175 research outputs found
Mobilizing Greater Crop and Land Potentials Sustainably
The supply side of the food security engine is the way we farm. The current engine of
conventional tillage farming is faltering and needs to be replaced. This presentation will address
supply side issues of agriculture to meet future agricultural demands for food and industry using
the alternate no-till Conservation Agriculture (CA) paradigm (involving no-till farming with
mulch soil cover and diversified cropping) that is able to raise productivity sustainably and
efficiently, reduce inputs, regenerate degraded land, minimise soil erosion, and harness the flow
of ecosystem services. CA is an ecosystems approach to farming capable of enhancing not only
the economic and environmental performance of crop production and land management, but also
promotes a mindset change for producing ‘more from less’, the key attitude towards sustainable
production intensification. CA is now spreading globally in all continents at an annual rate of 10
Mha and covers some 157 Mha of cropland.
Today global agriculture produces enough food to feed three times the current population of
7.21 billion. In 1976, when the world population was 4.15 billion, world food production far
exceeded the amount necessary to feed that population. However, our urban and industrialised
lifestyle leads to wastage of food of some 30%-40%, as well as waste of enormous amount of
energy and protein while transforming crop-based food into animal-derived food; we have a
higher proportion of people than ever before who are obese; we continue to degrade our
ecosystems including much of our agricultural land of which some 400 Mha is reported to be
abandoned due to severe soil and land degradation; and yields of staple cereals appear to have
stagnated. These are signs of unsustainability at the structural level in the society, and it is at the
structural level, for both supply side and demand side, that we need transformed mind sets about
production, consumption and distribution.
CA not only provides the possibility of increased crop yields for the low input smallholder
farmer, it also provides a pro-poor rural and agricultural development model to support
agricultural intensification in an affordable manner. For the high output farmer, it offers greater
efficiency (productivity) and profit, resilience and stewardship. For farming anywhere, it
addresses the root causes of agricultural land degradation, sub-optimal ecological crop and land
potentials or yield ceilings, and poor crop phenotypic expressions or yield gaps.
As national economies expand and diversify, more people become integrated into the economy
and are able to access food. However, for those whose livelihoods continue to depend on
agriculture to feed themselves and the rest of the world population, the challenge is for agriculture
to produce the needed food and raw material for industry with minimum harm to the environment
and the society, and to produce it with maximum efficiency and resilience against abiotic and
biotic stresses, including those arising from climate change. There is growing empirical and
scientific evidence worldwide that the future global supplies of food and agricultural raw
materials can be assured sustainably at much lower environmental and economic cost by shifting
away from conventional tillage-based food and agriculture systems to no-till CA-based food and
agriculture systems. To achieve this goal will require effective national and global policy and
institutional support (including research and education)
Reproductive Outcomes and Endocrine Profile in Artificially Inseminated versus Embryo Transferred Cows
[EN] The increasing use of in vitro embryo production (IVP) followed by embryo transfer (ET), alongside with cryopreservation of embryos, has risen concerns regarding the possible altered pregnancy rates, calving or even neonatal mortality. One of the hypotheses for these alterations is the current culture conditions of the IVP. In an attempt to better mimic the physiological milieu, embryos were produced with female reproductive fluids (RF) as supplements to culture medium, and another group of embryos were supplemented with bovine serum albumin (BSA) as in vitro control. Embryos were cryopreserved and transferred while, in parallel, an in vivo control (artificial insemination, AI) with the same bull used for IVP was included. An overview on pregnancy rates, recipients’ hormonal levels, parturition, and resulting calves were recorded. Results show much similarity between groups in terms of pregnancy rates, gestation length and calves’ weight. Nonetheless, several differences on hormonal levels were noted between recipients carrying AI embryos especially when compared to BSA. Some calving issues and neonatal mortality were observed in both IVP groups. In conclusion, most of the parameters studied were similar between both types of IVP derived embryos and the in vivo-derived embryos, suggesting that the IVP technology used was efficient enough for the safe production of calvesSIThis research was funded by European Union, Horizon 2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie Action, grant number REPBIOTECH675526 and as well as by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Spain), grants number AGL2015-66341-R & AGL2015-70140-R MINECO-FEDER and Fundación Séneca, grant number 20040/GERM/1
Making Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptability Real in Africa with Conservation Agriculture
In this report, the authors have gathered essential information on how the agricultural sector can respond to climate change through Conservation Agriculture (CA). This document aims to serve as a basis for decision-making based on science and agricultural experimentation in Africa
Trends in Loss to Follow-Up among Migrant Workers on Antiretroviral Therapy in a Community Cohort in Lesotho
BACKGROUND: The provision of antiretroviral therapy (ART) to migrant populations raises particular challenges with respect to ensuring adequate treatment support, adherence, and retention in care. We assessed rates of loss to follow-up for migrant workers compared with non-migrant workers in a routine treatment programme in Morjia, Lesotho. DESIGN: All adult patients (≥18 years) initiating ART between January 1, 2008, and December 31, 2008, and followed up until the end of 2009, were included in the study. We described rates of loss to follow-up according to migrant status by Kaplan-Meier estimates, and used Poisson regression to model associations between migrant status and loss to follow-up controlling for potential confounders identified a priori. RESULTS: Our cohort comprised 1185 people, among whom 12% (148) were migrant workers. Among the migrant workers, median age was 36.1 (29.6-45.9) and the majority (55%) were male. We found no statistically significant differences between baseline characteristics and migrant status. Rates of lost to follow up were similar between migrants and non-migrants in the first 3 months but differences increased thereafter. Between 3 and 6 months after initiating antiretroviral therapy, migrants had a 2.78-fold increased rate of defaulting (95%CI 1.15-6.73); between 6 and 12 months the rate was 2.36 times greater (95%CI 1.18-4.73), whereas after 1 year the rate was 6.69 times greater (95%CI 3.18-14.09). CONCLUSIONS: Our study highlights the need for programme implementers to take into account the specific challenges that may influence continuity of antiretroviral treatment and care for migrant populations
Renal Safety of a Tenofovir-Containing First Line Regimen: Experience from an Antiretroviral Cohort in Rural Lesotho
Current guidelines contraindicate TDF use when creatinine clearance (CrCl) falls below 50 ml/min. We report prevalence of abnormal renal function at baseline and factors associated with abnormal renal function from a community cohort in Lesotho
CCP4 Cloud for structure determination and project management in macromolecular crystallography
Nowadays, progress in the determination of three-dimensional macromolecular structures from diffraction images is achieved partly at the cost of increasing data volumes. This is due to the deployment of modern high-speed, high-resolution detectors, the increased complexity and variety of crystallographic software, the use of extensive databases and high-performance computing. This limits what can be accomplished with personal, offline, computing equipment in terms of both productivity and maintainability. There is also an issue of long-term data maintenance and availability of structure-solution projects as the links between experimental observations and the final results deposited in the PDB. In this article, CCP4 Cloud, a new front-end of the CCP4 software suite, is presented which mitigates these effects by providing an online, cloud-based environment for crystallographic computation. CCP4 Cloud was developed for the efficient delivery of computing power, database services and seamless integration with web resources. It provides a rich graphical user interface that allows project sharing and long-term storage for structure-solution projects, and can be linked to data-producing facilities. The system is distributed with the CCP4 software suite version 7.1 and higher, and an online publicly available instance of CCP4 Cloud is provided by CCP4.The following funding is acknowledged: Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (grant No. BB/L007037/1; grant No. BB/S007040/1; grant No. BB/S007083/1; grant No. BB/S005099/1; grant No. BB/S007105/1; award No. BBF020384/1); Medical Research Council (grant No.MC_UP_A025_1012; grant No. MC_U105184325); Ro¨ntgenA˚ ngstro¨m Cluster (grant No. 349-2013-597); Nederlandse Wetenschappelijke Organisatie (grant No. TKI 16219)
Cognitive Performance and Heart Rate Variability: The Influence of Fitness Level
In the present study, we investigated the relation between cognitive performance and heart rate variability as a function of fitness level. We measured the effect of three cognitive tasks (the psychomotor vigilance task, a temporal orienting task, and a duration discrimination task) on the heart rate variability of two groups of participants: a high-fit group and a low-fit group. Two major novel findings emerged from this study. First, the lowest values of heart rate variability were found during performance of the duration discrimination task, compared to the other two tasks. Second, the results showed a decrement in heart rate variability as a function of the time on task, although only in the low-fit group. Moreover, the high-fit group showed overall faster reaction times than the low-fit group in the psychomotor vigilance task, while there were not significant differences in performance between the two groups of participants in the other two cognitive tasks. In sum, our results highlighted the influence of cognitive processing on heart rate variability. Importantly, both behavioral and physiological results suggested that the main benefit obtained as a result of fitness level appeared to be associated with processes involving sustained attention.This research was supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Educación y Cultura with a predoctoral grant (FPU-AP2010-3630) to the first author, Spanish grants SEJ2007-63645 from the Junta de Andalucía to Daniel Sanabria, Mikel Zabala and Esther Morales, and the CSD2008-00048 CONSOLIDER INGENIO (Dirección General de Investigación) to Daniel Sanabria
Intrusion Detection Systems Based on Artificial Intelligence Techniques in Wireless Sensor Networks
[EN] Intrusion detection system (IDS) is regarded as the second line of defense against network anomalies and threats. IDS plays an important role in network security. There are many techniques which are used to design IDSs for specific scenario and applications. Artificial intelligence techniques are widely used for threats detection. This paper presents a critical study on genetic algorithm, artificial immune, and artificial neural network (ANN) based IDSs techniques used in wireless sensor network (WSN)The authors extend their appreciation to the Distinguished Scientist Fellowship Program(DSFP) at King Saud University for funding this research.Alrajeh, NA.; Lloret, J. (2013). Intrusion Detection Systems Based on Artificial Intelligence Techniques in Wireless Sensor Networks. International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks. 2013(351047):1-6. https://doi.org/10.1155/2013/351047S16201335104
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