Seasonal Price Patterns for Arkansas Soybeans

Seasonality is generally regarded as a major feature in soybean market price variations. Recent years in Arkansas have seen considerable construction of on-farm storage, a move that could mitigate the seasonality effect on price variations. A study comparing cash price indices from the past ten years with results from a 1986 Arkansas study and a recent national-level study found that Arkansas soybean prices appear to have followed a consistent and logical pattern around their national average in spite of increased variability and uncertainty.Seasonality, soybean, cash price index, Demand and Price Analysis, Farm Management, Marketing,

Cryogenic thermal control technology summaries

A summarization and categorization is presented of the pertinent literature associated with cryogenic thermal control technology having potential application to in-orbit fluid transfer systems and/or associated space storage. Initially, a literature search was conducted to obtain pertinent documents for review. Reports determined to be of primary significance were summarized in detail. Each summary, where applicable, consists of; (1) report identification, (2) objective(s) of the work, (3) description of pertinent work performed, (4)major results, and (5) comments of the reviewer (GD/C). Specific areas covered are; (1) multilayer insulation of storage tanks with and without vacuum jacketing, (2) other insulation such as foams, shadow shields, microspheres, honeycomb, vent cooling and composites, (3) vacuum jacketed and composite fluid lines, and (4) low conductive tank supports and insulation penetrations. Reports which were reviewed and not summarized, along with reasons for not summarizing, are also listed

Nuclear propulsion technology advanced fuels technology

Viewgraphs on advanced fuels technology are presented. Topics covered include: nuclear thermal propulsion reactor and fuel requirements; propulsion efficiency and temperature; uranium fuel compounds; melting point experiments; fabrication techniques; and sintered microspheres

The toad fly Lucilia bufonivora: its evolutionary status and molecular identification

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Wiley via the DOI in this recordThe blow fly genus Lucilia is composed largely of saprophages and facultative myasis agents, including the economically important species Lucilia cuprina (Wiedemann) (Diptera: Calliphoridae) and Lucilia sericata (Meigen). Only one species is generally recognized as an obligate agent of myiasis, Lucilia bufonivora Moniez, and this is an obligate parasite of toads. Lucilia silvarum (Meigen), a sister species, behaves mainly as a carrion breeder; however, it has also been reported as a facultative parasite of amphibians. Morphologically, these species are almost identical, and historically this has led to misidentification, taxonomic ambiguity and a paucity of studies of L. bufonivora. In this study, dipterous larvae were analysed from toad myiasis cases from the U.K., The Netherlands and Switzerland, together with adult specimens of fly species implicated in amphibian parasitism: L. bufonivora, L. silvarum and Lucilia elongata Shannon (from North America). Partial sequences of two genes, cox1 and ef1α, were amplified. Seven additional blow fly species were analysed as outgroups. Bayesian inference trees of cox1, ef1α and a combined-gene dataset were constructed. All larvae isolated from toads were identified as L. bufonivora and no specimens of L. silvarum were implicated in amphibian myiasis. This study confirms L. silvarum and L. bufonivora as distinct sister species and provides unambiguous molecular identification of L. bufonivora.The award of a PhD studentship to G.A.‐R. from the CONACYT (Mexico) is gratefully acknowledged

Electrodynamics of Media

Contains reports on two research projects.Joint Services Electronics Programs (U.S. Army, U. S. Navy, and U. S. Air Force) under Contract DAAB07-71-C-0300U.S. Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories Contract Fl9628-70-C-0064M. I. T. Sloan Fund for Basic Research (Grant 616

Impact of COVID-19 on Arkansas Field Crop Farms

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is disrupting the global economy in unprecedented ways, and the agricultural sector is no exception. Prices of most commodities decreased since the pandemic began, which are affecting farm revenues and production costs. We assess the impact of COVID-19 on Arkansas field crop farms using the Representative Farm models, calibrated to the latest baseline published by the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute. The results show that COVID-19 decreases the net cash farm incomes of all five farms, increases the probability of having a negative net cash farm income, and increases the cost of commodity programs. Payments under the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP) effectively compensate for the revenue losses due to COVID-19 projected for the 2019 crop for the five farms

Electrodynamics of Media

Contains reports on four research projects.Joint Services Electronics Programs (U. S. Army, U. S. Navy, and U. S. Air Force) under Contract DA 28-043-AMC-02536(E

Electrodynamics of Media

Contains reports on three research projects.Joint Services Electronics Programs (U. S. Army, U. S. Navy, and U. S. Air Force) under Contract DAAB07-71-C-0300U. S. Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories Contract F19628-70-C-006

The complement of protein kinases of the microsporidium Encephalitozoon cuniculi in relation to those of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Schizosaccharomyces pombe.

RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are.BACKGROUND: Microsporidia, parasitic fungi-related eukaryotes infecting many cell types in a wide range of animals (including humans), represent a serious health threat in immunocompromised patients. The 2.9 Mb genome of the microsporidium Encephalitozoon cuniculi is the smallest known of any eukaryote. Eukaryotic protein kinases are a large superfamily of enzymes with crucial roles in most cellular processes, and therefore represent potential drug targets. We report here an exhaustive analysis of the E. cuniculi genomic database aimed at identifying and classifying all protein kinases of this organism with reference to the kinomes of two highly-divergent yeast species, Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Schizosaccharomyces pombe. RESULTS: A database search with a multi-level protein kinase family hidden Markov model library led to the identification of 29 conventional protein kinase sequences in the E. cuniculi genome, as well as 3 genes encoding atypical protein kinases. The microsporidian kinome presents striking differences from those of other eukaryotes, and this minimal kinome underscores the importance of conserved protein kinases involved in essential cellular processes. Approximately 30% of its kinases are predicted to regulate cell cycle progression while another approximately 28% have no identifiable homologues in model eukaryotes and are likely to reflect parasitic adaptations. E. cuniculi lacks MAP kinase cascades and almost all protein kinases that are involved in stress responses, ion homeostasis and nutrient signalling in the model fungi S. cerevisiae and S. pombe, including AMPactivated protein kinase (Snf1), previously thought to be ubiquitous in eukaryotes. A detailed database search and phylogenetic analysis of the kinomes of the two model fungi showed that the degree of homology between their kinomes of approximately 85% is much higher than that previously reported. CONCLUSION: The E. cuniculi kinome is by far the smallest eukaryotic kinome characterised to date. The difficulty in assigning clear homology relationships for nine out of the twentynine microsporidian conventional protein kinases despite its compact genome reflects the phylogenetic distance between microsporidia and other eukaryotes. Indeed, the E. cuniculi genome presents a high proportion of genes in which evolution has been accelerated by up to four-fold. There are no orthologues of the protein kinases that constitute MAP kinase pathways and many other protein kinases with roles in nutrient signalling are absent from the E. cuniculi kinome. However, orthologous kinases can nonetheless be identified that correspond to members of the yeast kinomes with roles in some of the most fundamental cellular processes. For example, E. cuniculi has clear orthologues of virtually all the major conserved protein kinases that regulate the core cell cycle machinery (Aurora, Polo, DDK, CDK and Chk1). A comprehensive comparison of the homology relationships between the budding and fission yeast kinomes indicates that, despite an estimated 800 million years of independent evolution, the two model fungi share approximately 85% of their protein kinases. This will facilitate the annotation of many of the as yet uncharacterised fission yeast kinases, and also those of novel fungal genomes.Published versio

Ecological and geographical speciation in Lucilia bufonivora: The evolution of amphibian obligate parasitism

This is the final version. Available on open access from Elsevier via the DOI in this record. Lucilia (Diptera: Calliphoridae) is a genus of blowflies comprised largely of saprophagous and facultative parasites of livestock. Lucilia bufonivora, however, exhibits a unique form of obligate parasitism of amphibians, typically affecting wild hosts. The evolutionary route by which amphibian myiasis arose, however, is not well understood due to the low phylogenetic resolution in existing nuclear DNA phylogenies. Furthermore, the timing of when specificity for amphibian hosts arose in L. bufonivora is also unknown. In addition, this species was recently reported for the first time in North America (Canada) and, to date, no molecular studies have analysed the evolutionary relationships between individuals from Eastern and Western hemispheres. To provide broader insights into the evolution of the amphibian parasitic life history trait and to estimate when the trait first arose, a time-scaled phylogeny was inferred from a concatenated data set comprising mtDNA, nDNA and non-coding rDNA (COX1, per and ITS2 respectively). Specimens from Canada, the UK, Poland, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Germany were analysed, as well as individuals from its sister taxa, the saprophage Lucilia silvarum and a Nearctic species also implicated in amphibian myiasis, Lucilia elongata. Obligate amphibian parasitism appears to have arisen ~4 mya, likely as a result of niche displacement of a saprophagous/facultative parasite ancestor. Consistent paraphyly of L. bufonivora with respect to L. elongata across single-gene phylogenies and high mtDNA genetic distances between Nearctic and Palearctic individuals suggest on-going cryptic speciation facilitated by geographical isolation. These findings suggest that recent reports of L. bufonivora in the Nearctic do not constitute a recent introduction, but instead suggest that it remained unrecorded due to taxonomic confusion and low abundance. This is the first study to confirm the involvement of L. bufonivora in amphibian myiasis in Canada using DNA-based identification methods.Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología, MexicoPolish National Science Centr