Five-Year Growth Report: From Inception to Global Influence 2010 - 2015

While we are proud of our accomplishments in building an institutional framework, we are even more proud of our institute’s initial work to build an impact-driven program. This work is indeed the central focus of this report. Through the leadership of our new directors for research and policy, we have begun to build a vigorous research and policy development program that includes engagement with both local and global stakeholders. We have also developed a strong set of collaborations with national and international partners, striving to achieve a balance between work in Nebraska and globally, including in India, Brazil, China and selected countries in East Africa and the Middle East and North Africa region. Our annual Water for Food Global Conference has become a sought-after event for thought partners, researchers, students, policymakers, producers, business leaders and others in our sector. We have also convened or co-convened many policy dialogues, workshops and seminars in the last five years, including at the annual Stockholm World Water Weeks and the 2012 and 2015 World Water Forums. We are pleased by the progress we have made in our work to educate the next generation and engage young talent, through such activities as the double Master of Science program in Agricultural Water Management with UNESCO-IHE in Delft and a fellowship program for undergraduate and graduate students and post-docs. Now, with a full complement of directors and staff, the past year has witnessed a transformation at WFI. Relationships and partnerships have matured, programs launched and directions clarified. After reflecting on lessons learned in our initial years and many discussions with university leadership, global experts and faculty, we’ve identified where WFI’s greatest capacities lie to effect change. As we’ve developed new strategies for the next five years, we’ve targeted key subject areas and geographic locations in which we will focus our resources. The 2015-2020 Strategic Plan details specific research, policy and educational projects we are undertaking and how we will measure progress in outputs and outcomes. A year ago, when we moved into our new location on the Nebraska Innovation Campus, we had many empty desks. Today, those desks are filled and our offices bustling with core staff as well as students, faculty and visiting researchers. As WFI heads into its next five years, we’re excited to embrace promising new projects, from closing water and agricultural productivity gaps in Africa to educating the next generation of researchers and practitioners. Contents: 10 I Ending Water and Food Insecurity 12 I A Comprehensive Plan for Today... 15 I ... and Tomorrow / Innovation through Research and Policy 19 I Key research & Policy Accomplishments 21 I Improving Yields and Water Productivity 23 I Telling Nebraska’s Groundwater Governance Story 25 I Making Crop CIRCLES in Tanzania 27 I Setting a River in Motion 29 I Educating, Engaging and Communicating 35 I Building Capacity in Developing Countries 36 I A Global Forum for Water for Food 37 I 50 Years of Nebraska Water Experience 40 I Connecting Nebraska to the World 42 I Bringing People Together 44 I Building the Institute 48 I The Water for Food Institute: A Founding Story 52 I Conclusion 54 I Financials 56 I Leadership/ Board of Directors/International Advisory Panel 57 I Faculty Advisory Panel 58 I Leadership Team/Staff 59 I Credit

GROWING A WATER AND FOOD SECURE FUTURE: ANNUAL REPORT FY2019 (JULY 1, 2018 TO JUNE 30, 2019)

Ensuring water and food security for our growing world is an audacious goal – exactly what Bob Daugherty sought to achieve by creating the Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute (DWFI) at the University of Nebraska nearly 10 years ago. He, along with leaders and supporters within the University of Nebraska, the state and well beyond, understood that a collective and committed effort on wise water management was essential to producing enough food to feed the world while sustaining our valuable and limited water resources. For decades, many dedicated people around the world have striven to overcome the challenges of ensuring water and food security. There isn’t a “silver bullet” that will quickly address the complex, interconnected and evolving issues, including climate change, rising demand for more water-intensive foods, soil and water degradation, conflict over and competition for water resources, and, in many developing countries, the low levels of investment in supporting facilities and services. In collaboration with our dedicated partners, DWFI is making valuable contributions to meeting these challenges. As you’ll read in this year’s annual report, the institute is conducting innovative research, informing policy, convening stakeholders, sharing knowledge, cultivating new leaders and communicating our work to millions of stakeholders across the U.S. and around the world. Most importantly, our work is advancing our mission to ensure food and water security for nearly 10 billion people by 2050. The progress towards these outcomes was fittingly demonstrated at the 2019 Water for Food Global Conference, which focused on innovation in water and food security. More than 400 partners – including farmers, scientists, companies, philanthropists, investors, government agencies and nonprofit organizations – convened to explore practical actions to help stakeholders build more resilient, water-smart and productive agricultural and food systems. New partnerships and ideas generated during the conference sessions and networking are now under development. Here in Nebraska and neighboring states, it has been a year of far too much water, dominated by historic floods and a wetter-than-usual planting season that left many acres fallow. The impacts on people and communities, infrastructure, and crops and livestock have been enormous. Much has been done to restore the affected communities, though full recovery will take much longer. Stakeholders across the state are reflecting on lessons learned and exploring ways to strengthen the resilience of communities, including bolstering water and food systems. The results from the recently completed Nebraska Water Productivity report reflect remarkable improvements in yield per drop of water used (water productivity or WP) for crops, livestock and biofuels over the past three decades. This underscores the importance of long-term investments in crop and livestock breeding, enhanced management systems and new technologies. The challenge is how to sustainably achieve similar water productivity advancements in other agricultural landscapes. With our friends at the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources (IANR) and a number of Faculty Fellows and partners, we have catalyzed our efforts to better understand and address water quality challenges here in Nebraska and further afield. A notable example is the Bazile Groundwater Management Area (BGMA) in Northeast Nebraska, where we are working with four Natural Resources Districts (NRDs) to mitigate and manage nitrate contamination. DWFI is part of a strong alliance of international partners working to expand development of local solutions for irrigated agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa and other emerging regions of the world. These collaborations amplify our individual strengths and create powerful new approaches to achieving water and food security. Directly contributing to this ambitious initiative, the institute and IANR are assessing existing irrigated agriculture business models in Rwanda. The results from this research are expected to inform new investments in sustainably scaling intensive agriculture in other sub-Saharan countries. While it will still take time to fully achieve our vision of a world without hunger or water scarcity, we are witnessing accelerated progress. As we close in on the institute’s 10th anniversary in 2020, we are pleased to share the impacts we’ve made. We greatly appreciate the support of our Board of Directors, staff, University of Nebraska leadership, Faculty Fellows, Global Fellows, International Advisory Panel, donors and friends who help make these important breakthroughs possible

Tumor-induced remote ECM network orientation steers angiogenesis

Tumor angiogenesis promotes tumor growth and metastasis. Here, we use automated sequential microprinting of tumor and endothelial cells in extracellular matrix (ECM) scaffolds to study its mechanical aspects. Quantitative reflection microscopy shows that tumor spheroids induce radial orientation of the surrounding collagen fiber network up to a distance of five times their radius. Across a panel of ~20 different human tumor cell lines, remote collagen orientation is correlated with local tumor cell migration behavior. Tumor induced collagen orientation requires contractility but is remarkably resistant to depletion of collagen-binding integrins. Microvascular endothelial cells undergo directional migration towards tumor spheroids once they are within the tumor-oriented collagen fiber network. Laser ablation experiments indicate that an intact physical connection of the oriented network with the tumor spheroid is required for mechanical sensing by the endothelial cells. Together our findings indicate that, in conjunction with described activities of soluble angiogenic factors, remote physical manipulation of the ECM network by the tumor can help to steer angiogenesis

The B∗BπB^*B\pi coupling with relativistic heavy quarks

We report on a calculation of the $B^*B\pi$ coupling in lattice QCD. The strong matrix element $\langle B \pi | B^*\rangle$ is directly related to the leading order low-energy constant in heavy meson chiral perturbation theory (HM$\chi$PT) for $B$-mesons. We carry out our calculation directly at the $b$-quark mass using a non-perturbatively tuned clover action that controls discretisation effects of order $|\vec{p}a|$ and $(ma)^n$ for all $n$. Our analysis is performed on RBC/UKQCD gauge configurations using domain wall fermions and the Iwasaki gauge action at two lattice spacings of $a^{-1}=1.73(3)$ GeV, $a^{-1}=2.28(3)$ GeV, and unitary pion masses down to 290 MeV. We achieve good statistical precision and control all systematic uncertainties, giving a final result for the HM$\chi$PT coupling $g_b = 0.569(48)_{stat}(59)_{sys}$ in the continuum and at the physical light-quark masses. This is the first calculation performed directly at the physical $b$-quark mass and lies in the region one would expect from carrying out an interpolation between previous results at the charm mass and at the static point.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, presented at the 31st International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory (Lattice 2013), 29 July - 3 August 2013, Mainz, German

Heterogeneity of autoreactive T cell clones specific for the E2 component of the pyruvate dehydrogenase complex in primary biliary cirrhosis.

The extraordinary specificity of bile duct destruction in primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) and the presence of T cell infiltrates in the portal tracts have suggested that biliary epithelial cells are the targets of an autoimmune response. The immunodominant antimitochondrial response in patients with PBC is directed against the E2 component of pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDC-E2). Hitherto, there have only been limited reports on the characterization and V beta usage of PDC-E2-specific cloned T cell lines. In this study, we examined peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) for their reactivity to the entire PDC complex as well as to the E1- and E2-specific components. We also examined the phenotype, lymphokine profile, and V beta usage of PDC-specific T cell clones isolated from cellular infiltrates from the livers of PBC patients. We report that PBMC from 16/19 patients with PBC, but not 12 control patients, respond to the PDC-E2 subunit. Interestingly, this response was directed to the inner and/or the outer lipoyl domains, despite the serologic observation that the autoantibody response is directed predominantly to the inner lipoyl domain. Additionally, lymphokine analysis of interleukin (IL) 2/IL-4/interferon gamma production from individual liver-derived autoantigen-specific T cell clones suggests that both T helper cell Th1- and Th2-like clones are present in the liver. Moreover, there was considerable heterogeneity in the T cell receptor for antigen (TCR) V beta usage of these antigen-specific autoreactive T cell clones. This is in contrast to murine studies in which animals are induced to develop autoimmunity by specific immunization and have an extremely limited T cell V beta repertoire. Thus, our data suggest that in human organ-specific autoimmune diseases, such as PBC, the TCR V beta repertoire is heterogenous

Improving the effectiveness of Ugandan water user committees

This article outlines issues affecting the functionality of Ugandan water user committees responsible for managing communal water and sanitation (WASH) services. Research undertaken demonstrated that their effectiveness is compromised by poor understanding of their rights and responsibilities by stakeholders within and outside the committees. Following the research, a handbook was produced that explained the rights and responsibilities in a form that is accessible to all community members. Preliminary feedback from committees that have used the handbook suggests that it has the potential to improve the functionality of the water user committees, thereby helping to improve the local management of WASH services in Uganda

Cellulaire 'systeempsychologie' en geneesmiddeltoxiciteit

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Topological susceptibility with the asqtad action

Chiral perturbation theory predicts that in quantum chromodynamics (QCD), light dynamical quarks suppress the gauge-field topological susceptibility of the vacuum. The degree of suppression depends on quark multiplicity and masses. It provides a strong consistency test for fermion formulations in lattice QCD. Such tests are especially important for staggered fermion formulations that lack a full chiral symmetry and use the "fourth-root" procedure to achieve the desired number of sea quarks. Over the past few years we have measured the topological susceptibility on a large database of 18 gauge field ensembles, generated in the presence of 2+1 flavors of dynamical asqtad quarks with up and down quark masses ranging from 0.05 to 1 in units of the strange quark mass and lattice spacings ranging from 0.045 fm to 0.12 fm. Our study also includes three quenched ensembles with lattice spacings ranging from 0.06 to 0.12 fm. We construct the topological susceptibility from the integrated point-to-point correlator of the discretized topological charge density F-Fdual. To reduce its variance, we model the asymptotic tail of the correlator. The continuum extrapolation of our results for the topological susceptibility agrees nicely at small quark mass with the predictions of lowest-order SU(3) chiral perturbation theory, thus lending support to the validity of the fourth-root procedure.Comment: 28 pp, 6 figs. Version 2 corrects some discussion, some numbers, and some figures and adds some reference