Weeds are one of the greatest challenges to snap bean production. Anecdotal observation posits certain species frequently escape the weed management system by the time of crop harvest, hereafter called residual weeds. The objectives of this work were to 1) quantify the residual weed community in snap bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) grown for processing across the major growing regions in the U.S., and 2) investigate linkages between the density of residual weeds and their contributions to weed canopy cover. In surveys of 358 fields across the Northwest (NW), Midwest (MW), and Northeast (NE), residual weeds were observed in 95% of the fields. While a total of 109 species or species-group were identified, one to three species dominated the residual weed community of individual fields in most cases. It was not uncommon to have >10 weeds m-2 with a weed canopy covering >5% of the field’s surface area. Some of the most abundant and problematic species or species-group escaping control included amaranth species (such as smooth pigweed (Amaranthus hybridus L.), Palmer amaranth (Amaranthus palmeri S. Watson), redroot pigweed (Amaranthus retroflexus L.), and waterhemp [Amaranthus tuberculatus (Moq.) J. D. Sauer]), common lambsquarters (Chenopodium album L.), large crabgrass [Digitaria sanguinalis (L.) Scop.], and ivyleaf morningglory (Ipomoea hederacea Jacq.). Emerging threats include hophornbeam copperleaf (Acalypha ostryifolia Riddell) in the MW and sharppoint fluvellin [Kickxia elatine (L.) Dumort.] in the NW. Beyond crop losses due to weed interference, the weed canopy at harvest poses a risk to contaminating snap bean products with foreign material. Random forest modeling predicts the residual weed canopy is dominated by common lambsquarters, large crabgrass, carpetweed (Mollugo verticillata L.), I. hederacea, amaranth species, and A. ostryifolia. This is the first quantitative report on the weed community escaping control in U.S. snap bean production.

This research paper aimed to demonstrate that mammary secretions provided by sheep farmers across Scotland from cases of clinical mastitis are free from environmental contamination, as well as to provide information on the major bacterial causes of disease and levels of antimicrobial resistance. Mastitis represents one of most significant diseases of small ruminant production worldwide. Staphylococcus aureus, Mannheimia haemolytica, Streptococcus uberis and coagulase-negative Staphylococcal species are common pathogens isolated from cases of sheep mastitis. Sampling kits supplied to 23 farms provided 33 samples for bacteriology, antimicrobial susceptibility testing and genetic analysis. Of the bacterial isolates identified, 60% were S. aureus, 23% M. haemolytica and 7% coagulase-negative staphylococci. Low levels of antimicrobial resistance were identified in the S. aureus isolates which provided novel multi-locus sequence types. In conclusion, this proof-of-concept survey demonstrated that mammary secretions free from environmental contamination may be provided by sheep farmers. It also provided data on the prevalence of antimicrobial resistance associated with clinical mastitis in sheep and will inform on the scale required for larger surveys aiming to improve current strategies for mastitis control in sheep flocks across the UK.

Palmer amaranth resistant to dicamba, glufosinate, and protoporphyrinogen oxidase inhibitors has been documented in several southern states. With extensive use of these and other herbicides in South Carolina, a survey was initiated in the fall of 2020 and repeated in the fall of 2021 and 2022 to determine the relative response of Palmer amaranth accessions to selected preemergence (PRE) and postemergence (POST) herbicides. A greenhouse screening experiment was conducted where accessions were treated with three PRE (atrazine, s-metolachlor, and isoxaflutole) and six POST (glyphosate, thifensulfuron-methyl, fomesafen, glufosinate, dicamba, 2,4-D) herbicides at the 1× and 2× use rates. Herbicides were applied shortly after planting (PRE) or at the 2 to 4 leaf growth stage (POST). Percent survival was evaluated 5-14 days after application depending on herbicide activity. Sensitivity to atrazine PRE was lower for 49 and 33 accessions out of 115 to atrazine PRE at the 1× and 2× rate, respectively. Most of the accessions (90%) were controlled by isoxaflutole PRE at the 1× rate. Response to S-metolachlor PRE indicated 34% of the Palmer amaranth accessions survived the 1× rate (>60% survival). There were 11 accessions with reduced sensitivity to fomesafen POST; however, these percentages were not different from the 0% survivor group. Glyphosate POST at the 1× rate did not control most accessions (79%). Palmer amaranth response to thifensulfuron-methyl POST varied across the accessions, with only 36 and 28% controlled at the 1× and 2×rate, respectively. All accessions were controlled by 2,4-D, dicamba, or glufosinate POST. Palmer amaranth accessions from this survey exhibited reduced susceptibility to several herbicides commonly used in agronomic crops in South Carolina. Therefore, growers should continue to utilize multiple management tactics to minimize the evolution of herbicide resistance in Palmer amaranth in South Carolina.

Many companion kittens entering shelters are fostered by volunteer community members during the sensitive period for socialisation (~2 to 9 weeks of age) when early experiences are critical to behavioural development. Using a mixed-method survey, we explored current fostering practices relevant to kitten behavioural development and welfare. Foster caretaker participants (n = 487) described their fostering practices and reported providing kittens with a majority of recommended socialisation experiences, such as handling and exposure to various toys and exploratory items. In open-ended text responses, foster caretakers described how they adapted socialisation practices for fearful kittens and the supports and challenges they perceived to impact their ability to properly socialise kittens. Some non-recommended techniques (e.g. flooding) were reported for socialising fearful kittens, with a decreased odds of reporting non-recommended techniques for participants with a higher level of agreeableness personality trait and an increased odds of reporting if fostering practices had been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Foster caretakers reported feeling supported through shelter-supplied resources, personal knowledge, external support, and having access to socialisation opportunities; however, faced personal (e.g. time constraints), shelter-specific (e.g. lack of shelter support), and kitten-specific challenges (e.g. kitten illness). This study highlights the perspectives of foster caretakers as related to optimal socialisation, behavioural development, and welfare. To identify opportunities for improvement it is important to investigate the socialisation guidelines provided to foster caretakers, with the ultimate goal of enhancing kitten behavioural development for improved welfare, long-term adoption, and caretaker satisfaction.

Low temporal stability may complicate the interpretation of survey measures of conspiracy theories (CTs). Current study examines the stability of endorsement of CTs on a popular set of items addressing COVID-19-related CTs. An online survey tapping two CTs about COVID-19 was administered to 179 students of general medicine. The same items were presented twice in March 2022 and once in May 2022. The mean endorsement of the CTs did not differ between March and May. The correlation between answers provided in March and May was low (.5 < r < .7). Most of those reporting agreement with CTs in March reported disagreement in May. Conspiracy believers’ responses did not change between two measurements in March but were different in May, suggesting that the low temporal stability was due to situational factors rather than erroneous or random answers. Poor temporal stability of responses endorsing CTs may problematize interpretation of survey data. Respondents’ endorsement of CTs may be affected by situational factors, inflating agreement with CTs, and correlations with other survey-based measures.

Information regarding the prevalence and distribution of herbicide-resistant waterhemp [Amaranthus tuberculatus (Moq.) Sauer] in Minnesota is limited. Whole-plant bioassays were conducted in the greenhouse on 90 A. tuberculatus populations collected from 47 counties in Minnesota. Eight postemergence herbicides, 2,4-D, atrazine, dicamba, fomesafen, glufosinate, glyphosate, imazamox, and mesotrione, were applied at 1× and 3× the labeled doses. Based on their responses, populations were classified into highly resistant (≥40 % survival at 3× the labeled dose), moderately resistant (<40% survival at 3× the labeled dose but ≥40% survival at 1× the labeled dose), less sensitive (10% to 39% survival at 1× the labeled dose), and susceptible (<10% survival at 1× the labeled dose) categories. All 90 populations were resistant to imazamox, while 89% were resistant to glyphosate. Atrazine, fomesafen, and mesotrione resistance was observed in 47%, 31%, and 22% of all populations, respectively. Ten percent of the populations were resistant to 2,4-D, and 2 of 90 populations exhibited >40% survival following dicamba application at the labeled dose. No population was confirmed to be resistant to glufosinate. However, 22% of all populations were classified as less sensitive to glufosinate. Eighty-two populations were found to be multiple-herbicide resistant. Among these, 15 populations exhibited resistance to four different herbicide sites of action (SOAs); 7 and 4 populations were resistant to five and six SOAs, respectively. All six-way-resistant populations were from southwest Minnesota. Two populations, one from Lincoln County and the other from Lyon County, were resistant to 2,4-D, atrazine, dicamba, fomesafen, glyphosate, imazamox, and mesotrione, leaving only glufosinate as a postemergence control option for these populations in corn (Zea mays L.) and soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.]. Diversified management tactics, including nonchemical control measures along with herbicide applications from effective SOAs, should be implemented to slow down the evolution and spread of herbicide-resistant A. tuberculatus populations.

In March 2023 the EU-funded CHERISH project published its free user-guide and methodology for investigating heritage and climate change in the coastal and maritime environment (Barker and Corns 2023). This paper provides an overview of the publication, specifically the CHERISH toolkit – the 15 approaches employed by the multi-disciplinary project to investigate at-risk heritage sites in Wales and Ireland. Using the eroding coastal hillfort of Dinas Dinlle in Wales as a case study, the toolkit which combines air, land and sea-based investigation techniques is highlighted. This article will assist users going forward in identifying relevant approaches to the study of their own at-risk sites. It is relevant to a wide-ranging audience anywhere in the world, taking into consideration a variety of requirements such as the environment, budget, and outputs.

This study applies surveys of business and household expenditure to draw inferences about the size of regional multipliers to assess the cascading economic impacts of the data-limited Indonesian tropical tuna fishery. The average business-level production multiplier was estimated at around 1.3 across survey respondents, while household-level consumption effects were considerably higher, with the total economic effect roughly three times larger than the production value. A statistical analysis using generalized additive models suggests that there is considerable difference in production multipliers across regions, driven by the individual characteristics of operators, such as revenue/profit, size of the boat, type of gear, and the class of the port where the business is located. This research has the potential to provide a practical management tool to measure flow-on economic impacts of a fishery when information necessary for more formal economic analysis is unavailable, such as for data-limited fisheries or small regional studies.

Genotype-based dietary and physical activity advice can be delivered to young adults before unhealthy lifestyle behaviours or metabolic and physiological conditions have developed. The aim of the present study was to investigate the factors that influence the intention to adopt genotype-based personalised advice on diet and physical activity in young adults who perceive themselves to be a healthy weight versus those who perceive themselves to be overweight or obese. An online survey of 396 young adults (18–25 years) evaluated background factors (participant characteristics (including perception of body weight), psychological factors, belief composites) and constructs of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) related to the adoption of genotype-based personalised advice. The association between background factors and TPB constructs was assessed using multiple linear regression. The constructs of TPB predicted intention to adopt genotype-based personalised nutrition (P < 0.001, adj. R2 = 0.54; attitude: B = 0.24, subjective norm: B = 0.25, PBC: B = 0.45). Background factors including belief composites, health locus of control, gender, physical activity, and food choice motives of ‘health’, ‘price’, ‘familiarity’, ‘weight control’, and ‘convenience’ significantly added to models of TPB constructs related to the intention to adopt personalised advice (P < 0.05). The influence of background factors varied between TPB constructs and differed based on participants perception of their body weight. The study provides support for the use of the TPB in understanding the intention of young adults to adopt gene-based advice for dietary and physical activity behaviour. In addition to perceived body weight, the background factors identified should help to inform and modify the delivery of advice in behaviour change interventions that seek to use genotype-based personalised advice in young adult populations.

Sharing ideas through communication with peers is the primary mode of human interaction. Consequently, extensive research has been conducted in the area of conversational AI, leading to an increase in the availability and diversity of conversational tasks, datasets, and methods. However, with numerous tasks being explored simultaneously, the current landscape of conversational AI has become fragmented. Consequently, initiating a well-thought-out model for a dialogue agent can pose significant challenges for a practitioner. Toward highlighting the critical ingredients needed for a practitioner to design a dialogue agent from scratch, the current study provides a comprehensive overview of the primary characteristics of a dialogue agent, the supporting tasks, their corresponding open-domain datasets, and the methods used to benchmark these datasets. We observe that different methods have been used to tackle distinct dialogue tasks. However, building separate models for each task is costly and does not leverage the correlation among the several tasks of a dialogue agent. As a result, recent trends suggest a shift toward building unified foundation models. To this end, we propose Unit, a Unified dialogue dataset constructed from conversations of varying datasets for different dialogue tasks capturing the nuances for each of them. We then train a Unified dialogue foundation model, GPT-2$^{\textrm{U}}$ and present a concise comparative performance of GPT-2$^{\textrm{U}}$ against existing large language models. We also examine the evaluation strategies used to measure the performance of dialogue agents and highlight the scope for future research in the area of conversational AI with a thorough discussion of popular models such as ChatGPT.

Digital Twins are perceived differently between and within industry and academia regarding applications and potentials. For this reason, a round table was formed based on the Digital Twin Workshop of the Design Conference 2022. One of the results of this round table is this contribution, which deals with a survey within the industry. The survey captured the understanding of the different roles in the creation and use of Digital Twins, the requirements and hurdles as well as the perception of methodological support. In addition, factors that influence the perception were identified.

This article presents a landscape assessment of the findings from the 2021 Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) Evaluators Survey. This survey was the most recent iteration of a well established, national, peer-led systematic snapshot of the CTSA evaluators, their skillsets, listed evaluation resources, preferred methods, and identified best practices. Three questions guided our study: who are the CTSA evaluators, what competencies do they share and how is their work used within hubs. We describe our survey process (logistics of development, deployment, and differences in historical context with prior instruments); and present its main findings. We provide specific recommendations for evaluation practice in two main categories (National vs Group-level) including, among others, the need for a national, strategic plan for evaluation as well as enhanced mentoring and training of the next generation of evaluators. Although based on the challenges and opportunities currently within the CTSA Consortium, takeaways from this study constitute important lessons with potential for application in other large evaluation consortia. To our knowledge, this is the first time 2021 survey findings are disseminated widely, to increase transparency of the CTSA evaluators' work and to motivate conversations within hub and beyond, as to how best to leverage existent evaluative capacity.

Paratonia is a form of hypertonia characterized by an inability to relax muscles in the setting of cognitive impairment. Paratonia results in pain, refusal of care, and caregiver burden. We sent surveys to 67 Canadian physiatrists and neurologists regarding their experience treating paratonia with botulinum toxin A (BoNT-A). Twenty-seven survey respondents were included in the analysis. Thirteen percent of survey respondents treating paratonia with BoNT-A reported a significant clinically relevant improvement; 74% endorsed a moderately clinically relevant improvement; 13% endorsed a slight clinically relevant improvement. Ninety percent of survey respondents endorsed significant barriers in treating paratonia with BoNT-A.

A survey for slug- and snail-associated nematodes was conducted in forests, parks, botanical gardens, and nature reserves at 13 localities in Belgium to uncover more diversity of gastropod mollusc-associated nematodes and to characterise Pellioditis populations found in the country. A total of 319 slugs and snails belonging to nine species were examined. Arion vulgaris was the most commonly found mollusc species in this study (eight locations), and 19.4% of the examined mollusc specimens were found infected by nematodes. The highest prevalence of nematodes was observed in Cornu aspersum (60%) followed by A. vulgaris (34.8%), Limax maximus (28.6%), and Cepaea sp. (20%). Eleven nematode species belonging to eight families were isolated and identified from the mollusc hosts including Alloionema appendiculatum, Angiostoma dentiferum, A. gandavense, Angiostrongylus vasorum, Cosmocerca longicauda, Panagrolaimus cf. subelongatus, Pellioditis californica, P. hermaphrodita, Rhabditis sp., Tetrameres cf. fissispina, and Troglostrongylus cf. brevior. Pellioditis was the most commonly found nematode genus (at nine localities) and C. longicauda and P. californica were reported in Belgium for the first time. Co-infections of more than one nematode species were observed in eight (2.5%) molluscs specimens. Most co-infections consisted of two nematode species. In one A. vulgaris specimen, a co-infection of three nematode species (A. vasorum, P. hermaphrodita, and Tetrameres cf. fissispina) was observed. Four ex vivo cultures of P. californica and six ex vivo cultures of P. hermaphrodita were established from single hermaphrodites, and both species were described based on light microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and morphometric, morphological, and molecular data.

Conservation agriculture (CA) is an approach to farming that is defined by three principles: (1) minimal soil disturbance (no-till), (2) crop diversity in time and space, and (3) soil coverage by crop residues and/or cover crops. These principles provide a roadmap to protect and improve soil. However, the narrow criteria for defining CA may fail to account for tradeoffs between soil health and other ecosystem services. A literature review of meta-analyses dealing with CA and an online survey in France were conducted to explore the implementation and performances of CA. Research on CA systems has focused on crop productivity and soil quality whereas research on other dimensions of cropping system sustainability are lacking. The effects of CA on other aspects of sustainability such as biodiversity and profitability are less prevalent in the literature. The online survey results show that 63% of respondents thought that CA helps reduce pesticide use, 91% that CA improves water use efficiency, and 77% that CA helps to store carbon and achieve the objectives of the 4 per 1000 international initiative. Given the prevalence and widespread support for CA, we advocate for moving CA from its current definition based on the means toward a definition that includes performance-based metrics that address different ecosystem services. CA has potential to help address challenges associated with climate change, biodiversity loss, and water pollution, but opportunities may be missed without developing performance targets that go beyond soil conservation.