High Rates of Sewage Sludge in Wheat Production

ABSTRACT A greenhouse experiment was conducted at the University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, to study the effects of sewage sludge loading rates on the vegetative growth, yield, and heavy metal contents of wheat grain and straw. Vegetative growth, grain and straw yields were similar whether wheat was fertilized with the recommended rate of inorganic N (112 kg/ha) or equivalent amounts of plantavailable N from sewage sludge. Sewage sludge loading rates higher than three times the recommended plant-available N level delayed maturity and decreased wheat stands in the seedling stage; however, grain and straw yields were similar for all sewage sludge loading rates. Concentrations of cadmium (Cd), copper (Cu), lead (Pb), nickel (Ni), and zinc (Zn) in wheat grain and straw and in the soil following each harvest were low and similar for all fertilizer treatments

Gendering the Politics of Alienation: Arab Revolution and Women’s Sentiments of Loss and Despair

The article suggests that from the start of the revolutions in the Arab region in late 2010 a connection between the law, state, political economy, gender norms and orientalist ideology has formed the foundation of women’s systematic exclusion from politics. As a consequence, women’s alienation from politics – a necessity for the restoration of old regimes of power – took on various forms, including: externalising, exceptionalising, and celebrating women’s revolutionary acts and contributions to revolutions. This article examines these processes that created the ideological and material conditions of women’s alienation, estranging their political involvement and exposing them to various forms of violence The article suggests that alienation of women from revolutions relied on gender normative ideology to create women’s supposedly unique and distinct interests; according to this ideology, women attempt to satisfy such interests through dancing, nikah al-jihad or the desire to be sexually harassed. Women’s power and needs were moulded as distinctly different from those of men. Hence, forms of alienation diminished women’s roles as initiators, producers of revolutions, rendering women apart. This article shows that, whilst forms of alienation differed in various political phases and often contradicted each other, the intent of each form of alienation was to show a defect, a mistake in women’s acts, and thus establish the supposedly ‘correct’ characteristics of women protesters based on women’s intrinsic nature. Through this, gender normativity was reproduced to serve the political class(s)’s specific interests, 2 determining the linkages between the alienation of women from politics, the alienation of the revolution from its people, and the entire sphere of politics. The sphere of politics not only relates to political activism and conflict between revolutions and counterrevolutions, it is also a battlefield for the (re)production of knowledge