The U.S. Department of Agriculture–Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) has been a leader in weed science research covering topics ranging from the development and use of integrated weed management (IWM) tactics to basic mechanistic studies, including biotic resistance of desirable plant communities and herbicide resistance. ARS weed scientists have worked in agricultural and natural ecosystems, including agronomic and horticultural crops, pastures, forests, wild lands, aquatic habitats, wetlands, and riparian areas. Through strong partnerships with academia, state agencies, private industry, and numerous federal programs, ARS weed scientists have made contributions to discoveries in the newest fields of robotics and genetics, as well as the traditional and fundamental subjects of weed–crop competition and physiology and integration of weed control tactics and practices. Weed science at ARS is often overshadowed by other research topics; thus, few are aware of the long history of ARS weed science and its important contributions. This review is the result of a symposium held at the Weed Science Society of America’s 62nd Annual Meeting in 2022 that included 10 separate presentations in a virtual Weed Science Webinar Series. The overarching themes of management tactics (IWM, biological control, and automation), basic mechanisms (competition, invasive plant genetics, and herbicide resistance), and ecosystem impacts (invasive plant spread, climate change, conservation, and restoration) represent core ARS weed science research that is dynamic and efficacious and has been a significant component of the agency’s national and international efforts. This review highlights current studies and future directions that exemplify the science and collaborative relationships both within and outside ARS. Given the constraints of weeds and invasive plants on all aspects of food, feed, and fiber systems, there is an acknowledged need to face new challenges, including agriculture and natural resources sustainability, economic resilience and reliability, and societal health and well-being.

Case identification is an ongoing issue for the COVID-19 epidemic, in particular for outpatient care where physicians must decide which patients to prioritise for further testing. This paper reports tools to classify patients based on symptom profiles based on 236 severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 positive cases and 564 controls, accounting for the time course of illness using generalised multivariate logistic regression. Significant symptoms included abdominal pain, cough, diarrhoea, fever, headache, muscle ache, runny nose, sore throat, temperature between 37.5 and 37.9 °C and temperature above 38 °C, but their importance varied by day of illness at assessment. With a high percentile threshold for specificity at 0.95, the baseline model had reasonable sensitivity at 0.67. To further evaluate accuracy of model predictions, leave-one-out cross-validation confirmed high classification accuracy with an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.92. For the baseline model, sensitivity decreased to 0.56. External validation datasets reported similar result. Our study provides a tool to discern COVID-19 patients from controls using symptoms and day from illness onset with good predictive performance. It could be considered as a framework to complement laboratory testing in order to differentiate COVID-19 from other patients presenting with acute symptoms in outpatient care.

Rice, Cloninger & Reich (1980) showed that correlational data on American I.Q. is consistent with a rather low genetic heritability. Here we confirm their general results with a more parsimonious model. From phenotypic data alone, the estimates of genetic and cultural heritability are 0·31 and 0·42, respectively. Using environmental indices, the parsimonious estimates become 0·34 and 0·26, respectively.

Data from Neurospora, Drosophila, and the mouse support the mapping parameter conventionally used for man, exclude the Haldane, Kosambi, and Carter—Falconer functions, and suggest a refinement for centromere mapping. Different sexes, chromosome arms, and types of data are surprisingly consistent. Double recombination frequencies are accurately predicted, but triple recombination frequencies are overestimated. The centromere appears to act on interference as an obligatory chiasma. Recombination across the centromere conforms to a simple approximation, based on the interval Markov assumption with a common mapping parameter. These results imply that mapping of n loci requires estimation of at most n parameters, and the relation between map distances and all recombination frequencies is explicit.

An eight-band k·p theory that does not suffer from the spurious solution problem is demonstrated. It is applied to studying the electronic properties of InP and InAs free-standing nanowires. Band gaps and effective masses are reported as a function of size, shape, and orientation of the nanowires. We compare our results with experimental work and with other calculations.

A library of different crystalline sol-gel thin films with a composition of BaxTiyOz (where x = 1,2; y = 1,2,9 and z = 3, 7, 20) has been generated using variable multi-step laser and thermal annealing. Point by point X-ray diffraction characterization revealed the presence of high dielectric (BaTiO3) and low dielectric (Ba2Ti2O7 and Ba2Ti9O20) phases. Appropriate laser and thermal annealing controlled crystallinity, phase content, morphology and dielectric property of libraries. We have extended the process to BaTiO3 based thick-films and investigated the surface morphology of laser-annealed films.

The objective of this study was to evaluate the biological responses of three different mixtures of a bone substitute material placed in tooth extraction sites to determine which mixture best enhances bone formation. Under general anesthesia three adult mongrel canine had bilateral extractions of the second and fourth premolar bicuspids. Each site was modeled into 3-wall defect with box-like dimensions and having the window on the buccal (outer) side of the mandible. A synthetic hydroxyapatite bone cement (HAC) was prepared three different ways: 1) 2.5 gms HAC + 0.75 cc sterile water (W); 2) 2.5 gms HAC + 0.75 cc 2% Hydroxypropylmethylcellulose in sterile water (HPMC); 3) 2.5 gms HAC + 0.75 cc Sodium Phosphate [45mM/15mL Phosphate + 60 MEq/15mL Sodium] (SP). Each mixture was syringe injected into a different extraction site and the fourth site received no cement to serve as a control site, and after sites were filled, a periodontal flap closure was accomplished with a 4-0 VICRYL suture.

Compatible pollination of Brassica napus necessitates pollen hydration, pollen germination and growth of the pollen tube through the loosened walls of stigmatic papillar cells, whereas self-incompatible (SI) pollinations fail at one of these stages. Analyses of the early stages of pollination show that at high (but not low) relative humidities, both compatible and SI pollen hydrates, but SI germination is reduced and the rare pollen tubes generally fail to penetrate the papillar walls, although there is some wall loosening. Inside the papillae, both compatible and SI interactions may induce the formation of callose, but there is no evidence for a major accumulation of cytoplasm or secretory vesicles in the vicinity of the pollen tubes and neither microtubule nor F-actin patterns re-arrange in this zone. These observations indicate that the source of the wall-loosening enzymes is probably the pollen tube or pollen coat, and that the common cellular responses of plants to attempted invasions have become suppressed in the papilla–pollen tube interaction.

We have used cross-sectional scanning tunneling microscopy to study the atomic-scale interface structure of InAs/Ga, _In.xSb superlattices grown by molecular-beam epitaxy. Detailed, quantitative analysis of interface profiles obtained from constant-current images of both (110) and (1ī0) cross-sectional planes of the superlattice indicates that interfaces in the (1ī0) plane exhibit a higher degree of interface roughness than those in the (110) plane, and that the Ga1-xln xAs interfaces are rougher than the InAs-on-Gal1-xInxSb interfaces. The roughness data are consistent with anisotropy in interface structure arising from anisotropic island formation during growth, and in addition with a growth-sequence-dependent interface asymmetry resulting from differences in interfacial bond structure between the superlattice layers. Roughness data are compared with measurements of anisotropy in low-temperature Hall mobilities of the samples.