The Potassium,Sodium, Magnesium,Calcium and Phosphate Nutrition of Sugarbeet (Beta vulgaris) Grown on Soils Containing Incorporated Straw

Between 1990 and 1992, a series of three experiments compared the effects of incorporating or removing straw from a total of five preceding cereal crops on the nutrient concentration, uptake and processing quality of sugarbeet. Incorporated straw increased K concentrations in tops and roots and increased total K uptake by c 40 kg ha^-1. Conversely, incorporated straw reduced Na concentrations and reduced total Na uptake by c 10 kg ha^-1. Straw incorporation had little effect on root processing quality, because whilst K impurities increased in the straw incorporated treatments, Na impurities were reduced. Generally, any effects of straw disposal method on concentration and uptake of phosphorus, calcium and magnesium were small and of little agronomic or economic significance. In the absence of regular soil analysis it is recommended that when straw has been incorporated that K fertiliser rates for beet are reduced by c 20 kg ha^-1. This is less than the allowance made for cereals. Also, contrary to the current cereal recommendation, there was no evidence for reducing P inputs when straw had been incorporated. © 1997 SCI.     

Hygienic level and surface contamination in fresh-cut vegetable production plants

The number of vegetable processing plants has increased during recent years in many countries. At the same time, fresh vegetable products have been implicated by epidemiologic investigations as sources of infection. Fresh vegetables are susceptible to microbial contamination after harvest due to their high water and nutrient contents. Contamination may occur at all stages during production. The aim of this study was to determine the level of surface contamination after cleaning in several fresh-cut vegetable processing plants, and to identify the critical points in the processes and operating rooms. Surface and environmental samples were taken from the plants after cleaning of the processing devices and surfaces. The levels of surface and air hygiene in the vegetable processing factories were determined with different rapid hygiene monitoring methods. The amounts of total aerobic bacteria, Enterobacteriaceae and β-glucuronidase-positive bacteria, yeasts and moulds on surfaces were measured using Hygicult^® contact plates. ATP bioluminescence was measured luminometrically with an HY-LiTE^®2 equipment. The number of microbes in air was measured with an MAS-100 sampler. The highest levels of total aerobic bacteria, yeasts, Enterobacteriaceae and β-glucuronidase-positive bacteria were detected on machines (cutters, peeling machines etc.). High mean values of ATP were detected e.g. on packaging surfaces (due to high values of wooden boxes) and on cutters. Most of the bacterial counts measured on the surfaces were unacceptable when using the Finnish surface hygiene guidelines as criteria. However, the results should be examined in the context of the type of production and the stage of operation also must be taken into account. Different hygiene areas (FDA, 2008) should be separate enough to allow maintenance of good hygiene in cleaner areas while accepting lower hygiene levels e.g. in primary (early) washing steps. Despite this, the results show that there is a clear need to improve cleaning and hygiene practices in vegetable production. Several practical recommendations were given e.g. concerning cleaning, design of production areas, training of employees and self monitoring of surface hygiene. The information obtained will be used for improvement of practices in the cleaning of vegetable processing factories.     

Influence of polymers on microstructure and adhesive strength of cementitious tile adhesive mortars

The impact of polymer modification on the physical properties of cementitious mortars is investigated using a multimethod approach. Special emphasis is put on the identification and quantification of different polymer components within the cementitious matrix. With respect to thin-bed applications, particularly tile adhesives, the spatial distributions of latex, cellulose ether (CE), polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), and cement hydration products can be quantified. It is shown that capillary forces and evaporation induce water fluxes in the interconnected part of the pore system, which transport CE, PVA, and cement ions to the mortar interfaces. In contrast, the distribution of latex remains homogeneous. In combination with results from qualitative experiments, the quantitative findings allow reconstruction of the evolution from fresh to hardened mortar, including polymer film formation, cement hydration, and water migration. The resulting microstructure and the failure modes can be correlated with the final adhesive strength of the tile adhesive. The results demonstrate that skinning prior to tile inlaying can strongly reduce wetting properties of the fresh mortar and lower final adhesive strength.     

How woodcocks produce the most brilliant white plumage patches among the birds

Until recently, and when compared with diurnal birds that use contrasting plumage patches and complex feather structures to convey visual information, communication in nocturnal and crepuscular species was considered to follow acoustic and chemical channels. However, many birds that are active in low-light environments have evolved intensely white plumage patches within otherwise inconspicuous plumages. We used spectrophotometry, electron microscopy, and optical modelling to explain the mechanisms producing bright white tail feather tips of the Eurasian woodcock Scolopax rusticola. Their diffuse reflectance was approximately 30% higher than any previously measured feather. This intense reflectance is the result of incoherent light scattering from a disordered nanostructure composed of keratin and air within the barb rami. In addition, the flattening, thickening and arrangement of those barbs create a Venetian-blind-like macrostructure that enhances the surface area for light reflection. We suggest that the woodcocks have evolved these bright white feather patches for long-range visual communication in dimly lit environments.     

Developing Cross-Cultural Communication Skills

Engineers have traditionally focused on hard-skill knowledge acquisition, but the increasingly multicultural work practices of professional engineers now demand better soft-skill proficiency, such as foreign language ability, communication confidence, and cross-cultural experience. Students and staff within a university engineering department were surveyed to identify how cross-cultural language use potentially impacted academic and communication performance. The results indicate that engineering faculties may be concentrating on subject content at the expense of facilitating the development of soft skills. The findings suggest that students do experience problems with communication skills that may be exacerbated when studying in a second language. Lecturers need to become more energized to introduce innovative curriculum schemes, more proactive in developing challenging learning approaches, and more willing to integrate cross-cultural, language, and communication skills training into traditional engineering contexts. This case study has implications for any university engineering department where students are taught either partially or solely in a second language and where issues of communication and culture are recognized as impacting the professional development of engineers for the global workplace.     

Social support and the quality of parenting under economic pressure and workload in Finland: The role of family structure and parental gender.

This study focused on how factors outside the home affect the quality of mothering and fathering. Economic pressure and workload were evaluated along with the compensating role of social support on parenting. Information was gathered from 842 mothers and 573 fathers including 139 single-mother and 21 single-father families. The results showed that the nature of the strains, together with parental gender and family structure, influenced their effects on parenting. The results further revealed some gender- and strain-specific protective functions of social support on parenting. For example, economic pressure was related to increased punitive parenting, which was compensated by instrumental and emotional support among the mothers. Workload was related to less authoritative single fathering, which was compensated by instrumental support. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Detection of karst cavities by geophysical methods

Bulletin of Engineering Geology and the Environment - At two dam construction sites in Central America geophysical tests were conducted in a karstic environment in order to evaluate the...     

Cortical surface shape analysis based on spherical wavelets

In vivo quantification of neuroanatomical shape variations is possible due to recent advances in medical imaging and has proven useful in the study of neuropathology and neurodevelopment. In this paper, we apply a spherical wavelet transformation to extract shape features of cortical surfaces reconstructed from magnetic resonance images (MRIs) of a set of subjects. The spherical wavelet transformation can characterize the underlying functions in a local fashion in both space and frequency, in contrast to spherical harmonics that have a global basis set. We perform principal component analysis (PCA) on these wavelet shape features to study patterns of shape variation within normal population from coarse to fine resolution. In addition, we study the development of cortical folding in newborns using the Gompertz model in the wavelet domain, which allows us to characterize the order of development of large-scale and finer folding patterns independently. Given a limited amount of training data, we use a regularization framework to estimate the parameters of the Gompertz model to improve the prediction performance on new data. We develop an efficient method to estimate this regularized Gompertz model based on the Broyden-Fletcher-Goldfarb-Shannon (BFGS) approximation. Promising results are presented using both PCA and the folding development model in the wavelet domain. The cortical folding development model provides quantitative anatomic information regarding macroscopic cortical folding development and may be of potential use as a biomarker for early diagnosis of neurologic deficits in newborns.     

Subdivision shell elements with anisotropic growth

A thin shell finite element approach based on Loop's subdivision surfaces is proposed, capable of dealing with large deformations and anisotropic growth. To this end, the Kirchhoff–Love theory of thin shells is derived and extended to allow for arbitrary in‐plane growth. The simplicity and computational efficiency of the subdivision thin shell elements is outstanding, which is demonstrated on a few standard loading benchmarks. With this powerful tool at hand, we demonstrate the broad range of possible applications by numerical solution of several growth scenarios, ranging from the uniform growth of a sphere, to boundary instabilities induced by large anisotropic growth. Finally, it is shown that the problem of a slowly and uniformly growing sheet confined in a fixed hollow sphere is equivalent to the inverse process where a sheet of fixed size is slowly crumpled in a shrinking hollow sphere in the frictionless, quasistatic, elastic limit. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Growth of immobilized DNA by polymerase: bridging nanoelectrodes with individual dsDNA molecules

We present a method for controlled connection of gold electrodes with dsDNA molecules (locally on a chip) by utilizing polymerase to elongate single-stranded DNA primers attached to the electrodes. Thiol-modified oligonucleotides are directed and immobilized to nanoscale electrodes by means of dielectrophoretic trapping, and extended in a procedure mimicking PCR, finally forming a complete dsDNA molecule bridging the gap between the electrodes. The technique opens up opportunities for building from the bottom-up, for detection and sensing applications, and also for molecular electronics.