Crop pests and predators exhibit inconsistent responses to surrounding landscape composition

The idea that noncrop habitat enhances pest control and represents a win–win opportunity to conserve biodiversity and bolster yields has emerged as an agroecological paradigm. However, while noncrop habitat in landscapes surrounding farms sometimes benefits pest predators, natural enemy responses remain heterogeneous across studies and effects on pests are inconclusive. The observed heterogeneity in species responses to noncrop habitat may be biological in origin or could result from variation in how habitat and biocontrol are measured. Here, we use a pest-control database encompassing 132 studies and 6,759 sites worldwide to model natural enemy and pest abundances, predation rates, and crop damage as a function of landscape composition. Our results showed that although landscape composition explained significant variation within studies, pest and enemy abundances, predation rates, crop damage, and yields each exhibited different responses across studies, sometimes increasing and sometimes decreasing in landscapes with more noncrop habitat but overall showing no consistent trend. Thus, models that used landscape-composition variables to predict pest-control dynamics demonstrated little potential to explain variation across studies, though prediction did improve when comparing studies with similar crop and landscape features. Overall, our work shows that surrounding noncrop habitat does not consistently improve pest management, meaning habitat conservation may bolster production in some systems and depress yields in others. Future efforts to develop tools that inform farmers when habitat conservation truly represents a win–win would benefit from increased understanding of how landscape effects are modulated by local farm management and the biology of pests and their enemies

Esotericism made exoteric? Insider and outsider perspectives on the 2006 Mormon Temple Public Open House in Espoo, Finland

The purpose of this article is to discuss two perspectives on Latter-day Saints’ (Mormons') temple open houses. First, that of the Latter-day Saints themselves, who are placed in a delicate situation as they present the temple to the public while simultaneously desiring to preserve its esoteric nature. What do they want to accomplish and how do they go about doing it? Second, the perspective of the public, whose reactions exemplify layman views of what it can be like to peek into a sacred and esoteric world foreign to oneself. What kinds of forms can their thoughts take at Mormon temple open houses? The particular case considered in this article is the autumn 2006 open house at the Helsinki Finland temple

A wideband blocker-resilient RF front-end with selective input-impedance matching for direct-ΔΣ-receiver architectures

This paper presents a wideband blocker-tolerant RF front-end suitable for direct-ΔΣ-E-receivers. Blockers are attenuated by providing low receiver input impedance at blocker frequencies while for desired frequency the input impedance is boosted to matched condition by providing an up-converted positive feedback from the baseband stage. RF front-end is evaluated on 28nm fully-depleted silicon-on-insulator CMOS process with current consumption of 8mA, excluding local-oscillator drive, at 1V supply voltage. Front-end is reconfigurable from 0.7-3GHz with maximum noise figure of 5dB and achieves an out-of-band 1dB compression point of 0dBm at 100MHz local oscillator frequency offset.Peer reviewe

A wideband blocker-resilient direct delta sigma receiver with selective input-impedance matching

This paper presents a wideband blocker-tolerant direct DR receiver (DDSR). Blockers are attenuated through selective input impedance matching and reduced gain design. The selective input impedance profile provides a low impedance at blocker frequencies enabling blocker attenuation, while the in-band impedance is boosted to matched condition through an up-converted positive feedback from the DDSR output. In addition, with the help of reduced gain design, near band blocker gain is minimized, further improving the blocker resilience. The receiver is designed for configurable operation from 0.7-2.7 GHz and a baseband bandwidth of 10 MHz. Simulated in a 28 nm technology, the DDSR demonstrates a maximum noise figure of 6.2 dB, and achieves a peak SNDR of 53 dB with an out-of-band 1 dB input compression point of - 11 dBm at a 100 MHz offset.Peer reviewe

Quantization noise upconversion effects in mixer-first direct delta-sigma receivers

In this paper, we investigate the application of the direct ΔΣ receiver (DDSR) concept in a mixer-first architecture. Specifically, we analyze the degrading effects of quantization noise (Qn) upconversion on DDSR sensitivity, which is a major concern in mixer-first DDSR architecture. We demonstrate that with the chosen approach, the mixer-first architecture is suitable for the DDSR despite the potential challenges arising from Qn upconversion. A systematic modeling and understanding of Qn upconversion effects is presented, which lead to simple design guidelines. The results demonstrate that a first-order low-pass Qn filtering is sufficient in most cases for mixer-first DDSR implementations. Based on analytical results, we design a transistor-level mixer-first DDSR by merging the functionality of N-path capacitors both as channel select and Qn filters. Simulations performed in a 28-nm complementary metal-oxideŰsemiconductor (CMOS) process show a mere 1.5-dB degradation from maximum signal-to-noise and distortion ratio (SNDR) for the worst-case scenarios arising from Qn upconversion effects, validating the chosen approach.Peer reviewe