Inverse meta-modelling to estimate soil available water capacity at high spatial resolution across a farm

Geo-referenced information on crop production that is both spatially- and temporally-dense would be useful for management in precision agriculture (PA). Crop yield monitors provide spatially but not temporally dense information. Crop growth simulation modelling can provide temporal density, but traditionally fail on the spatial issue. The research described was motivated by the challenge of satisfying both the spatial and temporal data needs of PA. The methods presented depart from current crop modelling within PA by introducing meta-modelling in combination with inverse modelling to estimate site-specific soil properties. The soil properties are used to predict spatially- and temporally-dense crop yields. An inverse meta-model was derived from the agricultural production simulator (APSIM) using neural networks to estimate soil available water capacity (AWC) from available yield data. Maps of AWC with a resolution of 10 m were produced across a dryland grain farm in Australia. For certain years and fields, the estimates were useful for yield prediction with APSIM and multiple regression, whereas for others the results were disappointing. The estimates contain ‘implicit information’ about climate interactions with soil, crop and landscape that needs to be identified. Improvement of the meta-model with more AWC scenarios, more years of yield data, inclusion of additional variables and accounting for uncertainty are discussed. We concluded that it is worthwhile to pursue this approach as an efficient way of extracting soil physical information that exists within crop yield maps to create spatially- and temporally-dense dataset

COS-Speech: Protocol to develop a core outcome set for dysarthria after stroke for use in clinical practice and research

BACKGROUND: Dysarthria after stroke is when speech intelligibility is impaired, and this occurs in half of all stroke survivors. Dysarthria often leads to social isolation, poor psychological well-being and can prevent return to work and social lives. Currently, a variety of outcome measures are used in clinical research and practice when monitoring recovery for people who have dysarthria. When research studies use different measures, it is impossible to compare results from trials and delays our understanding of effective clinical treatments. The aim of this study is to develop a core outcome set (COS) to agree what aspects of speech recovery should be measured for dysarthria after stroke (COS-Speech) in research and clinical practice. METHODS: The COS-Speech study will include five steps: (1) development of a long list of possible outcome domains of speech that should be measured to guide the survey; (2) recruitment to the COS-Speech study of three key stakeholder groups in the UK and Australia: stroke survivors, communication researchers and speech and language therapists/pathologists; (3) two rounds of the Delphi survey process; (4) a consensus meeting to agree the speech outcomes to be measured and a follow-up consensus meeting to match existing instruments/measures (from parallel systematic review) to the agreed COS-Speech; (5) dissemination of COS-Speech. DISCUSSION: There is currently no COS for dysarthria after stroke for research trials or clinical practice. The findings from this research study will be a minimum COS, for use in all dysarthria research studies and clinical practice looking at post-stroke recovery of speech. These findings will be widely disseminated using professional and patient networks, research and clinical forums as well as using a variety of academic papers, videos, accessible writing such as blogs and links on social media. TRIAL REGISTRATION: COS-Speech is registered with the Core Outcome Measures in Effectiveness Trials (COMET) database, October 2021 https://www.comet-initiative.org/Studies/Details/1959. In addition, “A systematic review of the psychometric properties and clinical utility of instruments measuring dysarthria after stroke” will inform the consensus meeting to match measures to COS-Speech. The protocol for the systematic reviews registered with the International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews. PROSPERO registration number: CRD42022302998. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13063-022-06958-7

Role of the microbiome in regulating bone metabolism and susceptibility to osteoporosis

The human microbiota functions at the interface between diet, medication-use, lifestyle, host immune development and health. It is therefore closely aligned with many of the recognised modifiable factors that influence bone mass accrual in the young, and bone maintenance and skeletal decline in older populations. While understanding of the relationship between micro-organisms and bone health is still in its infancy, two decades of broader microbiome research and discovery supports a role of the human gut microbiome in the regulation of bone metabolism and pathogenesis of osteoporosis as well as its prevention and treatment. Pre-clinical research has demonstrated biological interactions between the microbiome and bone metabolism. Furthermore, observational studies and randomized clinical trials have indicated that therapeutic manipulation of the microbiota by oral administration of probiotics may influence bone turnover and prevent bone loss in humans. In this paper, we summarize the content, discussion and conclusions of a workshop held by the Osteoporosis and Bone Research Academy of the Royal Osteoporosis Society in October, 2020. We provide a detailed review of the literature examining the relationship between the microbiota and bone health in animal models and in humans, as well as formulating the agenda for key research priorities required to advance this field. We also underscore the potential pitfalls in this research field that should be avoided and provide methodological recommendations to facilitate bridging the gap from promising concept to a potential cause and intervention target for osteoporosis

Astronomical Distance Determination in the Space Age: Secondary Distance Indicators

The formal division of the distance indicators into primary and secondary leads to difficulties in description of methods which can actually be used in two ways: with, and without the support of the other methods for scaling. Thus instead of concentrating on the scaling requirement we concentrate on all methods of distance determination to extragalactic sources which are designated, at least formally, to use for individual sources. Among those, the Supernovae Ia is clearly the leader due to its enormous success in determination of the expansion rate of the Universe. However, new methods are rapidly developing, and there is also a progress in more traditional methods. We give a general overview of the methods but we mostly concentrate on the most recent developments in each field, and future expectations. © 2018, The Author(s)

ENIGMA and global neuroscience: A decade of large-scale studies of the brain in health and disease across more than 40 countries

This review summarizes the last decade of work by the ENIGMA (Enhancing NeuroImaging Genetics through Meta Analysis) Consortium, a global alliance of over 1400 scientists across 43 countries, studying the human brain in health and disease. Building on large-scale genetic studies that discovered the first robustly replicated genetic loci associated with brain metrics, ENIGMA has diversified into over 50 working groups (WGs), pooling worldwide data and expertise to answer fundamental questions in neuroscience, psychiatry, neurology, and genetics. Most ENIGMA WGs focus on specific psychiatric and neurological conditions, other WGs study normal variation due to sex and gender differences, or development and aging; still other WGs develop methodological pipelines and tools to facilitate harmonized analyses of "big data" (i.e., genetic and epigenetic data, multimodal MRI, and electroencephalography data). These international efforts have yielded the largest neuroimaging studies to date in schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance use disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, autism spectrum disorders, epilepsy, and 22q11.2 deletion syndrome. More recent ENIGMA WGs have formed to study anxiety disorders, suicidal thoughts and behavior, sleep and insomnia, eating disorders, irritability, brain injury, antisocial personality and conduct disorder, and dissociative identity disorder. Here, we summarize the first decade of ENIGMA's activities and ongoing projects, and describe the successes and challenges encountered along the way. We highlight the advantages of collaborative large-scale coordinated data analyses for testing reproducibility and robustness of findings, offering the opportunity to identify brain systems involved in clinical syndromes across diverse samples and associated genetic, environmental, demographic, cognitive, and psychosocial factors

Novel genetic loci associated with hippocampal volume

The hippocampal formation is a brain structure integrally involved in episodic memory, spatial navigation, cognition and stress responsiveness. Structural abnormalities in hippocampal volume and shape are found in several common neuropsychiatric disorders. To identify the genetic underpinnings of hippocampal structure here we perform a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of 33,536 individuals and discover six independent loci significantly associated with hippocampal volume, four of them novel. Of the novel loci, three lie within genes (ASTN2, DPP4 and MAST4) and one is found 200 kb upstream of SHH. A hippocampal subfield analysis shows that a locus within the MSRB3 gene shows evidence of a localized effect along the dentate gyrus, subiculum, CA1 and fissure. Further, we show that genetic variants associated with decreased hippocampal volume are also associated with increased risk for Alzheimer's disease (rg =-0.155). Our findings suggest novel biological pathways through which human genetic variation influences hippocampal volume and risk for neuropsychiatric illness

Physical Processes in Star Formation

© 2020 Springer-Verlag. The final publication is available at Springer via https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-020-00693-8.Star formation is a complex multi-scale phenomenon that is of significant importance for astrophysics in general. Stars and star formation are key pillars in observational astronomy from local star forming regions in the Milky Way up to high-redshift galaxies. From a theoretical perspective, star formation and feedback processes (radiation, winds, and supernovae) play a pivotal role in advancing our understanding of the physical processes at work, both individually and of their interactions. In this review we will give an overview of the main processes that are important for the understanding of star formation. We start with an observationally motivated view on star formation from a global perspective and outline the general paradigm of the life-cycle of molecular clouds, in which star formation is the key process to close the cycle. After that we focus on the thermal and chemical aspects in star forming regions, discuss turbulence and magnetic fields as well as gravitational forces. Finally, we review the most important stellar feedback mechanisms.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

All-sky search for long-duration gravitational wave transients with initial LIGO

We present the results of a search for long-duration gravitational wave transients in two sets of data collected by the LIGO Hanford and LIGO Livingston detectors between November 5, 2005 and September 30, 2007, and July 7, 2009 and October 20, 2010, with a total observational time of 283.0 days and 132.9 days, respectively. The search targets gravitational wave transients of duration 10-500 s in a frequency band of 40-1000 Hz, with minimal assumptions about the signal waveform, polarization, source direction, or time of occurrence. All candidate triggers were consistent with the expected background; as a result we set 90% confidence upper limits on the rate of long-duration gravitational wave transients for different types of gravitational wave signals. For signals from black hole accretion disk instabilities, we set upper limits on the source rate density between 3.4×10-5 and 9.4×10-4 Mpc-3 yr-1 at 90% confidence. These are the first results from an all-sky search for unmodeled long-duration transient gravitational waves. © 2016 American Physical Society