scholarly journals Use of Irrigation Technologies for Vegetable Crops in Florida

2010 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael D. Dukes ◽  
Lincoln Zotarelli ◽  
Kelly T. Morgan

Major horticultural crops in Florida are vegetables, small fruit, melons, and tree fruit crops. Approximately half of the agricultural area and nearly all of the horticultural crop land is irrigated. Irrigation systems include low-volume microirrigation, sprinkler systems, and subsurface irrigation. The present review was divided into two papers, in which the first part focuses on vegetable crop irrigation and the second part focuses on fruit tree crop irrigation. This first part also provides an overview of irrigation methods used in Florida. Factors affecting irrigation efficiency and uniformity such as design and maintenance are discussed. A wide range of soil moisture sensors (e.g., tensiometers, granular matrix, and capacitance) are currently being used in the state for soil moisture monitoring. Current examples of scheduling tools and automated control systems being used on selected crops in Florida are provided. Research data on the effect of irrigation scheduling and fertigation on nutrient movement, particularly nitrate, are reviewed. Concluding this review is a discussion of potential for adoption of irrigation scheduling and control systems for vegetable crops by Florida growers and future research priorities.

2010 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelly T. Morgan ◽  
Lincoln Zotarelli ◽  
Michael D. Dukes

Florida is the most important center of processed citrus (Citrus spp.) production in the United States, and all of the crop is irrigated. Irrigation systems include low-volume microirrigation, sprinkler systems, and subsurface irrigation. This review details the relative irrigation efficiencies and factors affecting irrigation uniformity such as design and maintenance. A wide range of soil moisture sensors (e.g., tensiometers, granular matrix, and capacitance) are currently being used for citrus in the state. The use of these sensors and crop evapotranspiration estimation using weather information from the Florida Automated Weather Network in irrigation scheduling are discussed. Current examples of scheduling tools and automated control systems being used on selected fruit crops in Florida are provided. Research data on the effect of irrigation scheduling, soluble fertilizer injection, and soil nutrient movement, particularly nitrate and the use of reclaimed water in Florida, are also reviewed. Concluding this review is a discussion of the potential for adoption of irrigation scheduling and control systems for citrus by Florida growers and future research priorities.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. e001108
Author(s):  
Omar Heyward ◽  
Stacey Emmonds ◽  
Gregory Roe ◽  
Sean Scantlebury ◽  
Keith Stokes ◽  
...  

Women’s rugby (rugby league, rugby union and rugby sevens) has recently grown in participation and professionalisation. There is under-representation of women-only cohorts within applied sport science and medicine research and within the women’s rugby evidence base. The aims of this article are: Part 1: to undertake a systematic-scoping review of the applied sport science and medicine of women’s rugby, and Part 2: to develop a consensus statement on future research priorities. This article will be designed in two parts: Part 1: a systematic-scoping review, and Part 2: a three-round Delphi consensus method. For Part 1, systematic searches of three electronic databases (PubMed (MEDLINE), Scopus, SPORTDiscus (EBSCOhost)) will be performed from the earliest record. These databases will be searched to identify any sport science and medicine themed studies within women’s rugby. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses extension for Scoping Reviews will be adhered to. Part 2 involves a three-round Delphi consensus method to identify future research priorities. Identified experts in women’s rugby will be provided with overall findings from Part 1 to inform decision-making. Participants will then be asked to provide a list of research priority areas. Over the three rounds, priority areas achieving consensus (≥70% agreement) will be identified. This study has received institutional ethical approval. When complete, the manuscript will be submitted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal. The findings of this article will have relevance for a wide range of stakeholders in women’s rugby, including policymakers and governing bodies.


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 438-477
Author(s):  
Bryan R Early ◽  
Menevis Cilizoglu

Abstract Policymakers employ economic sanctions to deal with a wide range of international challenges, making them an indispensable foreign policy tool. While scholarship on sanctions has tended to focus on the factors affecting their success, newer research programs have emerged that explore the reasons for why sanctions are threatened and initiated, the ways they are designed and enforced, and their consequences. This scholarship has yielded a wealth of new insights into how economic sanctions work, but most of those insights are based on sanctions observations from the 20th Century. The ways that policymakers employ sanctions have fundamentally changed over the past two decades, though, raising concerns about whether historically derived insights are still relevant to contemporary sanctions policies. In this forum, the contributors discuss the scholarly and policy-relevant insights of existing research on sanctions and then explore what gaps remain in our knowledge and new trends in sanctions policymaking. This forum will inform readers on the state of the art in sanctions research and propose avenues for future research.


Author(s):  
Oleg Vasilyevich Tikhanychev

The subject of this research is the process of developing software for automated control systems. The object of research is the means of organizing software development. A generally recognized promising direction for increasing the efficiency of the use of organizational and technical systems is the automation of their management. A significant share of the effectiveness of any complex technical system is provided by its software. This primarily applies to the application software. The development of application programs is fraught with certain difficulties, primarily of an organizational nature. The generalized analysis showed that in world practice there is a fairly wide range of tools for organizing the program development process. These tools are proposed to be divided into two large groups with respect to the attitude to the process and the degree of detail on "project management tools" and "development controls". Each of the tools is effective for certain conditions of software development. The review article analyzes the factors affecting the effectiveness of the use of a particular tool, synthesized proposals on the expediency of using various control systems in different conditions of the development process. The analysis showed that for the conditions of the development of applied software for automated decision support systems, the most effective is the integrated use of process control automation tools.


2014 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 235-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Martin-Biggers ◽  
Kim Spaccarotella ◽  
Amanda Berhaupt-Glickstein ◽  
Nobuko Hongu ◽  
John Worobey ◽  
...  

Abstract The L.E.A.D. (Locate, Evaluate, and Assemble Evidence to Inform Decisions) framework of the Institute of Medicine guided the assembly of transdisciplinary evidence for this comprehensive, updated review of family meal research, conducted with the goal of informing continued work in this area. More frequent family meals are associated with greater consumption of healthy foods in children, adolescents, and adults. Adolescents and children who consume fewer family meals consume more unhealthy food. School-aged children and adolescents who consume more family meals have greater intakes of typically underconsumed nutrients. Increased family meal frequency may decrease risk of overweight or obesity in children and adolescents. Frequent family meals also may protect against eating disorders and negative health behaviors in adolescents and young adults. Psychosocial benefits include improved perceptions of family relationships. However, the benefits of having a family meal can be undermined if the family consumes fast food, watches television at the meal, or has a more chaotic atmosphere. Although these findings are intriguing, inconsistent research methodology and instrumentation and limited use of validation studies make comparisons between studies difficult. Future research should use consistent methodology, examine these associations across a wide range of ages, clarify the effects of the mealtime environment and feeding styles, and develop strategies to help families promote healthful mealtime habits.


2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina Liossi ◽  
Anna-Karenia Anderson ◽  
Richard F Howard ◽  

Priority setting for healthcare research is as important as conducting the research itself because rigorous and systematic processes of priority setting can make an important contribution to the quality of research. This project aimed to prioritise clinical therapeutic uncertainties in paediatric pain and palliative care in order to encourage and inform the future research agenda and raise the profile of paediatric pain and palliative care in the United Kingdom. Clinical therapeutic uncertainties were identified and transformed into patient, intervention, comparison and outcome (PICO) format and prioritised using a modified Nominal Group Technique. Members of the Clinical Studies Group in Pain and Palliative Care within National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Clinical Research Network (CRN)-Children took part in the prioritisation exercise. There were 11 clinically active professionals spanning across a wide range of paediatric disciplines and one parent representative. The top three research priorities related to establishing the safety and efficacy of (1) gabapentin in the management of chronic pain with neuropathic characteristics, (2) intravenous non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs in the management of post-operative pain in pre-schoolers and (3) different opioid formulations in the management of acute pain in children while at home. Questions about the long-term effect of psychological interventions in the management of chronic pain and various pharmacological interventions to improve pain and symptom management in palliative care were among the ‘top 10’ priorities. The results of prioritisation were included in the UK Database of Uncertainties about the Effects of Treatments (DUETS) database. Increased awareness of priorities and priority-setting processes should encourage clinicians and other stakeholders to engage in such exercises in the future.


Plant Disease ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 96 (11) ◽  
pp. 1588-1600 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leah L. Granke ◽  
Lina Quesada-Ocampo ◽  
Kurt Lamour ◽  
Mary K. Hausbeck

Since L. H. Leonian's first description of Phytophthora capsici as a pathogen of chile pepper in 1922, we have made many advances in our understanding of this pathogen's biology, host range, dissemination, and management. P. capsici causes foliar blighting, damping-off, wilting, and root, stem, and fruit rot of susceptible hosts, and economic losses are experienced annually in vegetable crops including cucurbits and peppers. Symptoms of P. capsici infection may manifest as stunting, girdling, or cankers for some cultivars or crops that are less susceptible. P. capsici continues to be a constraint on production, and implementation of an aggressive integrated management scheme can still result in insufficient control when weather is favorable for disease. Management of diseases caused by P. capsici is currently limited by the long-term survival of the pathogen as oospores in the soil, a wide host range, long-distance movement of the pathogen in surface water used for irrigation, the presence of fungicide-resistant pathogen populations, and a lack of commercially acceptable resistant host varieties. P. capsici can infect a wide range of hosts under laboratory and greenhouse conditions including cultivated crops, ornamentals, and native plants belonging to diverse plant families. As our understanding of P. capsici continues to grow, future research should focus on developing novel and effective solutions to manage this pathogen and prevent economic losses due to the diseases it causes.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristina Medlinskiene ◽  
Justine Tomlinson ◽  
Iuri Marques ◽  
Sue Richardson ◽  
Katherine Stirling ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: Implementation and uptake of novel and cost-effective medicines can improve patient health outcomes and healthcare efficiency. However, the uptake of new medicines into practice faces a wide range of obstacles Earlier reviews provided insight into determinants for new medicine uptake (such as medicine, prescriber, patient, organization, and external environment factors), but the methodological approaches used had limitations (e.g., single author, narrative review, narrow search, no quality assessment of reviewed evidence).This systematic review aims to identify barriers and facilitators affecting the uptake of new medicines into clinical practice and identify areas for future research. Method: A systematic search was undertaken within seven databases. Eligible qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods studies focused on adult participants (18 years and older) requiring or taking new medicine(s) for any condition, in the context of healthcare organizations and identified factors affecting the uptake of new medicines. The methodological quality was assessed using QASTDD tool. A narrative synthesis of reported factors was conducted using framework analysis and conceptual framework was utilised to group them. Results: A total of 66 studies were included. Most studies (n=62) were quantitative and used secondary data (n=46) from various databases, e.g., insurance databases. The identified factors had a varied impact on the uptake of the different studied new medicines. Differently from earlier reviews, patient factors (patient education, engagement with treatment, therapy preferences), cost of new medicine, reimbursement and formulary conditions, and guidelines were suggested to influence the uptake. Also, the review highlighted that health economics, wider organizational factors, and underlying behaviours of adopters were not or under explored. Conclusion: This systematic review identifies additional factors affecting new medicine use not reported in earlier reviews, which included patient influence and education level, cost of new medicines, formulary and reimbursement restrictions, and guidelines. Further research employing determinant frameworks or implementation theories is needed to gain a better understanding of factors, especially patient, prescriber, and organizational, affecting the uptake of new medicines into clinical practice.Registration: PROSPERO database (CRD42018108536)


2017 ◽  
Vol 164 (2) ◽  
pp. 77-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel S Burns ◽  
M R Riley ◽  
A Mason ◽  
M S Bailey

IntroductionInfectious diseases are a frequent cause of morbidity among British troops. The aim of this paper is to describe the spectrum of infectious diseases seen when UK service personnel are evacuated for definitive care to the Role 4 Medical Treatment Facility based at Birmingham Heartlands Hospital.MethodA retrospective analysis of all military patients presenting with infectious diseases and treated at Birmingham Heartlands Hospital between 14 April 2005 and 31 December 2013 was undertaken.ResultsDuring this period, 502 patients were identified. Infections originated in 49 countries, most commonly Afghanistan (46% cases), the UK (10% cases) and Belize (9% of cases). The most common presentations were dermatological conditions, gastroenterological illnesses and undifferentiated fevers.ConclusionUK service personnel in significant numbers continue to suffer a wide range of infectious diseases, acquired throughout the globe, which often require specialist tertiary infection services to diagnose and manage. Future prospective data collection is recommended to identify trends, which in turn will inform military training needs and future research priorities in the Defence Medical Services (DMS) and allows development of appropriate policies and clinical guidelines for management of DMS personnel with infectious diseases.


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