Extension Connection: Workforce Development and Cooperative Extension Working Hand-in-Hand

The Extension Connection enhances life skills to support workforce development of low-income families by providing education promoting self-sufficiency. This program helps develop life skills that provide structure within the family and community. Project STRIDE supports workforce development in a high-crime, at-risk area with education. Project STRIDE increases stability within the family, helps families be productive in their community, and helps them overcome barriers to entering the work force, achieve job stability and advance in life for themselves and their families. Families also learn nutrition for healthy living and money management

Hessian Fly in Texas Wheat.

10 p

Managing Insects on Texas Peanuts.

7 p

Salinity and Livestock Water Quality

Experiments with albino rates were undertaken preliminary to work with large animals. The purpose here was two-fold: (1) to compare several kinds of salts and get some idea of their relative toxicities; and (2) to establish what concentrations of salts would be best used in experimental work with large animals

Managing Insects on Texas Peanuts.

7 p

Tensile strained InxGa1−xPIn_{x}Ga_{1-x}P membranes for cavity optomechanics

We investigate the optomechanical properties of tensile-strained ternary InGaP nanomembranes grown on GaAs. This material system combines the benefits of highly strained membranes based on stoichiometric silicon nitride, with the unique properties of thin-film semiconductor single crystals, as previously demonstrated with suspended GaAs. Here we employ lattice mismatch in epitaxial growth to impart an intrinsic tensile strain to a monocrystalline thin film (approximately 30 nm thick). These structures exhibit mechanical quality factors of 2*10^6 or beyond at room temperature and 17 K for eigenfrequencies up to 1 MHz, yielding Q*f products of 2*10^12 Hz for a tensile stress of ~170 MPa. Incorporating such membranes in a high finesse Fabry-Perot cavity, we extract an upper limit to the total optical loss (including both absorption and scatter) of 40 ppm at 1064 nm and room temperature. Further reductions of the In content of this alloy will enable tensile stress levels of 1 GPa, with the potential for a significant increase in the Q*f product, assuming no deterioration in the mechanical loss at this composition and strain level. This materials system is a promising candidate for the integration of strained semiconductor membrane structures with low-loss semiconductor mirrors and for realizing stacks of membranes for enhanced optomechanical coupling.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure

Multidisciplinary approaches to address food insecurity and nutrition among youth and their families

Our aim in publishing this issue of JARC on nutrition and food insecurity is to understand the factors associated with nutrition and food insecurity in the U.S. and around the world; to elucidate the potential consequences of food insecurity on physical and mental health; and to raise awareness and identify solutions to address this complex issue. We also aim to encourage collaboration across disciplines in order to frame initiatives that reduce these threats to child health, well-being and success

High-level expression of the HIV entry inhibitor griffithsin from the plastid genome and retention of biological activity in dried tobacco leaves

The global HIV epidemic continues to grow, with 1.8 million new infections occurring per year. In the absence of a cure and an AIDS vaccine, there is a pressing need to prevent new infections in order to curb the disease. Topical microbicides that block viral entry into human cells can potentially prevent HIV infection. The antiviral lectin griffithsin has been identified as a highly potent inhibitor of HIV entry into human cells. Here we have explored the possibility to use transplastomic plants as an inexpensive production platform for griffithsin. We show that griffithsin accumulates in stably transformed tobacco chloroplasts to up to 5% of the total soluble protein of the plant. Griffithsin can be easily purified from leaf material and shows similarly high virus neutralization activity as griffithsin protein recombinantly expressed in bacteria. We also show that dried tobacco provides a storable source material for griffithsin purification, thus enabling quick scale-up of production on demand

Characterization of envelope function of transmitted viruses circulating in Mbeya, Tanzania, and its impact on disease progression

An understanding of the biological characteristics of transmitted viruses provides important insights into HIV pathogenesis and informs vaccine development. The aim of the study was to characterize env function of transmitted viruses and its role in disease progression

Optimizing the rheological properties of silica nano-modified bentonite mud using overlaid contour plot and estimation of maximum or upper shear stress limit.

An optimization based statistical (response surface) approach was used to evaluate the rheological properties of bentonite mud treated with silica nanoparticles. The overlaid contour plot established the feasible region for the various factor settings from multiple regression equations. The steepest method was used to further determine the optimal factor settings for minimum rheological properties and this was established at 6.3 wt.% bentonite content and 0.94 wt.% silica nanoparticles. The rheological properties of the bentonite mud containing and without silica nanoparticles was evaluated using a Hyperbolic (new) model and related with other oil industry based models: Herschel Bulkley, Sisko, Casson. The hyperbolic rheological model estimated the rheological behaviour of the nano-modified mud satisfactorily while also predicting a shear stress limit for the nano-modified mud. The maximum shear stress limit values for 6.3, 13 and 15 wt.% mud were 14.59, 61.74 and 107.4 Pa respectively. Upper shear stress values obtained from a 1.5 wt.% silica nanoparticle modified 6.3, 13 and 15 wt.% bentonite mud were 22.27, 72.62 and 171.3 Pa respectively, which represents an increment of 34.5 to 37.4% in the upper limit of shear stress. The effect of silica nanoparticles on the upper shear stress limit was quantified using a response surface design