Effect of CCC [(2-chloroethyl)-trimethyl ammonium chloride] on fruiting behaviour of Cabernet Sauvignon

A foliar spray of CCC (300 ppm) applied at the stage when inflorescences were between 25 and 100 % cap fall will increase total yield by increasing cluster number and number of berries/cluster in the year following treatment. The effect of CCC on berry size is influenced by the number of berries/cluster.Einfluß von CCC [(2-Chloräthyl)-trimethylammoniumcblorid] auf die Ertragskomponenten von Cabernet SauvignonWurden die Blätter von Cabernet Sauvignon mit 300 ppm CCC gespritzt, wenn die Calyptren der Blüten zu 25-100°/o abgefallen waren, so war der Ertrag im folgenden Jahr gesteigert; hierbei waren sowohl die Anzahl der Trauben als auch die Anzahl der Beeren/Traube vermehrt. Die Wirkung von CCC auf die Beerengröße wurde durch die Anzahl der Beeren/Traube beeinflußt

Continued development of V. vinifera inflorescence primordia in winter dormant buds

Continued development of inflorescence primordia in winter dormant buds of Vitis vinifera 'Pinot Noir' is reported. In buds sampled from a commercial vineyard in the cool climate wine region of Southern Tasmania, mitotic activity was evident throughout the period from harvest to bud swell the following season. Results showed that in spite of buds entering apparent dormancy, cell division and inflorescence development continued throughout the winter months.

Innovation in the UK fresh produce sector: Identifying systemic problems and the move towards systemic facilitation

Innovation has been promoted to help meet the various challenges faced by the UK fresh produce sector. However, what barriers hinder the development and spread of new ideas in the sector have not been investigated. This article explores the social and economic constraints to innovation by combining the agricultural innovation systems (AIS) conceptual framework with a functional-structural analysis. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 32 key informants, including growers, agronomists, researchers and representatives from major retailers. The findings show that, whilst the UK fresh produce sector is highly innovative, a number of systemic problems slow or prevent the acquisition and utilisation of knowledge. The privatisation of public extension services has led to a degree of horizontal and vertical fragmentation, with increasingly ‘closed’ groups and lack of nationwide research coordination or guiding visions for the sector. Variation in business size and crop type make coordination or coherent visions challenging to establish, presenting problems for intermediary organisations in matching the supply and demand of agricultural knowledge. At the same time, a stark power asymmetry exists between suppliers and retail customers, whose policies have led to a “defensive” innovation culture and lack of trust – producer organisations represent a response to this asymmetry, as well as increasingly important factor in the (now globalised) development and diffusion of agricultural innovations. Systemic instruments to facilitate better coordination and communication are proposed, such as innovation platforms to bring together otherwise closed groups around common problems and the use of road-mapping to provide a guiding vision for the future of the sector. Retail-led grower groups also provide a means to improve trust between suppliers and customers in the sector and promote new technological trajectories

A mechanism of internal decadal atlantic ocean variability in a high-resolution coupled climate model

The North Atlantic Ocean subpolar gyre (NA SPG) is an important region for initialising decadal climate forecasts. Climate model simulations and palaeo climate reconstructions have indicated that this region could also exhibit large, internally generated variability on decadal timescales. Understanding these modes of variability, their consistency across models, and the conditions in which they exist, is clearly important for improving the skill of decadal predictions — particularly when these predictions are made with the same underlying climate models. Here we describe and analyse a mode of internal variability in the NA SPG in a state-of-the-art, high resolution, coupled climate model. This mode has a period of 17 years and explains 15–30% of the annual variance in related ocean indices. It arises due to the advection of heat content anomalies around the NA SPG. Anomalous circulation drives the variability in the southern half of the NA SPG, whilst mean circulation and anomalous temperatures are important in the northern half. A negative feedback between Labrador Sea temperatures/densities and those in the North Atlantic Current is identified, which allows for the phase reversal. The atmosphere is found to act as a positive feedback on to this mode via the North Atlantic Oscillation which itself exhibits a spectral peak at 17 years. Decadal ocean density changes associated with this mode are driven by variations in temperature, rather than salinity — a point which models often disagree on and which we suggest may affect the veracity of the underlying assumptions of anomaly-assimilating decadal prediction methodologies

Phosphorus Transfer to River Water from Grassland Catchments in Ireland

In Ireland it is estimated that at least half of phosphorus (P) loss to water is from agricultural sources and National and European Union policy and legislation aim at reducing phosphorus (P) loss to water in order to reduce eutrophication. In Ireland, the average soil test P (STP) levels increased ten-fold, from less than 1 to over 8 mg Morgan P per l soil over the past 50 years, reflecting increased P inputs in fertiliser and animal feed. One of the main objectives of this three-year research programme, started in 2001, was to investigate P loss to water in grassland catchments

Why 'scaffolding' is the wrong metaphor : the cognitive usefulness of mathematical representations.

The metaphor of scaffolding has become current in discussions of the cognitive help we get from artefacts, environmental affordances and each other. Consideration of mathematical tools and representations indicates that in these cases at least (and plausibly for others), scaffolding is the wrong picture, because scaffolding in good order is immobile, temporary and crude. Mathematical representations can be manipulated, are not temporary structures to aid development, and are refined. Reflection on examples from elementary algebra indicates that Menary is on the right track with his ‘enculturation’ view of mathematical cognition. Moreover, these examples allow us to elaborate his remarks on the uniqueness of mathematical representations and their role in the emergence of new thoughts.Peer reviewe

The narrative self, distributed memory, and evocative objects

In this article, I outline various ways in which artifacts are interwoven with autobiographical memory systems and conceptualize what this implies for the self. I first sketch the narrative approach to the self, arguing that who we are as persons is essentially our (unfolding) life story, which, in turn, determines our present beliefs and desires, but also directs our future goals and actions. I then argue that our autobiographical memory is partly anchored in our embodied interactions with an ecology of artifacts in our environment. Lifelogs, photos, videos, journals, diaries, souvenirs, jewelry, books, works of art, and many other meaningful objects trigger and sometimes constitute emotionally-laden autobiographical memories. Autobiographical memory is thus distributed across embodied agents and various environmental structures. To defend this claim, I draw on and integrate distributed cognition theory and empirical research in human-technology interaction. Based on this, I conclude that the self is neither defined by psychological states realized by the brain nor by biological states realized by the organism, but should be seen as a distributed and relational construct

In search of clarity about parity

First paragraph: Andy Clark's Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension (Clark 2008) is, among other things, a characteristically bold and timely defence of the extended mind hypothesis (Clark and Chalmers 1998). According to this hypothesis, which Clark here calls EXTENDED, the physical mechanisms of mind (the material vehicles that realize cognition) sometimes extend beyond the traditional boundaries of skull and skin, such that "actions and loops through nonbiological structure [sometimes count] as genuine aspects of extended cognitive processes" (p. 85). In the brief treatment that follows I cannot hope to engage with everything that is worthy of discussion in Clark's rich and exciting text, so I shall content myself with exploring and assessing a central thread in his argument for EXTENDED. That thread revolves around what is called the parity principle. Here is how that principle is formulated in Supersizing the Mind (p. 77, drawing on Clark and Chalmers 1998, p. 8): If, as we confront some task, a part of the world functions as a process which, were it to go on in the head, we would have no hesitation in accepting as part of the cognitive process, then that part of the world is (for that time) part of the cognitive process. The general idea is this: if there is functional equality with respect to governing intelligent behaviour (for example, in the way stored information is poised to guide such behaviour), between the causal contribution of certain internal elements and the causal contribution of certain external elements, and if the internal elements concerned already qualify as the proper parts of a cognitive trait (system, state, process, mechanism, architecture...), then there is no good reason to deny equivalent status to the relevant external elements. Parity of causal contribution mandates parity of status with respect to the cognitive

The cognitive integration of scientific instruments: Information, situated cognition, and scientific practice

Researchers in the biological and biomedical sciences, particularly those working in laboratories, use a variety of artifacts to help them perform their cognitive tasks. This paper analyses the relationship between researchers and cognitive artifacts in terms of integration. It first distinguishes different categories of cognitive artifacts used in biological practice on the basis of their informational properties. This results in a novel classification of scientific instruments, conducive to an analysis of the cognitive interactions between researchers and artifacts. It then uses a multidimensional framework in line with complementarity-based extended and distributed cognition theory to conceptualize how deeply instruments in different informational categories are integrated into the cognitive systems of their users. The paper concludes that the degree of integration depends on various factors, including the amount of informational malleability, the intensity and kind of information flow between agent and artifact, the trustworthiness of the information, the procedural and informational transparency, and the degree of individualisation