Optimal Grazing Termination Date for Dual-Purpose Winter Wheat Production

Dual-purpose winter wheat (fall-winter forage plus grain) production is an important economic enterprise in the southern Great Plains. Grazing termination to enable grain production is a critical decision. The objective is to determine the optimal grazing termination date for dual-purpose wheat. The value of knowing the occurrence of first hollow stem (FHS), a wheat growth threshold for grazing termination, is also determined. Results indicate that for most price situations grazing should be terminated at or before FHS. Marginal wheat returns from extended grazing were negative and the value of FHS information ranges from $1.50 to$10 per acre.dual-purpose, first hollow stem, plateau function, stocker cattle, value of information, wheat, Agribusiness, Agricultural Finance, Crop Production/Industries, Farm Management, Land Economics/Use, Livestock Production/Industries, Production Economics, Q12, Q16,

Recent H-alpha results on pulsar B2224+65's bow-shock nebula, the "Guitar"

We used the 4 m Discovery Channel Telescope (DCT) at Lowell observatory in 2014 to observe the Guitar Nebula, an Hα bow-shock nebula around the high-velocity radio pulsar B2224+65. Since the nebula`s discovery in 1992, the structure of the bow-shock has undergone significant dynamical changes. We have observed the limb structure, targeting the "body" and "neck" of the guitar. Comparing the DCT observations to 1995 observations with the Palomar 200-inch Hale telescope, we found changes in both spatial structure and surface brightness in the tip, head, and body of the nebula

Reusing Data and Metadata to Create New Metadata Through Machine-Learning & Other Programmatic Methods

Recent improvements in natural language processing (NLP) enable metadata to be created programmatically from reused original metadata or even the dataset itself. Transfer-learning applied to NLP has greatly improved performance and reduced training data requirements. In this talk, well compare machine-generated metadata to human-generated metadata and discuss characteristics of metadata and data archives that affect suitability for machine-learning reuse of metadata. Where as human-generated metadata is often populated once, populated from the perspective of data supplier, populated by many individuals with different words for the same thing, and limited in length, machine-generated metadata can be updated any number of times, generated from the perspective of any user, constrained to a standardized set of terms that can be evolved over time, and be any length required. Machine-learning generated metadata offers benefits but also additional needs in terms of version control, process transparency, human-computer interaction, and IT requirements. As a successful example, well discuss how a dataset of abstracts and associated human-tagged keywords from a standardized list of several thousand keywords were used to create a machine-learning model that predicted keyword metadata for open-source code projects on code.nasa.gov. Well also discuss a less successful example from data.nasa.gov to show how data archive architecture and characteristics of initial metadata can be strong controls on how easy it is to leverage programmatic methods to reuse metadata to create additional metadata

Construction and description of a diagnostic test of physical science ideas

Teaching physical science in such a way that the learning outcomes result in effective understanding of conceptions has been recognized as a process which is not occurring as well as it could be in New Zealand. Recent research shows that most young people's misunderstandings about the natural world around them are retained even after a considerable period of teaching has occurred. One of the main steps for rectifying the mis­understandings young people have is to identify what the misunderstandings actually are. In an attempt to assist teachers with this process a diagnostic test has been prepared so that teachers can use it to identify misunderstandings and see how typical their students or classes are compared with a Local Norm Group which have been tested. Analysis of the results from the Local Norm Group shows that there are clearly identified misunderstandings that the students tested have about the physical science topics used in this project

Preliminary results from the ISAMS NO channel: Thermospheric radiances

The Improved Stratospheric and Mesospheric Sounder (ISAMS) is producing the first global measurements of emission from the 1 yields 0 band of nitric oxide (NO). The emission from the lower thermosphere has been examined and is seen to increase dramatically at times corresponding to high solar activity. The temporal and geographical extent of the effect is reported, and possible mechanisms for the enhanced emission are discussed. The need for adequate representation of thermospheric NO emission in order to retrieve NO number densities at all heights from ISAMS data is discussed, as are prospects for science studies using such NO number density measurements

Development and validation of a pragmatic natural language processing approach to identifying falls in older adults in the emergency department

BACKGROUND: Falls among older adults are both a common reason for presentation to the emergency department, and a major source of morbidity and mortality. It is critical to identify fall patients quickly and reliably during, and immediately after, emergency department encounters in order to deliver appropriate care and referrals. Unfortunately, falls are difficult to identify without manual chart review, a time intensive process infeasible for many applications including surveillance and quality reporting. Here we describe a pragmatic NLP approach to automating fall identification. METHODS: In this single center retrospective review, 500 emergency department provider notes from older adult patients (age 65 and older) were randomly selected for analysis. A simple, rules-based NLP algorithm for fall identification was developed and evaluated on a development set of 1084 notes, then compared with identification by consensus of trained abstractors blinded to NLP results. RESULTS: The NLP pipeline demonstrated a recall (sensitivity) of 95.8%, specificity of 97.4%, precision of 92.0%, and F1 score of 0.939 for identifying fall events within emergency physician visit notes, as compared to gold standard manual abstraction by human coders. CONCLUSIONS: Our pragmatic NLP algorithm was able to identify falls in ED notes with excellent precision and recall, comparable to that of more labor-intensive manual abstraction. This finding offers promise not just for improving research methods, but as a potential for identifying patients for targeted interventions, quality measure development and epidemiologic surveillance

Learning Design through the Lens of Service: A Qualitative Study

Twenty-four senior-level capstone engineering design projects were completed at a large, public, primarily undergraduate university involving 85 students (70 male and 15 female). All projects involved the design of equipment to facilitate physical activity for people with disabilities. The effects on: i) learning design, ii) attitude towards people with disabilities, iii) motivation to complete team design projects and iv) interdisciplinary collaboration were analyzed through 24 one-hour focus groups. We explored the student experience using a constructivist approach and grounded theory. Four major themes (with associated sub-themes) emerged from our data analysis: learning design (project management, iterative design process, and user-centered design), motivation to complete design (engineering, disabilities, user), perceptions of people with disabilities (previous experience, changed attitudes and beliefs), and multidisciplinary collaboration (etiquette presentation, communication between disciplines, defining roles and expectations). Students completing these projects were shown to appreciate user-centered design, exhibit greater motivation when able to meet and develop a relationship with their client in person, discuss altruistic factors regarding their capstone experience, and were able to develop strong multidisciplinary skills

Glycemic Control and Alveolar Bone Loss Progression in Type 2 Diabetes

This study tested the hypothesis that the risk for alveolar bone loss is greater, and bone loss progression more severe, for subjects with poorly controlled (PC) type 2 diabetes mellitus (type 2 DM) compared to those without type 2 DM or with better controlled (BC) type 2 DM. The PC group had glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1) ≥ 9%; the BC group had HbA1 < 9%. Data from the longitudinal study of the oral health of residents of the Gila River Indian Community were analyzed. Of the 359 subjects, aged 15 to 57 with less than 25% radiographic bone loss at baseline, 338 did not have type 2 DM, 14 were BC, and 7 were PC. Panoramic radiographs were used to assess interproximal bone level. Bone scores (scale 0–4) corresponding to bone loss of 0%, 1% to 24%, 25% to 49%, 50% to 74%, or ≥ 75% were used to identify the worst bone score (WBS) in the dentition. Change in worst bone score at follow‐up, the outcome, was specified on a 4‐category ordinal scale as no change, or a 1‐, 2‐, 3‐, or 4‐category increase over baseline WBS (WBS1). Poorly controlled diabetes, age, calculus, time to follow‐up examination, and WBS1 were statistically significant explanatory variables in ordinal logistic regression models. Poorly controlled type 2 DM was positively associated with greater risk for a change in bone score (compared to subjects without type 2 DM) when the covariates were included in the model. The cumulative odds ratio (COR) at each threshold of the ordered response was 11.4 (95% CI = 2.5, 53.3). When contrasted with subjects with BC type 2 DM, the COR for those in the PC group was 5.3 (95% CI = 0.8, 53.3). The COR for subjects with BC type 2 DM was 2.2 (95% CI = 0.7, 6.5), when contrasted to those without type 2 DM. These results suggest that poorer glycemic control leads to both an increased risk for alveolar bone loss and more severe progression over those without type 2 DM, and that there may be a gradient, with the risk for bone loss progression for those with better controlled type 2 DM intermediate to the other 2 groups. Ann Periodontol 1998;3:30–39.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/142262/1/aape0030.pd

Cloned defective interfering influenza virus protects ferrets from pandemic 2009 influenza A virus and allows protective immunity to be established

Influenza A viruses are a major cause of morbidity and mortality in the human population, causing epidemics in the winter, and occasional worldwide pandemics. In addition there are periodic outbreaks in domestic poultry, horses, pigs, dogs, and cats. Infections of domestic birds can be fatal for the birds and their human contacts. Control in man operates through vaccines and antivirals, but both have their limitations. In the search for an alternative treatment we have focussed on defective interfering (DI) influenza A virus. Such a DI virus is superficially indistinguishable from a normal virus but has a large deletion in one of the eight RNAs that make up the viral genome. Antiviral activity resides in the deleted RNA. We have cloned one such highly active DI RNA derived from segment 1 (244 DI virus) and shown earlier that intranasal administration protects mice from lethal disease caused by a number of different influenza A viruses. A more cogent model of human influenza is the ferret. Here we found that intranasal treatment with a single dose of 2 or 0.2 µg 244 RNA delivered as A/PR/8/34 virus particles protected ferrets from disease caused by pandemic virus A/California/04/09 (A/Cal; H1N1). Specifically, 244 DI virus significantly reduced fever, weight loss, respiratory symptoms, and infectious load. 244 DI RNA, the active principle, was amplified in nasal washes following infection with A/Cal, consistent with its amelioration of clinical disease. Animals that were treated with 244 DI RNA cleared infectious and DI viruses without delay. Despite the attenuation of infection and disease by DI virus, ferrets formed high levels of A/Cal-specific serum haemagglutination-inhibiting antibodies and were solidly immune to rechallenge with A/Cal. Together with earlier data from mouse studies, we conclude that 244 DI virus is a highly effective antiviral with activity potentially against all influenza A subtypes