Risk Analysis of Organic Cropping Systems in Minnesota

When all strategies received conventional market prices, 4-year cropping sequences had greater net returns than 2-year sequences, and the organic input, 4-year strategy had the highest net return. Adding 50% of the estimated organic premium, the 4-year, organic strategy dominated all low- and high-purchased input strategies.Crop Production/Industries, Risk and Uncertainty,

Influence of dietary modifications on the blood pressure response to antihypertensive medication

Identifying dietary modifications that potentiate the blood pressure (BP)-lowering effects of antihypertensive medications and that are practical for free-living people may assist in achieving BP reduction goals. We assessed whether two dietary patterns were effective in lowering BP in persons on antihypertensive therapy and in those not on therapy. Ninety-four participants (38/56 females/males), aged 55.6 (sd 9.9) years, consumed two 4-week dietary regimens in random order (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH)-type diet and low-Na high-K (LNAHK) diet) with a control diet before each phase. Seated home BP was measured daily for the last 2 weeks in each phase. Participants were grouped based on antihypertensive drug therapy. The LNAHK diet produced a greater fall in systolic BP (SBP) in those on antihypertensive therapy ( - 6.2 (sd 6.0) mmHg) than in those not on antihypertensive therapy ( - 2.8 (sd 4.0) mmHg) (P = 0.036), and this was greatest for those on renin-angiotensin system (RAS) blocker therapy ( - 9.5 (sd 6.4) mmHg) (interaction P = 0.007). The fall in SBP on the DASH-type diet, in those on therapy (overall - 1.1 (sd 6.2) mmHg; renin-angiotensin blocker therapy - 4.2 (sd 4.7) mmHg), was not as marked as that observed on the LNAHK diet. Dietary modifications are an important part of all hypertension management regimens, and a low-Na and high-K diet enhances the BP-lowering effect of antihypertensive medications, particularly those targeting the RAS.<br /

Speech Communication

Contains research objectives and summary of research on six research projects and reports on three research projects.National Institutes of Health (Grant 5 RO1 NS04332-13)National Institutes of Health (Fellowship 1 F22 MH5825-01)National Institutes of Health (Grant 1 T32 NS07040-01)National Institutes of Health (Fellowship 1 F22 NS007960)National Institutes of Health (Fellowship 1 F22 HD019120)National Institutes of Health (Fellowship 1 F22 HD01919-01)U. S. Army (Contract DAAB03-75-C-0489)National Institutes of Health (Grant 5 RO1 NS04332-12

PhenX RISING: real world implementation and sharing of PhenX measures

Abstract Background The purpose of this manuscript is to describe the PhenX RISING network and the site experiences in the implementation of PhenX measures into ongoing population-based genomic studies. Methods Eighty PhenX measures were implemented across the seven PhenX RISING groups, thirty-three of which were used at more than two sites, allowing for cross-site collaboration. Each site used between four and 37 individual measures and five of the sites are validating the PhenX measures through comparison with other study measures. Self-administered and computer-based administration modes are being evaluated at several sites which required changes to the original PhenX Toolkit protocols. A network-wide data use agreement was developed to facilitate data sharing and collaboration. Results PhenX Toolkit measures have been collected for more than 17,000 participants across the PhenX RISING network. The process of implementation provided information that was used to improve the PhenX Toolkit. The Toolkit was revised to allow researchers to select self- or interviewer administration when creating the data collection worksheets and ranges of specimens necessary to run biological assays has been added to the Toolkit. Conclusions The PhenX RISING network has demonstrated that the PhenX Toolkit measures can be implemented successfully in ongoing genomic studies. The next step will be to conduct gene/environment studies

Suppressing quantum errors by scaling a surface code logical qubit

Practical quantum computing will require error rates that are well below what is achievable with physical qubits. Quantum error correction offers a path to algorithmically-relevant error rates by encoding logical qubits within many physical qubits, where increasing the number of physical qubits enhances protection against physical errors. However, introducing more qubits also increases the number of error sources, so the density of errors must be sufficiently low in order for logical performance to improve with increasing code size. Here, we report the measurement of logical qubit performance scaling across multiple code sizes, and demonstrate that our system of superconducting qubits has sufficient performance to overcome the additional errors from increasing qubit number. We find our distance-5 surface code logical qubit modestly outperforms an ensemble of distance-3 logical qubits on average, both in terms of logical error probability over 25 cycles and logical error per cycle ($2.914\%\pm 0.016\%$ compared to $3.028\%\pm 0.023\%$). To investigate damaging, low-probability error sources, we run a distance-25 repetition code and observe a $1.7\times10^{-6}$ logical error per round floor set by a single high-energy event ($1.6\times10^{-7}$ when excluding this event). We are able to accurately model our experiment, and from this model we can extract error budgets that highlight the biggest challenges for future systems. These results mark the first experimental demonstration where quantum error correction begins to improve performance with increasing qubit number, illuminating the path to reaching the logical error rates required for computation.Comment: Main text: 6 pages, 4 figures. v2: Update author list, references, Fig. S12, Table I