Compilation of the data on the land withdrawals in Alaska

Major decisions an the use and disposition of land in Alaska are being made by the State and Federal governments. These decisions will affect the utilization of all our land resources including minerals. Since minerals are an essential component of our existance, the availability and access to minerals is an important issue. There are approximately 2600 land orders and acts classifying land in Alaska that restrict the utilization of our minerals resources. As of April 1977, approximately twenty-six percent of Alaska, or 100,875,391 acres was open to mineral entry and location under the Federal Mining Laws and the State Mining and Mineral leasing Laws

Economics of dairy breeding

From Michigan State University Extension Bulletin E-1148.R. W. Everett (Cornell University), R. E. Pearson (Agricultural Research, U.S. Department of Agriculture), Adapted by Rex Ricketts (Dairy Husbandry Department, College of Agriculture)New 9/79/8

Recovery of Fertilizer Nitrogen Under Field Conditions Using Nitrogen-15

An experiment was conducted under field conditions to study the movement and recovery of N15-enriched nitrogen fertilizer added to soil in the forms of NaNO2 and (NH4)2SO4. The plots consisted of the soil mass inside cylinders 30 or 60 cm in diameter, which were pressed into the soil to a depth of 45-60 cm. These plots were either seeded to sudangrass (sorghum sudanense) or left uncropped. The plant tops, roots, and the soil, by 15-cm layers, were analyzed for total N and excess N15 content. Recovery of added N15 from the 32 plots ranged between 96.3 and 101.8%, and averaged 99.0%. There was no significant difference in recovery of the fertilizer N due to the percent of excess N15 in the fertilizer, size of plot, exposure to natural rainfall, cropping, N source, or the time of application of the fertilizer. Wide variation in recovery of excess N15 occurred with core sampling and it was found necessary to remove, weigh, mix and subsample the entire soil mass from within the rims. The small amounts of unrecovered N were probably due to procedural errors in the field and laboratory, and leaching and root growth beyond the sampling zone. There was no indication of any N loss in the gaseous form. The fate of applied fertilizer N was followed under field conditions using N15-enriched nitrogen fertilizer applied to the soil in situ enclosed by large steel cylinders. Total recovery of the fertilizer N from these experiments after 8 weeks ranged from 88 to 96%, but dropped as low as 77% after 10 months. Recovery of the fertilizer N was greater from an ammonium source than from nitrate. Better recovery of fertilizer was obtained when the plots were cropped to sudangrass rather than left fallow. Doubling the rate of application of the fertilizer N from 336 to 672 kg/ha did not affect percent of total recovery. The 4 to 12% of fertilizer N unrecovered after 8 weeks appears to be due to a loss in the gaseous form, since special precautions were taken to restrict leaching and to eliminate errors in sampling and analysis

Selective attention moderates the relationship between attentional capture by signals of nondrug reward and illicit drug use

BACKGROUND: The current study examined whether cognitive control moderates the association between (non-drug) reward-modulated attentional capture and use of alcohol and other drugs (AOD). METHODS: Participants were 66 university students who completed an assessment including questions about AOD use, a visual search task to measure value-modulated attentional capture, and a goal-directed selective attention task as a measure of cognitive control. RESULTS: The association between the effect of value-modulated attentional capture and illicit drug use was moderated by level of cognitive control. Among participants with lower levels of cognitive control, value-modulated attentional capture was associated with illicit drug use. This was not the case among participants with higher levels of cognitive control, who instead showed a significant association between illicit drug use and self-reported impulsivity, as well as alcohol use. CONCLUSIONS: These results provide support for models that view addictive behaviours as resulting from interaction and competition between automatic and more reflective processes. That is, the mechanisms that ultimately drive addictive behaviour may differ between people low or high in cognitive control. This has important implications for understanding the development and maintenance of substance use disorders and potentially their treatment and prevention

Temperatures of Fragment Kinetic Energy Spectra

Multifragmentation reactions without large compression in the initial state (proton-induced reactions, reverse-kinematics, projectile fragmentation) are examined, and it is verified quantitatively that the high temperatures obtained from fragment kinetic energy spectra and lower temperatures obtained from observables such as level population or isotope ratios can be understood in a common framework.Comment: LaTeX, 7 pages, 2 figures available from autho

Continent stabilisation by lateral accretion of subduction zone-processed depleted mantle residues; insights from Zealandia

To examine how the mantle lithosphere stabilises continents, we present a synthesis of the mantle beneath Zealandia in the SW Pacific Ocean. Zealandia, Earth's “8th continent”, occurs over 4.9 M km2 and comprises a fore-arc, arc and back-arc fragment rifted from the Australia–Antarctica Gondwana margin 85 Myr ago. The oldest extant crust is ∼500 Ma and the majority is Permian–Jurassic. Peridotitic rocks from most known locations reveal the underpinning mantle to comprise regional domains varying from refractory (Al2O3 < 1 wt%, olivine Mg# > 92, spinel Cr# up to 80, Pt/Ir < 1) to moderately depleted (Al2O3 = 2–4 wt%, olivine Mg# ∼90.5, spinel Cr# < ∼60). There is no systematic distribution of these domains relative to the former arc configuration and some refractory domains underlie crust that is largely devoid of magmatic rocks. Re-depletion Os model ages have no correlation with depletion indices but do have a distribution that is very similar to global convecting mantle. Whole rock, mineral and isotopic data are interpreted to show that the Zealandia mantle lithosphere was constructed from isotopically heterogeneous convecting mantle fragments swept into the sub-arc environment, amalgamated, and variably re-melted under low-P hydrous conditions. The paucity of mafic melt volumes in most of the overlying crust that could relate to the depleted domains requires melting to have been followed by lateral accretion either during subduction or slab rollback. Recent Australia–Pacific convergence has thickened portions of the Zealandia mantle to >160 km. Zealandia shows that the generation of refractory and/or thick continental lithosphere is not restricted to the Archean. Since Archean cratons also commonly display crust–mantle age decoupling, contain spinel peridotites with extreme Cr# numbers that require low-P hydrous melting, and often have a paucity of mafic melts relative to the extreme depletion indicated by their peridotitic roots, they too may – in part – be compilations of peridotite shallowly melted and then laterally accreted at subduction margins

Predictive prey pursuit in a whiskered robot

Highly active small mammals need to capture prey rapidly and with a high success rate if they are to survive. We consider the case of the Etruscan shrew, which hunts prey including crickets almost as large as itself, and relies on its whiskers (vibrissae) to complete a kill. We model this hunting behaviour using a whiskered robot. Shrews strike rapidly and accurately after gathering very limited sensory information; we attempt to match this performance by using model-based simultaneous discrimination and localisation of a ‘prey’ robot (i.e. by using strong priors). We report performance that is comparable, given the spatial and temporal scale differences, to shrew performance in most respects