Perennial Ryegrass Variety Differences in Nutritive Value Characteristics

Animal grazing performance at grass is predominately determined by herbage intake rates, with high yielding dairy cows requiring up to 20 kg/d DM within a limited grazing time (Gibb, 1998). Grass nutritional factors such as seasonal patterns in digestibility and water-soluble carbohydrate levels have been linked to animal productivity (Davies et al., 1991), while sward surface height, herbage mass, bulk density and green leaf mass have been shown to promote high grazing intake (Barrett et al., 2001). Furthermore, fatty acid profiles have been shown to improve the unsaturated fatty acid composition of milk, with potential human health benefits (Parodi, 1997). Recent CAP funding changes are expected to intensify the drive to optimise margin over costs. Given that grazed grass is the cheapest ruminant feed, it is expected that nutritive value characteristics of grass varieties will become increasingly important relative to total productivity, both as a breeding objective and as an evaluation criteria by variety testers and by farmers. This study examined the genetic diversity in such parameters among a wide range of perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.) varieties, as an indicator of the heterogeneity among current varieties and the prospects for improvement by selective breeding

G_2 Perfect-Fluid Cosmologies with a proper conformal Killing vector

We study the Einstein field equations for spacetimes admitting a maximal two-dimensional abelian group of isometries acting orthogonally transitively on spacelike surfaces and, in addition, with at least one conformal Killing vector. The three-dimensional conformal group is restricted to the case when the two-dimensional abelian isometry subalgebra is an ideal and it is also assumed to act on non-null hypersurfaces (both, spacelike and timelike cases are studied). We consider both, diagonal and non-diagonal metrics and find all the perfect-fluid solutions under these assumptions (except those already known). We find four families of solutions, each one containing arbitrary parameters for which no differential equations remain to be integrated. We write the line-elements in a simplified form and perform a detailed study for each of these solutions, giving the kinematical quantities of the fluid velocity vector, the energy-density and pressure, values of the parameters for which the energy conditions are fulfilled everywhere, the Petrov type, the singularities in the spacetimes and the Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker metrics contained in each family.Comment: Latex, no figure

G_2 cosmological models separable in non-comoving coordinates

We study new separable orthogonally transitive abelian G_2 on S_2 models with two mutually orthogonal integrable Killing vector fields. For this purpose we consider separability of the metric functions in a coordinate system in which the velocity vector field of the perfect fluid does not take its canonical form, providing thereby solutions which are non-separable in comoving coordinates in general. Some interesting general features concerning this class of solutions are given. We provide a full classification for these models and present several families of explicit solutions with their properties.Comment: latex, 26 pages, accepted for publication in Class. Quantum Gra

Distributional Modes for Scalar Field Quantization

We propose a mode-sum formalism for the quantization of the scalar field based on distributional modes, which are naturally associated with a slight modification of the standard plane-wave modes. We show that this formalism leads to the standard Rindler temperature result, and that these modes can be canonically defined on any Cauchy surface.Comment: 15 pages, RevTe

The Existence of Double-Burden of Malnutrition in the Same Households in Eastern Indonesia: Analysis Using Global Vs. Alternative Asian BMI Cut-off Points

The study utilizes the data from the first round of Indonesian Family Life Survey conducted in the eastern part of the country (IFLS East) during 2012 to identify child-mother pairs which experience the Double Burden of Malnutrition (DBM) - a situation where overnutrition of the mother and undernutrition of the child coexist within the same household. The analyisis is done using several cross tabulations and comparisons to determine outcomes for the two separate Body Mass Index (BMI) measurement classifications; the Global-Cut off and the Asian Cut-off. The study also explores the difference in household characteristic as factors contributing to DBM. The results showed that the prevalence of child undernourishment within the IFLS East is considerably high, especially for the stunting prevalence (44%). The results also showed that the use of the Asian-Cut off for classification of BMI raises the prevalence of mothers in the categories of overweight and obese from 32% to 46%, consequently raising the prevalence of DBM child-mother pairs by 6 percentage points. The study was able to detect a significant risk factor for DBM of maternal short stature, but was not able to detect other significant factors leading to the presence of the DBM child-mother pair. The paper argues that more research is required into the special characteristics of the women in between the two cut-off classifications, as well as their children. Findings of the additional research may lead to a determination of the appropriateness of the Asian Cut-off as more accurately capturing the severity and prevalence of double burden of malnutrition amongst the population. Several policy recommendations for the further monitoring and analysis of DBM and obesity amongst women of child bearing age are provided

Language and Groundwater: Symbolic Gradients of the Anthropocene

This article argues that geographers must study the power of words as integral parts of human–environment relationships, with particular attention to local meanings, to intervene more effectively in the Anthropocene. Words are important tools by which people come to understand environmental changes and develop plans to facilitate mitigation and adaptation or, alternatively, to postpone these responses. This project considers the portion of Texas underlain by the Ogallala aquifer as a system of communication, exploring stakeholder articulations through in-depth interviews. The semiotic concepts of gradients, grading, degradation, and grace are employed to facilitate consideration of how verbal articulations intersect with resource use, conservation, anthropogenic environmental change, and action within a highly conservative political context.Office of the VP for Researc

Top quark physics in hadron collisions

The top quark is the heaviest elementary particle observed to date. Its large mass makes the top quark an ideal laboratory to test predictions of perturbation theory concerning heavy quark production at hadron colliders. The top quark is also a powerful probe for new phenomena beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. In addition, the top quark mass is a crucial parameter for scrutinizing the Standard Model in electroweak precision tests and for predicting the mass of the yet unobserved Higgs boson. Ten years after the discovery of the top quark at the Fermilab Tevatron top quark physics has entered an era where detailed measurements of top quark properties are undertaken. In this review article an introduction to the phenomenology of top quark production in hadron collisions is given, the lessons learned in Tevatron Run I are summarized, and first Run II results are discussed. A brief outlook to the possibilities of top quark research a the Large Hadron Collider, currently under construction at CERN, is included.Comment: 84 pages, 32 figures, accepted for publication by Reports on Progress in Physic

The European Union, borders and conflict transformation: the case of Cyprus

Much of the existing literature on the European Union (EU), conflict transformation and border dynamics has been premised on the assumption that the nature of the border determines EU intervention and the consequences that flow from this in terms of EU impact. The article aims to transcend this literature through assessing how domestic interpretations influence EU border transformation in conflict situations, taking Cyprus as a case study. Moreover, the objective is to fuse the literature on EU bordering impact and perceptions of the EU’s normative projection in conflict resolution. Pursuing this line of inquiry is an attempt to depart from the notion of borders being constructed solely by unidirectional EU logics of engagement or bordering practices to a conceptualization of the border as co-constituted space, where the interpretations of the EU’s normative projections by conflict parties, and the strategies that they pursue, can determine the relative openness of the EU border

Preserving the impossible: conservation of soft-sediment hominin footprint sites and strategies for three-dimensional digital data capture.

Human footprints provide some of the most publically emotive and tangible evidence of our ancestors. To the scientific community they provide evidence of stature, presence, behaviour and in the case of early hominins potential evidence with respect to the evolution of gait. While rare in the geological record the number of footprint sites has increased in recent years along with the analytical tools available for their study. Many of these sites are at risk from rapid erosion, including the Ileret footprints in northern Kenya which are second only in age to those at Laetoli (Tanzania). Unlithified, soft-sediment footprint sites such these pose a significant geoconservation challenge. In the first part of this paper conservation and preservation options are explored leading to the conclusion that to 'record and digitally rescue' provides the only viable approach. Key to such strategies is the increasing availability of three-dimensional data capture either via optical laser scanning and/or digital photogrammetry. Within the discipline there is a developing schism between those that favour one approach over the other and a requirement from geoconservationists and the scientific community for some form of objective appraisal of these alternatives is necessary. Consequently in the second part of this paper we evaluate these alternative approaches and the role they can play in a 'record and digitally rescue' conservation strategy. Using modern footprint data, digital models created via optical laser scanning are compared to those generated by state-of-the-art photogrammetry. Both methods give comparable although subtly different results. This data is evaluated alongside a review of field deployment issues to provide guidance to the community with respect to the factors which need to be considered in digital conservation of human/hominin footprints