Introducing Big Sagebrush into a Crested Wheatgrass Monoculture

Crested wheatgrass (Agropyron desertorum or A. cristatum) has been effectively used to stabilize arid and semi-arid range sites for decades. Reestablishing native plant materials into these areas is often desirable to increase wildlife habitat and ecological diversity. Due to its competitive nature, efforts to reestablish native plants into crested wheatgrass monocultures have had limited success. Tillage will control the grass but leaves the soil vulnerable to erosion and weed invasion. This publication will report on a trial conducted near Nephi, Utah to find a method of introducing native plants into a crested wheatgrass monoculture without subjecting the resource base to degradation in the conversion process. In this trial, the effect of chemically controlling crested wheatgrass before transplanting big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) was studied. Small container grown plants of sagebrush were transplanted either directly into a 60 year-old stand of crested wheatgrass or after chemically controlling the grass. Three different subspecies of big sagebrush; Basin big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata Nutt. ssp. tridentata), Mountain big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata Nutt. ssp. vaseyana (Rydb.) Beetle) and Wyoming big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata Nutt. ssp. wyomingensis Beetle & Young); were planted to see if there would be differences among subspecies. Four years of data indicate that controlling crested wheatgrass prior to transplanting resulted in higher sagebrush survival and faster establishment. There were some differences among sagebrush subspecies. Basin big sagebrush survived equally well with or without grass control but grew faster with grass control. Chemical control of the grass was important for both the survival and growth of Mountain big sage and Wyoming big sage

Trends in the availability and usage of electrophysical agents in physiotherapy practices from 1990 to 2010: A review

This is the Pre-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2012 Maney PublishingBackground: The use of electrophysical agents has a historically important role in physiotherapy practice. There are anecdotal reports that the availability and usage of electrotherapy modalities are declining, which may have implications for physiotherapy practice. The aim of this literature review was to provide scientific evidence on electrotherapy usage in the last 20 years by identifying trends in availability, use, and non-use of nine electrotherapeutic modalities in physiotherapy practices during 1990s and 2000s. Methods: Review of empirical studies published in the English language from 1990 to 2010 and identified through searching online bibliographic databases, which included: Medline/OvidSP, PubMed Central, CINAHL/EBSCOhost, ScienceDirect, Scopus, ISI Web of Science, and Google Scholar. Findings: In the last 20 years, ultrasound availability and usage show increasing trends in several countries. The availability and use of pulsed shortwave diathermy and laser have shown steady trends. Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation, interferential, and biofeedback availability and usage have shown increasing trends in the UK and decreasing trends in Australia and the Republic of Ireland. Trends of continuous shortwave diathermy availability and use are declining irrespective of the country of the study. The availability and usage of microwave diathermy and H-wave show steeply declining trends, while there is a sharp rise in their non-availability over the last several years. Conclusions: The availability and use of electrophysical agents have greatly changed in the last 20 years. Declining trends in the availability and usage along with increasing trend of non-availability of electrotherapy modalities may have implications for electrotherapy education, training, and practice in the coming years.This study was funded by Health & Safety Executive, UK (grant no. 4371/R47.022)

Multimodal Approach for Assessing Neuromotor Coordination in Schizophrenia Using Convolutional Neural Networks

This study investigates the speech articulatory coordination in schizophrenia subjects exhibiting strong positive symptoms (e.g. hallucinations and delusions), using two distinct channel-delay correlation methods. We show that the schizophrenic subjects with strong positive symptoms and who are markedly ill pose complex articulatory coordination pattern in facial and speech gestures than what is observed in healthy subjects. This distinction in speech coordination pattern is used to train a multimodal convolutional neural network (CNN) which uses video and audio data during speech to distinguish schizophrenic patients with strong positive symptoms from healthy subjects. We also show that the vocal tract variables (TVs) which correspond to place of articulation and glottal source outperform the Mel-frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCCs) when fused with Facial Action Units (FAUs) in the proposed multimodal network. For the clinical dataset we collected, our best performing multimodal network improves the mean F1 score for detecting schizophrenia by around 18% with respect to the full vocal tract coordination (FVTC) baseline method implemented with fusing FAUs and MFCCs.Comment: 5 pages. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2102.0705

Serologic Survey for Canine Infectious Diseases among Sympatric Swift Foxes (Vulpes velox) and Coyotes (Canis latrans) in Southeastern Colorado

Swift foxes (\\u27IL~VPGCY~ OX)a nd CoVi I otes (C~rrisl r~tr(~r~a.rse) sympatric canids distributed througllout rnany regions of tlie Great Plains of North America. ~h~ prevalence of canid diseases arnong these two species where they occur syiripatrically is presently unknown. Frorn January 1997 to January 2001, we collected blood salnples from 89 switt toxes and 122 coyotes oil the US Arlny Pifion Canyon Maneuver Site, 1,as Anilrlas County, SE lorado (USA). Seroprcvalence of ailtibodies against canine parvovirr~s (C13\i) was 71 % for adult (\u3e9 nlo old) ailcl 38% for jrlveilile (59 Ino old) swift fbxes. Adult (21 yr old) and juvenile (old) coyotes had a scroprevalence fo

Role of inherent soil characteristics in assessing soil health across Missouri

Soil health indicator values vary based on parent material, native vegetation, and other soil forming factors; therefore, useful interpretations require consideration of inherent soil characteristics. Our objective was to evaluate the distribution of soil health indicators across soil and climate gradients throughout the state of Missouri through a statewide cover crop cost-share program. Soil samples (0–7 cm) were collected from 5,300 agricultural fields and analyzed for several soil health indicators. Comparisons were made among six regions in the state based on Major Land Resource Area and county boundaries. Results varied for soil organic carbon (C), active C, potentially mineralizable nitrogen, water stable aggregates, and cation exchange capacity by region and corresponded with soil forming factors. Interpretation of soil health indicators must account for regional factors, recognizing that areas with different inherent values have a different potential for soil health

Cropping system and landscape characteristics influence long-term grain crop profitability

Converting from standard tillage or no-tillage cropping systems to more conservation-based cropping systems that include no-tillage, cover crops, and reduced agrichemical inputs must be profitable for large-scale adoption. Therefore, research was conducted at the central Mississippi River Basin site of the USDA Long-Term Agroecosystem Research Network from 1996 to 2009 to determine how cropping systems, landscape position, and depth to claypan affected net economic return. Treatments consisted of three cropping systems {mulch-till corn (Zea mays L.)–soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.], MTCS; no-till corn–soybean, NTCS; no-till corn–soybean–wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) (NTCSW)–cover crop} and three landscape positions (summit, backslope, and footslope). Within each cropping system, landscape position influenced the depth to claypan and net returns, which were greatest in the summit and footslope positions. Across landscape positions, net return for NTCS was US$252 and$119 ha−1 yr−1 greater than MTCS and NTCSW, respectively. Net return of corn in MTCS and NTCSW was negative, whereas corn in NTCS averaged $97 ha−1 yr−1. Only NTCS corn exhibited a positive linear response in net return to depth to claypan. Soybean was much more profitable than corn, and both NTCS and NTCSW soybean were less influenced by landscape position and had at least$252 ha−1 yr−1 greater return than did MTCS soybean across landscape position. Results suggest that converting from MTCS to NTCS would have large positive impacts on reducing within-field variability and increasing profitability in the region, and modifications to the NTCSW system are needed to improve profitability

Model and Sensor-Based Recommendation Approaches for In-Season Nitrogen Management in Corn

Nitrogen management for corn (Zea mays L.) may be improved by applying a portion of N in-season. This investigation was conducted to evaluate crop modeling (Maize-N) and active crop canopy sensing approaches for recommending in-season N fertilizer rates. These approaches were evaluated during 2012–2013 on 11 field sites, in Missouri, Nebraska, and North Dakota. Nitrogen management also included a no-N treatment (check) and a non-limiting N reference (all at planting). Nitrogen management treatments were assessed for two hybrids and at low and high seeding rates, arranged in a randomized complete block design. In 9 of 11 site-years, the sensor-based approach recommended lower in-season N rates than the model (collectively 59% less N), resulting in trends of higher partial factor productivity of nitrogen (PFPN) and higher agronomic efficiency (AE) than the model. However, yield was better protected by the model-based approach. In some situations, canopy sensing excelled at optimizing the N rate for localized conditions. With abnormally warm and moist soil conditions for the 2012 Nebraska sites and presumed high levels of inorganic N from mineralization, N application was appropriately reduced, resulting in no yield decrease and N savings compared to the non-limiting N reference. Depending on the site, both recommendation approaches were successful; a combination of model and sensor information may optimize in-season decision support for N recommendation