What Are The Pros And Cons Of Vertical Farming

Posted on August 9, 2023 by hemp2022

Vertical farming comes with a range of advantages and disadvantages, which can vary depending on factors like the specific implementation, technology used, and the context in which it’s applied. Here’s a breakdown of the pros and cons of vertical farming:

Pros:

  1. Increased Crop Yields: Vertical farming allows for multiple layers of crops to be grown in the same space, leading to higher crop yields compared to traditional farming methods.
  2. Space Efficiency: Vertical farms can be established in urban areas or locations with limited space,rolling grow table making it possible to grow food in places where traditional agriculture may not be feasible.
  3. Reduced Land Use: Vertical farming requires less land compared to conventional farming, which can help conserve natural ecosystems and reduce deforestation.
  4. Year-Round Production: Controlled environments in vertical farms enable year-round crop production, regardless of external weather conditions, leading to a more reliable food supply.
  5. Reduced Water Usage: Hydroponic and aeroponic systems used in vertical farming are more water-efficient than traditional soil-based farming, reducing water wastage and conserving this valuable resource.
  6. Lower Pesticide Use: Controlled environments can reduce the need for pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides, leading to safer and more environmentally friendly food production.
  7. Local Food Production: Vertical farms located in urban areas can bring food production closer to consumers, reducing the carbon footprint associated with long-distance transportation of produce.
  8. Less Dependence on Weather: Vertical farming is less susceptible to weather-related challenges like droughts, floods, and extreme temperatures, resulting in more predictable yields.
  9. Soil Conservation: Vertical farming doesn’t require soil, which can help protect valuable topsoil and prevent soil degradation.
  10. Opportunity for Innovation: The technology-driven nature of vertical farming encourages innovation in agriculture, leading to the development of new growing techniques and systems.

Cons:

  1. High Initial Costs: Setting up a vertical farm can require a significant investment in infrastructure, equipment, and technology, which might be a barrier for some farmers or regions.
  2. Energy Consumption: The use of artificial lighting, climate control systems, and other technologies can lead to higher energy consumption, especially if the energy comes from non-renewable sources.
  3. Technical Expertise: Successful vertical farming requires a deep understanding of technology, horticulture, and agriculture. Farmers need to be knowledgeable about various systems and their maintenance.
  4. Economic Viability: The profitability of vertical farming can be challenging due to high initial costs, ongoing operational expenses, and the need to compete with conventional agricultural products in the market.
  5. Resource Intensiveness: The production and disposal of equipment used in vertical farming, such as LED lights and specialized growing systems, can contribute to resource consumption and waste generation.
  6. Limited Crop Variety: Some crops are better suited for vertical farming than others. Large plants with extensive root systems might not thrive in the constrained growing spaces of vertical farms.
  7. Dependency on Inputs: Vertical farms rely on a consistent supply of resources like water, nutrients, and electricity. Disruptions to these supplies can impact crop growth.
  8. E-Waste: The rapid pace of technological advancement could lead to the disposal of outdated equipment and components,4 x 8 grow table contributing to electronic waste (e-waste) concerns.
  9. Labor Intensity: The need for monitoring, maintenance, and daily care can make vertical farming labor-intensive, especially in larger operations.
  10. Cultural Acceptance: Vertical farming represents a significant departure from traditional agricultural practices. Its adoption might face resistance or skepticism in some communities.

In conclusion, while vertical farming offers several potential benefits, it also presents challenges and trade-offs. Its success hinges on careful planning, sustainable practices, technological innovation, and the ability to address the cons effectively.

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The Legislature resisted funding TEPP at the level specified in the initiative

Posted on August 8, 2023 by hemp2022

Apparently Philip Morris felt comfortable enough with Napolitano’s reassurance that Proposition 200 did not change the tobacco tax that no documented tobacco industry involvement in the MSA propositions occurred. RJ Reynolds representatives spoke with Arizona’s Attorney General Janet Napolitano in early October 2000, finding her “strictly ‘unofficial’ and ‘off the record’ reaction” to the tobacco industry attorneys’ argument that Proposition 200 did not increase the tobacco tax reassuring.This opinion led RJ Reynolds counsel Henery Stokes to report to Philip MacDonnell: “It was the consensus of the conference call group that the industry should stay out of the Initiatives. In the discussion I stated I would recommend to RJ Reynolds that we stay out of the campaigns. I stated that if we did anything further it might undermine our legal position. There was general agreement.”There were immediate efforts to divert the money to the General Fund, which were prevented with the help of former U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater.As a compromise to get some money appropriated to tobacco control, the resulting enabling legislation for Proposition 200, HB 2275, the Tobacco and Health Care Act , passed in 1995 capping expenditures for tobacco control in FY1996 at $10 million and FY1997 at $15 million.While revenues deposited into the Health Education Account for these two years were $27 million and $28.9 million respectively, the capped funds accrued a $30.9 million reserve in the account until they became available in FY1998 for subsequent allocation. After July 1, 1997 , TEPP was free to use the full account accrual of annual income and the accumulated reserves, limited only by TEPP’s capacity to create and develop programs. Not only did failing to appropriate all of the money voters allocated to TEPP mean the program would be smaller and less effective,plant racks for vertical growing but it also created a situation that invited future diversion of the funds away from tobacco control.

In a 2006 interview, Kevin DeMenna, long time lobbyist for the ALA, AHA, and ACS, noted that the pressure not to allocate all the TEPP funds and create the reserve came from Senate Majority Whip Jan Brewer “at the request of the tobacco companies.”DeMenna explained, “If you know anything about state budgeteers, [creating a fund reserve is] like painting a target on your forehead. In order to finally get that money loosened up [from protobacco legislators to create the TEPP program], we had to give a little to get.”HB 2275 also was amended by pro-tobacco legislators to prohibit the health voluntary groups involved in Proposition 200 from receiving any TEPP funds by specifying with which agencies TEPP could contract. This move retaliated against the voluntary health organizations for their role in bypassing the Legislature’s authority by going to voters with Proposition 200.These health groups, which had the most practical knowledge of tobacco control, were barred from participating in TEPP’s formation process and service provider network. Joel Meister, who during the time directed TEPP’s parent Center for Prevention and Health Promotion, concluded that when the Legislature selected permissible recipients of state contracts the purpose of specifying agencies achieved “intentionally excluding all other private, nonprofit agencies,” such as the health voluntaries.91TEPP’s ADHS infrastructure was poorly prepared to deal with this financial blow. At the same time TEPP had already been weakened by a six-month period without an Office Chief and a rocky transition to a new media contractor. These concurrent disruptions aggravated the severe budget cuts’ effect on the program, undoing much of the program’s infrastructure up to that point. The Arizona Department of Health Services was “complicit” with the budget cuts, according to health lobbyist Kevin DeMenna in a 2006 interview; “they had other priorities” than protecting the TEPP funds.These cuts had a discernable effect on smoking: Smoking prevalence increased after the cuts , and per capita cigarette consumption fell at a slower rate .

A confluence of four factors contributed to the diversion of Health Education Account funds. First, in April 2001, seven months before the proposed initial diversions, a $250 million budget shortfall and “slumping economy” confronted Arizona, even prior to the recession Arizona faced in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington D.C.,particularly because Arizona’s economy relies heavily on tourism. Second, at the time of Governor Hull’s first proposal to cut TEPP funding on November 5, 2001, the unspent Health Education Account reserve totaled $31 million, which the governor and Legislature viewed as money available for other purposes. Third, Proposition 204 created a need for additional money because the available funds from the MSA were not adequate to finance AHCCCS at 100% of the federal poverty level. Fourth and finally, the fact that Proposition 204 rather than Proposition 200 went into effect resulted in the Health Education Account remaining “unprotected” by the 1998 Voter Protection Act. On November 5, 2001, Governor Hull announced her plan to balance Arizona’s budget in light of an anticipated $1.5 billion deficit over two years. Part of her proposal included eliminating the entire TEPP program by using its reserve fund and yearly revenue to fund AHCCCS programs for indigent healthcare.The Legislature also had its own designs for the TEPP funds. A week earlier, Speaker of the House Jim Weiers had promised $4.3 million of the TEPP funds to trauma centers in southern Arizona. While Weiers’ plan was unsuccessful, this proposed diversion of TEPP funds unleashed legislators to drain TEPP finances for pet projects. Within weeks, the Arizona State Legislature transferred, in separate expenditure allocations, $27.8 million from the Health Education Account to the AHCCCS, nearly emptying the Account’s reserve and proposed to take $5 million per year from the Health Education Account for the AHCCCS. As soon as the health groups realized in November 2001 that the Governor and Legislature were planning to dismantle TEPP, they scrambled to voter-protect the funds as soon as possible. But the next election, in November 2002, was too late to stop the funds diversion of money from TEPP. The initial proposed diversion of TEPP funds to medical services would have reduced TEPP’s budget for FY 2002 and FY 2003 to a third of its previous budget. To this end, Hull supported HB 2019, which would have transferred $40 million for FY2002 and $18 million for FY 2003 from the Health Education Account to AHCCCS to provide the medical services Proposition 204 required.The ACS, ALA, and AHA actively opposed these diversions, both by making public statements and working through their lobbyist Kevin DeMenna. As a result of this resistance, the Senate amended the bill so the originally proposed $58 million diversion over two years was reduced to $32.8 million over two years. The first diversion came in HB 2019, which, after amendments,wholesale indoor plant grow rack appropriated $15 million from the Health Education Account to the “medical services stabilization fund” and was signed by the governor on December 19, 2001. , Carolyn Allen , James Weiers , et al.

The second transfer from the Health Education Account occurred when SB 1007 , Timothy Bee , Randall Gnant , Jack Brown , et al. appropriated $2.8 million from the Health Education Account to the AHCCCS, and became law without the signature of the governor on December 21, 2001. The last segment of this transfer came late in the fiscal year. HB 2004 transferred $10 million from the Health Education Account to AHCCCS March 21, 2002, and was signed by the governor. In addition to diverting money from TEPP to fund AHCCCS coverage, pro-tobacco legislators sought to divert an additional $5 million a year for five years from the Health Education Account to a new project called the Translational Genomics Research Institute . The statewide public private TGen was created by a group of business, science, and government leaders in February 2002 and operates with a $90 million budget from the Flinn Foundation, the Arizona State government, and businesses. This $5 million a year would be about 30% of TGen’s overall operating budget, and was promoted as a goodwill gesture on the part of the Legislature to demonstrate Arizona’s governmental commitment to the Institute. The majority of TGen’s $90 million funding came from grants and private foundations . This bill, HB2711, did not take TEPP funds and apply them to the state’s fiscal crisis as was often the rationalization for TEPP’s funding diversions,but instead appropriated them for new biotech development. The bill was sponsored by some of the legislators with the lowest policy scores, including Robert Blendu , Jake Flake , Linda Gray Barbara Leff , Cheryl Chase , and Laura Knaperek . The bill, written at the same time as Proposition 303 to voter-protect the Health Education Account was being voted on by the Legislature, stated that if Arizona voters approved Proposition 303 prohibiting future legislative appropriations of TEPP funds, then TGen’s $5 million a year would instead come from the Health Research Account that funded tobacco disease-related research.Displacing the diversion from TEPP to the Health Research Account occurred because the voluntary health organizations and the Legislature agreed the Health Research Account would not be reenacted along with the rest of Proposition 200’s language, and therefore, the Health Research Account would not be voter-protected. HB 2711was approved in May 2002 and signed by Governor Hull, extracting the $5 million from TEPP for FY2003 even though the Legislature had already referred Proposition 303 to the November ballot.On November 15, 2001, ten days after Hull announced her intention to divert the Health Education Accounts funds, Arizona Attorney General Janet Napolitano held a press conference with the previous Attorney General, Grant Woods, decrying Hull’s proposed diversions.Napolitano said Hull’s actions were “short-sighted,” would hurt children, and ignored the will of the voters who approved the Health Education Account.Woods expressed his disappointment in Hull, calling her diversion “a theft from the voters and from the children of Arizona.”

Disagreeing with Hull’s attack on the funds, Napolitano said she intended to lead an initiative to increase the excise tax on cigarettes from 58 cents at the time to somewhere between 70 cents and $1.08 to generate new revenue for TEPP while voter-protecting the Health Education Account from further diversions.While Napolitano and Woods’ defensive efforts did not stop the raid on TEPP’s finances, their opposition to Hull’s plan not only animated the voluntary health organizations to take their own initiative to save as much of TEPP’s funds as possible, but also planted the seed for Proposition 303.The health voluntaries and Arizona tobacco control advocates felt their “hands were tied” during the raid on TEPP because they were unable to preserve TEPP’s funding, even if they did reduce the proposed diversions.But the voluntary health organizations knew a piecemeal approach to defend TEPP from the Legislature was not going to effectively safeguard the program in the long run. Determined to protect TEPP, tobacco control advocates went back to the ballot to voter-protect the Health Education Account by reenacting it. Proposition 303, which would voter-protect TEPP and raise Arizona’s tobacco tax 60 cents, ultimately involved the AzHHA providing most of the campaign funding and the Legislature referring the measure to the ballot. Proposition 303 was predicated on each party’s “enlightened” self-interest: Voter-protecting the Health Education Account would not only free up tobacco control advocates to focus on other activities such as passing clean indoor air ordinances, but it would also create a Chronic Disease Fund, ultimately providing several million dollars a year for disease detection and prevention, allowing the health voluntaries to be major recipients of these funds as contracted service providers. The AzHHA, which helped lobby the Legislature to refer Preposition 303 and got Arizona hospitals to contribute more than half of the overall funds to run the campaign, would reap a huge return on their investment, receiving roughly $30 million a year in hospital reimbursements for unpaid services. The Legislature also gained by referring the measure to the ballot rather than allowing the health voluntaries to decide where the tax increase would go: the Legislature used the majority of Proposition 303’s tobacco tax increase, $100 million a year, to relieve their fiscal obligation to use general fund money to fulfill the requirements of the 2000 Proposition 204 mandate to fund AHCCCS at 100% the federal poverty level.

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A random sub-sample of 41 other subjects was selected from the survey pool with negative responses

Posted on August 7, 2023 by hemp2022

Authors did not report the cross-sectional risk of atopy to common allergens from exposure to formaldehyde. They hypothesized that formaldehyde causes inflammation and the release of cytokines, which leads to the upregulation of inducible NO synthetase. This view was supported by another study that found intranasal exposure to 400 ppb formaldehyde in healthy subjects caused eosinophilia in the nasal epithelium . Given that a key marker of the asthmogenic effects of formaldehyde may be specific IgE to formaldehyde-albumin, other air toxics could be similarly screened to evaluate their potential influence on atopic responses.Some experimental evidence in controlled human exposure studies supports an respiratory irritant mechanism for VOCs , but the human experimental research on lower respiratory or pulmonary immunologic effects of VOCs is scarce apart from studies of agents associated with occupational asthma . Koren et al. conducted a randomized crossover chamber study of 14 healthy nonsmoking young adult men. Subjects were exposed for 4 hr 1 week apart to clean air and 25 µg/m3 of a VOC mixture typical of indoor nonindustrial micro-environments. Nasal lavage performed immediately after exposure and 18 hr later showed significant increases in neutrophils at both time points. Harving et al. conducted a randomized crossover chamber study of 11 asthmatic individuals who were hyperreactive to histamine. Subjects were exposed for 90 min, 1 week apart to clean air and VOC mixtures at 2.5 and 25 µg/m3. Investigators found FEV1 decreased to 91% of baseline with 25 µg/m3, but this was not significantly different from sham exposure,indoor plant growing rack and there was no change in histamine reactivity. It is possible that the null results do not reflect inflammatory changes that influence small airways, which could be missed with FEV1 measurements.

What may be occurring in natural environments is another story, with mixed exposures possibly interacting under a wide range of exposure–dose conditions. This is best investigated with epidemiologic designs.Indirect evidence of a role for ambient VOCs in asthma comes from research linking a buildup of indoor irritants including VOCs and bio-aerosols in office buildings to a nonspecific cluster of symptoms called the “sick building syndrome,” which includes upper and lower respiratory tract symptoms, eye irritation, headache, and fatigue. Other studies have also found new-onset asthma occurring in relation to particular nonresidential indoor environments, especially where problems with ventilation systems or dampness have been found . It is possible that fungal spores or other aeroallergens, mycotoxins, and endotoxins could increase in parallel with VOCs under conditions of inadequate air exchange at work, and be responsible for some of these findings. Epidemiologic evidence linking indoor home VOCs with asthma or related respiratory outcomes come largely from cross-sectional studies. A survey of 627 students 13–14 years of age attending 11 schools in Uppsala, Sweden, showed self-reported asthma prevalence was higher in schools with higher VOCs . Other risk factors were not controlled for in this association. In addition, passive, not active, VOC measurements were associated with asthma. Norbäck et al. , using a survey sample of 600 adults 20–44 years of age in Uppsala, Sweden, selected a nonrandom sub-sample of 47 subjects reporting asthma attacks or nocturnal breathlessness the last 12 months or reporting current use of asthma medications.Logistic regression models adjusted for age, sex, smoking, carpeting, and house dust mites, but not dampness, which was significant. There were no effects on daytime breathlessness from concentrations of 2-hr active VOC samples in the homes. Nocturnal breathlessness was associated with toluene, C8-aromatics, terpenes, and formaldehyde in adjusted models. Bronchial hyper responsiveness was correlated only with limonene.

PEF variability was correlated only with terpenes. Wieslander et al. aimed to examine respiratory symptoms and asthma outcomes in relation to indoor paint exposures in the last year. They selected an enriched random sample of 562 adult subjects, including asymptomatic responders along with all reporting asthma or nocturnal dyspnea , using the same survey source population as Norbäck et al. in Uppsala. Asthma was defined as positive bronchial hyper responsiveness to methacholine plus asthma symptoms . Thirty-two percent of homes and 23% of workplaces were painted within the last year. Total VOC was elevated by 100 µg/m3 in 62 newly painted homes. Logistic regression models adjusted for age, sex, and current smoking but not ETS. Asthma prevalence was greater for newly painted homes [OR 1.5 ], consistent with greater differences in VOCs . Blood eosinophil concentrations were also elevated in newly painted homes. In newly painted workplaces, asthmalike symptoms were significantly increased , but there was no association with bronchial hyper responsiveness or eosinophils. There were no associations for newly painted homes or workplaces and atopy , serum eosinophilic cationic protein, serum IgE, PEF variability , or in-clinic FEV1. Biases in the above cross-sectional studies in Uppsala include potential selection bias and the possibility that health outcomes preceded exposures. Diez et al. studied 266 newborn children born with birth weight of 1,500–2,500 g, or with elevated IgE in cord blood, or with a positive primary family history of atopic disease. Concentrations of 25 VOCs were monitored indoors during the first 4 weeks of life. Parents filled out questionnaires after 6 weeks and 1 year of age. Postnatal respiratory infections were associated with benzene > 5.6 µg/m3 [OR 2.4 ] and styrene > 2.0 µg/m3 [OR 2.1 ]. Wheezing was associated with reports of restoration during the first year of life, but not with total or specific IgE at the age of 1 year. These models controlled for heating, gas cooking, home size, new furniture, and animals but did not control for significant effects of ETS, which was correlated with benzene.

All of the above studies of indoor VOCs may be subject to unmeasured confounding by other causal agents that increase indoors under low ventilation conditions, including aeroallergens, or that are correlated with VOCs for other reasons. Most, but not all, of the studies controlled for ETS. The research to date is too sparse to evaluate causality from indoor home VOCs, but there is even less information to evaluate the public health impact on respiratory health from outdoor VOCs, which include some of the same compounds found indoors. Ware et al. conducted a study in a large chemical manufacturing center in the Kanawha Valley, West Virginia. They surveyed 74 elementary schools with interviews of 8,549 children in and out of the valley and measured passive 8-week samples of 5 petroleum-related VOCs and 10 process related VOCs . Higher VOC concentrations were found in the valley. Cross-sectional results showed children in the valley had higher rates of physician-diagnosed asthma [OR 1.27 ]. Composite indicators for lower respiratory symptoms in the last year were weakly positively associated with petroleum-related VOC levels [OR per 10 µg/m3, 1.05 ] and process-related VOCs levels [OR per 2 µg/m3, 1.08 ]. Asthma diagnoses were weakly positively associated with petroleum-related VOCs [OR 1.05 ] but not process related VOCs . One school with high petroleum-related VOCs strongly influenced the model. The average concentrations measured in the Kanawha study do not differ greatly from average levels in large urban areas . For the Kanawha study compared with a Los Angeles ambient exposure study, for example, average toluene was 9.7 µg/m3 versus 13 µg/m3, respectively, and for benzene, 3.2 µg/m3 versus 3.5 µg/m3, respectively . In a study of 51 residents of Los Angeles, personal and indoor air concentrations of all prevalent VOCs except carbon tetrachloride were higher than outdoor ambient concentrations . Also,marijuana growing racks personal real time exposures can be even higher, particularly while in cars . For example, measurements of toluene taken inside cars in New York City ranged from 26 to 56 µg/m3 and for benzene ranged from 9 to 11 µg/m3 . Active ingredients in insecticide products used in residential and agricultural environments have changed over time due in part to regulations implemented to protect human health and the environment. Organochlorine insecticides such as dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane were introduced in the 1940’s and used to treat termites and other insects in homes. DDT was banned from all use in the United States in 1972 due to concerns about ecological and human health.1 Chlordane, another OC insecticide, replaced DDT until it, too, was banned for residential use in 1988 due to concerns about potential carcinogenicity and developmental health effects.Organophosphate insecticides, including chlorpyrifos and diazinon, largely replaced OC insecticides for residential use beginning in the 1970’s. As a result of the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996 and in advance of a required phase out in 2005 due to concerns about exposure to children, sales of chlorpyrifos and diazinon for indoor home use were voluntarily ended by the manufacturers in 2001 and 2004, respectively.Carbamate insecticides, including carbaryl and propoxur, were widely used for residential indoor applications in the 1980’s and 1990’s but many registered residential uses have been cancelled, including all indoor applications of carbaryl in 2008,5 due to concerns about neurodevelopmental effects of carbamates and carcinogenic effects of propoxur,Synthetic pyrethroids, such as permethrin and cypermethrin, were developed as a less toxic alternative to OP and OC insecticides,and have largely replaced OPs and carbamates insecticides for residential uses.Carpet dust has been used as an indicator of potential long-term exposure in the residential environment for non-volatile and semi-volatile compounds because the indoor environment is protected from light, weather and microbes that degrade compounds outdoors.

Carpet dust is an especially good environmental medium for assessing exposure to children because they spend more time on the floor and have more hand-to-mouth activity than adults,resulting in greater estimated intake of chemicals from non-dietary ingestion.Based on exposure models for children three to five years of age, estimated non-dietary ingestion was the primary route of exposure to permethrin in U.S. homes with self-reported use of the insecticide,and to chlorpyrifos and diazinon among farmworkers’ children from an agricultural community in California.Sources of insecticides inside the home include indoor and outdoor residential applications,occupational take-home,16 and drift from nearby agricultural applications.In this study, we collected carpet dust from children’s homes between 2001 and 2006 and measured the concentrations of eight insecticides. This study provided an opportunity to evaluate changes in concentrations of insecticides in carpet dust over time, while adjusting for important covariates, such as home insect treatments and nearby agricultural use. The results of our analyses provide information on the impact of regulatory changes on indoor levels of these insecticides. Our analysis included 413 residences from the Northern California Childhood Leukemia Study , a population-based case-control study in 17 counties in the San Francisco Bay area and 18 counties in the Central Valley.A single carpet dust sample was collected from a subset of NCCLS homes between October 2001 and April2006. Homes were eligible for carpet dust sample collection if the child was < 8 years old at diagnosis and lived in the same home since he/she was diagnosed with leukemia and had a carpet or area rug that was at least one square meter in area. Our analysis also included 21 residences from the Agricultural Pesticide Study in Fresno, California, which was designed to evaluate temporal variability in levels and determinants of exposure to agricultural pesticides.Eligibility criteria for APS residences included having at least 25% of land within 500 m of the home in agricultural production and no residents working in pesticide-related jobs during the previous six months. All APS homes had at least 2.2 m2 of carpet or rugs that had been in the residence for at least one year and each home was visited from one to seven times between April 2003 and November 2005. Both study protocols were approved by the Institutional Review Boards of participating institutions and all participants gave written informed consent prior to participation. A dust sample was collected from each residence at the home visit, as described previously,using a High Volume Small Surface Sampler . For NCCLS participants, the dust sample was taken from a carpet or rug in the room where the child spent the most time while awake in the year prior to diagnosis/reference date to provide the best estimate of exposure since the bedroom would include time spent sleeping when the child would not be in contact with the carpet. For APS participants, a sample was collected from a carpet or rug in the room located on the side of the home facing agricultural fields at each home visit. Interview staff collected approximately 10 mL of dust.

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Putative progenitor T cells develop into early TH0 cells with the first antigen encounter

Posted on August 3, 2023 by hemp2022

Occupational physical activities contributed to high levels of total activity-related energy expenditure in our study , and we did not find an association of AMI risk with the agricultural or manual labor job patterns. Our study has several limitations that must be kept in mind in interpreting our study findings. Our study is a case-control study and, thus, the temporal relationship between physical activity and AMI risk is unclear. As in all observational studies, we cannot establish causal associations. Self-reported physical activity measurements contain large measurement error, which may lead to underestimate the effect of physical activity on AMI risk. Recall bias is an issue in case-control studies. If controls are more likely to under-report daily physical activities than cases, the results could be biased towards the null hypothesis; if controls, due to social desirability, overestimate their physical activities while cases do not, then the effects of physical activity could be overestimated. However, our results on total activity-related energy expenditure are consistent with those from previous studies. Thus, recall bias is less likely to play a role in our study. Another potential limitation is that cases only included survivors of a first AMI. We cannot exclude residual confounding in our estimates. For example, occupation stress, a potential confounder, was not accounted for in our study because the information was not available. Our results may not be generalizable to other populations, since physical activity patterns are likely to vary according to many factors such as population level economic development, individual level socioeconomic status, the built environment, and distribution of leisure and occupational activities.Asthma morbidity and mortality have steadily increased since the mid-1970s , possibly reaching a plateau recently,greenhouse grow racks but the causes of this rise are largely unknown. The rise in allergic rhinitis may have begun after the inception of the industrial revolution .

The possibility of a linkage between the rise in asthma and in allergic rhinitis is supported by the consensus that the two diseases share certain genetic and environmental determinants . During the time that asthma increased, regulated ambient criteria air pollutants generally decreased in the United States. Because the two time trends are not positively related, arguably the rise in asthma could not be due to exposure to ambient air pollutants. This argument is not valid because correlations between time series are subject to ecologic fallacy. This biased interpretation can occur when associations at an aggregate level do not represent associations on an individual level because of unrelated causal factors that independently drive one or both of the aggregate trends. The bias may be amplified if trends in synergistic or antagonistic factors are ignored. For example, a lifestyle risk factor or other environmental exposure may have increased over the same period, and that factor could have positively interacted with effects of the regulated air pollutants. Many factors associated with Western industrial life other than environmental pollution have been identified as potential causes for the asthma epidemic, including allergens from indoor carpeting and pets coupled with increases in indoor residence time and in building tightness, early antibiotic use that prevents differentiation toward T-helper type 1 lymphocytes , declining physical fitness, and diet . Acute asthma morbidity has been associated with specific regulated air pollutants in aggregate time series and in individual-level repeated measures studies [reviewed by Bascom et al.. The risk of asthma onset or chronic effects on asthma from ambient air pollution exposure has been less clearly identified in epidemiologic studies, although few studies are prospective cohort designs . A cohort study of nonsmoking adult Seventh Day Adventists in California followed 10 or more years found associations between the development of asthma and outdoor concentrations of total suspended particulates , total suspended sulfate , and ozone . The association for O3 was found in males but not in females, possibly because males in that study spent significantly more time outdoors than females .

Three cohort studies looked at lung function growth in children and found significant reductions in growth of forced expiratory volume in 1 sec and forced vital capacity in relation to increasing levels of ambient air pollutants, including nitrogen dioxide , particulate matter < 10 and < 2.5 µm in aerodynamic diameter , O3, sulfur dioxide , and black smoke . Diminished lung function growth is one of the possible adverse outcomes of poorly controlled asthma . Epidemiologic studies of asthma and ambient air pollution have focused primarily on five of six principal criteria air pollutants for which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has established so-called National Ambient Air Quality Standards : O3, PM, carbon monoxide , NO2, and SO2. Studies in Europe have also used black smoke, which can represent sources of complex exposures such as DE that have a high elemental carbon content. The causal components in the epidemiologic studies have not been clearly identified, partly because the measurements have included only those major pollutant types that a) co-vary with other photochemically produced pollutants ; b) involve complex particle mixtures that vary by space and time ; or c) are correlated with other cogenerated primary pollutants . The availability of government monitoring data and the regulatory focus partly explains the lack of epidemiologic data concerning other potentially important exposures such as air toxics. Experimental research on the respiratory effects of air toxics is largely limited to animal models or in vitro studies. This is not surprising given that many air toxics have potentially serious adverse consequences such as carcinogenic, reproductive, or neurological effects. The occupational literature, on the other hand, has data on high exposures that may be less frequently encountered in nonoccupational settings. Given the lack of information on the causal role in asthma of a large number of potentially important air pollutants, it is important at this stage to identify information that future research can build upon. This article provides a review of the literature relevant to this issue. A major objective is to establish conceptual linkages concerning potential adverse respiratory effects of air toxics between different foci of research, including occupational, indoor, and community air pollution research.

Air toxics can be defined as having three characteristics: a) they have the potential to cause serious adverse health effects in the general population or to organisms in the environment as a result of airborne exposures; b) they are released from anthropogenic sources; and c) they include 189 hazardous air pollutants listed in section 112.b.1 of the Clean Air Act of 1990. It is conceivable that personal exposures to some air toxics may have increased over the last several decades and been partly responsible for the increase in asthma. Most notably, the U.S. Department of Transportation reports that the number of ton-miles carried by intercity trucks has steadily increased from 285 billion ton-miles in 1960 to 1,027 billion ton-miles in 1998, and the amount of diesel fuel consumed also increased in parallel . Over the same period, the total motor vehicle fuel consumption nearly tripled . Traffic density has also increased in many cities along with stagnation in fuel economy since the early 1980s . As a result, it is expected that concentrations of traffic-related pollutants will have increased in certain urban micro-environments. It is relevant that minority groups most at risk for poor asthma management and subsequent disease progression are more likely to live in areas failing to meet the NAAQS. This includes 80% of Hispanics and 65% of Blacks compared with 57% of Whites in the United States . Asthma has been defined as having three phenotypic characteristics: intermittent and reversible airway obstruction; increased airway responsiveness to contractile stimuli; and airway inflammation. Pulmonary inflammation is a hallmark of asthma and is directly related to asthma severity as a function of acute and chronic airflow obstruction. One potential mechanism of action for air toxics is through enhancement of airway inflammation. Inflammation in asthma, however,greenhouse growing rack has diverse pathways, mirroring the complexity of the disease. Three general mechanisms of inflammation in asthma include immunoglobulin E -mediated, neurogenic, and irritant induced. The principal inflammatory mechanism in asthma is an IgE-mediated reaction whereby an antigen cross-links with an IgE antibody specific to that antigen on the surface of mast cells and other immune cells. Commonly recognized antigens that induce acute exacerbations of asthma are high molecular weight allergens such as pollen, fungal and animal proteins. Low molecular weight agents involved in IgE-mediated reactions, including certain air toxics, act as haptens. Haptens must first react with endogenous or exogenous proteins to form a complete antigen . IgE-mediated mechanisms are key in early-phase asthmatic reactions . Other processes follow over several hours and involve the recruitment of eosinophils, CD4+T cells, neutrophils, basophils, and macrophages, and the release of proinflammatory mediators and cytokines. T-cell activation leads to the release of Thelper cell type 2 -like cytokines, which may be involved in a more prolonged chronic phase of inflammatory response over days .

The involvement of TH2 cells is important because a key pathway to the development of the asthma phenotype is believed to be the early differentiation of T-helper lymphocytes into TH2 rather than TH1 cells, although this is still controversial . TH1 cells participate in delayed-type hypersensitivity reactions. TH2 cells promote antibody immune responses, and because they secrete eosinophil-active cytokines and enhance IgE synthesis, they are implicated in the genesis of allergic inflammation.TH0 cells then differentiate into TH1- or TH2-type lymphocytes after repetitive antigen stimulation . Interleukin -4 shifts the differentiation from TH1 to TH2. The balance toward TH2 cells may be tipped by early environmental influences, including exposure to air pollutants , coupled with genetic susceptibilities. This is presumed to be key in the development of asthma. Neurogenic inflammation involves a spread of the inflammatory response via the release of neurotransmitters or activation of afferent nerves by the action of inflammatory mediators . Inflammatory mediators can trigger the activation of nonadrenergic, noncholinergic nerves to release tachykinins. A cascade of bronchoconstrictive reflexes and of inflammatory events can follow. Reactive airways dysfunction syndrome is a primary example of a type of asthma where toxic irritant-induced inflammation is a key mechanism. RADS has been identified in occupational settings and is defined as an irritant-induced nonimmunologic asthma with no latency period. RADS is nonimmunologic in the sense that bronchial epithelial injury is the primary causal event and typical phases of the immune response are absent, namely, sensitization, latent period, episode of elicitation of an immune response to antigen, and repetitive elicitation . RADS is an example of an inflammatory mechanism of air toxics, but it is rare and its relevance to nonoccupational asthma is unclear. There is hypothesized to be a feedback loop between inflammatory processes and neuronal processes that trigger inflammation . The inflammatory processes can be either immune mediated or triggered by irritant-induced airway injury. For RADS , and to some extent oxidant pollutants such as O3 , the initiation of bronchial epithelial injury could initiate the release of inflammatory mediators. This inflammation could then trigger neurogenic inflammation. Chemical irritants may also act as neuronal triggers directly . Irritant-induced induction of tachykinin release could serve to enhance ongoing inflammation in the asthmatic lung caused by known immune triggers. Examples consistent with this hypothetical mechanism include the putative interaction between ozone and pollen in asthma exacerbations , and the finding in subjects with mild asthma that airway responsiveness to inhaled allergen increases after ozone challenge . Airborne irritants could also indirectly enhance neuroinflammation by inhibition of neutral endopeptidase . NEP degrades tachykinins and its levels are decreased following exposure to oxidants , cigarette smoke , and an agent responsible for a form of occupational asthma, toluene diisocyanate . PAHs are found in relatively high concentrations in automobile and DE, along with other potentially important chemicals including nitroaromatics, aldehydes, alcohols, ketones, quinones, phenols, and other organic compounds, as well as volatile co-pollutants— oxides of nitrogen and of sulfur, CO, and numerous VOCs such as formaldehyde, benzene, and 1,3-butadiene. Diesel exhaust particles have a submicrometer elemental carbon core coated with organic compounds , nitrites, sulfites, and trace metals. The most common type of PAH compound in DEPs includes the phenanthrenes, followed by fluorenes, fluoranthrenes, naphthalenes, and pyrenes . However, PAHs are semivolatile, and so much of the PAHs emitted from motor vehicles is not particle bound. Selected indoor home concentrations of various semivolatile PAH compounds for 33 homes in Californiaand Ohio ranged from 9.2 to 210 ng/m3 for phenanthrene, 0.29 to 1100 ng/m3 for quinoline, 2.40 to 37.4 ng/m3 for fluoranthrene, and 0.00 to 4.13 ng/m3 for benzo[a]pyrene .

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The only exception exists for the baseline case AB when the inlet mass flow rate is the smallest

Posted on August 2, 2023 by hemp2022

Besides the velocity distribution, the effect of temperature is also a critical parameter for determining convective flow. Fig. 8 shows the two-dimensional temperature distributions in the x-y plane along the middle of the z-direction for all eight cases at a mass flow rate of 0.3 kg s−1. In our analysis, the temperature of the inlet flow is lower than that of the exit flow due to the heat generated from the LED light. For case BC, the inlet is located near the bottom and the exit is near the top. Due to the density difference, the exit warm stream tends to flow up. This allows the flow to reach the topmost tray more easily and, therefore, achieves more uniform temperature distribution among all trays. Combining the inlet flow along the long side of the tray, the helical flow effect, and the buoyancy, case BC is able to reach the maximum OU of 91.7%. Fig. 9 summarized the velocity and temperature contours for case BC at an inlet mass flow rate of 0.3 kg s−1. The velocity pro- files in Fig. 9a clearly show the spiral effect above each cultivation tray and the local velocity is close to the optimal speed of 0.4 m s−1. In addition, the temperature shows an increasing trend from bottom to top as the flow helically passing through the crops and moving towards the outlet.he distributions of temperature and gas species, such as water vapor and CO2, play an integral role in photosynthesis which, in turn, influences the quality of plant and its growth. Therefore, maintaining these critical parameters in a reasonable range to ensure reliable and efficient production is essential to environmental control of an IVFS. Evaluating the distribution of these parameters can also provide the effectiveness of inlet/exit location. It should be noted that the parameter OU provides an overall assessment of the air flow velocity over planting trays. An optimal design is to achieve desired local temperature and species distribution while maintaining high OU values in an IVFS. In the following discussion,micro green growing racks the four cases with highest values of OU at their corresponding mass flow rates are studied and compared to the baseline case AB.

Since CO2 is a reactant of photosynthesis, increasing CO2 concentration usually leads to enhancement of crop production. Reports show that increasing the CO2 concentration from the atmospheric average of 400 ppm to 1500 ppm can increase the yield by as much as 30%. In this IVFS analysis, the CO2 level of the inlet mass flow rate is increased by a CO2 generator to be 1000 ppm . Since the consumption rate of CO2 through the exchange zones is fixed, higher overall average CO2 concentration through the system is desirable. Fig. 10 shows the comparison of the average CO2 concentration between the highest OU cases and the baseline case AB at different inlet mass flow rate. A few general trends of CO2 concentration can be observed from Fig. 10. First, the CO2 concentration increases with inlet flow rate due to increasing supply of CO2 molecules. In addition, tray 1 has the highest CO2 concentration because most of the cold fresh inlet air dwells near the bottom of the IVFS due to the buoyancy effect. In contrast, tray 3 has the lowest CO2 concentration because the fresh inlet air has the highest flow resistance to reach tray 3due to the combination of sharp turns and buoyancy effect. This is particularly true at low inlet flow rates and when the inlet is located on the top, which lead to low flow circulation as cold inlet air flows downward directly. As a result, BC, BA, and DA at 0.3, 0.4, and 0.5 kg s−1, respectively, have relatively high CO2 concentrations. Even though the baseline case AB at 0.5 kg s−1 has the highest CO2 concentration, its OU is too low to be considered a good design. Temperature is also a critical parameter to control and monitor because it directly affects both relative humidity and plant growth. The temperature distribution in the system depends on the inlet/exit location, inlet mass flow rate, and amount of heat. Since the inlet temperature and heat flux conditions are fixed, the exit temperature increases with decreasing inlet mass flow rate.

Fig. 11 shows a comparison of the average temperatures of the higher OU cases and the baseline case AB at different inlet mass Fig. 12. Comparison of the average RH over each tray between the best OU cases and the baseline case at each inlet mass flow rate condition. flow rates. Three phenomena can be observed from the baseline case AB results at different inlet mass flow rates: the flow above tray 4 always has a lower temperature than that above tray 3 since it is closest to the inlet region; at low inlet mass flow rate , the flow above tray 3 has the highest temperature due to buoyancy effect; and at high inlet mass flow rate , the flow above tray 1 has the highest temperature because it is located closest to the exit. The temperature distribution for case AD is very similar to that of the baseline case due to similar inlet/exit location orientations so that buoyancy is the dominant effect at low inlet mass flow rate . On the other hand, cases BC, BA, and DA have different temperature distributions than the baseline because the inlet and exit are located near the bottom and the top, respectively. Therefore, the temperature of tray 1 is much closer to the inlet temperature and the temperature increases with height except at high mass flow rate where the temperature above tray 4 can be lower than that above tray 3. This is due to strong helical flow mixing inside the room at high inlet mass flow rate, which also explains that the temperature uniformity increases with increasing inlet mass flow rate. Previous studies show that the optimal germination temperature is between 294 K and 297 K. As can be observed from Fig. 11, cases BC, BA, and DA at 0.3, 0.4, and 0.5 kg s−1, respectively, exhibit the desirable temperature range and distribution for lettuce growth. Nevertheless, compared to the baseline at each mass flow rate, case BC at an inlet mass flow rate of 0.3 kg s−1 exhibits the most significant average temperature reduction . Furthermore, the average temperature of case BC at 0.3 kg s−1 is lower than that of the baseline case at 0.5 kg s−1, which demonstrates the design effectiveness of case BC. Relative humidity represents the water vapor partial pressure in the IVFS, which has a strong effect on crop growth. It is reported that the ideal RH for lettuce and leafy greens should be between 50–70%. High RH can cause pathogen issues, like mildew and botrytis, and low RH can induce an outer leaf edge burn due to dryness.

Therefore, the inlet RH is set to be 85% in this IVFS design. The comparison of RH for each tray between the highest OU and the baseline cases at different inlet mass flow rates is shown in Fig. 12. It can be observed from the baseline case that RH increases with increasing inlet mass flow rate due to the increase of water supply and decreasing room temperature. RH can be calculated from the ratio of the partial pressure of water vapor to the saturation vapor pressure at a given temperature. Therefore, RH can be increased by either increasing water partial pressure or decreasing temperature. In our study, temperature is the dominant parameter because the gas species composition in the system does not vary significantly. Therefore, the trend of RH distribution agrees with that of the temperature distribution in Fig. 11.Under such conditions, tray 3 has higher temperature and RH than tray 4. To explain this behavior, the results from the CO2 distribution analysis need to be considered. At the lowest inlet flow rate, the flow has lowest circulation and tray 3 is near the end of the fresh inlet flow stream. Therefore, tray 3 has the lowest CO2 and highest H2O concentrations due to photosynthesis as shown in Figs. 10 and 12. Overall, the average RH distributions for cases BC and BA fall within the optimal range.Modeling the dynamics of airborne particulate matter is a powerful tool for understanding how building design, occupancy, and operation affect human exposure to airborne particles . Key physical processes affecting indoor particles such as penetration, deposition, resuspension, filtration,plant grow rack and indoor emissions can each vary strongly with particle size . Size-dependent particle behavior often can be associated with specific chemical and biological constituents of particulate matter provided that the particle size distribution of the constituent is known. Due significantly to limitations of culture-based sampling and analysis that have constrained efforts to study the full microbial ecology of air , modeling tools for simulating indoor aerosols have not been systematically applied to the biological components of particulate matter. As a consequence, our knowledge of microbes in indoor air lags behind that of total particulate matter and its chemical constituents, even though the impacts of biological aerosol exposure on human health and well being are considerable . One important knowledge gap is in understanding how human occupancy results in the emission of bacterial and fungal particles into indoor air. Observational and mechanistic studies have demonstrated the importance of human occupancy as a source of total aerosol mass . More specifically, in the absence of combustion, cooking, and smoking, evidence indicates that resuspension can be a major source of total airborne particulate matter in occupied indoor environments, thereby suggesting a potentially important emission mechanism for indoor biological particles.

In addition, direct human emissions such as skin shedding , talking, coughing, and sneezing may play a significant, but less well-characterized role influencing the content and character of indoor microbiological aerosols. Investigators have previously noted both the significant content of desquamated human skin cells in aerosols in occupied settings , as well as the presence of bacteria, including Staphylococcus, Propionibacteria, Corynebacteria, and enteric bacteria, that are typically ascribed to human micro-flora . However, the size resolved emission rates of bacteria and fungi due to human occupancy of indoor environments have not been reported, which limits modeling efforts to predict the fate and transport of these important components of particulate matter. The goal of this research is to determine the human associated emission rates of bacteria and fungi in an occupied classroom. Particle size distributions of total airborne particulate matter, bacterial genomes, and fungal genomes were measured under occupied and vacant conditions, and a material balance model was applied to determine the per person emission rates of bacterial and fungal size-fractionated particles attributable to occupancy. Bacterial phylogenetic libraries were produced for aerosols sampled under occupied conditions, and the size-resolved emissions of human-associated bacterial taxa were estimated. The size-resolved emission rates and bacterial population characterization produced here represent an important step toward applying models to make inferences about the distribution of and human exposure to bacteria and fungi in occupied indoor settings.A university classroom located on the ground floor of a five-story building in the northeastern United States was selected as the test room. This location was selected because of consistent and readily characterized occupancy levels, along with proximity to the research team and relative ease of securing access. Experiments were conducted in the fall of 2009 and included 4 days when the classroom and building were occupied, and 4 days when the classroom and building were vacant. On occupied days, the room was frequently accessed with three to five classes per weekday. For the four test days when the room was occupied, the room held an average of 4.7 people during a total of 22.2 h of sampling for a cumulative occupancy of 104.2 person hours. Classes were conducted in a lecture format. Students typically sat in desks and the instructor stood or moved throughout the front half of the classroom. Although the floor is vacuumed regularly, no cleaning was conducted at least 1 day before or during the experimental days. The volume of the classroom is approximately 90 m3 , and the entire floor area was covered by lightly worn commercial medium pile level-loop carpet. No mold or moisture problems have been reported for this building, and none have been observed during sampling.

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Vector biting and resting behaviour may be altered by exposure to insecticides

Posted on August 1, 2023 by hemp2022

Studies done by Oloo et al. showed that the use of permethrin-treated sisal curtains led to the exit of half-gravid mosquitoes from indoors. This could be one of the reasons why there was a high collection of halfgravid mosquitoes, both An. gambiae and An. funestus. This result coincided with the human behaviour study where >50% of the population stayed outdoors after dusk but went indoors by 21.00 h and woke up before dawn to do their daily chores. Similar studies in the lowlands of western Kenya have also reported that the vectors bite throughout the night and mostly indoors. Anopheles funestus feeding habits suggest that transmission is most likely happening indoors, although there is a high risk of outdoor transmission. Findings in the lowland regions show that An. funestus was the most infectious vector while in the highlands; An. gambiae was the main vector of transmission. The ratio of blood-feds to half-gravids was 3:1 and the capture of both blood-feds and halfgravids shows that there was insecticidal excito-repellency. This blood-fed to gravid ratio can be as a result of mortality of the vectors after contact with ITNs or insecticide repellency. The capture of half-gravids and gravid vectors is an indicator of exophily.Under the use of ITNs in Tanzania, the tendency of mosquitoes to exit the indoor environment increased . In Ethiopia, An. arabiensis avoided resting on DDT sprayed surfaces. In western Kenya, the proportion of An. gambiae taking a blood meal before humans slept under ITNs increased after the introduction of ITNs. These shifts in biting and resting behaviour reduce exposure of malaria vectors to the impacts of insecticides thus minimizes their mortality resulting in sustained malaria transmission. Data collected from this study suggests Anopheles funestus may have changed its resting behaviour. In previous studies,indoor plant growing racks where ITNs were not in use, no blood fed females of An. funestus were collected in light traps and exit traps.

Equally, no blood fed female An. funestus were collected in outdoor placed light traps. In the current study, blood fed An. funestus were collected in indoor and outdoor placed light traps suggesting a post blood feeding flight activity and possibly exit to the outdoor environment. Studies being undertaken will test whether the blood fed females had fed on humans or other hosts. Data from this study indicates that the proportion of An. funestus in Iguhu and Marani, where historical data exists, has increased in recent years which suggests that this vector has better survival under the use of ITNS than An. gambiae s.l. this could be explained by increased avoidance of insecticide treated surfaces a behaviour that remains to be studied. There was a difference in the densities of the vectors collected between households that had at least one bed net and households that did not own a bed net. This was seen in Kombewa, a site that had An. funestus as the main vector. Fewer vectors were collected in the households that had at least one bed net. Mbogo et al. reported that after distribution of permethrin-treated bed nets, fewer vectors were collected. This shows that owning a bed net protects the household from malaria vectors, while a high coverage of bed net ownership creates community-wide protection from mosquitoes. Besides owning a bed net and the high distribution in the study sites, there has been a reported increase in the resistance to insecticides both in West Africa and in East Africa, especially in western Kenya. Change in behaviour patterns due to high ownership of bed nets are also reducing the role of An. gambiae s.s. in malaria transmission but not ruling out the role of An. arabiensis.Producers and suppliers seeking to innovate and succeed in the future of agribusiness are keenly aware that sustainability-based purchasing is accelerating, and that more than ever, up-and-coming consumer segments such as millennials and gen Z are driven by the environmental impact, taste and quality of their grocery products . As sustainability increasingly becomes a key differentiator for marketing agricultural products and costs of fertilizers and feed grow, there is increasing interest in integrating pastured poultry and crop farming. Pastured poultry in integrated cropping systems is an opportunity to produce a more diverse array of higher-value animal products such as egg, poultry meat and crops, which maximizes land-use efficiency while reducing producers’ reliance on purchased inputs such as feed and fertilzier .

Grazing animals play an important ecological role in managing vegetation and cycling organic biomass and nutrients into the soil, which in turn sustains rich plant life and healthy ecosystems. Integrated crop-livestock systems utilize agricultural techniques such as rotational grazing—practiced historically and currently around the world—that leverage this beneficial relationship between animals, soils and plants . Rotational grazing is practiced with many different types of livestock including cattle and pigs. In this study we refer specifically to pastured poultry as the rotational grazing of poultry. Rotational grazing is a management technique that entails containing poultry in one portion of the pasture and successively moving them to other portions of the pasture, or removing them from the pasture before they fully denude the vegetation in any given area . The grazed portion of the pasture is then given time to regrow before animals are allowed to graze it again, while the poultry’s brief visitation can ultimately benefit the quality of the soil and pasture in various ways. The term “chicken tractor”, describing bottomless mobile chicken coops used for rotational poultry grazing, has emerged amongst proponents of alternative agricultural production systems as a notable technology specific to rotational pastured poultry systems . Proponents of pastured poultry claim that in contrast to conventional production systems, which contain poultry in stationary housing such as barns, pastured poultry can offer improved welfare conditions wherein poultry can experience more enriched surroundings and natural behaviors such as scratching the ground and catching insects . Properly managed rotational grazing is additionally said to reduce disease pressure on the chickens compared to stationary-housed chickens given access to pasture. For instance, rotating poultry to a new patch of pasture avoids the buildup of excess manure, pathogens and parasites in the land . Although poultry are not ruminants so for the most part cannot obtain calories from forages, forages and insects found in pasture allow them to supplement their diets with vitamins, minerals, protein and fiber . Evidence is emerging that pastured poultry eggs and meat can contain better dietary value in terms of certain vitamins, fatty acids, and cholesterol . Although nutritional benefits depend on the quality of the pasture , some studies have also shown comparable or higher yields from pastured or crop-integrated poultry compared with conventional systems .

Farmers may manage rotational grazing with the goal of maximizing the benefits of pasture for poultry production, or intentionally integrate rotational grazing with the goal of building a mutually beneficial relationship with crop production. While conventional systems produce animals and crops on separate farms, resulting in both soil nutrient depletion related to heavy reliance on costly soil amendments on one hand and excessive manure pollution on the other , integrated farming can create a more resource efficient “closed loop” system wherein pastured poultry consume crop residue,montel grow racks and deposit manure to support crop production. In addition to the benefits derived from pastured poultry alone, integrated cropping systems can purportedly also benefit from improved retention of soil nitrogen, a key nutrient for crops as well as other important soil quality indicators . As poultry forage outdoors, they can provide additional ecosystem services such as weed or insect pest control . These characteristics of pastured poultry contribute to higher crop yields and economic profit . For vegetable producers interested in trialing integrated cropping, poultry requires lower entry costs relative to other livestock, lowering the barriers to development of small-businesses and additional innovation . Despite the longtime existence and renewed interest in pastured poultry and integrated cropping, its scale and popularity are much smaller than that of conventional systems. Although promising examples exist regarding the benefits of integrated poultry-crop systems, research to substantiate the purported benefits remains sparse around certain features of these farming systems. For instance, although consumers commonly perceive that pastured poultry provides welfare benefits as compared to chickens raised conventionally indoors, there is a trade off since poultry raised outdoors experience higher mortality rate associated with potential exposure to extreme elements, predation and disease vectors, that may also result in reduced yield of meat and eggs . Risk of food-borne pathogen contamination is an important concern that is also not yet sufficiently studied in integrated cropping with pastured poultry . Further research is still needed to fully evaluate the potential benefits and challenges. If significant potential to benefit from such farming systems exist, then extensionists should help more agricultural producers gain awareness of it, and support them in overcoming challenges to successful implementation so that the integrated pastured poultry and cropping practices can be utilized at a larger scale to benefit more people. However, the degree of awareness or importance farmers and the public attribute to the benefits and drawbacks of such production systems has not yet been extensively studied. Additional research to gain understanding of the challenges or successes experienced by current practitioners of pastured poultry and integrated farming can help guide the production of scientific knowledge that will strengthen the value that agricultural extension services can bring to farming innovators. For agricultural research and extension to meet the knowledge demands of producers in adopting innovations in rotationally grazed poultry and integrated cropping, as well as to promote awareness of these sustainable production alternatives, it is imperative to incorporate producers’ perceptions into research generation and science communication.

The significance of studying social media and other online user-generated content is two-fold. First, as a means of knowledge dissemination: it has been demonstrated that for farmers with access to online technologies such as smartphones, the use of social media platforms as an agricultural extension tool improves adoption of sustainable agricultural technologies . In fact, the important role of social networks in enhancing adoption of sustainable technologies or natural resource management practices is an established topic of research and online platforms can facilitate this. Second, as prevalent forms of communication evolve, and the global population increasingly seek out online media and online platforms for community and knowledge exchange, online conversations present a unique opportunity for researchers to understand current perceptions of the benefits, challenges, and other motivators around the agricultural innovations in question . This study underlines the importance of understanding social media as platforms for social learning, and ultimately as channels for more productive exchange and understanding between farmers and extension service. Already, corporations and market researchers are targeting social media and other online user generated content as an essential part of their strategy to understand how people converse about certain products or brands . Companies use social media data to understand consumer sentiments on product features, and look to these platforms to gain an advantage in advertising products and disseminating information to the public . In the new age of social media, it is no longer sufficient to reach the public through traditional means that mostly seeks a passive audience, but rather to capture a continuous and active relationship of consumer engagement . Since 72 percent of US adults utilize social media , conversations gathered from these online platforms can represent a larger proportion of individuals in the population than would be feasible with traditional survey tools . Sometimes, associated metadata scraped from the social medial posts also allow researchers to analyze geographic and temporal trends to understand where posts originate, and how online discourse is evolving over time. From a science communication perspective, the auto amplification effects of social networks which allow certain information to “go viral” online, present an opportunity for new practices and technologies to reach an audience with low excess costs . In addition to allowing sampling of a greater portion of the population, researchers are also applying machine learning methods for targeted marketing of specific consumer segments. For instance, Wang et. al’s work presents an approach to customer segmentation by using machine learning models to identify “Sentiment Communities”, defined as “a group of users who are closely connected and highly consistent in their sentiments about one product/service”.

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The marijuana tax revenue makes spending increases more palatable to legislators

Posted on July 31, 2023 by hemp2022

Though cutting proved ineffective in communicating with her stepfather, it was apparently effective in a negative sense by addressing her emotional pain. In this sense for Maria cutting was anagentive practice and bodily technique operating in tandem with bulimia—one technique to take away pain and the other to gain attention—against the background of multiple interpersonal traumas. Finally, she was able to evaluate bulimia as something that worked, but in a bad way. Secrecy and isolation are themes for her even though her mother and aunt discovered her actions and initiated a trajectory of consultation with a school counselor leading to hospitalization; in fact, Maria had already spoken to the counselor before this event without telling her mother. It was her mother’s contact, however, that led the counselor to suggest treatment. Maria insisted that she had not cut herself since leaving the hospital.In a variety of ways, Colorado remains a state in transition. As is the case with many states around the nation, the economy continues to improve from the recession. Demographically, the state is becoming increasingly diverse. According to the census, more than one-fifth of state residents were Hispanic or Latino/a in 2015. Colorado’s population growth of nearly eight percent since 2010 ranks third behind only Texas and North Dakota. Politically, Colorado has been trending blue over the past several election cycles. Some have identified the migration of Californians into Colorado as a contributing factor to the state leaning further in the Democratic direction . The state awarded its Electoral College votes in 2008 and 2012 to the Democratic ticket,4 tier grow rack and the party appears poised to carry the state in 2016. A streak of two consecutive wins for the Democratic Party’s presidential candidates has not happened since Colorado voters supported Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 and 1936. Democrats emerged victorious in the last three gubernatorial elections and won three consecutive elections to the U.S. Senate beginning in 2004.

The state’s march toward blue-state status was interrupted in 2014, however, as Republican Representative Cory Gardner defeated incumbent Democratic Senator Mark Udall in a competitive race. Republican candidates in this election cycle swept three of the remaining four statewide races, and the GOP regained control of one chamber of the state legislature. The single bright spot for Democrats on election night 2014 was the reelection of incumbent Governor John Hickenlooper who narrowly edged out Republican challenger Bob Beauprez. Colorado continues to receive national and international attention over the legalization of recreational marijuana, which has important budgetary implications. Though revenues associated with legalized recreational marijuana have fallen short of early government forecasts, marijuana tax revenue continues to grow steadily. The sale of marijuana to adults over the age of 21 became legal on January 1, 2014. By the end of the year, the state received $44 million in revenue from recreational marijuana. Combined with the preexisting medical marijuana market, the state received $76 million in 2014 .1 Despite an improving economy and a new stream of marijuana tax revenue, legislators remain wary about approving new spending measures. This is partly attributable to uncertainty regarding potential tax rebates mandated by the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights . In the current legislature, Democrats hold a slim majority in the House, while the Republican advantage in the Senate is by a single seat. An analysis of roll call voting in state legislatures concluded that the Colorado Legislature is among the most ideologically polarized in the nation . Divided government, coupled with greater ideological polarization, has made dramatic changes in spending less likely to be successful. Governor Hickenlooper’s approval rating remains above 50 percent, but he faces a divided legislature and does not enjoy substantial political capital, having barely survived a close reelection . When submitting requests to the Office of State Planning and Budget , departments must outline a strategic plan to accompany their request.

The governor’s budget request is submitted to the legislature in the fall. After consideration by the Joint Budget Committee , the full legislature typically passes the budget in May in time for the start of the fiscal year on July 1. The constitution mandates a balanced budget. Last November, the priorities reflected in Governor Hickenlooper’s proposed budget for the 2015–2016 fiscal year were similar to those in prior budgets drafted by the governor in collaboration with the OSPB. In his accompanying letter to the six-member JBC, the governor emphasized “enrollment and inflation increases for K-12 education, the return of General Fund support for transportation for the first time since FY 2007‒08 pursuant to S.B. 09‒228, increased caseload in the State’s Medicaid program, an anticipated decrease in the federal Medicaid match rate, the continuation of existing capital construction projects, and essential projects for the state’s information technology infrastructure” . Spending in just two areas—K-12 education and health and human services—constitute two-thirds of all proposed General Fund appropriations. Governor Hickenlooper’s budget letter detailed how economic progress in Colorado has outpaced the nationwide recovery. In that sense, the budget reflects a cautious optimism about the state’s economic well being. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that Colorado’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in December 2014 was just 4.0 percent. Tied for seventh lowest in the country , it is a product of 35 consecutive months of job growth. The national unemployment rate for the same month was 5.6 percent. After a decrease in gross state product in 2009, the state has logged increases averaging about 2.5 percent a year for the past four years, and per capita income levels have increased. Against this backdrop of economic improvement, the governor’s budget includes $26.8 billion in total spending with a General Fund allocation of $10.3 billion. The sums represent spending increases from the prior fiscal year of 7.0 percent in total funds and 9.6 percent from the General Fund . During the recent economic recession, General Fund revenue in current dollars decreased over two consecutive fiscal years. Since the low point of the 2009–2010 when the General Fund fell to $6.4 billion, this number has increased by an average of $0.65 billion over the past four years.2 A March 2015 estimate projected that General Fund revenue was on track to grow by nearly nine percent in the current fiscal year, but contraction in oil and gas industry-related activity is projected to slow revenue gains. The projected General Fund amounts for the fiscal years beginning in 2014 and 2015 are $9.6 billion and $10.3 billion, respectively. One novel aspect of this year’s budget debate is that economic gains are substantial enough that lawmakers will have to consider tax refunds under TABOR.

According to TABOR, which voters ratified in the state constitution in 1992, the state must issue tax refunds if revenues exceed the prior year’s spending after accounting for inflation and population growth. TABOR refunds have not been possible for at least a decade. The governor’s budget includes a rebate forecast in the amount of $167.2 million.3 Legislators may ask voters to forego refunds in lieu of providing spending in a number of areas. The governor’s budget letter outlines several contingency plans where additional legislation or voter approval may be necessary to enact the spending items it includes. The governor’s 2015–2016 budget proposed increasing appropriations from the General Fund for most state departments. Table 1 provides summary data comparing the proposed budget with spending levels from the prior year. The first items discussed in the governor’s budget letter concern education, which is among the governor’s highest priorities. Since Governor Hicken looper previously campaigned for passage of Amendment 66—a tax increase to fund K-12 education— it is not surprising to see his budget propose increases in education funding in the aftermath of its defeat. Put to voters on the 2013 ballot,cannabis grow racks Amendment 66 proposed an approximate 10 percent increase in the tax rate on income up to $75,000 and a 25 percent increase on income beyond $75,000. According to the state, the amendment would have raised taxes by $950 million in the first year following adoption. Despite the fact that supporters of the amendment raised in excess of $10 million to promote the measure, Colorado voters overwhelmingly rejected the tax increase with 64 percent of the electorate voting against it. Following this resounding defeat, the governor’s proposed budget seeks to increase education funding. The defeat of the tax increase to fund education could make more modest increases in education spending more acceptable to Republican legislators. Many Democratic lawmakers who supported the tax increase view the governor’s increase in K-12 spending as all the more necessary. Accordingly, the budget for the upcoming fiscal year increases total spending on K-12 education by 8.1 percent , an increase in per pupil funding of nearly $475 that brings total per pupil funding to about $7,500. Spending on higher education will increase by over $100 million after agreement was reached in 2014 on legislation limiting undergraduate tuition increases to no more than six percent in exchange for greater direct support from the state budget.4 General Fund increases for public institutions of higher education was set at about $75 million. This amount allocated to the governing.The governor’s budget continues to make investments in improving the Department of Corrections. Interest in directing greater funds to this area grew after the murder of Department of Corrections Director Tom Clements in 2013. The new director, Rick Raemisch, has championed meaningful prison reform. After increasing General Fund spending for the department by more than six percent last year, the 2015–2016 budget proposes a more modest increase of 4.0 percent, or nearly $30 million. The department estimates a small increase in the number of offenders housed in its facilities, and greater funding will allow the department to improve operations and facilities, including the addition of 330 beds. The state expects to hire more than 20 full-time employees to better assist people in the criminal justice system with mental health issues. A 1.0 percent provider rate increase is also included in the budget. The only departments with proposed reductions in General Fund spending were Public Health and Environment, Public Safety, and Revenue. Funding requested for the Department of Public Safety is 8.5 percent lower due to the absence of nearly $10 million in funding allocated to purchase aircraft and equipment for an aerial firefighting fleet.

These funds made it into the prior year’s budget after the state experienced one of the most devastating wildfire seasons in its history. Partially filling this void is a proposed additional $2.7 million in funding to go toward two new Colorado Bureau of Investigation forensic labs and a 1.0 percent increase for state community corrections program providers. Funding proposed for the Department of Public Health and Environment is 28 percent lower largely due to the absence of appropriations made last year to help communities recover from widespread flooding that occurred in September 2013. General Fund spending for the Department of Revenue is slated for reduction with the loss of a one-time appropriation of $6.2 million in the prior year’s budget to help the department modernize its operations. These anomalies explain most of the larger cuts in General Fund spending. The budget preserves the status quo in most areas with a few targeted increases.In 2012, when nearly 55 percent of Colorado voters cast ballots in favor of legalizing recreational marijuana use by adults over the age of 21 the state’s counties were nearly evenly divided on the issue. Thirty-three of the 64 counties had a majority voting in favor of legalization, while 31 counties were had more no voters. One of many reasons for the ultimate success of the measure was that localities were given the option to prohibit marijuana business.”A year-end analysis in The Denver Post noted that 23 Colorado counties currently permit marijuana cul-tivation, sales, or both . Within these counties, 53 cities or towns permit recreational marijuana sale. As of March 2015, the state had licensed a total of 341 retail stores to sell marijuana. Including those authorized to sell medicinal marijuana, the number of outlets is over 500 .A study by the Marijuana Policy Group found that the demand for marijuana in the state likely far exceeds prior estimates, although the total amount of tax revenue generated by the first year of legal recreational sales fell short of expectations . Using survey data, the study estimates about 13 percent of Colorado’s population used marijuana at least once in 2010 or 2011.

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The disease burden of alcohol and illicit drug addiction is the highest in the United States

Posted on July 27, 2023 by hemp2022

We examined CEMA by Latino youth in outpatient treatment and highlighted a number of important contextual factors related to AOD use. Better understanding context provides an immediate benefit by informing the development of general EMI content and strategies that use, for example, smartphone geo-location data to trigger in-the-moment interventions. The full capabilities of EMI can be recognized by using context to trigger EMI with content that is appropriate for the context. For example, real time advice delivered by EMI can differ depending on the time of day, location, and presence of peers. Social context appears to be an important contextual AOD-use factor in our study as it has in prior studies. AOD use was most frequently reported with close friends and while hanging out relative to other types of associations and activities, respectively. Alcohol by itself was more frequently reported at a friend’s house while marijuana and other substances were more frequently reported at other locations. Social context has traditionally been self-reported and in turn, difficult to harness in automated applications. However, there are promising developments in providing passive mobile data streams. Many users access social networking sites through their phones that leave digital footprints of social interactions. Phone logs are also recorded and can be accessed as other researchers have done . Social network information can be further refined by combining it with GPS location traces to determine time spent with friends at one of their homes. In our study, AOD use was more frequently reported in the afternoon and nighttime and about half the time on weekends. This is in line with other studies that have found AOD use to bemore common after school hours and on weekends . Alcohol consumption by itself was more frequently reported at night and on weekends relative to marijuana and other substances and warrants closer examination in larger samples.

Temporal information provides a good starting point for actionable EMI information. Date and time stamps can be passively collected without user burden and provide quantifiable information, such as weekend or weekday categories,wholesale vertical grow factories that can be incorporated into classifiers that trigger EMI. Cravings provided useful self-reported data, with strong cravings more frequently reported on AOD use days. Cravings can be categorized in a binary fashion with reporting operationalized as a button on a phone’s desktop for easy access and more frequent reporting. Random prompts can be used throughout the day to query cravings similar to Piasecki et al. . This offers an improvement over our study design in the ability to better understand temporal context for AOD use. Affective states are multi-faceted and more difficult to quantify. Happiness tended to be the most frequently reported affective state across CEMA strategies, but were reported to the same degree when AOD use did and did not occur. Thoughts of wanting to get buzzed were more common for alcohol use alone and thoughts of relaxation were more common for marijuana and other substances. Reports of context, cravings and affect were robust to CEMA reporting strategy, whether reports were based on recall or in the moment. An exception was that marijuana use was most commonly reported in the morning based on recall and only reported in the afternoon based on EBA. In-the-moment RA does not provide a comparison as youth were not prompted in the morning. Further study is needed to see if time-of-day differences in reporting marijuana hold in larger samples. Overall robustness in reporting context is encouraging and suggests that there is flexibility in using different CEMA strategies. Flexibility in assessment is important with youth in consideration of school activities and other events that may make it difficult to implement one assessment strategy. Next steps call for studies with larger sample sizes to examine overlap between contextual factors and explore temporal relationships with AOD use, similar to multilevel analyses by Piasecki et al. that analyzed nicotine use in mostly white youth.

The small number of participants, low rates of AOD use, and missing data due to non-response made this impractical in our study and are limitations. This hampered our ability to provide subgroup analyses by age and gender; both characteristics are linked to AOD use and context . There is variation in the degree of AOD use across participants that may also relate to context but was impractical to explore in our sample. Caution is also warranted in generalizing our findings for normative samples of AOD users as participants were in a substance abuse treatment program. Lastly, RA occurred once a day after school hours and more closely mimicked EoDA than true RA that typically occurs multiple times a day. Our assessment scheme limited our ability to address the second hypothesis and explore if different assessment methods elicited different types of AOD use-related context. Notwithstanding sample size limitations, our sample is representative of Latino youth in outpatient treatment. We did not see evidence of self-selection to participate in our study; there was a lot of interest to participate. The use of a study phone and free cell phone minutes that accompanied participation provided strong incentives. Enrollment was limited by the number of study phones. Interest in our study highlights an important opportunity to develop substance use interventions for youth through a medium they already use in their daily lives.Spontaneous EBR has become increasingly popular as a putative behavioural marker of endogenous dopamine. Interestingly, most of the past studies that have used sEBR in this capacity have loosely referred to ‘dopamine function’ or ‘dopamine activity’, perhaps reflecting the current dearth of knowledge regarding which specific aspect of the dopamine system correlate with sEBR. Here we tested the hypothesis of a positive relationship between sEBR and striatal dopamine synthesis capacity, based on the proposal that sEBR is positively related to striatal dopamine function , and previous results showing a positive correlation between sEBR and striatal dopamine levels measured in post-mortem monkey brains . Both frequentist and Bayesian statistics, as well as ROI and voxel-wise analyses, argue against the existence of such a positive relationship in our sample and show that, if anything, the evidence is in favour of a negative relationship.

While we prefer to refrain from making speculative interpretations regarding the existence of a negative relationship, given the moderate level of evidence, we believe these data provide a strong cautionary message against the use of sEBR as a positive predictor of pre-synaptic striatal dopamine. Importantly, our data speak specifically to dopamine synthesis capacity and do not preclude correlations of sEBR with other aspects of the dopamine system, including dopamine D2 receptor availability. It has been suggested that sEBR might primarily reflect striatal D2 receptor activity, based on the observation of a positive correlation with D2 receptor availability in monkeys , and the observation that sEBR better predicts D2-mediated punishment learning than D1-mediated reward learning . However, this relationship between sEBR and dopamine D2 functioning has been recently questioned by a PET study which failed to replicate it in humans . Also, such a relationship remains difficult to reconcile with recent findings showing a positive association between dopamine D2 receptor availability and dopamine synthesis capacity , as this would predict a positive relationship between sEBR and dopamine synthesis capacity, in contrast to our results. These inconsistencies certainly call for further research to better elucidate the dopaminergic mechanisms underlying sEBR. This study is not devoid of limitations. First, our sample size is relatively small, although one should note that it is larger than the samples used in many of the psychopharmacological studies that have investigated dopaminergic drug effects on sEBR . In fact, a power analysis performed with GPower3.1 suggests that a sample size of 12 individuals should have been sufficient to replicate with 95% power the positive relationship reported by Taylor et al. between striatal dopamine levels and sEBR in monkeys . In addition,grow rack as argued by Dang et al. , the use of sEBR as a reliable predictor of dopamine function implicitly requires that the positive relationship between these two variables should be strong and thus observable even in small samples. For these reasons, we believe that the preliminary evidence reported here is valuable, even though a replication in a larger sample size is warranted. Another aspect that may be perceived as a limitation is the use of a mixed population of healthy participants and pathological gamblers. While we acknowledge that pathological gamblers are not typical individuals and are characterized, among other things, by elevated striatal dopamine synthesis , we believe that this is not necessarily an issue in the context of the current study. Indeed, our goal was to examine whether individual differences in sEBR and dopamine synthesis were positively related, regardless of the origin of these individual differences. If sEBR is to be used as proxy measure of dopamine levels, it should be insensitive to the underlying causes of individual variations, so that it can be effectively used in both clinical and non-clinical populations. In fact, a large portion of the literature that has led to the hypothesis of a link between sEBR and dopamine function is based on the study of clinical populations characterized by dopamine dysfunctions. Finally, one should note that restricting our analyses to healthy individuals did not affect the results, still showing moderate evidence against a positive correlation.

To conclude, our study does not support the hypothesis of a positive relationship between sEBR and striatal dopamine synthesis, and if anything, provides evidence against it. Even though it is based on a modest sample size and needs to be replicated in a larger sample – which we are currently attempting to do, it warrants caution for future studies that may be tempted to use sEBR as a proxy measure of striatal dopamine synthesis capacity.Misuse of substances is common, can be serious and costly to society, and often goes untreated due to barriers to accessing care. Globally, 3.5 million people die from alcohol and illicit drug use each year. Over 20 million Americans had a substance use disorder in 2018, 73% had an alcohol use disorder, 40% had an illicit drug use disorder, and 13% had both alcohol and illicit drug use disorders. Approximately half of Americans with an SUD had a co-occurring mental illness. Treatment of depression and anxiety, the most common psychiatric comorbidities among patients with SUDs, may reduce craving and substance use and enhance overall outcomes. In 2018, less than 1 in 5 individuals with a SUD received addiction treatment. Alcohol and illicit drug misuse and addiction cost the United States over US $440 billion annually in lost workplace productivity, health care expenses, and crime-related costs. Potential effects on individuals include an array of physical and mental health problems, overdose, trauma, and violence. Web-based interventions and digital health apps may reduce or eliminate common, significant barriers to traditional SUD treatment. Preliminary evidence suggests that digital SUD interventions affect substance use behavior and have the potential to reduce the population burden of SUDs. To date, most digital SUD interventions have been delivered on a web platform, rather than via mobile apps. The widespread use of smartphones makes app-based intervention delivery a viable and scalable medium. In 2019, about 8 out of 10 White, Black, and Latinx adults owned a smartphone. Although lower-income adults were less likely to own a smartphone than higher-income adults, they were more likely to rely on smartphones for internet access. In a 2015 survey, 58% of mobile phone owners reported downloading a health app. Texting is the most widely and frequently used app on a smartphone, with 97% of Americans texting at least once a day. Automated conversational agents can deliver a coach-like or sponsor-like experience and yet do not require human implementation assistance for in-the-moment treatment delivery. As recent meta-analytic work suggests, conversational text-based agents may increase engagement and enjoyment in digitized mental health care, whereas most general mental health care apps face difficulty sustaining engagement with high dropout. Conversational agents can provide real-time support to address substance use urges, unlike traditional in-person frameworks of weekly visits. The scale potential of conversational agents is unconstrained, immediate, and available to users in an instant. Being nonhuman based also reduces perceived stigma.

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The conservation of FUN makes it likely to be an important gene in plant development in general

Posted on July 26, 2023 by hemp2022

Many DELLA mutants are constitutive repressors of the GA response and they have been made famous by the socalled “Green Revolution” which included wheat and rice plants that were dwarfed by their inability to respond to GA. Both D8 and D9 maize mutants do not respond to application of GA3 that causes an increase in height in normal siblings. Neither D8 nor D9 are as short as plants treated with PBZ, nor as short as GA biosynthetic mutants like d1, which suggests there are other GA receptor pathways in addition to D8 or D9 in maize.BLASTing the non-redundant maize genome with the FUN protein found partial homology to a region on chromosome 6, where chromosome 3 is known to have duplicates. This region does not translate into a continuous peptide chain, which could mean that duplicates of this gene are punished by selection. BLAST retrieved closely conserved homologues to FUN across the grasses. With PSI-BLAST it was possible to collect homologues of FUN throughout the Plant Kingdom, including Amborella trichopoda, Rosids, Asterids and nongrass monocots. The resulting tree assembled by MAFFT from these proteins fell into the same distribution as the APG IV phylogeny105, and is therefore assumed to be reliable . Alignment of the diverse family of FUN proteins revealed conserved regions , including one of the regions predicted by NucPred to be involved in nuclear localisation, which may be important to the function of FUN. Though BLASTing of ZmFUN only found one hit in the Brassicales , using the C. papaya gene as a BLAST query returned more Brassicale hits,vertical grow manufacturer allowing the retrieval of an Arabidopsis thaliana homologue. The Brassicales were found to have retained the FRWW, MRLM and KKR motifs, but not the GAKHIL motif . RNA-seq datasets published by Stelpflug et al. tracking different stages of maize development106 showed that the FUN transcript is highly expressed in the developing seed and endosperm.

The next highest peaks were: developing leaves, especially the base; immature and meiotic tassels; and the immature and pre-pollination cob. FUN transcript was detected in all samples examined in Stelpflug et al.’s dataset . Walley et al. collected transcript and protein from 23 developing maize tissues and mapped them to the v4 genome. FUN was also examined in this data set, where the highest transcript reads were found in developing leaves, and were much lower in mature leaves. Endosperm levels were still high, but not as extreme as seen in the dataset of Stelpflug et al. Unfortunately, immature tassels were not sampled, but strikingly, no FUN transcript was detected in mature pollen, unlike all other tissues sampled. Relatively high levels of FUN transcript were found in the female spikelet, as well as some in the silk . The proteomic data mapped to v4 did not return anything for FUN, but mapped to v3, high levels of protein were found in the endosperm and the developing leaves, but not the mature leaf, nor any other tissues sampled . No phosphorylated peptides were detected in any tissue sampled. Since these datasets were highly generalised, a dataset created specifically to query auricle development in maize was also used.A dataset created by Kong et al. compares developing B73 auricles with those of the inbre. B73 has what can be considered normal auricles, while the auricles of 986 are much smaller . Developing auricle tissue was collected at three stages and RNA-seq libraries were made. According to Kong et al.’s dataset, FUN is found at equal levels in the early auricle of both B73 and 986. At mid auricle development, both B73 and 986 drop, but 986 is lower than B73. Both have dropped to low levels by late auricle development . Thus, various RNA-seq datasets were used to give indications of where FUN localised at the macro level. Next, various software were used to predict where FUN localised at the sub-cellular level.The entire FUN protein amino acid sequence was entered into NucPred, an online tool for prediction of nuclear proteins as well as PSORT, which predicts sub-cellular localisation given a protein sequence.

The entire FUN protein sequence was entered into the PSIPRED prediction tool , which runs multiple protein folding and interaction predictions to come to a synthetic prediction for the structure and function of a given protein sequence. NucPred gave the FUN amino acid sequence a score of 0.98 on a scale of 0.1-1, with a score of 1 indicating certainty that the protein is nuclear . The k-NN Prediction provided by the online program PSORT lists FUN as 91.3% likely to be nuclear and 8.7% likely to mitochondrial. FFPred, part of the PSIPRED package, also agreed that FUN is likely to nuclear. FFPred also predicted that FUN is likely to be involved in DNA and RNA interactions, is likely to be involved in cytoskeletal and DNA binding, and has a high percentage of serines and glutmamic acid . DISOPRED, also part of the PSIPRED package, predicted that most of the FUN sequence can be defined as disordered, though the first 50 amino acids of FUN are not predicted to be disordered . In sum, FUN transcript is found in developing leaves and tassels, which fits with the phenotype of the mutant. FUN transcript is also found in developing ears, which is surprising since an ear phenotype was not observed. Higher levels of FUN during leaf development are associated with larger auricles. FUN is predicted to be a disordered protein that localises to the nucleus. Attempts were then made to validate these predictions. Y2H, using the FUN protein as bait, and a cDNA library of immature ears and tassels as prey, retrieved a list of 234 possible interactors. Using the A. thaliana homologues of these proteins in a GO term biological process analysis found enrichment for proteins involved in negative regulation organ, specifically flower, development; and proteins involved in negative regulation of nucleic acid metabolic processes . The A. thaliana homologues were enriched in transcription factor activity and hydrolase activity according to a GO term analysis based on molecular function , and most of these predicted interacting partners were nuclear or cytosol localised. The GRMZM numbers were also run through the GO term analysis prediction software provided by AgriGO and were found to be enriched in GTP and GTPase binding . A table of selected genes returned by the Y2H can be seen in Figure 5-7A. One such gene is ZmDWF1.

This brassinosteroid synthesis protein was found to have a synergistic interaction in double mutant analysis with fun . Another gene implicated in the brassinosteroids pathway was BSL1 that is known as an inhibitor of BRI1. The strongest confidence hit for the Y2H as an interactor for FUN was tubulin, butthis may be a false positive due to the high concentration of this protein in a cell.In order to test the idea that FUN is nuclear-localized, I carried out a transformation experiment using Nicotiana benthamiana. The entire FUN protein was fused to an N terminus YFP as described in Methods. The FUN-YFP fusion was found to localise to the nucleus in transformed N. benthamiana pavement cells. This result was observed in two separate transformations. Though not all nuclei in the samples were found to fluoresce under YFP excitation, this is likely due to imperfect transformation efficiency and is normal in this kind of experiment109. 25 nuclei expressing YFP were photographed and many more observed during the course of this experiment; YFP expression was not observed in any other sub-cellular regions. In order to confirm that the YFP expression was nuclear, the leaves were also examined under 405nm excitation. Since the leaves had been infiltrated with DAPI prior to examination,vertical grow marijuana system this caused the DNA to fluoresce. YFP fluorescence was shown to overlap with this DAPI fluorescence . As further confirmation, the sample was also examined under bright field and the YFP fluorescence was thus seen to overlap with clearly visible nuclei . This was observed at the microscope, as well as by overlapping micrographs using ImageJ. Close inspection of individual transformed nuclei revealed a nuclear speckle pattern . In order to make an antibody to the FUN protein, the purified protein has to be injected into a living animal and the antibody produced must then be purified. To this end, the third exon of FUN was amplified by primers 53xF/R and cloned into pENTR. Recombining with pDEST17 was unsuccessful. I hypothesised that FUN may be toxic, which would explain why the expression plasmid would not grow, though pENTR would grow, so bacteria were grown at lower temperatures. This was also unsuccessful, so a smaller fragment out of the exon was used, amplified from cDNA with primers An2F/R . This 600bp fragment was successfully cloned into pDEST17. Interestingly, the other fragments attempted that contained the conserved GAKHIL motif did not clone into pDEST17 under the conditions used, which could imply a toxicity of this domain, since all fragments that did not contain the GAKHIL motif were successfully cloned.The newly made plasmid pDEST17-An2F/R was then cloned into Rosetta cells and grown into a 100ml culture overnight. This culture was used to spike 1 litre of fresh LB. After 4 hours of growth at 37°C this culture reached 0.42 OD600nm and 200μl of 1M IPTG were added. This culture was then shaken at room temperature for 5 hours and spun at 8000 RCF for 15 minutes at 4°C. The resulting pellet was resuspended in 75ml of lysis buffer . This was spun at 12000 RCF for 15 minutes and the supernatant co-incubated with 2.5ml of 50% Ni++ beads in EtOH slurry.

The beads were spun and washed several times using wash buffer and were finally eluted using elution buffers at pH 4.4, 3.8 and 3twice each. Most protein was recovered from the second pH 4.4 and first 3.8 elutions as measured by nanodrop. These samples were then run on an SDS gel and the correct size band was observed for An2F/R samples, but nothing was observed for An1F/R. Thus the protein produced by plasmid pDEST17-An2F/R was purified. It was then resuspended in 6M urea by dialysis in a side-A-lyser cassette and sent to Cocalico for injection into guinea pigs. Test-bleeds and pre-bleeds were returned from the company. The pDEST17- An2F/R protein product was blotted onto nitrocellulose and incubated in 2ml of PBS with 2μl of test-bleed or 2μl of pre-bleed for 2 hours before washing and incubating in PBS and anti-Guinea Pig Alkaline Phosphotase fusion antibody. Finally this was incubated in NETN and NBT/BCIP to give an output of purple colour if the antibody is reacting to the protein . Later, second bleeds were returned by the company, and this dot-blot process was repeated, along with the sera from another antibody as a control . Thus, it was confirmed that the guinea pigs were producing appropriate antibody. In order to purify the terminal bleeds, a GST-tagged version of the protein was made. The pENTR-An2F/R was therefore combined with pDEST-15, transformed into Rosetta cells and induced and spun down as for the pDEST17- An2F/R purification step. This pellet was resuspended in NETN and put through a French press twice at ~1000lbs of pressure before 2x 20s of sonication to shear DNA. Triton X-100 was then added to 0.5%. This cell lysate was then spun at 12,000 RCF for 15mins and the supernatant was added to 2ml of 50% glutathione-sepharose beads equilibrated in 10ml NETN. After co-incubation during which the GST-tagged protein should bind to the beads, the beads are spun down and washed several times with 0.2M Borate pH8. The washed beads are then transferred to a column and cross-linked to the beads using DMP solution before washing with 0.1M glycine-Cl pH2.5 to remove non-covalently linked molecules and a final wash with 1xTBS . The terminal bleeds were thawed and 1/10 volume 10xTBS was added. This TBS-serum was then incubated in a column containing beads bound to GST for 30min at 4°C. Thus any antigens specific to GST that might be in the guinea pig sera would bind to these beads and the eluate from this column should be free of such contaminants. This eluate was incubated in the column described in the preceding paragraph and incubated at 4°C for 1 hour. Thus any antibodies specific to the FUN fragment should bind to these beads.

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The dogma of evolutionary theory states that change must occur by incremental mutations

Posted on July 25, 2023 by hemp2022

A historical theory for why imperfect flowers might be beneficial was that it could promote out crossing. Clearly a dioecious species is an obligate out crosser, since the male and female flowers exist on separate plants. However, it is not so clear that this would be true for monoecious plants. It was hypothesised that if monoecy were to promote out crossing inherently, monoecious plants would not have to rely on other costly mechanisms to promote out crossing such as molecular self-incompatibility . Studies have not shown this to be the case, indeed monoecy is just as common in self-compatible species as it is it in SI species5 , though of course this does not rule out the possibility that avoiding self-fertilisation could still be a factor in the evolution of imperfect flowers, especially for dioecious plants. Instead of making a theory and trying to find data to support it, it is more fruitful to look at the natural world and make a theory to explain it. For this, we might ask: “what kinds of plants are likely to bear imperfect flowers?”. Analysis of large datasets has shown that species with imperfect flowers are likely to be viniferous or woody, wind-pollinated plants with small green flowers, and for dioecious plants, the bearing of fleshy fruits2 . One theory proposed by Bertin to explain enrichment in wind-pollinated plants is the relatively low cost of their flowers allows for monoecy to develop. Monoecy is more expensive than perfection because a plant with unisexual flowers will have to produce two sets of flowers where asingle perfect flower would suffice, thus Bertin argues, it is only when flowers are relatively cheap that monoecy can be permitted. Bertin’s theory does not explain why monoecy might be desirable, instead it merely states why it might not be punished. Since monoecy is not uncommon in plants, there must be some kind of advantage. Again, we should turn to direct observations of the natural world to explain this. As we have seen,vertical grow bench wind pollinated plants are more likely to evolve monoecy than insect pollinated. Indeed, all gymnosperms are wind pollinated and can be thought of as dioecious or monoecious since they bear micro- and macrostrobili.

When we consider the flowers of a wind pollinated angiosperm tree such as hazel, the benefit of the separation of the sexes becomes immediately apparent. The benefit is specialisation. Male hazel inflorescences hang from the branch; their primary role is in dispersal of gametes and their hanging habit allows for the efficient dispersal of pollen by the wind. On the other hand, the primary role of female flowers is the reception of gametes – female hazel flowers fulfil this end by having tentacle like protrusions that catch pollen from the air. Insect pollinated plants have no such need for specialisation – in fact they need the same insects to visit both the male and female flowers. While Bertin’s theory may explain how monoecy is permitted, the advantages bestowed by specialisation explains how it can become fixed. It has further been proposed that pistils that are separated from stamens might be more effective in being pollinated because they avoid “pollen interference”. Self-pollen could clog the tip of the pistil, stopping pollen from other plants from reaching into the stigma. It could also begin to grow down into the stigma and even if it is stopped at the micropyle the pollen tubes could partially or completely block the micropyle, again interfering with fertility mechanistically. This would be especially true for wind-pollinated plants that produce copious amounts of pollen that fills the surrounding environment, fitting with the observation that wind pollinated plants are more likely to have imperfect flowers. Despite the elegance of this theory, it remains to be confirmed, and studies in gynodioecious Plantago maritimax and representatives from the Lamiaceae8 failed to find evidence for an female advantage due to lack of interference from self-pollen. Finally, the potentially high cost of female flowers has been suggested as a driver towards imperfection. Hermaphroditic flowers must produce nectar, petals, sepals etc., stamens, ovules and fruits and seeds. A male flower must produce a + b, while a female flower must produce a + c + d. Even if the fruits and seeds are aborted at some stage, there is still the cost of their inception, for example the monoecious Cucumis spp. make fairly large prefruits on their female flowers long before pollination. When fruit and seeds are especially large , unisexual flowers can allow a plant to produce pollen without committing large reserves of resources to ovules, fruits and seeds.

As we shall see, andromonoecy is more common than gynomonoecy, which fits with this theory.If our starting point is a perfect flower as seen in most angiosperms and the basal Amborella trichopoda and Magnoliidae, and the unisexual flower is the derived state what are the intermediary steps from hermaphroditic flowers to a monoecious or dioecious species? Protogyny and protandry, androand gynomonoecy, along with andro- and gynodioecy, present themselves as intermediaries between perfection and monoecy or dioecy. Almost all of these states have been shown experimentally to be intermutatable. Once these states arise, they can remain environmentally plastic, or become fixed: in monoecy by the evolution of strict developmental pathways; and in dioecy by the evolution of autosomal sex determining loci or true sex chromosomes.One of the first steps towards unisexual flowers is thought to be the temporal separation of male and female function in hermaphroditic flowers6,9 . This separation is most often thought of as a strategy for promoting outcrossing and/or reducing pollen interference. The temporal separation of the sexes allows them to begin evolving as separated pathways, and can eventually lead to true unisexual flowers.C. bulbosum is an annual from the Apiaceae common by riversides in Europe. The plants are andromonoecious – bearing both hermaphroditic and male flowers in their umbelliferous inflorescences. Andromonoecy is common in the Apiaceae, and appears to have evolved multiple times from dioecy within this group. Some Apiaceae are protandrous , highlighting the role this sexual form may play in the evolution of andromonoecy. C. bulbosum has been shown to respond to damage and pollination restriction by increasing its ratio of hermaphroditic to male flowers in order to ensure seed set. Thus, this plant is able to respond to environmental cues by changing its sex ratios to enhance reproductive success. Andromonoecy is thought to be a more common first step towards monoecy than gynomonoecy because the benefits of avoiding commitment to female flowers is more obvious, as discussed above.In androdioecious populations, both hermaphroditic and male plants exist.

It has been proposed that in such a situation, the population will naturally tend toward true dioecy because hermaphroditic flowers cannot compete with the high pollen production of exclusively male flowers and will therefore tend to become more female. While this has not been shown experimentally, the inverse has. By removing all male plants from a population of M. annua, pollen production by the hermaphroditic plants was shown to increase over 3 generations as compared to the control group12, implying that the hermaphroditic flowers are compensating for a lack of pollen. This implies that the hermaphrodites in the wild, unmanipulated populations are restricting their pollen production and perhaps also enhancing female function as a response to the males in their population. This may mean that M. annua is providing us with a snapshot in evolutionary time of a species on its way towards evolving dioecy .Gynomonoecy, where plants bear female and hermaphroditic flowers, is a very rare sexual state. In a survey of Occupied Palestine, Sinai and Jordan, only 0.4% of plants were listed as gynomonoecious. Further,vertical grow cannabis most gynomonoecious plants are of the Asteraceae, where female ray florets surround perfect disc florets. It is not likely that the femininity of these ray florets underlies their evolution and maintenance – rather it seems that these are specialised flowers that serve as pollinator attractors. Overall, gynomonoecy has been understudied as a sexual system in plants, partially due to its rarity and partially because it is not thought to be important as a sexual system. Gynomonoecy does appear in domesticated species such as cultivars of Spinacia olearacea, which is usually monoecious, showing that gynomonoecy represents a possible route between sexual systems in plants .Given the rarity of gynomonoecious species, it is perhaps surprising that gynodioecious species are so prevalent. Perhaps specialising as female on a separate plant is more beneficial than doing so on the same plant. Further, Given the rarity of gynomonoecious species, it is perhaps surprising that gynodioecious species are so prevalent. Perhaps specialising as female on a separate plant is more beneficial than doing so on the same plant. Further, Monoecy in Zea mays is rigidly controlled with an apical male inflorescence and axillary female inflorescences. This is not simply a relic of domestication – teosinte also bears its female inflorescences laterally to its male inflorescences. Likely, this spatial separation and elevation of the male tassel enhances the specialisation of these inflorescences. Monoecy does not have to follow this strict habit though. In Cucumis spp. the flowers alternate unpredictably between male and female along the shoot. Another vine, Freycinetia funiculari, preferentially makes male flowers early in its life before switching to female flowers later in development.

Postponing growth of female flowers makes sense because of the greater resource investment required, especially for vines which may spend years beneath the canopy waiting for full sun. Charles worth and Charles worth briefly discuss the evolution of monoecy. They argue convincingly that monoecy must evolve from hermaphroditism through a series of at least two mutations, through the intermediary steps of gyno- or andromonoecy. Charles worth and Charles worth further postulate that these genes would have no tendency to be linked, unlike the mutations leading to dioecy which must be linked. Confirmation of this theory comes from Erin Irish’s work in stacking the maize mutations of the tasselseed and dwarf class. The tasselseed mutants fail to abort the silk in the male tassel, rendering them female; and the dwarf mutants restore perfection to the female flowers. Together these two mutations change the monoecious maize plant into a plant that bears only perfect flowers. Singly, the dwarf mutants in Zea mays and the CmACS7 mutant in Cucumis sativus are capable of changing these monoecious plants to andromonoecious plants, showing this rote of evolution of monoecy . The Cucumis sativus mutant CmWIP1 represents a change from monoecy to gynodioecy suggesting a route from monoecy to dioecy. Monoecy is able to convert to dioecy, as shown by the high number of monoecious families containing nested dioecious species but I believe it would be a mistake to consider monoecy merely a stepping stone to dioecy. Unlike dioecy, monoecy allows plants to retain their ability to be both mothers and fathers, but allows specialisation of floral forms that is so crucial for wind pollinated plants. From a human perspective, monoecy has been a powerful tool in the genetic manipulability of Zea mays, allowing both hybrid crops and extensive genetic research in the modern era .As we have seen, gyno- and androdioecy lead towards dioecy. When plants in a population become sex specific, there is an evolutionary pressure for hermaphrodites to specialise in the other direction thereby producing a dioecious population. Dioecy can also evolve from monoecy, as predicted by dioecious species nested within monoecious evolutionary groupings9 . Simple dioecy is not the end of the road – it can become more and more fixed and derived as evolutionary time proceeds. It is thought that at first dioecy is characterised by simple sex determining regions in the genome. These will often be clustered on a single autosome as is the case in Populus balsamifera. In this species, an SDR has been described on chromosome 1917. This region includes 13 genes, one of which is a paralogue of methyltransferase1 . Another gene within the region is a cytokinin signaling gene PbRR9 and methylation of this gene is predictive of sex of the tree21. P. balsamifera is therefore a less derived dioecious species which still relies on epigenetic modifications for its sex determination loci that reside on autosomes.

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