The U.S. Department of Agriculture–Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) has been a leader in weed science research covering topics ranging from the development and use of integrated weed management (IWM) tactics to basic mechanistic studies, including biotic resistance of desirable plant communities and herbicide resistance. ARS weed scientists have worked in agricultural and natural ecosystems, including agronomic and horticultural crops, pastures, forests, wild lands, aquatic habitats, wetlands, and riparian areas. Through strong partnerships with academia, state agencies, private industry, and numerous federal programs, ARS weed scientists have made contributions to discoveries in the newest fields of robotics and genetics, as well as the traditional and fundamental subjects of weed–crop competition and physiology and integration of weed control tactics and practices. Weed science at ARS is often overshadowed by other research topics; thus, few are aware of the long history of ARS weed science and its important contributions. This review is the result of a symposium held at the Weed Science Society of America’s 62nd Annual Meeting in 2022 that included 10 separate presentations in a virtual Weed Science Webinar Series. The overarching themes of management tactics (IWM, biological control, and automation), basic mechanisms (competition, invasive plant genetics, and herbicide resistance), and ecosystem impacts (invasive plant spread, climate change, conservation, and restoration) represent core ARS weed science research that is dynamic and efficacious and has been a significant component of the agency’s national and international efforts. This review highlights current studies and future directions that exemplify the science and collaborative relationships both within and outside ARS. Given the constraints of weeds and invasive plants on all aspects of food, feed, and fiber systems, there is an acknowledged need to face new challenges, including agriculture and natural resources sustainability, economic resilience and reliability, and societal health and well-being.

The development of wearable technology, which enables motion tracking analysis for human movement outside the laboratory, can improve awareness of personal health and performance. This study used a wearable smart sock prototype to track foot–ankle kinematics during gait movement. Multivariable linear regression and two deep learning models, including long short-term memory (LSTM) and convolutional neural networks, were trained to estimate the joint angles in sagittal and frontal planes measured by an optical motion capture system. Participant-specific models were established for ten healthy subjects walking on a treadmill. The prototype was tested at various walking speeds to assess its ability to track movements for multiple speeds and generalize models for estimating joint angles in sagittal and frontal planes. LSTM outperformed other models with lower mean absolute error (MAE), lower root mean squared error, and higher R-squared values. The average MAE score was less than 1.138° and 0.939° in sagittal and frontal planes, respectively, when training models for each speed and 2.15° and 1.14° when trained and evaluated for all speeds. These results indicate wearable smart socks to generalize foot–ankle kinematics over various walking speeds with relatively low error and could consequently be used to measure gait parameters without the need for a lab-constricted motion capture system.

Background: Bloodstream infections (BSIs) due to methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) are important causes of morbidity and mortality in hospitalized patients. Long-term national MRSA BSI surveillance establishes rates for internal and external comparison and provide insight into epidemiologic, molecular, and resistance trends. Here, we present and discuss National MRSA BSI incidence rates and trends over time in Canadian acute-care hospitals from 2008 to 2018. Methods: The Canadian Nosocomial Infection Surveillance Programme (CNISP) is a collaborative effort of the Association of Medical Microbiology and Infectious Disease Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada. Since 1995, the CNISP has conducted hospital-based sentinel surveillance of MRSA BSIs. Data were collected using standardized definitions and forms from hospitals that participate in the CNISP (48 hospitals in 2008 to 62 hospitals in 2018). For each MRSA BSI identified, the medical record was reviewed for clinical and demographic information and when possible, 1 blood-culture isolate per patient was submitted to a central laboratory for further molecular characterization and susceptibility testing. Results: From 2008 to 2013, MRSA BSI rates per 10,000 patient days were relatively stable (0.60–0.56). Since 2014, MRSA BSI rates have gradually increased from 0.66 to 1.05 in 2018. Although healthcare-associated (HA) MRSA BSI has shown a minimal increase (0.40 in 2014 to 0.51 in 2018), community-acquired (CA) MRSA BSI has increased by 150%, from 0.20 in 2014 to 0.50 in 2018 (Fig. 1). Laboratory characterization revealed that the proportion of isolates identified as CMRSA 2 (USA 100) decreased each year, from 39% in 2015 to 28% in 2018, while CMRSA 10 (USA 300) has increased from 41% to 47%. Susceptibility testing shows a decrease in clindamycin resistance from 82% in 2013 to 41% in 2018. Conclusions: Over the last decade, ongoing prospective MRSA BSI surveillance has shown relatively stable HA-MRSA rates, while CA-MRSA BSI rates have risen substantially. The proportion of isolates most commonly associated with HA-MRSA BSI (CMRSA2/USA 100) are decreasing and, given that resistance trends are tied to the prevalence of specific epidemic types, a large decrease in clindamycin resistance has been observed. MRSA BSI surveillance has shown a changing pattern in the epidemiology and laboratory characterization of MRSA BSI. The addition of hospitals in later years that may have had higher rates of CA-MRSA BSI could be a confounding factor. Continued comprehensive national surveillance will provide valuable information to address the challenges of infection prevention and control of MRSA BSI in hospitals.

Funding: None

Disclosures: None

OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: Patients with locally advanced pancreatic cancer typically have poor outcomes, with a median survival of ~16 months. Novel methods to improve local control are needed. Nab-paclitaxel (abraxane) has shown efficacy in pancreatic cancer and is FDA approved for metastatic disease in combination with gemcitabine. Nab-paclitaxel is also a promising radiosensitizer based on laboratory studies, but it has never been clinically tested with definitive radiotherapy for locally advanced disease. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: We performed a phase 1 study using a 3+3 dose-escalation strategy to determine the safety and tolerability of dose escalated nab-paclitaxel with fractionated radiotherapy for patients with unresectable or borderline resectable pancreatic cancer. Following induction chemotherapy with 2 cycles of nab-paclitaxel and gemcitabine, patients were treated with weekly nab-paclitaxel and daily radiotherapy to a dose of 52.5 Gy in 25 fractions. Final dose-limiting toxicity (DLT) determination was performed at day 65 after the start of radiotherapy. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: Nine patients received nab-paclitaxel at a dose level of either 100 mg/m2 (n=3) or 125 mg/m2 (n=6). One DLT (grade 3 neuropathy) was observed in a patient who received 125 mg/m2 of nab-paclitaxel. Other grade 3 toxicities included fatigue (11%), anemia (11%), and neutropenia (11%). No grade 4 toxicities were observed. With a median follow-up of 8 months (range 5–28 months), median survival was 19 months and median progression-free survival was 10 months. Following chemoradiation, 3 patients underwent surgical resection, all with negative margins and limited tumor viability. Of the 3 patients, 2 initially had borderline resectable tumors and 1 had an unresectable tumor. Tumor (SMAD-4, Caveolin-1) and peripheral (circulating tumor cells and microvesicles) biomarkers were collected and are being analyzed. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPACT: The combination of fractionated radiation and weekly nab-paclitaxel was safe and well tolerated. This regimen represents a potentially promising therapy for patients with unresectable and borderline resectable pancreatic cancer and warrants further investigation.

The Neotoma Paleoecology Database is a community-curated data resource that supports interdisciplinary global change research by enabling broad-scale studies of taxon and community diversity, distributions, and dynamics during the large environmental changes of the past. By consolidating many kinds of data into a common repository, Neotoma lowers costs of paleodata management, makes paleoecological data openly available, and offers a high-quality, curated resource. Neotoma’s distributed scientific governance model is flexible and scalable, with many open pathways for participation by new members, data contributors, stewards, and research communities. The Neotoma data model supports, or can be extended to support, any kind of paleoecological or paleoenvironmental data from sedimentary archives. Data additions to Neotoma are growing and now include >3.8 million observations, >17,000 datasets, and >9200 sites. Dataset types currently include fossil pollen, vertebrates, diatoms, ostracodes, macroinvertebrates, plant macrofossils, insects, testate amoebae, geochronological data, and the recently added organic biomarkers, stable isotopes, and specimen-level data. Multiple avenues exist to obtain Neotoma data, including the Explorer map-based interface, an application programming interface, the neotoma R package, and digital object identifiers. As the volume and variety of scientific data grow, community-curated data resources such as Neotoma have become foundational infrastructure for big data science.

Experiments were conducted from 1989 to 1991 on two silt loam and two clay soils to determine the effect of herbicides applied to the previous crop on growth and yield of rice. All herbicides were applied preplant-incorporated at recommended rates adjusted as needed for soil texture. Rice was planted the following year. Imazaquin, imazethapyr, alachlor, metolachlor, clomazone, trifluralin, and atrazine did not injure rice the year following application. Norflurazon was the only herbicide to injure rice on silt loam soils, with injury at one silt loam location in one of two years. Norflurazon and fluometuron residues caused rice injury on clay soils, and chlorimuron residues caused injury in one year on a day soil. This chlorimuron carryover injury was from August-planted soybean but did not occur from June-planted soybean. Norflurazon, fluometuron, and chlorimuron temporarily reduced rice dry matter early in the season. No herbicide reduced either rough rice or percent head rice yield on any of the soils.

Field experiments were conducted in 2004 and 2005 to determine the tolerance of direct-seeded green onion to selected herbicides applied before or after green onion emergence. Preemergence herbicides included S-metolachlor, pendimethalin, dimethenamid, quinclorac, pronamide, ethofumesate, and DCPA, a registered standard. Herbicide applied to two- to three-leaf green onion included glyphosate, trifloxysulfuron, flumioxazin, phenmedipham, ethalfluralin, pendimethalin, S-metolachlor, and oxyfluorfen. Plots were cultivated and hand weeded to minimize negative effects of weed interference on the crop. All herbicides applied at seeding, excluding DCPA, caused excessive injury (>25%) to green onion in at least 1 of 2 years. Oxyfluorfen, ethalfluralin, or S-metolachlor applied after crop emergence caused less than 10% injury in both years to green onion. Green onion yields following treatment with oxyfluorfen, ethalfluralin, or S-metolachlor were equivalent to the nontreated control. All other herbicides applied after crop emergence resulted in height, density, or yield reductions relative to a nontreated control in at least 1 of 2 years.

The geochronology of a gravity core collected from an anoxic, high sedimentation rate (>2.5 cm/yr) setting near the head of the Saguenay Fjord in Quebec has been established for the period 1900–1979 to a resolution of better than 1 yr using a constant flux 210Pb model. Interannual variations of the sedimentation rate of between 28 and 50% are caused by rapid inputs of coarse silt and fine sand during spring freshet events. A significant correlation between sand percentage and sediment accumulation rate reflects the increase in stream competence during the spring freshet; the sand percentage parameter can be used in conjunction with sediment size parameters to estimate temporal variations in river discharge intensity. Between 1914 and 1979 sediment accumulation rates were about 60% higher during the spring and summer compared to fall and winter seasons. Both the magnitude of the Saguenay River spring discharge and the quantity of precipitation stored as snow decrease through the 20th century suggesting that the freshet intensity was governed largely by natural rather than anthropogenic (e.g., dam construction) factors. A direct correlation between sand flux, peak river discharge, and a snow storage parameter provides a link between sediment texture and climate. Detailed analyses of the grain-size distributions for dated core intervals offer a method for the reconstruction of a proxy record of paleodischarge for the Saguenay River spring freshets.