Growing sunflowers in Missouri

"In Missouri, sunflowers may yield from 500 to 3,800 pounds per acre depending on the location, crop environment, and planting date. Yields of 800 to 1,500 pounds per acre are common on upload Missouri soils. Improved management may raise these averages."--First page.S.D. Livingston and Joe H. Scott (Department of Agronomy, College of Agriculture)New 12/82/8

Marketing sunflowers

"In today's market, soybean, palm, sunflower, peanut, and most other plant oils are substituted for one another according to availability and cost. They are substituted even though sunflower oil is slightly lower in cholesterol and has a higher flashpoint and clarity than the other oils. What this highly competitive market means to farmers is that unless they are growing sunflowers under contract to the mill, they are not likely to be paid any premiums for high oil content."--First page.S.D. Livingston and Joe H. Scott (Department of Agronomy, College of Agriculture)New 10/83/8

A procedure for independently estimating blanks and uncertainties for measured values of 90Sr and 137Cs concentrations in the Atlantic Ocean

A procedure has been developed for independently estimating blanks and measurement uncertainties for measured values of 90Sr and 137Cs concentrations in the Atlantic Ocean. The procedure depends on delineation of a region in the Atlantic Ocean which has never contained measurable quantities of these fission products. Such a region is defined...

Fiscal year 1981 US corn and soybeans pilot preliminary experiment plan, phase 1

A draft of the preliminary experiment plan for the foreign commodity production forecasting project fiscal year 1981 is presented. This draft plan includes: definition of the phase 1 and 2 U.S. pilot objectives; the proposed experiment design to evaluate crop calendar, area estimation, and area aggregation components for corn and soybean technologies using 1978/1979 crop-year data; a description of individual sensitivity evaluations of the baseline corn and soybean segment classification procedure; and technology and data assessment in support of the corn and soybean estimation technology for use in the U.S. central corn belt

Prevalence of and associations with agitation in residents with dementia living in care homes: MARQUE cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND: Agitation is reportedly the most common neuropsychiatric symptom in care home residents with dementia. AIMS: To report, in a large care home survey, prevalence and determinants of agitation in residents with dementia. METHOD: We interviewed staff from 86 care homes between 13 January 2014 and 12 November 2015 about residents with dementia with respect to agitation (Cohen-Mansfield Agitation Inventory (CMAI)), quality of life (DEMQOL-proxy) and dementia severity (Clinical Dementia Rating). We also interviewed residents and their relatives. We used random effects models adjusted for resident age, gender, dementia severity and care home type with CMAI as a continuous score. RESULTS: Out of 3053 (86.2%) residents who had dementia, 1489 (52.7%) eligible residents participated. Fifteen per cent of residents with very mild dementia had clinically significant agitation compared with 33% with mild (odds ratios (ORs)=4.49 95% confidence interval (CI)=2.30) and 45% with moderate or severe dementia (OR=6.95 95% CI=3.63, 13.31 and OR=6.23 95% CI=3.25, 11.94, respectively). More agitation was associated with lower quality of life (regression coefficient (rc)=-0.53; 95% CI=-0.61, -0.46) but not with staffing or resident ratio (rc=0.03; 95% CI=-0.04, 0.11), level of residents' engagement in home activities (rc=3.21; 95% CI=-0.82, 7.21) or family visit numbers (rc=-0.03; 95% CI=-0.15, 0.08). It was correlated with antipsychotic use (rc=6.45; 95% CI=3.98, 8.91). CONCLUSIONS: Care home residents with dementia and agitation have lower quality of life. More staffing time and activities as currently provided are not associated with lower agitation levels. New approaches to develop staff skills in understanding and responding to the underlying reasons for individual resident's agitation require development and testing. DECLARATION OF INTEREST: None. COPYRIGHT AND USAGE: © The Royal College of Psychiatrists 2017. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Non-Commercial, No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) license

A mass balance for 137Cs and 90Sr in the North Atlantic Ocean

The total inventory of 137Cs(3272 kCi) and 90Sr(2257 kCi) in the North Atlantic Ocean in 1972, as well as the subinventories in the 0 to 1000 m, 1000 to 2000 m, 2000 m to bottom layers, continental shelf waters and bottom sediments, have been estimated. We have been careful to provide reliable estimates of uncertainty for each of these values. We have also estimated the inputs of 137Cs to the Atlantic Ocean as direct fallout (2065 kCi), or as ocean current transport (240 kCi) since the start of large scale nuclear testing...

Performance of spiral-wound membrane modules in organic solvent nanofiltration – Fluid dynamics and mass transfer characteristics

AbstractDuring the past few decades organic solvent nanofiltration has received a great deal of attention and a growing number of studies has been reported on development and optimisation of solvent resistant membranes and their transport mechanism. However, most of these studies have used flat sheet membranes. On the other hand, many researchers studied fluid dynamics and mass transfer in spiral-wound membrane modules, almost exclusively in aqueous solutions. This paper reports the performance of four spiral-wound membrane modules tested in 0–20wt% solutions of sucrose octaacetate in ethyl acetate under various pressures and retentate flowrates. These modules were made of two different types of membranes (a commercial membrane, PuraMem® S600, and a development product, Lab-1, from Evonik Membrane Extraction Technology Limited) and covered three module sizes (1.8″×12″, 2.5″×40″ and 4.0″×40″). All modules had the same feed and permeate spacers. The classical solution diffusion model was applied to describe the transport of solute and solvent through the membrane and regress the unknown model parameters from flat sheet data. Correlations for characterising the fluid dynamics and mass transfer in the spiral-wound membrane modules, as well as the parameters describing the feed and permeate channels, were determined by performing the regression of experimental data of a 1.8″×12″ PuraMem® S600 membrane module. The classical solution–diffusion model, combined with the film theory, was then successfully applied to predict the performance of other modules of larger size (such as the 2.5″×40″ and 4.0″×40″ module sizes) and/or made of a different membrane material (such as Lab-1). The procedure proposed in this paper predicts the performance of a specific module by obtaining a limited number of experimental data for flat sheets and a 1.8″×12″ spiral-wound membrane module only (necessary to obtain the fitting parameters characteristic of the membrane and the module). Furthermore, with this procedure, it is not necessary to know a priori the spacer geometry, because the necessary information about the spacer geometry will be also obtained by regression of few experimental data

Case Study: Mouse Parvovirus Outbreak Likely Caused by a Contaminated Commercial Lyophilized Antibody Powder

An MPV-contaminated lyophilized antibody product obtained from a commercial vendor was the probable cause of an outbreak of mouse parvovirus (MPV) in an academic research institution. The outbreak was initially discovered by the seroconversion of the mouse sentinels receiving soiled bedding from the affected cage(s). After further investigation, a suspected antibody product was submitted to a diagnostic laboratory and the sample tested positive for MPV via polymerase chain reaction (PCR). To confirm administration of this product to mice could produce MPV infection, we inoculated the MPV-positive antibody product into experimental mice (n=5). We collected faecal pellets at Days 0, 5, 9, 12, and 14 post-inoculation. At the end of the experimental period, we collected mesenteric lymph nodes (mLN) and submitted both mLN and faecal pellets for MPV analysis via PCR. While all faecal pellets were negative for MPV, we were able to detect MPV in mLN from one of the five mice, thus replicating the likely method of transmission and the cause of the MPV outbreaks

Patterns in reduction or cessation of drinking in Australia (2001-2013) and motivation for change

Aims: This paper examines: 1) change over time (2001-2013) in recently reducing or ceasing drinking in the Australian population, and 2) the reasons given for reducing or ceasing drinking in the most recent survey (2013); stratified by sex and age group. Methods: Data are from five waves of the National Drug Strategy Household Survey (N=119,397). Logistic regression models with interaction terms were used to identify a shift in sex or age over time in predicting reduction or cessation of drinking, and to predict motivations for reducing or ceasing drinking by sex and age. Results: Reports of recently reducing the quantity or frequency of drinking increased from 2001 to 2007, and remained stable between 2007 and 2013. There was a steady increase in the number of Australians reporting recently ceasing drinking from 2001 to 2013, with a significant effect for age (younger groups more likely than older groups to cease drinking in the past two waves). Reasons for reducing or ceasing drinking varied by age, with older people more likely to report health reasons, and younger people more likely to report lifestyle reasons or enjoyment. Conclusion: Increases over time in reports of reduction or cessation of drinking due to health, lifestyle, social and enjoyment reasons, suggests that the social position of alcohol in Australia may be shifting, particularly among young people

Flux penetration in slab shaped Type-I superconductors

We study the problem of flux penetration into type--I superconductors with high demagnetization factor (slab geometry).Assuming that the interface between the normal and superconducting regions is sharp, that flux diffuses rapidly in the normal regions, and that thermal effects are negligible, we analyze the process by which flux invades the sample as the applied field is increased slowly from zero.We find that flux does not penetrate gradually.Rather there is an instability in the process and the flux penetrates from the boundary in a series of bursts, accompanied by the formation of isolated droplets of the normal phase, leading to a multiply connected flux domain structure similar to that seen in experiments.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, Fig 2.(b) available upon request from the authors, email - [email protected]