Common Practice Research Articles

Combination of nitrogen and organic fertilizers reduce N2O emissions while increasing winter wheat grain yields and quality in China

Wheat grain yields, quality, and nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions were controlled through the type and application rate of nitrogen (N) fertilizer. Here, we investigated the optimal management of N fertilization by examining the combined effects of organic and N fertilizers on wheat yields, quality, and N2O emissions. Field trials under six treatments were located on campus farms at Anhui Science and Technology University, including farmer’s common practice (270 kg N ha-1, N270), 2/3 reduction in N270 (90 kg N ha-1, N90), organic fertilizer with equal N270 (OF270), 2/3 reduction in OF270 (OF90), 4/5 reduction OF270 + 1/5 reduction N270 (20% OF270 + 80% N270), and 4/5 reduction OF90 + 1/5 reduction N90 (20% OF90 + 80% N90) were applied to winter wheat. The plots were arranged in a randomized complete block experimental design. The N2O emissions were quantified under different fertilization measures in the peak wheat growing season during sowing, jointing, and grain filling stages, respectively. Compared with N270 and N90 treatments, N2O emissions were significantly decreased by 18.6% and 27.2%, respectively, under 20% OF270 + 80% N270% and 20% OF90 + 80% N90 (p < 0.05). Further, N2O emissions in N270 were increased by 50.8% relative to N90. Wheat yields increased significantly under 20% OF90 + 80% N90 by 27.6% (N270) and 16.4% (N90), and were considerably enhanced under 20% OF270 + 80% N270 by 40.6% (N270) and 12.7% (N90) in contrast to OF270 and N270 (p < 0.05). Compared with N90, the content of wet gluten, protein and starch under 20% OF90 + 80% N90 treatment significantly increased by 7.7%, 13.8% and 7.9%, and enhanced by 7.6%, 4.8%, 8.0% relative to OF90, respectively (p < 0.05). The starch content increased significantly by 2.0%, whereas the settlement value decreased considerably by 2.9% under 20% OF270 + 80% N270 (p < 0.05), and there was no notable difference in the wet gluten and protein contents (p > 0.05). Our findings indicated that organic fertilizer mixed with N fertilizer can effectively reduce N2O emissions, increase both the grain yields and quality in wheat field compared with N fertilizer alone.

Evaluating the contributions and economic costs for Walleye fry and fingerling stocking in a large midwestern reservoir

Stocking is a common management practice to maintain Walleye populations where natural recruitment is low or to introduce and sustain Walleye populations outside of their native range. Walleye can be stocked at multiple lengths (e.g., fry and fingerling) and different sizes of stocked Walleye may contribute differently to Walleye year class strength, depending on the system into which they are stocked. The cost associated with stocking also varies by product. Therefore, it is important to determine the contributions from different stocked products within a region or for an individual waterbody. The objectives of our research were to 1) compare the relative contribution of and total length and body condition at the time of capture at age-0 between stocked Walleye fry and fingerlings and naturally produced individuals; and 2) estimate and compare the economic costs of Walleye fry and fingerling production relative to their contribution to the age-0 catch in Lake McConaughy during 2022 and 2023.We collected 178 and 263 age-0 Walleyes from Lake McConaughy during the summer and fall of 2022 and 2023, respectively. Fingerling-stocked Walleye contributed 2.12 times in 2022 and 2.92 times more in 2023 than fry-stocked Walleye. Production cost estimates revealed that fry cost 1.08 and 1.35 times greater than fingerlings per stocking unit in 2022 and 2023, thus fingerlings were deemed the most cost-effective product in this study. Walleye stocked as fry were significantly longer at the time of collection in 2022 and were in significantly better condition in both years compared to fingerling stocked Walleye. Our results provide valuable insights for fisheries managers by offering a case study example as well as offering a practical approach to guide effective management decisions on which stocked product is most appropriate for other systems. Overall, this research enhances the existing literature on Walleye stocking in large reservoir systems, offering practical and useful information for effective management decisions.

Comparison between Design Methods for Seismic Retrofit of Reinforced Concrete Frames Using Dissipative Bracing Systems

Braces equipped with dissipative devices are among the most widespread methods for the seismic strengthening of seismically prone reinforced concrete (RC) frames. It allows for high reductions in seismic vulnerability with inexpensive, quickly executed interventions. They can often be carried out mainly at the exterior, resulting in interruptions of use that are limited both in time and to only small portions of the building. The design methods of dissipative devices are based on the extensive use of pushover analyses (POA). POA is capable of highlighting the structural deficiencies of the building and comparing the performances of design performed according to different methods and sizing criteria. In the present work, with reference to a case study represented by a four-story spatial frame having characteristics representative of design and construction common practice of the 1970s in Southern European countries, the performances of three different design methods were evaluated and compared. The examined procedures differ, including the following: (i) methods for estimating the peak displacement response of the nonlinear systems, namely (i1) the well-known equal displacement rule and (i2) the equivalent (secant) stiffness and damping rule, and (ii) criteria for distributing stiffness and strength of the braces along the height, namely (ii1) the distribution of stiffness and strength proportionally to those of the frame and (ii2) methods that vary the stiffness and strength along the height in order to minimize the eventual irregularity in elevation of the bare frame. The effectiveness of the procedures was checked by both POA and nonlinear response history analysis, the latter performed assuming both unidirectional and bidirectional input. The stiffness was found to increase by about 10 times and the strength between 7.5 to 3.7 times depending on the design method, and reduction in the displacements ranged between 31% and 42% compared to the values of the original frame. The pros and cons of each procedure are summarized, as all procedures are able to provide brace designs that meet the performance requirements set during the design phase.

Artificial intelligence-driven skin aging simulation as a novel skin cancer prevention.

Skin cancer, a prevalent cancer type among fair-skinned patients globally, poses a relevant public health concern due to rising incidence rates. Ultraviolet (UV) radiation poses a major risk factor for skin cancer. However intentional tanning associated with sunburns remains a common practice, notably among female adults Appropriate prevention campaigns targeting children and adolescents are needed to improve sun-protection behavior particularly in these age groups. The aim of our study is to investigate if an AI-based simulation of facial skin aging can enhance sun-protection behavior in female adults. In this single-center prospective observational pilot study at Department of Dermatology at the University Hospital of Basel, we took photographs of healthy young females' faces with a VISIA-CR camera (Canfield Scientific Inc., Parsippany, New Jersey, Version 8.2) between February to March 2021. Digital images were performed in three angles (straight, left 45°, right 45°). All participants received an AI-based simulation of their facial skin with continuous aging to 80 years. A newly created anonymous questionnaire capturing participants' sociodemographic data and also tanning and sun-protection behavior was completed in pre- and post-aging simulation. To observe long-term effects, a 2-year follow-up was conducted between March to April 2023. The 60 participants (mean age 23.6±2.5 years) evaluated the importance of sun-protection significantly higher after skin aging simulation with VISIA-CR camera (p<0.0001; 95%-CI:8.2-8.8). Post-intervention, 91.7% (55/60) of the females were motivated to reduce UV exposure and to intensify UV protection in the future since the individual UV-dependent risk was perceived significantly higher (p<0.001; 95%-CI: 5.9-6.7). At two-year follow-up, 96% (24/25) indicated persistent effort reducing UV exposure. The preference for SPF50+ sunscreen increased to 46.7% (28/65) directly after the skin-aging simulation and continued to rise up to 60.0% (15/25) after two years. Our data emphasize the potential of AI-assisted photo-aging interventions to enhance motivation for UV protection in the short and the long term We encourage that different age and gender groups are addressed in a personalized, generation-specific manner with the appropriate media and by considering the Hawthorne effect. Campaigns with visual AI support can improve the intent of cancer-preventative behavior.

Billiards Sports Analytics: Datasets and Tasks

Nowadays, it becomes a common practice to capture some data of sports games with devices such as GPS sensors and cameras and then use the data to perform various analyses on sports games, including tactics discovery, similar game retrieval, performance study, and so forth. While this practice has been conducted to many sports such as basketball and soccer, it remains largely unexplored on the billiards sports, which is mainly due to the lack of publicly available datasets. Motivated by this, we collect a dataset of billiards sports, which includes the layouts (i.e., locations) of billiards balls after performing break shots, called break shot layouts, the traces of the balls as a result of strikes (in the form of trajectories), and detailed statistics and performance indicators. We then study and develop techniques for three tasks on the collected dataset, including (1) prediction and (2) generation on the layouts data, and (3) similar billiards layout retrieval on the layouts data, which can serve different users such as coaches, players and fans. We conduct extensive experiments on the collected dataset and the results show that our methods perform effectively and efficiently.

Enhancing Intent Classifier Training with Large Language Model-generated Data

ABSTRACT Intent classification is essential in Natural Language Processing, serving applications like virtual assistants and customer service by categorizing user inputs into predefined classes. Despite its importance, the effectiveness of intent classifiers is often constrained by the scarcity of labeled data, as acquiring substantial, annotated datasets is costly and impractical. Data augmentation addresses this by expanding datasets with modified or synthetic examples, a common practice in computer vision but more complex in NLP due to the discrete nature of language. Traditional NLP data augmentation methods have been explored but exhibit limitations. This paper investigates the use of Large Language Models for generating labeled data to enhance intent classification. We explore whether LLM-generated data can effectively augment training sets, comparing its impact on intent classifier performance against traditional augmentation methods. Our study reveals that LLMs can generate diverse and realistic data, potentially improving classifier accuracy in low-data scenarios, thereby providing valuable insights into leveraging generative AI for NLP tasks in real-world applications.

How do you assert a graph? Towards an account of depictions in scientific testimony

AbstractI extend the literature on norms of assertion to the ubiquitous use of graphs in scientific papers and presentations, which I term “graphical testimony.” On my account, the testimonial presentation of a graph involves commitment to both (a) the in‐context reliability of the graph's framing devices and (b) the perspective‐relative accuracy of the graph's content. Despite apparent disagreements between my account and traditional accounts of assertion, the two are compatible and I argue that we should expect a similar pattern of commitments in a set of cases that extends beyond the graphical one. I end by demonstrating that the account resolves apparent tensions between the demands of honesty and the common scientific practice of presenting idealized or simplified graphs: these “distortions” can be honest so long as there's the right kind of alignment between the distortion and the background beliefs and values of the audience.

Evaluating Boil Water Advisory Policies and Practices: Health Outcomes in Hong Kong

Boiling water (BW) is a common global practice, especially in Asia, for ensuring safe drinking water, though it does not remove chemical contaminants. The World Health Organisation recommends BW as an emergency measure against microbial contamination. In Hong Kong, the Water Supplies Department ensures water quality through strict regulations and extensive monitoring. Comparisons with Norway and Canada reveal effective practices such as water safety planning and risk-based advisories. Norway mandates water safety planning and uses messaging notifications for water advisories, ensuring high compliance, while Canada issues site-specific BW advisories based on risk assessments. Hong Kong faces unique challenges, such as a warm climate and complex building infrastructure, which impact water quality. Many buildings lack proper maintenance, leading to potential health risks and necessitating regular maintenance. Health management, public health education and expert guidance are essential for promoting efficient practices and ensuring safe drinking water.

Three new species of Talaromyces sect. Talaromyces discovered in China.

Talaromyces species play an important role in the nutrient cycle in natural ecosystems, degradation of vegetal biomass in industries and the implications in medicine. However, the species diversity of this genus is still far from fully understood. The polyphasic taxonomic approach integrating morphological comparisons and molecular phylogenetic analyses based on BenA, CaM, Rpb2 and ITS sequences was used to propose three new Talaromyces species. Three new species of sect. Talaromyces isolated from soil are proposed, namely, T. disparis (ex-type AS3.26221), T. funiformis (ex-type AS3.26220) and T. jianfengicus (ex-type AS3.26253). T. disparis is unique in low growth rate, velvety texture, limited to moderate sporulation, biverticillate, monoverticillate and irregular penicilli bearing a portion of abnormally large globose conidia, it has no close relatives in phylogeny. Being a member of T. pinophilus complex, T. funiformis produces mycelial funicles on Czapek yeast autolysate agar (CYA), 5% malt extract agar (MEA) and yeast extract (YES), sparse sporulation on Czapek agar (Cz), CYA, MEA and YES while abundant on oatmeal agar (OA), bearing appressed biverticillate penicilli and globose to pyriform conida with smooth to finely rough walls. T. jianfengicus belongs to T. verruculosus complex, is characterized by velvety colony texture with moderate to abundant elm-green conidia en masse, producing biverticillate penicilli, globose conidia with verrucose walls. It is now a common practice in establishing new species of Aspergillus, Penicillium and Talaromyces based on morphological characters and phylogenetic analyses of BenA, CaM, Rpb2 and ITS sequences. The proposal of the three novelties of Talaromyces in this article is not only supported by their morphological distinctiveness, but also confirmed by the phylogenetic analyses of the concatenated BenA-CaM-Rpb2 and BenA-CaM-ITS, as well as the individual BenA, CaM, Rpb2 and ITS sequence matrices.

Challenging questions in Saudi press conferences

Press conferences that host high ranking officials have not been a common practice in Saudi Arabia. Nevertheless, since 2020 this has changed clearly as Ministers have begun to appear in regular press conferences, a new format that requires examination and comparison to see the extent to which it is in line with the previous findings of this kind of interaction in western contexts. The current paper concentrates on examining the practice of challenging officials. The questions from these press conferences have been categorized using a framework that assesses aggressiveness through four aspects: initiative, directness, assertiveness, and hostility. The results show that journalists score a high level in the first dimension, but achieve generally low scores in the other three dimensions. The overall results indicate that journalists display a degree of initiative-taking and bring some concerns of the public to officials, but with a high proportion of cautious and non-assertive questions, an interaction system that avoids a high level of confrontation toward officials.

Phenomenology of TMD parton distributions in Drell-Yan and Z0 boson production in a hadron structure oriented approach

We present a first practical implementation of a recently proposed hadron structure oriented (HSO) approach to transverse momentum dependent (TMD) phenomenology applied to Drell-Yan-like processes, including lepton pair production at moderate Q2 and Z0 boson production. We compare and contrast general features of our methodology with other common practices and emphasize aspects that we view as improvements. Separately, we discuss the importance of treatments that preserve various theoretical properties of the nonperturbative parts of TMD parametrizations for future applications that have the extraction of hadron structure as a primary goal. These include the HSO’s preservation of a basic TMD parton-model-like framework even while accounting for full TMD factorization and evolution, explicit preservation of the integral relationship between TMD and collinear parton density functions, and the ability to meaningfully compare different theoretical models of nonperturbative TMD parton distributions. In our examples, we show that there is significant sensitivity at moderate Q2 to both the form of the nonperturbative transverse momentum dependence and the parametrization of collinear parton densities. However, we also find that evolving to Q2=MZ2, without fitting, results in a satisfactory postdiction of existing data for Z0 production, nearly independently of the modeling of nonperturbative transverse momentum behavior. We argue that this demonstrates that moderate Q measurements should be given greater weight than high Q measurements in extractions of nonperturbative transverse momentum dependence. We also obtain new extractions of the nonperturbative Collins-Soper kernel within the HSO approach. We discuss its features and compare with some earlier extractions. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Lavender essential oil market integrity: A comprehensive study of commercial Lavandula angustifolia essential oils adulteration and assessment of industrial standards

Adulteration of essential oils (EOs) is a common and unethical practice that affects both consumers and honest suppliers and harms market integrity. Despite the awareness of this problem, scarce scientific studies are described in the scientific literature. Therefore, 55 samples of lavender EOs were purchased and extensively analyzed to the trace levels, including chromatographic profile, quantitative analysis, and chiral profile. Of the 51 samples labeled as Lavandula angustifolia, 51 % were genuine, 6 % were cheaper lavandin EO, 14 % were fortified with synthetic additives and over 29 % of the samples were adulterated with both lavandin EO and synthetics. Usually, adulterated EOs were cheaper than genuine products, still some expensive products were also falsified. The most common synthetic adulterants were synthetic linalool and linalyl acetate, 3,5,5-trimethylhexyl acetate, α-terpinyl acetate, and dipropylene glycol. Only four of the studied samples were diluted with a medium not fully visible in the recorded GC profile. Industry standards were assessed to eliminate adulterated EOs and ISO 3515 was found to be impractical and too strict, but Ph. Eur. demonstrated its efficiency in eliminating adulterated samples without rejecting many genuine ones.PCA enabled the differentiation of lavender EOs containing synthetics from those of purely natural origin, and in the latter group, to distinguish L. angustifolia from lavandin. Some samples had an unusual composition suggesting that they were artificial blends of synthetics and some terpene fractions of non-lavender origin.This is the first such extensive study of adulteration of lavender EOs, regarding both the number of commercial samples as well as implications on their biological activity. The adulteration via dilution influenced the antimicrobial activity of the essential oils. In conclusion, adulteration is a significant problem in the market, and a large share of products on the market is somehow counterfeited, not only the cheapest products.

Augmenting Multimodal Content Representation with Transformers for Misinformation Detection

Information sharing on social media has become a common practice for people around the world. Since it is difficult to check user-generated content on social media, huge amounts of rumors and misinformation are being spread with authentic information. On the one hand, most of the social platforms identify rumors through manual fact-checking, which is very inefficient. On the other hand, with an emerging form of misinformation that contains inconsistent image–text pairs, it would be beneficial if we could compare the meaning of multimodal content within the same post for detecting image–text inconsistency. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to misinformation detection by multimodal feature fusion with transformers and credibility assessment with self-attention-based Bi-RNN networks. Firstly, captions are derived from images using an image captioning module to obtain their semantic descriptions. These are compared with surrounding text by fine-tuning transformers for consistency check in semantics. Then, to further aggregate sentiment features into text representation, we fine-tune a separate transformer for text sentiment classification, where the output is concatenated to augment text embeddings. Finally, Multi-Cell Bi-GRUs with self-attention are used to train the credibility assessment model for misinformation detection. From the experimental results on tweets, the best performance with an accuracy of 0.904 and an F1-score of 0.921 can be obtained when applying feature fusion of augmented embeddings with sentiment classification results. This shows the potential of the innovative way of applying transformers in our proposed approach to misinformation detection. Further investigation is needed to validate the performance on various types of multimodal discrepancies.

Microbiology, induction, and management practices to mitigate lameness caused by bacterial chondronecrosis with osteomyelitis in broiler chickens

Bacterial chondronecrosis with osteomyelitis (BCO) lameness is the most prevalent skeletal disorder in poultry, implicated by the inherent risk of the high growth rate of modern broilers. The non-synchronization of massive body mass accretion vs maturation of the structural bone induces vulnerability to bone microfracture and immunosuppression, leading to bacterial necrosis in the skeletal and thoracic vertebral bones, leg paralysis, and eventual death. BCO lameness also imposes animal welfare issues and confers food safety risks. A study in 20 broiler farms in Australia recorded 28% BCO lesions of the necropsied birds, while a study in commercial flocks in Europe reported 19% moderate-to-severe lameness symptoms. The high incidence of lameness in commercial broiler farms reduces production value and leads to a huge economic loss in the poultry industry. Managing BCO lameness in broiler poultry is more challenging than that of other species because the peak of lameness incidence emerges at the marketing age of broilers. Moreover, curative treatment of the affected broilers is arduous due to their larger populations but shorter production cycles. Thus, condemnation of clinically lame birds has been a common practice in broiler farms to prevent the transmission of highly contagious BCO throughout the broiler populations. This practice decreases the production value and increases the economic forfeits. Therefore, presenting intervention measures for managing and controlling BCO in broiler poultry is necessary. Knowledge of etiological agents, pathogenesis, detection, and experimental lameness models to evaluate the efficacy of the intervention measures is highly important in presenting approaches to mitigate BCO lameness. Thus, this review focuses on microbiology studies of BCO, models of creating experimental lameness, and intervention measures mitigating BCO lameness in broiler chickens.

Effectiveness of constructed wetland technology-treated industrial wastewater on the spinach (Spinacia oleracea) health risks and biochar efficiency.

In peri-urban areas, use of industrial wastewater for irrigation is a common practice. Industrial wastewater contains cadmium, chromium, lead, nickel, and other elements that deteriorate food quality and affect human health. Biochar has been proven to remediate heavy metal contaminated soil by reducing their mobility and bioavailability. A pot experiment was conducted to evaluate the efficiency of different levels of biochar on spinach growth with low heavy metal concentration and to minimize associated health issues. The experiment lasted two months and the treatments: Control (tap water), untreated and treated industrial wastewater and both in combination with biochar (0.5% and 1%) were applied in completely randomized design. Findings suggested that treated industrial wastewater with 1% biochar resulted in maximum plant height, shoot weight, chlorophyll contents (SPAD value), photosynthetic and transpiration rate. Biochar significantly reduced heavy metal mobility in soil due to its porous structure, high pH, higher CEC, and variety of surface functional groups. The cumulative hazard index (HI), hazard quotient, cancer risk, and total cancer risk (TCR) were calculated using method provided by US-EPA for each metal. All treatments had HI values of < 1, however applying 1% biochar significantly reduced the HI values to 2.00E-01 and 2.88E-01 in adults and children, respectively. TCR for all treatments was < 1, while treated industrial wastewater and biochar (1%) has significantly reduced to 1.55E-02 and 1.91E-03 for adults and children, respectively. Thus, it was determined that irrigation with industrial effluents caused toxicity in vegetables, which had a negative impact on human health. Biochar effectively mitigated metal toxicity in both soil and spinach plants that resulted in reduced health/cancer risk.

Anthoxanthum odoratum (Poaceae) as a bioindicator of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi abundance prior to native revegetation on agricultural soils

ABSTRACT Mycorrhizal fungi, which form symbiotic associations with plant roots, can be critical to the successful establishment of plants. Up to 90% of land plant species form associations with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF), which develop fungal structures inside host roots. Common site preparation practices prior to ecological restoration, such as soil disturbance and herbicide application, may lessen the availability of AMF, potentially jeopardising plant establishment. However, the state of the soil microbiome can be difficult to assess directly. This study examines the potential of the widespread pasture grass Anthoxanthum odoratum (Sweet Vernal, Poaceae) as a bioassay of AMF abundance in soils. We present a rapid clearing and staining protocol for visualising AMF structures in the roots of A. odoratum. We then compare % colonisation on roots of naturally established A. odoratum plants collected from undisturbed pastures vs. sprayed and tilled pastures. Roots of A. odoratum collected from sprayed and tilled pastures showed a significantly lower average AMF colonisation at 43.8% compared with 57.6% on roots from undisturbed pastures. However, all plants sourced from the sprayed and tilled pastures still showed some AMF structures. Our results strongly suggest that A. odoratum can be a useful bioindicator of AMF presence and abundance in soils, offering a promising tool for seed-based restoration on retired agricultural land.

Tuning diagonal scale matrices for HMC

Three approaches for adaptively tuning diagonal scale matrices for HMC are discussed and compared. The common practice of scaling according to estimated marginal standard deviations is taken as a benchmark. Scaling according to the mean log-target gradient (ISG), and a scaling method targeting that the frequency of when the underlying Hamiltonian dynamics crosses the respective medians should be uniform across dimensions, are taken as alternatives. Numerical studies suggest that the ISG method leads in many cases to more efficient sampling than the benchmark, in particular in cases with strong correlations or non-linear dependencies. The ISG method is also easy to implement, computationally cheap and would be relatively simple to include in automatically tuned codes as an alternative to the benchmark practice.

Greenhouse gas emissions during alfalfa cultivation: How do soil management and crop fertilisation of preceding maize impact emissions?

ContextThe use of alfalfa in rotation with intensive crops is common practice to mitigate the physical and chemical issues arising from intensive farming practices. However, there is a dearth of studies on this practice. Given the current concern regarding climate change and the significant impact agriculture has on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, understanding the emissions associated with this practice, as well as the most suitable soil and crop management techniques for their mitigation, is of paramount importance. ObjectiveThe present study aimed to (i) quantify emissions of N2O, CO2 and CH4 in an alfalfa crop following a maize cropping scenario; (ii) to determine which tillage system generates the lowest GHG emissions, and; (iii) to determine how N fertilisation from a preceding intensive maize crop affects GHG emissions during alfalfa cropping period. MethodsA three-year field experiment (2019, 2020 and 2021) was conducted to assess the emissions of N2O, CO2 and CH4 from alfalfa cultivation following a three-year period of irrigated maize. Two soil management practices (no-tillage and conventional tillage) were implemented during both the maize cropping period and the alfalfa establishment. Additionally, the nitrogen (N) fertilisation rates applied to the preceding maize crop were included as a treatment (0, 200, and 400 kg N ha⁻¹, corresponding to zero, medium, and high fertilisation levels, respectively) in a randomized block design with two factors. ResultsEmissions of N2O in alfalfa ranged from 0.05 to 0.32 mg N2O-N m⁻² day⁻¹, being significantly higher only during first month of sampling in the treatments that had received fertilisation. CO2 emissions ranged from 1158 to 4258 mg CO2-C m⁻² day⁻¹. Year-average CH4 fluxes were −0.27 g C ha⁻¹ day⁻¹. The average total dry matter produced by alfalfa was 17700 kg ha⁻¹ year⁻¹, being higher for the no-tillage treatment, though significantly so only during first month of sampling. ConclusionsUnder Mediterranean conditions, the tillage system and mineral N fertilizer rates have a relative effect on greenhouse gas emissions during the alfalfa cropping period. Plots without N fertilization initially produced lower N2O emissions and higher total dry matter, resulting in the lowest scaled emissions. For the tillage treatment, no significant differences were found in emission dynamics, which may be due to the fact that alfalfa does not involve soil disturbance, leading to a homogenization of the treatments. However, the NT treatment showed lower scaled emissions due to higher yields in the first year. Therefore, alfalfa cultivation is characterized by low GHG emissions, high yields, and a notable capacity to mitigate the negative effects of previous intensive crops. SignificanceThis study provides data on GHG emissions during alfalfa cropping in the typical Maize-alfalfa crop rotation under Mediterranean irrigated systems, which is useful for new agricultural policies aimed at reducing pollution in the agricultural sector. Additionally, it demonstrates the capability of this crop to mitigate adverse agronomic and environmental conditions caused by preceding intensive farming practices.

Biomechanics of the Human Knee Joint in Maximum Voluntary Isometric Flexion: Study of Changes in Applied Moment, Agonist-Antagonist Participations, Joint Center, and Flexion Angle.

Estimation of the knee joint strength by maximum voluntary isometric contraction (MVIC) is a common practice to assess strength, coordination, safety to return to work or engage in sports after an injury, and to evaluate the efficacy of treatment modalities and rehabilitation strategies. In this study, we utilize a previously validated coupled finite element-musculoskeletal model of the lower extremity to explore the sensitivity of output measures (posterior cruciate ligament [PCL]/muscle/contact forces and passive moments) in knee MVIC flexion exercises at seated position. To do so, at three knee flexion angles (KFA), input measures (resistance moment and contribution moments of quadriceps and gastrocnemii) were varied at four levels each using the Taguchi design of experiment. Our findings reveal significant increases in PCL forces with KFA (p < 0.01), net MVIC moment (p < 0.01), and resistance moment of quadriceps (p < 0.01). In contrast, they drop at larger activity in gastrocnemii (p < 0.01). Tibiofemoral (TF) contact forces increase with the net MVIC moment (p < 0.01). The passive knee flexion moment, while highly dependent on the location at which computed, also increases with the net MVIC moment (p < 0.01). Changes in KFA, MVIC moment, and proportions thereof carried by quadriceps and/or gastrocnemii substantially affect biomechanics of the joint. Compared with level walking and stair ascent, slightly larger contact forces/stresses and much greater PCL forces are computed. This study improves our understanding of the knee joint behavior during MVIC in effective evaluation and rehabilitation interventions. Besides, it emphasizes the importance of positioning the joint center in model studies.

Teachers handling multiple subject areas: Difficulties and adaptive attributes in the delivery of instructions

The adoption of K–12 program wanted to produce better proficient pupils with the skills needed for both job and lifetime study. Though the Department of Education (DepEd) emphasized the need for many teachers, issues like the number of students enrolled in the program and the subjects that require specialized instruction tend to increase. Instructors end up teaching subjects other than their area of expertise, which is a problem that schools all around the country are still facing today. This qualitative-phenomenology study carried out a small-scale interview that investigated the challenges faced by teachers who had to teach multiple subject areas. Teachers (n=8) were purposively sampled according to their subject areas. Thematic analysis indicated that teachers were troubled of teaching multiple subject areas because of the preparation process they need to consider, the difference in teaching materials and even their teaching methods matter. Some noted that the process was not effective because the subject mastery was insufficient. These have major implications in education in the Philippines especially it was a common practice to give teaching loads to teachers having competence beyond their area of expertise. This highlighted the need to reevaluate teaching assignments and strategies for professional development to ensure that educators have the necessary competence to effectively teach in different subject areas.