Topic: Heads or Tails - page 2. (Read 5887 times)

Since you can't change what you don't measure, the seedstock industry is seeking new ways to measure valuable traits fot commercial cattlemen.
Genetic predictions in the form of EPDs (expected progeny difference) have been fully implemented for 30 years. Centered on growth traits, these predictions have led to tremendous genetic improvements not imagined when the only selection tool was visual appraisal. The industry went on to tackle carcass traits with EPDs, and for the last 20 years, seedstock producers have enjoyed similar genetic progress.

However, many areas of harder-to-measure traits such as reproduction have lagged far behind despite their economic importance, and objectively describing traits like disease resistance and soundness have also been sorely lacking. Genomics have also become extremely important tools to the industry, but have strained our EPD models based on 30-year-old technology, which has not allowed genomics to fully reach the potential that they can play in objective selection. This article will cover the advances in objectively describing fertility and novel traits as well as the new EPD models, which will finally fully leverage the information genomics have to offer. Fertility traits Reproductive traits have been shown to be the most economically-important traits to commercial producers, and the seedstock industry is just beginning to objectively describe reproduction. This is because in order to describe female reproduction, breed associations need to have an inventory-based breed registry which annually accounts for the production of every female in every calving season. This has long been talked about, but implemented slowly by many associations.

Red Angus has been the notable exception going to mandatory total herd reporting in 1995, which featured a spring and fall calving inventory. This allowed the Red Angus Association to release the industry’s first reproductive sire summary in 2002, which among other genetic predictions, featured EPDs for heifer pregnancy and Stayability. Even with this history, Dr. Mark Enns of Colorado State University says, “We have just scratched the surface on reproduction and fitness traits.”


The first female reproductive EPD was Stayability, which is defined as a female already in the cow herd producing a calf at six years or older. The first model was very simplistic with only two meaningful data points; having a calf before six years of age, and then again at six or older. This meant with the Stayability EPD, sires were quite old before high accuracy was achieved, past the sire’s normal productive lifespan. This model has been incrementally advanced in recent years, which has allowed accuracy to build earlier in an animal’s life. However, new models for producing Stayability or longevity EPDs have been sorely needed.

The research community has answered this need by introducing a new statistical model using a procedure called random regression, which will greatly advance the well-understood Stayability EPD or allow the calculation of longevity EPDs. This statistical model tests the reproduction of a cow each year during her productive lifetime and allows for unknown values when inventory-based reporting is not fully implemented. A number of breeds are on the cusp of implementing this new procedure, which will greatly advance the industry’s genetic description of sustained fertility.

International Genetic Solutions (IGS), which calculates multibreed EPDs for 12 breed associations, plans on implementing a multibreed Stayability EPD on the same base and scale in the coming year. Included in IGS’ effort are Simmental, Red Angus, Shorthorn, Gelbvieh, Limousin, Chinana and Maine-Anjou, as well as their Canadian counterparts. Hereford and Angus are looking at calculating longevity EPDs, and Brangus and Beefmaster are considering a Stayability EPD in the future.

Where Angus and Hereford plan on a longevity EPD, and the breeds associated with IGS will continue with the well-understood Stayability EPD, both methods will be based on an economicallyimportant trait that accounts for any reason a cow leaves the herd and/or fails to report a calf. The primary reason will always be reproduction, but can also include production or soundness issues, so they are currently investigating feet and leg scoring and other fitness traits, which they hope to add as correlated traits.

Another relevant fertility trait being pursued is heifer pregnancy. This is described as a heifer that is exposed to become pregnant successfully entering the herd. With the implementation of inventorybased systems, heifer pregnancy EPDs have been implemented by Angus and Gelbvieh following Red Angus’ lead, and it is on the drawing board for other breeds like Hereford. IGS is also working on a multibreed heifer pregnancy EPD and expects to release it in the near future.

As breeds like Angus gather more phenotypes, genomics will play an increasing role in adding information to the accuracy of the trait. For instance, due to the larger phenotypic database in Angus’ latest genomic recalibration, the correlation between genomic information and phenotypic data jumped from .45 to .62, which means genomics will add significantly more accuracy to their heifer pregnancy EPD.

Novel traits

A number of breeds are currently looking at a host of novel traits including soundness and disease resistance. Perhaps none is more economically important than the disease resistance work being conducted by a group of universities.

According to Enns at Colorado State University, bovine respiratory disease (BRD) causes over $1 billion in losses to our industry annually. Luckily, BRD susceptibility is a heritable trait (.18 to .21), so genetic progress can be made on lowering BRD incidence. The genomic companies are also working with the universities to identify gene markers to add to their seedstock panels, which will increase the accuracy of a BRD EPD. The methodology for producing BRD EPDs is also straightforward, so the key to producing an EPD is the collection of phenotypes. A whitepaper has been presented to Beef Improvement Federation (BIF), and proposed guidelines for collecting data will be approved this year. Once the breed associations have the guidelines for collecting data, an EPD and genomic enhancement can be achieved in the next couple of years. To get a jump on the collection of field data many of the breed associations are collecting BRD data in their structured progeny tests on many of their high-use sires.



Feet and leg scoring has been receiving increased interest by many breed associations. For example, Gelbvieh, Simmental, and Red Angus have an active multi-year research project going on with Kansas State University to determine the heritability of the trait and candidate gene markers. Angus is leading the industry in collecting field data and hopes to come out with a genetic prediction as soon as this fall. All of their goals are to add it to their Stayability/longevity models to help add accuracy to the genetic predictions. Other associations are looking at a longer horizon before they produce feet and leg predictions.

Using genetic predictions, teat and udder quality has long been objectively selected for in the dairy industry, so the methodology is well understood. In beef breeds, Hereford has led the industry in the production of these EPDs, and they have found the traits to

be moderately heritable and teat and udder scores to be highly correlated. Red Angus is also among the many breeds currently working on the traits and is in the process of calculating genetic parameters at Colorado State University needed to produce a genetic prediction. Simmental and Gelbvieh are also active in this effort. Breeds hope to incorporate the genetic predictions as correlated traits to add accuracy to their Stayability model.

In the West, certain breeds run at altitude are susceptible to high altitude disease, more commonly known as brisket disease, which can be fatal and may also be associated with feedlot death in cattle nearing market readiness. Colorado State University has been actively engaged in working with Angus cattle on producing an EPD on the indicator trait pulmonary arterial pressure (PAP) because cattle with higher PAP scores are more likely to suffer from brisket disease. PAP is a heritable trait (.25 to .40), so genetic advancement can be made through a genetic prediction. The technology to produce a PAP EPD has been fully developed and as soon as the affected breeds collect field data, EPDs should become available in a timely manner.

Genomics and EPDs

The seedstock industry is in the process of making a quantum leap in methodology on how it incorporates genomics into genetic predictions. Currently the breeds with genomically-enhanced EPDs (GE- EPDs) include Angus, Beefmaster, Brangus, Charolais, Gelbvieh, Hereford, Limousin, Red Angus, Santa Gertrudis and Simmental. The primary method used to achieve GE- EPDs is a two-step method.

Other breeds and universities are working on environmental adaptability traits. Hair shedding is necessary for productive cattle especially in hot environments and for cattle grazing fescue. Angus Genetics Incorporated (AGI) is currently researching hair shedding and has already found it to be very heritable (.42). This means genetic improvement can be made on the trait and EPDs can easily be produced once field data is gathered. Other universities are looking to see if there is any value in regional EPD calculation, and Mississippi State University is investigating the effect of hair color on productivity in hot environments. This whole area of environmental adaptability has significant potential to improve the objective description of cattle.



First a molecular breeding value (MBV) is calculated and then the MBVs are used to enhance the EPDs calculated from the existing EPD models. This is because genomics have been treated as an add-on to how EPDs have traditionally been calculated. This has many drawbacks, but has been the most expedient way to achieve GE-EPDs.

Currently there are four major companies calculating EPDs: Agriculture Business Research Institute (ABRI) in Australia calculates EPDs for several U.S. breeds including Hereford, Salers, and South Devon; AGI, which does Angus, Charolais, and Senepol as well as Canadian Black Angus and Charolais; IGS, which does the genetic predictions for 12 American and Canadian breed associations; and Livestock Genetic Services, LLC (LGS), which calculates genetic predictions for Brangus, Beefmaster, Santa Gertrudis, Braunvieh, and Akauski.

IGS and ABRI achieve GE-EPDs by blending the MBVs into the EPDs post analysis. The major drawback of this method is that it does not allow the genomic information to flow up and down the pedigree to parents and progeny. AGI uses the MBV as a correlated trait much as birth weight is a correlated trait with weaning weight, which allows genomic information to flow up and down the pedigree. This is a step forward, but does not make full use of all the information genomics have to offer.

The answer to these drawbacks is to design completely new models with genomics as a main component. This has already been achieved in dairy, swine, and poultry, and has been implemented in beef by LGS with American (Bos Indicus influenced) breeds. This new “One Step” process is very computationally intensive. With One Step, all the markers from a genomic panel are added to an EPD equation, significantly increasing the size of the mathematical problem to be solved. For each animal you still have all the phenotypic and pedigree data, but add approximately 50,000 markers per animal that is genotyped, exponentially increasing the size of the mathematical problem to produce EPDs.

The One Step method described above was first pioneered in beef by John Genho’s company, LGS. According to Genho, the major advantage of One Step is that through genotypes the actual pedigree relationship becomes known. For instance, theoretically full siblings can be 0-100 percent related according to the way genes are randomly passed from a sire and dam to their progeny. With genomics, the amount of relationship is known, which according to Genho, makes single step GE-EPDs much more precise.

The concept of EPD precision can be demonstrated by a genetic prediction calculated from two contemporary groups of equal size, but one containing biased data and the other with unbiased data. Each will come up with an EPD for the trait in question with the same accuracy since the same amount of information went into the calculation. However, with Charolais.

Hardware hardships

One of the challenges of using these new ways of calculating EPDs is that the calculations are massive, but with new computer hardware this is now possible.

IGS, which calculates GE- EPDs for more breeds than any other company, and ABRI are taking a whole new approach to One Step genomically-enhanced EPDs using a model called BOLT (Biometry Open Language Tools) developed by THETA Solutions, LLC, founded by geneticists Drs. Bruce Golden and Dorian Garrick. Their method is much more computationally intensive, utilizing equations that were only thought to be practical with small data sets and nothing as large as a breed database. Interestingly enough, they solved this problem using processing units designed for computer games—called graphic processing units or GPUs—which have huge processing capabilities. When they stack multiple GPUs, it exponentially increases computing power, but the key is to have software that can use the multiple processors simultaneously to solve an equation. The power of this hardware is demonstrated by being able to calculate traditional EPD procedures in less than 24 minutes instead of the 24 hours IGS now takes. With this processing power these much more intensive computations associated with BOLT can be achieved.

Like the Georgia methodology, the BOLT software takes advantage of the actual genotypic relationship between animals, but also allows markers to be weighted or discarded depending on their effect on a trait, which further improves a genetic prediction’s precision as well as accuracy. In addition, the BOLT software computationally gives a more reliable estimate of accuracy and can even produce accuracies for indexes.

ABRI and IGS plan on implementing the BOLT software this fall. Although it does not have the track record in production like the Georgia model, BOLT is fully developed and tested, and due to the speed of calculation will easily allow for more frequent evaluations, daily if desired. Angus already does weekly analysis, so implementing One Step will not be a concern from a data management perspective. However, IGS plans on going to a more frequent analysis when it implements BOLT, as does Hereford, making database management the step they are working on now. This is especially challenging for IGS, which deals with 12 breed associations running a multibreed breed analysis producing EPDs on the same base and scale for all breeds in order to facilitate planned crossbreeding systems.

Merging and cross referencing these divergent breeds’—and their hybrids’—databases from 12 different breed associations is a tremendous logistical problem. IGS is currently testing a web portal system and universal animal identification system. The EPD analysis will be done weekly, and various breeds can update their EPDs as frequently as they desire. Red Angus and Simmental have committed to weekly runs starting sometime this year while others might choose to have their EPDs calculated less frequently. Hereford at ABRI will also be using BOLT and in the next year expects to move from a monthly to a weekly analysis.

Summary

The future of objective selection is exciting and foretells heights previously unimagined. Traits of significant economic importance related to soundness and fertility are on the cusp of being fully objectively described with EPDs. A genetic prediction for something like bovine respiratory disease will have a huge economic impact on the industry and is just one of a number of novel traits on the threshold of having EPDs. New models will allow the industry to fully leverage all the information genomics have to offer. This will lead to a more profitable and sustainable industry.

My garden hedge is full of empty nests. The blackbirds have fledged, twice, and so have the dunnocks. Successfully fending off sparrowhawks and cats, their exhausted parents are now enjoying a well-earned holiday. In the fields beyond our home, though, parents still slave away, feeding baby bullfinches, linnets and yellowhammers tucked in the hedges that grace our countryside.

As well as the usual predators, every August these declining species have had to fend off another ravenous monster: the hedge-trimmer. This summer and last, however, the cutting machines are silent because the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has taken an excellent, science-led policy decision: to protect these birds by extending the farmland hedge-cutting ban by a month, to 31 August.

This ban is not responsible for the overgrown lanes vexing rural holidaymakers, because roadside hedges can still be cut for safety reasons (blame austerity for wild roadsides), but it is vexing many farmers. August is a convenient time for hedge-cutting because the ground is dry and the work doesn’t obstruct more important tasks, such as sowing crops.

The science, however, is unequivocal: more than 40,000 nesting records collected by volunteers for the British Trust for Ornithology prove that finches and buntings nest through August. Ground-nesting skylarks and corn buntings are also destroyed by hedge-cutters driving along field margins.

As farmers press to repeal the ban, the wildlife campaigner Mark Avery says its survival will be a test of both the new Defra secretary, Andrea Leadsom, and whether we are in danger of slipping into a post-science era of countryside management.

I hope this wild-hedged August will show farmers that they can save money by cutting back on contractors and help birds, insects and mammals. We need to escape the tyranny of the tidy hedge.

Lynx effect

I expected the story of the lynx fleeing Dartmoor zoo to run and run, but it’s ended with Flaviu being trapped on Dartmoor and “grumpily” returned to captivity.


It’s not a romantic climax, but not tragic either. Benjamin Mee, the zoo’s owner, is right when he says the lynx would’ve been shot had it remained in the wild. For anti-rewilders, Flaviu’s killing of four lambs during her short freedom is a valuable propaganda victory. However, it’s not so simple because captive-bred Flaviu has not learned to kill wild food, and so does not represent wild lynx behaviour.

If lynx are brought back, they will mostly trouble Britain’s burgeoning deer population. Nevertheless, the grudging acquiescence of local farmers must be won – via compensation, perhaps – if the recently proposed Kielder Forest reintroduction is to be a success.

Avalanches in slow motion

I can still picture the horror on Robbie Chater’s face when I asked him whether the Avalanches were working on a follow-up to their amazing debut album, Since I Left You. His reply went something like: we’ve just spent four years making this, please don’t make me think about the next one. I don’t have it verbatim because it’s on a lost cassette tape dating from 2001. During that Guardian interview on Melbourne’s sunny Fitzroy Street neither of us imagined their second record would take another 15 years. The backstory to the Avalanches’ new album, Wildflower, is spectacular – and so is its warm, beautiful and complex music. Whether it’s accidental, perfectionism or an act of defiance, their slowness sets a superb example.

There's an Earth-like planet in our galactic neighborhood — and it may have conditions for life

Pale blue dot, meet pale red dot.

Astronomers have spent decades scouring the skies looking for Earth-sized planets around distant stars. And now they’ve found one, sitting smack in the habitable zone of our nearest stellar neighbor.

Proxima b, described Wednesday in the journal Nature, could be one of the first planets where humans might find life outside our solar system.

“It’s the closest star. It has a potentially habitable world. I just think it’s amazing,” said Cornell astrophysicist Lisa Kaltenegger, who was not involved in the discovery. “This is just such a great, exciting time to live in because we’ll figure out how we fit into all of this — and hopefully, also, if we’re alone in the universe.”

The discovery comes four months after the announcement of Breakthrough Starshot, an initiative to build and send tiny spacecraft to the nearest star system within the coming decades. Now the project has a tantalizing planetary target.

“The technology today is sufficient to begin thinking about these things,” said Pete Worden, Breakthrough Starshot’s executive director and the former head of NASA’s Ames Research Center. “We are really excited, and, to use the U.S. term, pumped, about this discovery. We’re on our way.”

Proxima b orbits Proxima Centauri, the third wheel to the binary star pair known as Alpha Centauri AB. As its name suggests, Proxima Centauri is the closest star to our solar system, sitting a relatively close 4.2 light-years away. But as an M-dwarf — a dim, red, low-mass star — it can’t be seen from Earth with the naked eye. It has just 12% of the sun’s mass and 0.15% of its luminosity.

The newly discovered planet is estimated to hold at least 1.3 Earth masses, which means it’s probably a rocky world like our own. And though it lies a mere 4.3 million miles or so from the surface of its star — about nine times closer than Mercury is to the sun — Proxima Centauri is so dim that water, theoretically, could remain stable on the planet’s surface, assuming there’s a protective atmosphere.

Scientists discovered Proxima b thanks to what’s known as the radial velocity method, which takes advantage of the Doppler effect. As a planet moves around its star, it tugs just a little bit, causing the star to wobble back and forth. When the wobble brings the star closer to us, the light reaching us is squeezed, making it bluer. When the star is pulled slightly away from us, the light is stretched, making it redder. That color shift allows astronomers to determine the mass of the planet tugging on it.

In some ways, this is simpler to do with M dwarfs; because of their size, they’re more easily pulled this way and that by their planets. And since Proxima b completes an entire orbit in just 11.2 Earth days, the tugging should be easy to pick out. Plus, as the star closest to us, Proxima Centauri is one of the best-studied red dwarfs to date.

And yet it took years to find the planet. That’s partly because M dwarfs are very noisy, variable stars whose activity can drown out the Doppler signal. Observations made years earlier revealed hints of the planet but could not decisively prove its existence.

“The data collected for this research [span] 16 years,” said study coauthor Pedro Amado, an astrophysicist at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia in Granada, Spain. “The first datasets did not show anything, but as our analysis technique improved and we added data from more precise instruments, a periodic signal started to show up.”

This year, a team of astronomers known as the Pale Red Dot campaign studied Proxima Centauri with the European Southern Observatory’s HARPS instrument, a spectrograph installed on the 3.8-meter telescope at La Silla in Chile. Using other telescopes, they monitored the star’s brightness to make sure that its own variability wasn’t producing the tantalizing exoplanetary signal.

They found that, at times, Proxima Centauri was moving toward or away from Earth at roughly 3 mph — a typical human walking pace. An unseen planet, they realized, must be tugging on this star.

“All the pieces together is what allows us to be very, very sure that we have it right this time,” said study leader Guillem Anglada-Escuse, a planet hunter at the Queen Mary University of London.

As it happens, there was another signal mixed into the data — one that might hint at the existence of a larger, more distant planet circling Proxima Centauri.

Could life exist on Proxima b? There are several unknowns that make it impossible to say right now, according to scientists. The planet is tidally locked to Proxima Centauri, so one side may permanently face the star while the other remains shrouded in darkness. But if there is an atmosphere, it should redistribute heat across the surface, the researchers said.

As an M dwarf, Proxima Centauri is prone to frequent flares and bursts of X-rays that would send down 400 times the X-ray flux that Earth receives from the sun, according to the study. Those X-rays could eat away at the atmosphere, even if one exists.

And it’s also not clear whether water could have survived on the planet over the eons. The answer depends on how violent the star was in the past and where the planet originated — both of which remain a mystery.

“This is the biggest question mark for the question of whether it’s an Earth-like planet or not,” said study coauthor Ansgar Reiners of the University of Goettingen in Germany. “This will be subject to further studies.”

Fortunately, Proxima Centauri and its planetary companion are so close that it should be relatively easy to start probing these questions. Some teams already have started.

If there were life on this planet, it probably survived either underground or deep within its hypothetical oceans, said Kaltenegger, the director of Cornell’s Carl Sagan Institute, which is dedicated to the search for habitable worlds. But there’s a chance that organisms evolved to handle the extreme radiation that may reach the surface, she added, perhaps by using biofluorescence.

The discovery signals a shift in the hunt for exoplanets, from broad surveys such as NASA’s Kepler and K2 missions toward in-depth profiles of individual planets, said MIT astrophysicist Sara Seager, who was not involved in the work.

“Exoplanets,” she said, are “the gift that keeps on giving.”
How scientists use satellite data to track poverty in Africa
Caption How scientists use satellite data to track poverty in Africa
Watch a time-lapse video of the Perseid meteor shower from Joshua Tree
Caption Watch a time-lapse video of the Perseid meteor shower from Joshua Tree

There’s only a 1.5% chance that Proxima b’s transiting across its star’s surface is visible from Earth, which means researchers will probably not be able to study its atmosphere for a while. But as ever more-powerful telescopes come online, it may be possible to take images of this nearby star system.

Plans to visit Proxima b remain an exceedingly distant prospect. With current technology, it would probably take tens of thousands of years to get there — and more than four years just to send a message back.

In April, physicist Stephen Hawking and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner announced the $100-million Breakthrough Starshot program that aims to build nanosatellites capable of accelerating to 20% of the speed of light. At that rate, it would take roughly 20 years to reach our nearest neighbors — and it could take much longer for that technology to be designed and built.

In the meantime, scientists will probably have their hands full studying Proxima b from Earth.

“Our picture of the galactic neighborhood has changed,” Reiners said. “We have a new neighbor, and there will likely be a whole branch of science aiming to understand its nature.”

In this article we talk about soil pH, what is and how to modify its value.

 

In fact, one of the most important parameters to calculate before growing a specific plant in a specific soil is the PH value, i.e. the measurement of the acidity or alkalinity of the soil, which is defined as the negative logarithm ( base 10 ) of the activity of hydronium ions ( H+ or, more precisely, H3O+aq ) in a solution. In fact, depending on their peculiarities, different plants need different pHs.

 

Soil pH strongly influences microbiological activity, mineral elements availability and, ultimately, the adaptability of the different plant species. The most of bacteria – from which nitrogen fixation, nitrification, some organic matter decomposition process depend – prefer a sub-acid or slightly alkaline environment ( pH 6.8÷7.2 ); the deviation from such conditions negatively affect both nutritive elements availability and humidification process. Mushrooms prefer an acid environment and with such conditions they ensure the demolition of organic compounds. Actinomycetes develop mainly in slightly alkaline dry, loose ( and thus rich in oxygen ) soils ( pH 7÷7.5 ), because – with such conditions – they are able to compensate for the lack of activity of mushrooms and other bacteria, in drought periods.

 

Soil pH influences the solubility of various mineral elements causing their accumulation in forms more or less available for plants, as well as their leaching to deeper layers. Thus, knowing pH value gives useful indications about mineral elements availability in the soil, deriving both from origin minerals decomposition and any spread fertilizers. The most known and important case for soil fertility is the one of phosphorus; in the soil it can be found in the form of poorly soluble phosphates. Their solubility depends on pH: if the reaction is acid it means there are iron and aluminum phosphates, the availability of which increases as pH increases; instead if the reaction is alkaline there are calcium phosphates, the availability of which decreases as pH increases. The result is a higher solubility of phosphates ( and thus of phosphorus ) for pH values near neutrality.

 

The most of horticultural crops can easily grow with a sub-acid pH ( between 6 and 6.7 ) or with a neutral one. Yet there exist garden plants and some vegetables too with different needs; for this reason it could be better to “modify” soil pH in order to adapt it to the kind of crop, especially if we talk about pot crops.
Soils which have a pH between 6.8 and 7.2 is considered neutral and is the best soil for the most of horticultural crops. In fact many microelements can be absorbed optimally in this type of soil, while this does not happen in strongly acid or strongly alkaline ones, except for few microelements.

 

Soils which have an acid pH – between 5.4 and 5.9 – are generally not very fertile; such conditions usually also inhibit bacterial and fungal activity, which are fundamental to decompose organic substances. Moreover, elements like calcium or magnesium are insoluble and thus unusable by plants. Other elements scarcely present in an acid soil are boron and phosphorus. Instead, elements highly available and soluble are aluminum, iron and manganese which, if present in too large quantity, could lead to nutritional imbalances and plants problems.
Instead, a soil with an alkaline pH – between 8.2 and 8.8 – is usually rich in limestone; generally such soils are clayey. In alkaline soils insoluble elements ( the ones not available for plants ) are iron, sulfur and potassium. Limestone, similarly to what happens in acid soils, slows microbial and microorganisms activity, which help to decompose organic matter.

 

In the case of an excessive soil acidity, we can try to remedy correcting it administering some substances with an alkaline pH, like – for example – limestone rocks, calcium carbonate and marl.
The correction with addition of quicklime could be of particular interest. To do it, we need to spread in our vegetable garden small heaps of this substance and then let them fade a little bit. Afterwards we need to uniformly spread this substance on the soil and then bury it.
Besides positively modify pH in too acid soils, lime also brings other benefits.
In fact, it stimulates organic matter mobilization helping to speed up mineralization process with a resulting increase of productions. Yet, on the other hand, it quickens the depletion of soil’s organic reserves.

 

Instead if we need to reduce the pH in a too alkaline soil, we can try to remedy administering both organic substances and gypsum. Among the organic substances, manure can be successfully used to this purpose, thanks to its slightly acid pH, as well as other benefits that usually brings to soils. Correcting alkaline soils through gypsum, namely calcium sulphate, is often suggested because this substance – if added in a solution – brings sulfuric acid ions . We need to keep in mind that – due to its calcium content – gypsum shows effects similar to lime on soils, namely it quickens organic matter mineralization, increasing productions, but also quickening the depletion of organic reserves.

 

For Cactaceae family it is usually suggested a soil with a pH near 6.5; to reduce pH in a quick and DIY way we can prepare a solution with water and cooking vinegar, using a teaspoon vinegar for 1 liter of water. In alternative we can use: lemon or orange juice, beer, wine, conifers parts ( needles or twigs ) or tomatoes. All of these things have an acid pH, so they can be successfully used for this purpose, as well as coffee grounds, which can be left to dry and then directly mixed to the compound.

We've all experienced love. We've loved (and been loved by) parents, brothers, sisters, friends, even pets. But romantic love is different. It's an intense, new feeling unlike any of these other ways of loving.

Why Do We Fall in Love?

Loving and being loved adds richness to our lives. When people feel close to others they are happier and even healthier. Love helps us feel important, understood, and secure.

But each kind of love has its own distinctive feel. The kind of love we feel for a parent is different from our love for a baby brother or best friend. And the kind of love we feel in romantic relationships is its own unique type of love.

Our ability to feel romantic love develops during adolescence. Teens all over the world notice passionate feelings of attraction. Even in cultures where people are not allowed to act on or express these feelings, they're still there. It's a natural part of growing up to develop romantic feelings and sexual attractions to others. These new feelings can be exciting — or even confusing at first.

2121-2211

Something random and unexpected, lol.

Sunday


I'm not sure why I'm writing this down on paper and not on my computer. I guess I've just noticed some odd things. It's not that I don't trust the computer... I just... need to organize my thoughts. I need to get down all the details somewhere objective, somewhere I know that what I write can't be deleted or... changed... not that that's happened. It's just... everything blurs together here, and the fog of memory lends a strange cast to things...

I'm starting to feel cramped in this small apartment. Maybe that's the problem. I just had to go and choose the cheapest apartment, the only one in the basement. The lack of windows down here makes day and night seem to slip by seamlessly. I haven't been out in a few days, because I've been working on this programming project so intensively. I suppose I just wanted to get it done. Hours of sitting and staring at a monitor can make anyone feel strange, I know, but I don't think that's it.

I'm not sure when I first started to feel like something was odd. I can't even define what it is. Maybe I just haven't talked to anyone in awhile. That's the first thing that crept up on me. Everyone I normally talk to online while I program has been idle, or they've simply not logged on at all. My instant messages go unanswered. The last e-mail I got from anybody was a friend, saying he'd talk to me when he got back from the store, and that was yesterday. I'd call with my cell phone, but reception's terrible down here. Yeah, that's it. I just need to call someone. I'm going to go outside.

Read the full story here = http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/Psychosis

Like humans, fruit flies sleep at night, caffeine affects their sleep, and if they get a lousy night's sleep it can affect their memory performance. But what can they tell us about the connection between sleep deprivation and metabolic disorders like diabetes and obesity? A lot, according to a new study that is the first to identify that a conserved gene -- translin -- works as a modulator of sleep in response to metabolic changes.


Spearheaded by researchers at Florida Atlantic University, findings from this study are published in the April 4 issue of Current Biology, which establishes that translin is an essential integrator of sleep and metabolic state, with important implications for understanding the neural mechanism underlying sleep deprivation in response to environmental challenges.

Acute sleep loss in humans is associated with increased appetite and insulin insensitivity, while chronically sleep-deprived individuals are more likely to develop obesity, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Conversely, metabolic state has a potent impact on modulating sleep and our body clocks.

"In humans, sleep and feeding are tightly interconnected, and pathological disturbances of either process are associated with metabolism-related disorders," said Alex C. Keene, Ph.D., corresponding author and associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences on FAU's John D. MacArthur Campus in Jupiter. "Despite the widespread evidence for interactions between sleep loss and metabolic dysfunction, little is known about the molecular basis of this interaction and how these processes integrate within the brain."

When fruit flies are hungry, they sleep less because they will sacrifice sleep for their quest to search for food. Keene and his collaborators used fruit flies in their study and created various scenarios between sleeping and foraging to test each gene one at a time to determine which gene didn't affect their sleep. They carried out a nervous system-specific RNAi screen to identify the genes required to keep hungry flies awake. What they discovered is that translin, when knocked down in neurons, causes starving flies to sleep as soundly as they would on a full stomach. They also observed the same inability to suppress sleep while in starvation mode in the flies that carried a null mutation in translin.

Fruit flies were placed on specific diets as the researchers measured their sleep, and glycogen, triglycerides and free glucose levels. They broke down the starvation response in the fruit flies into separate mechanisms for hunger and sleep-suppression.

"While many genes have been identified as genetic regulators of sleep or metabolic state, mounting evidence from our study indicates that translin functions as a unique integrator of these processes," said Kazuma Murakami, co-first author and a Ph.D. student in the FAU/Max Planck Florida Institute Integrative Biology and Neuroscience (IBAN) program. "We also have been able to show that this gene is not required for general modulation of sleep. Furthermore, we now know that the energy stores in mutant flies are normal and that the starvation-induced sleep suppression phenotype is not due to increased nutrient storage."

Results of this study provide important evidence that translin is not required for the perception of starvation or to stimulate hunger-related behaviors, but is required to stimulate wakefulness in the absence of food.

"The identification of genes regulating sleep-feeding interactions will provide important insight into how the brain integrates and controls the expression of complex behaviors," said Keene.

Dear Umbra,

The microbeads issue has me wondering if silicone-based personal lubricants may pollute water. Any idea?

Patrick
New York, New York

A. Dearest Patrick,

I’ve been asked many a question about personal lube, but up ‘til now, the curiosity has always been about health effects: Is the slick stuff safe for me and my partner? And while this is an important and worthy question, I applaud you for taking it one step further and considering the effects your bedroom activities may have on the ecosystem as a whole. That’s the kind of consideration and caring that I’ll bet make you a popular date indeed.

Airlander 10: World's largest aircraft crashes as it attempts to take to the sky

The bottom-shaped ship had been attempting its second flight when it ran into problems

Airlander 10, the world's largest aircraft, has crashed during its second test flight.

The huge ship – nicknamed "The Flying Bum" because of its pert, round back – crashed as it landed at its base at Cardington Airfield this morning, at the end of its second attempt to fly. Its official name is the Martha Gwyn – however, it gained notoriety not just because of its huge size but the interesting shape of its back.

"We're debriefing following the second test flight this morning," a spokesperson for the ship's makers, HAV, said. "All crew are safe and well and there are no injuries."

    This morning's #Airlander incident. pic.twitter.com/GwFqbQ1QIN
    — Airships.net (@Airships) August 24, 2016

It isn't clear if the ship itself took any damage during the crash.

The ship appears to have run into problems as it was making its way back onto the ground, when it flew into a telegraph pole and began running into problems.

"A line that was hanging down from the plane hit the telegraph pole about two fields away," one eyewitness said. "Then, as it came in to land, it seemed to nose dive and landed on the cockpit, smashing it up."

The 302-foot long ship made its maiden voyage last week.

The ship is on sale for £25 million. The makers hope that it can be sold for a variety of uses – including surveillance, communications and deliveries.
Gadgets and tech news in pictures

Airlander 10 can carry a ten tonne payload and is supposed to be abel to stay in the air for up to five days. The company hopes to be building ten of them per year by 2021.

'Bagpipe lung' announced as cause of man's death - two years later

By the time the man arrived at the lung disease clinic in Manchester, England, it was almost too late.
It was April 2014 and the 61-year-old had spent the past seven years finding it harder and harder to breathe.
Once able to run 10 kilometers, he could now barely walk 20 meters.
His lungs were operating at a third their proper capacity.
Doctors were stumped.
Five years earlier, the man had been diagnosed with a serious inflammation of the lungs, known as hypersensitivity pneumonitis, or HP.
HP has a variety of other names, each one of which offered a possible solution to the medical mystery: farmer’s lung, hot tub lung, humidifier lung and, perhaps oddest of all, pigeon fancier’s lung.
When doctors tried to pin down the cause of the man’s malady, however, it eluded them.
He didn’t smoke. His home wasn’t hiding any mold. He didn’t have connective tissue disease, which can cause breathing problems.
And he did not fancy pigeons.
The only clue physicians at the University Hospital of South Manchester could see was that the man’s symptoms had rapidly improved when he moved to Australia for three months, only for his breathing to deteriorate once again as soon as he returned to the United Kingdom.
In September 2014, five months after first arriving at the clinic, the man returned — in worse shape than ever.
He was breathing rapidly but suffering from hypoxia, or a lack of oxygen in his blood. When doctors listened to his lungs, they heard crackling like an old vinyl record.
An X-ray suggested pneumonia, a blood clot in the lungs or an exacerbation of the still mysterious HP. A CT scan ruled out a clot but showed that the lung scarring that had started seven years earlier had gotten worse.
Doctors gave him a cocktail of drugs to treat what they thought was bacterial pneumonia. When those didn’t work, they added Posaconazole therapy, used to treat pneumonia caused by fungi.
Despite their efforts, the man died on Oct. 10, 2014.
An autopsy didn’t explain much. It merely showed that his lungs were badly scarred, which was attributed to the years of inexplicable HP. The medical examiner chalked the cause of death up to “acute exacerbation of ILD,” or interstitial lung disease, a broad category.
Now, however, nearly two years after the man’s death, doctors say they have solved the medical mystery.
In a report published Monday in the medical journal Thorax, a team of five UHSM researchers coined a new term for the man’s condition.
“Bagpipe lung.”
According to the paper, when doctors initially tried diagnosing the man’s illness, they overlooked his daily hobby: playing the bagpipes.
Tests conducted on the man’s bagpipes found a slew of fungi and yeast living inside the musical instrument.
Inside the air bag was a mixture of Paecilomyces variotti, Fusarium oxysporum, Rhodotorula mucilaginosa, and Penicillium species. In a petri dish, they formed a psychedelic swirl of green, orange and red mold.
There was pink yeast on the instrument’s mouthpiece as well as fungi on the neck, chanter, chanter reed, chanter reed protector, bass drome and tenor drome, researchers found. Even the bagpipe carrying case had mold inside.
The moist, airtight bagpipes made an ideal home for the spores.
Unknown to the piper, who was not named in the study, every time he played his instrument, he was inhaling a mixture of mold that caused his illness.
His brief recovery in Australia had coincided with him leaving his bagpipes home in the U.K.
“It sounds like a Monty Python skit or an Agatha Christie story gone wrong,” William Schaffner, a professor at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, told USA Today.
This mystery, however, had been all too real.
“If that had been identified earlier, and he had stopped playing the bagpipes or cleaned them regularly, he may well have just gotten better,” Jenny King, the study’s lead author, told the newspaper.
The study noted similar illnesses befalling saxophone and trombone players, although they were fortunate enough for their instruments to be identified as the cause before it was too late.
According to the Guardian, however, it wasn’t the first time that bagpipes have been identified as a health hazard.
In 2013, professional piper John Shone fell seriously ill with similar symptoms of breathlessness and weakness. Doctors discovered the fungus lurking inside his instrument just in time.
“It was very much life-threatening,” Shone told the Guardian. “I was near death.”
Part of the problem may stem from the use of modern materials in bagpipes, as old-fashioned leather pipes were often used along with a “seasoning” bag that had antiseptic properties, Shone said. Although airtight, leather bagpipes are also porous enough to let moisture escape, normally preventing mold growth, added Ian Clabburn, chairman of the Bagpipe Society, in an interview with the Telegraph.
The “bagpipe lung” case hold lessons for both doctors and musicians, according to the study.
“This case highlights the importance of a careful clinical history including hobbies,” researchers wrote. “Thorough clinical history exploring occupation, environmental triggers and pastimes is very important in cases of HP.”
Wind instrument players, meanwhile, need to regularly clean their instruments.

Copyright: Washington Post

On a regular basis, a lot of people contact me about suspecting their partner of cheating and ask me how to hack email password of their account, so as to find out the truth.

If you are in a similar situation or simply want to hack into someone’s email account, this article can surely help you out. Here in this article I will try to uncover some of the real and working methods to hack the password of any email account!
Possible Ways to Hack an Email Account:

While there exists many nasty websites on the Internet that mislead people with fake methods and false promises to obtain passwords, some often present readers with obsolete methods that can no longer be used. However, on this website you will find all the information clear, simple and easy to implement. With my experience of over 10 years in the field of ethical hacking and information security, I can tell you that the following are the only 2 foolproof methods to hack emails:
1. Keylogging: The Easiest Way!

Keylogging simply refers to the process of recording each and every keystroke that a user types on a specific computer’s keyboard. This can be done using a small software program called keylogger (also referred to as spy program).

    How does a Keylogger Work?

    A Keylogger is small software program that can easily be installed by any novice computer user. Once installed, it records all the keystrokes typed on the computer including passwords. It does not require any special knowledge or skill to use keyloggers.
    Can a Keylogger be Detected?

    No! Once installed, it operates in a complete stealth mode and hence remains undetected to the computer user.
    What if I do not have Physical Access to the Target Computer?

    Not to Worry! Some of the best keyloggers on the market support “remote installation” that makes it possible to install it even if the target computer is hundreds of miles away.
    How can a Keylogger Help Me in Hacking Email Password?

    Once installed, the keylogger simply records all the keystrokes typed (including passwords) and uploads the logs to a secret server. You can access these logs anytime by logging into your online account that comes with the keylogger program.

n previous Wi-Fi hacking tutorials, I have shown you ways to create an Evil Twin, to DoS a wireless AP, and to crack WEP and WPA2 passwords, but in this tutorial, I will show you something a little bit different.

In many restaurants, hotels, airports, airplanes, and cafes, they have open authentication on the wireless AP, but once you connect to the AP, you are sent to a proxy that asks you for your credentials. This is very common in many commercial establishments around the world. To obtain the necessary credentials, there is usually charge associated with it.

What if you didn’t have a credit card, or forgot your credit card, and needed to access the internet? You still may be able to, if the server accepts ICMP (ping) and you are patient.

In addition, imagine a scenario where you need to stealthily retrieve a file, send a message, or retrieve a message, in say, a cyber espionage or cyber warfare situation, while barely leaving a trace of your activity. This may be your method of choice.

Note: This is a more advanced technique, so if you are new to hacking, work on some of the more basic techniques before trying this.
ICMP: The Internet Control Message Protocol

As you know, ICMP is a protocol that is used detect the presence of a active host. We can determine if a host is active (pay attention, newbies) by simply typing:

kali > ping

There are multiple types of ICMP messages, but this one is echo request (Type 0) and echo reply (Type . Although nearly all of us use ping one time or another, keep in mind that there are other types of ICMP that can come in handy when scanning or hacking systems that may block or drop ICMP Type 0.

If a server accepts ICMP (many won’t as a security precaution), you can use ICMP to bypass the need for authentication via the proxy (that webpage that asks you for credentials). Because it is very slow, I don’t recommend this for daily use, but in a pinch, this can be a very innovative way to get your email when you don’t want to buy access to the service, or—you want to access the web without leaving a trace.