Providing Precision Farming Education Through Conferences and Workshops

In response to rapidly growing interest in precision farming, universities and others have developed numerous educational programs. Many of these events are multi-day conferences and workshops as these venues provide the time necessary for attendees to learn about the many technologies, analysis approaches, and management strategies that make up precision farming. The Washington State University Western Precision Agriculture Conference, the Assiniboine Community College Precision Agriculture Conference and the University of Nebraska–Lincoln Crop Modeling for Environment-Specific Management Workshop exemplify these types of educational programs. The Western Precision Agriculture Conference uses a traditional format where the audience primarily listens to presentations. The Assiniboine Community College Precision Agriculture Conference provides a mixture of presentations and hands-on sessions where attendees actually use precision farming tools or develop site-specific management plans. Finally, those who attend the University of Nebraska–Lincoln Crop Modeling for Environment-Specific Management Workshop complete exercises related to each topic and presentation. Because a conference or workshop brings many experts together for a short period of time, organizers of all three events have tried to capture conference content for later use in other educational programs. Their approaches to this include videotaping interviews of conference speakers and assembling software and data used during the conference on compact disk. Given the multidisciplinary nature of precision farming, conferences and workshops that utilize multiple expert presenters such as those discussed in this paper are among the best sources of precision farming education.     

Domesticated nature: shaping landscapes and ecosystems for human welfare

Like all species, humans have exercised their impulse to perpetuate and propagate themselves. In doing so, we have domesticated landscapes and ecosystems in ways that enhance our food supplies, reduce exposure to predators and natural dangers, and promote commerce. On average, the net benefits to humankind of domesticated nature have been positive. We have, of course, made mistakes, causing unforeseen changes in ecosystem attributes, while leaving few, if any, truly wild places on Earth. Going into the future, scientists can help humanity to domesticate nature more wisely by quantifying the tradeoffs among ecosystem services, such as how increasing the provision of one service may decrease ecosystem resilience and the provision of other services.     

Genetic determination of phenotypic variation in sickle cell trait

Two genetic sources of variation influence the percentage of sickle cell hemoglobin found in heterozygotes. One factor is strongly related to the percentage of hemoglobin S in the carrier parent and appears to be determined by sickle hemoglobin isoalleles, whereas the other is related to racial background and may well be polygenic.