Targeting Farmers\u27 Markets in Utah: Understanding Fresh Produce Pricing

This fact sheet focuses primarily on farmers’ market price comparisons to assist fresh produce growers in determining which produce varieties have the highest premiums, the range of prices they can expect, and any considerations for production method, seasonality and market location. This information will be useful for growers as they develop production plans and a marketing strategy, including varieties and farmers’ market locations that may be most profitable

What Determines Produce Pricing in Utah

Since pricing information is valuable for produce growers when estimating the potential profitability of various produce items, as well as market types and locations, this fact sheet provides a comparison of fresh produce prices at farmers’ markets and grocery stores in Utah. It also discusses the price impacts for various item characteristics, including variety, market location, seasonality, and production methods

Plant Driven Movement: Does Plant Quality Affect the Foraging Patterns of Successful Male Sage-Grouse (Centrocercus Urophasianus)?

The structural and dietary quality of plants is highly variable across the landscape and may influence energy acquisition by herbivores needed for energy dependent activities. For sage-grouse, male display efforts are energetically expensive, with successful males expending up to four times their basal metabolic rate to display. Previous work found that males who had the greatest energy expenditure during the lekking season also lost the least weight and foraged farthest from the lek. We hypothesized that the energetic benefit of foraging farther from the lek is due to higher quality food or cover compared to near lek vegetation. To initially test this hypothesis, we quantified the structural and nutritional quality of sagebrush at different distances away from the lek as well as at patches used by sage-grouse for foraging and roosting. We found no difference in density, percent cover, or height of live or dead sagebrush among different distances (edge, 100, 200, 400 or 800 m) away from leks, but there was a trend for plants near the lek edge to have higher crude protein than those farther away from leks. We found no difference in percent grass, percent forbs, volume of sagebrush, or crude protein of sagebrush among forage, roost, or near lek (100 m from edge) patches, but forage patches tended to have taller sagebrush than roost or near lek patches. The preliminary results suggest that selection for off-lek patches by male sage-grouse may not be driven by the structural or nutritional quality of plants. We propose that plant chemical components may be more indicative of off-lek habitat use by male sage-grouse during the lekking period

Identifying Self-Disclosures of Use, Misuse and Addiction in Community-based Social Media Posts

In the last decade, the United States has lost more than 500,000 people from an overdose involving prescription and illicit opioids (https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/epidemic/index.html) making it a national public health emergency (USDHHS, 2017). To more effectively prevent unintentional opioid overdoses, medical practitioners require robust and timely tools that can effectively identify at-risk patients. Community-based social media platforms such as Reddit allow self-disclosure for users to discuss otherwise sensitive drug-related behaviors, often acting as indicators for opioid use disorder. Towards this, we present a moderate size corpus of 2500 opioid-related posts from various subreddits spanning 6 different phases of opioid use: Medical Use, Misuse, Addiction, Recovery, Relapse, Not Using. For every post, we annotate span-level extractive explanations and crucially study their role both in annotation quality and model development. We evaluate several state-of-the-art models in a supervised, few-shot, or zero-shot setting. Experimental results and error analysis show that identifying the phases of opioid use disorder is highly contextual and challenging. However, we find that using explanations during modeling leads to a significant boost in classification accuracy demonstrating their beneficial role in a high-stakes domain such as studying the opioid use disorder continuum. The dataset will be made available for research on Github in the formal version.Comment: Work in progres

The assembly of developing motor neurons depends on an interplay between spontaneous activity, type II cadherins and gap junctions

A core structural and functional motif of the vertebrate central nervous system is discrete clusters of neurons or ‘nuclei’. Yet the developmental mechanisms underlying this fundamental mode of organisation are largely unknown. We have previously shown that the assembly of motor neurons into nuclei depends on cadherin-mediated adhesion. Here, we demonstrate that the emergence of mature topography among motor nuclei involves a novel interplay between spontaneous activity, cadherin expression and gap junction communication. We report that nuclei display spontaneous calcium transients, and that changes in the activity patterns coincide with the course of nucleogenesis. We also find that these activity patterns are disrupted by manipulating cadherin or gap junction expression. Furthermore, inhibition of activity disrupts nucleogenesis, suggesting that activity feeds back to maintain integrity among motor neurons within a nucleus. Our study suggests that a network of interactions between cadherins, gap junctions and spontaneous activity governs neuron assembly, presaging circuit formation

Acute phase inflammation is characterized by rapid changes in plasma/peritoneal fluid N-glycosylation in mice.

To access publisher's full text version of this article, please click on the hyperlink in Additional Links field or click on the hyperlink at the top of the page marked Files. This article is open access.Murine zymosan-induced peritonitis is a widely used model for studying the molecular and cellular events responsible for the initiation, persistence and/or resolution of inflammation. Among these events, it is becoming increasingly evident that changes in glycosylation of proteins, especially in the plasma and at the site of inflammation, play an important role in the inflammatory response. Using matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF-MS)-based glycosylation profiling, we investigated the qualitative and quantitative effect of zymosan-induced peritonitis on N-glycosylation in mouse plasma and peritoneal fluid. Our results show that both N-glycomes exhibit highly similar glycosylation patterns, consisting mainly of diantennary and triantennary complex type N-glycans with high levels (>95 %) of galactosylation and sialylation (mostly NeuGc) and a medium degree of core fucosylation (30 %). Moreover, MS/MS structural analysis, assisted by linkage-specific derivatization of sialic acids, revealed the presence of O-acetylated sialic acids as well as disialylated antennae ("branching sialylation") characterized by the presence of α2-6-linked NeuGc on the GlcNAc of the NeuGcα2-3-Galβ1-3-GlcNAc terminal motif. A significant decrease of (core) fucosylation together with an increase of both α2-3-linked NeuGc and "branching sialylation" were observed in N-glycomes of mice challenged with zymosan, but not in control mice injected with PBS. Importantly, substantial changes in glycosylation were already observed 12 h after induction of peritonitis, thereby demonstrating an unexpected velocity of the biological mechanisms involved.Dutch Arthritis Association (Reumafonds) LLP-24 Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking (IMI JU)/ 115142-2 Netherlands Genomic Initiative/93511033 info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/FP7/278535info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/FP7/27853

Examining co-patterns of depression and alcohol misuse in emerging adults following university graduation

Depression and alcohol use disorders are highly comorbid. Typically, alcohol use peaks in emerging adulthood (e.g., during university), and many people also develop depression at this time. Self-medication theory predicts that depressed emerging adults drink to reduce negative emotions. While research shows that depression predicts alcohol use and related problems in undergraduates, far less is known about the continuity of this association after university. Most emerging adults “mature out” of heavy drinking; however, some do not and go on to develop an alcohol use disorder. Depressed emerging adults may continue to drink heavily to cope with the stressful (e.g., remaining unemployed) transition out of university. Accordingly, using parallel process latent class growth modelling, we aimed to distinguish high- from low-risk groups of individuals based on joint patterns of depression and alcohol misuse following university graduation. Participants (N = 123) completed self-reports at three-month intervals for the year post-graduation. Results supported four classes: class 1: low stable depression and low decreasing alcohol misuse (n = 52), class 2: moderate stable depression and moderate stable alcohol misuse (n = 35), class 3: high stable depression and low stable alcohol misuse (n = 29), and class 4: high stable depression and high stable alcohol misuse (n = 8). Our findings show that the co-development of depression and alcohol misuse after university is not uniform. Most emerging adults in our sample continued to struggle with significant depressive symptoms after university, though only two classes continued to drink at moderate (class 2) and high (class 4) risk levels

Computerized Tailored Interventions to Enhance Prevention and Screening for Hepatitis C Virus Among People Who Inject Drugs: Protocol for a Randomized Pilot Study.

BACKGROUND: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a growing problem among people who inject drugs. Strategies to reduce disease transmission (eg, syringe exchange programs) and facilitate HCV screening and linkage are available but are under-utilized in many communities affected by injection drug use. Novel approaches to increasing the use of these strategies are needed. OBJECTIVE: The goals of this project are to (1) develop and pilot test a computerized tailored intervention for increasing HCV screening and decreasing risky drug use behavior among people who inject drugs and (2) determine the feasibility of disseminating such an intervention using peer-based referrals in the setting of a community-based syringe exchange program. METHODS: This 2-arm, randomized pilot study is being conducted in a large-volume, multisite syringe exchange program in southern Wisconsin. A social network-based strategy was used to recruit a total of 235 adults who reported past-month injection of opioids, cocaine, or methamphetamine. Network recruiters were identified among clients requesting services from the syringe exchange program and were enlisted to refer eligible peers to the study. All participants completed a computer-adapted questionnaire eliciting information about risk behaviors and their knowledge, attitudes, and prior experiences related to HCV screening. Subjects were then randomly assigned to receive usual care, consisting of standard counseling by syringe exchange staff, or the Hep-Net intervention, which provides algorithm-based, real-time tailored feedback and recommendations for behavior change in the style of motivational interviewing. Changes in drug use behaviors and attitudes will be assessed during a second session between 90 and 180 days after the baseline visit. Frequency of repeat HCV testing and HCV incidence will be assessed through a database search 1 year after study completion. RESULTS: Recruitment for this study was completed in April 2015. Follow-up of enrolled participants is expected to continue until March 2016. Network recruiters were enrolled who referred a total of 195 eligible peers (overall N=235). At baseline, the median age was 34 years; 41.3% (97/235) were non-white; and 86.4% (203/235) reported predominantly injecting heroin. Most participants (161/234, 68.8%) reported sharing injection equipment in the past and of these, 30.4% (49/161) had never been tested for HCV. CONCLUSIONS: This study will provide preliminary evidence to determine whether incorporating computerized behavioral interventions into existing prevention services at syringe exchange programs can lead to adoption of healthier behaviors. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02474043; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02474043 (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/6dbjUQG7J)

Proteogenomic Features of the Highly Polymorphic Histidine-rich Glycoprotein Arose Late in Evolution

Histidine-rich glycoprotein (HRG) is a liver-produced protein circulating in human serum at high concentrations of around 125 μg/ml. HRG belongs to the family of type-3 cystatins and has been implicated in a plethora of biological processes, albeit that its precise function is still not well understood. Human HRG is a highly polymorphic protein, with at least five variants with minor allele frequencies of more than 10%, variable in populations from different parts of the world. Considering these five mutations we can theoretically expect 35 = 243 possible genetic HRG variants in the population. Here, we purified HRG from serum of 44 individual donors and investigated by proteomics the occurrence of different allotypes, each being either homozygote or heterozygote for each of the five mutation sites. We observed that some mutational combinations in HRG were highly favored, while others were apparently missing, although they ought to be present based on the independent assembly of these five mutation sites. To further explore this behavior, we extracted data from the 1000 genome project (n ∼ 2500 genomes) and assessed the frequency of different HRG mutants in this larger dataset, observing a prevailing agreement with our proteomics data. From all the proteogenomic data we conclude that the five different mutation sites in HRG are not occurring independently, but several mutations at different sites are fully mutually exclusive, whereas others are highly intwined. Specific mutations do also affect HRG glycosylation. As the levels of HRG have been suggested as a protein biomarker in a variety of biological processes (e.g., aging, COVID-19 severity, severity of bacterial infections), we here conclude that the highly polymorphic nature of the protein needs to be considered in such proteomics evaluations, as these mutations may affect HRG's abundance, structure, posttranslational modifications, and function

Key changes in bovine milk immunoglobulin G during lactation: NeuAc sialylation is a hallmark of colostrum immunoglobulin G N-glycosylation

We monitored longitudinal changes in bovine milk IgG in samples from four cows at 9 time points in between 0.5 and 28 days following calving. We used peptide-centric LC–MS/MS on proteolytic digests of whole bovine milk, resulting in the combined identification of 212 individual bovine milk protein sequences, with IgG making up >50 percent of the protein content of every 0.5 d colostrum sample, which reduced to ≤3 percent in mature milk. In parallel, we analyzed IgG captured from the bovine milk samples to characterize its N-glycosylation, using dedicated methods for bottom-up glycoproteomics employing product ion-triggered hybrid fragmentation; data are available via ProteomeXchange with identifier PXD037755. The bovine milk IgG N-glycosylation profile was revealed to be very heterogeneous, consisting of >40 glycoforms. Furthermore, these N-glycosylation profiles changed substantially over the period of lactation, but consistently across the four individual cows. We identified NeuAc sialylation as the key abundant characteristic of bovine colostrum IgG, significantly decreasing in the first days of lactation, and barely detectable in mature bovine milk IgG. We also report, for the first time to our knowledge, the identification of subtype IgG3 in bovine milk, alongside the better-documented IgG1 and IgG2. The detailed molecular characteristics we describe of the bovine milk IgG, and their dynamic changes during lactation, are important not only for the fundamental understanding of the calf’s immune development, but also for understanding bovine milk and its bioactive components in the context of human nutrition