Adoption of Technology, Management Practices, and Production Systems in U.S. Milk Production

We examine U.S. dairy farmer adopter characteristics and adoption rates of eleven technologies. Excepting grazing, technologies were generally adopted complementarily. Four were used on higher percentages of farms in 2005 than 2000. The interaction of farm size with adoption suggests greater percentages of milk being produced under each, excepting grazing.Technically Complementary, Technology, Management Practices, Production System, Farm Management, Livestock Production/Industries, Production Economics,

Genome-wide detection of segmental duplications and potential assembly errors in the human genome sequence

BACKGROUND: Previous studies have suggested that recent segmental duplications, which are often involved in chromosome rearrangements underlying genomic disease, account for some 5% of the human genome. We have developed rapid computational heuristics based on BLAST analysis to detect segmental duplications, as well as regions containing potential sequence misassignments in the human genome assemblies. RESULTS: Our analysis of the June 2002 public human genome assembly revealed that 107.4 of 3,043.1 megabases (Mb) (3.53%) of sequence contained segmental duplications, each with size equal or more than 5 kb and 90% identity. We have also detected that 38.9 Mb (1.28%) of sequence within this assembly is likely to be involved in sequence misassignment errors. Furthermore, we have identified a significant subset (199,965 of 2,327,473 or 8.6%) of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the public databases that are not true SNPs but are potential paralogous sequence variants. CONCLUSION: Using two distinct computational approaches, we have identified most of the sequences in the human genome that have undergone recent segmental duplications. Near-identical segmental duplications present a major challenge to the completion of the human genome sequence. Potential sequence misassignments detected in this study would require additional efforts to resolve

Land cover influence on catchment scale subsurface water storage investigated by multiple methods:Implications for UK Natural Flood Management

Study region: United Kingdom (UK). Study Focus: ‘Natural flood management’ (NFM) schemes manipulating land use and other catchment features to control runoff are increasingly promoted across the UK. Catchment water storage and mixing processes influence runoff, but our understanding of the effects of land cover change on these processes is still limited. This study combined hydrometric, isotopic and geochemical measurements to investigate land cover versus potential topographic, soil and geological controls. It compared storage-discharge dynamics in nine nested catchments within a 67 km2 managed upland catchment in southern Scotland. Storage and mixing dynamics were characterised from hydrometric data using recession analysis and from isotopic data using mean transit time and young water fraction estimates. To give information on water sources, groundwater fraction was estimated from end member mixing analysis based on acid neutralising capacity.New hydrological insights: The analysis showed low but variable sub-catchment scale dynamic storage (16–200 mm), mean transit times (134–370 days) and groundwater fractions (0.20–0.52 of annual stream runoff). Soil hydraulic conductivity was most significantly positively correlated with storage and mixing measures, whilst percentage forest cover was inversely correlated. Any effects of forest cover on increasing catchment infiltration and storage are masked by soil hydraulic properties even in the most responsive catchments. This highlights the importance of understanding dominant controls on catchment storage when using tree planting as a flood management strategy

Generating contrast in hyperpolarized 13C MRI using ligand–receptor interactions

We report the imaging of β-cyclodextrin/benzoic acid binding at 14T using hyperpolarized 13C magnetic resonance (MR). Benzoic acid was polarized using a dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) approach and combined with β-cyclodextrin in aqueous solution. As anticipated, decreases in the spin-lattice relaxation constant (T1) were observed with decreases in the ligand/ receptor ratio. The calculated log K was approximately 1.7, similar to previously reported binding constants. Hyperpolarized [1-13C] benzoic acid was used to interrogate solutions of variable β-cyclodextrin concentration, with the mixtures imaged at 14T using a 3D frequency-selective MR sequence. Differences in β-cyclodextrin concentration were easily visualized. These results suggest that hyperpolarized 13C MR could be used in vivo to determine the presence, and density of receptors for a given ligand-receptor pair

A large data resource of genomic copy number variation across neurodevelopmental disorders

Copy number variations (CNVs) are implicated across many neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) and contribute to their shared genetic etiology. Multiple studies have attempted to identify shared etiology among NDDs, but this is the first genome-wide CNV analysis across autism spectrum disorder (ASD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), schizophrenia (SCZ), and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) at once. Using microarray (Affymetrix CytoScan HD), we genotyped 2,691 subjects diagnosed with an NDD (204 SCZ, 1,838 ASD, 427 ADHD and 222 OCD) and 1,769 family members, mainly parents. We identified rare CNVs, defined as those found in \u3c0.1% of 10,851 population control samples. We found clinically relevant CNVs (broadly defined) in 284 (10.5%) of total subjects, including 22 (10.8%) among subjects with SCZ, 209 (11.4%) with ASD, 40 (9.4%) with ADHD, and 13 (5.6%) with OCD. Among all NDD subjects, we identified 17 (0.63%) with aneuploidies and 115 (4.3%) with known genomic disorder variants. We searched further for genes impacted by different CNVs in multiple disorders. Examples of NDD-associated genes linked across more than one disorder (listed in order of occurrence frequency) are NRXN1, SEH1L, LDLRAD4, GNAL, GNG13, MKRN1, DCTN2, KNDC1, PCMTD2, KIF5A, SYNM, and long non-coding RNAs: AK127244 and PTCHD1-AS. We demonstrated that CNVs impacting the same genes could potentially contribute to the etiology of multiple NDDs. The CNVs identified will serve as a useful resource for both research and diagnostic laboratories for prioritization of variants

Discovery of Human Inversion Polymorphisms by Comparative Analysis of Human and Chimpanzee DNA Sequence Assemblies

With a draft genome-sequence assembly for the chimpanzee available, it is now possible to perform genome-wide analyses to identify, at a submicroscopic level, structural rearrangements that have occurred between chimpanzees and humans. The goal of this study was to investigate chromosomal regions that are inverted between the chimpanzee and human genomes. Using the net alignments for the builds of the human and chimpanzee genome assemblies, we identified a total of 1,576 putative regions of inverted orientation, covering more than 154 mega-bases of DNA. The DNA segments are distributed throughout the genome and range from 23 base pairs to 62 mega-bases in length. For the 66 inversions more than 25 kilobases (kb) in length, 75% were flanked on one or both sides by (often unrelated) segmental duplications. Using PCR and fluorescence in situ hybridization we experimentally validated 23 of 27 (85%) semi-randomly chosen regions; the largest novel inversion confirmed was 4.3 mega-bases at human Chromosome 7p14. Gorilla was used as an out-group to assign ancestral status to the variants. All experimentally validated inversion regions were then assayed against a panel of human samples and three of the 23 (13%) regions were found to be polymorphic in the human genome. These polymorphic inversions include 730 kb (at 7p22), 13 kb (at 7q11), and 1 kb (at 16q24) fragments with a 5%, 30%, and 48% minor allele frequency, respectively. Our results suggest that inversions are an important source of variation in primate genome evolution. The finding of at least three novel inversion polymorphisms in humans indicates this type of structural variation may be a more common feature of our genome than previously realized

Climate forcing of unprecedented intense-hurricane activity in the last 2000 years

© The Author(s), 2015. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Earth's Future 3 (2015): 49–65, doi:10.1002/2014EF000274.How climate controls hurricane variability has critical implications for society is not well understood. In part, our understanding is hampered by the short and incomplete observational hurricane record. Here we present a synthesis of intense-hurricane activity from the western North Atlantic over the past two millennia, which is supported by a new, exceptionally well-resolved record from Salt Pond, Massachusetts (USA). At Salt Pond, three coarse grained event beds deposited in the historical interval are consistent with severe hurricanes in 1991 (Bob), 1675, and 1635 C.E., and provide modern analogs for 32 other prehistoric event beds. Two intervals of heightened frequency of event bed deposition between 1400 and 1675 C.E. (10 events) and 150 and 1150 C.E. (23 events), represent the local expression of coherent regional patterns in intense-hurricane–induced event beds. Our synthesis indicates that much of the western North Atlantic appears to have been active between 250 and 1150 C.E., with high levels of activity persisting in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico until 1400 C.E. This interval was one with relatively warm sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the main development region (MDR). A shift in activity to the North American east coast occurred ca. 1400 C.E., with more frequent severe hurricane strikes recorded from The Bahamas to New England between 1400 and 1675 C.E. A warm SST anomaly along the western North Atlantic, rather than within the MDR, likely contributed to the later active interval being restricted to the east coast.Funding was provided by US National Science Foundation (awards 0903020 and 1356708), the Risk Prediction Initiative at the Bermuda Institute for Ocean Sciences (BIOS), US Department of Energy National Institute for Climate Change Research, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (award NA11OAR431010), and the Dalio Explore Fund

Complex biomarker discovery in neuroimaging data: Finding a needle in a haystack

AbstractNeuropsychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and Alzheimer's disease are major public health problems. However, despite decades of research, we currently have no validated prognostic or diagnostic tests that can be applied at an individual patient level. Many neuropsychiatric diseases are due to a combination of alterations that occur in a human brain rather than the result of localized lesions. While there is hope that newer imaging technologies such as functional and anatomic connectivity MRI or molecular imaging may offer breakthroughs, the single biomarkers that are discovered using these datasets are limited by their inability to capture the heterogeneity and complexity of most multifactorial brain disorders. Recently, complex biomarkers have been explored to address this limitation using neuroimaging data. In this manuscript we consider the nature of complex biomarkers being investigated in the recent literature and present techniques to find such biomarkers that have been developed in related areas of data mining, statistics, machine learning and bioinformatics