Forage Moisture Testers

The quality of forage used for feed is affected by the moisture content at which it was harvested and stored. To guess moisture content from experience or by hand squeezing and wadding is not accurate enough for today\u27s methods of putting up hay, haylage or silage. There are several very accurate and rapid types of sophisticated moisture indicators used in various industries, but these are too complex and costly to be considered for portable use by farmers. Other smaller instruments are also available that do a less accurate but acceptable job of determining moisture content of forage. One of these can be the most useful and economical pieces of equipment a farmer can own

Temporary Silage Storage

The following information is intended as a supplement to the attached publication entitled Temporary Silage Storage Systems published by the Purdue University Cooperative Extension Service

Enhancing Student Learning of ERP and Business Process Knowledge through Hands-On ERP Exercises in an Introductory Management of Information Systems Course

Organizations are in need of business graduates who understand how enterprise systems and integrated business processes work. Business schools are increasingly incorporating Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems into their programs to address this need. Using hands-on ERP exercises is one initiative that could enhance student learning of these vital topics. How can business schools integrate hands-on exercises to ensure all business graduates have the opportunity to develop this knowledge? This paper investigates using hands-on ERP exercises in an Introductory Management of Information Systems (IS) course to enhance student learning of ERP and business process concepts. Data will be collected using a pre and post survey designed to measure ERP and business process knowledge. Then t-tests will be utilized to determine if differences exist after exposure to the course material and the hands-on exercises

Genome-wide association, prediction and heritability in bacteria with application to Streptococcus pneumoniae

Whole-genome sequencing has facilitated genome-wide analyses of association, prediction and heritability in many organisms. However, such analyses in bacteria are still in their infancy, being limited by difficulties including genome plasticity and strong population structure. Here we propose a suite of methods including linear mixed models, elastic net and LD-score regression, adapted to bacterial traits using innovations such as frequency-based allele coding, both insertion/deletion and nucleotide testing and heritability partitioning. We compare and validate our methods against the current state-of-art using simulations, and analyse three phenotypes of the major human pathogen Streptococcus pneumoniae, including the first analyses of minimum inhibitory concentrations (MIC) for penicillin and ceftriaxone. We show that the MIC traits are highly heritable with high prediction accuracy, explained by many genetic associations under good population structure control. In ceftriaxone MIC, this is surprising because none of the isolates are resistant as per the inhibition zone criteria. We estimate that half of the heritability of penicillin MIC is explained by a known drug-resistance region, which also contributes a quarter of the ceftriaxone MIC heritability. For the within-host carriage duration phenotype, no associations were observed, but the moderate heritability and prediction accuracy indicate a moderately polygenic trait.Peer reviewe

Concurrent panel session 1: Environmental sustainability and Las Vegas

Moderator: Dr. Stan Smith, UNLV School of Life Sciences Scribe: Crystal Jackson, UNLV Department of Sociology Conference white paper & Full summary of panel session, 6 page

Commons governance in Southern Africa

This policy brief was authored by the CROSCOG (Cross Sectoral Commons Governance in Southern Africa) project teamThis Policy Brief is based on synthetic studies undertaken by participants in the Cross Sectoral Commons Governance in Southern Africa (CROSCOG) project between 2007 and 2009, funded by the European Commission (European Commission: FP6-2002-INCO- DEV/SSA-1, contract no. 043982). The objective of the project was to share existing research and experience in the governance of large-scale natural resource commons across various ecosystem types in southern Africa.Commission of the European Communitie

Filling Key Gaps in Population and Community Ecology

We propose research to fill key gaps in the areas of population and community ecology, based on a National Science Foundation workshop identifying funding priorities for the next 5–10 years. Our vision for the near future of ecology focuses on three core areas: predicting the strength and context-dependence of species interactions across multiple scales; identifying the importance of feedbacks from individual interactions to ecosystem dynamics; and linking pattern with process to understand species coexistence. We outline a combination of theory development and explicit, realistic tests of hypotheses needed to advance population and community ecology