You Look Just Like Your Mother, Mary.

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Four strategies to increase the likelihood of creating and sustaining successful research teams

Modern scientific expertise rests heavily upon work carried out by teams, rather than scholars working on their own. Proper preparation is key, with some research suggesting that the effectiveness of collaborative work is determined before any of the work is carried out. Howard Aldrich and Akram Al-Turk have identified four structural elements that increase the likelihood of creating and sustaining collaborative relationships. These cover the importance of focused definitions of a project’s scope; explicit agreement on individual responsibilities; cast-iron deadlines and timely feedback; and innovative coordination mechanisms

(You Know — I Know)Ev\u27rything\u27s Made For Love

Sheet music contains sexist and/or misogynistic language, concepts, and/or imagry promoting rape culture. With Ukulele arrangement. Contains advertisements and/or short musical examples of pieces being sold by publisher.https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-vp/7072/thumbnail.jp

Fertiliser credit and agroecological use of organic soil amendments in northern Ghana

Contemporary African agricultural policy embodies the African Green Revolution’s drive towards modernisation and commercialisation. Agroecologists have criticised this movement on ecological, social and political grounds. Northern Ghanaian fertiliser credit schemes provide a good example through which these critiques can be examined in a context where agricultural policy reflects the African Green Revolution’s ideals. This study aimed to determine the relationship of such credit schemes to farmers’ use of organic amendments, elucidate other factors related to organic amendment use, and comment on the relevance of this modernisation policy and its relationship to agroecology. A first research phase employed semi-structured key informant interviews. Qualitative data from these informed construction of a semi-structured questionnaire that was used in a survey of 205 farmers. Multistage sampling purposively identified five villages and selected farmers within who had joined government and donor-funded fertiliser credit schemes. The use of organic and inorganic amendments was compared to that of peers who had not taken part in such schemes. Quantitative data were used in binomial logistic regression, inferential and descriptive statistics. Qualitative data were content analysed. Credit group membership was associated with higher fertiliser application and yield, but had little influence on the extent of commercialisation. Farmers who applied organic amendments were 40% less likely to belong to a fertiliser credit scheme than not, indicating substitution between organic and inorganic fertilisers. Organic amendments were 40% more likely to be applied to compound farms than outfields and six times more likely to be applied by household heads than other household members. However, household heads also preferentially joined credit groups. This was part of an agroecological soil fertility management strategy. Household heads appreciated the soil moisture retention properties of organic amendments, and applied them to compound farms to reduce risk to their household food supply in a semi-arid environment. They simultaneously accessed fertiliser to enhance this household provisioning strategy. They appreciated the increased yields this achieved, yet complained that the repayment terms of credit schemes were unfair, fertiliser did not enhance yields in dry conditions and fertilisers were supplied late. Farmers’ use of credited fertiliser alongside their existing agroecological strategy is helpful to the extent that it raises yields, yet is problematic in that it conflicts with risk-reduction strategies based on organics. There is some potential for modernised and agroecological management paradigms to coexist. For fertiliser credit to play a role in this, schemes must use fairer repayment terms and involve a focus on simultaneous use of organic amendments.Keywords: Agroecology, compost, Ghana, fertiliser credit, Soil Fertility Management, maiz

Breeding of Spanish Sparrow in Bahrain

The Spanish Sparrow Passer hispaniolensis is found from Europe and North Africa to western China and Afghanistan. This species shows complex movement patterns, some southern populations are sedentary while others are partially migratory or nomadic. North-ease African birds are considered to be winter visitors from breeding populations in the east of the birds’ range. Birds in the Middle East were considered to be primarily winter visitors to southern Turkey, Iraq, Kuwait and north-west Saudi Arabia (Snow \u26 Perrins, 1998; Beaman \u26 Madge, 1998). During the latter half of the 20th Century it began to establish itself as an irregular breeder in Arabia. It has continued to expand its range during this century with records of breeding in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates along the western coastal zone of the Arabian Gulf, while most recently two colonies were recorded from Qatar in 2007 (Jennings, in prep

Tick‐, mosquito‐, and rodent‐borne parasite sampling designs for the National Ecological Observatory Network

Parasites and pathogens are increasingly recognized as significant drivers of ecological and evolutionary change in natural ecosystems. Concurrently, transmission of infectious agents among human, livestock, and wildlife populations represents a growing threat to veterinary and human health. In light of these trends and the scarcity of long‐term time series data on infection rates among vectors and reservoirs, the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) will collect measurements and samples of a suite of tick‐, mosquito‐, and rodent‐borne parasites through a continental‐scale surveillance program. Here, we describe the sampling designs for these efforts, highlighting sampling priorities, field and analytical methods, and the data as well as archived samples to be made available to the research community. Insights generated by this sampling will advance current understanding of and ability to predict changes in infection and disease dynamics in novel, interdisciplinary, and collaborative ways

Spectroscopic Binaries in Planetary Nebulae

It is already known that about 10% of central stars of PNe are very short-period binaries (hours to days), which are detected through photometric variations. These must have been formed through common-envelope interactions in initially wide binaries, accompanied by ejection of the envelope and its subsequent photoionization as a PN. Radial-velocity observations by ourselves and others are now suggesting that an even larger fraction of planetary nuclei may be spectroscopic binaries, making the total binary fraction very large. However, we have not as yet been able to rule out the possibility that the apparent velocity changes are actually due to stellar-wind variations. Pending follow-up spectroscopic observations with large telescopes, it presently appears plausible that binary-star ejection is the major formation channel for planetary nebulae.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures; to appear in: Planetary Nebulae as Astronomical Tools, edited by R. Szczerba, G. Stasi\'nska, and S. K. G\'orny, AIP Conference Proceedings, Melville, New York, 200

If He Can Fight Like He Can Love Good Night Germany!

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