1,058 research outputs found

    Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Meeting, Southern Soybean Disease Workers (March 9-10, 2016, Pensacola Beach, Florida)

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    Contents Schedule Southern United States Soybean Disease Loss Estimates for 2015. TW Allen, CA Bradley, JP Damicone, NS Dufault, TR Faske, CA Hollier, T Isakeit, RC Kemerait, NM Kleczewski, SR Koenning, HL Mehl, JD Mueller, C Overstreet, PP Price, EJ Sikora, TN Spurlock, and H Young Soilborne Disease Symposium (Tom Allen, moderator) Integrated management of sudden death syndrome. D Mueller, L Leandro, Y Kandel, C Bradley, M Chilvers, A Tenuta, and K Wise Field screening for stem canker: an outdated exercise or a necessary service for soybean growers? K Rowe and T Kirkpatrick Nematode associated diseases in soybean. C Overstreet, Edward C McGawley, D Xavier-Mis, and M Kularathna Characterization of taproot decline in southern soybean. M Tomaso-Peterson, T Allen, P Price, R Singh, and T Spurlock Frontline tactics to manage Phytophthora stem and root rot. A Robertson Graduate student research competition (Travis Faske and Terry Spurlock, moderators) Causative agents for the green stem disorder of soybeans in Louisiana. B Ward, C Robertson, and R Schneider Solubilization of cercosporin and its use for reproducing symptoms of Cercospora leaf blight of soybean. E Silva, M Liu, J Zhang, C Robertson, Z Liu, and R Schneider Effect of droplet size on foliar fungicide application in soybean. S Butler, H Kelly, T Mueller, and G Kruger Virulence assessment of strobilurin-sensitive and -resistant Cercospora sojina, the causal agent of frogeye leaf spot in soybean. N Brochard, M Tomaso-Peterson, T Allen, and R Melanson Application thresholds in controlling Cercospora sojina, the causal agent of frogeye leaf spot. J Jordan and H Kelly Assessment of ILeVO for management of root-knot nematodes in soybean. C Jackson, T Faske, M Emerson, and K Hurd Evaluating the physiological impacts of fungicide phytotoxicity in Mississippi soybean. J Mansour, M Tomaso-Peterson, A Henn., J Bond, T Irby, and T Allen Benefit of secondary nutrition in reducing Macrophomina phaseolina colonization in Mississippi soybean T. Wilkerson, M. Tomaso-Peterson. B Golden, S Lu, A Johnson, and T Allen Detection of a mycovirus from soybean rust and mycoviruses from other biotrophic fungi using a practical method for the extraction of viral dsRNA. R Herschlag, S Khankhum, and R Valverde Effect of Macrophomina phaseolina inoculation, irrigation and cultivar on soybean yield. M Zaccaron and J Rupe Contributed papers (Eduardo Silva, moderator) Phenotypic characterization of Cercospora sojina isolates collected from wide geographical areas. A Mengistu, J Ray, J Smith, and H Kelly Phenotypic characterization of Cercospora sojina isolates collected from wide geographical areas. A Mengistu, J Ray, J Smith, and H Kelly Effect of flower and pod removal on soybean senescence and comparison to green bean syndrome. J Rupe, B Holland, and A Steger Competition studies of QoI resistant and sensitive Cercospora sojina isolates, the causal agent of frogeye leaf spot. B Lin, H Kelly, H Yu, and A Mengistu Frequency and distribution of QoI resistant Cercospora sojina in Virginia. H Mehl and T Zhou A survey of Arkansas soybean nematodes, 2014-2015. K Sullivan, J Robinson, and T Kirkpatrick Nuclear proteins controlling soybean rust resistance B. Cooper Nuts, bolts, frogeye leaf spot, and the UUOT. T Allen, T Faske, C Hollier, P Price, T Spurlock, and H Young Proceedings of the Southern Soybean Disease Workers are published annually by the Southern Soybean Disease Workers. Text, references, figures, and tables are reproduced as they were submitted by authors. The opinions expressed by the participants at this conference are their own and do not necessarily represent those of the Southern Soybean Workers. Mention of a trademark or proprietary products in this publication does not constitute a guarantee, warranty, or endorsement of that product by the Southern Soybean Disease Workers

    Local food systems: concepts, impacts, and issues

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    Consumer demand for food that is locally produced,marketed, and consumed is generating increased interest in local food throughout the United States. As interest grows, so do questions about what constitutes local food and what characterizes local food systems. What Is the Issue? This study provides a comprehensive literature-review-based overview of the current understanding of local food systems, including: alternative defi nitions; estimates of market size and reach; descriptions of the characteristics of local food consumers and producers; and an examination of early evidence on the economic and health impacts of such systems. What Did the Study Find? There is no generally accepted definition of “local” food. Though “local” has a geographic connotation, there is no consensus on a definition in terms of the distance between production and consumption. Definitions related to geographic distance between production and sales vary by regions, companies, consumers, and local food markets. According to the definition adopted by the U.S. Congress in the 2008 Food, Conservation, and Energy Act,the total distance that a product can be transported and still be considered a “locally or regionally produced agricultural food product” is less than 400 miles from its origin, or within the State in which it is produced. Definitions based on market arrangements, including direct-to-consumer arrangements such as regional farmers’ markets, or direct-to-retail/foodservice arrangements such as farm sales to schools, are well-recognized categories and are used in this report to provide statistics on the market development of local foods. Local food markets account for a small but growing share of total U.S. agricultural sales. • Direct-to-consumer marketing amounted to 1.2billionincurrentdollarsalesin2007,accordingtothe2007CensusofAgriculture,comparedwith1.2 billion in current dollar sales in 2007, according to the 2007 Census of Agriculture, compared with 551 million in 1997. • Direct-to-consumer sales accounted for 0.4 percent of total agricultural sales in 2007, up from 0.3 percent in 1997. If nonedible products are excluded from total agricultural sales, direct-to consumer sales accounted for 0.8 percent of agricultural sales in 2007. • The number of farmers’ markets rose to 5,274 in 2009, up from 2,756 in 1998 and 1,755 in 1994, according to USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service. • In 2005, there were 1,144 community-supported agriculture organizations, up from 400 in 2001 and 2 in 1986, according to a study by the National Center for Appropriate Technology. In early 2010, estimates exceeded 1,400, but the number could be much larger. • The number of farm to school programs, which use local farms as food suppliers for school meals programs and promote relationships between schools and farms, increased to 2,095 in 2009, up from 400 in 2004 and 2 in the 1996-97 school year, according to the National Farm to School Network. Data from the 2005 School Nutrition and Dietary Assessment Survey, sponsored by USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service, showed that 14 percent of school districts participated in Farm to School programs, and 16 percent reported having guidelines for purchasing locally grown produce. Production of locally marketed food is more likely to occur on small farms located in or near metropolitan counties. Local food markets typically involve small farmers, heterogeneous products, and short supply chains in which farmers also perform marketing functions, including storage, packaging, transportation, distribution, and advertising. According to the 2007 U.S. Census of Agriculture, most farms that sell directly to consumers are small farms with less than 50,000intotalfarmsales,locatedinurbancorridorsoftheNortheastandtheWestCoast.In2007,directtoconsumersalesaccountedforalargershareofsalesforsmallfarms,asdefinedabove,thanformediumsizedfarms(totalfarmsalesof50,000 in total farm sales, located in urban corridors of the Northeast and the West Coast. In 2007, direct-to-consumer sales accounted for a larger share of sales for small farms, as defi ned above, than for medium-sized farms (total farm sales of 50,000 to 499,999)andlargefarms(totalfarmsalesof499,999) and large farms (total farm sales of 500,000 or more). Produce farms engaged in local marketing made 56 percent of total agricultural direct sales to consumers, while accounting for 26 percent of all farms engaged in direct-to-consumer marketing. Direct-to-consumer sales are higher for the farms engaged in other entrepreneurial activities, such as organic production, tourism, and customwork (planting, plowing, harvesting, etc. for others), than for other farms. In 2007, direct sales by all U.S. farms surpassed customwork to become the leading on-farm entrepreneurial activity in terms of farm household participation. Barriers to local food-market entry and expansion include: capacity constraints for small farms and lack of distribution systems for moving local food into mainstream markets; limited research, education, and training for marketing local food; and uncertainties related to regulations that may affect local food production, such as food safety requirements. Consumers who value high-quality foods produced with low environmental impact are willing to pay more for locally produced food. Several studies have explored consumer preferences for locally produced food. Motives for “buying local” include perceived quality and freshness of local food and support for the local economy. Consumers who are willing to pay higher prices for locally produced foods place importance on product quality, nutritional value, methods of raising a product and those methods’ effects on the environment, and support for local farmers. Federal, State, and local government programs increasingly support local food systems. Many existing government programs and policies support local food initiatives, and the number of such programs is growing. Federal policies have grown over time to include the Community Food Project Grants Program, the WIC Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program, Senior Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program, Federal State Marketing Improvement Program, National Farmers’ Market Promotion Program, Specialty Crop Block Grant Program, and the Community Facilities Program. State and local policies include those related to farm-to-institution procurement, promotion of local food markets, incentives for low-income consumers to shop at farmers’ markets, and creation of State Food Policy Councils to discuss opportunities and potential impact of government intervention. (WIC is the acronym for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children). As of early 2010, there were few studies on the impact of local food markets on economic development, health, or environmental quality. • Empirical research has found that expanding local food systems in a community can increase employment and income in that community. • Empirical evidence is insuffi cient to determine whether local food availability improves diet quality or food security. • Life-cycle assessments—analyses of energy use at all stages of the food system including consumption and disposal—suggest that localization can but does not necessarily reduce energy use or greenhouse gas emissions. How Was the Study Conducted? Existing analyses of local food markets by universities, government agencies, national nonprofit organizations, and others of local food markets were synthesized to evaluate the definition of local foods and the effects of local food systems on economic development, health and nutrition, food security, and energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. The report’s content relies on data collected through the 2007 Census of Agriculture, as well as other surveys by USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service, the National Farm to School Network, university extension departments, and others, to provide a comprehensive picture of types of local food markets, their characteristics, and their importance over time.Local food systems; farmers’ markets; direct-to-consumer marketing; direct-to-retail/foodservice marketing; community supported agriculture; farm to school programs; Farmers’ Market Promotion Program; food miles; ERS; USDA

    Local Food Systems: Concepts, Impacts, and Issues

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    This comprehensive overview of local food systems explores alternative definitions of local food, estimates market size and reach, describes the characteristics of local consumers and producers, and examines early indications of the economic and health impacts of local food systems. There is no consensus on a definition of “local” or “local food systems” in terms of the geographic distance between production and consumption. But defining “local” based on marketing arrangements, such as farmers selling directly to consumers at regional farmers’ markets or to schools, is well recognized. Statistics suggest that local food markets account for a small, but growing, share of U.S. agricultural production. For smaller farms, direct marketing to consumers accounts for a higher percentage of their sales than for larger farms. Findings are mixed on the impact of local food systems on local economic development and better nutrition levels among consumers, and sparse literature is so far inconclusive about whether localization reduces energy use or greenhouse gas emissions.local food systems, farmers’ markets, direct-to-consumer marketing, direct-to-retail/ foodservice marketing, community supported agriculture, farm to school programs, Farmers’ Market Promotion Program, food miles, Community/Rural/Urban Development,

    HST survey of the Orion Nebula Cluster in the H2_2O 1.4 μ\mum absorption band: I. A census of substellar and planetary mass objects

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    In order to obtain a complete census of the stellar and sub-stellar population, down to a few MJup_{Jup} in the 1\sim1 Myr old Orion Nebula Cluster, we used the infrared channel of the Wide Field Camera 3 of the Hubble Space Telescope with the F139M and F130N filters. These bandpasses correspond to the 1.4μ1.4 \mum H2_2O absorption feature and an adjacent line-free continuum region. Out of 4,5044,504 detected sources, 3,3523,352 (about 75%75\%) appear fainter than m130=14_{130}=14 (Vega mag) in the F130N filter, a brightness corresponding to the hydrogen-burning limit mass (M0.072M\simeq 0.072 M_\odot) at 1\sim 1 Myr. Of these, however, only 742742 sources have a negative F130M-139N color index, indicative of the presence of H2_2O vapor in absorption, and can therefore be classified as bona-fide M and L dwarfs, with effective temperatures T2850\lesssim 2850 K at an assumed 11 Myr cluster age. On our color-magnitude diagram, this population of sources with H2_2O absorption appears clearly distinct from the larger background population of highly reddened stars and galaxies with positive F130M-F139N color index, and can be traced down to the sensitivity limit of our survey, m13021.5_{130}\simeq 21.5, corresponding to a 11 Myr old 3\simeq 3 MJup_{Jup}, planetary mass object under about 2 magnitudes of visual extinction. Theoretical models of the BT-Settl family predicting substellar isochrones of 1,21, 2 and 33 Myr (down to 1\sim 1 MJup_{Jup}) fail to reproduce the observed H2_2O color index at M20\lesssim 20 MJup_{Jup}. We perform a Bayesian analysis to determine extinction, mass and effective temperature of each sub-stellar member of our sample, together with its membership probability.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. The resolution of several figures has been downgraded to comply with the size limit of arXiv submission

    Binocular vision of designing process for whole systems design crossing boundaries

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    In the spirit of honoring Bateson’s metaphor of binocular vision (1979), this proposal brings together two design scenes for comparison in the mind of the reader as a way of generating new connections relating design and systems thinking as they played out (and are playing out at the time of this writing) in practice together with stakeholders and others in international and intercultural design contexts. The two comparative design scenes we explore are the Generation of Peace Project in the state of Ceara, Brazil, where more than 10,000 co-researchers sought to foster cultures of peace statewide, and the design of a Design Thinking course in the Honors College at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida. Connecting these two distinct scenes are not only shared practices rooted in design and systems thinking but also the World Café (Brown and Isaacs, 2005; Steier, Brown, & Mesquita da Silva, 2015), a group communication process facilitated in each scene that later also emerged as a conversational bridge connecting the scenes. As a first scene for binocular vision, the setting is Brazil’s Generation of Peace Project, a cooperation between the State Department of Education of Ceará (SEDUC), Brazil, and United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), aimed at building networks of a culture of peace between 700 high schools and their communities. The focus on peace in a broad sense, promoting inclusion and respect for diversity, directly and indirectly involved almost 500,000 youth and their families as well as over 16,000 teachers and school administrators, in creating and maintaining a culture of peace. The voices of most societal segments brought in conversation facilitated by the World Café across the whole process of inception and development of the project made it possible to reach more than 200 high schools in less than a year. On the fourth year, in 2014, the project certified 509 schools that presented evidence of building peace on a daily basis, accounting for almost 75% of the entire school system explicitly engaged in the movement. The syncretization of the concepts, tools, and methodologies of systems thinking and the vision, values, and philosophy of ecological thought, elegantly organized in Stephen Sterling’s (2003) thesis, gave rise to the conditions that allowed for the schools to contribute to the project’s evolution according to their local characteristics, sharing the same framework with the other schools while providing unique experiences. Hence, “Generation of Peace” is a result of a whole systems design approach (Mesquita da Silva, 2017). As a second scene for binocular vision, the setting is in the United States, in the Honors College at the University of South Florida (USF) in Tampa, Florida, where college leadership sought to bring about change together with their students across a number of different dimensions of student life, ranging from the design of a new, dedicated Honors College building to the redesign of students’ curricular processes. To begin that work, students were invited as co-designers together with college leadership and faculty in bringing about change in the College and the larger campus environment through recursively designing their (our) Design Thinking course. These student co-designers were also invited to consider their observing frames (Steier and Jorgenson, 2003) in relation to their learning together with others, and have engaged so far in diverse design projects ranging from enhancing support of refugees moving to the Tampa Bay area to designing green spaces in USF’s Marshall Student Center, and they are regularly engaged in redesigning the course – ranging from reflection-in-action during group activities in a single class setting to inviting redesign of the course as a whole at the end of the term. By looking at these two scenes in “double vision,” a number of key principles and patterns emerged for us that both connect these local contexts and offer opportunities for further inquiry as more general design principles. Most notably, in this proposal we highlight the recursive connections among design and communication, including how communication emerged as a key focus of design along with the other “objects” of design (Thompson, Steier, & Ostrenko, 2014) in both scenes, and also highlight an emergent need across both scenes for focus on cultivating learning from a whole systems perspective. In attending to communication as a designable aspect of the larger design efforts for both scenes, we extended Glanville’s observation (2012) that design is a conversational process among designers by opening conversations through World Cafés and other group processes with stakeholders and designers together as a way of bridging multiple levels of communication – similar in spirit to Bateson’s development of the “orders of learning” frame (1972) – affording focus on both communication process and content such that a new, “third language” might be cogenerated by designers and stakeholders together, leading to new opportunities for learning and shared understanding about local design contexts. Building on this attention to communication process as a designable aspect for design teams and stakeholders together, we also brought forward the integration of action and inquiry from both second-order cybernetics and action research (Greenwood and Levin, 2007) as a frame of colearning- suggesting that the learners in a design scene include both the designers AND the stakeholders, as well as the larger whole of designers and stakeholders together, as they jointly work toward whole systems design. Through this mutual learning and languaging together, new frames and metaphors emerged cogeneratively with new perspectives on shared possibilities for action. In bringing these systems and design thinking principles into practice through hundreds of meetings we co-facilitated across both of these scenes, ranging from hosting World Cafés for cultivation of peace in Brazil to facilitating students’ learning related to design research in a Design Thinking course, this proposal highlights the importance of transitioning design “meetings” from a frame that primarily foregrounds products over processes and roles over activities to a frame that affords a focus on relationships through joint attention to communication process and on mutual learning toward whole systems design

    Evaluation of machine learning algorithms for treatment outcome prediction in patients with epilepsy based on structural connectome data

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    The objective of this study is to evaluate machine learning algorithms aimed at predicting surgical treatment outcomes in groups of patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) using only the structural brain connectome. Specifically, the brain connectome is reconstructed using white matter fiber tracts from presurgical diffusion tensor imaging. To achieve our objective, a two-stage connectome-based prediction framework is developed that gradually selects a small number of abnormal network connections that contribute to the surgical treatment outcome, and in each stage a linear kernel operation is used to further improve the accuracy of the learned classifier. Using a 10-fold cross validation strategy, the first stage in the connectome-based framework is able to separate patients with TLE from normal controls with 80% accuracy, and second stage in the connectome-based framework is able to correctly predict the surgical treatment outcome of patients with TLE with 70% accuracy. Compared to existing state-of-the-art methods that use VBM data, the proposed two-stage connectome-based prediction framework is a suitable alternative with comparable prediction performance. Our results additionally show that machine learning algorithms that exclusively use structural connectome data can predict treatment outcomes in epilepsy with similar accuracy compared with "expert-based" clinical decision. In summary, using the unprecedented information provided in the brain connectome, machine learning algorithms may uncover pathological changes in brain network organization and improve outcome forecasting in the context of epilepsy

    Evaluation of EGFR mutation status in cytology specimens: An institutional experience

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    Epidermal growth factor receptor ( EGFR ) mutation status has been shown to predict response to anti‐EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors in non‐small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). In patients with advanced‐stage NSCLC, evaluation of mutational status is increasingly requested on biopsy or fine‐needle aspiration specimens, which often have limited material. There are limited data on the suitability of cytology cell blocks (CB) for EGFR mutation testing. In this study, we report our institutional experience with cytology cell block material for EGFR mutation testing. We retrospectively reviewed EGFR mutation analyses performed on 234 surgical (SP) and cytology (CB) from October 2007 to May 2010. One hundred ninety‐two SP specimens and 42 CB specimens were evaluated for EGFR mutation. CB specimens were evaluated for overall specimen size based on aggregate cellularity in comparison to small biopsy specimens, and percent tumor. Of the 192 SP and 42 CB specimens, 31 (16.1%) and 11 (26.2%) were positive for EGFR mutation, respectively; there does not appear to be an association between mutation detection rate and the source of the specimen ( P = 0.124). Limited DNA was obtained from 70.0% (29/42), including 81.8% (9/11) of those which were mutation positive. Additionally, 45.4% (5/11) of mutation positive specimens had extremely low DNA yields. Although 16.6% (7/42) of CB specimens had 10% tumor. These data indicate that CB specimens provide an alternative source for molecular evaluation of NSCLC, and that tumor percentage may be more important than specimen size and/or DNA yield in determining the suitability of these specimens for testing. Diagn. Cytopathol. 2013;41:316–323. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/97174/1/21851_ftp.pd

    CTRnet DL for disaster information services

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    We describe our work in collecting, analyzing and visualizing online information (e.g., Web documents, images, tweets), which are to be maintained by the Crisis, Tragedy and Recovery Network (CTRnet) digital library. We have been collecting resources about disaster events, as well as campus and other major shooting events, in collaboration with the Internet Archive (IA). Social media data (e.g., tweets, Facebook data) also have been collected and analyzed. Analyzed results are visualized using graphs and tag clouds. Exploratory content-based image retrieval has been applied in one of our image collections. We explain our CTR ontology development methodology an

    Transition to Quorum Sensing in an Agrobacterium Population: A Stochastic Model

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    Understanding of the intracellular molecular machinery that is responsible for the complex collective behavior of multicellular populations is an exigent problem of modern biology. Quorum sensing, which allows bacteria to activate genetic programs cooperatively, provides an instructive and tractable example illuminating the causal relationships between the molecular organization of gene networks and the complex phenotypes they control. In this work we—to our knowledge for the first time—present a detailed model of the population-wide transition to quorum sensing using the example of Agrobacterium tumefaciens. We construct a model describing the Ti plasmid quorum-sensing gene network and demonstrate that it behaves as an “on–off” gene expression switch that is robust to molecular noise and that activates the plasmid conjugation program in response to the increase in autoinducer concentration. This intracellular model is then incorporated into an agent-based stochastic population model that also describes bacterial motion, cell division, and chemical communication. Simulating the transition to quorum sensing in a liquid medium and biofilm, we explain the experimentally observed gradual manifestation of the quorum-sensing phenotype by showing that the transition of individual model cells into the “on” state is spread stochastically over a broad range of autoinducer concentrations. At the same time, the population-averaged values of critical autoinducer concentration and the threshold population density are shown to be robust to variability between individual cells, predictable and specific to particular growth conditions. Our modeling approach connects intracellular and population scales of the quorum-sensing phenomenon and provides plausible answers to the long-standing questions regarding the ecological and evolutionary significance of the phenomenon. Thus, we demonstrate that the transition to quorum sensing requires a much higher threshold cell density in liquid medium than in biofilm, and on this basis we hypothesize that in Agrobacterium quorum sensing serves as the detector of biofilm formation
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