PERENNIAL CROPS FOR BIO-FUELS AND CONSERVATION

Perennial woody crops have the potential to contribute significantly to the production of bio-fuels while simultaneously helping to provide a wide range of conservation benefits. Among these benefits are increased biological diversity in the landscape, conservation of soil and water resources, maintenance of forest ecosystem productivity and health, contribution to the global carbon cycle, and provision of socioeconomic benefits. Short rotation woody crops, like hybrid poplar and willow, grow rapidly and can reach 15-25 feet in height after only three years. Currently, non-irrigated yields can be sustained at about 5 dry tons/acre/year and are increasing as plant breeding, nutrient management, and weed control advances are made. The high hemi-cellulose and cellulose content of woody biomass result in favorable net energy conversion ratios of 1:11 when co-fired with coal and 1:16 when undergoing gasification. Directing this wood fiber into bio-fuels would benefit both the energy sector and forest and farm landowners, while providing an array of conservation benefits and ecological services. The amount of biofuel that can be sustainably produced each year from perennial crops is potentially very large. The next Farm Bill affords an opportunity to insure that this potential can be more fully realized

PERENNIAL CROPS FOR BIO-FUELS AND CONSERVATION

Perennial woody crops have the potential to contribute significantly to the production of bio-fuels while simultaneously helping to provide a wide range of conservation benefits. Among these benefits are increased biological diversity in the landscape, conservation of soil and water resources, maintenance of forest ecosystem productivity and health, contribution to the global carbon cycle, and provision of socioeconomic benefits. Short rotation woody crops, like hybrid poplar and willow, grow rapidly and can reach 15-25 feet in height after only three years. Currently, non-irrigated yields can be sustained at about 5 dry tons/acre/year and are increasing as plant breeding, nutrient management, and weed control advances are made. The high hemi-cellulose and cellulose content of woody biomass result in favorable net energy conversion ratios of 1:11 when co-fired with coal and 1:16 when undergoing gasification. Directing this wood fiber into bio-fuels would benefit both the energy sector and forest and farm landowners, while providing an array of conservation benefits and ecological services. The amount of biofuel that can be sustainably produced each year from perennial crops is potentially very large. The next Farm Bill affords an opportunity to insure that this potential can be more fully realized

PERENNIAL CROPS FOR BIO-FUELS AND CONSERVATION

Perennial woody crops have the potential to contribute significantly to the production of bio-fuels while simultaneously helping to provide a wide range of conservation benefits. Among these benefits are increased biological diversity in the landscape, conservation of soil and water resources, maintenance of forest ecosystem productivity and health, contribution to the global carbon cycle, and provision of socioeconomic benefits. Short rotation woody crops, like hybrid poplar and willow, grow rapidly and can reach 15-25 feet in height after only three years. Currently, non-irrigated yields can be sustained at about 5 dry tons/acre/year and are increasing as plant breeding, nutrient management, and weed control advances are made. The high hemi-cellulose and cellulose content of woody biomass result in favorable net energy conversion ratios of 1:11 when co-fired with coal and 1:16 when undergoing gasification. Directing this wood fiber into bio-fuels would benefit both the energy sector and forest and farm landowners, while providing an array of conservation benefits and ecological services. The amount of biofuel that can be sustainably produced each year from perennial crops is potentially very large. The next Farm Bill affords an opportunity to insure that this potential can be more fully realized

Oral abstracts of the 21st International AIDS Conference 18-22 July 2016, Durban, South Africa

The rate at which HIV-1 infected individuals progress to AIDS is highly variable and impacted by T cell immunity. CD8 T cell inhibitory molecules are up-regulated in HIV-1 infection and associate with immune dysfunction. We evaluated participants (n=122) recruited to the SPARTAC randomised clinical trial to determine whether CD8 T cell exhaustion markers PD-1, Lag-3 and Tim-3 were associated with immune activation and disease progression.Expression of PD-1, Tim-3, Lag-3 and CD38 on CD8 T cells from the closest pre-therapy time-point to seroconversion was measured by flow cytometry, and correlated with surrogate markers of HIV-1 disease (HIV-1 plasma viral load (pVL) and CD4 T cell count) and the trial endpoint (time to CD4 count <350 cells/μl or initiation of antiretroviral therapy). To explore the functional significance of these markers, co-expression of Eomes, T-bet and CD39 was assessed.Expression of PD-1 on CD8 and CD38 CD8 T cells correlated with pVL and CD4 count at baseline, and predicted time to the trial endpoint. Lag-3 expression was associated with pVL but not CD4 count. For all exhaustion markers, expression of CD38 on CD8 T cells increased the strength of associations. In Cox models, progression to the trial endpoint was most marked for PD-1/CD38 co-expressing cells, with evidence for a stronger effect within 12 weeks from confirmed diagnosis of PHI. The effect of PD-1 and Lag-3 expression on CD8 T cells retained statistical significance in Cox proportional hazards models including antiretroviral therapy and CD4 count, but not pVL as co-variants.Expression of ‘exhaustion’ or ‘immune checkpoint’ markers in early HIV-1 infection is associated with clinical progression and is impacted by immune activation and the duration of infection. New markers to identify exhausted T cells and novel interventions to reverse exhaustion may inform the development of novel immunotherapeutic approaches

Improved soil biological health increases corn grain yield in N fertilized systems across the Corn Belt

AbstractNitrogenous fertilizers have nearly doubled global grain yields, but have also increased losses of reactive N to the environment. Current public investments to improve soil health seek to balance productivity and environmental considerations. However, data integrating soil biological health and crop N response to date is insufficient to reliably drive conservation policy and inform management. Here we used multilevel structural equation modeling and N fertilizer rate trials to show that biologically healthier soils produce greater corn yields per unit of fertilizer. We found the effect of soil biological health on corn yield was 18% the magnitude of N fertilization, Moreover, we found this effect was consistent for edaphic and climatic conditions representative of 52% of the rainfed acreage in the Corn Belt (as determined using technological extrapolation domains). While N fertilization also plays a role in building or maintaining soil biological health, soil biological health metrics offer limited a priori information on a site’s responsiveness to N fertilizer applications. Thus, increases in soil biological health can increase corn yields for a given unit of N fertilizer, but cannot completely replace mineral N fertilization in these systems. Our results illustrate the potential for gains in productivity through investment in soil biological health, independent of increases in mineral N fertilizer use.</jats:p

A genome-wide association study identifies susceptibility loci for Wilms tumor

Wilms tumor is the most common renal malignancy of childhood. To identify common variants that confer susceptibility to Wilms tumor we conducted a genome-wide association study in 757 cases and 1,879 controls. We evaluated ten SNPs in regions significant at P<5×10(−5) in two independent replication series from the UK (769 cases and 2,814 controls) and the US (719 cases and 1,037 controls). We identified clear significant associations at two loci, 2p24 (rs3755132, P=1.03×10(−14) and rs807624, P=1.32×10(−14)) and 11q14 (rs790356, P=4.25 ×10(−15)). Both regions contain genes that are plausibly related to Wilms tumorigenesis. We also identified candidate signals at 5q14, 22q12 and Xp22

Potato Soil Core Microbiomes Are Regionally Variable Across the Continental United States

Soil microbiomes play crucial roles in pathogen suppression, nutrient mobilization, and maintenance of plant health. Their complexity and variability across spatial and temporal scales provide challenges for identifying common targets—microbial taxa or assemblages—for management in agricultural systems. To understand how microbiomes in potato production soils vary across growing regions and identify commonly distributed taxa among them, we compiled a continental-scale bacterial and eukaryotic amplicon dataset of over 1,300 communities with corresponding edaphic measurements from nine U.S. field sites. Field site explained most of the variance across bacterial and eukaryotic (predominantly fungal) communities, while pH and organic matter as well as nitrate, phosphate, and potassium concentrations also varied with community structure. Bacterial and eukaryotic potato soil microbiomes showed consistent phylum-level composition across locations at the continental scale, with regional-scale differences evident among genera and amplicon sequence variants (ASVs). Core community analysis identified 606 bacterial and 74 eukaryotic ASVs, which were present, but unequally distributed, across all nine field sites. Many of these core ASVs belonged to common soil genera, such as Bacillus and Mortierella, which may reveal the functional potential involved in maintaining soil health across regionally variable soil systems