Economic Impacts of Groundwater Salinity in Louisiana

In the United States, nearly 60 million acres of land is affected by water and soil salinity problems that pose a serious threat to the long-term economic and environmental viability of the agricultural sector. Understanding the economic impacts of soil salinity in agricultural lands is essential for planning farming practices in several salinity affected regions. This study presents a two-stage approach to assess the damage from salinity in two major aquifers in Louisiana. In the first stage, looking at the trend of rise in salt content within these aquifers, I predict the future level of salinity by assuming three different scenarios. In the second stage, I use the IMPLAN software to estimate the potential economic impact from the increasing level of salinity with and without using adaptive measures. If the damage is assessed 30 years from now, the results show that increased salinity can result in loss of more than $400 million in total output in the current value term. Furthermore, I find that adaptive measure using alternative cropping practices should be able to prevent a majority of this loss

Effect of different additives on nutrient parameter and palatability of ensiled water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes)

Water hyacinth, Eichhornia crassipes, is an invasive aquatic weed that covers major water bodies in Nepal, and its silage has great potential to be used as ruminant’s feed. An experiment was conducted with an aim to explore its ensiling attributes along with palatability test for cattle was conducted at Institute of Agriculture and Animal Science, Rupandehi in a completely randomized experimental design with three replications. The quality and palatability of water hyacinth silage prepared with additives such as rice straw, molasses, wheat flour, and rice bran were assessed. The treatments included: water hyacinth with rice straw(T1); water hyacinth with rice straw and rice bran(T2); water hyacinth with rice straw and wheat flour(T3); water hyacinth with rice straw and molasses(T4); water hyacinth with rice straw, wheat flour and molasses(T5); water hyacinth with rice straw, wheat flour and rice bran(T6) and water hyacinth with rice straw, wheat flour, molasses and rice bran(T7). The results showed, crude protein (CP), crude fiber (CF), ether extract (EE), total ash (TA), pH, and palatability had significant differences across all treatments (p<0.05). CP (15.13) and CF (23.73) were found to be highest under control whereas rice straw, wheat flour and rice bran had the highest EE (12.74), TA (15.13), pH (3.87), palatability (100%), and considerably high CP (12.40) and CF (19.75). Hence, silage of water hyacinth with rice straw, wheat flour, and rice bran has high nutrient content, palatability and can be used as a feed alternative to solve the problem of feed scarcity

Weed Management in Pulses: Overview and Prospects

Pulses, the world’s second-most consumed food, are an important source of food. They face several major challenges, including weed infestations, as a wide variety of weeds compete with them. Because of their competition with weeds, pulses can suffer a significant yield reduction. So as to alleviate such a menace, growers rely on different management tools, such as tillage, intercropping systems, and herbicides. Each method has been effective, albeit to varying degrees, in resolving the issue. Chemical herbicides, however, have served as double-edged swords over the past few decades due to their indiscriminate use. The repetitive use of the same herbicide or herbicides with the same mode of action confers resistance, thereby, leading to a serious impact on only nontargets. Therefore, it requires well-thought-out planning for a weed management strategy to maximize yields without creating environmental issues concomitantly. At the present, the integrated weed management approach has been accepted as the most reasonable tool for many farmers, which includes using preventive strategies, mechanical tools, crop rotation, intercropping, and herbicides with different modes of action, but cautiously. Modeling and robotics are the cutting-edge technologies that growers will be using for weed management in the coming days, thanks to the advent of such new innovation

Sustainable Livestock Production in Nepal: A Focus on Animal Nutrition Strategies

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Depot and sex-specific implications for adipose tissue expandability and functional traits in adulthood of late prenatal and early postnatal malnutrition in a precocial sheep model

The aim was to investigate long‐term, tissue and sex‐specific impacts of pre and postnatal malnutrition on expandability and functional traits of different adipose tissues. Twin‐pregnant ewes were fed NORM (~requirements), LOW (50% of NORM) or HIGH (150%/110% of energy/protein) diets the last 6 weeks prepartum (term ~147‐days). Lambs received moderate, low‐fat (CONV) or high‐carbohydrate‐high‐fat (HCHF) diets from 3 days until 6 months of age, and thereafter CONV diet. At 2½ years of age (adulthood), histomorphometric and gene expression patterns were characterized in subcutaneous (SUB), perirenal (PER), mesenteric (MES), and epicardial (EPI) adipose tissues. SUB had sex‐specific (♂<♀) upper‐limits for adipocyte size and cell‐number indices, irrespective of early life nutrition. PER mass and contents of adipocytes were highest in females and HIGH♂, whereas adipocyte cross‐sectional area was lowest in LOW♂. Pre/postnatal nutrition affected gene expression sex‐specifically in SUB + PER, but unrelated to morphological changes. In PER, LOW/LOW♂ were specific targets of gene expression changes. EPI was affected by postnatal nutrition, and HCHF sheep had enlarged adipocytes and upregulated expressions for adipogenic and lipogenic genes. Conclusion: upper‐limits for SUB expandability were markedly lower in males. Major targets for prenatal malnutrition were PER and males. LOW♂ had the lowest PER expandability, whereas HIGH♂ had an adaptive advantage due to increased hypertrophic ability equivalent to females. Fixed expandability in SUB meant PER became a determining factor for MES and ectopic fat deposition, rendering LOW♂ particularly predisposed for obesity‐associated metabolic risks. EPI, in contrast to other tissues, was targeted particularly by early postnatal obesity, resulting in adipocyte hypertrophy in adulthood.publishedVersionUnit Licence Agreemen

Effects of Increasing Doses of Lactobacillus Pre-fermented Rapeseed Product with or without Inclusion of Macroalgae Product on Weaner Piglet Performance and Intestinal Development

This study evaluated the effects of increasing doses of pre-fermented rapeseed meal (FRM) without or with inclusion of the brown macroalgae Ascophyllum nodosum (AN) on weaner piglets&rsquo; performance and gut development. Ten days pre-weaning, standardized litters were randomly assigned to one of nine isoenergetic and isoproteic diets comprising (on DM basis): no supplement (negative control, NC), 2500 ppm ZnO (positive control, PC), 8, 10, 12, 15 or 25% FRM, and 10% FRM plus 0.6 or 1.0% AN. Fifty piglets receiving the same pre-weaning diets were weaned at 28 days of age and transferred to one pen, where they continued on the pre-weaning diet until day 92. At 41 days, six piglets per treatment were sacrificed for blood and intestinal samplings. The average daily gain was at least sustained at any dose of FRM (increased at 8% FRM, 28&ndash;41 days) from 18&ndash;41 days similar to PC but unaffected by inclusion of AN. The percentage of piglets that completed the experiment was increased by FRM compared to NC, despite detection of diarrhea symptoms. FRM showed quadratic dose-response effects on colon and mid-jejunum crypts depth, and enterocyte and mid-jejunum villus heights with optimum development at 8% or 10% FRM, respectively, but this was abolished when AN was also added. In conclusion, FRM sustained piglet growth performance and intestinal development similar to ZnO with an optimum inclusion level of 8&ndash;10% of dietary DM

Adapting Segment Anything Model (SAM) through Prompt-based Learning for Enhanced Protein Identification in Cryo-EM Micrographs

Cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) remains pivotal in structural biology, yet the task of protein particle picking, integral for 3D protein structure construction, is laden with manual inefficiencies. While recent AI tools such as Topaz and crYOLO are advancing the field, they do not fully address the challenges of cryo-EM images, including low contrast, complex shapes, and heterogeneous conformations. This study explored prompt-based learning to adapt the state-of-the-art image segmentation foundation model Segment Anything Model (SAM) for cryo-EM. This focus was driven by the desire to optimize model performance with a small number of labeled data without altering pre-trained parameters, aiming for a balance between adaptability and foundational knowledge retention. Through trials with three prompt-based learning strategies, namely head prompt, prefix prompt, and encoder prompt, we observed enhanced performance and reduced computational requirements compared to the fine-tuning approach. This work not only highlights the potential of prompting SAM in protein identification from cryo-EM micrographs but also suggests its broader promise in biomedical image segmentation and object detection

Interspecies and seasonal variations in macroalgae from the Nordic region: Chemical composition and impacts on rumen fermentation and microbiome assembly

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