Life Sciences Commons^™

Multidisciplinary Research And Extension Team Evolution: Processes, Outcomes, And Strategies, Daren Redfearn, Jay Parsons, Mary Drewnoski

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

Team-based research is not an innovative concept; however, the current models of team research are based principally on self-formed teams with a defined duration. Current trends seem to point toward the development of administratively designed multidisciplinary teams. Although this seems logical, minimal guidelines exist to aid in team development or evaluate team outcomes. Critical processes in a team-based research atmosphere have not been identified, much less described, and strategies for successful implementation have not been proposed. The strength of this approach can be summarized as a unified focus during the course of problem definition and solution. Many trade-offs and obstacles …

Comparison Of An Ultra-Low Volume (Ulv) Sprayer Against A Conventional Sprayer, For Foliar Fertiliser And Fungicide Applications In Turfgrass, Jason Connor Ferguson, Roch E. Gaussoin, John A. Eastin, Matthew D. Sousek, Greg R. Kruger

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

Two field studies (I and II) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln: John Seaton Anderson Turfgrass Research Facility near Mead, NE, USA, were conducted to determine if a new ultra-low volume (ULV) sprayer can apply foliar nutrient, growth regulator, and fungicide treatments, in a manner similar to that of a conventional sprayer. Treatments were applied over creeping bentgrass ‘L-93’ (Agrostis stolonifera L.) managed as a fairway at 561 l · ha⁻¹ and 47 l · ha⁻¹ with the conventional and ULV sprayer, respectfully. Data were collected for chlorophyll content with a chlorophyll meter, and for the normalised difference …

Organic Struggle: The Movement For Sustainable Agriculture In The United States [Book Review], Charles A. Francis

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

Organic Struggle chronicles the challenges encountered by innovators in a growing segment of the U.S. food production and marketing system. Practiced for millennia by farmers before the introduction of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and first developed more formally in Europe, organic farming practices began to gain prominence in the United States only in the 1950s. Far more than a system for producing food, this strategy has become a focus for those supporting healthy and pesticide-free products, for some who embrace the organic system as a food movement, and by many who disagree with the current domination of the country’s food …

Identification And Verification Of Qtl Associated With Frost Tolerance Using Linkage Mapping And Gwas In Winter Faba Bean, Ahmed Sallam, Mustapha Arbaoui, Mohamed El-Esawi, Nathan Abshire

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

Frost stress is one of the abiotic stresses that causes a significant reduction in winter faba bean yield in Europe. The main objective of this work is to genetically improve frost tolerance in winter faba bean by identifying and validating QTL associated with frost tolerance to be used in marker-assisted selection (MAS). Two different genetic backgrounds were used: a biparental population (BPP) consisting of 101 inbred lines, and 189 genotypes from single seed descent (SSD) from the Gottingen Winter bean Population (GWBP). All experiments were conducted in a frost growth chamber under controlled conditions. Both populations were genotyped using the …

Animal Sentience: The Other-Minds Problem, Stevan Harnad

Animal Sentience

The only feelings we can feel are our own. When it comes to the feelings of others, we can only infer them, based on their behavior — unless they tell us. This is the “other-minds problem.” Within our own species, thanks to language, this problem arises only for states in which people cannot speak (infancy, aphasia, sleep, anaesthesia, coma). Our species also has a uniquely powerful empathic or “mind-reading” capacity: We can (sometimes) perceive from the behavior of others when they are in states like our own. Our inferences have also been systematized and operationalized in biobehavioral science …

Nonhuman Mind-Reading Ability, Marthe Kiley-Worthington

Animal Sentience

Harnad (2016) is mistaken that humans are better at mind-reading than other species. Humans have context-independent language, but nonhuman species, especially mammals, have context-dependent nonverbal skills – perceptual, communicative and social -- that can be much keener than our own.

Considering Animals’ Feelings: Précis Of Sentience And Animal Welfare (Broom 2014), Donald M. Broom

Animal Sentience

The concept of sentience concerns the capacity to have feelings. There is evidence for sophisticated cognitive concepts and for both positive and negative feelings in a wide range of nonhuman animals. All vertebrates, including fish, as well as some molluscs and decapod crustaceans have pain systems. Most people today consider that their moral obligations extend to many animal species. Moral decisions about abortion, euthanasia, and the various ways we protect animals should take into account the research findings about sentience. In addition, all animal life should be respected and studies of the welfare of even the simplest invertebrate animals should …

From Sentience To Science: Limits Of Anthropocentric Cognition, Charukeshi Chandrasekera

Animal Sentience

Donald Broom’s Sentience and Animal Welfare (2014) is an intellectually and morally engaging book written with radical new concepts in mind. It deals with many issues that are central to the animal welfare debate such as brain complexity, cognitive ability, when in life sentience begins, and how it all affects the way we endorse welfare. It addresses how our insatiable quest to define the uniqueness of our own species has led us to ignore logic and scientific evidence. It also brings greater clarity to these precarious positions and outlines pragmatic approaches to tackling this complex topic of sentience and welfare.

Sentience And Animal Welfare: Affirming The Science And Addressing The Skepticism, Nancy Clarke

Animal Sentience

Broom’s (2014) book is a well-researched and thoroughly written exploration and evaluation of the journey from the origins of animal welfare science to what we can say we now know and need to consider in relation to animal sentience and welfare. This book will help to counter any skepticism among academics and policy makers.

Linking Animal Ethics And Animal Welfare Science, Sue Donaldson, Will Kymlicka

Animal Sentience

Broom (2014) argues that theories of animal ethics need to be better informed by the findings of animal welfare science. We agree, but argue that animal welfare science in turn may need to ask different questions. To date it has largely assumed that society will continue to treat domesticated animals as a caste group that exists to serve us, and that animal welfare is to be improved within that legal and political framework. We offer an alternative model of human-animal relations, and discuss what kind of animal welfare science it would require.

Is Sentience Only A Nonessential Component Of Animal Welfare?, Ian J.H. Duncan

Animal Sentience

According to Broom (2014), animal welfare is a concept that can be applied to all animals, including single-celled organisms that are obviously not sentient. Such a stance makes it difficult to draw a connection between welfare and sentience, and that is the book’s downfall. Some excellent points are made about sentience and there are very good discussions on animal welfare. However, unless sentience is considered the essential component of welfare, any attempt to link the two phenomena will be unsuccessful — and that, indeed, is the case with this book.

Animal Welfare And Animal Rights, M.E. Rolle

Animal Sentience

This overview of Broom’s book, Sentience and Animal Welfare (2014), considers the role the book could play in the animal rights debate. In a thoroughly researched and objectively presented text, Broom lays out information that could place doubt in the minds of decision-makers. By highlighting not just the ways animals resemble humans, but also the ways humans resemble animals, Broom shines a light on a solidly grey area in the animal rights debate.

Sentience And Animal Welfare: New Thoughts And Controversies, Donald M. Broom

Animal Sentience

Sentience involves having some degree of awareness but awareness of self is not as complex as some people believe. Fully functioning vertebrate animals, and some invertebrates, are sentient but neither humans nor non-humans are sentient early in development or if brain-damaged. Feelings are valuable adaptive mechanisms and an important part of welfare but are not all of welfare so the term welfare refers to all animals, not just to sentient animals. We have much to learn about what non-human animals want from us, the functioning of the more complex aspects of their brains and of our brains and how we …

No Evidence That Pain Is Painful Neural Process, Riccardo Manzotti

Animal Sentience

Key (2016) claims that fish do not feel pain because they lack the neural structures that have a contingent causal role in generating and feeling pain in mammals. I counterargue that no conclusive evidence supports the sufficiency of any mammalian neural structure to produce pain. We cannot move from contingent necessity in mammals to necessity in every organism.

Why Babies Do Not Feel Pain, Or: How Structure-Derived Functional Interpretations Can Go Wrong, Helmut Segner

Animal Sentience

The response to pain involves a non-conscious, reflexive action and a conscious perception. According to Key (2016), consciousness — and thus pain perception — depends on a neuronal correlate that has a “unique neural architecture” as realized in the human cortex. On the basis of the “bioengineering principle that structure determines function,” Key (2016) concludes that animal species such as fish, which lack the requisite cortex-like neuroanatomical structure, are unable to feel pain. This commentary argues that the relationship between brain structure and brain function is less straightforward than suggested in Key’s target article.

Fish Pain: Would It Change Current Best Practice In The Real World?, B. K. Diggles

Animal Sentience

Much of the “fish pain debate” relates to how high the bar for pain should be set. The close phylogenetic affinities of teleosts with cartilaginous fishes which appear to lack nociceptors suggests caution should be applied by those who seek to lower the bar, especially given the equivocal and conflicting nature of the experimental data currently available for teleosts. Nevertheless, even if we assume fish “feel pain,” it is difficult to see how current best practice in aquaculture would change. This is because of the need to avoid stress at all stages of the rearing process to optimize health, growth …

Leaving The Door Open For Fish Pain: Evolutionary Convergence And The Utility Of ‘Just-So Stories’, David B. Edelman

Animal Sentience

Key argues that fish do not experience pain because they lack the necessary (but not necessarily sufficient) brain structures and associated functional circuitry to engender such conscious percepts. I propose that fish pain may be dependent on neuroanatomical regions and pathways that are structurally and/or functionally analogous — but not strictly homologous — to well-characterized mammalian substrates of pain. An example is the convergent appearance of the complex, single-compartment eye across invertebrate and vertebrate phylogeny. Structural-functional convergence is ubiquitous in evolution. Comparative inferences and correlative lines of evidence play an important role in building evolutionary arguments. The dismissal of the …

Going Beyond Just-So Stories, Brian Key

Animal Sentience

Colloquial arguments for fish feeling pain are deeply rooted in anthropometric tendencies that confuse escape responses to noxious stimuli with evidence for consciousness. More developed arguments often rely on just-so stories of fish displaying complex behaviours as proof of consciousness. In response to commentaries on the idea that fish do not feel pain, I raise the need to go beyond just-so stories and to rigorously analyse the neural circuitry responsible for specific behaviours using new and emerging technologies in neuroscience. By deciphering the causal relationship between neural information processing and conscious behaviour, it should be possible to assess cogently the …

How Welfare Biology And Commonsense May Help To Reduce Animal Suffering, Yew-Kwang Ng

Animal Sentience

Welfare biology is the study of the welfare of living things. Welfare is net happiness (enjoyment minus suffering). Since this necessarily involves feelings, Dawkins (2014) has suggested that animal welfare science may face a paradox, because feelings are very difficult to study. The following paper provides an explanation for how welfare biology could help to reduce this paradox by answering some difficult questions regarding animal welfare. Simple means based on commonsense could reduce animal suffering enormously at low or even negative costs to humans. Ways to increase the influence of animal welfare advocates are also discussed, focusing initially on farmed …

Animal Welfare Cannot Adequately Protect Nonhuman Animals: The Need For A Science Of Animal Well-Being, Marc Bekoff, Jessica Pierce

Animal Sentience

A focus on animal welfare in the use of nonhuman animals in the service of human economic and scientific interests does not and cannot adequately protect (nonhuman) animals. It presupposes that using other animals for human ends is acceptable as long as we try our best to improve the welfare of the animals we use. We argue instead for a “science of animal well-being” in which the protection of animal needs is not subordinated to human economic or scientific interests.

What’S The Common Sense Of Just Some Improvement Of Some Welfare For Some Animals?, Liv Baker

Animal Sentience

The goal of Animal Welfare Science to reduce animal suffering is commendable but too modest: Suffering animals need and deserve far more.

Animal Suffering Calls For More Than A Bigger Cage, Simon R. B. Leadbeater

Animal Sentience

Ng (2016) argues for incremental welfare biology partly because it would be impossible to demonstrate conclusively that animals are sentient. He argues that low cost changes in industrial practices and working collaboratively may be more effective in advancing animal welfare than more adversarial approaches. There is merit in some of Ng’s recommendations but a number of his arguments are, in my view, misdirected. The fact that nonhuman animals feel has already been adequately demonstrated. Cruelty to animals is intrinsic to some industries, so the only way to oppose it is to oppose the industry.

Why Animal Welfarism Continues To Fail, Lori Marino

Animal Sentience

Welfarism prioritizes human interests over the needs of nonhuman animals. Despite decades of welfare efforts other animals are mostly worse off than ever before, being subjected to increasingly invasive and harmful treatments, especially in the factory farming and biomedical research areas. A legal rights-based approach is essential in order for other animals to be protected from the varying ethical whims of our species.

End-State Welfarism, Joel Marks

Animal Sentience

Yew-Kwang Ng’s research is the work of an obviously sincere, intelligent, and conscientious animal advocate. But I am unable to accept his starting assumption that animal welfare is an appropriate basis for animal ethics. More specifically I argue that animal welfare as a means to animal liberation is an issue that can be debated, but animal welfare as the ultimate end or goal of animal advocacy is misguided.

Molecular Mechanisms Of Suberoylanilide Hydroxamic Acid In The Inhibition Of Tgf-Β1-Mediated Canine Corneal Fibrosis, Kristina M. Gronkiewicz, Elizabeth A. Giuliano, Ajay Sharma, Rajiv R. Mohan

Pharmacy Faculty Articles and Research

Objective—To investigate molecular mechanisms mediating anti-fibrotic effect of SAHA in the canine cornea using an in vitro model. We hypothesized that SAHA attenuates corneal fibrosis by modulating Smad-dependent and, to a lesser extent, Smad-independent signaling pathways activated by TGF-β1, as well as matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) activity.

Methods—Cultured canine corneal fibroblasts (CCF) were incubated in the presence/absence of TGF-β1 (5ng/ml) and SAHA (2.5μM) for 24hrs. Western blot analysis was used to quantify non-phosphorylated and phosphorylated isoforms of Smad2/3, p38 MAP kinase (MAPK), ERK1/2 and JNK1. Real-time PCR and zymography were utilized to quantify MMP1, MMP2, MMP8 and MMP9 mRNA expression and …

2016 Weed Science Research Report – Blue Section, Ndsu Weed Science, Dept. Of Plant Sciences

Plant Sciences Weed Science Reports

The Weed Science team at North Dakota State University conduct field research in the State of North Dakota. This specific document reports on field research conducted in 2016. It includes work on corn, soybean and the management of several weeds in North Dakota.

2016 Weed Science Research Report – Gold Section, Ndsu Weed Science, Dept. Of Plant Sciences

Plant Sciences Weed Science Reports

The Weed Science team at North Dakota State University conduct field research in the State of North Dakota and Minnesota. This specific document reports on field research conducted in 2016. It includes work on sugarbeet and the management of several weeds in North Dakota.

2016 Weed Science Research Report – Green Section, Ndsu Weed Science, Dept. Of Plant Sciences

Plant Sciences Weed Science Reports

The Weed Science team at North Dakota State University conduct field research in the State of North Dakota. This specific document reports on field research conducted in 2016. It includes work on small grains and the management of several weeds in North Dakota.

2016 Weed Science Research Report – White Section, Ndsu Weed Science, Dept. Of Plant Sciences

Plant Sciences Weed Science Reports

The Weed Science team at North Dakota State University conduct field research in the State of North Dakota. This specific document provides environmental, indexes, abbreviations and collaborators in 2016.

Enabling Method To Design Versatile Biomaterial Systems From Colloidal Building Blocks, Shalini Saxena, L. Andrew Lyon

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

Development of materials with fine spatial control over topographical, mechanical, or chemical features has been investigated for a variety of applications. Here we present a method to fabricate an array of polyelectrolyte constructs including two-dimensionally and three-dimensionally patterned assemblies using both compressible and incompressible colloidal building blocks. This method eliminates prior constraints associated with specific chemistries, and can be used to develop modular, multi-component, patterned assemblies. In particular, development of constructs were investigated using microgels, which are colloidally stable hydrogel microparticles, polystyrene (PS) beads, and PS-microgel core-shell building blocks in conjunction with the polycation poly(ethyleneimine) (PEI). The topography, mechanical properties, …