Breed availability analysis of local beef cattle in Seram Utara Timur Seti District Maluku Tengah Regency

This study aim were to analyze the potential availability of breeds for beef cattle development in Seram Utara Timur Seti District. The research method used was a desk study and survey method. Desk studies were conducted by utilizing relevant secondary data from various related agencies, as well as relevant research results. Meanwhile, surveys and direct observations in the field were carried out in the Animal Husbandry Production Center (KSP) areas, namely Wailoping, Kobisonta and Waitila Village. The variables observed included population structure and potential availability of beef cattle. The results showed that the proportion of the beef cattle population for the categories of calves, youth and adults was 23.18; 22.18 and 54.64% respectively. The sex ratio of male to female in all age categories is still below the normal ratio of 1 male to 5. Total breed growth (net increase) was 70 tails per year from the total population of beef cattle in Seram Utara Timur Seti District (13,032 tails). The total growth of beef cattle is still less than 1% (around 130 heads) of the total population, so it is necessary to pay attention for the development of the source area for beef cattle breeding in Seram Utara Timur Seti District.

Barium and Cadmium in Tropical Soils Cropped and Under Native Forest

Toxic elements pose a high environmental risk because of their long persistence in soil, water, and food chain. This study aimed to estimated potentially available and pseudototal contents of barium (Ba) and cadmium (Cd) in tropical soil under native forest vegetation, sugarcane and maize crops. Soil samples were collected at 0.00–0.20 m depth in different municipalities in São Paulo State, Brazil, and analyzed for fertility, texture, total iron, iron oxides, pseudototal and available Ba and Cd contents. Heavy metals were extracted using different extraction solutions (Mehlich-1, Mehlich-3, and DTPA). Data were subjected to descriptive and multivariate analyses. Correlations between soil clay content, mineralogy, and fertility were also investigated. Of the three extraction solutions tested, Mehlich-3 was the most effective to estimate the potential availability of Ba and Cd. Ba extracted by Mehlich-3 was negatively correlated with goethite, and pseudototal barium was positively correlated with pH CaCl2. Cd extracted by Mehlich-3 was positively correlated with pH CaCl2, and pseudototal cadmium was strongly correlated with iron oxide, clay, and organic matter contents.

Distribution and Potential Availability of As, Metals and P in Sediments from a Riverine Reservoir in a Rural Mountainous Catchment (NE Portugal)

A geochemical investigation was carried out on the bottom sediments of a riverine reservoir, located in a mountainous rural region (NE Portugal), with the aim of evaluating the contents of As, metals and P and their potential availability. The elements contents were detected in the following ranges (µg g−1): As (18–64); Cr (32–128); Cu (39–93); Ni (18–80); Pb (49–160); Zn (207–334); P (1705–2681). The reducible fraction is the most significant in the retention of the elements. Based on their potential relative mobility, the detected metals could be classed as follows: Zn > As, Pb > Cu > Cr, Ni. The results on geochemical partitioning were revealed to be important when the Sediment Quality Guidelines (SQGs) were considered. Arsenic, Cr, Ni, Pb and Zn showed total contents exceeding the values of Probable Effect Level (PEL), but only As occurred in the most potentially available form; Cr and Ni can be considered relatively unavailable, since these are mainly associated with the residual phase. Locally, oxygen depletion could release P into the water column due to the higher concentrations in Fe-P and CDB-P fractions. The potential availability of As, metals and P in sediments indicates that the quality of sediments accumulated in small reservoirs should be considered in management policies.

On the Possibilities of Critical Raw Materials Production from the EU’s Primary Sources

Sufficient supplies of critical raw materials (CRMs) for rapidly developing technologies, e.g., Li-ion batteries, wind turbines, photovoltaics, digitization, etc., have become one of the main economic challenges for the EU. Due to growing import dependency and associated risk of supply disruptions of these raw materials from third countries, there is a need to encourage their domestic production. This is an important starting point for EU value chains crucial for the sustainable economic growth of the whole Union. This contribution has evaluated the possibilities of CRMs supply from the EU’s primary sources. A three-step approach, including an assessment of CRMs’ importance for the EU’s economic growth, their significance in at least two of the three strategic industrial sectors (i.e., renewable energy, e-mobility, defense and aerospace), and their potential availability from EU mineral deposits, has been applied. Results of the analysis have shown that, of 29 critical mineral raw materials (according to the 2020 EC list), the potential to develop manufacturing from the Union mineral deposits exists for 11 CRMs, i.e., cobalt, graphite (natural), HREE, LREE, lithium, magnesium, niobium, PGMs, silicon metal, titanium, and tungsten, while some other CRMs, namely gallium, germanium, indium, and vanadium can be recovered as by-products. Measures to mitigate EU import dependency have been also proposed.

Pelatihan Pengenalan Pakan Kambing Perah di Kelompok Peternak Roudhatul Ghonam Kecamatan Sidamulih Kabupaten Pangandaran

Abstrak: Peternak harus mengenal jenis pakan yang biasa diberikan kepada ternak supaya menghasilkan produksi yang baik. Pakan berupa hijauan, leguminosa, dan konsentrat umumnya diberikan kepada ternak kambing perah. Tujuan pengabdian adalah memberikan pengetahuan tentang pakan kambing perah di Kelompok Peternak Roudhatul Ghonam Sidamulih Pangandaran. Pengabdian ini telah dilaksanakan di kelompok ternak Roudhatul Ghonam Kecamatan Sidamulih Kabupaten Pangandaran yang diikuti oleh peserta berjumlah 30 peserta dengan berbagai tingkatan usia. Metode pelaksanaan dengan cara memberikan penyuluhan kepada para peternak dengan pengenalan berbagai pakan untuk kambing perah. Tahapan dimulai dengan sebaran kuisioner pre test sebelum kegiatan dilakukan dengan 10 pertanyaan yang diajukan, pemaparan materi pengenalan pakan, penyebaran kuisioner post test kepada peserta dan diakhiri dengan sesi tanya jawab peserta dan narasumber. Kemudian mengenalkan pakan berupa hijauan seperti rumput gajah, raja, gamal, kaliandra dan ampas tahu yang bisa diberikan dengan potensi ketersediaan diwilayahnya, konsentrat serta teknologi pakan hasil fermentasi berupa silase. Hasil menunjukkan bahwa pengetahuan tentang pakan meningkat di tingkat peternak berdasarkan pre test dan post test sehingga diharapkan dengan ilmu dan pengetahuan tersebut produktivitas ternaknya tinggi dengan pemberian pakan yang terbaik.Abstract: Farmers must know the types of feed that are usually given to livestock to produce good production. Feed in the form of forage, legume, and concentrate is generally given to dairy goats. This service aims to provide knowledge about dairy goat feed in the Roudhatul Ghonam Farm Sidamulih Pangandaran. This service was carried out in the Roudhatul Ghonam farm, Sidamulih District, Pangandaran Regency, where 30 participants of various ages attended. The implementation method is by providing counseling to breeders with the introduction of various feeds for dairy goats. The stages began with the distribution of pre-test questionnaires before the activity was carried out with ten questions being asked, presentation of feed introduction material, distributing post-test questionnaires to participants, and ended with a question and answer session between participants and resource persons. Then introduce feed in the form of forages such as elephant grass, king grass, Gamal, calliandra, and tofu dregs that can be provided with potential availability in the region, concentrate and fermented feed technology the form of silage. The results showed that knowledge about feed increased at the farmer level based on the pre-test and post-test. It is expected that with this knowledge and knowledge, the productivity of livestock is high by providing the best feed

A novel machine learning-based approach for the computational functional assessment of pharmacogenomic variants

Background: The field of pharmacogenomics focuses on the way a person’s genome affects his or her response to a certain dose of a specified medication. The main aim is to utilize this information to guide and personalize the treatment in a way that maximizes the clinical benefits and minimizes the risks for the patients, thus fulfilling the promises of personalized medicine. Technological advances in genome sequencing, combined with the development of improved computational methods for the efficient analysis of the huge amount of generated data, have allowed the fast and inexpensive sequencing of a patient’s genome, hence rendering its incorporation into clinical routine practice a realistic possibility. Results: The potential availability of a vast number of identified genetic variants in a clinical setting highlights the necessity of developing a method to evaluate and prioritize this information towards its exploitation in guiding medication or dosing scheme systematically and effectively. In this direction, the present study examines the development of a computational model that can classify new variants according to their possible effects on protein function, which in turn affects drug response, by using as a training set a dataset of functionally validated single nucleotide variants (SNVs) located in pharmacogenes. Conclusion: Overall, the proposed model holds promise to lead to an extremely useful variant prioritization and scoring tool with interesting clinical applications in pharmacogenomics.

Rank normalization empowers a t-test for microbiome differential abundance analysis while controlling for false discoveries

A major task in the analysis of microbiome data is to identify microbes associated with differing biological conditions. Before conducting analysis, raw data must first be adjusted so that counts from different samples are comparable. A typical approach is to estimate normalization factors by which all counts in a sample are multiplied or divided. However, the inherent variation associated with estimation of normalization factors are often not accounted for in subsequent analysis, leading to a loss of precision. Rank normalization is a nonparametric alternative to the estimation of normalization factors in which each count for a microbial feature is replaced by its intrasample rank. Although rank normalization has been successfully applied to microarray analysis in the past, it has yet to be explored for microbiome data, which is characterized by high frequencies of 0s, strongly correlated features and compositionality. We propose to use rank normalization as an alternative to the estimation of normalization factors and examine its performance when paired with a two-sample t-test. On a rigorous 3rd-party benchmarking simulation, it is shown to offer strong control over the false discovery rate, and at sample sizes greater than 50 per treatment group, to offer an improvement in performance over commonly used normalization factors paired with t-tests, Wilcoxon rank-sum tests and methodologies implemented by R packages. On two real datasets, it yielded valid and reproducible results that were strongly in agreement with the original findings and the existing literature, further demonstrating its robustness and future potential. Availability: The data underlying this article are available online along with R code and supplementary materials at https://github.com/matthewlouisdavisBioStat/Rank-Normalization-Empowers-a-T-Test.