Forage quality of rillscale ( Atriplex suckleyi ) grown on amended bentonite mine spoil

At peak standing crop, rillscale ( Atriplex suckleyi ) foliage grown on amended bentonite mine spoil contained adequate digestible energy, crude protein, and all mineral elements except phosphorus necessary for cattle, sheep, antelope, and deer. Amendments (sawdust, NPK, gypsum) generally did not affect forage quality. Iron, manganese, aluminum, sodium, and potassium concentrations were high and may have adversely affected forage quality. Forage utility would be limited to a few months during the growing season.     

Computing texture boundaries from images

Recent computational and psychological theories of human texture vision assert that texture discrimination is based on first-order differences in geometric and luminance attributes of texture elements, called 'textons'. Significant differences in the density, orientation, size, or contrast of line segments or other small features in an image have been shown to cause immediate perception of texture boundaries. However, the psychological theories, which are based on the perception of synthetic images composed of lines and symbols, neglect two important issues. First, how can textons be computed from grey-level images of natural scenes? And second, how, exactly, can texture boundaries be found? Our analysis of these two issues has led to an algorithm that is fully implemented and which successfully detects boundaries in natural images. We propose that blobs computed by a centre-surround operator are useful as texture elements, and that a simple non-parametric statistic can be used to compare local distributions of blob attributes to locate texture boundaries. Although designed for natural images, our computation agrees with some psychophysical findings, in particular, those of Adelson and Bergen (described in the preceding article), which cast doubt on the hypothesis that line segment crossings or termination points are textons.     

Genome-wide association analysis identifies three psoriasis susceptibility loci

We carried out a meta-analysis of two recent psoriasis genome-wide association studies with a combined discovery sample of 1,831 affected individuals (cases) and 2,546 controls. One hundred and two loci selected based on P value rankings were followed up in a three-stage replication study including 4,064 cases and 4,685 controls from Michigan, Toronto, Newfoundland and Germany. In the combined meta-analysis, we identified three new susceptibility loci, including one at NOS2 (rs4795067, combined P = 4 × 10?11), one at FBXL19 (rs10782001, combined P = 9 × 10?1?) and one near PSMA6-NFKBIA (rs12586317, combined P = 2 × 10??). All three loci were also associated with psoriatic arthritis (rs4795067, combined P = 1 × 10??; rs10782001, combined P = 4 × 10??; and rs12586317, combined P = 6 × 1??) and purely cutaneous psoriasis (rs4795067, combined P = 1 × 10??; rs10782001, combined P = 2 × 10??; and rs12586317, combined P = 1 × 10??). We also replicated a recently identified association signal near RNF114 (rs495337, combined P = 2 × 10??).     

Relating soil chemistry and plant relationship in wooded draws of the northern Great Plains

Soils of the green ash/chokecherry habitat type in northwestern South Dakota were evaluated for 22 properties to determine whether any could be correlated with density of chokecherry ( Prunus virginiana ) and snowberry ( Symphoricarpos occidentalis ). Surface soils were moderately fertile, with high levels of all elements except phosphorus and nitrogen. Soils were fine textured with moderately high cation exchange capacity and saturation percentages. However, soils were nonsaline-nonalkaline with low amounts of exchangeable sodium. None of the soil properties showed good correlation with chokecherry and snowberry densities. Greatest correlations were found between each of the shrub species and grass.