How many gigabytes per hectare are available in the digital agriculture era? A digitization footprint estimation

The applications of digital agriculture technologies are increasing rapidly with increased interest from the new generation of farmers to use digital solutions. Such technologies include several in-field and remote sensors besides data processing software packages. The accumulation of archived data from season to season has become an issue considering the high spatial and temporal resolution of the generated data from the commercially available sensors. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate and quantify the accumulated data considering the evolution of utilized digital solutions from a farmer's case study. This study estimated the data storage disc space requirements in the last two decades from a 22 ha field located in North Italy. The farmer's accumulated data sources were from an in-field weather station, soil analysis information, soil apparent electrical conductivity scanning, soil moisture sensor, planter performance monitoring system, yield maps, Sentinel-2 satellite images, and recently drone images. The accumulated data were reported on an annual basis with respect to each year's specific contribution. The results showed that the total accumulated data size from the study field reached 18.6 GB in 2020 mainly due to the use of drone images with a predicted total data size of 40.5 GB by 2025

Myocardial viability and survival in ischemic left ventricular dysfunction

BACKGROUND: The assessment of myocardial viability has been used to identify patients with coronary artery disease and left ventricular dysfunction in whom coronary-artery bypass grafting (CABG) will provide a survival benefit. However, the efficacy of this approach is uncertain. METHODS: In a substudy of patients with coronary artery disease and left ventricular dysfunction who were enrolled in a randomized trial of medical therapy with or without CABG, we used single-photon-emission computed tomography (SPECT), dobutamine echocardiography, or both to assess myocardial viability on the basis of prespecified thresholds. RESULTS: Among the 1212 patients enrolled in the randomized trial, 601 underwent assessment of myocardial viability. Of these patients, we randomly assigned 298 to receive medical therapy plus CABG and 303 to receive medical therapy alone. A total of 178 of 487 patients with viable myocardium (37%) and 58 of 114 patients without viable myocardium (51%) died (hazard ratio for death among patients with viable myocardium, 0.64; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.48 to 0.86; P=0.003). However, after adjustment for other baseline variables, this association with mortality was not significant (P=0.21). There was no significant interaction between viability status and treatment assignment with respect to mortality (P=0.53). CONCLUSIONS: The presence of viable myocardium was associated with a greater likelihood of survival in patients with coronary artery disease and left ventricular dysfunction, but this relationship was not significant after adjustment for other baseline variables. The assessment of myocardial viability did not identify patients with a differential survival benefit from CABG, as compared with medical therapy alone. (Funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; STICH ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT00023595.)