Comparison Of Nutritional And Sensory Qualities Between Hydroponic And Soil-Grown Strawberries And Raspberries

Hydroponic means of food production represent a possible opportunity towards sustainable crop production. Hydroponics can be defined as growing plants in soilless conditions with nutrients, water and an inert medium. Hydroponics has the potential to supply food in non-arable regions of the world, such as arid or urban areas. Along with this, hydroponics could be a means to provide food to those living in food deserts. Hydroponic food production currently has a positive connotation because of the abundant proposed environmental benefits associated with the growing method. Some of these environmental benefits include: less use of water, less pesticide usage, higher yields, increased nutritional content and better taste. For the hydroponic product to be successful, it must be equal or better than the soil-grown product in terms of environmental benefits, nutritional quality and taste. The majority of recent studies have investigated hydroponic leafy greens, peppers and tomato fruit. Limited research has been conducted for hydroponic strawberries (Fragaria x ananassa) and raspberries (Rubus Idaeus). Strawberries and raspberries contain high amounts of health promoting bioactive compounds. Consumption of these nutritious fruits is associated with decreased risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes and prevention of certain types of oxidative stress mediated diseases. This research consists of two review papers, and four experimental studies. The objectives of the review papers were to evaluate the current literature and provide an understanding whereby future research can move forward in the quest for global sustainable food production. The objectives of the studies for both strawberries and raspberries were to examine the crop compared to their soil-grown counterpart for viability, nutritional quality, and sensory attributes. In the review papers, it was concluded that many factors could contribute to the successes of a hydroponic crop. Currently, research on hydroponic methods is limited but preliminary research shows beneficial results in areas of ecological, economical, nutritional and sensory quality of the product. Evidence based research indicates a wide variety of study methods and designs, all which will contribute to the viability, nutrition, and sensory attributes of the hydroponic product. The results from our experimental studies support the hypotheses that hydroponics may be able to contribute to a sustainable food production while providing food that is equal in nutrition and taste. The hydroponic strawberry and raspberries results indicated a higher yield, equal or better nutritional quality, and equal or better in taste preferences compared to soil-grown strawberries and raspberries. The results from the experimental studies suggest hydroponic food production offers numerous advantages and may be conceivable to grow nutritious and flavorsome food in non-arable regions in the world

Invasive Plant Ecology In Vermont: Insights From Spatial Analysis And Interactions Of Garlic Mustard (alliaria Petiolata) With Native Plants And Invertebrates

Causes and patterns of invasive plant species establishment and success depend broadly upon their ecology, including habitat suitability and interactions with other plants and animals. Here I examine the traits and distribution of invasive plants in Vermont, using spatial analysis, laboratory and field studies. I used GIS to investigate environmental factors correlated with presence of 19 invasive plant species in Vermont campgrounds. My results support the assumption that human dispersal of invasive plant seed and stock may be more important than natural dispersal of these plant species to new sites. I also investigate in-depth the relationships of invasive herbaceous garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) with native tree seedlings and co-occurring herbaceous plants in the greenhouse and Vermont forests, respectively. Shade from \u3e 1 m tall A. petiolata plants may effect root:shoot ratios of neighboring tree seedlings and interact with nutrition quality of sites to affect their growth patterns. Invasive plants\u27 integration into novel environments is also mediated by their interactions with native invertebrate species. A. petiolata is associated with a unique assemblage of aboveground invertebrates compared with neighboring native plants. Observations indicate A. petiolata may also serve as an attractant for ants, bees, and wasps who feed from water and nectar at the base of the flower or silique during its flowering and seeding period. These results collectively inform our understanding of plant invasion patterns and management strategies of A. petiolata in Vermont. Community interactions are probably more important than allelopathy in determining the influence of Alliaria petiolata on native ecosystems

Effect of wireless glucose meter on hyperglycemia and prenatal visits

Gestational diabetes mellitus can have devastating effects in the health of the mother and child. While pregnancy rates are decreasing, prevalence of GDM is increasing, and it is estimated that up to 9% of pregnancies are complicated by diabetes in the United States. Traditional treatment and monitoring of gestational diabetes mellitus relies on patient’s compliance to document glycemic levels. This proposed study will evaluate the effectiveness of telemedicine using a wireless glucose meter that transmits information to the providers in real time. The prospective open cohort randomized clinical trial will take place in medical centers around Boston. Two hundred participants diagnosed with gestational diabetes will be recruited over a period of 24 months from these centers and randomly placed into two groups. One group will follow traditional treatment, and the intervention group will be asked to use iGlucose meter system. Glycemic levels and frequency of prenatal visits will be evaluated and analyzed. If telemedicine proves to be efficacious in treating GDM, this would give providers a new treatment plan to consider to effectively manage blood glucose levels and reduce poor perinatal outcomes related to gestational diabetes mellitus

Influence of offset weak zones on the development of rift basins: Activation and abandonment during continental extension and breakup: Offset weak zones and rift basins

International audienceWe use numerical modelling to investigate reactivation of inherited Offset Weak Zones (OWZ) in continental crust and Mantle Weak Zones (MWZ) to form offset rift basins during continental rifting and breakup. Offset rift basins are basins that are set off/offset from the main rift/locus of breakup. Weak zones embedded in a stiff layer are preferentially and rapidly reactivated, whereas the same zones are either ignored or slowly reactivated when embedded in pliable layers. Here `Stiff' implies a nonlinear flow law with a high stress exponent (n ~ 10,000), a plastic material, and `Pliable' means a low stress exponent (n ~2 - 5) as in ductile, power-law creep of rocks. Whether offset rift basins form during rifting of a composite lithosphere, (i.e. comprising stiff and pliable layers) depends on the competition between necking instabilities that develop at the weak zones in the stiff layers, and the coupling between the stiff and pliable layers. Stiff/cratonic lithosphere results in early localization of the deformation at the MWZ, rapid necking and breakup without developing offset rift basins. In contrast, warm pliable lithosphere develops significant offset basins and has protracted rifting because the MWZ is now embedded in a pliable layer. We also investigate the influence of OWZ dip, sedimentation, and the sensitivity of reactivation to the distance from OWZ to the MWZ, and to the size of the MWZ. A tectonic rifting styles diagram is used to show that the model results agree with natural examples

Digital pseudomanifolds, digital weakmanifolds and Jordan–Brouwer separation theorem

AbstractIn this paper we introduce the new notion of n-pseudomanifold and n-weakmanifold in an (n+1)-digital image using (2(n+1),3(n+1)−1)-adjacency. For these classes, we prove the digital version of the Jordan–Brouwer separation theorem. To accomplish this objective, we construct a polyhedral representation of the (n+1)-digital image based on a cubical complex decomposition which enables us to translate some results from polyhedral topology into the digital space. Our main result extends the class of “thin” objects that are defined locally and verifying the Jordan–Brouwer separation theorem

The role of inheritance in structuring hyperextended rift systems: Some considerations based on observations and numerical modeling

International audienceA long-standing question in Earth Sciences is related to the importance of inheritance in controlling tectonic processes. In contrast to physical processes that are generally applicable, assessing the role of inheritance suffers from two major problems: firstly, it is difficult to appraise without having insights into the history of a geological system; and secondly all inherited features are not reactivated during subsequent deformation phases. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to give some conceptual framework about how inheritance may control the architecture and evolution of hyperextended rift systems.In this paper, we use the term inheritance to refer to the difference between an “ideal” layer-cake type lithosphere and a “real” lithosphere containing heterogeneities. The underlying philosophy of this work is that the evolution of hyperextended rift systems reflects the interplay between their inheritance (innate/“genetic code”) and the physical processes at play (acquired/external factors). Thus, by observing the architecture and evolution of hyperextended rift systems and integrating the physical processes, one may get hints on what may have been the original inheritance of a system.We first define 3 types of inheritance, namely structural, compositional and thermal inheritance and develop a simple and robust terminology able to describe and link observations made at different scales using geological, geophysical and modeling approaches. To this, we add a definition of rift-induced processes, i.e. processes leading to compositional changes during rifting (e.g. serpentinization or decompression melting). Using this approach, we focus on 3 well-studied rift systems that are the Alpine Tethys, Pyrenean–Bay of Biscay and Iberia–Newfoundland rift systems. However, as all these examples are magma-poor, hyperextended rift systems that evolved over a Variscan lithosphere the concepts developed in this paper cannot be applied universally. For the studied examples we can show that:1) the inherited structures did not significantly control the location of breakup2) the inherited thermal state may control the mode and architecture of rift systems, in particular the architecture of the necking zone3) the architecture of the necking zone may be influenced by the distribution and importance of ductile layers during decoupled deformation and is consequently controlled by the thermal structure and/or the inherited composition of the crust4) conversely, the deformation in hyperextended domains is strongly controlled by weak hydrated minerals (e.g. clay, serpentinite) that result from the breakdown of feldspar and olivine due to fluid and reaction assisted deformation5) inherited structures, in particular weaknesses, are important in controlling strain localization on a local scale and during early stages of rifting6) inherited mantle composition and rift-related mantle processes may control the rheology of the mantle, the magmatic budget, the thermal structure and the localization of final rifting.These key observations show that both inheritance and rift-induced processes played a significant role in the development of the magma-poor southern North Atlantic and Alpine Tethys rift systems and that the role of inheritance may change as the physical conditions vary during the evolving rifting and as rift-induced processes (serpentinization; magma) become more important. Thus, it is not only important to determine the “genetic code” of a rift system, but also to understand how it interacts and evolves during rifting. Understanding how far these new ideas and concepts derived from the well-studied hyperextended rift systems of the southern North Atlantic and Alpine Tethys can be translated to other less explored hyperextended rift systems will be one of the challenges of future research in rifted margins

Large Language Models Are Also Good Prototypical Commonsense Reasoners

Commonsense reasoning is a pivotal skill for large language models, yet it presents persistent challenges in specific tasks requiring this competence. Traditional fine-tuning approaches can be resource-intensive and potentially compromise a model's generalization capacity. Furthermore, state-of-the-art language models like GPT-3.5 and Claude are primarily accessible through API calls, which makes fine-tuning models challenging. To address these challenges, we draw inspiration from the outputs of large models for tailored tasks and semi-automatically developed a set of novel prompts from several perspectives, including task-relevance, supportive evidence generation (e.g. chain-of-thought and knowledge), diverse path decoding to aid the model. Experimental results on ProtoQA dataset demonstrate that with better designed prompts we can achieve the new state-of-art(SOTA) on the ProtoQA leaderboard, improving the Max Answer@1 score by 8%, Max Incorrect@1 score by 4% (breakthrough 50% for the first time) compared to the previous SOTA model and achieved an improvement on StrategyQA and CommonsenseQA2.0 (3% and 1%, respectively). Furthermore, with the generated Chain-of-Thought and knowledge, we can improve the interpretability of the model while also surpassing the previous SOTA models. We hope that our work can provide insight for the NLP community to develop better prompts and explore the potential of large language models for more complex reasoning tasks

Assessing the impact of orogenic inheritance on the architecture, timing and magmatic budget of the North Atlantic rift system: a mapping approach: Orogenic inheritance and the North Atlantic rift

International audienceIn order to investigate the impact of orogenic inheritance on the characteristics of hyperextended rift systems we develop new mapping methods highlighting the first-order architecture and timing of hyperextended rifts, as well as the distribution of heterogeneities inherited from previous orogenies. We use these to characterize the North Atlantic rift system and adjacent areas affected by the Palaeozoic Caledonian and Variscan orogenies. Comparison of these maps demonstrates major differences in the behaviour of the North Atlantic rift relative to both orogens, the Variscan front appearing to be a major limit. Indeed, the rift cuts through the Caledonian orogen and parallels its structural grain, while it circumvents the core of the Variscides. In addition, rifting is protracted and polyphase, and breakup is magma-rich North to the Variscan front, as opposed to the South where a single, apparently continuous extensional event lead to magma-poor breakup in less than 50 Myr. These observations point to a major influence of orogenic inheritance on the characteristics of hyperextended rift systems. On the other hand, our study supports that rifts reactivate sutures corresponding to former large (> 2 000 km) oceans, while leaving sutures of small (< 500 – 1 000 km) oceanic basins little affected, suggesting a significant impact of the pre-orogenic histories on subsequent extensional processes

The CO₂–broadened H₂O continuum in the 100–1500cm-1 region: Measurements, predictions and empirical model

Transmission spectra of H₂O+CO₂ mixtures have been recorded, at 296, 325 and 366 K, for various pressures and mixture compositions using two experimental setups. Their analysis enables to retrieve values of the “continuum” absorption by the CO₂-broadened H2₂O line wings between 100 and 1500 cm-1. The results are in good agreement with those, around 1300 cm-1, of the single previous experimental study available. Comparisons are also made with direct predictions based on line-shape correction factors χ calculated, almost thirty years ago, using a quasistatic approach and an input H₂O—CO₂ intermolecular potential. They show that this model quite nicely predicts, with slightly overestimated values, the continuum over a spectral range where it varies by more than three orders of magnitude. An empirical correction is proposed, based on the experimental data, which should be useful for radiative transfer and climate studies in CO2 rich planetary atmospheres