Soil fertility comparison among organic and conventional managed citrus orchards in Sicily.

In recents years, organic farming is expanding in Southern Italy and in the Mediterranean area, due to interest of consumers and EU agricultural policies. Evaluation of organic farming system introduction on soil quality and fertility status should be taken into account in order to define medium-long term environmental and agricultural strategies, on both locol and national scale. Soil physical, chemical and biological parameters represent effective tools to evaluate soil quality and changes in soil fertility status, as a consequence of different agronomic management (i.e. organic vs coventional). The aim of this work was to compare soil fertility of conventional and organic managed citrus Orchards, using specific soil system descriptors. The research was carried out in a Mediterranean environment (Sicil Region, Southern Italy), on Navelina and Tarocco orchards. Soil characteristics were analysed in 54 farms under both organic and conventional management. Farms were selected to obtain similar pairs (27) in the same environmental conditions. Moreover, orchards pairs were homogeneous for age, cultivar and rootsock to reduce effects not linked to soil management. For each soil, total organic carbon, total nitrogen, mineral NO3-N and NH4-N were determined. In addition, in order to evaluate biological fertility of the considered soils, carbon mineralisation and nitrogen mineralisation in anaerobic conditions were studied. Soils' humic fraction was at least characterised qualitatively by isoelectric focusing technique,to obtain information on soil organic matter stability. Potenzially mineralisable carbon and cumulative mineralised carbon determined on 21 days experimental trials differed significantly in organic and conventional soils. Since this significance was detected also for cumulative mineralised carbon after 7 days, probably C-mineralisation represents the more reliable and prompter indicator to discriminate soil biological fertility with respect to the other tested ones. Moreover, it should be remarked that some parameters (as total nitrogen content, mineralised carbon after 1 days and the more humified organic matter fraction), even if not yet significantly different, revealed a strong tendency to increase in organic managed soils, attesting that the organic citrus orchards can be considered systems able to conserve energy and store nutrients more than the conventional ones

Adapted Extended Baum-Welch transformations

The discrimination technique for estimating parameters of Gaussian mixtures that is based on the Extended Baum-Welch transformations (EBW) has had significant impact on the speech recognition community. \ud In this paper we introduce a general definition of a family of EBW transformations that can be associated with a weighted sum of updated and initial models. We compute a gradient steepness measurement for a family of EBW transformations that are applied to functions of Gaussian mixtures and demonstrate the growth property of these transformations. We consider EBW transformations of discriminative functions in which EBW controlled parameters are adapted to a gradient steepness measurement or to the likelihood of the data given the model. We present experimental results that show that adapted EBW transformations can significantly speed up estimating parameters of Gaussian mixtures and give better decoding results

A Giant Lipoma In The Hand - Report Of A Rare Case

A 38 years old male patient presented with a large painless swelling in the right palm with ultrasound examination suggestive of fatty nature of the swelling MRI showing a well-circumscribed soft tissue swelling in the deep palmar space. The giant tumor of 6.5 X 4 cm was excised and the patient was symptom free two years following the surgery

Effect of cultivar and soil characteristics on nutritional value in organic and conventional wheat

Evidence of greater nutritional value in organic crops is currently a subject of intense debate. Our objectives in this study were to test for grain mineral concentration in 35 winter wheat cultivars in paired organic and conventional systems, and to determine the influence of cultivar, soil characteristics and farming system on mineral concentration. Here we report preliminary results that show that the grain mineral concentration in organic wheat was higher for copper (Cu), magnesium (Mg), manganese (Mn), phosphorus (P) and zinc (Zn) and lower in calcium (Ca), than the grain mineral concentration in conventional wheat. No difference was found between systems for iron (Fe) concentration. Cultivar was significant in determining mineral concentration for Ca, Cu, Mg, Mn and P. Soil mineral concentration was not responsible for grain mineral concentration, with the exception of P. The organic wheat farming systems had higher grain mineral concentrations of Cu, Mg, Mn, P and Zn than the conventional systems, possibly due in part to increased soil organic matter and pH in the organic systems. Growing specific cultivars capable of exploiting particular soil conditions may be necessary in order to optimize the nutritional value in organic farming systems

L’immersion précoce en allemand au cycle 1 dans le canton de Neuchâtel :: l’enseignement des langues en Suisse dans un contexte européen

La migration des populations, tant au niveau cantonal, national, européen que mondial, influence inévitablement les politiques éducatives qui doivent s’adapter au contexte social. Chaque individu, en Suisse comme ailleurs, a son propre profil linguistique et culturel. C’est pourquoi, l’enseignement doit privilégier l’intercompréhension en développant des compétences communicatives. C’est au Canada que l’immersion linguistique est née. Il s’agit d’une situation de formation bilingue où un certain nombre de disciplines non linguistiques sont enseignées dans une autre langue que la langue de scolarisation. Cette approche novatrice de l’enseignement d’une langue étrangère a eu du succès et s’est répandue dans plusieurs pays. Actuellement, en Suisse, l’immersion précoce en allemand au cycle 1 est expérimentée dans les cantons francophones et permet d’initier l’élève à l’allemand dès l’école enfantine. Dans le canton de Neuchâtel, ce projet a débuté il y a quatre ans. Mon travail s’intéresse donc à la façon dont les enseignants conçoivent leurs séquences d’apprentissage pour permettre aux élèves d’acquérir des compétences linguistiques et disciplinaires, tout en sachant que le matériel didactique est limité et que la formation des enseignants n’est pas encore au point

Facing the organic reality : the diversity of development models and their consequences on research policies

While OF&F specificity or diversity are acknowledged in many studies, the process of selecting development models is still a pending issue. Based on literature review and our experience, we propose a comprehensive description of such models. Two main axes determine four models. The first axis refers to governance patterns, whether individual or collective. The second one opposes means-based OF to system redesign. Four models are then described, and potential transitions among them are discussed. The role and nature of public policies likely to support candidate models is finally examined. On this basis, this paper intends to openly lay down the stakes of a public research policy for OF&F. As the current poli-cies generally consider implicitly OF&F as an homoge-nous entity, the authors emphasize it’s the diversity and show how the research agendas are strongly connected to the development models for OF&F

Global challenges of graduate level Ayurvedic education: A survey

In the present day scenario, Ayurveda is globally being perceived in several contradictory ways. Poor quality of Ayurveda graduates produced as a result of poorly structured and poorly regulated education system is at least one of the important factors responsible for this scenario. The present study was carried out to evaluate the 'Global challenges of graduate level Ayurvedic education' and is based on the responses of Ayurvedic students and Ayurvedic teachers from various educational institutions of India to a methodically validated questionnaire. As the study indicates, the poor standard of Ayurvedic education in India is definitely a cause of concern. The curriculum of Bachelor of Ayurvedic Medicine and Surgery (BAMS) course of studies is required to be reviewed and restructured. The syllabi are required to be updated with certain relevant topics like laws governing the intellectual property rights, basic procedures of standardization of medicinal products, fundamental methods of evaluating the toxicity of the medicinal products, essentials of healthcare management and the basics of cultivation and marketing of medicinal plants. Furthermore, the study suggests that the Ayurvedic academicians are required to be trained in standard methods of research and documentation skills, and the educational institutions are required to be encouraged to contribute their share in building up the evidence base for Ayurveda in the form of quality education and research