Using Birdsfoot Trefoil in Kentucky Pastures

Birdsfoot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus L.) is an excellent pasture legume in the Corn Belt and in northeast United states . It has usually been considered too poorly adapted to Kentucky to merit trial by the farmers. Observations and grazing results in Woodford county during the last 14 years, however, indicate that this view is no longer valid. A grazing trial was established in 1954, with birdsfoot trefoil and Kentucky bluegrass as one of three mixtures used. Trefoil was seeded alone in the spring, and an excellent stand was obtained. Bluegrass was drilled in the established trefoil in September 1954. There were four 4-acre experimental pastures of trefoil-bluegrass and an additional 6-acre field which was used as a reserve pasture

Some Observations and Comments on Birdsfoot Trefoil

Farmer\u27s Bulletin No. 2191, TREFOIL PRODUCTION FOR PASTURE AND HAY, was released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in July, 1967. This publication noted that acreages of trefoil in the U.S. increased from 770,000 in 1957 to over 2 million acres in 1967. This bulletin is an excellent guide to kinds of trefoils, to the different varieties available, and to general production practices in obtaining stands and in managing this legume. It is stated in the bulletin that birdsfoot trefoil is not recommended south of a line drawn from the Nebraska-Kansas border to the east coast, except at higher elevations. (The very northern tip of Kentucky is about 70 miles south of the Nebraska-Kansas line.

Models of Individual Blue Stragglers

This chapter describes the current state of models of individual blue stragglers. Stellar collisions, binary mergers (or coalescence), and partial or ongoing mass transfer have all been studied in some detail. The products of stellar collisions retain memory of their parent stars and are not fully mixed. Very high initial rotation rates must be reduced by an unknown process to allow the stars to collapse to the main sequence. The more massive collision products have shorter lifetimes than normal stars of the same mass, while products between low mass stars are long-lived and look very much like normal stars of their mass. Mass transfer can result in a merger, or can produce another binary system with a blue straggler and the remnant of the original primary. The products of binary mass transfer cover a larger portion of the colour-magnitude diagram than collision products for two reasons: there are more possible configurations which produce blue stragglers, and there are differing contributions to the blended light of the system. The effects of rotation may be substantial in both collision and merger products, and could result in significant mixing unless angular momentum is lost shortly after the formation event. Surface abundances may provide ways to distinguish between the formation mechanisms, but care must be taking to model the various mixing mechanisms properly before drawing strong conclusions. Avenues for future work are outlined.Comment: Chapter 12, in Ecology of Blue Straggler Stars, H.M.J. Boffin, G. Carraro & G. Beccari (Eds), Astrophysics and Space Science Library, Springe

Mitochondrial phylogeography and demographic history of the Vicuña: implications for conservation

The vicuña (Vicugna vicugna; Miller, 1924) is a conservation success story, having recovered from near extinction in the 1960s to current population levels estimated at 275 000. However, lack of information about its demographic history and genetic diversity has limited both our understanding of its recovery and the development of science-based conservation measures. To examine the evolution and recent demographic history of the vicuña across its current range and to assess its genetic variation and population structure, we sequenced mitochondrial DNA from the control region (CR) for 261 individuals from 29 populations across Peru, Chile and Argentina. Our results suggest that populations currently designated as Vicugna vicugna vicugna and Vicugna vicugna mensalis comprise separate mitochondrial lineages. The current population distribution appears to be the result of a recent demographic expansion associated with the last major glacial event of the Pleistocene in the northern (18 to 22°S) dry Andes 14–12 000 years ago and the establishment of an extremely arid belt known as the 'Dry Diagonal' to 29°S. Within the Dry Diagonal, small populations of V. v. vicugna appear to have survived showing the genetic signature of demographic isolation, whereas to the north V. v. mensalis populations underwent a rapid demographic expansion before recent anthropogenic impacts

Evo-devo of human adolescence: beyond disease models of early puberty

Despite substantial heritability in pubertal development, much variation remains to be explained, leaving room for the influence of environmental factors to adjust its phenotypic trajectory in the service of fitness goals. Utilizing evolutionary development biology (evo-devo), we examine adolescence as an evolutionary life-history stage in its developmental context. We show that the transition from the preceding stage of juvenility entails adaptive plasticity in response to energy resources, other environmental cues, social needs of adolescence and maturation toward youth and adulthood. Using the evolutionary theory of socialization, we show that familial psychosocial stress fosters a fast life history and reproductive strategy rather than early maturation being just a risk factor for aggression and delinquency. Here we explore implications of an evolutionary-developmental-endocrinological-anthropological framework for theory building, while illuminating new directions for research

Comparative Evaluation of Light-Trap Catches, Electric Motor Mosquito Catches and Human Biting Catches of Anopheles in the Three Gorges Reservoir

The mosquito sampling efficiency of light-trap catches and electric motor mosquito catches were compared with that of human biting catches in the Three Gorges Reservoir. There was consistency in the sampling efficiency between light-trap catches and human biting catches for Anopheles sinensis (r = 0.82, P<0.01) and light-trap catches were 1.52 (1.35–1.71) times that of human biting catches regardless of mosquito density (r = 0.33, P>0.01), while the correlation between electric motor mosquito catches and human biting catches was found to be not statistically significant (r = 0.43, P>0.01) and its sampling efficiency was below that of human biting catches. It is concluded that light-traps can be used as an alternative to human biting catches of Anopheles sinensis in the study area and is a promising tool for sampling malaria vector populations

Transcriptomic Analysis of Toxoplasma Development Reveals Many Novel Functions and Structures Specific to Sporozoites and Oocysts

Sexual reproduction of Toxoplasma gondii occurs exclusively within enterocytes of the definitive felid host. The resulting immature oocysts are excreted into the environment during defecation, where in the days following, they undergo a complex developmental process. Within each oocyst, this culminates in the generation of two sporocysts, each containing 4 sporozoites. A single felid host is capable of shedding millions of oocysts, which can survive for years in the environment, are resistant to most methods of microbial inactivation during water-treatment and are capable of producing infection in warm-blooded hosts at doses as low as 1–10 ingested oocysts. Despite its extremely interesting developmental biology and crucial role in initiating an infection, almost nothing is known about the oocyst stage beyond morphological descriptions. Here, we present a complete transcriptomic analysis of the oocyst from beginning to end of its development. In addition, and to identify genes whose expression is unique to this developmental form, we compared the transcriptomes of developing oocysts with those of in vitro-derived tachyzoites and in vivo-derived bradyzoites. Our results reveal many genes whose expression is specifically up- or down-regulated in different developmental stages, including many genes that are likely critical to oocyst development, wall formation, resistance to environmental destruction and sporozoite infectivity. Of special note is the up-regulation of genes that appear “off” in tachyzoites and bradyzoites but that encode homologues of proteins known to serve key functions in those asexual stages, including a novel pairing of sporozoite-specific paralogues of AMA1 and RON2, two proteins that have recently been shown to form a crucial bridge during tachyzoite invasion of host cells. This work provides the first in-depth insight into the development and functioning of one of the most important but least studied stages in the Toxoplasma life cycle

Enrichment and characterization of ammonia-oxidizing archaea from the open ocean : phylogeny, physiology and stable isotope fractionation

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2011. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Nature Publishing Group for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in The ISME Journal 5 (2011): 1796–1808, doi:10.1038/ismej.2011.58.Archaeal genes for ammonia oxidation are widespread in the marine environment, but direct physiological evidence for ammonia oxidation by marine archaea is limited. We report the enrichment and characterization of three strains of pelagic ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) from the north Pacific Ocean that have been maintained in laboratory culture for over three years. Phylogenetic analyses indicate the three strains belong to a previously identified clade of water column-associated AOA and possess 16S rRNA genes and ammonia monooxygenase subunit a (amoA) genes highly similar (98-99% identity) to those recovered in DNA and cDNA clone libraries from the open ocean. The strains grow in natural seawater-based liquid medium while stoichiometrically converting ammonium (NH4 +) to nitrite (NO2 -). Ammonia oxidation by the enrichments is only partially inhibited by allylthiourea at concentrations known to inhibit cultivated ammonia-oxidizing bacteria. The three strains were used to determine the nitrogen stable isotope effect (15εNH3) during archaeal ammonia oxidation, an important parameter for interpreting stable isotope ratios in the environment. Archaeal 15εNH3 ranged from 13- 41‰, within the range of that previously reported for ammonia-oxidizing bacteria. Despite low amino acid identity between the archaeal and bacterial Amo proteins, their functional diversity as captured by 15εNH3 is similar.This work was supported by a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) Postdoctoral Scholar fellowship to AES and the WHOI Ocean Life Institute

Utilisation of an operative difficulty grading scale for laparoscopic cholecystectomy

Background A reliable system for grading operative difficulty of laparoscopic cholecystectomy would standardise description of findings and reporting of outcomes. The aim of this study was to validate a difficulty grading system (Nassar scale), testing its applicability and consistency in two large prospective datasets. Methods Patient and disease-related variables and 30-day outcomes were identified in two prospective cholecystectomy databases: the multi-centre prospective cohort of 8820 patients from the recent CholeS Study and the single-surgeon series containing 4089 patients. Operative data and patient outcomes were correlated with Nassar operative difficultly scale, using Kendall’s tau for dichotomous variables, or Jonckheere–Terpstra tests for continuous variables. A ROC curve analysis was performed, to quantify the predictive accuracy of the scale for each outcome, with continuous outcomes dichotomised, prior to analysis. Results A higher operative difficulty grade was consistently associated with worse outcomes for the patients in both the reference and CholeS cohorts. The median length of stay increased from 0 to 4 days, and the 30-day complication rate from 7.6 to 24.4% as the difficulty grade increased from 1 to 4/5 (both p < 0.001). In the CholeS cohort, a higher difficulty grade was found to be most strongly associated with conversion to open and 30-day mortality (AUROC = 0.903, 0.822, respectively). On multivariable analysis, the Nassar operative difficultly scale was found to be a significant independent predictor of operative duration, conversion to open surgery, 30-day complications and 30-day reintervention (all p < 0.001). Conclusion We have shown that an operative difficulty scale can standardise the description of operative findings by multiple grades of surgeons to facilitate audit, training assessment and research. It provides a tool for reporting operative findings, disease severity and technical difficulty and can be utilised in future research to reliably compare outcomes according to case mix and intra-operative difficulty