Cover crop adoption is increasing among growers with the occurrence of herbicide-resistant weed species. A field study conducted at three sites from autumn 2021 through the crop harvest in 2022 in Alabama aimed to evaluate the combined effect of cover crop residue and herbicides for weed control and improved cotton lint yield. The experiment was conducted in split-plot design with main plots consisting of six cover crop treatments: cereal rye, crimson clover, oat, radish, cover crop mixture, and winter fallow. The subplots included four herbicide treatments: (i) preemergence, pendimethalin + fomesafen, (ii) postemergence, dicamba + glyphosate + S-metolachlor, (iii) preemergence followed by postemergence, and (iv) nontreated (NT) check. Cover crops, excluding radish, exhibited greater weed biomass reduction than winter fallow with corresponding herbicide treatments of either preemergence, postemergence, or preemergence + postemergence as compared to control (winter fallow and NT check). Considering preemergence + postemergence treatment, cereal rye, crimson clover, oat, and cover crop mixture provided >95% weed biomass reduction as compared to control. Looking at the overall effect of cover crop, cereal rye outperformed and showed greater weed biomass reduction than radish relative to control. Preemergence + postemergence herbicide treatment resulted in greater lint yield than other treatments. Cotton in cereal rye plots had a greater lint yield than in winter fallow at one out of three locations. In conclusion, integrating herbicides and incorporating high-residue cover crops such as cereal rye is an effective weed management strategy to control troublesome weeds.

In mid-southern, southeastern, and northeastern U.S. soybean production regions, the evolution of herbicide-resistant weeds has become a significant management challenge for growers. The rising herbicide costs for managing herbicide-resistant weeds are also a growing concern, leading to the utilization of cover crops as an integrated weed management strategy for addressing these challenges. Field experiments were conducted at two locations in Alabama in 2022 to evaluate winter cereal cover crops, including a mixture and herbicide system integration in soybean. Treatments included five cover crops: oats, cereal rye, crimson clover, radish, and a cover crop mixture. Cover crops were evaluated for their weed-suppressive characteristics compared to a winter fallow treatment. Additionally, four herbicide treatments were applied: a preemergence (PRE) herbicide, a postemergence (POST) herbicide, PRE plus POST herbicides, and a nontreated (NT) check. The PRE herbicide was S-metolachlor; the POST treatment contained a mixture of dicamba and glyphosate. The PRE plus POST system contained the PRE application followed by POST application. Results show that cereal rye and the cover crop mixture provided weed biomass reduction compared to all cover crop treatments across both locations. Furthermore, we observed greater soybean yield following the cereal rye cover crop than following the winter fallow treatment at one location. POST and PRE plus POST herbicide treatment resulted in greater weed biomass reduction and improved soybean yield than the PRE herbicide treatment alone and the NT check at both locations.

A principal mode of corrosion in combustion or fuel cell environments is the formation of volatile hydroxides and oxyhydroxides from metal or oxide surfaces at high temperatures. It is important to determine the degree of volatility and accurate thermodynamic properties for these hydroxides. Significant gaseous metal hydroxides/oxyhydroxides are discussed, along with available experimental and theoretical methods of characterizing species and determining their thermodynamic properties.

Virtual Engineering (VE), also known as Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE), is necessary in both current operational engineering qualifications and to help reduce the costs of future vertical lift design and analysis. As computational power continues to provide increasing capability to the rotorcraft engineering community to perform simulations in both real time and off line, it is imperative that the community develop verification and validation protocols and processes to certify these methods so that they can be reliably used to help reduce engineering cost and schedule. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) has become a major Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) tool in the fixed wing and vertical lift communities, but it has not been developed to the point where it is accepted as a replacement for testing in certification of new or existing systems or vehicles. Since the rise of modern CFD in the 1980s, the promise of CFD’s capabilities has been met or exceeded, but its role in certification arguably remains less prominent than projected. The ability to implement transformative technologies further drives the need for CFD in design. To meet CFD’s role in certification, several goals must be met to provide a true “numerical experiment” from which accuracies (error estimates), sensitivities, and consistent application results can be extracted. This paper discusses the progress and direction towards developing CFD strategies for certification.

An adverse early life environment can increase the risk of metabolic and other disorders later in life. Genetic variation can modify an individual’s susceptibility to these environmental challenges. These gene by environment interactions are important, but difficult, to dissect. The nucleus is the primary organelle where environmental responses impact directly on the genetic variants within the genome, resulting in changes to the biology of the genome and ultimately the phenotype. Understanding genome biology requires the integration of the linear DNA sequence, epigenetic modifications and nuclear proteins that are present within the nucleus. The interactions between these layers of information may be captured in the emergent spatial genome organization. As such genome organization represents a key research area for decoding the role of genetic variation in the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease.

Introduction: Our tertiary care institution embarked on the Choosing Wisely campaign to reduce unnecessary testing, and selected the reduction of ankle x-rays as part of its top five priority initiatives. The Low Risk Ankle Rule (LRAR), an evidence-based decision rule, has been derived and validated to clinically evaluate ankle injuries which do not require radiography. The LRAR, is cost-effective, has 100% sensitivity for clinically important ankle injuries and reduces ankle imaging rates by 30-60% in both academic and community setting. Our objective was to significantly reduce the proportion of ankle x-rays ordered for acute ankle injuries presenting to our pediatric Emergency Department (ED). Methods: Medical records were reviewed for all patients presenting to our tertiary care pediatric ED (ages 3- 18 years) with an isolated acute ankle injury from Jan 1, 2016-Sept 30, 2016. Children with outside imaging, an injury that occurred >72 hours prior, or those who had a repeat ED visit for same injury were excluded. Quality improvement (QI) initiatives included multidisciplinary staff education about the LRAR, posters placed within the ED highlighting the LRAR, development of a new diagnostic imaging requisition for ankle x-rays requiring use of the LRAR and collaboration with the Division of Radiology to ensure compliance with new requisition. The proportion of patients presenting to the ED with acute ankle injuries who received x-rays was measured. ED length of stay (LOS), return visits to the ED and orthopedic referrals were collected as balancing measures. Results: At baseline 88% of patients with acute ankle injuries received x-rays. Following our multiple interventions, the proportion of x-rays decreased significantly to 54%, (p<0.001). This decrease in x-ray rate was not associated with an increase in ED LOS, ED return visits or orthopedic referrals. There was an increase uptake of the dedicated x-ray requisition over time to 71%. Conclusion: This QI initiative to increase uptake of the LRAR, resulted in a significant reduction of ankle x-rays rates for children presenting with acute ankle injuries in our pediatric ED without increasing LOS, return visits or need for orthopedic referrals for missed injuries. Just as in the derivation and validation studies, the reductions have been sustained and reduced unnecessary testing and ionizing radiation.

Background. For irrational fears and their associated phobias, epidemiological studies suggest sex differences in prevalence and twin studies report significant genetic effects. How does sex impact on the familial transmission of liability to fears and phobias?

Methods. In personal interviews with over 3000 complete pairs (of whom 1058 were opposite-sex dizygotic pairs), ascertained from a population-based registry, we assessed the lifetime prevalence of five phobias and their associated irrational fears analysed using a multiple threshold model. Twin resemblance was assessed by polychoric correlations and biometrical model-fitting incorporating sex-specific effects.

Results. For agoraphobia, situational and blood/injury fear/phobia, the best fit model suggested equal heritability in males and females and genetic correlations between the sexes of less than +0·50. For animal fear/phobias by contrast, the best fit model suggested equal heritability in males and females and a genetic correlation of unity. No evidence was found for an impact of family environment on liability to these fears or phobias. For social phobias, twin resemblance in males was explained by genetic factors and in females by familial–environmental factors.

Conclusion. The impact of sex on genetic risk may differ meaningfully across phobia subtypes. Sex-specific genetic risk factors may exist for agoraphobia, social, situational and blood-injury phobias but not for animal fear/phobia. These results should be interpreted in the context of the limited power of twin studies, even with large sample sizes, to resolve sex-specific genetic effects.

In a recent article, I discussed vocative uses of οὗτος in the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes, showing that there are two types of vocatives: ‘calls’, which are utterance-initial and directed at one whose attention is turned elsewhere, and ‘addresses’, which are non-initial, employed by a speaker who is already conversing with a hearer, and typically indicate a speaker's annoyance at the hearer. Menander uses οὗτος as a vocative in the same ways as the other dramatic poets, but there is one instance in Dyscolus that has been routinely misconstrued and merits clarification.

Data on soils with six Neoglacial moraines of the Klutlan Glacier have been compared with those from moraines at the warm, moist coastal site of Glacier Bay, 160 km south. Percentage organic matter increases rapidly for the first 100 to 150 yr of soil development and then continues to rise gradually for the next 100 yr. Soil pH falls from 8.0 in recent till to approximately 6.0 in 200-yr-old soils. Nitrogen levels in the mineral soil increase from near zero in recent tills to 0.7% in soils 175–200 yr old; organic horizons of soils associated with spruce forests in later successional stages contain approximately 1% nitrogen. Concentrations of certain inorganic phosphate ions in the different-aged soils increase continually throughout the succession. Data for nine chemical variables were subjected to a principal components analysis; the major pattern in the data reflects the differences between soils of low organic content and high pH present in early successional stages, and nutrient-rich soils with high organic content and low pH present after succession has progressed toward the spruce forest. These trends in soil development with time are strikingly similar to those reported from Glacier Bay, except that the changes in soil properties appear to be delayed by 50–100 yr at the Klutlan terminus. Although numerous signs of nitrogen deficiency have been identified in plants growing on new soils at Glacier Bay, none was observed visually in living plants or in nutrients measured in samples of foliage from three plant taxa (Epilobium latifolium, Salix spp., and Populus balsamifera) taken from the Klutlan moraines. Concentrations of nitrogen and other nutrients (Ca, Mg, K, total P) in the foliage samples show no clear trends with increasing soil development. Low temperatures, a short growing season, and very low mean annual precipitation probably limit plant growth and account for the delayed soil development on the Klutlan moraines.

In this paper, we present novel algorithms for finding small relations and ideal factorizations in the ideal class group of an order in an imaginary quadratic field, where both the norms of the prime ideals and the size of the coefficients involved are bounded. We show how our methods can be used to improve the computation of large-degree isogenies and endomorphism rings of elliptic curves defined over finite fields. For these problems, we obtain improved heuristic complexity results in almost all cases and significantly improved performance in practice. The speed-up is especially high in situations where the ideal class group can be computed in advance.

Trypanosomes and Leishmania are vector-borne parasites associated with high morbidity and mortality. Trypanosoma lewisi, putatively introduced with black rats and fleas, has been implicated in the extinction of two native rodents on Christmas Island (CI) and native trypanosomes are hypothesized to have caused decline in Australian marsupial populations on the mainland. This study investigated the distribution and prevalence of Trypanosoma spp. and Leishmania spp. in two introduced pests (cats and black rats) for three Australian locations. Molecular screening (PCR) on spleen tissue was performed on cats from CI (n = 35), Dirk Hartog Island (DHI; n = 23) and southwest Western Australia (swWA) (n = 58), and black rats from CI only (n = 46). Despite the continued presence of the intermediate and mechanical hosts of T. lewisi, there was no evidence of trypanosome or Leishmania infection in cats or rats from CI. Trypanosomes were not identified in cats from DHI or swWA. These findings suggest T. lewisi is no longer present on CI and endemic Trypanosoma spp. do not infect cats or rats in these locations.