Inputs for Turfgrass Managers and Sod Growers: Marketing vs. Science-Based Information with Emphasis on Australian Experience

Industry structure and supporting resources are discussed in relation to information on plant nutritional and biostimulant products and concepts. Critical commentary is provided on examples of such products and services before considering ways in which decision-making by turf managers and sod growers can be improved in the future

The British Colonial Press coverage of the Indian Rebellion of 1857-8 and its realationship to local concerns

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the many aspects of identity, in the varied colonies and settlements of the British Empire. It achieves this through investigating the impact that the Indian Rebellion of 1857-8 had on perceived localised issues of identity, interests and the lands that they inhabited. It uses the colonial press copy on one of the Empire’s primary news events, the Rebellion, as source material. Much of the literature on the imperial press covers later periods during which the telegraph system was in place, news agencies were fully developed, and efficient mass printing presses had cut production costs. The newspaper had become a consumer item, as a consequence of the removal of taxes. The existing surveys of the press reaction to the Rebellion concern specific issues or are limited in location and number of journals utilised. Each of the four substantive chapters of this thesis analyse different aspects of identity, by taking specific issues and relating them to colonies or the groups that inhabited them. In the first chapter the island of Ireland is used to examine the issues of religion and ethnicity followed by the divisions those created. The second chapter focuses on at settler colonies and their desire to establish a place and position in the empire by contributing men, material and finances. For this set of concerns British North America, the Cape Colony and Australia were the examples. The Straits Settlements and Burma are also used as locations, in which the European population was seeking to replace East India Company rule with that of the British state. The third chapter uses as an example the colonies of British North America to examine the divided loyalties in settler colonies. The fourth employs several colonies with plantation economies to look at the need for labour and the threat that Indian labour, free or convict, might present. In the final chapter empire wide copy was utilised to compare and to contrast the two visions of the combatants, both European and Indian, and aspects of them to determine if a cross-imperial viewpoint was arrived at, or whether these were local views made homogeneous by the types of people who expressed them

Learning bodies: What do teachers learn from embodied practice?

© 2016, Western Australian Institute for Educational Research Inc. All rights reserved. In this article, we reflect on ways that young adolescents learn through embodied practice, which we define as moments when the body is ‘caught up’ in learning activities. Our observations draw from two workshops conducted as part of the IMC Sky High! program which annually involves over 150 Year 7 and 8 students from schools in low socioeconomic areas of south-west Sydney, Australia. The program is delivered on and off campus by a team at the University of Technology Sydney. In addition to building confidence and skill in curriculum areas, the program aims to introduce young high school students to a tertiary environment and motivate them to engage more actively at school. Paying close attention to a classical music encounter and a trip to a museum, we use ethnographic strategies to consider how looking, doing, listening and proximity facilitate feelings of connection and motivation towards learning. We discuss how an educators’ sensitivity to the listening and speaking body, and the learning and caring body can enhance learning design and opportunities for engagement. Greater awareness of embodiment can enable educators to facilitate rich, sensory learning encounters that are empowering and transformative

Non-Equilibrium Modeling of the Fe XVII 3C/3D ratio for an Intense X-ray Free Electron Laser

We present a review of two methods used to model recent LCLS experimental results for the 3C/3D line intensity ratio of Fe XVII (Bernitt et al. 2012), the time-dependent collisional-radiative method and the density-matrix approach. These are described and applied to a two-level atomic system excited by an X-ray free electron laser. A range of pulse parameters is explored and the effects on the predicted Fe XVII 3C and 3D line intensity ratio are calculated. In order to investigate the behavior of the predicted line intensity ratio, a particular pair of A-values for the 3C and 3D transitions was chosen (2.22 $\times$ 10$^{13}$ s$^{-1}$ and 6.02 $\times$ 10$^{12}$ s$^{-1}$ for the 3C and 3D, respectively), but our conclusions are independent of the precise values. We also reaffirm the conclusions from Oreshkina et al.(2014, 2015): the non-linear effects in the density matrix are important and the reduction in the Fe XVII 3C/3D line intensity ratio is sensitive to the laser pulse parameters, namely pulse duration, pulse intensity, and laser bandwidth. It is also shown that for both models the lowering of the 3C/3D line intensity ratio below the expected time-independent oscillator strength ratio has a significant contribution due to the emission from the plasma after the laser pulse has left the plasma volume. Laser intensities above $\sim 1\times 10^{12}$ W/cm$^{2}$ are required for a reduction in the 3C/3D line intensity ratio below the expected time independent oscillator strength ratio

Product selling vs. pay-per-use service: a strategic analysis of competing business models

We present a model that suggests possible explanations for the observed proliferation of “pay-per-use" (PPU) business models over the last two decades. Delivering “fractions" of a product as a service offers a cost advantage to customers with lower usage but requires extra delivery costs. Previous research focused on information goods (with negligible production costs) and predicted that PPU, when arising as a differentiation to selling in equilibrium, fundamentally achieves lower profits than selling. We extend the theory by covering goods with any production cost, in duopolistic competition. We show that PPU business models can be more profitable than selling (especially at mid-range production costs), as long as their delivery costs are not too high, a requirement that is more easily fulfilled as new technologies reduce these costs. Moreover, if firms are imperfectly informed about their customers' usage profiles, PPU's effective pricing of customers' varying usage offers an additional advantage over selling. This requires companies to employ accounting methods that do not inappropriately allocate production costs over stochastic usage levels. If PPU service provision suffers from queueing inefficiencies, this does not fundamentally change the relative profitability of the PPU and selling models, provided that PPU providers can attract sufficiently high demand to benefit from pooling economies

Meeting the Changing Need for Herbage Seed Quality Assurance in the 21st Century

Quality assurance is a key element in the herbage seed supply chain. The measurement and management of seed quality is discussed in terms of its four main parameters - genetic, physical, vital, and phytosanitary quality - which provide information on the expected performance of herbage seed when sown in the field. During the past century, seed quality management systems have evolved in response to national and regional differences in economic development, crop characteristics, merit testing, and the demands of international trade. The pace of change in the management of seed quality assurance has intensified in developed countries over the past decade or so, driven mainly by the ability to protect intellectual property, the consolidation of seed companies into larger units, and government policy aimed at deregulating the delivery of quality assurance. In developed countries, this has seen the strong private seed sector taking increasing responsibility for seed quality assurance, both economically and legally, together with the emergence of private seed testing laboratories and in-house certification programs. However, developing countries without a strong private seed sector are better served by the more traditional model in which government takes on the role and responsibility for managing seed quality assurance in the public interest. This paper explores recent trends in seed quality management and their strategic implications for different countries now and in the future with particular reference to herbage seed

A UNIVERSIDADE CORPORATIVA COMO REDUTORA DE DESIGUALDADES SOCIAIS NO SETOR DE SERVIÇOS: UM ESTUDO DE CASO EM UMA CENTRAL DE ATENDIMENTO A CLIENTES

Atualmente existe uma discussão sobre a eficácia das universidades tradicionais em relação ao seu papel de formação de profissional. Tal discussão, apesar de válida, reflete apenas uma imagem que as empresas têm destas instituições. Para tanto, visando minimizar os hiatos de formação, verifica-se que as empresas estão assumindo a responsabilidade pela educação de seus profissionais através de suas Universidades Corporativas. Porém, a adoção das Universidades Corporativas não vem apenas a sanar o problema de formação e sim a possibilitar o desenvolvimento e maximização de competências críticas, assim como a manutenção da cultura organizacional. Todavia, um fator interessante é que as práticas empresariais referentes as Universidades Corporativas estão migrando para as causas sociais, no intuito de reduzir as diferenças e as desigualdades. Portanto esse trabalho vem a demonstrar uma experiência válida de uma empresa que possui uma Universidade Corporativa. Para tanto, utilizou-se de procedimentos exploratórios e descritivos, assim como quantitativos e qualitativos visando conhecer melhor o assunto e relatar as práticas da Universidade em questão. Como resultados, foram verificados uma maior aproximação com a sociedade, uma diminuição no nível de absenteísmo e um aumento no nível de comprometimento dos funcionários para com a empresa