LEVELS OF BIRD DAMAGE TO SORGHUM IN THE AWASH BASIN OFETHIOPIA AND THE EFFECTS OF THE CONTROL OF QUELEA NESTING COLONIES

Quantitative assessments of bird damage to lowland sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) were made annually from 1976 through 1979 in the major growing areas associated with the Awash River Basin. Results indicated that the Red-billed Quelea (Quelea quelea) can be an important limiting factor in the overall production of this cereal, and that damage can be locally severe. Lethal control of Quelea breeding colonies found along the Awash River and at Lake Zwai was undertaken in September/ October of both 1978 and 1979. Subsequent assessments showed substantially less bird damage in both years and overall losses were minimal

The problem of the quartz dolerites: Some significant facts concerning mineral volume grain size and fabric. Appendix: The variation of density and magnetic properties

The problem of the quartz dolerites has been attacked by a number of methods, yet much remains to be discovered regarding the differentiation of these rocks. Chemical methods and mineralogical studies, particularly with regard to the pyroxenes, have thrown much light upon the problem, but the extreme uniformity of the dolerites still remains unexplained, and makes the matter of attack on their genesis difficult

Bringing the circular economy home - Insights from socio-technical perspectives on everyday consumption

Transitions toward a circular economy require a nuanced understanding of how change plays out in households in relation to the role of consumers and daily consumption practices. However, little policy and research attention has been paid to the complexities of achieving necessary transformations in everyday cultures of consumption and the possible challenges faced by citizens and householders in achieving a circular economy. As a result, we know little about how circular consumption practices are already emerging in everyday life and can be scaled up across society. Additionally, critical gaps in understanding exist concerning how rebound and spillover effects occur in daily practices and the role of social and material contexts in configuring possibilities for circular consumption. Addressing these gaps, we develop an agenda for attending to the social embeddedness and complexity of participating in the circular economy. This agenda includes several critical elements, including the examination of routine and habitual aspects of social life, dynamics of rebound and spillover effects within interconnected practices, and the impact of institutional-material arrangements and provisioning systems on how consumers use services and products in the performance of social practices. In discussing these elements we outline research gaps and recommendations for future CE policy and research that better appreciates the social and material dynamics of everyday life, with the aim of addressing critical scientific and societal knowledge gaps concerning circular consumption transformations

The sacred and the profane: biotechnology, rationality, and public debate

Davies G, 2006. The definitive, peer-reviewed and edited version of this article is published in Environment and Planning A, 38(3), pp. 423 – 443 DOI: 10.1068/a37387This paper explores the forms of argumentation employed by participants in a recent public engagement process in the United Kingdom around new technologies for organ transplantation, with specific reference to xenotransplantation and stem-cell research. Two forms of reasoning recur throughout participants’ deliberations which challenge specialist framing of this issue. First, an often scatological humour and sense of the profane are evident in the ways in which participants discuss the bodily transformations that such technologies demand. Second, a sense of the sacred, in which new biotechnologies are viewed as against nature or in which commercial companies are ‘playing god’, is a repetitive and well-recognised concern. Such forms of reasoning are frequently dismissed by policymakers as ‘uninformed gut reactions’. Yet they also form a significant part of the repertoire of scientists themselves as they proclaim the hope of new medical breakthroughs, or seek to reconstruct ideas of the body to facilitate new biotechnological transformations. Through questioning of assumptions in Habermas’s notion of discourse ethics, and exploring the importance of hybridity and corporeality as concepts in ethical thinking, the author suggests that, far from being ill-formed opinions, such reasonings perform an important function for thinking through the ontological significance of the corporealisation of these proposed new forms of human and animal bodies

A comment on Buehler optimal confidence bounds for series systems reliability

Confidence limits for the reliability of series systems based on binomial component data are discussed. Several examples are given which show that Buehler optimal confidence bounds can increase in length with an increasing point estimate of reliability, a counter-intuitive result.Optimal lower confidence bound reliability series system