Farming in Alaska.

An analysis of commercial farming in Alaska has long been needed. This report may supply helpful information. It spans the yea rs from 1949 to 1954, a time of rapid development and growth. T he study analyzes detailed information supplied by 75 to 85 farmers in the Matanuska Valley and by 15 to 30 others in the Tanana Valley. In 1952, records were also obtained from 19 farmers in the Kenai Peninsula. These record s are estimated to cover about 60 per cent of all commercial farming activity in these particular areas during the period. Information on farming in areas outside the Kenai Peninsula and the Railbelt was gathered from mailed questionnaires supplemented by personal observations. Data for 1949 and 1950 were collected by Clarence A. Moore and were first summarized in his Mimeographed Circular 1, Alaska Farms : Organization and Practices in 1949, and Bulletin 14, Farming in the Matanuska and Tanana Valleys of A laska, both published by the Alaska Agricultural Experiment Station. The authors are grateful to the farmers, agencies and others whose help made this work possible

Absorbent articles, especially catamenials, having improved fluid directionality

The present invention provides absorbent articles, especially sanitary napkins, containing a fluid transport layer. In-use, the transport layer directs menses to a storage layer, thereby minimizing product failure and staining of undergarments. The transport layer can protrude into, or through, a topsheet to provide very aggressive transport of vaginal discharges. Preferably, the transport layer is a layer of fibers having external capillary channels

Designing environmental research for impact

Transdisciplinary research, involving close collaboration between researchers and the users of research, has been a feature of environmental problem solving for several decades, often spurred by the need to find negotiated outcomes to intractable problems. In 2005, the Australian government allocated funding to its environment portfolio for public good research, which resulted in consecutive four-year programmes (Commonwealth Environmental Research Facilities, National Environmental Research Program). In April 2014, representatives of the funders, researchers and research users associated with these programmes met to reflect on eight years of experience with these collaborative research models.This structured reflection concluded that successful multi-institutional transdisciplinary research is necessarily a joint enterprise between funding agencies, researchers and the end users of research. The design and governance of research programmes need to explicitly recognise shared accountabilities among the participants, while respecting the different perspectives of each group. Experience shows that traditional incentive systems for academic researchers, current trends in public sector management, and loose organisation of many end users, work against sustained transdisciplinary research on intractable problems, which require continuity and adaptive learning by all three parties. The likelihood of research influencing and improving environmental policy and management is maximised when researchers, funders and research users have shared goals; there is sufficient continuity of personnel to build trust and sustain dialogue throughout the research process from issue scoping to application of findings; and there is sufficient flexibility in the funding, structure and operation of transdisciplinary research initiatives to enable the enterprise to assimilate and respond to new knowledge and situations