Utilizing Leafy Spurge as Haylage for Sheep

It is well recognized that sheep will graze the noxious weed leafy spurge and at least one sheep producer (Don Genre near Towner, ND) feeds large quantities of leafy spurge hay to sheep. We conducted a small trial to determine how well sheep would consume leafy spurge haylage, and how productive they were while consuming it

Is Grassfed Meat and Dairy Better for Human and Environmental Health?

The health of livestock, humans, and environments is tied to plant diversity—and associated phytochemical richness—across landscapes. Health is enhanced when livestock forage on phytochemically rich landscapes, is reduced when livestock forage on simple mixture or monoculture pastures or consume high-grain rations in feedlots, and is greatly reduced for people who eat highly processed diets. Circumstantial evidence supports the hypothesis that phytochemical richness of herbivore diets enhances biochemical richness of meat and dairy, which is linked with human and environmental health. Among many roles they play in health, phytochemicals in herbivore diets protect meat and dairy from protein oxidation and lipid peroxidation that cause low-grade systemic inflammation implicated in heart disease and cancer in humans. Yet, epidemiological and ecological studies critical of red meat consumption do not discriminate among meats from livestock fed high-grain rations as opposed to livestock foraging on landscapes of increasing phytochemical richness. The global shift away from phytochemically and biochemically rich wholesome foods to highly processed diets enabled 2.1 billion people to become overweight or obese and increased the incidence of type II diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. Unimpeded, these trends will add to a projected substantial increase in greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) from producing food and clearing land by 2050. While agriculture contributes one quarter of GHGE, livestock can play a sizable role in climate mitigation. Of 80 ways to alleviate climate change, regenerative agriculture—managed grazing, silvopasture, tree intercropping, conservation agriculture, and farmland restoration—jointly rank number one as ways to sequester GHG. Mitigating the impacts of people in the Anthropocene can be enabled through diet to improve human and environmental health, but that will require profound changes in society. People will have to learn we are members of nature’s communities. What we do to them, we do to ourselves. Only by nurturing them can we nurture ourselves

The Mortenson Ranch: Cattle and Trees at Home on the Range. A Restoration Guidebook

Early agriculture on western rangeland met with little success and resulted in serious consequences including soil erosion, loss of native woodlands and wildlife, and economic ruin. The Mortenson family in Stanley County, South Dakota, has been engaged in restoring degraded rangeland on their ranch for more than 50 years. Their primary goal has been to return the land to its condition prior to white settlement while maintaining a profitable cattle ranching operation. In recent years the ranch has served as a model of successful ranching based on a conservation ethic. This guidebook summarizes the restoration techniques and grazing regime used by the Mortensons and offers suggestions for applying these ideas to other locations. It is not intended to be a step-by-step cookbook, an all-complete reference, or a set of hard and fast rules. It is meant to provide an example of land management practices based on sound ecological principles. The quotes throughout these pages are Clarence Mortenson\u27s. Since 1941, he has observed the changes taking place on the property described here. Sons Todd, Jeff, and Curt are now involved; Todd manages the land and the cattle operation. The ranch lost extensive bottomland forest to Oahe Reservoir on the nearby Missouri River in the 1950s. [Page 1

Biomass round bales infield aggregation logistics scenarios

Biomass bales often need to be aggregated (collected into groups and transported) to a field-edge stack or a temporary storage before utilization. Several logistics scenarios for aggregation involving equipment and aggregation strategies were modeled and evaluated. Cumulative Euclidean distance criteria evaluated the various aggregation scenarios. Application of a single-bale loader that aggregated bales individually was considered as the “control” scenario with which others were compared. A computer simulation program developed determined bale coordinates in ideal and random layouts that evaluated aggregation scenarios. Simulation results exhibited a “diamond pattern” of bales on ideal layout and a “random pattern” emerged when ≥ 10% variation was introduced. Statistical analysis revealed that the effect of field shape, swath width, biomass yield, and randomness on bale layout did not affect aggregation logistics, while area and number of bales handled had significant effects. Number of bales handled in the direct method significantly influenced the efficiency. Self-loading bale picker with minimum distance path (MDP, 80%) and parallel transport of loader and truck with MDP (78%) were ranked the highest, and single-bale central grouping the lowest (29%) among 19 methods studied. The MDP was found significantly more efficient (4%-16%) than the baler path. Simplistic methods, namely a direct triple-bale loader with MDP (64%-66%), or a loader and truck handling six bales running parallel with MDP (75%-82%) were highly efficient. Great savings on cumulative distances that directly influence time, fuel, and cost were realized when the number of bales handled was increased or additional equipment was utilized

Cataclysmic Variables from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. VIII. The Final Year (2007–2008)

This paper completes the series of cataclysmic variables (CVs) identified from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) I/II. The coordinates, magnitudes, and spectra of 33 CVs are presented. Among the 33 are eight systems known prior to SDSS (CT Ser, DO Leo, HK Leo, IR Com, V849 Her, V405 Peg, PG1230+226, and HS0943+1404), as well as nine objects recently found through various photometric surveys. Among the systems identified since the SDSS are two polar candidates, two intermediate polar candidates, and one candidate for containing a pulsating white dwarf. Our follow-up data have confirmed a polar candidate from Paper VII and determined tentative periods for three of the newly identified CVs. A complete summary table of the 285 CVs with spectra from SDSS I/II is presented as well as a link to an online table of all known CVs from both photometry and spectroscopy that will continue to be updated as future data appear

The large Thaumasia graben on Mars: Is it a rift?

We investigate the morphology and topography of one of the largest fault-bounded tectonic structures on Mars, a complex, approximately N-S trending system of troughs and scarps at the western border of the Thaumasia plateau in the Claritas region (hereinafter referred to as “Thaumasia graben,” or TG). It is located between 15°S and 38°S latitude and at ∼255°E longitude. No detailed investigation of its morphotectonic setting has been performed yet. The region is a complexly fractured area with a number of different fault sets, including simple and complex graben. The TG extends over more than 1000 km along its trend, averaging 100 km in width and 1.6 km in depth. Crustal extension is accommodated by the formation of a system of asymmetric graben, or halfgraben. On the basis of fault orientation and trough depth, the TG can be subdivided in a north-south direction into three segments. Except for the northernmost segment, the predominant master fault system is located along the eastern flank of the TG, highlighting the overall asymmetric architecture. Fault length segments vary from 50 to 90 km with observable displacements of 1.3–2.2 km. Crustal extension, inferred from gridded MOLA topography across scarp offsets, varies along trend between 0.5 km and ∼4 km, assuming a fault dip of 60°. This is relatively moderate extension if compared to terrestrial continental rifts, but consistent with extension measured across the Tempe Rift on Mars. We find that the Thaumasia graben displays some characteristics which are common to terrestrial continental rifts, whereas other properties are distinctively not rift-like

Search for Anisotropy of Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays with the Telescope Array Experiment

We study the anisotropy of Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Ray (UHECR) events collected by the Telescope Array (TA) detector in the first 40 months of operation. Following earlier studies, we examine event sets with energy thresholds of 10 EeV, 40 EeV, and 57 EeV. We find that the distributions of the events in right ascension and declination are compatible with an isotropic distribution in all three sets. We then compare with previously reported clustering of the UHECR events at small angular scales. No significant clustering is found in the TA data. We then check the events with E>57 EeV for correlations with nearby active galactic nuclei. No significant correlation is found. Finally, we examine all three sets for correlations with the large-scale structure of the Universe. We find that the two higher-energy sets are compatible with both an isotropic distribution and the hypothesis that UHECR sources follow the matter distribution of the Universe (the LSS hypothesis), while the event set with E>10 EeV is compatible with isotropy and is not compatible with the LSS hypothesis at 95% CL unless large deflection angles are also assumed. We show that accounting for UHECR deflections in a realistic model of the Galactic magnetic field can make this set compatible with the LSS hypothesis.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figure

MESSENGER and Mariner 10 flyby observations of magnetotail structure and dynamics at Mercury

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/94896/1/jgra21525.pd

CORRELATIONS OF THE ARRIVAL DIRECTIONS OF ULTRA-HIGH ENERGY COSMIC RAYS WITH EXTRAGALACTIC OBJECTS AS OBSERVED BY THE TELESCOPE ARRAY EXPERIMENT

We search for correlations between the positions of extragalactic objects and the arrival directions of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) with primary energy E ??? 40 EeV as observed by the surface detector array of the Telescope Array (TA) experiment during the first 40 months of operation. We examine several public astronomical object catalogs, including the Veron-Cetty and Veron catalog of active galactic nuclei. We count the number of TA events correlated with objects in each catalog as a function of three parameters: the maximum angular separation between a TA event and an object, the minimum energy of the events, and the maximum redshift of the objects. We determine the combination of these parameters that maximizes the correlations, and we calculate the probability of having the same levels of correlations from an isotropic distribution of UHECR arrival directions. No statistically significant correlations are found when penalties for scanning over the above parameters and for searching in several catalogs are taken into account.open4