Green waste compost reduces nitrous oxide emissions from feedlot manure applied to soil

Australia produces in excess of 1 million tonnes of feedlot manure (FLM) annually. Application of FLM to grain cropping and grazing soils could provide a valuable nutrient resource. However, because of high nutrient concentration, especially of N (>2%), FLM has the potential for environmental pollution, for example, N pollution to the water bodies and NO emission to the atmosphere. Therefore, controlling N supply from FLM is essential for the judicious utilisation of FLM in the field as well as reducing NO emission to the atmosphere. We utilised the low N concentration green waste compost (GWC, about 3 million tonnes produced annually) as a potential management tool to assess its effectiveness in regulating N release from FLM and controlling the rates of NO emission from field application when both FLM and GWC were applied together to sorghum (Sorghum bicolor Moench) grown on a Vertisol. We measured NO emission rates during the sorghum crop and clean fallowing over one-year period in the field. Annual soil NO emissions were 5.0 kg NO ha from urea applied at 150 kg N ha, 5.1 and 5.5 kg NO ha from FLM applied at 10 and 20 t ha respectively, 2.2 kg NO ha from GWC applied at 10 t ha, 4.3 kg NO ha from FLM and GWC applied together at 10 t ha each, and 3.3 kg NO ha from the unamended soil. Thus, we found that GWC application reduced NO emissions below those from an unamended soil while annual emission rate from FLM approached that from fertiliser N application (∼0.7% NO emission factor). A mixture of FLM + GWC applied at 10 t ha each reduced NO emission factor by 64% (the emission factor was 0.22%), most likely by reducing the amount of mineral N in the soil because soil NH-N and NO-N and the rate of NO emission were significantly correlated in this soil. Since the global warming potential of NO is 298 times that of CO, even a small reduction in NO emission from GWC application has a significant and positive impact on reducing global warming

The cost effectiveness of REACH-HF and home-based cardiac rehabilitation compared with the usual medical care for heart failure with reduced ejection fraction:a decision model-based analysis

This is the final version. Available from Sage Publications via the DOI in this record.Background The REACH-HF (Rehabilitation EnAblement in CHronic Heart Failure) trial found that the REACH-HF home-based cardiac rehabilitation intervention resulted in a clinically meaningful improvement in disease-specific health-related quality of life in patients with reduced ejection fraction heart failure (HFrEF). The aims of this study were to assess the long-term cost-effectiveness of the addition of REACH-HF intervention or home-based cardiac rehabilitation to usual care compared with usual care alone in patients with HFrEF. Design and methods A Markov model was developed using a patient lifetime horizon and integrating evidence from the REACH-HF trial, a systematic review/meta-analysis of randomised trials, estimates of mortality and hospital admission and UK costs at 2015/2016 prices. Taking a UK National Health and Personal Social Services perspective we report the incremental cost per quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) gained, assessing uncertainty using probabilistic and deterministic sensitivity analyses. Results In base case analysis, the REACH-HF intervention was associated with per patient mean QALY gain of 0.23 and an increased mean cost of £400 compared with usual care, resulting in a cost per QALY gained of £1720. Probabilistic sensitivity analysis indicated a 78% probability that REACH-HF is cost effective versus usual care at a threshold of £20,000 per QALY gained. Results were similar for home-based cardiac rehabilitation versus usual care. Sensitivity analyses indicate the findings to be robust to changes in model assumptions and parameters. Conclusions Our cost-utility analyses indicate that the addition of the REACH-HF intervention and home-based cardiac rehabilitation programmes are likely to be cost-effective treatment options versus usual care alone in patients with HFrEF.National Institute for Health Research (NIHR

The Hubble Constant

I review the current state of determinations of the Hubble constant, which gives the length scale of the Universe by relating the expansion velocity of objects to their distance. There are two broad categories of measurements. The first uses individual astrophysical objects which have some property that allows their intrinsic luminosity or size to be determined, or allows the determination of their distance by geometric means. The second category comprises the use of all-sky cosmic microwave background, or correlations between large samples of galaxies, to determine information about the geometry of the Universe and hence the Hubble constant, typically in a combination with other cosmological parameters. Many, but not all, object-based measurements give $H_0$ values of around 72-74km/s/Mpc , with typical errors of 2-3km/s/Mpc. This is in mild discrepancy with CMB-based measurements, in particular those from the Planck satellite, which give values of 67-68km/s/Mpc and typical errors of 1-2km/s/Mpc. The size of the remaining systematics indicate that accuracy rather than precision is the remaining problem in a good determination of the Hubble constant. Whether a discrepancy exists, and whether new physics is needed to resolve it, depends on details of the systematics of the object-based methods, and also on the assumptions about other cosmological parameters and which datasets are combined in the case of the all-sky methods.Comment: Extensively revised and updated since the 2007 version: accepted by Living Reviews in Relativity as a major (2014) update of LRR 10, 4, 200

Moderation in management research: What, why, when and how.

Many theories in management, psychology, and other disciplines rely on moderating variables: those which affect the strength or nature of the relationship between two other variables. Despite the near-ubiquitous nature of such effects, the methods for testing and interpreting them are not always well understood. This article introduces the concept of moderation and describes how moderator effects are tested and interpreted for a series of model types, beginning with straightforward two-way interactions with Normal outcomes, moving to three-way and curvilinear interactions, and then to models with non-Normal outcomes including binary logistic regression and Poisson regression. In particular, methods of interpreting and probing these latter model types, such as simple slope analysis and slope difference tests, are described. It then gives answers to twelve frequently asked questions about testing and interpreting moderator effects

Calibration of Traffic Simulation Models using SPSA

Εθνικό Μετσόβιο Πολυτεχνείο--Μεταπτυχιακή Εργασία. Διεπιστημονικό-Διατμηματικό Πρόγραμμα Μεταπτυχιακών Σπουδών (Δ.Π.Μ.Σ.) “Γεωπληροφορική

Mitotic Illegitimate Recombination Is a Mechanism for Novel Changes in High-Molecular-Weight Glutenin Subunits in Wheat-Rye Hybrids

Wide hybrids can have novel traits or changed expression of a quantitative trait that their parents do not have. These phenomena have long been noticed, yet the mechanisms are poorly understood. High-molecular-weight glutenin subunits (HMW-GS) are seed storage proteins encoded by Glu-1 genes that only express in endosperm in wheat and its related species. Novel HMW-GS compositions have been observed in their hybrids. This research elucidated the molecular mechanisms by investigating the causative factors of novel HMW-GS changes in wheat-rye hybrids. HMW-GS compositions in the endosperm and their coding sequences in the leaves of F1 and F2 hybrids between wheat landrace Shinchunaga and rye landrace Qinling were investigated. Missing and/or additional novel HMW-GSs were observed in the endosperm of 0.5% of the 2078 F1 and 22% of 36 F2 hybrid seeds. The wildtype Glu-1Ax null allele was found to have 42 types of short repeat sequences of 3-60 bp long that appeared 2 to 100 times. It also has an in-frame stop codon in the central repetitive region. Analyzing cloned allele sequences of HMW-GS coding gene Glu-1 revealed that deletions involving the in-frame stop codon had happened, resulting in novel ∼1.8-kb Glu-1Ax alleles in some F1 and F2 plants. The cloned mutant Glu-1Ax alleles were expressed in Escherichia coli, and the HMW-GSs produced matched the novel HMW-GSs found in the hybrids. The differential changes between the endosperm and the plant of the same hybrids and the data of E. coli expression of the cloned deletion alleles both suggested that mitotic illegitimate recombination between two copies of a short repeat sequence had resulted in the deletions and thus the changed HMW-GS compositions. Our experiments have provided the first direct evidence to show that mitotic illegitimate recombination is a mechanism that produces novel phenotypes in wide hybrids

A Differentiation-Based Phylogeny of Cancer Subtypes

Histopathological classification of human tumors relies in part on the degree of differentiation of the tumor sample. To date, there is no objective systematic method to categorize tumor subtypes by maturation. In this paper, we introduce a novel computational algorithm to rank tumor subtypes according to the dissimilarity of their gene expression from that of stem cells and fully differentiated tissue, and thereby construct a phylogenetic tree of cancer. We validate our methodology with expression data of leukemia, breast cancer and liposarcoma subtypes and then apply it to a broader group of sarcomas. This ranking of tumor subtypes resulting from the application of our methodology allows the identification of genes correlated with differentiation and may help to identify novel therapeutic targets. Our algorithm represents the first phylogeny-based tool to analyze the differentiation status of human tumors