(Press-News.org) The increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events like droughts and floods have taken a toll on the midwestern U.S. in recent years, putting a major strain on the region's farmers. From 2001 to 2010, the Federal Crop Insurance Program, a government program created to protect farmers from crop loss, covered $4.1 billion in damages; in 2011 alone, the program paid out $10.8 billion.
With the largest U.S. crop -- corn -- conservatively estimated to drop in yield anywhere from 20 to 80 percent due to extreme weather exacerbated by climate change, insurance claims may skyrocket to levels that may not be sustainable. But researchers from the Yale School of the Environment (YSE) found that by considering soil properties when determining insurance premiums could be beneficial to both farmers and insurers.
A study published in Environmental Research Letters uses years of data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to outline how higher levels of soil organic matter improve water retention, which can mitigate crop yield losses from drought. If insurers were to include oft-omitted data on soil health when determining premiums, the researchers say, insurance liabilities could drop considerably, while food security increases.
"It's been commonly thought for a while that if you have more soil organic matter, you are more drought resilient," says Dan Kane, a PhD student at YSE and lead author of the study. "What we're able to show is data backing this -- and how much more resilient the crops can be in more severe weather conditions."
Using USDA data on county-wide corn yields, the researchers determined that increasing soil organic matter by one percent would reduce the average proportion of liabilities under severe drought conditions by 36 percent. It would also increase corn yields by roughly 35 bushels per acre, they estimate -- roughly one ton.
Additional co-authors include Mark Bradford, professor of soils and ecosystem ecology at YSE; Emily Oldfield '19 PhD, a postdoctoral fellow at the Environmental Defense Fund; Stephen Wood, a research scientist at YSE and The Nature Conservancy; and Emma Fuller, director of sustainability science at the farming software company Granular.
The current system for providing crop insurance is complex. The Federal Crop Insurance Program, which is partially subsidized by federal dollars, very strictly controls insurance premiums and which local insurers can sell and service insurance policies. Kane explains that these premiums are typically determined by historical yield data, which may prove ineffective when faced with increasingly variable and extreme weather.
"There need to be other factors added to the equation, and the soil itself seems an obvious one for land-based agriculture" Bradford says, adding that the USDA data also identifies counties where corn has not been a successful crop.
Bradford, Kane, Oldfield and Wood were also authors of a quarterly research review published by the Aspen Global Change Institute this month, titled "Understanding Soil Carbon Science To Identify Strategies for Climate Mitigation and Adaptation." The review focuses on a November 2019 study published in Nature Sustainability, led by Bradford, which raised concern over the public debate on the potential for soil carbon to mitigate climate change.
"Given the momentum in the soil carbon space, the need for clear communication is more important than ever and will help ensure policy, markets, and management actions are well-informed and successful," the authors wrote in the review, offering suggestions for moving forward.
INFORMATION:
Less than a decade after unveiling the "Map of Life," a global database that marks the distribution of known species across the planet, Yale researchers have launched an even more ambitious and perhaps important project -- creating a map of where life has yet to be discovered.
For Walter Jetz, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale who spearheaded the Map of Life project, the new effort is a moral imperative that can help support biodiversity discovery and preservation around the world.
"At the current pace of global environmental change, there is no doubt that many species will go extinct before we have ever learned ...
Efficient conversion of CO2 is strategically significant for alleviating the energy crisis and achieving the goal of carbon neutrality. One promising conversion route is the hydrogenation of CO2 to methanol using a renewable energy-based "green hydrogen" source.
Traditional metal oxide catalysts for this reaction typically require a high temperature (>300 oC), which tends to promote undesired reverse water-gas shift (RWGS) side reactions, thus producing a large amount of CO as the by-product.
Introduction of transition metal components onto metal oxides can promote the activation of H2, thereby reducing the reaction temperature, but this also facilitates excessive hydrogenation of CO2 to CH4, leading to lowered methanol selectivity. Further improvement of the performance ...
Physicians across the country have analyzed the emerging scientific data about the long-term effects of COVID-19, creating an initial knowledge base about the clinical experiences of so-called "long-haulers" - patients with COVID-19 who experience prolonged symptoms and/or the emergence of new ones well after the initial viral infection has resolved. A comprehensive review published today in Nature Medicine offers an initial glimpse of the multi-organ effects of long-term COVID-19 and suggests a framework for the care of COVID-19 long-haulers through dedicated, multidisciplinary clinics.
"It was important to respond to our patients' concerns and pay close attention to the symptoms they were experiencing beyond the acute phase of COVID-19," said Kartik Sehgal, MD, a lead ...
Oncotarget published "Predictors of immunotherapy benefit in Merkel cell carcinoma" which reported that the authors retrospectively analyzed electronic health records and next-generation sequencing data of 45 patients treated at our institution from 2013 to 2020 to understand clinical and genomic correlates of benefit from immunotherapy.
They reported that their cohort predominantly included individuals with stage III disease at primary disease diagnosis and individuals with stage IV disease at recurrent/metastatic disease diagnosis.
Less advanced stages at primary disease diagnosis and shorter disease-free interval between completion of initial treatment and recurrence were each associated with greater odds of response.
Single-nucleotide ...
Oncotarget published "Cytogenetic and molecular landscape and its potential clinical significance in Hispanic CMML patients from Puerto Rico" which reported that one hundred and eleven Hispanic CMML patients from Puerto Rico were diagnosed in our institute from 2009 to 2018. Karyotypes were available in one hundred and seven patients.
Compared to previously published data, Hispanic CMML patients in this study had significantly lower rates of overall cytogenetic abnormalities and trisomy 8.
Among one hundred and eleven Hispanic CMML patients, 40-gene myeloid molecular profile tests were performed in fifty-six CMML patients.
Previous studies indicated that mutated ASXL1, DNMT3A, NRAS, RUNX1, and SETBP1 may associate with an unfavorable prognosis ...
Oncotarget published "Ibuprofen disrupts a WNK1/GSK3β/SRPK1 protein complex required for expression of tumor-related splicing variant RAC1B in colorectal cells" which reported that although the molecular mechanism behind the antitumor properties of NSAIDs has been largely attributed to inhibition of cyclooxygenases , several studies have shown that the chemopreventive properties of ibuprofen also involve multiple COX-independent effects.
One example is its ability to inhibit the alternative splicing event generating RAC1B, which is overexpressed in a specific subset ...
Aging-US published "Aging and rejuvenation - a modular epigenome model" which reported that the view of aging has evolved in parallel with the advances in biomedical sciences.
Long considered as an irreversible process where interventions were only aimed at slowing down its progression, breakthrough discoveries like animal cloning and cell reprogramming have deeply changed our understanding of postnatal development, giving rise to the emerging view that the epigenome is the driver of aging. The idea was significantly strengthened by the converging discovery that DNA methylation at specific CpG sites could be used as a highly accurate biomarker of age defined by an algorithm known as the Horvath clock (also published in Aging-US here).
It was at this point ...
Having the right tool for the job makes the job a lot easier, less expensive and faster. Chemical engineering researchers have now developed a virtual laboratory that can be used to determine the artificial intelligence (AI) tools best suited for addressing various chemical synthesis challenges in flow chemistry systems.
"Autonomous systems have tremendous potential for accelerating chemical R&D and manufacturing, but they are not in widespread use yet," says Milad Abolhasani, corresponding author of a paper on the work and an assistant professor of chemical engineering at North Carolina State University. "These systems face two kinds of ...
Scientists from MIPT and ITMO University and their colleagues have studied the formation and growth of crystals from simple organic molecules into large associations. These experiments will help create capsules for targeted drug delivery to specific tissues in the human body. The scientific paper was published in the journal Crystal Growth & Design.
Melamine cyanurate consists of melamine, colourless crystals, and cyanuric acid, whose molecules associate in a similar way to DNA formation. The various studies associated with it could be useful ...
COLUMBUS, Ohio - As psychedelics gain ground as a potential therapy for mental health disorders, there remains a pressing concern that patients in clinical trials may have adverse effects to the drugs.
New research identifies personality traits that have been associated with positive and negative experiences on psychedelics in previous studies, information that could help predict how future clinical trial participants will respond to the drugs.
The findings suggest that people more open to new experiences and willing to surrender to the unknown may be best positioned to have a positive experience on psychedelics, and individuals who tend to be preoccupied or apprehensive could be more likely to have a ...
