THE UNITED STATES AND WORLD COTTON OUTLOOK

Crop Production/Industries,

The United States and World Cotton Outlook

Crop Production/Industries,

The United States and World Cotton Outlook

Crop Production/Industries,

The United States and World Cotton Outlook

Crop Production/Industries,

A Brief Motivational Intervention for Heavy Alcohol Use in Dental Practice Settings: Rationale and Development

Although brief alcohol interventions have proven effective in a variety of health care settings, the present article describes the development of the first brief intervention for heavy drinkers in dental practice. Elements of motivational interviewing and personalized normative feedback were incorporated in a 3- to 5-minute intervention delivered by dental hygienists. The intervention is guided by a one-page feedback report providing personalized normative feedback regarding the patient\u27s current oral health practices, their drinking in comparison to others, and oral cancer risk associated with current smoking and drinking. Future publications will present data regarding intervention effectiveness from an ongoing randomized trial

The DNA Helicase Activity of BLM Is Necessary for the Correction of the Genomic Instability of Bloom Syndrome Cells

Bloom syndrome (BS) is a rare autosomal recessive disorder characterized by growth deficiency, immunodeficiency, genomic instability, and the early development of cancers of many types. BLM, the protein encoded by BLM, the gene mutated in BS, is localized in nuclear foci and absent from BS cells. BLM encodes a DNA helicase, and proteins from three missense alleles lack displacement activity. BLM transfected into BS cells reduces the frequency of sister chromatid exchanges and restores BLM in the nucleus. Missense alleles fail to reduce the sister chromatid exchanges in transfected BS cells or restore the normal nuclear pattern. BLM complements a phenotype of a Saccharomyces cerevisiae sgs1 top3 strain, and the missense alleles do not. This work demonstrates the importance of the enzymatic activity of BLM for its function and nuclear localization pattern

Renewable energy in fisheries and aquaculture: Case studies from the United States

Fisheries and aquaculture are highly reliant on fossil fuels and must transition to renewable energy to reduce carbon emissions and meet global planetary heath goals. Here, we assessed total and renewable energy use in farmed catfish and wild-caught salmon, two of the largest seafood sectors in the United States (U.S.). Interviews were used to explore participants’ views of key barriers and opportunities to replace fossil fuel use. Modeled scenarios were used to assess changes in grid source energy and electricity costs for the farmed catfish sector using the U.S. EIA National Energy Modeling System. We found that renewable energy makes up 5% of direct energy use in catfish aquaculture in Mississippi and Alabama. Catfish industry interviewees indicate that cheap electricity costs and diurnal energy use are barriers to onsite implementation of renewables. Projected renewable energy use for the catfish sector could be as high as 41% of total direct energy use in 2050 under modeled scenarios, which would result in 86% lower CO2 emissions but 34% higher electricity costs. For wild-capture pink salmon from Prince William Sound, Alaska (AK) and sockeye salmon from Bristol Bay, AK, renewable energy makes up 2% and 0% of direct energy use, respectively. Wild-caught salmon industry interviewees identified the short duration of the fishing season as a barrier for onsite renewable energy, though there is a desire for more regional renewable energy technologies to lower electricity costs and increase reliability. Proposed renewable energy projects at utilities in fish processing towns in AK would only make modest improvements in the share of direct energy from renewables due to fuel use by fishing vessels. This is the first study to characterize current and potential renewable energy use among parts of the fisheries and aquaculture sectors in the U.S. We found that energy needs for fisheries and aquaculture are influenced by their often-remote location, production methods, and seasonal energy demands, which require context-specific solutions. There is the need for federal and state policies and incentives to shift energy sources used in these sectors to meet national and international climate change goals while supporting food security.publishedVersio

O VI Observations of the Onset of Convection Zones in Main-Sequence A Stars

If magnetic activity in outer stellar atmospheres is due to an interplay between rotation and subsurface convection, as is generally presumed, then one would not expect to observe indicators of activity in stars with T_eff > 8300 K. Any X-ray or ultraviolet line emission from hotter stars must be due either to a different mechanism or to an unresolved, active, binary companion. Due to their poor spatial resolution, X-ray instruments have been especially susceptible to source confusion. At wavelengths longward of 1216 Angstroms, the near ultraviolet spectra of stars hotter than this putative dividing line are dominated by photospheric continuum. We have used FUSE to obtain spectra of the subcoronal O VI emission lines, which lie at a wavelength where the photospheric continuum of the mid- and early-A stars is relatively weak. We observed 14 stars spanning a range in T_eff from 7720 to 10,000 K. Eleven of the 14 stars showed O VI emission lines, including 6 of the 8 targets with T_eff > 8300 K. At face value, this suggests that activity does not fall off with increasing temperature. However, the emission lines are narrower than expected from the projected rotational velocities of these rapidly-rotating stars, suggesting that the emission could come from unresolved late-type companions. Furthermore, the strength of the O VI emission is consistent with that expected from an unseen active K or M dwarf binary companinon, and the high x-ray to far uv luminosity ratios observed indicate that this must be the case. Our results are therefore consistent with earlier studies that have shown a rapid drop-off in activity at the radiative/convective boundary expected at T_eff about 8300 K, in agreement with conventional stellar structure models

On the multiple supernova population of Arp 299: constraints on progenitor properties and host galaxy star formation characteristics

Throughout the last 20 years 7 supernovae (SNe) have been discovered within Arp 299. One of these is unclassified, leaving 6 core-collapse events; 2 type II, 2 type Ib, a type IIb and one object of indistinct type; Ib/IIb. We analyse the relative numbers of these types, together with their positions with respect to host galaxy properties, to investigate implications for both progenitor characteristics and star formation (SF) properties. Our findings are: 1) the ratio of 'stripped envelope' (SE) events to other type II is higher than that found in the local Universe. 2) All SE SNe are more centrally concentrated within the system than the other type II. 3) All SN environments have similar metallicities and there are no significant metallicity gradients across the system. 4) The SE SNe all fall on bright SF regions while the other type II are found to occur away from bright HII regions. We draw two different -but non-mutually exclusive- interpretations on the system and its supernovae: 1) The distribution of SNe, and the relatively high fraction of types Ib and IIb events over other type II can be explained by the young age of the most recent SF in the system, where insufficient time has expired for the observed to match the 'true' relative SN rates. This explanation provides additional independent evidence that both types Ib and IIb SNe arise from progenitors of shorter stellar lifetime and hence higher mass than other type II. 2) Given the assumption that types Ib and IIb trace higher mass progenitor stars, the relatively high frequency of types Ib and IIb to other type II, and also the centralisation of the former over the latter with respect to host galaxy light implies that in the centrally peaked and enhanced SF within this system, the initial mass function is biased towards the production of high mass stars.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS. The abstract has been edited to fit within arXiv.org submission requirement

The Recent Star Formation in NGC 6822: an Ultraviolet Study

We characterize the star formation in the low-metallicity galaxy NGC 6822 over the past few hundred million years, using GALEX far-UV (FUV, 1344-1786 A) and near-UV (NUV, 1771-2831 A) imaging, and ground-based Ha imaging. From GALEX FUV image, we define 77 star-forming (SF) regions with area >860 pc^2, and surface brightness <=26.8 mag(AB)arcsec^-2, within 0.2deg (1.7kpc) of the center of the galaxy. We estimate the extinction by interstellar dust in each SF region from resolved photometry of the hot stars it contains: E(B-V) ranges from the minimum foreground value of 0.22mag up to 0.66+-0.21mag. The integrated FUV and NUV photometry, compared with stellar population models, yields ages of the SF complexes up to a few hundred Myr, and masses from 2x10^2 Msun to 1.5x10^6 Msun. The derived ages and masses strongly depend on the assumed type of interstellar selective extinction, which we find to vary across the galaxy. The total mass of the FUV-defined SF regions translates into an average star formation rate (SFR) of 1.4x10^-2 Msun/yr over the past 100 Myr, and SFR=1.0x10^-2 Msun/yr in the most recent 10 Myr. The latter is in agreement with the value that we derive from the Ha luminosity, SFR=0.008 Msun/yr. The SFR in the most recent epoch becomes higher if we add the SFR=0.02 Msun/yr inferred from far-IR measurements, which trace star formation still embedded in dust (age <= a few Myr).Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ, 21 pages, 6 figures, 3 table