Mapping performance of irrigation schemes in Turkey

Water is a crucial resource and approximately 70% usage of it in the agriculture sector in Turkey. Water user associations are in charge of irrigation water management. The core aim of this study is to assess water user associations have command area more than 1,000 ha (WUAs) within the districts of DSI (State Hydraulic Works) and to create spatial maps to show the distribution of the performance indicators used constantly by researchers especially around Mediterranean countries during the period from 2011 to 2015. Frequency and panel data analysis are used to figure out the relationship among performance indicators and attributes such as water diversion type, management type, source of water and district no. Panel data analysis was applied to examine statistical assessment over time. As a result, current performance indicators show that excessive irrigation water used due to low technology and management problem. Performance indicators show high differences among districts due to climate, water resources, and crop pattern. Moreover, low irrigation efficiency can be increased with a transition to pressurized irrigation systems, so more are can be irrigated with less water

The social wellbeing of irrigation water. A demand-side integrated valuation in a Mediterranean agroecosystem

[EN] Irrigation water is a vital input for agricultural production. The supply of irrigation water to crops enhances land productivity and affects the agroecosystem functioning. Agroecosystems co-provide a wide range of agroecosystem services and disservices, which contribute positively and negatively, respectively, to human wellbeing. Therefore, irrigated agroecosystems produce several positive and negative outcomes in relation to society, and agricultural water management is key to the provision of adequate incentives for the enhancement of social wellbeing. In such a context, the aim of this work was to value the contribution of water to the provision of agroecosystem services and disservices, as a way to summarise the contribution of irrigation to social wellbeing. To this end, a demand-side integrated valuation of agroecosystem services and disservices was carried out for both rain-fed and irrigated agriculture in two different agroecosystems of the Region of Murcia (south-eastern Spain), a semi-arid western Mediterranean region characterised by water scarcity. In addition, the intensity of the agricultural water use was considered by distinguishing traditional and highly-intensive irrigated agroecosystems. Almond and lemon, two woody crops, were employed to develop the economic valuation in rain-fed and irrigated agroecosystems, respectively. The assessment of biophysical indicators to quantify the provision of services and disservices and their economic valuation, using market and non-market methods, were used. The results show that the contribution of water to social wellbeing is valued at 9000-12,300 euro/ha/year, being greater when the intensive use of agricultural water is promoted. The net economic value of all categories of agroecosystem services and disservices increases when irrigation water is supplied. Notwithstanding, the greatest contribution is due to the increase in provisioning services, mainly food provision in the case of the highly-intensive agroecosystem. Traditional irrigated agroecosystems make a greater contribution to regulating and cultural agroecosystem services. Hence, agricultural water management should focus on increasing the contribution of irrigated agroecosystems to human wellbeing.This work was supported by the AgriCambio project (Grant PID2020- 114576RB-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033). Jos¿e A. Zabala, Víctor Martínez-García and Jos¿e A. Albaladejo-García acknowledge the financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Personal Training (FPU 16/03473; FPU19/05143; FPU 16/ 03562)Alcon, F.; Zabala, J.; Matínez-García, V.; Albaladejo, J.; López-Becerra, E.; De Miguel, MD.; Martínez-Paz, JM. (2022). The social wellbeing of irrigation water. A demand-side integrated valuation in a Mediterranean agroecosystem. Agricultural Water Management. 262. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agwat.2021.10740026

Integrating socio-spatial preference heterogeneity into the assessment of the aesthetic quality of a Mediterranean agricultural landscape

Assessing ecosystem services associated with agricultural landscapes is of growing interest to the research and policy/practice communities. One particularly challenging aspect to understand is the value of the aesthetic quality of such landscapes, even though this is one of the main contributions that agricultural landscapes make to cultural ecosystem service provision. Indeed, as increasing demands are placed on agricultural landscapes for food production, infrastructure development and urbanisation, aesthetic qualities can be severely affected, particularly if those landscapes are used for traditional agricultural practices. Here we assess the aesthetic quality of an agricultural landscape by integrating social preferences heterogeneity and spatial aspects of the provision, combining subjective and objective perspectives. We work in landscapes dominated by irrigated flowering fruit trees in Cieza, in south-east Spain as it is an excellent example of a semi-arid Mediterranean agroecosystem that delivers multiple ecosystem services, including aesthetic quality, in addition to food production. Using GIS tools and a choice experiment, we assess the social utility function for this landscape, and demonstrate social preferences heterogeneity for demand for the aesthetic qualities of the landscape. Latent class modelling distinguished three populations, with the majority preferring diversified agricultural landscapes and management policies based on a more natural-looking agricultural landscape. These results provide agroecosystem managers with an additional vision focused on enhancing the combination of the most diverse and natural-looking elements in the landscape in order to underpin the delivery of cultural ecosystem services that also increase social well-being

Streaming histogram sketching for rapid microbiome analytics

Background: The growth in publically available microbiome data in recent years has yielded an invaluable resource for genomic research, allowing for the design of new studies, augmentation of novel datasets and reanalysis of published works. This vast amount of microbiome data, as well as the widespread proliferation of microbiome research and the looming era of clinical metagenomics, means there is an urgent need to develop analytics that can process huge amounts of data in a short amount of time. To address this need, we propose a new method for the compact representation of microbiome sequencing data using similarity-preserving sketches of streaming k-mer spectra. These sketches allow for dissimilarity estimation, rapid microbiome catalogue searching and classification of microbiome samples in near real time. Results: We apply streaming histogram sketching to microbiome samples as a form of dimensionality reduction, creating a compressed ‘histosketch’ that can efficiently represent microbiome k-mer spectra. Using public microbiome datasets, we show that histosketches can be clustered by sample type using the pairwise Jaccard similarity estimation, consequently allowing for rapid microbiome similarity searches via a locality sensitive hashing indexing scheme. Furthermore, we use a ‘real life’ example to show that histosketches can train machine learning classifiers to accurately label microbiome samples. Specifically, using a collection of 108 novel microbiome samples from a cohort of premature neonates, we trained and tested a random forest classifier that could accurately predict whether the neonate had received antibiotic treatment (97% accuracy, 96% precision) and could subsequently be used to classify microbiome data streams in less than 3 s. Conclusions: Our method offers a new approach to rapidly process microbiome data streams, allowing samples to be rapidly clustered, indexed and classified. We also provide our implementation, Histosketching Using Little K-mers (HULK), which can histosketch a typical 2 GB microbiome in 50 s on a standard laptop using four cores, with the sketch occupying 3000 bytes of disk space

Pharmacologic and Genetic Manipulation of MMP-2 and -9 Affects Retinal Neovascularization in Rodent Models of OIR

PURPOSE. The efficacy of three matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) inhibitors with various selectivities (Ro-31-9790, AG3340, and DPC-A37668) was investigated in a rat model of retinopathy of prematurity, to examine the roles of MMP-2 and -9 in retinal neovascularization. The susceptibilities of MMP-2 Ϫ/Ϫ and -9 Ϫ/Ϫ mice to preretinal neovascularization were investigated in a mouse model of oxygen-induced retinopathy. METHODS. Sprague-Dawley newborn rats were exposed to alternating episodes of 50% and 10% oxygen (variable oxygen exposure) to induce retinal neovascularization. Three MMP inhibitors with various selectivity profiles were administered to variable oxygen-exposed rats via local or systemic routes. Antineovascular efficacy was determined in drug-treated versus vehicle-treated rat pups by computerized imaging of adenosine diphosphatase (ADPase)-stained retinal flatmounts. Wild-type C57BL/6J and isogenic MMP-2 Ϫ/Ϫ and -9 Ϫ/Ϫ mice were exposed to 75% oxygen followed by normoxia. The mice were killed immediately before or after the normoxic exposure, and eyes were either harvested for retinal dissection and flatmounting or were paraffin embedded and sectioned. Retinal vascular area and retinal neovascularization were assessed by adenosine diphosphatase staining of retinal flatmounts and by counting preretinal nuclei of hematoxylin and eosin-stained retinal sections, respectively. RESULTS. Ro-31-9790, AG3340, and DPC-A37668 had no effect on normal development of the rat retinal vasculature, regardless of dose or route of administration. Intravitreal injection of Ro-31-9790 (broad-spectrum) immediately after variable-oxygen exposure and 2 days after exposure resulted in 78% and 82% inhibition of retinal neovascularization, respectively. AG3340 (MMP-2-and -9-selective inhibitor) and DPC-A37668 (MMP-2-selective inhibitor) resulted in 65% and 52% inhibition, respectively, when administered by intravitreal injection immediately after variable-oxygen exposure. Intraperitoneal injection of 5, 15, and 50 mg/mL AG3340 or DPC-A37668 for 6 days after variable oxygen exposure resulted in 22% to 39% and 0% to 31% inhibition of neovascularization, respectively. AG3340 and DPC-A37668 administered by oral gavage at doses of 3, 10, or 30 mg/mL provided up to 42% and 86% inhibition of neovascularization, respectively. The average vascular areas of retinas from MMP-2 Ϫ/Ϫ or -9 Ϫ/Ϫ mice at postnatal day 12 were not significantly different from the wild-type control. There was a 75% (P Ͻ 0.001) and 44% (P Ͻ 0.01) reduction in preretinal neovascularization in oxygen-exposed MMP-2 Ϫ/Ϫ and -9 Ϫ/Ϫ mice at postnatal day 19, respectively, compared with wild-type control mice. CONCLUSIONS. The results of this study suggest that MMP-2 plays a predominant role in retinal angiogenesis in both the mouse and rat models of oxygen-induced retinopathy. Furthermore, MMP-2 inhibition may be a viable therapeutic approach for ocular diseases characterized by retinal neovascularization. (Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 2007;48:907-915) DOI:10.1167/ iovs.06-0082 T he term angiogenesis refers to the growth of new capillaries from preexisting blood vessels. The initial events of angiogenesis involve proteolytic basement membrane degradation; extracellular matrix remodeling; and endothelial cell (EC) proliferation, migration, and differentiation. The integration of these events in physiologic angiogenesis involves complex interactions among cells, growth factors, cytokines, and extracellular matrix components. 1 Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) comprise a family of proteolytic enzymes of more than 20 members that are zinc and calcium dependent. Most MMPs are secreted in the inactive proenzyme form, some of them by endothelial cells of the angiogenic phenotype. 2 MMP proenzymes are activated, in part, by the plasminogen activator (PA) system, giving rise to active forms that digest and remodel the basement membrane and extracellular matrix. 6 Although tPA is secreted by established vessels, 7 studies in a guinea pig corneal neovascularization (NV) model demonstrated that endothelial cells in new vessel sprouts secrete uPA exclusively (Jerdan JA et al. IOVS 1988;29:ARVO Abstract 109). uPA and tPA activities are rigidly controlled by plasminogen activator inhibitor (PAI)-1. MMP-2 and -9 degrade gelatin; elastin; and collagens IV (a major basement membrane component), V, VII, and X. 2 MMP-2 and -9 are most likely involved in tumor angiogenesis, 9 -11 and recent studies indicate that MMP-2 and -9 are critical for NV in the posterior segment of the eye. For example, experiments From th

An Objective Scatter Index Based on Double-Pass Retinal Images of a Point Source to Classify Cataracts

PURPOSE: To propose a new objective scatter index (OSI) based in the analysis of double-pass images of a point source to rank and classify cataract patients. This classification scheme is compared with a current subjective system. METHODS: We selected a population including a group of normal young eyes as control and patients diagnosed with cataract (grades NO2, NO3 and NO4) according to the Lens Opacities Classification System (LOCS III). For each eye, we recorded double-pass retinal images of a point source. In each patient, we determined an objective scatter index (OSI) as the ratio of the intensity at an eccentric location in the image and the central part. This index provides information on the relevant forward scatter affecting vision. Since the double-pass retinal images are affected by both ocular aberrations and intraocular scattering, an analysis was performed to show the ranges of contributions of aberrations to the OSI. RESULTS: We used the OSI values to classify each eye according to the degree of scatter. The young normal eyes of the control group had OSI values below 1, while the OSI for subjects in LOCS grade II were around 1 to 2. The use of the objective index showed some of the weakness of subjective classification schemes. In particular, several subjects initially classified independently as grade NO2 or NO3 had similar OSI values, and in some cases even higher than subjects classified as grade NO4. A new classification scheme based in OSI is proposed. CONCLUSIONS: We introduced an objective index based in the analysis of double-pass retinal images to classify cataract patients. The method is robust and fully based in objective measurements; i.e., not depending on subjective decisions. This procedure could be used in combination with standard current methods to improve cataract patient surgery scheduling

The Diagnostic Sensitivity of Dengue Rapid Test Assays Is Significantly Enhanced by Using a Combined Antigen and Antibody Testing Approach

Dengue is a serious public health concern with around 3 billion people at risk of infection. Severe forms of the infection can be fatal and with no licensed vaccine or effective therapeutic currently available, early detection is important to assist with the clinical management of symptoms. Isolation of the virus and the detection of viral RNA using RT-PCR are commonly used methods for early diagnosis but are time-consuming, expensive and require skilled operation. Rapid immunochromatographic tests (ICT) are relatively simple, inexpensive and easy to perform at or near the point of care. Here, we report on the clinical performance of a new rapid ICT for the non-structural protein 1 (NS1) of dengue virus, a marker of acute infection. At two clinical study sites, NS1 was detected in 60–70% of laboratory-confirmed dengue cases and specificity of the test was >95%. We have also shown that a combined testing approach for both circulating NS1 antigen and antibody responses to the glycoprotein E of the virus can significantly improve diagnostic sensitivity compared to the detection of NS1 alone. Importantly, the combined antigen and antibody testing approach also provides an expanded window of detection from as early as day 1 post-onset of illness

Treatment and disease progression in a birth cohort of vertically HIV-1 infected children in Ukraine

Background: Ukraine has the highest HIV prevalence (1.6%) and is facing the fastest growing epidemic in Europe. Our objective was to describe the clinical, immunological and virological characteristics, treatment and response in vertically HIV-infected children living in Ukraine and followed from birth.Methods: The European Collaborative Study (ECS) is an ongoing cohort study, in which HIV-1 infected pregnant women are enrolled and followed in pregnancy, and their children prospectively followed from birth. ECS enrolment in Ukraine started in 2000 initially with three sites, increasing to seven sites by 2009.Results: A total of 245 infected children were included in the cohort by April 2009, with a median age of 23 months at most recent follow-up; 33% (n = 77) had injecting drug using mothers and 85% (n = 209) were infected despite some use of antiretroviral prophylaxis for prevention of mother-to-child transmission. Fifty-five (22%) children had developed AIDS, at a median age of 10 months (IQR = 6-19). The most prevalent AIDS indicator disease was Pneumocystis jiroveci pneumonia (PCP). Twenty-seven (11%) children had died (median age, 6.2 months). Overall, 108 (44%) children had started highly active antiretroviral treatment (HAART), at a median 18 months of age; median HAART duration was 6.6 months to date. No child discontinued HAART and 92% (100/108) remained on their first-line HAART regimen to date. Among children with moderate/severe immunosuppression, 36% had not yet started HAART. Among children on HAART, 71% (69/97) had no evidence of immunosuppression at their most recent visit; the median reduction in HIV RNA was 4.69 log10 copies/mL over a median of 10 months treatment. From survival analysis, an estimated 94%, 84% and 81% of children will be alive and AIDS-free at 6, 12 and 18 months of age, respectively. However, survival increased significantly over time: estimated survival rates to 12 months of age were 87% for children born in 2000/03 versus 96% for those born in 2004/08.Conclusion: One in five children had AIDS and one in ten had died. The half of children who received HAART has responded well and survival has significantly improved over time. Earlier diagnosis and prompt initiation of HAART remain key challenges