Search

In an effort to adopt emerging technologies in food security assessment through a codevelopment approach, the Government of Nepal’s Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development (MoALD) and the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development’s (ICIMOD) SERVIR-HKH Initiative undertook a pilot study in Chitwan District in 2019 to jointly develop methods for satellite remote sensing and machine learning-based in-season crop assessment. MoALD experts and relevant stakeholders thoroughly reviewed the approach before the honourable minister approved it for formal use in the national-level assessment for 2020 and onwards. For wider adoption of the advanced data science methods established in the pilot study, we customised the technology by developing a digital suite of software, including GeoFairy (a mobile app to facilitate field data collection by field extension professionals at the district level) and RiceMapEngine (a simplified platform for machine learning-based crop classification to facilitate crop area map production by MoALD’s GIS Section). In the current federal governance structure of Nepal, high-quality crop maps and yield estimates will not only bridge information needs among the federal and subnational institutions but also provide a means for consistent cross-country crop status assessments and communication.

In this study, the thermal properties, mechanical properties, and microstructure evolution of Sn-xBi (x = 0, 10, 17, 20, 30, 40, 50, and 58 wt.%, respectively) alloys were investigated via differential scanning calorimetry, scanning electron microscope during and after tensile test. The results reveal that the shapes of precipitated Bi particles relate to the cooling rate, that is, sphere in water cooling condition and short rod like cooled in air. Beta tin phase strengthened by Bi particle precipitation offers superior performance than Sn-Bi eutectic structure. The result also clearly demonstrates the deformation and fracture modes of Sn-Bi alloys with different microstructure through in situ observations during tensile loading. The deformation of Sn-17Bi alloy deforms based on the grain boundary diffusion. For Sn-58Bi alloy, the deformation is mainly resulted by grain boundary sliding during even deformation stage and the phase sliding between Bi-rich and Sn-rich phase boundary after necking. And the latter accounts for the majority. Sn-50Bi alloy deforms through grain boundary sliding of eutectic phase and phase boundary sliding between beta tin phase strengthen by precipitated Bi and eutectic phase. Moreover, Sn-rich phase works as floating grains, does not participate in the deformation, but provides sliding interface with the eutectic part, which promotes the continuous plastic deformation. Sn-50Bi alloy deforms through slip between grain boundaries within eutectic region and phase boundary sliding between beta tin phase and eutectic phase.

Accurate crop-specific damage assessment immediately after flood events is crucial for grain pricing, food policy, and agricultural trade. The main goal of this research is to estimate the crop-specific damage that occurs immediately after flood events by using a newly developed Disaster Vegetation Damage Index (DVDI). By incorporating the DVDI along with information on crop types and flood inundation extents, this research assessed crop damage for three case-study events: Iowa Severe Storms and Flooding (DR 4386), Nebraska Severe Storms and Flooding (DR 4387), and Texas Severe Storms and Flooding (DR 4272). Crop damage is assessed on a qualitative scale and reported at the county level for the selected flood cases in Iowa, Nebraska, and Texas. More than half of flooded corn has experienced no damage, whereas 60% of affected soybean has a higher degree of loss in most of the selected counties in Iowa. Similarly, a total of 350 ha of soybean has moderate to severe damage whereas corn has a negligible impact in Cuming, which is the most affected county in Nebraska. A total of 454 ha of corn are severely damaged in Anderson County, Texas. More than 200 ha of alfalfa have moderate to severe damage in Navarro County, Texas. The results of damage assessment are validated through the NDVI profile and yield loss in percentage. A linear relation is found between DVDI values and crop yield loss. An R2 value of 0.54 indicates the potentiality of DVDI for rapid crop damage estimation. The results also indicate the association between DVDI class and crop yield loss.

Background. Hypoxia is a typical microenvironmental feature of most solid tumors, affecting a variety of physiological processes. We developed a hypoxia-related prognostic risk score (HPRS) model to reveal tumor microenvironment (TME) and predict prognosis of lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD). Methods. LUAD sample expression data were from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) databases. Weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) Cox regression identified hypoxia-related genes (HRGs) to create HPRS. The prognostic value, genetic mutation and TME, and therapeutic response of distinct HPRS groups were analyzed. Univariate and multivariate Cox regression analysis identified independent factors associated with the prognosis of LUAD. A decision tree based on HPRS and clinicopathological variables was established using the classification system based on decision tree algorithm. A nomogram was constructed with important clinical features and HPRS by the RMS package. Results. A HPRS model with five HRGs was developed and verified in two separate cohorts of GEO. HPRS model divided patients with LUAD into two groups. High HPRS was related to high probability of genetic alterations. HPRS could predict the prognosis, TME, and sensitivity to immunotherapy/chemotherapy of LUAD. The decision tree defined four risk subgroups with significant OS differences. Nomogram with integrated HPRS and clinical features had acceptable accuracy in predicting LUAD prognosis. Conclusions. A HPRS model was developed to evaluate prognosis, genetic alterations, TME, and response to immunotherapy, which may provide theoretical reference for the study of molecular mechanism of hypoxia in LUAD.

Inland aquaculture in Bangladesh has been growing fast in the last decade. The underlying land use/land cover (LULC) change is an important indicator of socioeconomic and food structure change in Bangladesh, and fishpond mapping is essential to understand such LULC change. Previous research often used water indexes (WI), such as Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) and Modified Normalized Difference Water Index (MNDWI), to enhance water bodies and use shape-based metrics to assist classification of individual water features, such as coastal aquaculture ponds. However, inland fishponds in Bangladesh are generally extremely small, and little research has investigated mapping of such small water objects without high-resolution images. Thus, this research aimed to bridge the knowledge gap by developing and evaluating an automatic fishpond mapping workflow with Sentinel-2 images that is implemented on Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform. The workflow mainly includes two steps: (1) the spectral filtering phase that uses a pixel selection technique and an image segmentation method to automatically identify all-year-inundated water bodies and (2) spatial filtering phase to further classify all-year-inundated water bodies into fishponds and non-fishponds using object-based features (OBF). To evaluate the performance of the workflow, we conducted a case study in the Singra Upazila of Bangladesh, and our method can efficiently map inland fishponds with a precision score of 0.788. Our results also show that the pixel selection technique is essential in identifying inland fishponds that are generally small. As the workflow is implemented on GEE, it can be conveniently applied to other regions.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play important roles in tumorigenesis and tumor progression. In this study, we investigated the role of miR-320a-3p in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Expressions of miR-320a-3p were firstly determined in 80 NSCLC patients' cancer tissues and adjacent normal lung tissues by qRT-PCR. Then MTT assay, cell migration and invasion assays were performed in vitro. Potential binding sites on target gene of miR-320a-3p were predicted and luciferase reporter assay was used to identify the potential binding sites. Tumorigenesis assay were performed in nude mice by injecting A549 cells which stably express miR-320a-3p. Results indicated that high expression of miR-320a-3p suppresses cell proliferation, migration and invasion through the inactivation of PI3K/Akt signaling pathway in NSCLC cells. Smaller tumor size and lighter weight were also found in nude mice which had miR-320a-3p higher expressed. Furthermore, data from luciferase reporter assay proved the direct binding of miR-320a-3p on the 3'UTR region of ELF3 mRNA, this could further decrease ELF3 expression transcriptionally. We provided evidence that miR-320a-3p might work as a tumor suppressor in NSCLC both in vivo and in vitro.

Cyberinfrastructure plays an important role in the collection, management, and dissemination of drought information in agricultural activities, especially when the activities involve a variety of facilities, data sources, and communities. The challenge of coordinating tremendous sources of data and systems becomes paramount. Some key questions require additional attention if analyzing agricultural drought in a large social-environmental context: preprocessing observation into analysis-ready format, integrate vegetation/soil observations across platforms, and assess potential risks on the crop yield and environment. Cyberinfrastructure capable of accepting data from either research and monitoring networks or professionals in agricultural activities, must be built to achieve these goals. The cyberinfrastructure design generally consists of four components: data source, standardized web service, application service, and client interface. This study introduces a cloud-based global agricultural drought monitoring and forecasting system (GADMFS) which provides scalable vegetation-based drought indicators derived from satellite-, and model-based vegetation condition datasets. The provided datasets include global historical drought severity data from the monitoring component. The system is a significant extension to current capabilities and datasets from global drought assessment and early warning. The experiment results show that GADMFS successfully captured the major drought events in history and reflected the high-resolution spatial distribution which can specifically assist agriculture stakeholders to make informative decisions and take proactive drought management actions.

Cropland Data Layer (CDL) is an annual crop-specific land use map produced by the U.S. Department of Agricultural (USDA) National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS). The CDL products are officially hosted on CropScape website which provides capabilities of geospatial data visualization, retrieval, processing, and statistics based on the open geospatial Web services. This study utilizes cloud computing technology to improve the performance of CropScape application and Web services. A cloud-based prototype of CropScape is implemented and tested. The experiment results show the performance of CropScape is significantly improved in the cloud environment. Comparing with the original system architecture of CropScape, the cloud-based architecture provides a more flexible and effective environment for the dissemination of CDL data.

WaterSmart project is an NSF funded projected seeks water consumption reduction using satellite observations. In order to fit the fine temporal resolution requirement, satellites are required to have a high revisit cycle. MODIS is an ideal platform for monitoring the ground thanks to its daily coverage while the spatial resolution is too coarse. Research has demonstrated the possibility to improve the spatial resolution of MODIS using the Landsat 8 images. This research is aimed to establish a workflow to adapt the data fusion algorithm to achieve automatically processing at real-time in order to support short-term decision making.

Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable countries to sea level rise due to the climate change. Soil salinity is one of the potential threat to the coastal ecosystem and agriculture which might hinder the country's future food security. Conventional field-based soil salinity monitoring over vast region may not be cost and time efficient. Satellite remote sensing is offering an efficient way to monitor soil salinity via different indices. This study monitors soil salinity in five years interval from 1990 to 2015 using a regression equation which is developed and tested in the same geographical area to calculate soil salinity from Landsat images. The result shows that soil salinity increases significantly in most of the part of the study area in 25 years period. The percentage of very high saline soil is increased from less than 1% in 1990 to 33% in 2015 which is very alarming for the agriculture growth in this area.

Land use and land cover maps are essential to study how the earth surface change over time and how human activities interact with environments. The growing amount of available remote sensing images, especially the well archived Landsat images with 30 meters resolution, have been used to conduct supervised classification for land use and land cover maps. However, to achieve high classification accuracy, ground truth samples with fine quality and large quantity are required. Collecting ground truth samples is both time-consuming and expensive and sometimes even unviable when ground truth samples are needed for the past years. In this paper, we provided a way of using the GlobeLand30 (GLC30) 2000 and 2010 products as ground truth instead of manually labeling ground truth samples to produce land use and land cover maps for 2005 in our study area, Bangladesh country on Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform. The accuracy assessment is conducted on randomly generated samples from GlobeLand30 products, and the overall accuracy is around 84.8%.

ELF3 is one of the member of transcription factors from E-twenty-six family, its role varies in different types of cancer. However, the role and specific mechanisms of ELF3 in the development of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) still remains largely unknown. In our study, ELF3 was observed to be upregulated in NSCLC tissues compared to the corresponding normal lung tissue at mRNA and protein levels, and its expression level was correlated with the overall survival of patients with NSCLC. Silencing of the ELF3 gene in NSCLC cells inhibited the proliferation and metastasis significantly in vitro and in vivo. Conversely, overexpression of ELF3 in NSCLC cells promoted cancer growth and metastasis in vitro. Mechanistically, ELF3 activated PI3K/AKT and ERK signaling pathways and its downstream effectors, thus regulating the cell cycle and epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). Furthermore, the promotive effects of ELF3 on cellular proliferation and metastasis could be rescued by Ly294002 (inhibitor of PI3K) and U0126 (inhibitor of MEK1/2). The results show that ELF3 promotes cell growth and metastasis by regulating PI3K/Akt and ERK pathways in NSCLC and that it may be a promising new target for the treatment of NSCLC patients.

This study aimed to clarify the role of multidrug resistance-associated protein 3 (MRP3) in resistance to neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy and long-term prognosis of advanced rectal cancer. Immunohistochemistry was used to measure MRP3 expression in biopsy specimens of 144 stage II–III rectal cancer patients who received preoperative chemoradiotherapy. The effect of MRP3 expression on short-term pathological response and postoperative long-term prognosis were assessed using the Cox proportional hazards model. Short interfering RNAs targeting MRP3 were synthesized and used to transfect human colorectal carcinoma cell lines. The effect of MRP3 down-regulation on cell proliferation and apoptosis in response to 5-fluorouracil and/or irradiation were examined in vitro and in xenograft mouse models, respectively. The content of intracellular reactive oxygen species and the activity of caspase-3-dependent apoptotic pathway in response to irradiation were further evaluated. High expression (immunoreactive score > 6) of MRP3 significantly predicted poor pathological response to chemoradiotherapy (tumor regression grade ≤ 2 vs. ≥3, p = 0.002) in univariate analysis and unfavorable long-term prognosis (5-year overall survival: HR = 1.612, 95% CI, 1.094–2.375, p = 0.016; 5-year disease-free survival: HR = 1.513, 95% CI, 1.041–2.200, p = 0.030) in multivariate Cox analysis. MRP3 down-regulation significantly increased 5-fluorouracil or irradiation-induced cell apoptosis and attenuated tumor growth following irradiation in animal models. MRP3 inhibition significantly reduced intracellular reactive oxygen species exporting from cells following irradiation, and increased expression of cleaved poly ADP-ribose polymerase and caspase-3. Aberrant expression of MRP3 in rectal cancer confers chemo-radioresistance. MRP3 might be a predictive factor and an attractive target in treating advanced rectal cancer.

Rapid urbanization has been an important social and economic phenomenon in the last 50 years. Our study analyzes the spatial–temporal landscape pattern in the National Capital Region (NCR) of Delhi, one of the most rapid urbanization areas in the world. Delhi metropolitan area and its surrounding satellite cities exhibit a soaring rate of landscape pattern change during the last two decades. A set of landscape metrics with supplementary ecological meaning was chosen to study the changes of landscape pattern in NCR. The results indicate that the rapid urbanization has brought enormous landscape changes in NCR, and consequently, substantial impacts on its landscape pattern. The most “active” landscapes are farmland and impervious surface, as the major landscape change (41.46%) is found in the transition from farmland landscape to impervious-surface landscape. Meanwhile, the landscape pattern is fragmented into a more heterogeneous pattern in both farmland and urban landscape with more irregularly shaped patches during urbanization. Our research confirms the effectiveness and applicability of a combination of remote sensing, geographic information systems, and landscape metrics in revealing spatial–temporal of landscape change throughout rapid growth periods.

This study was designed to verify the effect of ATP-binding cassette subfamily C member 4 on radiosensitivity of locally advanced rectal carcinoma.The expression of ATP-binding cassette subfamily C member 4 protein in 121 pretreatment tissue samples from locally advanced rectal carcinoma patients was detected by immunohistochemistry.Pathological response to radiotherapy was evaluated according to tumor regression grading by postoperative histological examinations after they received long-course preoperative neoadjuvant radiotherapy, and the association between clinicopathological data and tumor regression grading was analyzed retrospectively. For further validation, short hairpin RNA was constructed and transfected into colorectal carcinoma cell line HT29. The knockdown efficiency was confirmed at both RNA and protein levels. The altered radiosensitivity was evaluated by methylthiazolyl tetrazolium assay, colony formation assay, flow cytometry, and Hoechst 33258 staining.Univariate analysis revealed that ATP-binding cassette subfamily C member 4 expression (p0.001), P53 type (p = 0.069), and CEA (p = 0.100) were possibly associated with tumor regression grading, and multivariate analysis demonstrated that ATP-binding cassette subfamily C member 4 expression (p0.001) and P53 type (p = 0.039) were positively correlated with response to neoadjuvant radiotherapy in locally advanced rectal carcinoma patients. Lentiviral vector was successfully introduced into HT29 cells and inhibited ATP-binding cassette subfamily C member 4 expression efficiently and persistently. Downregulation of ATP-binding cassette subfamily C member 4 expression significantly enhanced inhibition of cell proliferation, decreased colony formation capacity, and increased cell apoptosis induced by irradiation, as examined by a series of experiments in vitro. In addition, radiobiological parameters calculated according to the single-hit multitarget model were also decreased significantly.Our data indicate that ATP-binding cassette subfamily C member 4 may be a useful molecular marker in predicting radiosensitivity, and a potential target in improving the response to neoadjuvant radiotherapy in locally advanced rectal carcinoma patients.

BACKGROUND It has been speculated that zinc finger protein 148 (ZNF148) is a tumor suppressor. However, to the authors' knowledge, little is known about the clinical significance of ZNF148 expression in patients with colorectal cancer (CRC). The objective of the current study was to clarify the association between ZNF148 expression and the postoperative prognosis of patients with CRC. METHODS Tissue microarrays containing 56 normal mucosa, 51 adenoma, 742 CRC (TNM stage I-IV), 16 familial adenomatous polyposis, and 21 metastatic CRC specimens were examined immunohistochemically for ZNF148 expression. RESULTS Expression of ZNF148 was found to increase consecutively from normal mucosa to stage I CRC, and then decreased consecutively from stage I to stage IV CRC. Lower expression of ZNF148 in tumors was found to be significantly associated with lymph node metastases, advanced TNM disease stage, poor differentiation, higher rate of disease recurrence, worse overall survival (OS), and shorter disease-free survival. High expression of ZNF148 was also associated with improved OS (P = .025) and disease-free survival (P = .042) in patients with stages II to III CRC. On multivariate Cox analysis, lower ZNF148 expression in tumors, advanced TNM stage, colon cancer, and elevated serum carbohydrate antigen 19-9 (CA19-9) were found to be significant factors for a worse OS. In 16 patients with familial adenomatous polyposis, ZNF148 expression was upregulated at steps toward carcinogenesis. In 21 patients with metastatic CRC, although ZNF148 expression was higher in primary tumors compared with adjacent mucosa, its expression in metastatic tumors was significantly lower than that in primary tumors. CONCLUSIONS Although ZNF148 expression is related to colorectal carcinogenesis, high ZNF148 expression in patients with CRC appears to be inversely associated with malignant phenotypes and may serve as a significant prognostic factor after surgery for patients with CRC. Cancer 2013;119:2212–2222. © 2013 American Cancer Society.

The aim of this study was to compare the functional and oncologic results of pull-through intersphincteric stapled transection and anastomosis (PISTA) with low anterior resection (LAR) in the treatment for early ultralow rectal cancer. A total of 278 patients with early ultralow rectal cancer were retrospectively included and analyzed, with 136 in the PISTA group and 142 in the LAR group. Gender, age, tumor diameter, distance from the dentate line to the inferior margin of the tumor, tumor stage, length of operation and postoperative complications were comparable in the two groups. Compared with the LAR group, the PISTA group had a more accurate distal transection site, a lower daily fecal frequency (6 (5–7) vs. 8 (7–9), p

The virtual point-mass method has been widely used in dealing with the approximation of the local gravity field which is a difficult problem in internal currently. In this paper, the approximation theory of point-mass model is briefly introduced, and the characteristics of the elements in the coefficient matrix for the model construction are analyzed by numerical calculation. The observations of gravity anomaly is simulated from EGM2008 with degree and order 720 and the approximated region is 32 ~34 N ∘ ∘ and 103 ~ 105 E ∘ ∘ . A four-tier point-mass model which is on the base of the geopotential model with degree and order 36 from low frequency to high frequency is applied to approximate the local earth's gravity field. The results of the experiments show that the truncation error of gravity disturbance created by using the point-mass model is less than 2 mGal on the radial direction and there is an optimal truncation error for some certain spectrum gravity field in the space.

Cystic fibrosis (CF) patients suffer from chronic airway inflammation with excessive neutrophil infiltration. Migration of neutrophils to the lung requires chemokine and cytokine signaling as well as cell adhesion molecules, such as intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1), which plays an important role in mediating adhesive interactions between effector and target cells in the immune system. In this study, we investigated the relationship betweenICAM-1and epithelium-specific ETS-like transcription factor 1 (ESE-1) and found thatICAM-1expression is upregulated in cell lines of CF (IB3-1) as well as non-CF (BEAS-2B and A549) epithelial origin in response to inflammatory cytokine stimulation. SinceESE-1is highly expressed in A549 cells without stimulation, we examined the effect ofESE-1knockdown onICAM-1expression in these cells. We found thatICAM-1expression was downregulated whenESE-1was knocked down in A549 cells. We also tested the effect ofESE-1knockdown on cell-cell interactions and demonstrate that the knocking downESE-1in A549 cells reduce their interactions with HL-60 cells (human promyelocytic leukemia cell line). These results suggest thatESE-1may play a role in regulating airway inflammation by regulatingICAM-1expression.

To screen long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) associated with radiosensitivity in colorectal carcinoma cell lines.Colony formation assay was performed in colorectal cancer cell lines HT29, SW480, RKO, Lovo and HCT116 after irradiation with different radiation doses. Radiation sensitivity of these 5 cell lines was detected through survival fraction at 2 Gy (SF2 value). High-throughput lncRNA chip was used to screen lncRNA genes with expression differences more than 2 folds among SW480, RKO and Lovo. Further experiment on the expression differences of lncRNAs selected was conducted by realtime PCR.The radiosensitivity order of these 5 cell lines from low to high (SF2 value from high to low) was HT29 (0.83 ± 0.03), SW480 (0.69 ± 0.02), RKO(0.53 ± 0.02), Lovo (0.47 ± 0.05), HCT116 (0.32 ± 0.03) (P0.01). Five lncRNAs associated with radiation sensitivity were screened. Among them, expression levels of R05532, NR_015441, and NR_033374 were positively correlated with radiation resistance(all P0.01), and expression levels of the other 2 lncRNAs, NR_073156 and AA745020, were not correlated with radiation resistance of colorectal cancer cells (both P0.05).lncRNA R05532, NR_015441 and NR_033374 may be used as the predictive marker of radiosensitivity of colorectal cancer cells. Higher expression of these genes shows radiation resistance.