Citrus Water Use

Citrus is grown in semi-arid regions or subtropical regions in large parts of the world, where rainfall is seasonal and irrigation a necessity. Water is a vitally important element in all ecosystems and as agriculture is the largest user of fresh water resources, it needs to be efficient in the use of water. This is particularly true for the citrus industry, as it has a significant irrigation requirement. Good irrigation scheduling practices rely on accurate estimates of plant water-use (transpiration) for different climatic regions, citrus varieties, tree and canopy size, and choice of rootstock. This usually requires the use of a model, where a thorough understanding of the regulation of transpiration will improve the estimation capabilities of such a model. Results from our study (Quantifying citrus water use and water stress at tree and orchard scale, Water Research Commission Project K5/2275//4) showed that transpiration (T) follows diurnal and seasonal trends and is influenced by stomatal conductance (gs) and leaf water potentials (Ѱl). Good correlations between T and temperature, vapour pressure deficit (VPD) and solar radiation (SR) were found, indicating the importance of the environment in supplying the energy to drive transpiration. There was also a good relationship between canopy size and T, with larger canopies having higher T

Introduction: the moral matrix of capitalism in contemporary Central and Eastern Europe

This special section aims to shed light on moral milieus and agencies in contemporary capitalist Central and Eastern Europe. Drawing on case studies from Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Romania, and Russia, it offers insight into changing perceptions of a proper economy and proper practice amongst a broad range of actors - from landfill workers to business managers, to the super-rich. The contributors explore how actors at various scales morally construct, contest, and defend ideas of justice, (re-)distribution, and social worth, as well as socio-economic hierarchy, inequality, and harm. They analyze the capitalist moral transformation and order in the region, and examine the local appropriation of and buy-in to (as well as critique of) aspects of neoliberal moral orders - a topic side-lined in much of the existing moral economy scholarship. Exploring a broad range of moral-economic phenomena, they move beyond the conventional definition of morals as prosocial norms and action, approaching morals as a broader empirical phenomenon of economy and politics. They examine the actions, practices, and reasoning of different actors in relation to shifting notions of acceptable and unacceptable, just and unjust, and praiseworthy and blameworthy behavior. As such, this collection makes the case for widening the empirical object and analytical purchase of moral economy to include the study of not only moral critiques and resistance to capitalism, but also the (diverse) moral agencies, milieus and orders of capitalism, and the ways in which the advancement and embedding the capitalist moral order has shaped economic life in the region

Healthful choices depend on the latency and rate of information accumulation

The drift diffusion model provides a parsimonious explanation of decisions across neurobiological, psychological and behavioural levels of analysis. Although most drift diffusion model implementations assume that only a single value guides decisions, choices often involve multiple attributes that could make separable contributions to choice. Here we fit incentive-compatible dietary choices to a multi-attribute, time-dependent drift diffusion model, in which taste and health could differentially influence the evidence accumulation process. We find that these attributes shaped both the relative value signal and the latency of evidence accumulation in a manner consistent with participants’ idiosyncratic preferences. Moreover, by using a dietary prime, we showed how a healthy choice intervention alters multi-attribute, time-dependent drift diffusion model parameters that in turn predict prime-dependent choices. Our results reveal that different decision attributes make separable contributions to the strength and timing of evidence accumulation, providing new insights into the construction of interventions to alter the processes of choice

Engaging Young Fathers in Research through Photo-Interviewing

Although conducting interviews is the most popular research strategy in qualitative research, we question whether it is the best strategy to use with young fathers and other populations who may be less willing to share personal experiences and thoughts with an unknown researcher. The reluctance of young fathers to engage in research leads to the omission of important perspectives and inadvertently results in young fathers\u27 being understudied and unwittingly excluded from support programming and services. In this paper, we describe our experiences of using two different research strategies with young fathers: conventional in-depth interviews (i.e., interviews that rely on words only) and photo-interviewing (i.e., using photographs as props during an interview). We found that photo-interviewing contributed to young fathers\u27 comfort during the research process, provided them a sense of agency, and possibly enriched the quality of the data. While we do not argue that one data collection strategy is necessarily better than the other, we would like to caution researchers against using conventional interviews as a default data collection strategy with marginalized, vulnerable, or less verbal populations for whom interviewing may not be the most suitable data collection strategy and to encourage researchers to explore alternative options

Evaluation of the phytoestrogenic activity of Cyclopia genistoides (honeybush) methanol extracts and relevant polyphenols

The original publication is available at http://pubs.acs.org/Unfermented C. genistoides methanol extracts of different harvestings and selected polyphenols were evaluated for phytoestrogenic activity by comparing binding to both ER subtypes, transactivation of an ERE-containing promoter reporter, proliferation of MCF-7-BUS and MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells, and binding to SHBG. The extracts from one harvesting of C. genistoides (P104) bound to both ER subtypes. All extracts transactivated ERE-containing promoter reporters via ERβ but not via ERα. All extracts, except P122, caused proliferation of the estrogen-sensitive MCF-7-BUS cells. Proliferation of MCF-7-BUS cells was ER-dependent as ICI 182,780 reversed proliferation. Physiologically more relevant, extracts antagonized E2-induced MCF-7-BUS cell proliferation. Furthermore, all extracts, except P122, induced proliferation of the estrogen-insensitive MDA-MB-231 cells, suggesting that the extracts are able to induce ER-dependent and ER-independent cell proliferation. Binding to SHBG by extracts was also demonstrated. These results clearly show that C. genistoides methanol extracts display phytoestrogenic activity and act predominantly via ERβ. HPLC and LC-MS analysis, however, suggests that the observed phytoestrogenic activity cannot be ascribed to polyphenols known to be present in other Cyclopia species. © 2007 American Chemical Society.Publishers' versio

Peer presence increases the prosocial behavior of adolescents by speeding the evaluation of outcomes for others

Peer presence can elicit maladaptive adolescent decision-making, potentially by increasing sensitivity to the rewards one receives. It remains unknown whether peer presence also increases adolescents’ sensitivity to others’ outcomes, which could have an adaptive effect in contexts allowing pro-social behaviors. Here, we combine social utility modeling and real-time decision process modeling to characterize how peer presence alters adolescents’ processing of self and other outcomes. We found that adolescents behaved selfishly when privately allocating monetary rewards for themselves and a peer in an incentive-compatible task. In peer presence, however, adolescents became more altruistic. Real-time decision process estimates collected using computer mouse tracking showed that altruistic behavior was associated with relatively earlier influence of peer-outcomes relative to self-outcomes, and that peer presence sped the influence of peer-outcomes without altering the time at which self-outcomes began to influence the decision process. Our results indicate a mechanism through which peer presence prompts greater prosocial behavior by altering how adolescents process prosocial outcomes