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Satellite remote sensing enables monitoring of regenerative agriculture practices, such as crop rotation, cover cropping, and conservation tillage to allow tracking and quantification at unprecedented scales. The Monitor system presented here capitalizes on the scope and scale of these data by integrating crop identification, cover cropping, and tillage intensity estimations annually at field scales across the contiguous United States (CONUS) from 2014 to 2023. The results provide the first ever mapping of these practices at this temporal fidelity and spatial scale, unlocking valuable insights for sustainable agricultural management. Monitor incorporates three datasets: CropID, a deep learning transformer model using Sentinel-2 and USDA Cropland Data Layer (CDL) data from 2018 to 2023 to predict annual crop types; the living root data, which use Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data to determine cover crop presence through regional parameterization; and residue cover (RC) data, which uses the Normalized Difference Tillage Index (NDTI) and crop residue cover (CRC) index to assess tillage intensity. The system calculates field-scale statistics and integrates these components to compile a comprehensive field management history. Results are validated with 35,184 ground-truth data points from 19 U.S. states, showing an overall accuracy of 80% for crop identification, 78% for cover crop detection, and 63% for tillage intensity. Also, comparisons with USDA NASS Ag Census data indicate that cover crop adoption rates were within 20% of estimates for 90% of states in 2017 and 81% in 2022, while for conventional tillage, 52% and 25% of states were within 20% of estimates, increasing to 75% and 67% for conservation tillage. Monitor provides a comprehensive view of regenerative practices by crop season for all of CONUS across a decade, supporting decision-making for sustainable agricultural management including associated outcomes such as reductions in emissions, long term yield resiliency, and supply chain stability.

Malawi has the potential to explore the utilization of biogas technology. The technology has existed in the country for decades. However, the uptake has been lower than expected. Further, there has been a high rate of dis-adoption of the installed systems. To deal with the problem, this study explored the opportunities and barriers to biogas technology to enhance biogas adoption and utilization in Malawi. Qualitative research methods using key informant interviews were employed to collect the data from biogas adopters, dis-adopters, potential adopters, and experts. A total of 22 households and 6 experts were interviewed. The findings of the study show that the country has opportunities for biogas adoption and utilization. The most mentioned opportunities were livestock farming practices, constraints to access to reliable energy sources, associated benefits of biogas technology, and land holding. However, the adoption of the technology has faced several challenges. Commonly cited barriers were the high installation and maintenance costs, inadequate feedstock, inappropriate dissemination approaches, lack of training after installation services and expertise, lack of reliable water sources, absence of ownership, lack of cooperation amongst institutions involved in biogas promotion, lack of a coordinating body for institutions involved in biogas dissemination, lack of standards, and socio-cultural factors. To overcome the challenges, strategies were identified, and these include the provision of incentives, loans and subsidies, provision of technical support services, having demonstration sites, employing suitable dissemination approaches, co-digestion or diversification of raw materials, awareness campaigns, and collaboration amongst sectors involved in biogas dissemination.

The integrated stress response is a signaling network comprising four branches, each sensing different cellular stressors, converging on the phosphorylation of eIF2α to downregulate global translation and initiate recovery. One of these branches includes GCN2, which senses cellular amino acid insufficiency and participates in maintaining amino acid homeostasis. Previous studies have shown that GCN2 is a viable cancer target when amino acid stress is induced by inhibiting an additional target. In this light, we screened numerous drugs for their potential to synergize with the GCN2 inhibitor TAP20. The drug sensitivity of six cancer cell lines to a panel of 25 compounds was assessed. Each compound was then combined with TAP20 at concentrations below their IC50, and the impact on cell growth was evaluated. The strongly synergistic combinations were further characterized using synergy analyses and matrix-dependent invasion assays. Inhibitors of proteostasis and the MEK–ERK pathway, as well as the pan-CDK inhibitors, flavopiridol, and seliciclib, were potently synergistic with TAP20 in two cell lines. Among their common CDK targets was CDK7, which was more selectively targeted by THZ-1 and synergized with TAP20. Moreover, these combinations were partially synergistic when assessed using matrix-dependent invasion assays. However, TAP20 alone was sufficient to restrict invasion at concentrations well below its growth-inhibitory IC50. We conclude that GCN2 inhibition can be further explored in vivo as a cancer target.

Amino acid antiporters mediate the 1:1 exchange of groups of amino acids. Whether substrate specificity can be different for the inward and outward facing conformation has not been investigated systematically, although examples of asymmetric transport have been reported. Here we used LC–MS to detect the movement of 12C- and 13C-labelled amino acid mixtures across the plasma membrane of Xenopus laevis oocytes expressing a variety of amino acid antiporters. Differences of substrate specificity between transporter paralogs were readily observed using this method. Our results suggest that antiporters are largely symmetric, equalizing the pools of their substrate amino acids. Exceptions are the antiporters y+LAT1 and y+LAT2 where neutral amino acids are co-transported with Na+ ions, favouring their import. For the antiporters ASCT1 and ASCT2 glycine acted as a selective influx substrate, while proline was a selective influx substrate of ASCT1. These data show that antiporters can display non-canonical modes of transport.

Mast cells (MCs) are well-known for their role in IgE-mediated cutaneous anaphylactic responses, but their regulatory functions in the skin are still under intense scrutiny. Using a Red MC and Basophil reporter (RMB) mouse allowing red fluorescent detection and diphtheria toxin mediated depletion of MCs, we investigated the interaction of MCs, Foxp3+ regulatory T lymphocytes (Tregs) and Langerhans cells (LCs) during passive cutaneous anaphylaxis (PCA) responses. Using intravital imaging we show that MCs are sessile at homeostasis and during PCA. Breeding RMB mice with Langerin-eGFP mice revealed that dermal MCs do not interact with epidermal-localized LCs, the latter showing constant sprouting of their dendrites at homeostasis and during PCA. When bred with Foxp3-eGFP mice, we found that, although a few Foxp3+ Tregs are present at homeostasis, many Tregs transiently infiltrated the skin during PCA. While their velocity during PCA was not altered, Tregs increased the duration of their contact time with MCs compared to PCA-control mice. Antibody-mediated depletion of Tregs had no effect on the intensity of PCA. Hence, the observed increase in Treg numbers and contact time with MCs, regardless of an effect on the intensity of PCA responses, suggests an anti-inflammatory role dedicated to prevent further MC activation.

The cerebellum, or “little brain”, is often overlooked in studies of brain metabolism in favour of the cortex. Despite this, anomalies in cerebellar amino acid homeostasis in a range of disorders have been reported. Amino acid homeostasis is central to metabolism, providing recycling of carbon backbones and ammonia between cell types. Here, we examined the role of cerebellar amino acid transporters in the cycling of glutamine and alanine in guinea pig cerebellar slices by inhibiting amino acid transporters and examining the resultant metabolism of [1-13C]d-glucose and [1,2-13C]acetate by NMR spectroscopy and LCMS. While the lack of specific inhibitors of each transporter makes interpretation difficult, by viewing results from experiments with multiple inhibitors we can draw inferences about the major cell types and transporters involved. In cerebellum, glutamine and alanine transfer is dominated by system A, blockade of which has maximum effect on metabolism, with contributions from System N. Inhibition of neural system A isoform SNAT1 by MeAIB resulted in greatly decreased metabolite pools and reduced net fluxes but showed little effect on fluxes from [1,2-13C]acetate unlike inhibition of SNAT3 and other glutamine transporters by histidine where net fluxes from [1,2-13C]acetate are reduced by ~50%. We interpret the data as further evidence of not one but several glutamate/glutamine exchange pools. The impact of amino acid transport inhibition demonstrates that the cerebellum has tightly coupled cells and that glutamate/glutamine, as well as alanine cycling, play a major role in that part of the brain.

Mid-infrared supercontinuum generation from 1.5 to 4.5 µm with sub-nanojoule femtosecond pump pulses is demonstrated by using a short segment of dispersion-engineered step-index tellurite fiber with very low OH content. Distinct group-velocity dispersion regimes in a simple design of step-index tellurite fiber are also reported, which allows to choose the nonlinear pulse propagation regime according to the required tailoring of the supercontinuum source. Numerical simulations based on the generalized nonlinear Schrödinger equation are used to determine optimized fiber parameters before experimental demonstrations. We also analyse the coherence properties of the resulting supercontinuum sources.

Studying texts by Lydia Maria Child, Sarah Grimke, and Margaret Fuller, this article seeks to recover the early phases of a dialogue that moved marriage away from an institution grounded in ideas of unification and toward a concept of marriage grounded in liberal ideas about equality. It seeks to situate the “marriage question” within both the rhetoric of American antebellum reform and of liberal religious thought. Rather than concluding that these early texts facilitated a movement toward a contractarian ideal of marriage this article concludes that Child, Grimke, and Fuller, sought to discredit unification as an organizing idea for marriage and replace it with a definition that placed a spiritual commitment to equality between the partners as the animating core of the idea of marriage.

In terahertz (THz) materials science, imaging by scanning prevails when low power THz sources are used. However, the application of array detectors operating with high power THz sources is increasingly reported. We compare the imaging properties of four different array detectors that are able to record THz radiation directly. Two micro-bolometer arrays are designed for infrared imaging in the 8–14 μm wavelength range, but are based on different absorber materials (i) vanadium oxide; (ii) amorphous silicon; (iii) a micro-bolometer array optimized for recording THz radiation based on silicon nitride; and (iv) a pyroelectric array detector for THz beam profile measurements. THz wavelengths of 96.5 μm, 118.8 μm, and 393.6 μm from a powerful far infrared laser were used to assess the technical performance in terms of signal to noise ratio, detector response and detectivity. The usefulness of the detectors for beam profiling and digital holography is assessed. Finally, the potential and limitation for real-time digital holography are discussed.