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Transgenic corn and cotton that produce Cry and Vip3Aa toxins derived from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) are widely planted in the United States to control lepidopteran pests. The sustainability of these Bt crops is threatened because the corn earworm/bollworm, Helicoverpa zea (Boddie), is evolving a resistance to these toxins. Using Bt sweet corn as a sentinel plant to monitor the evolution of resistance, collaborators established 146 trials in twenty-five states and five Canadian provinces during 2020–2022. The study evaluated overall changes in the phenotypic frequency of resistance (the ratio of larval densities in Bt ears relative to densities in non-Bt ears) in H. zea populations and the range of resistance allele frequencies for Cry1Ab and Vip3Aa. The results revealed a widespread resistance to Cry1Ab, Cry2Ab2, and Cry1A.105 Cry toxins, with higher numbers of larvae surviving in Bt ears than in non-Bt ears at many trial locations. Depending on assumptions about the inheritance of resistance, allele frequencies for Cry1Ab ranged from 0.465 (dominant resistance) to 0.995 (recessive resistance). Although Vip3Aa provided high control efficacy against H. zea, the results show a notable increase in ear damage and a number of surviving older larvae, particularly at southern locations. Assuming recessive resistance, the estimated resistance allele frequencies for Vip3Aa ranged from 0.115 in the Gulf states to 0.032 at more northern locations. These findings indicate that better resistance management practices are urgently needed to sustain efficacy the of corn and cotton that produce Vip3Aa.

Supplementary Figure 1 from Identification of SULF2 as a Novel Transcriptional Target of p53 by Use of Integrated Genomic Analyses

Microarray analysis has been useful for identifying the targets of many transcription factors. However, gene expression changes in response to transcription factor perturbation reveal both direct transcriptional targets and secondary gene regulation. By integrating RNA interference, gene expression profiling, and chromatin immunoprecipitation technologies, we identified a set of 32 direct transcriptional targets of the tumor suppressor p53. Of these 32 genes, 11 are not currently associated with the core p53 pathway. From among these novel pathway members, we focused on understanding the connection between p53 and SULF2, which encodes an extracellular heparan sulfate 6-O-endosulfatase that modulates the binding of growth factors to their cognate receptors and that has been shown to function as a tumor suppressor. Genetic and pharmacologic perturbation of p53 directly influences SULF2 expression, and similar to silencing of TP53, RNA interference–mediated suppression of SULF2 results in an impaired senescence response of cells to genotoxic stress. Thus, our integrated genomic approach has led to the identification of a novel mediator of p53 network biology. [Cancer Res 2009;69(4):1368–74]

Supplementary Table 1 from Identification of SULF2 as a Novel Transcriptional Target of p53 by Use of Integrated Genomic Analyses

Supplementary Figure and Table Legend from Identification of SULF2 as a Novel Transcriptional Target of p53 by Use of Integrated Genomic Analyses

Biotypes of Palmer amaranth that are resistant to acetolactate synthase (ALS) inhibitor are becoming widespread in western Nebraska. There are limited effective postemergence (POST) herbicides labeled for ALS-inhibitor-resistant Palmer amaranth control in dry edible bean. The objective of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of dimethenamid-Pin a sequential preemergence (PRE) fb followed by (fb) POST program at two POST application timings, the first and third trifoliate stages (V1 and V3, respectively), for controlling ALS-inhibitor-resistant Palmer amaranth in dry edible bean. A field study was conducted in 2019, 2020, and 2021 in Scottsbluff, NE. PRE-alone applications of pendimethalin + dimethenamid-Pprovided inconsistent Palmer amaranth control. Dimethenamid-Papplied POST following a PRE application of pendimethalin + dimethenamid-Pprovided effective (>90%) Palmer amaranth control at 4 wk after V3 only at the V1 application timing in 2019. In 2020 and 2021 dimethenamid-Papplied POST at V1 and V3 following a PRE application of pendimethalin + dimethenamid-Pprovided 99% and 98% Palmer amaranth control at 4 wk after V3, and 98% and 94% Palmer amaranth control at harvest, respectively. Palmer amaranth biomass was reduced by 95% to 99% and by 96% to 98% compared with the -nontreated control when dimethenamid-Pwas applied POST at V1 and V3, respectively, following a PRE application of pendimethalin + dimethenamid-Pin 2020 and 2021. Application of a mixture of dimethenamid-Pwith imazamox + bentazon POST provided similar results to those of the fomesafen-containing treatments and dimethenamid-Palone POST. Dimethenamid-Papplied POST following a PRE application of pendimethalin + dimethenamid-Presulted in similar yield as the fomesafen-containing treatments. If fomesafen is not an option due to the crop rotation interval restriction, using dimethenamid-Pin a sequential PRE fb POST program is the only effective alternative to control ALS-inhibitor–resistant Palmer amaranth in Nebraska. The use of dimethenamid-Pin a sequential PRE fb POST program, alone or mixed with foliar-active herbicides should be considered by dry edible bean growers who are dealing with ALS-inhibitor-resistant Palmer amaranth.

Although Palmer amaranth is currently not widespread in most dry edible bean−producing states in the United States, it is widespread in western Nebraska, a major dry edible bean−producing region. There is currently a lack of research on management and biology of Palmer amaranth within dry edible bean production. The objective of this study was to quantify the impact of season-long Palmer amaranth interference on yield of dry edible bean and seed production of Palmer amaranth. A field study was conducted in Scottsbluff, NE, in 2020 and 2021. Palmer amaranth interference at densities of 0, 0.2, 0.3, 0.5, 1, and 2 plants m−1row of dry edible bean was evaluated. Palmer amaranth interference reduced dry edible bean yield by 77% at a weed density of 2 plants m−1row compared to the weed-free control, and a 5% yield reduction threshold was estimated to occur at a Palmer amaranth density of 0.02 plants m−1row. Yield reduction occurred primarily through a reduction in the number of pods per plant as Palmer amaranth density increased. Palmer amaranth plants produced 91,000 to 376,000 seeds per plant depending on densities, and as many as 140,000 seeds m−2. Study results will help farmers and other stakeholders estimate Palmer amaranth interference within their fields, and may help justify the economic cost of incorporating additional Palmer amaranth management practices.

The International Space Station is one the most complex projects ever, with numerous interdependent constraints affecting productivity and crew safety. This requires planning years before crew expeditions, and the use of sophisticated scheduling tools. Human work practices, however, are difficult to study and represent within traditional planning tools. We present an agent-based model and simulation of the activities and work practices of astronauts onboard the ISS. The model represents "a day in the life" of the ISS crew and is developed in Brahms--- an agent-oriented, activity-based language used to model knowledge in situated action and learning in human activitiesPresented at the 11th Conference on Computer-Generated Forces and Behavior Representation, May 7-9, 2002.

Paper describes the result of industry workshops as held within the Connekt IA p

The University of Edinburgh and research sponsors are authorised to reproduce and distribute reprints and on-line copies for their purposes notwithstanding any copyright annotation hereon. The views and conclusions contained herein are the author’s and shouldn’t be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies or endorsements, either expressed or implied, of other parties. The Coalition Search and Rescue Task Support demonstration shows cooperative agents supporting a highly dynamic mission in which AI task planning, inter-agent collaboration, workflow enactment, policy-managed communications, semantic web queries, semantic web services matchmaking and knowledge-based notifications are employed.

The University of Edinburgh and research sponsors are authorised to reproduce and distribute reprints and on-line copies for their purposes notwithstanding any copyright annotation hereon. The views and conclusions contained herein are the author’s and shouldn’t be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies or endorsements, either expressed or implied, of other parties. This paper summarizes our efforts to develop capabilities for policy and contract management for Semantic Web Services applications. KAoS services and tools allow for the specification, management, analyzes, disclosure and enforcement of policies represented in OWL. We discuss three current Semantic Web Services applications as examples of the kinds of roles that a policy management framework can play: as an authorization service in grid computing environments, as a distributed policy specification and enforcement capability for a semantic matchmaker, and as a verification tool for services composition and contract management.

International audience; We propose a syntactic possibilistic belief-change operator, which operates on a belief base represented as a fuzzy set of formulas. Such a set may be regarded as a finite and compact encoding of a possibility distribution over a possibly infinite set of interpretations. The proposed operator is designed so that it behaves like a semantic possibilistic belief-change operator for BDI agents recently proposed in the literature. The equivalence of the semantic and syntactic operators is then proved.

International audience; An important issue in belief revision is the possibleloss of previous information which later might turn to becorrect when new information becomes available to the agent.Starting from the fuzzy argument labeling based on trust, wemirror argument reinstatement in belief reinstatement, andwe show the conditions under which the belief reinstatementis total, partial, or nonexistent.