OUTDOOR RECREATION TRENDS AND MARKET OPPORTUNITIES IN THE UNITED STATES

In 1994 and 1995, the National Survey of Recreation and Environment (NSRE) was accomplished by interviewing approximately 17,000 Americans over age 15 in random-digit-dialing telephone samplings. The primary purpose was to learn about the outdoor recreation activities of people over age 15 in the United States. They were asked about their participation in 62 specific recreation activities.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Multivisceral intestinal transplantation: Surgical pathology

We report the diagnostic surgical pathology of two children who underwent multivisceral abdominal transplantation and survived for 1 month and 6 months. There is little relevant literature, and diagnostic criteria for the various clinical possibilities are not established; this is made more complicated by the simultaneous occurrence of more than one process. We based our interpretations on conventional histology, augmented with immunohistology, including HLA staining that distinguished graft from host cells in situ. In some instances functional analysis of T cells propagated from the same biopsies was available and was used to corroborate morphological interpretations. A wide spectrum of changes was encountered. Graft-versus-host disease, a prime concern before surgery, was not seen. Rejection was severe in 1 patient, not present in the other, and both had evidence of lymphoproliferative disease, which was related to Epstein-Barr virus. Bacterial translocation through the gut wall was also a feature in both children. This paper documents and illustrates the various diagnostic possibilities.. © 1989 Informa UK Ltd All rights reserved: reproduction in whole or part not permitted

A Low-Cost, Portable Fluorescence Correlation Spectrometer for Disease Diagnosis

The DVD team is developing a cost-effective technique for measuring HIV load in resource-restricted regions. Our client is Dr. Phil Thuma and the Macha Research Trust in Zambia. Our design is based on advanced fluorescence spectroscopy that utilizes a fluorescence protein probe, confocal optics, and low-cost, low-power electronics to assess viral load in a patient blood sample. Our timeline for a functional exploded prototype is Fall 2021. Specifically, we are employing a method of spectroscopy that seeks to identify individual viruses in dilute samples by characteristic “bursts” in fluorescent and elastically scattered light. We have assembled a housing for a custom-designed detector, associated electronics, and signal processing hardware. One project goal is to integrate this modular design into a single printed circuit board. Communication between signal processing hardware and a software-based user interface implemented on a Raspberry Pi and touchscreen is achieved by the use of a Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) protocol. The entire system is battery-powered. This system will allow for fast, effective viral load determinations in remote settings.https://mosaic.messiah.edu/engr2021/1002/thumbnail.jp

Residue management in double-crop systems: Impact on soybean growth and yield

Double-crop soybeans [Glycine max(L.) Merr.] have the potential to be a productive and profitable system. However, due to delayed planting, double-crop soybeans frequently experience lower yields and higher stress. Because planting is a major production constraint, a critical practice is the management of previous wheat residue. Trials were established in 2012, 2013, and 2014 in Saint Joseph, LA, and in 2013 and 2014 in Winnsboro, LA. The four residue management treatments investigated included conventionally tilled, planted into burned residue, planted into mowed residue, and planted into standing wheat residue. Vegetative and reproductive growth parameters, as well as yield, were used to evaluate the influence of residue management on productivity. Overall, residue management did not have a significant impact on early season growth parameters, except for plant height in 2012 at St. Joseph; however, it did significantly influence yield at both locations. In Saint Joseph in 2012, yields from planting into wheat residue were significantly lower than burned and mowed plots (1.2 compared with 2.8 and 2.7 Mg ha-1, respectively), and tilled treatments yielded significantly less than all three nontilled treatments in 2013 and 2014. In Winnsboro, planting into residue left on the soil surface resulted in significantly higher yields than when residue was removed. Overall, leaving residue on the soil surface provided stable yields across years and locations; however, not managing the residue can result in diminished yields. Therefore, practices such as mowing of wheat residue prior to planting provide an alternative to traditional no-till planting.Peer reviewedPlant and Soil Science

GENIE: a software package for gene-gene interaction analysis in genetic association studies using multiple GPU or CPU cores

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Gene-gene interaction in genetic association studies is computationally intensive when a large number of SNPs are involved. Most of the latest Central Processing Units (CPUs) have multiple cores, whereas Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) also have hundreds of cores and have been recently used to implement faster scientific software. However, currently there are no genetic analysis software packages that allow users to fully utilize the computing power of these multi-core devices for genetic interaction analysis for binary traits.</p> <p>Findings</p> <p>Here we present a novel software package GENIE, which utilizes the power of multiple GPU or CPU processor cores to parallelize the interaction analysis. GENIE reads an entire genetic association study dataset into memory and partitions the dataset into fragments with non-overlapping sets of SNPs. For each fragment, GENIE analyzes: 1) the interaction of SNPs within it in parallel, and 2) the interaction between the SNPs of the current fragment and other fragments in parallel. We tested GENIE on a large-scale candidate gene study on high-density lipoprotein cholesterol. Using an NVIDIA Tesla C1060 graphics card, the GPU mode of GENIE achieves a speedup of 27 times over its single-core CPU mode run.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>GENIE is open-source, economical, user-friendly, and scalable. Since the computing power and memory capacity of graphics cards are increasing rapidly while their cost is going down, we anticipate that GENIE will achieve greater speedups with faster GPU cards. Documentation, source code, and precompiled binaries can be downloaded from <url>http://www.cceb.upenn.edu/~mli/software/GENIE/</url>.</p

Amino acid residues in five separate HLA genes can explain most of the known associations between the MHC and primary biliary cholangitis.

Primary Biliary Cholangitis (PBC) is a chronic autoimmune liver disease characterised by progressive destruction of intrahepatic bile ducts. The strongest genetic association is with HLA-DQA1*04:01, but at least three additional independent HLA haplotypes contribute to susceptibility. We used dense single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data in 2861 PBC cases and 8514 controls to impute classical HLA alleles and amino acid polymorphisms using state-of-the-art methodologies. We then demonstrated through stepwise regression that association in the HLA region can be largely explained by variation at five separate amino acid positions. Three-dimensional modelling of protein structures and calculation of electrostatic potentials for the implicated HLA alleles/amino acid substitutions demonstrated a correlation between the electrostatic potential of pocket P6 in HLA-DP molecules and the HLA-DPB1 alleles/amino acid substitutions conferring PBC susceptibility/protection, highlighting potential new avenues for future functional investigation

A genome-wide scan for common alleles affecting risk for autism

Although autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) have a substantial genetic basis, most of the known genetic risk has been traced to rare variants, principally copy number variants (CNVs). To identify common risk variation, the Autism Genome Project (AGP) Consortium genotyped 1558 rigorously defined ASD families for 1 million single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and analyzed these SNP genotypes for association with ASD. In one of four primary association analyses, the association signal for marker rs4141463, located within MACROD2, crossed the genome-wide association significance threshold of P < 5 × 10−8. When a smaller replication sample was analyzed, the risk allele at rs4141463 was again over-transmitted; yet, consistent with the winner's curse, its effect size in the replication sample was much smaller; and, for the combined samples, the association signal barely fell below the P < 5 × 10−8 threshold. Exploratory analyses of phenotypic subtypes yielded no significant associations after correction for multiple testing. They did, however, yield strong signals within several genes, KIAA0564, PLD5, POU6F2, ST8SIA2 and TAF1C

Testing gene-environment interactions in gene-based association studies

Gene-based and single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) set association studies provide an important complement to SNP analysis. Kernel-based nonparametric regression has recently emerged as a powerful and flexible tool for this purpose. Our goal is to explore whether this approach can be extended to incorporate and test for interaction effects, especially for genes containing rare variant SNPs. Here, we construct nonparametric regression models that can be used to include a gene-environment interaction effect under the framework of the least-squares kernel machine and examine the performance of the proposed method on the Genetic Analysis Workshop 17 unrelated individuals data set. Two hundred simulated replicates were used to explore the power for detecting interaction. We demonstrate through a genome scan of the quantitative phenotype Q1 that the simulated gene-environment interaction effect in the data can be detected with reasonable power by using the least-squares kernel machine method