Crop residue conservation during fallow and erosion risk in west central Saskatchewan

Non-Peer ReviewedSummerfallow is considered to be a necessary practice to replenish soil moisture reserves in much of west central Saskatchewan. Unfortunately, this practice has been largely responsible for severe erosion in the past. Recently many farmers have attempted to keep more crop residue on the soil surface, by using herbicides and wide blade cultivators to control weeds during the fallow period. Much of the increase in these practices has been due to assistance programs provided by PFRA, Saskatchewan Agriculture (e.g., Save Our Soils (SOS) program), Ducks Unlimited and other organizations. This paper looks at the effectiveness of these projects in mainta1n1ng crop residue to minimize erosion. Included are evaluations of weed control, costs, subsequent crop yields and farmer perceptions. Results of a crop residue survey are also presented. This survey provides a good comparison with the project fields. It also enables one to forecast erosion potential for the following winter, spring, and summer seasons. While the paper focuses mainly on 1988 activities, it should be noted that similar work was done in 1986-87

Seeding systems and cropping trends in Saskatchewan results of a PFRA survey, 1997-2002

Non-Peer ReviewedFrom 1997 to 2002, Agriculture & Agri-Food Canada’s (AAFC) PFRA Branch conducted a survey of over 4000 annually cropped fields in Saskatchewan. Each year the same fields were visited shortly after crop emergence to collect information on crop type, row spacing, opener type, packing system, amount of previous crop residue, orientation of previous crop stubble, and adoption of low soil disturbance seeding. Key results are the increasing trend toward lower soil disturbance seeding, and the high incidence of pulse crops associated with low disturbance seeding. In depth analysis of trends on individual fields suggest that very few producers are able to maintain low disturbance seeding every year on the same field. This suggests that some flexibility is required to allow for periodic soil disturbance to address issues such as perennial weeds

Operation of a Stark decelerator with optimum acceptance

With a Stark decelerator, beams of neutral polar molecules can be accelerated, guided at a constant velocity, or decelerated. The effectiveness of this process is determined by the 6D volume in phase space from which molecules are accepted by the Stark decelerator. Couplings between the longitudinal and transverse motion of the molecules in the decelerator can reduce this acceptance. These couplings are nearly absent when the decelerator operates such that only every third electric field stage is used for deceleration, while extra transverse focusing is provided by the intermediate stages. For many applications, the acceptance of a Stark decelerator in this so-called $s=3$ mode significantly exceeds that of a decelerator in the conventionally used ($s=1$) mode. This has been experimentally verified by passing a beam of OH radicals through a 2.6 meter long Stark decelerator. The experiments are in quantitative agreement with the results of trajectory calculations, and can qualitatively be explained with a simple model for the 6D acceptance. These results imply that the 6D acceptance of a Stark decelerator in the $s=3$ mode of operation approaches the optimum value, i.e. the value that is obtained when any couplings are neglected.Comment: 13 pages, 11 figure

Healthy ageing and home: The perspectives of very old people in five European countries

This paper reports on in-depth research, using a grounded theory approach, to examine the ways in which very old people perceive healthy ageing in the context of living alone at home within urban settings in five European countries. This qualitative study was part of a cross-national project entitled ENABLE-AGE which examined the relationship between home and healthy ageing. Interviews explored the notion of healthy ageing, the meaning and importance of home, conceptualisations of independence and autonomy and links between healthy ageing and home. Data analysis identified five ways in which older people constructed healthy ageing: home and keeping active; managing lifestyles, health and illness; balancing social life; and balancing material and financial circumstances. Older people reflected on their everyday lives at home in terms of being engaged in purposeful, meaningful action and evaluated healthy ageing in relation to the symbolic and practical affordances of the home, contextualised within constructions of their national context. The research suggests that older people perceive healthy ageing as an active achievement, created through individual, personal effort and supported through social ties despite the health, financial and social decline associated with growing older. The physicality and spatiality of home provided the context for establishing and evaluating the notion of healthy ageing, whilst the experienced relationship between home, life history and identity created a meaningful space within which healthy ageing was negotiated

The Effects of Caffeine on Maximal Anaerobic Exercise

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High atmospheric horizontal resolution eliminates the wind-driven coastal warm bias in the southeastern tropical Atlantic

We investigate the strong warm bias in sea surface temperatures (SST) of the southeastern tropical Atlantic that occurs in most of the current global climate models. We analyse this bias in the Max Planck Institute Earth System Model at different horizontal resolutions ranging from 0.1° to 0.4° in the ocean and 0.5° to 1.8° in the atmosphere. High atmospheric horizontal resolution eliminates the SST bias close to the African coast, due to an improved representation of surface wind-stress near the coast. This improvement affects coastal upwelling and horizontal ocean circulation, as confirmed with dedicated sensitivity experiments. The wind-stress improvements are partly caused by the better represented orography at higher horizontal resolution in the spectral atmospheric model. The reductions of the coastal SST bias obtained through higher horizontal resolution do not, however, translate to a reduction of the large-scale bias extending westward from the African coast into the southeastern tropical Atlantic

Preserved retinotopic brain connectivity in macular degeneration

PURPOSE: The eye disease macular degeneration (MD) is a leading cause of blindness worldwide. There is no cure for MD, but several promising treatments aimed at restoring vision at the level of the retina are currently under investigation. These treatments assume that the patient's brain can still process appropriately the retinal input once it is restored, but whether this assumption is correct has yet to be determined. METHODS: We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and connective field modelling to determine whether the functional connectivity between the input-deprived portions of primary visual cortex (V1) and early extrastriate areas (V2/3) is still retinotopically organised. Specifically, in both patients with juvenile macular degeneration and age-matched controls with simulated retinal lesions, we assessed the extent to which the V1-referred connective fields of extrastriate voxels, as estimated on the basis of spontaneous fMRI signal fluctuations, adhered to retinotopic organisation. RESULTS: We found that functional connectivity between the input-deprived portions of visual areas V1 and extrastriate cortex is still largely retinotopically organised in MD, although on average less so than in controls. Patients with stable fixation exhibited normal retinotopic connectivity, however, suggesting that for the patients with unstable fixation, eye-movements resulted in spurious, homogeneous signal modulations across the entire input-deprived cortex, which would have hampered our ability to assess their spatial structure of connectivity. CONCLUSIONS: Despite the prolonged loss of visual input due to MD, the cortico-cortical connections of input-deprived visual cortex remain largely intact. This suggests that the restoration of sight in macular degeneration can rely on a largely unchanged retinotopic representation in early visual cortex following loss of central retinal function

Sea level changes mechanisms in the MPI-ESM under FAFMIP forcing conditions

Mechanistic causes for sea level (SL) change patterns are analyzed as they emerge from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) endorsed Flux-Anomaly-Forced Model Intercomparison Project (FAFMIP) coupled climate experiments imposing individual forcing anomalies in wind stress, heatflux and freshwater flux to the Max-Planck-Institute Earth System Model (MPI-ESM). It appears that the heat flux perturbations have the largest effect on the sea level. In contrast, the direct impact of momentum and freshwater flux anomalies on SL anomalies appear to be limited to some region e.g. the Southern Ocean, Arctic Ocean and to some extent the North Pacific and North Atlantic Ocean. We find that thermosteric changes dominate the total SL change over large parts of the global ocean, except north of 60 °N where halosteric changes prevail. An analysis of added and redistributed components of heat and freshwater further suggests that the added component dominates the thermosteric SL and the redistributed component dominates the halosteric SL. Due to feedback processes a superposition of all forcing components together leads to the simulated sea level changes in each individual experiment. As a result, large surface heat flux anomalies over the Atlantic lead to wind stress change outside of the Atlantic through teleconnections, which in turn appear to be the primary driving agent for changes of sea level outside of the Atlantic in all three experiments. The associated wind driven Sverdrup stream function implicates that outside of the Atlantic most of the feedback can be explained by changes in the Sverdrup circulation

PTH6: PATIENTS' PERCEPTIONS OF THE OUTCOMES OF TREATMENT WITH TOPICAL NSAIDS, RUBIFACIANTS AND ORAL PAIN REMEDIES. A PROSPECTIVE STUDY OF MEDICINES AVAILABLE THROUGH COMMUNITY PHARMACIES

Obesity is a major health concern not only in the general population but also in patients with haemophilia. Little is known about the consequences of obesity for haemophilia patients. As obesity is an important risk factor for osteoarthritis, these effects may be even more pronounced in haemophilia patients who are prone to joint damage. The association between obesity and limitations in daily activities as well as the frequency of bleeds and use of factor VIII (FVIII) concentrate in obese and normal weight haemophilia patients was assessed. Fifteen obese (BMI≥30kgm-2) and fifteen normal weight (BMI≤25kgm-2) haemophilia A patients matched for severity and age were analysed. The Hemophilia Activities List (HAL) was used to assess the impairment in daily activities. Compared with the normal weight haemophilia patients, obese haemophiliacs had a significantly lower sum score (88/100 and 98/100, respectively, P=0.02), which was mainly caused by an impaired lower limb function. All other components of the HAL also showed lower scores in the obese patients, but did not reach statistical significance. A higher frequency of bleeds requiring treatment with FVIII concentrate occurred in the obese haemophiliacs (17 bleeds in eight individuals) compared with the controls (three bleeds in three individuals) (P=0.045). Compared with non-obese haemophilia patients, obese haemophiliacs had more joint bleeds and a lower overall HAL score, which was driven by a lower limb function score. Prevention of overweight and weight reduction requires special attention from physicians treating haemophilia patients. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd