Alabama State University

Hemp (Cannabis sativa L.) is an important crop, yet little is known about how herbivory and soil microbial communities interact to influence plant performance. In this study, two hemp cultivars, BaOx and Cherry Citrus, were grown under identical greenhouse conditions and exposed to naturally occurring background populations of the two-spotted spider mite (Tetranychus urticae). Plant traits were measured, and rhizosphere soil was sampled for 16S rRNA gene sequencing to compare bacterial community composition and diversity between cultivars. Spider mite injury was assessed using a standardized 0-5 visual damage scale commonly applied in integrated pest management studies. Although the cultivars did not differ significantly in growth traits, Cherry Citrus experienced significantly less spider mite damage than BaOx, suggesting greater tolerance or resistance to herbivory under shared conditions. Rhizosphere bacterial communities differed markedly between cultivars despite identical soil and environmental conditions. BaOx rhizospheres were enriched in Actinobacteria, including taxa associated with decomposition and antimicrobial compound production, whereas Cherry Citrus rhizospheres were enriched in Alphaproteobacteria, particularly nitrogen-cycling and root-associated taxa such as Rhizobium and Reyranella. Alpha diversity metrics did not differ between cultivars; however, beta diversity analyses revealed significant cultivar-level separation, particularly in phylogenetic community structure. Because herbivore pressure and microbial communities were not experimentally manipulated, this observational study identifies ecological associations rather than direct causal relationships. Nevertheless, the results demonstrate that hemp cultivar identity is associated with distinct rhizosphere microbiomes and differential susceptibility to spider mite damage. These findings highlight the potential for integrating cultivar selection and microbiome-informed strategies into sustainable pest management programs for hemp.

BackgroundSustaining health professional education (HPE) programs to meet workforce needs is an ongoing challenge. Evolving healthcare practices, societal influences, and emerging technologies create new challenges for HPE programs. Therefore, this study aimed to 1) identify and describe factors that affect orthotic-prosthetics (O&P) HPE sustainability within the United States and 2) recommend factors to monitor for sustainability and prioritize for sustainment efforts.MethodsAn online survey was developed using an adapted grounded theoretical approach and administered to a purposive sample to capture insights from O&P professionals across the United States. Open-ended responses were analyzed using line-by-line analysis. The original research question and data-generated themes were continually revisited during analyses to elucidate clear connections between the "strengths" and "challenges" of sustaining O&P HPE programs. Next, data were sorted into two a priori-identified groups based on the participant's primary occupational setting: "academic" and "practice." Finally, the authors used an inductive approach to identify themes that revealed strengths and challenges. Themes were then categorized by their relationship to O&P HPE or the O&P profession.ResultsFifty participants completed the survey - twenty-four from O&P practice and twenty-six from education settings. Strengths included Outcomes, Curriculum Content, Program Model, Delivery Methods and Student Attributes. Challenges included the Costs to Implement Programs, Setting, Academic Personnel, External/ Internal Support, Accreditation, Cost for Students, Awareness of the Profession, Value of Education/ Certification, Workforce, Credentialing Model, Resistance to Change, and Business and Policy Issues of the Profession. Strengths and challenges were separated into two categories: education-related and profession-related. Participants from both academic and practice settings reported more challenges to sustainability than strengths in both categories. Overall, the most frequently noted strength was educational outcomes while the most frequently noted challenge was the cost to implement programs - both in the education-related area. Within the profession-related category, the most frequently noted challenge expressed by respondents from academic and practice settings was awareness of the profession.ConclusionsSustainability is an ongoing process. Accreditation and credentialing organizations could use the factors identified in this paper as determinants to track sustainability and focus sustainment efforts.

Sugars are the structural building blocks of carbohydrates, which are transported through a series of transporters in plant. To explore the molecular mechanisms of how transporters, play roles in uptake, transport and mobilization of sugars in maize, a series of bioinformatics analyses were done to identify and characterize the transporters. Following the analyses, 60 sugar transporters were identified in maize, which shared eight (STP, PLT, ERD6, INT, TMT, pGlcT, SUC, and VGT) clades during phylogenetic analysis. Due to having significant differences in molecular weight, multiple beta-strands, transmembrane helices, and 11-12 transmembrane domains, the transports might play significant variations in functional properties. Since most transporters are plasma membrane bound, and have the highest homolog pairs (39) with S. bicolor during synteny analysis, the transporters might be involved in intercellular sugar transport that are conserved and significantly duplicated during the process of evolution. The lowest binding affinity (ΔG: - 7.1 kcal/mol) in ZmVGT1-Suc docked complex, and most commonly found hydrogen bond mediated attachment of valine residue ligand might represent the complex stability and functional integrity of the complex. Indeed, the RMSD deviation of 1 (for ZmST10-Gal) to 3 Å (for ZmST10-Glu) among the docked complexes might guide the subtle conformational differences that could impact the functional roles of the complexes. Next, during co-expression analysis, clustering of 491 genes with 43 maize sugar transporter into four co-expression clusters and five different metabolic pathways might guide their inter regulatory roles in interacting different metabolic pathways. More specifically, co-expression of ZmSTP9 and ZmPLT10 with the MYB8 and A6b stress-responsive transcription factors might guide their stress regulatory mechanisms. The RNA-Seq based observation of differential tissue specific expression and expression under salinity, drought, nitrogen deficiency, and heat stress and qRT-PCR mediated validation of differential tissue specific expression and upregulation of ZmPLT1, ZmPLT8, ZmSTP1, ZmTMT1, and ZmSUC3 under salinity stress might guide their potential roles in abiotic stress tolerance. The plasma membrane localized validation of subcellular localization of ZmPLT1 and ZmPLT8 proteins might guide the consistent results between dry and wet lab experiments. Therefore, the identified and characterized maize sugar transporters through integrated dry and wet lab experiments might guide the future research in developing abiotic stress tolerant maize and exploring the molecular mechanism of stress tolerance trough transporter guided regulation of maize abiotic stress signaling pathways following circuit enabled synthetic biology approaches.

In this paper, we introduce new generalized Hermite–Hadamard–Mercer and trapezoidal-type inequalities involving the k-Beta function. Our approach is based on Pavić’s generalized Jensen–Mercer inequality and highlights a unified way to obtain various integral estimates. The main novelty lies in extending several known results. In particular, we complement and generalize already established results in the literature by incorporating the k-Beta function and a broader Mercer-type method. With a new lemma, we also give explicit trapezoid-type error estimates for differentiable functions whose first derivatives satisfy certain convexity conditions. To illustrate the applications, we present several inequalities for special means of positive real numbers, such as power, harmonic-type, and exponential means. We also provide numerical examples and graphs to support our theoretical findings and demonstrate the accuracy of the new bounds.