Carrot or stick? – Would information concerning the economic value of nutrient losses, and their impact on food quality achieve greater environmental protection than regulation?

This report was presented at the UK Organic Research 2002 Conference. Organic standards have, since their origin (Soil Association 1967) required high standards of manure management, but in reality, these have not been implemented, possibly because of perceived costs of improved handling. However, a cost/benefit analysis of intermediate steps of nutrient conservation and manure handling may provide a practical solution, optimising retention of nutrients, financial and time inputs and environmental protection. Recent research on composting with conventional manures has quantified nutrient losses from heaps with different treatments (Parkinson et al, 2001). Financial and environmental costs and benefits of different management approaches are discussed

Visual protest material as empirical data

In recent years, various elaborate visual methods have been introduced for carrying out empirically controlled sociological studies. However, in contrast to other sociological sub-fields, research on protest events or social movements rarely employs visual analytic procedures. In this article, a research sample of visual protest material is taken to show how applied visual methods can increase the outcome of protest or social movement research. This study highlights how visual analysis provides extra information for supporting or rejecting interpretations, thus demonstrating that visual methods are an important tool in the triangulation of empirical methods. © SAGE Publications 2011

Fifth Graders Talk about Leisure Reading: a Series of Focus Groups

The purpose of this study was to discover the attitudes, behaviors and interests of fifth grade students concerning leisure time reading. The subjects consisted of nine focus groups of five students each (n=45) selected from fifth grade classes within Monroe County school districts. The schools were stratified by location including urban, suburban, and rural environments. Student selection was made by classroom teachers based on a variety of reading abilities and gender. Focus groups were interviewed regarding their leisure time reading habits, interests and behaviors. Group responses were then analyzed qualitatively and grouped into various categories. While the results did indicate a decline in leisure time reading, it was apparent that students in the fifth grade know what types of materials they enjoy reading, when they choose to read. Television viewing was reported as a favorite activity, as well as playing sports and spending time with friends. Reading was enjoyed most by suburban fifth graders. Magazines were the favorite medium for all groups of students, followed by books. Most read subjects included sports, humor, romance, fantasy and mystery. Higher ability readers tended to read more and have more confidence, while lower ability students preferred other activities. Those students who were read to as young children also reported more positive attitudes than those students not read to

Tangentially Driven Active Polar Linear Polymers -- An Analytical Study

The conformational and dynamical properties of isolated flexible active polar linear polymers (APLPs) are studied analytically. The APLPs are modeled as Gaussian bead-spring linear chains augmented by tangential active forces, both in a discrete and continuous representations. The polar forces lead to linear non-Hermitian equations of motion, which are solved by an eigenfunction expansion in terms of a biorthogonal basis set. Our calculations show that the polymer conformations are independent of activity. On the contrary, tangential propulsion strongly impacts the polymer dynamics and yields an active ballistic regime as well as activity-enhanced long-time diffusion, regimes which are both absent in passive systems. The polar forces imply a coupling of modes in the eigenfunction representation, in particular with the translational mode, with a respective strong influence on the polymer dynamics. The total polymer mean-square displacement on scales smaller than their radius of gyration is determined by the active internal dynamics rather than the collective center-of-mass motion, in contrast to active Brownian polymers, reflecting the distinct difference in the propulsion mechanism.Comment: 10 Figure

Do Farm Management Practices Alter Soil Biodiversity and Ecosystem Function? Implications for Sustainable Land Management

Maintaining ecosystem functions is a key issue for sustainable farming, while recent reviews (Hole et al, 2005, Fuller et al 2005) have highlighted that a wide range of taxa, including birds and mammals, benefit from organic management of land, there is a need to bring together the evidence for the impact of agricultural management practices on belowground biodiversity. A focus simply on the biodiversity of below-ground species is however not enough and there is a need to consider the contribution of below-ground biological processes to the maintenance and enhancement of a range of ecosystem services. A recent literature review on the impacts of land management practices on soil ecology and function shows clearly that farm management practices do alter below-ground biodiversity and ecosystem function. The data indicate that reducing the intensity of use of mechanical and manufactured inputs and (re)-discovering cost-effective ways to integrate biological inputs, will benefit below–ground biodiversity, particularly in lowland grassland and cropping systems. Benefits are seen from both organic and integrated systems; the evidence base is not strong enough to conclusively distinguish the benefits of these approaches from one another in lowland arable system

Planet Packing Revisited

Ross Eckler discusses a problem in his article Planet Packing in the May 2001 Word Ways: given a list of words, such as the names of the planets, how efficiently can they be packed into a single string of characters so that each word on the list can be read off left to right (but not necessarily contiguously)? He hypothesizes there is no guarantee that any algorithm will end up with a minimum string. Since the design and analysis of algorithms has been my area of research for some 25 years, this caught my attention. Informally, an algorithm is a terminating procedure that could be coded as a computer program. (However, the procedure in the Planet Packing article does not contain enough tie-breaking rules to qualify as an algorithm)

Elm Farm Organic Research Centre Bulletin 83 April 2006

Regular bulleting with technical updates from Organic Advisory Service Issue contains: Testing for Tolerance - a pragmatic view GM Debate Vaccination nation - to jab or not to jab Future shape of OCIS Evolutionary wheat makes the grade? NIAB tracks health of organic cereal seed Stopping erosion of soil quality - the organic way Care needed to halt butterfly collapse Aspects of poultry behaviour: How free range is free range? On choosing an organic wheat A local education challenge New Wakelyns Science Building Organic vegetable market growt