Sustainable development of smallholder crop-livestock farming in developing countries

Meeting the growing demand for animal-sourced food, prompted by population growth and increases in average per-capita income in low-income countries, is a major challenge. Yet, it also presents significant potential for agricultural growth, economic development, and reduction of poverty in rural areas. The main constraints to livestock producers taking advantage of growing markets include; lack of forage and feed gaps, communal land tenure, limited access to land and water resources, weak institutions, poor infrastructure and environmental degradation. To improve rural livelihood and food security in smallholder crop-livestock farming systems, concurrent work is required to address issues regarding efficiency of production, risk within systems and development of whole value chain systems. This paper provides a review of several forage basedstudies in tropical and non-tropical dry areas of the developing countries. A central tenet of this paper is that forages have an essential role in agricultural productivity, environmental sustainability and livestock nutrition in smallholder mixed farming systems

Next Generation Solar Array Technologies for Small Satellites

Recent advances in Shape Memory Alloy (SMA), Elastic Memory Composites (EMC), and ultra- light composites along with thin-film Copper-Indium- Diselinide (CIS) photovoltaics have offered the potential to provide solar array systems for small satellites that are significantly lighter than the current state of the practice. The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Langley, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and Lockheed Martin are jointly sponsoring an effort that will develop and, in partnership with AeroAstro, demonstrate advanced technologies for solar array applications. These technologies will result in advances that include cost, weight, risk, reliability, and power. Conventional state-of-the-practice solar arrays utilize rigid honeycomb panels to provide the structural support for the crystalline Silicon (Si) or Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) solar cells. Rigid composite panel structural and manufacturing methods have placed a practical producible limit on the power to weight efficiency of today’s solar panels. This limit is about 60 Watts per kilogram (W/kg). New technologies are needed to break this power to weight barrier and meet future DOD and NASA space power requirements. A potential solution to this problem, are the technologies that are being developed under the Lightweight Flexible Solar Array (LFSA) program. The LFSA will demonstrate key technologies on four space flights. The first space opportunity consisted of a flight experiment of a Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) deployment hinge that was demonstrated on the Space Shuttle Columbia (STS-93) in July 1999. The second flight opportunity consisted of a sub-scale twopanel solar array that was demonstrated on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 spacecraft in November 2000. The third and fourth flight opportunities will transition thin-film solar arrays into SSC02-II-2 Fosness, Eugene 2 16th Annual/USU Conference on Small Satellites operational spacecraft systems, specifically on the AeroAstro/Astronautic Technology Sdn. Bhd. (ATSB) Small Payload ORbit Transfer (SPORT™) vehicle in 2003 and the Team Encounter solar sail in 2004. The synergistic merging of the new, innovative technologies into an advanced lightweight thin- film solar array will meet the requirements of the emerging next generation of small satellites. The implementation of these new techno logies directed at lightweight solar arrays will result in significant weight and volume reductions over current satellite systems. The SMA devices will provide a controlled shock-less deployment of the solar array and improved testability due to mechanism re-set capability. Additionally, the SMA actuators will eliminate or minimize deployment motors, mechanisms, and part count. The LFSA program is a pathfinder for next generation rollout arrays that increase specific power densities to \u3e200 W/kg

Herbaceous Tropical Legume Integration into Small-Holder Crop-Livestock Systems in Eastern Indonesia: Results of 10-Years of Multi-Disciplinary Systems Research

Integration a forage legume into crop-livestock systems of Eastern Indonesia was tested to establish the capacity to improve nitrogen supply and yields of staple cereal crops (maize and rice) and allow for intensification of beef production to ultimately increase farm income and alleviate rural poverty in the region. Species evaluation sites across a diversity of environments showed Clitoria ternatea (butterfly pea) to be the most resilient and adaptable forage legume for use in association with cropping systems. Crop rotation experiments demonstrated that legumes grown in rotation with maize or rice can increase grain yields by 50% where legume was cut and removed, and by 90% where legume biomass was retained – the legume providing the equivalent of 100-150 kg of urea fertiliser. Forage establishment and cutting management were shown to be critical to maximising legume productivity but labour inputs required are important constraints. Lower-labour options can be used effectively without dramatically compromising productivity. Providing legumes as supplements to cattle have been shown to have significant benefits for livestock productivity in various production systems; preventing liveweight losses of reproductive cows during the dry season, doubling calf growth rates and halving calf mortality, and increasing growth rates of growing cattle by 0.3-0.5 kg LW/d. Whole-farm bioeconomic modelling and participatory on-farm evaluation has found that livestock-oriented farmers with available land resources will benefit most from forage legumes with potential increases of farm income of up to 30%. Local seed production is critical for ongoing use of herbaceous forage legumes, and our research has refined locally relevant recommendations for agronomy for seed production methods and processing. Our research has confirmed that herbaceous forage legumes can be integrated into cropping systems to improve crop yields, livestock production and livelihoods of small-holder farmers in East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia

Segmentation of British Sign Language (BSL): Mind the gap!

This study asks how users of British Sign Language (BSL) recognize individual signs in connected sign sequences. We examined whether this is achieved through modality-specific or modality-general segmentation procedures. A modality-specific feature of signed languages is that, during continuous signing, there are salient transitions between sign locations. We used the sign-spotting task to ask if and how BSL signers use these transitions in segmentation. A total of 96 real BSL signs were preceded by nonsense signs which were produced in either the target location or another location (with a small or large transition). Half of the transitions were within the same major body area (e.g., head) and half were across body areas (e.g., chest to hand). Deaf adult BSL users (a group of natives and early learners, and a group of late learners) spotted target signs best when there was a minimal transition and worst when there was a large transition. When location changes were present, both groups performed better when transitions were to a different body area than when they were within the same area. These findings suggest that transitions do not provide explicit sign-boundary cues in a modality-specific fashion. Instead, we argue that smaller transitions help recognition in a modality-general way by limiting lexical search to signs within location neighbourhoods, and that transitions across body areas also aid segmentation in a modality-general way, by providing a phonotactic cue to a sign boundary. We propose that sign segmentation is based on modality-general procedures which are core language-processing mechanisms

EIFiso4G augments the synthesis of specific plant proteins involved in normal chloroplast function

Copyright © 2019 American Society of Plant Biologists. All rights reserved. The plant-specific translation initiation complex eIFiso4F is encoded by three genes in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana)-genes encoding the cap binding protein eIFiso4E (eifiso4e) and two isoforms of the large subunit scaffolding protein eIFiso4G (i4g1 and i4g2). To quantitate phenotypic changes, a phenomics platform was used to grow wild-type and mutant plants (i4g1, i4g2, i4e, i4g1 × i4g2, and i4g1 × i4g2 × i4e [i4f]) under various light conditions. Mutants lacking both eIFiso4G isoforms showed the most obvious phenotypic differences from the wild type. Two-dimensional differential gel electrophoresis and mass spectrometry were used to identify changes in protein levels in plants lacking eIFiso4G. Four of the proteins identified as measurably decreased and validated by immunoblot analysis were two light harvesting complex binding proteins 1 and 3, Rubisco activase, and carbonic anhydrase. The observed decreased levels for these proteins were not the direct result of decreased transcription or protein instability. Chlorophyll fluorescence induction experiments indicated altered quinone reduction kinetics for the double and triple mutant plants with significant differences observed for absorbance, trapping, and electron transport. Transmission electron microscopy analysis of the chloroplasts in mutant plants showed impaired grana stacking and increased accumulation of starch granules consistent with some chloroplast proteins being decreased. Rescue of the i4g1 × i4g2 plant growth phenotype and increased expression of the validated proteins to wild-type levels was obtained by overexpression of eIFiso4G1. These data suggest a direct and specialized role for eIFiso4G in the synthesis of a subset of plant proteins

Sentence Repetition in Deaf Children with Specific Language Impairment in British Sign Language

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) perform poorly on sentence repetition tasks across different spoken languages, but until now, this methodology has not been investigated in children who have SLI in a signed language. Users of a natural sign language encode different sentence meanings through their choice of signs and by altering the sequence and inflections of these signs. Grammatical information is expressed through movement and configurational changes of the hands and face. The visual modality thus influences how grammatical morphology and syntax are instantiated. How would language impairment impact on the acquisition of these types of linguistic devices in child signers? We investigated sentence repetition skills in a group of 11 deaf children who display SLI in British Sign Language (BSL) and 11 deaf controls with no language impairment who were matched for age and years of BSL exposure. The SLI group was significantly less accurate on an overall accuracy score, and they repeated lexical items, overall sentence meaning, sign order, facial expressions, and verb morphological structures significantly less accurately than controls. This pattern of language deficits is consistent with the characterization of SLI in spoken languages even though expression is in a different modality. We conclude that explanations of SLI, and of poor sentence repetition by children with this disorder, must be able to account for both the spoken and signed modalities

Patient and public involvement in health literacy interventions: a mapping review

Background: Health literacy is a critical mediating factor that impacts on the health of older adults. Patient and public involvement in health and social care research, policy and design of care delivery is one mechanism that can promote production of better health literacy. This mapping review looks for and describes practices, concepts and methods that have been reported involving patients, public and (non-researcher) professionals in the development and design of health literacy interventions for older people. Methods: Studies that aimed to improve health literacy were identified within a previously created compatible inventory of health behaviour studies for older people. Articles were screened for whether they addressed health literacy and featured involvement of stakeholders other than investigators and patients. Two reviewers independently read each study to identify any patient, public and professional involvement in the research process. We also noted some aspects of outcomes. Results: Twenty-two studies included patient, public and/or professional involvement in at least one research domain: design, management or evaluation. Involvement included volunteers, older people, professionals, patients, and community representatives. All studies were driven by an organisational or biomedical agenda. Conclusions: Patient, public and professional involvement wasrarely reported in studies on health literacy interventions for older people. This could help explain why some interventions fail to improve health literacy in older people. Key words – health literacy intervention research, older people, patient and public involvement, mapping revie

Plasma Dynamics

Contains reports on four research projects.National Science Foundation (Grant ECS82-13485)University of Maryland (Subcontract A200728)U.S. Air Force - Office of Scientific Research (Grant AFOSR-84-0026B)U.S. Department of Energy (Contract DE-ACO2-78-ET-51013)National Science Foundation (Grant ECS82-13430

Research specialties as emergent phenomena: Connecting emergence theory and scientometrics

This short paper represents an initial effort to connect the emergence theory literature with the bibliometric, informetric, and scientometic literatures. It begins with a prominent definition of emergence, and then connects each of the components of this definition with the relevant insights about the development of new scientific and technical concepts or research specialties. Finally, it concludes with a discussion of the relationship between these two distinct areas of scholarly inquiry and the need for further exploration of this intersection.Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) viapublished or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe