Comparison of herbicide programs in imidazolinone tolerant corn

Field studies were conducted in 1998 at Jackson, Milan, Knoxville, and Spring Hill, Tennessee, to examine several herbicide programs for weed control in imidazolinone-tolerant corn. Field corn variety FFR 797 IMI was no-till or minimum-till planted at all locations. The treatments were replicated four times in a randomized block design. Treatments ranging from a PRE-only to PRE followed by postemergent (POST) to total POST applied to examine weed control, crop injury, and yield. Crop oil concentrate (COC) was combined with atrazine when applied POST, while nonionic surfactant was added to all other POST treatments. Visual evaluations were taken four weeks after treatment to evaluate control of broadleaf signalgrass (Brachiaria platyphylla (Griseb.) Nash), large crabgrass (Digitaria sanguinalis (L.) Scop), Palmer amaranth (Amaranthus palmeri (S.) Wats), pitted morningglory (Ipomoea lacunosa L.), and sicklepod (Senna obtusifolia (L.) Irwin and Barnaby). None of the treatments controlled sicklepod at Milan due to high population density (600-5000 plants/m2). Imazethapyr + imazapyr + dicamba POST and atrazine + metolachlor PRE followed by prosulfuron + primisulfuron + nicosulfuron POST controlled these weeds while imazethapyr + imazapyr POST, imazethapyr + imazapyr + pendimethalin POST, and atrazine + metolachlor PRE followed by flumetsulam + clopyralid + nicosulfuron POST controlled all weeds \u3e86% except Palmer amaranth (\u3c67%). Imazethapyr + imazapyr + nicosulfuron POST failed to control Palmer amaranth and only controlled sicklepod 75% at Spring Hill. Atrazine + metolachlor PRE followed by nicosulfuron POST did not control Palmer amaranth and pitted morningglory but controlled all other weeds. Atrazine + metolachlor PRE followed by dicamba POST failed to control broadleaf signalgrass and pitted morningglory, but controlled large crabgrass, Palmer amaranth, and sicklepod. Imazethapyr + imazapyr + atrazine POST controlled all weeds except pitted morningglory (71%), while atrazine + crop oil concentrate controlled the dicot weeds but had little monocot activity. Nicosulfuron + rimsulfuron + atrazine POST controlled broadleaf signalgrass and Palmer amaranth, but only partially controlled pitted morningglory control. Sicklepod was controlled at Knoxville but not at Spring Hill by the mixture of these three herbicides. Although atrazine + metolachlor PRE controlled broadleaf signalgrass and sicklepod at Knoxville, the treatment did not control all other weeds at Jackson and Spring Hill. Corn yields were reduced at Milan from sicklepod competition. Yields were also low for treatments that did not provide adequate large crabgrass and Palmer amaranth control. Slight corn injury was observed but did not appear to influence corn yields

Comparison of weight changes following unilateral and staged bilateral STN DBS for advanced PD

Unilateral and bilateral subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation (STN DBS) in Parkinson's disease (PD) result in weight gain in the initial postoperative months, but little is known about the changes in weight following unilateral and staged bilateral STN DBS over longer time intervals. A case–control comparison evaluated weight changes over 2 years in 43 consecutive unilateral STN DBS patients, among whom 25 elected to undergo staged bilateral STN DBS, and 21 age-matched and disease severity matched PD controls without DBS. Regression analyses incorporating age, gender, and baseline weight in case or control were conducted to assess weight changes 2 years after the initial unilateral surgery. Unilateral STN DBS and staged bilateral STN DBS patients gained 3.9 ± 2.0 kg and 5.6 ± 2.1 kg versus their preoperative baseline weight (P < 0.001, respectively) while PD controls without DBS lost 0.8 ± 1.1 kg. Although bilateral STN DBS patients gained 1.7 kg more than unilateral STN DBS patients at 2 years, this difference was not statistically significant (P = 0.885). Although there was a trend toward greater weight gain in staged bilateral STN DBS patients versus unilateral patients, we found no evidence for an equivalent or synergistic increase in body weight following placement of the second DBS electrode

Transporters in Drug Development: 2018 ITC Recommendations for Transporters of Emerging Clinical Importance

This white paper provides updated International Transporter Consortium (ITC) recommendations on transporters that are important in drug development following the 3rd ITC workshop. New additions include prospective evaluation of organic cation transporter 1 (OCT1) and retrospective evaluation of organic anion transporting polypeptide (OATP)2B1 because of their important roles in drug absorption, disposition, and effects. For the first time, the ITC underscores the importance of transporters involved in drug-induced vitamin deficiency (THTR2) and those involved in the disposition of biomarkers of organ function (OAT2 and bile acid transporters)

Integrated Proteomic and Transcriptomic Investigation of the Acetaminophen Toxicity in Liver Microfluidic Biochip

Microfluidic bioartificial organs allow the reproduction of in vivo-like properties such as cell culture in a 3D dynamical micro environment. In this work, we established a method and a protocol for performing a toxicogenomic analysis of HepG2/C3A cultivated in a microfluidic biochip. Transcriptomic and proteomic analyses have shown the induction of the NRF2 pathway and the related drug metabolism pathways when the HepG2/C3A cells were cultivated in the biochip. The induction of those pathways in the biochip enhanced the metabolism of the N-acetyl-p-aminophenol drug (acetaminophen-APAP) when compared to Petri cultures. Thus, we observed 50% growth inhibition of cell proliferation at 1 mM in the biochip, which appeared similar to human plasmatic toxic concentrations reported at 2 mM. The metabolic signature of APAP toxicity in the biochip showed similar biomarkers as those reported in vivo, such as the calcium homeostasis, lipid metabolism and reorganization of the cytoskeleton, at the transcriptome and proteome levels (which was not the case in Petri dishes). These results demonstrate a specific molecular signature for acetaminophen at transcriptomic and proteomic levels closed to situations found in vivo. Interestingly, a common component of the signature of the APAP molecule was identified in Petri and biochip cultures via the perturbations of the DNA replication and cell cycle. These findings provide an important insight into the use of microfluidic biochips as new tools in biomarker research in pharmaceutical drug studies and predictive toxicity investigations

Proceedings of the SC15 Workshop on Producing High Performance and Sustainable Software for Molecular Simulation

These are the proceedings of the SC15 Workshop on Producing High Performance and Sustainable Software for Molecular Simulation, which was organised as part of the APES project. Please see the Introduction and Table of Contents for more details

The FLUXNET2015 dataset and the ONEFlux processing pipeline for eddy covariance data

The FLUXNET2015 dataset provides ecosystem-scale data on CO2, water, and energy exchange between the biosphere and the atmosphere, and other meteorological and biological measurements, from 212 sites around the globe (over 1500 site-years, up to and including year 2014). These sites, independently managed and operated, voluntarily contributed their data to create global datasets. Data were quality controlled and processed using uniform methods, to improve consistency and intercomparability across sites. The dataset is already being used in a number of applications, including ecophysiology studies, remote sensing studies, and development of ecosystem and Earth system models. FLUXNET2015 includes derived-data products, such as gap-filled time series, ecosystem respiration and photosynthetic uptake estimates, estimation of uncertainties, and metadata about the measurements, presented for the first time in this paper. In addition, 206 of these sites are for the first time distributed under a Creative Commons (CC-BY 4.0) license. This paper details this enhanced dataset and the processing methods, now made available as open-source codes, making the dataset more accessible, transparent, and reproducible.Peer reviewe

Creative destruction in science

Drawing on the concept of a gale of creative destruction in a capitalistic economy, we argue that initiatives to assess the robustness of findings in the organizational literature should aim to simultaneously test competing ideas operating in the same theoretical space. In other words, replication efforts should seek not just to support or question the original findings, but also to replace them with revised, stronger theories with greater explanatory power. Achieving this will typically require adding new measures, conditions, and subject populations to research designs, in order to carry out conceptual tests of multiple theories in addition to directly replicating the original findings. To illustrate the value of the creative destruction approach for theory pruning in organizational scholarship, we describe recent replication initiatives re-examining culture and work morality, working parents\u2019 reasoning about day care options, and gender discrimination in hiring decisions. Significance statement It is becoming increasingly clear that many, if not most, published research findings across scientific fields are not readily replicable when the same method is repeated. Although extremely valuable, failed replications risk leaving a theoretical void\u2014 reducing confidence the original theoretical prediction is true, but not replacing it with positive evidence in favor of an alternative theory. We introduce the creative destruction approach to replication, which combines theory pruning methods from the field of management with emerging best practices from the open science movement, with the aim of making replications as generative as possible. In effect, we advocate for a Replication 2.0 movement in which the goal shifts from checking on the reliability of past findings to actively engaging in competitive theory testing and theory building. Scientific transparency statement The materials, code, and data for this article are posted publicly on the Open Science Framework, with links provided in the article

State of the climate in 2018

In 2018, the dominant greenhouse gases released into Earth’s atmosphere—carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide—continued their increase. The annual global average carbon dioxide concentration at Earth’s surface was 407.4 ± 0.1 ppm, the highest in the modern instrumental record and in ice core records dating back 800 000 years. Combined, greenhouse gases and several halogenated gases contribute just over 3 W m−2 to radiative forcing and represent a nearly 43% increase since 1990. Carbon dioxide is responsible for about 65% of this radiative forcing. With a weak La Niña in early 2018 transitioning to a weak El Niño by the year’s end, the global surface (land and ocean) temperature was the fourth highest on record, with only 2015 through 2017 being warmer. Several European countries reported record high annual temperatures. There were also more high, and fewer low, temperature extremes than in nearly all of the 68-year extremes record. Madagascar recorded a record daily temperature of 40.5°C in Morondava in March, while South Korea set its record high of 41.0°C in August in Hongcheon. Nawabshah, Pakistan, recorded its highest temperature of 50.2°C, which may be a new daily world record for April. Globally, the annual lower troposphere temperature was third to seventh highest, depending on the dataset analyzed. The lower stratospheric temperature was approximately fifth lowest. The 2018 Arctic land surface temperature was 1.2°C above the 1981–2010 average, tying for third highest in the 118-year record, following 2016 and 2017. June’s Arctic snow cover extent was almost half of what it was 35 years ago. Across Greenland, however, regional summer temperatures were generally below or near average. Additionally, a satellite survey of 47 glaciers in Greenland indicated a net increase in area for the first time since records began in 1999. Increasing permafrost temperatures were reported at most observation sites in the Arctic, with the overall increase of 0.1°–0.2°C between 2017 and 2018 being comparable to the highest rate of warming ever observed in the region. On 17 March, Arctic sea ice extent marked the second smallest annual maximum in the 38-year record, larger than only 2017. The minimum extent in 2018 was reached on 19 September and again on 23 September, tying 2008 and 2010 for the sixth lowest extent on record. The 23 September date tied 1997 as the latest sea ice minimum date on record. First-year ice now dominates the ice cover, comprising 77% of the March 2018 ice pack compared to 55% during the 1980s. Because thinner, younger ice is more vulnerable to melting out in summer, this shift in sea ice age has contributed to the decreasing trend in minimum ice extent. Regionally, Bering Sea ice extent was at record lows for almost the entire 2017/18 ice season. For the Antarctic continent as a whole, 2018 was warmer than average. On the highest points of the Antarctic Plateau, the automatic weather station Relay (74°S) broke or tied six monthly temperature records throughout the year, with August breaking its record by nearly 8°C. However, cool conditions in the western Bellingshausen Sea and Amundsen Sea sector contributed to a low melt season overall for 2017/18. High SSTs contributed to low summer sea ice extent in the Ross and Weddell Seas in 2018, underpinning the second lowest Antarctic summer minimum sea ice extent on record. Despite conducive conditions for its formation, the ozone hole at its maximum extent in September was near the 2000–18 mean, likely due to an ongoing slow decline in stratospheric chlorine monoxide concentration. Across the oceans, globally averaged SST decreased slightly since the record El Niño year of 2016 but was still far above the climatological mean. On average, SST is increasing at a rate of 0.10° ± 0.01°C decade−1 since 1950. The warming appeared largest in the tropical Indian Ocean and smallest in the North Pacific. The deeper ocean continues to warm year after year. For the seventh consecutive year, global annual mean sea level became the highest in the 26-year record, rising to 81 mm above the 1993 average. As anticipated in a warming climate, the hydrological cycle over the ocean is accelerating: dry regions are becoming drier and wet regions rainier. Closer to the equator, 95 named tropical storms were observed during 2018, well above the 1981–2010 average of 82. Eleven tropical cyclones reached Saffir–Simpson scale Category 5 intensity. North Atlantic Major Hurricane Michael’s landfall intensity of 140 kt was the fourth strongest for any continental U.S. hurricane landfall in the 168-year record. Michael caused more than 30 fatalities and $25 billion (U.S. dollars) in damages. In the western North Pacific, Super Typhoon Mangkhut led to 160 fatalities and$6 billion (U.S. dollars) in damages across the Philippines, Hong Kong, Macau, mainland China, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands. Tropical Storm Son-Tinh was responsible for 170 fatalities in Vietnam and Laos. Nearly all the islands of Micronesia experienced at least moderate impacts from various tropical cyclones. Across land, many areas around the globe received copious precipitation, notable at different time scales. Rodrigues and Réunion Island near southern Africa each reported their third wettest year on record. In Hawaii, 1262 mm precipitation at Waipā Gardens (Kauai) on 14–15 April set a new U.S. record for 24-h precipitation. In Brazil, the city of Belo Horizonte received nearly 75 mm of rain in just 20 minutes, nearly half its monthly average. Globally, fire activity during 2018 was the lowest since the start of the record in 1997, with a combined burned area of about 500 million hectares. This reinforced the long-term downward trend in fire emissions driven by changes in land use in frequently burning savannas. However, wildfires burned 3.5 million hectares across the United States, well above the 2000–10 average of 2.7 million hectares. Combined, U.S. wildfire damages for the 2017 and 2018 wildfire seasons exceeded $40 billion (U.S. dollars)