New medics show promise in the northern wheatbelt

For more than 20 years Cyprus barrel medic has been the mainstay of pastures grown on the medium to heavy red clay loamss of Western Australia\u27slow rainfall wheatbelt. However, since the early1980s its resistance to aphids has declined followed by reduced productivitymand persistence. Fortunately, a six year research program at Tenibdewa, near Mullewa, is on target to prove the superiority of Parabinga barrel medic and a mixture of Serena and Santiago burr medics. These varieties, which had not been widley tested in the region, generally out-perform Cyprus in all aspects because of their higher tolerance of aphids

Is African agriculture converging? Evidence from a panel of crop yields

Crop Production/Industries,

Lupin stubbles : getting the best with weaner sheep

Sweet lupins are now grown on about a million hectares in Western Australia each year. If half of the State\u27s seven million weaners were grazed as recommended on half of the lupin stubbles, it could generate about $15 million from reduced supplementary feeding, greater wool production and other advantages. But correct management is important, particularly knowing when to take weaners out. Research by the Department over the last five years is now indicating how this should be done

Phomopsis-resistant lupin stubbles as feed for weaner sheep

The breeding of sweet, narrow-leafed lupins with increased resistance to Phomopsis leptostromiformis, the fungus that causes lupinosis in sheep, is a breakthrough for the summer nutrition of weaner sheep. The new resistant varieties, Gungurru for the medium (325 to 450 mm) rainfall areas and Yorrel for low rainfall areas (less than 325 mm), were released by the Department of Agriculture in 1988. This article discusses progress in a four-year project which is examining liveweight and wool production of weaners grazing Gungurru stubbles

Exact Recursive Probabilistic Programming

Recursive calls over recursive data are widely useful for generating probability distributions, and probabilistic programming allows computations over these distributions to be expressed in a modular and intuitive way. Exact inference is also useful, but unfortunately, existing probabilistic programming languages do not perform exact inference on recursive calls over recursive data, forcing programmers to code many applications manually. We introduce a probabilistic language in which a wide variety of recursion can be expressed naturally, and inference carried out exactly. For instance, probabilistic pushdown automata and their generalizations are easy to express, and polynomial-time parsing algorithms for them are derived automatically. We eliminate recursive data types using program transformations related to defunctionalization and refunctionalization. These transformations are assured correct by a linear type system, and a successful choice of transformations, if there is one, is guaranteed to be found by a greedy algorithm

Regional assemblage and the spatial reorganisation of health and care: the case of devolution in Greater Manchester, England

In this paper, we examine how space is integral to the practices and politics of restructuring health and care systems and services and specifically how ideas of assemblage can help understand the remaking of a region. We illustrate our arguments by focusing on health and social care devolution in Greater Manchester, England. Emphasising the open?ended political construction of the region, we consider the work of assembling different actors, organisations, policies and resources into a new territorial formation that provisionally holds together without becoming a fixed totality. We highlight how the governing of health and care is shaped through the interplay of local, regional and national actors and organisations coexisting, jostling and forging uneasy alliances. Our goal is to show that national agendas continued to be firmly embedded within the regional project, not least the politics of austerity. Yet through keeping the region together as if it was an integrated whole and by drawing upon new global policy networks, regional actors strategically reworked national agendas in attempts to leverage and compete for new resources and powers. We set out a research agenda that foregrounds how the political reorganisation of health and care is negotiated and contested across multiple spatial dimensions simultaneously

94-GT-415 ENABLING TECHNOLOGIES FOR NUCLEAR GAS TURBINE IGT-MHRI POWER CONVERSION SYSTEM

ABSTRACT Since the onset of gas-cooled reactor work, almost half a century ago, the potential for direct coupling of a nuclear heat source with a gas turbine power conversion system was recognized, however, the technologies for the realization of this were not available, and the plants operated to date have used Rankine steam turbine power conversion systems. In the early 1990s, technology transfer from the gas turbine and aerospace industries, now make possible the introduction of the gas turbine modular helium reactor (GT-MHR) for utility power generation within the next decade. In this paper the enabling technologies for the helium gas turbine power conversion system are discussed, and these include the turbomachinery, magnetic bearings, compact heat exchangers, and helium system operating experience. Utilizing proven technology, the first GT-MHR plant would operate with an efficiency of 47%, and by exploiting its full potential this could perhaps reach as high as 60% early in the next century

Retinotopic organization of extrastriate cortex in the owl monkey—dorsal and lateral areas

Dense retinotopy data sets were obtained by microelectrode visual receptive field mapping in dorsal and lateral visual cortex of anesthetized owl monkeys. The cortex was then physically flatmounted and stained for myelin or cytochrome oxidase. Retinotopic mapping data were digitized, interpolated to a uniform grid, analyzed using the visual field sign technique—which locally distinguishes mirror image from nonmirror image visual field representations—and correlated with the myelin or cytochrome oxidase patterns. The region between V2 (nonmirror) and MT (nonmirror) contains three areas—DLp (mirror), DLi (nonmirror), and DLa/MTc (mirror). DM (mirror) was thin anteroposteriorly, and its reduced upper field bent somewhat anteriorly away from V2. DI (nonmirror) directly adjoined V2 (nonmirror) and contained only an upper field representation that also adjoined upper field DM (mirror). Retinotopy was used to define area VPP (nonmirror), which adjoins DM anteriorly, area FSTd (mirror), which adjoins MT ventrolaterally, and TP (mirror), which adjoins MT and DLa/MTc dorsoanteriorly. There was additional retinotopic and architectonic evidence for five more subdivisions of dorsal and lateral extrastriate cortex—TA (nonmirror), MSTd (mirror), MSTv (nonmirror), FSTv (nonmirror), and PP (mirror). Our data appear quite similar to data from marmosets, though our field sign-based areal subdivisions are slightly different. The region immediately anterior to the superiorly located central lower visual field V2 varied substantially between individuals, but always contained upper fields immediately touching lower visual field V2. This region appears to vary even more between species. Though we provide a summary diagram, given within- and between-species variation, it should be regarded as a guide to parsing complex retinotopy rather than a literal representation of any individual, or as the only way to agglomerate the complex mosaic of partial upper and lower field, mirror- and nonmirror-image patches into areas