSST design is driven by four main science themes: probing dark energy and dark matter, taking an inventory of the Solar System, exploring the transient optical sky, and mapping the Milky Way. LSST will be a wide-field ground-based system sited at Cerro Pach\'{o}n in northern Chile. The telescope will have an 8.4 m (6.5 m effective) primary mirror, a 9.6 deg$^2$ field of view, and a 3.2 Gigapixel camera. The standard observing sequence will consist of pairs of 15-second exposures in a given field, with two such visits in each pointing in a given night. With these repeats, the LSST system is capable of imaging about 10,000 square degrees of sky in a single filter in three nights. The typical 5$\sigma$ point-source depth in a single visit in $r$ will be $\sim 24.5$ (AB). The project is in the construction phase and will begin regular survey operations by 2022. The survey area will be contained within 30,000 deg$^2$ with $\delta<+34.5^\circ$, and will be imaged multiple times in six bands, $ugrizy$, covering the wavelength range 320--1050 nm. About 90\% of the observing time will be devoted to a deep-wide-fast survey mode which will uniformly observe a 18,000 deg$^2$ region about 800 times (summed over all six bands) during the anticipated 10 years of operations, and yield a coadded map to $r\sim27.5$. The remaining 10\% of the observing time will be allocated to projects such as a Very Deep and Fast time domain survey. The goal is to make LSST data products, including a relational database of about 32 trillion observations of 40 billion objects, available to the public and scientists around the world.Comment: 57 pages, 32 color figures, version with high-resolution figures available from https://www.lsst.org/overvie

Scanning Angle Plasmon Waveguide Resonance Raman Spectroscopy for the Analysis of Thin Polystyrene Films

Scanning angle (SA) Raman spectroscopy was used to characterize thin polymer films at a sapphire/50 nm gold film/polystyrene/air interface. When the polymer thickness is greater than ∼260 nm, this interface behaves as a plasmon waveguide; Raman scatter is greatly enhanced with both p- and s-polarized excitation compared to an interface without the gold film. In this study, the reflected light intensities from the interface and Raman spectra were collected as a function of incident angle for three samples with different polystyrene thicknesses. The Raman peak areas were well modeled with the calculated mean-square electric field (MSEF) integrated over the polymer film at varying incident angles. A 412 nm polystyrene plasmon waveguide generated 3.34× the Raman signal at 40.52° (the plasmon waveguide resonance angle) compared to the signal measured at 70.4° (the surface plasmon resonance angle). None of the studied polystyrene plasmon waveguides produced detectable Raman scatter using a 180° backscatter collection geometry, demonstrating the sensitivity of the SA Raman technique. The data highlight the ability to measure polymer thickness, chemical content, and, when combined with calculations of MSEF as a function of distance from the interface, details of polymer structure and order. The SA Raman spectroscopy thickness measurements agreed with those obtained from optical interferometery with an average difference of 2.6%. This technique has the potential to impact the rapidly developing technologies utilizing metal/polymer films for energy storage and electronic devices

The index of rural access: an innovative integrated approach for measuring primary care access

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The problem of access to health care is of growing concern for rural and remote populations. Many Australian rural health funding programs currently use simplistic rurality or remoteness classifications as proxy measures of access. This paper outlines the development of an alternative method for the measurement of access to primary care, based on combining the three key access elements of spatial accessibility (availability and proximity), population health needs and mobility.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The recently developed two-step floating catchment area (2SFCA) method provides a basis for measuring primary care access in rural populations. In this paper, a number of improvements are added to the 2SFCA method in order to overcome limitations associated with its current restriction to a single catchment size and the omission of any distance decay function. Additionally, small-area measures for the two additional elements, health needs and mobility are developed. By utilising this improved 2SFCA method, the three access elements are integrated into a single measure of access. This index has been developed within the state of Victoria, Australia.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The resultant index, the Index of Rural Access, provides a more sensitive and appropriate measure of access compared to existing classifications which currently underpin policy measures designed to overcome problems of limited access to health services. The most powerful aspect of this new index is its ability to identify access differences within rural populations at a much finer geographical scale. This index highlights that many rural areas of Victoria have been incorrectly classified by existing measures as homogenous in regards to their access.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The Index of Rural Access provides the first truly integrated index of access to primary care. This new index can be used to better target the distribution of limited government health care funding allocated to address problems of poor access to primary health care services in rural areas.</p

From Data to Software to Science with the Rubin Observatory LSST

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) dataset will dramatically alter our understanding of the Universe, from the origins of the Solar System to the nature of dark matter and dark energy. Much of this research will depend on the existence of robust, tested, and scalable algorithms, software, and services. Identifying and developing such tools ahead of time has the potential to significantly accelerate the delivery of early science from LSST. Developing these collaboratively, and making them broadly available, can enable more inclusive and equitable collaboration on LSST science. To facilitate such opportunities, a community workshop entitled "From Data to Software to Science with the Rubin Observatory LSST" was organized by the LSST Interdisciplinary Network for Collaboration and Computing (LINCC) and partners, and held at the Flatiron Institute in New York, March 28-30th 2022. The workshop included over 50 in-person attendees invited from over 300 applications. It identified seven key software areas of need: (i) scalable cross-matching and distributed joining of catalogs, (ii) robust photometric redshift determination, (iii) software for determination of selection functions, (iv) frameworks for scalable time-series analyses, (v) services for image access and reprocessing at scale, (vi) object image access (cutouts) and analysis at scale, and (vii) scalable job execution systems. This white paper summarizes the discussions of this workshop. It considers the motivating science use cases, identified cross-cutting algorithms, software, and services, their high-level technical specifications, and the principles of inclusive collaborations needed to develop them. We provide it as a useful roadmap of needs, as well as to spur action and collaboration between groups and individuals looking to develop reusable software for early LSST science.Comment: White paper from "From Data to Software to Science with the Rubin Observatory LSST" worksho

Evaluating the Effects of SARS-CoV-2 Spike Mutation D614G on Transmissibility and Pathogenicity.

Global dispersal and increasing frequency of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein variant D614G are suggestive of a selective advantage but may also be due to a random founder effect. We investigate the hypothesis for positive selection of spike D614G in the United Kingdom using more than 25,000 whole genome SARS-CoV-2 sequences. Despite the availability of a large dataset, well represented by both spike 614 variants, not all approaches showed a conclusive signal of positive selection. Population genetic analysis indicates that 614G increases in frequency relative to 614D in a manner consistent with a selective advantage. We do not find any indication that patients infected with the spike 614G variant have higher COVID-19 mortality or clinical severity, but 614G is associated with higher viral load and younger age of patients. Significant differences in growth and size of 614G phylogenetic clusters indicate a need for continued study of this variant