Understanding your water test report (1995)

"New 7/93, Reprinted 4/95/5M.""Water Quality.""Focus area : drinking water.""Published by University Extension. University of Missouri-Columbia.""Reviewed and adapted for Missouri by Wanda Eubank, Jerry Carpenter, Bev Maltsberger, University of Missouri-Columbia, and Nix Anderson, Missouri Department of Health, from Understanding Your Water Test Report by Michael H. Bradshaw, Health and Safety Extension Specialist and G. Morgan Powell, Natural Resource Engineer, Kansas State University.

Herbicide-Resistant Crops: Utilities and Limitations for Herbicide-Resistant Weed Management

Since 1996, genetically modified herbicide-resistant (HR) crops, particularly glyphosate-resistant (GR) crops, have transformed the tactics that corn, soybean, and cotton growers use to manage weeds. The use of GR crops continues to grow, but weeds are adapting to the common practice of using only glyphosate to control weeds. Growers using only a single mode of action to manage weeds need to change to a more diverse array of herbicidal, mechanical, and cultural practices to maintain the effectiveness of glyphosate. Unfortunately, the introduction of GR crops and the high initial efficacy of glyphosate often lead to a decline in the use of other herbicide options and less investment by industry to discover new herbicide active ingredients. With some exceptions, most growers can still manage their weed problems with currently available selective and HR crop-enabled herbicides. However, current crop management systems are in jeopardy given the pace at which weed populations are evolving glyphosate resistance. New HR crop technologies will expand the utility of currently available herbicides and enable new interim solutions for growers to manage HR weeds, but will not replace the long-term need to diversify weed management tactics and discover herbicides with new modes of action. This paper reviews the strengths and weaknesses of anticipated weed management options and the best management practices that growers need to implement in HR crops to maximize the long-term benefits of current technologies and reduce weed shifts to difficult-to-control and HR weeds

Global surveillance of cancer survival 1995-2009: analysis of individual data for 25,676,887 patients from 279 population-based registries in 67 countries (CONCORD-2)

BACKGROUND: Worldwide data for cancer survival are scarce. We aimed to initiate worldwide surveillance of cancer survival by central analysis of population-based registry data, as a metric of the effectiveness of health systems, and to inform global policy on cancer control. METHODS: Individual tumour records were submitted by 279 population-based cancer registries in 67 countries for 25·7 million adults (age 15-99 years) and 75,000 children (age 0-14 years) diagnosed with cancer during 1995-2009 and followed up to Dec 31, 2009, or later. We looked at cancers of the stomach, colon, rectum, liver, lung, breast (women), cervix, ovary, and prostate in adults, and adult and childhood leukaemia. Standardised quality control procedures were applied; errors were corrected by the registry concerned. We estimated 5-year net survival, adjusted for background mortality in every country or region by age (single year), sex, and calendar year, and by race or ethnic origin in some countries. Estimates were age-standardised with the International Cancer Survival Standard weights. FINDINGS: 5-year survival from colon, rectal, and breast cancers has increased steadily in most developed countries. For patients diagnosed during 2005-09, survival for colon and rectal cancer reached 60% or more in 22 countries around the world; for breast cancer, 5-year survival rose to 85% or higher in 17 countries worldwide. Liver and lung cancer remain lethal in all nations: for both cancers, 5-year survival is below 20% everywhere in Europe, in the range 15-19% in North America, and as low as 7-9% in Mongolia and Thailand. Striking rises in 5-year survival from prostate cancer have occurred in many countries: survival rose by 10-20% between 1995-99 and 2005-09 in 22 countries in South America, Asia, and Europe, but survival still varies widely around the world, from less than 60% in Bulgaria and Thailand to 95% or more in Brazil, Puerto Rico, and the USA. For cervical cancer, national estimates of 5-year survival range from less than 50% to more than 70%; regional variations are much wider, and improvements between 1995-99 and 2005-09 have generally been slight. For women diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2005-09, 5-year survival was 40% or higher only in Ecuador, the USA, and 17 countries in Asia and Europe. 5-year survival for stomach cancer in 2005-09 was high (54-58%) in Japan and South Korea, compared with less than 40% in other countries. By contrast, 5-year survival from adult leukaemia in Japan and South Korea (18-23%) is lower than in most other countries. 5-year survival from childhood acute lymphoblastic leukaemia is less than 60% in several countries, but as high as 90% in Canada and four European countries, which suggests major deficiencies in the management of a largely curable disease. INTERPRETATION: International comparison of survival trends reveals very wide differences that are likely to be attributable to differences in access to early diagnosis and optimum treatment. Continuous worldwide surveillance of cancer survival should become an indispensable source of information for cancer patients and researchers and a stimulus for politicians to improve health policy and health-care systems

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Texture analysis riparian coniferous forest ADAR imagery to identify potential ecological indicators for monitoring

The Airborne Data Acquisition and Registration (ADAR) remote sensing system captured one-meter resolution imagery of 25 different riparian sites in drift Creek Basin of coastal northwestern Oregon, USA. The multispectral, digital data characterized riparian areas with the intent to develop ecological indicators for long-term monitoring

Modeling canopy structure and heterogeneity across scales: From crowns to canopy

Canopy studies have been limited in ecological investigations due to problems of canopy accessibility, and the lack of efficient sampling and modeling methods. The primary objective of this study was to develop an efficient modeling approach to describe the 3-dimensional, hierarchical structure of individual crown shells within stands and corresponding canopy patches. Crown shells were modeled based on crown ratio, maximum cardinal radius, vertical position, and shape, Canopies were represented by adding unique crowns to simulated point patterns of trees of known aggregation as measured by Pielou\u27s index of nonrandomness. Canopy patches were delineated at multiple horizontal and vertical scales using the ARC/INFO geographic infomation system (GIS). The patterns of canopy patches are clearly variable and scale dependent. Canopy patterns become more diverse at broader horizontal scales, and change greatly from the lower to the upper canopies. The modeling approach used in this study has general utility in characterizing 3-dimensional canopies of many types of forests