Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for High-Throughput Phenotyping and Agronomic Research

Advances in automation and data science have led agriculturists to seek real-time, high-quality, high-volume crop data to accelerate crop improvement through breeding and to optimize agronomic practices. Breeders have recently gained massive data-collection capability in genome sequencing of plants. Faster phenotypic trait data collection and analysis relative to genetic data leads to faster and better selections in crop improvement. Furthermore, faster and higher-resolution crop data collection leads to greater capability for scientists and growers to improve precision-agriculture practices on increasingly larger farms; e.g., site-specific application of water and nutrients. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have recently gained traction as agricultural data collection systems. Using UAVs for agricultural remote sensing is an innovative technology that differs from traditional remote sensing in more ways than strictly higher-resolution images; it provides many new and unique possibilities, as well as new and unique challenges. Herein we report on processes and lessons learned from year 1-the summer 2015 and winter 2016 growing seasons-of a large multidisciplinary project evaluating UAV images across a range of breeding and agronomic research trials on a large research farm. Included are team and project planning, UAV and sensor selection and integration, and data collection and analysis workflow. The study involved many crops and both breeding plots and agronomic fields. The project's goal was to develop methods for UAVs to collect high-quality, high-volume crop data with fast turnaround time to field scientists. The project included five teams: Administration, Flight Operations, Sensors, Data Management, and Field Research. Four case studies involving multiple crops in breeding and agronomic applications add practical descriptive detail. Lessons learned include critical information on sensors, air vehicles, and configuration parameters for both. As the first and most comprehensive project of its kind to date, these lessons are particularly salient to researchers embarking on agricultural research with UAVs

The effect of race, gender, and economic status on the placement in special education high-incidence programs.

This study included all 4,537 of the educable mentally impaired (EMI), emotionally impaired (EI), and learning disabled (LD) students from eight urban districts who were in grades 1 through 6 and received a minimum of 10% of their schooling in special education. Black students were found to be overrepresented and White students were found to be underrepresented in EMI. White students were found to be overrepresented in EI, while this was the only classification where Black students were underrepresented. In the LD classification the overrepresentation of Hispanics was the only occurrence of disproportionate representation. All disability categories had a higher representation of low-economic students than occurred in regular education, with EMI having the largest percentage and LD the lowest. The overrepresentation of Black students in EMI is attributed to the high percentage of low-economic students in that category. Non-low-economic Black students were underrepresented while non-low-economic White students were overrepresented in all three disability categories. Eighty percent of the EI students, 70% of the LD students, and 55% of the EMI students were male. Gender was not significant in studying either race or economic status. The writer determined whether students were served in special education 10% to 50%, 51% to 99%, or full time. The majority of EMI students (57.2%) were served full time in special education, while only 6.6% were in special education less than half time. Almost half of the EI students (48.1%) spent their entire day in special education, with the remainder divided almost equally between the other time frames. Fifty-nine percent of the LD students spent most of their time in regular education, and 19% were in special education full time. Gender did not affect the amount of time that was spent in special education. Students who were of low-economic status were found to spend more time in special education.Ed.D.Elementary educationSpecial educationUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/161759/1/8812845.pd

Genome Sequence of Lactobacillus pentosus KCA1: Vaginal Isolate from a Healthy Premenopausal Woman

Contains fulltext : 119285.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)The vaginal microbiota, in particular Lactobacillus species, play an important role in female health through modulation of immunity, countering pathogens and maintaining a pH below 4.7. We report the isolation and genome sequence of Lactobacillus pentosus strain KCA1 (formally known as L. plantarum) from the vagina of a healthy Nigerian woman. The genome was sequenced using Illumina GA II technology. The resulting 16,920,226 paired-end reads were assembled with the Velvet tool. Contigs were annotated using the RAST server, and manually curated. A comparative analysis with the available genomes of L. pentosus IG1 and L. plantarum WCFS1 showed that over 15% of the predicted functional activities are found only in this strain. The strain has a chromosome sequence of 3,418,159 bp with a G+C content of 46.4%, and is devoid of plasmids. Novel gene clusters or variants of known genes relative to the reference genomes were found. In particular, the strain has loci encoding additional putative mannose phosphotransferase systems. Clusters of genes include those for utilization of hydantoin, isopropylmalate, malonate, rhamnosides, and genes for assimilation of polyglycans, suggesting the metabolic versatility of L. pentosus KCA1. Loci encoding putative phage defense systems were also found including clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPRs), abortive infection (Abi) systems and toxin-antitoxin systems (TA). A putative cluster of genes for biosynthesis of a cyclic bacteriocin precursor, here designated as pentocin KCA1 (penA) were identified. These findings add crucial information for understanding the genomic and geographic diversity of vaginal lactobacilli