History Lessons from Esther: The Leopold Von Ranke Lecture delivered at the Phi Alpha Theta Induction Ceremony

The German historian, Leopold Von Ranke, noted the following: “Every epoch is immediate to God, and its value is not based on what emerges from it, but on its very existence.” My assignment was to respond to Von Ranke’s thoughts. I have done so by drawing on four observations made from the OT book of Esther. These observations pertain to truth, years, obscurity, and heroes; all of them matter to God and all of them should matter to the historian. In a sense, these four elements are the raw materials, or building blocks, of history in any generation. I conclude by suggesting Von Ranke leads us to three affirmations: (1) God is aware of and present in every epoch. (2) Every epoch has inestimable value. (3) Existence, by itself, implies and confers value. No one is better equipped to understand and interpret these matters than a Christian historian, firmly rooted in God’s Word. Such an endeavor is a worthy and noble calling

Choking of milking machine pulsators

THE value of applying the teat cup squeezing action more slowly, by choking , has been well demonstrated for a number of years. Leslie and Whittlestone (1938) suggested that brutal teat cups and snappy pulsators could be undesirable because of the trauma caused. Choking was recommended by them to overcome this

Milking machine efficiency and shed husbandry practices

MILKING machine efficiency on dairy farms in the Bridgetown, Greenbushes, Balingup, Boyup Brook and Nannup areas was the subject of a recent testing survey. During the survey 106 machines were tested and the results assessed statistically to gauge the general level of machine efficiency in these districts

Progress in mastitis control : a simple control programme that works

Intensive Department of Agriculture work on the mastitis problem has resulted in development of a simple control programme that works in W.A. dairy herds. Farmern receive regular advice on their herd mastitis levels, and advice is available on overcoming specific problems

Increasing profit on dairy farms

Farmers continually make decisions on all aspects of their farms that influence profit. For dairy farmers these include the number of cows, calving pattern, level and type of supplementary feeding, area of each pasture type and fodder crop, and the areas for hay or silage, or both. The extent and type of the beef sideline operations also influence the overall profitability of the farm. The WesternAustralian Dairy Farm Model (WADFM) is a whole farm model developed by the Western Australian Department of Agriculture to help farmers maximise profits by considering all effects of such decisions on the farm

Letter to Andrew Inglis Clark, Tasmania, from Richard Olney, Boston, U.S.A., 14 Dec. 1901

Letter to Andrew Inglis Clark, Tasmania, from Richard Olney, Boston, U.S.A., 14 Dec. 1901 acknowledging receipt of Clark's book 'Australian Constitutional Law'. C4/C247

Geochemical signatures in otoliths record natal origins of American shad

Author Posting. © American Fisheries Society, 2008. This article is posted here by permission of American Fisheries Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Transactions of the American Fisheries Society 137 (2008): 57–69, doi:10.1577/T07-029.1.Population connectivity is a critical component in the life history dynamics of anadromous fishes and in the persistence of local populations. We used geochemical signatures in the otoliths of American shad Alosa sapidissima to determine natal origins and estimate rates of straying among river-specific populations along the U.S. Atlantic coast. Stable isotope (δ13C, δ18O and 87Sr:86Sr) and elemental (Mg:Ca, Mn:Ca, Sr:Ca and Ba:Ca) signatures in otoliths of juvenile American shad from rivers from Georgia to New Hampshire varied significantly, allowing for an average of 91% cross-validated accuracy when classifying individual fish to their natal rivers. We also found significant interannual variability in the geochemical signatures from several rivers, due largely to differences in δ18O values among years. We then used the ground-truthed geochemical signatures in the otoliths of juvenile American shad to identify the natal origins of spawning adults in the York River system in Virginia. Approximately 6% of the spawning adults collected in the York River were strays from other rivers. Of the remaining fish, 79% were spawned in the Mattaponi River and 21% in the Pamunkey River. The combined results of this and other recent studies suggest that although most American shad spawning in the York River were homing to their natal river, there was much less fidelity to individual tributaries. Small-scale straying could allow fish spawned in the Mattaponi River to subsidize spawning in the Pamunkey River, which has experienced persistent recruitment failureThis work was funded by National Science Foundation grants OCE-0215905 and OCE-0134998 to SRT and by the Wallop–Breaux Program of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service through the Virginia Marine Resources Commission to J.E.O