International Grassland Congress Outlook – a Historical Review and Future Expectations

Features of the history of the International Grassland Congress are mentioned. Aspects of a number of failed themes in grassland science are described with respect to molecular biology, intensive systems of ruminant production, carbohydrate use in plant growth, plant succession and range condition, and stocking method. Future expectations are focused on meeting a balance of objectives, maintaining reductionist science, taking new initiatives in plant improvement and in the development of animal production systems, and reducing barriers to international trade. The adoption of grassland science depends upon the growth of new learning, especially through cyclical interaction between scientists and farmers

Employing dynamic fuzzy membership functions to assess environmental performance in the supplier selection process

The proposed system illustrates that logic fuzzy can be used to aid management in assessing a supplier's environmental performance in the supplier selection process. A user-centred hierarchical system employing scalable fuzzy membership functions implement human priorities in the supplier selection process, with particular focus on a supplier's environmental performance. Traditionally, when evaluating supplier performance, companies have considered criteria such as price, quality, flexibility, etc. These criteria are of varying importance to individual companies pertaining to their own specific objectives. However, with environmental pressures increasing, many companies have begun to give more attention to environmental issues and, in particular, to their suppliers’ environmental performance. The framework presented here was developed to introduce efficiently environmental criteria into the existing supplier selection process and to reflect on its relevant importance to individual companies. The system presented attempts to simulate the human preference given to particular supplier selection criteria with particular focus on environmental issues when considering supplier selection. The system considers environmental data from multiple aspects of a suppliers business, and based on the relevant impact this will have on a Buying Organization, a decision is reached on the suitability of the supplier. This enables a particular supplier's strengths and weaknesses to be considered as well as considering their significance and relevance to the Buying OrganizationPeer reviewe

Interrelations of leaf area and non-structural carbohydrate status as determinants of the growth of sub-tropical grasses

Under the normal moisture and nutritional stresses of the sub-coastal southern Queensland pasture environment, leaf growth in green panic and buffel grass was not sufficient to intercept all light, and wide variations in the frequency and intensity of defoliation caused little difference in the annual yield of shoot growth. Heavy use promoted increased leaf growth and N content, and reduced root growth and carbohydrate accumulation. When moisture and nutrients were adequate, growth was more positively dependent upon LAI than on carbohydrate status. The results of growth analyses are discussed and attention directed to the equilibration of component growth factors which reduce defoliation-treatment effects

The Truth in Compatibilism and the truth of Libertarianism

The paper offers the outlines of a response to the often-made suggestion is that it is impossible to see how indeterminism could possibly provide us with anything that we might want in the way of freedom, anything that could really amount to control, as opposed merely to an openness in the flow of reality that would constitute merely the injection of chance, or randomness, into the unfolding of the processes which underlie our activity. It is suggested that the best first move for the libertarian is to make a number of important concessions to the compatibilist. It should be conceded, in particular, that certain sorts of alternative possibilities are neither truly available to real, worldly agents, nor required in order that those agents should act freely; and it should be admitted also that it is the compatibilist who tends to give the most plausible sorts of analyses of many of the ‘can’ and ‘could have’ statements which seem to need to be assertible of those agents we regard as free. But these concessions do not bring compatibilism itself in their wake. The most promising version of libertarianism, it is argued, should be based on the idea that agency itself (and not merely some special instances of it which we might designate with the honorific appellation ‘free’) is inconsistent with determinism. This version of libertarianism, it is claimed, can avoid the objection that indeterminism is as difficult to square with true agential control as determinism can sometimes seem to be

Results of an aqueous source term model for a radiological risk assessment of the Drigg LLW Site, U.K.

A radionuclide source term model has been developed which simulates the biogeochemical evolution of the Drigg low level waste (LLW) disposal site. The DRINK (DRIgg Near field Kinetic) model provides data regarding radionuclide concentrations in groundwater over a period of 100,000 years, which are used as input to assessment calculations for a groundwater pathway. The DRINK model also provides input to human intrusion and gaseous assessment calculations through simulation of the solid radionuclide inventory. These calculations are being used to support the Drigg post closure safety case. The DRINK model considers the coupled interaction of the effects of fluid flow, microbiology, corrosion, chemical reaction, sorption and radioactive decay. It represents the first direct use of a mechanistic reaction-transport model in risk assessment calculations

Inward Motions of the Compact SiO Masers Around VX Sagittarii

We report Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) observations of 43 GHz v=1, J=1-0 SiO masers in the circumstellar envelope of the M-type semi-regular variable star VX Sgr at 3 epochs during 1999 April-May. These high-resolution VLBA images reveal a persistent ringlike distribution of SiO masers with a projected radius of ~3 stellar radii. The typical angular size of 0.5 mas for individual maser feature was estimated from two-point correlation function analysis for maser spots. We found that the apparent size scale of maser features was distinctly smaller than that observed in the previous observations by comparing their fractions of total power imaged. This change in the size scale of maser emission may be related to stellar activity that caused a large SiO flare during our observations. Our observations confirmed the asymmetric distribution of maser emission, but the overall morphology has changed significantly with the majority of masers clustering to the north-east of the star compared to that lying to the south-west direction in 1992. By identifying 42 matched maser features appearing in all the three epochs, we determined the contraction of an SiO maser shell toward VX Sgr at a proper motion of -0.507 mas/yr, corresponding to a velocity of about 4 km/s at a distance of 1.7 kpc to VX Sgr. Such a velocity is on the order of the sound speed, and can be easily explained by the gravitational infall of material from the circumstellar dust shell.Comment: 26 pages, 5 figures, 4 tables, accepted for publication in Ap