Oil palm detection and delineation using local maxima, template matching and seeded region growing

Oil palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.) is recognized as a golden crop and it contributes significantly to the economic development of Malaysia. Oil palm detection and delineation are important stepping stones for the practice of precision agriculture in the oil palm industry and it could be done so with remote sensing applications. This research aims to develop a semi-automatic, streamlined approach of oil palm detection and delineation using a combination of template matching, local maxima and seeded region growing with Worldview-2 data. The performance of the proposed methods was assessed in various aspects while taking into consideration the different planting conditions, age, and height. The proposed methods of oil palm detection managed to achieve high accuracy with overall precision and recall rate of 83% and 90% respectively and planimetric accuracy of 0.84 m root mean square error. The overall accuracy index is recorded at 71.2%. It was found that different planting conditions affect the detection accuracy to a certain degree where oil palms in optimal planting conditions are the most accurately detected with an accuracy index of 89.5%. Meanwhile, the parameters of age and height were found to have no significant effect on the planimetric accuracy or its positional accuracy. Oil palm delineation scored a high segmentation accuracy with only a 25% error rate. The proposed methods are feasible for oil palm detection with their simple, streamlined and user-friendly features and the application of this approach can be extended to other regions of oil palms with similar conditions

Design, development and evaluation of a manually operated single row seed cum fertilizer drill (MOSiR-SF drill)

Machinery is a modern agriculture practices in which most of the labours are replaced with machines to yield higher productivity, lower labour cost, and reduce drudgery. Seed-cum-fertilizer drill is one of these machines applied in the field to make seed sowing faster, easier and more efficient compared to traditional methods, viz. broadcasting. It opens up furrows, dropped seeds and fertilizers at a desirable rate and covers them with soils. Most of the seed drills in the local market are designed to be operated as an implement to the tractors, motor-powered or drawn by animal where each of these design requires higher cost and sophisticated technology. Whereas, a manually operated single row seed-cum-fertilizer drill is simple and low cost to be fabricated. Thus, to practice this technology, a manually-operated single-row seed cum- fertilizer drill, or simply named as MoSiR-SF drill will be designed, developed and evaluated. MoSiR-SF drill was designed to sow small-seeded vegetables. It consisted of several major components, which were the metering mechanism, furrow opener, seed and fertilizer hoppers, and the frame. The fabrication of the machine was generally accomplished in line with the design specification. However, fertilizer pellet with sticky nature was found to be incompatible with the hole-type metering mechanism. Evaluation for the performance of the prototype MoSiR-SF drill had been carried out in laboratory and actual field condition with choy sum seeds. In the result, prototype was delivering satisfactory performance with sowing efficiency measured up to 95% under actual field condition

A review of remote sensing applications for oil palm studies

Oil palm becomes an increasingly important source of vegetable oil for its production exceeds soybean, sunflower, and rapeseed. The growth of the oil palm industry causes degradation to the environment, especially when the expansion of plantations goes uncontrolled. Remote sensing is a useful tool to monitor the development of oil palm plantations. In order to promote the use of remote sensing in the oil palm industry to support their drive for sustainability, this paper provides an understanding toward the use of remote sensing and its applications to oil palm plantation monitoring. In addition, the existing knowledge gaps are identified and recommendations for further research are given

Analysis of clinically relevant variants from ancestrally diverse Asian genomes

Asian populations are under-represented in human genomics research. Here, we characterize clinically significant genetic variation in 9051 genomes representing East Asian, South Asian, and severely under-represented Austronesian-speaking Southeast Asian ancestries. We observe disparate genetic risk burden attributable to ancestry-specific recurrent variants and identify individuals with variants specific to ancestries discordant to their self-reported ethnicity, mostly due to cryptic admixture. About 27% of severe recessive disorder genes with appreciable carrier frequencies in Asians are missed by carrier screening panels, and we estimate 0.5% Asian couples at-risk of having an affected child. Prevalence of medically-actionable variant carriers is 3.4% and a further 1.6% harbour variants with potential for pathogenic classification upon additional clinical/experimental evidence. We profile 23 pharmacogenes with high-confidence gene-drug associations and find 22.4% of Asians at-risk of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Tier 1 genetic conditions concurrently harbour pharmacogenetic variants with actionable phenotypes, highlighting the benefits of pre-emptive pharmacogenomics. Our findings illuminate the diversity in genetic disease epidemiology and opportunities for precision medicine for a large, diverse Asian population.</p

Empagliflozin in Patients with Chronic Kidney Disease

Background The effects of empagliflozin in patients with chronic kidney disease who are at risk for disease progression are not well understood. The EMPA-KIDNEY trial was designed to assess the effects of treatment with empagliflozin in a broad range of such patients. Methods We enrolled patients with chronic kidney disease who had an estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) of at least 20 but less than 45 ml per minute per 1.73 m(2) of body-surface area, or who had an eGFR of at least 45 but less than 90 ml per minute per 1.73 m(2) with a urinary albumin-to-creatinine ratio (with albumin measured in milligrams and creatinine measured in grams) of at least 200. Patients were randomly assigned to receive empagliflozin (10 mg once daily) or matching placebo. The primary outcome was a composite of progression of kidney disease (defined as end-stage kidney disease, a sustained decrease in eGFR to &lt; 10 ml per minute per 1.73 m(2), a sustained decrease in eGFR of &amp; GE;40% from baseline, or death from renal causes) or death from cardiovascular causes. Results A total of 6609 patients underwent randomization. During a median of 2.0 years of follow-up, progression of kidney disease or death from cardiovascular causes occurred in 432 of 3304 patients (13.1%) in the empagliflozin group and in 558 of 3305 patients (16.9%) in the placebo group (hazard ratio, 0.72; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.64 to 0.82; P &lt; 0.001). Results were consistent among patients with or without diabetes and across subgroups defined according to eGFR ranges. The rate of hospitalization from any cause was lower in the empagliflozin group than in the placebo group (hazard ratio, 0.86; 95% CI, 0.78 to 0.95; P=0.003), but there were no significant between-group differences with respect to the composite outcome of hospitalization for heart failure or death from cardiovascular causes (which occurred in 4.0% in the empagliflozin group and 4.6% in the placebo group) or death from any cause (in 4.5% and 5.1%, respectively). The rates of serious adverse events were similar in the two groups. Conclusions Among a wide range of patients with chronic kidney disease who were at risk for disease progression, empagliflozin therapy led to a lower risk of progression of kidney disease or death from cardiovascular causes than placebo