OUTSIDE PERSPECTIVES ON AGRIBUSINESS RESEARCH, TEACHING, AND OUTREACH

Many of my thoughts in this paper come from the author's experience in conducting comprehensive reviews of agricultural economics departments. The author suggests the need to look at the forces affecting the demand for our products and be willing to challenge many of the myths about the structure and performance of the university system and the agribusiness system. Agriculture is losing a lot of its uniqueness and becoming part of the mainstream. Colleges of agriculture have changed considerably in the last 50 years; they will change even more in the next fifty years. What is our unique niche? How willing are we to adapt to its challenges? These questions must be answered in regard to the future of agribusiness research, teaching, and outreach.Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession, Agribusiness,

Substructure Discovery Using Minimum Description Length and Background Knowledge

The ability to identify interesting and repetitive substructures is an essential component to discovering knowledge in structural data. We describe a new version of our SUBDUE substructure discovery system based on the minimum description length principle. The SUBDUE system discovers substructures that compress the original data and represent structural concepts in the data. By replacing previously-discovered substructures in the data, multiple passes of SUBDUE produce a hierarchical description of the structural regularities in the data. SUBDUE uses a computationally-bounded inexact graph match that identifies similar, but not identical, instances of a substructure and finds an approximate measure of closeness of two substructures when under computational constraints. In addition to the minimum description length principle, other background knowledge can be used by SUBDUE to guide the search towards more appropriate substructures. Experiments in a variety of domains demonstrate SUBDUE's ability to find substructures capable of compressing the original data and to discover structural concepts important to the domain. Description of Online Appendix: This is a compressed tar file containing the SUBDUE discovery system, written in C. The program accepts as input databases represented in graph form, and will output discovered substructures with their corresponding value.Comment: See http://www.jair.org/ for an online appendix and other files accompanying this articl

Energy, Shading and Daylighting Analysis for the Austin Bergstrom International Airport Terminal

Our firm was under contract with the City of Austin, Texas to perform energy analysis and analysis of the daylighting potential within the New Austin Bergstrom International Airport Terminal. Design of the Passenger Terminal Facility for the New Austin Airport included large glass areas for viewing arriving and departing planes, the sky, and the surrounding terrain. The glass was envisioned to provide quality natural lighting for the terminal during daylight hours in order to improve the quality of the space and save energy throughout the usable life of the terminal. For the glass to achieve the design goals, adverse qualities were minimized and beneficial qualities must be enhanced. Using computer simulation, we studied the shading devices on the south clearstories to maximize the daylight and minimize problems of direct gain in a large commercial space. The study also included analysis of skylights above the baggage claim, indirect lighting of major spaces within the airport, and the controls of the artificial lights for integrating the efficient use of the available daylight. The energy, shading, and daylighting analysis includes analysis of a mix of low and high volume spaces. The daylight sources include glass walls, clearstories, and skylights

An LED-based Flasher System for VERITAS

We describe a flasher system designed for use in monitoring the gains of the photomultiplier tubes used in the VERITAS gamma-ray telescopes. This system uses blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs) so it can be operated at much higher rates than a traditional laser-based system. Calibration information can be obtained with better statistical precision with reduced loss of observing time. The LEDs are also much less expensive than a laser. The design features of the new system are presented, along with measurements made with a prototype mounted on one of the VERITAS telescopes.Comment: Accepted for publication in Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research

Chemical Stratification and Mercury Distribution of Meromictic Glacial Lake

Mercury (Hg) is a toxic metal, which is poisonous to humans and wildlife when found in large concentrations. Mercury is largely distributed in the environment as a result of emissions and direct releases from natural and anthropogenic sources. We study the vertical distribution of Hg species, redox, and water quality parameters in the meromictic Glacial Lake, Jamesville, NY. The lake is permanently stratified due to high salinity inputs of groundwater and does not experience outside disturbance in the lower stratum. Samples from the lake were taken in May and October 2014. The samples were analyzed for ions, organic and inorganic carbon, Hg, pH, temperature, dissolved oxygen, and additional in-situ parameters to depict the stratification. During spring, the lake maintained strong stratification and the transition between aerobic and anaerobic zones was abrupt, without a detectable anoxic zone. The aerobic mixolimnion had low concentrations of dissolved total Hg (0.54ng/L) and MeHg (0.09ng/L). Substantial accumulation of Hg species occurred in the anaerobic zone; dissolved total Hg concentration increased progressively to 6.98ng/L; dissolved MeHg concentrations peaked at 0.583ng/L at the uppermost part of the anaerobic monimolimnion. The accumulation of Hg species was associated with loss of dissolved oxygen, and elevated concentrations of dissolved organic carbon and sulfide. During fall, the lower layers of the mixolimnion became anoxic, with a clear zone of nitrate reduction; the monimolimnion remained anaerobic. A single strong peak of dissolved MeHg concentrations (2.59ng/L) was observed at the anoxic-anaerobic transition region, e.g. the depth below which nitrate is completely absent and sulfide is detected. This maximum is few meters below the oxic-anoxic transition zone, e.g. the depth below which dissolved oxygen is absent. During both sampling events, the peak in MeHg concentrations was associated with a deep chlorophyll maximum that ranged between 300-350µg/L

Extensive differential protein phosphorylation as intraerythrocytic Plasmodium falciparumschizonts develop into extracellular invasive merozoites

Pathology of the most lethal form of malaria is caused by Plasmodium falciparum asexual blood stages and initiated by merozoite invasion of erythrocytes. We present a phosphoproteome analysis of extracellular merozoites revealing 1765 unique phosphorylation sites including 785 sites not previously detected in schizonts. All MS data have been deposited in the ProteomeXchange with identifier PXD001684 (http://proteomecentral.proteomexchange.org/dataset/PXD001684). The observed differential phosphorylation between extra and intraerythrocytic life-cycle stages was confirmed using both phospho-site and phospho-motif specific antibodies and is consistent with the core motif [K/R]xx[pS/pT] being highly represented in merozoite phosphoproteins. Comparative bioinformatic analyses highlighted protein sets and pathways with established roles in invasion. Within the merozoite phosphoprotein interaction network a subnetwork of 119 proteins with potential roles in cellular movement and invasion was identified and suggested that it is coregulated by a further small subnetwork of protein kinase A (PKA), two calcium-dependent protein kinases (CDPKs), a phosphatidyl inositol kinase (PI3K), and a GCN2-like elF2-kinase with a predicted role in translational arrest and associated changes in the ubquitinome. To test this notion experimentally, we examined the overall ubiquitination level in intracellular schizonts versus extracellular merozoites and found it highly upregulated in merozoites. We propose that alterations in the phosphoproteome and ubiquitinome reflect a starvation-induced translational arrest as intracellular schizonts transform into extracellular merozoites

Self-monitoring for improving control of blood pressue in patients with hypertension

The objective of this review is to determine the effect of SBPM in adults with hypertension on blood pressure control as compared to OBPM or usual care

External Shear in Quadruply Imaged Lens Systems

We use publicly available N-body simulations and semi-analytic models of galaxy formation to estimate the levels of external shear due to structure near the lens in gravitational lens systems. We also describe two selection effects, specific to four-image systems, that enhance the probability of observing systems to have higher external shear. Ignoring additional contributions from "cosmic shear" and assuming that lens galaxies are not significantly flattened, we find that the mean shear at the position of a quadruple lens galaxy is 0.11, the rms shear is roughly 0.15, and there is roughly a 45% likelihood of external shear greater than 0.1. This is much larger than previous estimates and in good agreement with typical measured external shear. The higher shear primarily stems from the tendency of early-type galaxies, which are the majority of lenses, to reside in overdense regions.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, ApJ in press, minor revision

Toxoplasma gondii profilin does not stimulate an innate immune response through bovine or human TLR5

Toxoplasma gondii is responsible for one of the most prevalent infections in people. T. gondii profilin (TgPr) is a protein integral to parasite movement and cellular invasion. Murine TLR has been described to bind TgPr. Furthermore, more recently, human TLR5 has been described to recognise recombinant TgPr, as well as bacterial flagellin. In addition to infections in humans, T. gondii infects farm animals, but little information is available about its innate recognition. We aimed to investigate whether, similarly to their human orthologue, bovine and porcine TLR5 could also be stimulated by TgPr by using a combination of reporter cell lines expressing full length TLR5 from each species as well as primary cells. Although human and bovine TLR5-transfected cells responded to flagellin, no response was detected upon stimulation with profilin. Furthermore, TgPr failed to elicit IL-6 secretion in human peripheral blood mononuclear cells and CD14þ monocytes. In contrast, exposure of RAW cells, known to express TLR11 to TgPr, slightly increased the IL-6 response. Our data cast doubts on the possibility that profilin is a specific ligand for human TLR5 and bovine TLR5. This leaves the immunogenic properties of this potential target antigen uncharacterised outside of the murine system