Salinity Tolerance in Kentucky Bluegrass Hybrids

Diminishing water sources in the Intermountain West have led to increased use of alternative sources of water. These sources, such as reclaimed water, generally have elevated salinity levels that may slow growth, and cause a decline in turfgrass quality. Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis L.) is sensitive to salt stress, but is otherwise very well adapted to many turfgrass areas because of its dark color, durability, ability to recover from wear, and soft texture. Because of these positive traits, it has been the subject of selection for salt tolerance. This study was designed to evaluate the salt tolerance of hybrids from parents that had previously recorded higher salt tolerance, and parents with higher quality traits. My hypothesis was that hybrids from these parent would have mid-parent salt tolerances. Thirty-one Kentucky bluegrass entries were included in this experiment, ten parents and twenty-one hybrids. Parents and hybrid plants were irrigated with increasing salinity levels. Plants were irrigated every-other-day with an automated boom irrigation system. Treatments began at a lower salinity level (3 dS m-1) for two weeks then increased to a higher salinity level (6 dS m-1) for the remainder of the eight-week experiment. Electrolyte leakage was measured to quantify salt stress along with visual quality ratings of plant health. The experiment was replicated 4 times over the course of 3 years. There was significant variation in salt tolerance among the different parents and hybrids. Grasses demonstrating higher salt tolerance generally did so during all four replications of the experiment. Of the hybrids that were evaluated, six demonstrated improved salt tolerance. The majority of these hybrids were offspring of parents: 768, ‘North Star’, 827, and 603. The numbered parents are breeding lines in the USDA-USU bluegrass program. I concluded that some Kentucky bluegrass hybrids have potential for use in environments with elevated salinity levels

Dirty coal : voluntary international environmental agreements and sustainable development in the People\u27s Republic of China

Agenda 21 is the voluminous policy document that emanated from the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. Using a brief case study of China’s energy use—specifically its use of coal—this article illustrates how the objectives of Agenda 21 are reflected in China’s economic development policies and practices. We address these kinds of questions: Has China endeavoured to implement environmentally sustainable development, as reflected in the chapters of Agenda 21? What does the case of energy use tell us about the utility of Agenda 21 objectives in China and other developing countries? What are some of the political and economic factors that influenced this process? More broadly, what does the Chinese case tell us about the implementation of voluntary international environmental agreements in the developing world? We conclude that China has been stimulated by Agenda 21 and other international instruments, along with other factors, to shift its economic development toward a more environmentally sustainable trajectory, as reflected in its changing policies on energy derived from coal burning. However, because economic growth remains central to development goals, these policies are only a start toward environmentally sustainable development. Environmental decline still outpaces sustainable development

Ecology and foreign policy : theoretical lessons from the literature

A comprehensive understanding of international environmental politics requires attention to foreign policy. In this essay we describe many of the most prominent—and some of the less prominent—theories and approaches to foreign policy and international relations, with emphasis on how they can help us to better understand foreign policy in the environmental issue area. We organize the theories into three categories: systemic theories, which emphasize the influence of the international system, including the distribution of power within it; societal theories, which focus our attention on domestic politics and culture; and state-centric theories, which find answers to questions about foreign policy within the structure of the state and the individuals who promulgate and implement foreign policies in the name of a given country. Within this presentation of various theories, we highlight the influence of power, interests and ideas

Evolving norms of north-south assistance will they be applied to HIV/AIDS?

The world is in the early stages of what will be the greatest health crisis in modern times. Millions of people—most of them in the world’s poor countries—are infected with HIV. The vast majority of these people will suffer and die from AIDS. The extent of this problem presents profound moral and ethical questions for the world’s wealthy people and countries, for it is they who are most able to assist the poor in addressing this tragedy. What is more, the spread of HIV and AIDS poses major threats to the interests of the developed countries. In short, HIV/AIDS presents the world with some of the most profound moral and practical challenges it has ever faced during peacetime. Nevertheless, developed countries have been very slow in responding to the international dimensions of this problem. They have instead focused on the relatively few people within their own borders at risk for HIV or suffering from AIDS, seemingly unwilling to recognize the greater challenges posed by the global spread of HIV. The rhetoric has started to change, but the developed countries have not backed this rhetoric with the substantial new and additional funds to assist the poor countries in coping with and reversing the HIV/AIDS epidemic. This essay examines this moral and practical problem in the context of North-South relations. It serves to highlight the need for much more international assistance to combat HIV/AIDS in the developing world

China\u27s domestic and international policies on global warming : explanations and assessment

Global warming and resulting climate change present the world with major and potentially devastating challenges. China is among the countries that will suffer the effects of climate change. Although its per captia emissions of pollutants causing global warming remain relatively low compared to the world’s richest countries, China is now the second largest global polluter, and in coming decades it will overtake the United States as the world’s largest polluter of the global atmosphere. How China responds to this problem has profound implications for its people, its neighbors and the world. China has joined with other countries in debating this issue, and it has started to implement programs and policies to reduce its emissions of so-called greenhouse gases. However, its domestic actions have rarely been motivated by concerns about the global impacts of climate change, and its response has been to avoid international regulation while waiting for the developed countries to act. Given this response, short of radical change in politics and environment, it is unlikely that China will adequately restrain its greenhouse gas emissions, thus mirroring—to the detriment if all—the industrialization and growth of the world’s wealthy countries

Justice and adaptation to climate change in the Asia Pacific region : designing international institutions

Many developing states argue that they should be compensated for the costs of adapting to climate change. They point out that industrialised states are responsible for the bulk of historical greenhouse gas emissions and per capita first world emissions continue to dwarf developing world emissions. Yet, given the substantial internal inequality and rapidly rising emissions within developing states such as China and India, the same arguments that justify international adaptation compensation might equally justify internal redistributive measures. This paper addresses the question of how international institutions that fund adaptation to anthropogenic climate change should be designed. After reviewing both communitarian and cosmopolitan arguments about adaptation assistance we propose that a more just and more effective international agreement on climate change adaptation must achieve a higher degree of consistency between the principles of burden sharing applied internationally and domestically. Adaptation assistance should target human welfare directly rather than through compensation payments between states. The application of these arguments is briefly demonstrated primarily by use of China as an example

Simple and efficient four-cycle counting on sparse graphs

We consider the problem of counting 4-cycles ($C_4$) in a general undirected graph $G$ of $n$ vertices and $m$ edges (in bipartite graphs, 4-cycles are also often referred to as $\textit{butterflies}$). There have been a number of previous algorithms for this problem; some of these are based on fast matrix multiplication, which is attractive theoretically but not practical, and some of these are based on randomized hash tables. We develop a new simpler algorithm for counting $C_4$ requiring $O(m\bar\delta(G))$ time and $O(n)$ space, where $\bar \delta(G) \leq O(\sqrt{m})$ is the $\textit{average degeneracy}$ parameter introduced by Burkhardt, Faber & Harris (2020). It has several practical improvements over previous algorithms; for example, it is fully deterministic, does not require any sorting of the adjacency list of the input graph, and avoids any expensive arithmetic in its inner loops. To the best of our knowledge, all previous efficient algorithms for $C_4$ counting have required $\Omega(m)$ space. The algorithm can also be adapted to count 4-cycles incident to each vertex and edge

Children's emotion understanding: A meta-analysis of training studies.

BACKGROUND: In the course of development, children show increased insight and understanding of emotions-both of their own emotions and those of others. However, little is known about the efficacy of training programs aimed at improving children's understanding of emotion. OBJECTIVES: To conduct an effect size analysis of trainings aimed at three aspects of emotion understanding: external aspects (i.e., the recognition of emotional expressions, understanding external causes of emotion, understanding the influence of reminders on present emotions); mental aspects (i.e., understanding desire-based emotions, understanding belief-based emotions, understanding hidden emotions); and reflective aspects (i.e., understanding the regulation of an emotion, understanding mixed emotions, understanding moral emotions). DATA SOURCES: A literature search was conducted using PubMed, PsycInfo, the Cochrane Library, and manual searches. REVIEW METHODS: The search identified 19 studies or experiments including a total of 749 children with an average age of 86 months (S.D.=30.71) from seven different countries. RESULTS: Emotion understanding training procedures are effective for improving external (Hedge's g = 0.62), mental (Hedge's g = 0.31), and reflective (Hedge's g = 0.64) aspects of emotion understanding. These effect sizes were robust and generally unrelated to the number and lengths of training sessions, length of the training period, year of publication, and sample type. However, training setting and social setting moderated the effect of emotion understanding training on the understanding of external aspects of emotion. For the length of training session and social setting, we observed significant moderator effects of training on reflective aspects of emotion. CONCLUSION: Emotion understanding training may be a promising tool for both preventive intervention and the psychotherapeutic process. However, more well-controlled studies are needed.R34 MH086668 - NIMH NIH HHS; R01 AT007257 - NCCIH NIH HHS; R21 MH101567 - NIMH NIH HHS; R34 MH099311 - NIMH NIH HHS; R21 MH102646 - NIMH NIH HHS; K23 MH100259 - NIMH NIH HHS; R01 MH099021 - NIMH NIH HH