Effect of Coriaria arborea on seed banks during primary succession on Mt Tarawera, New Zealand

An experiment was conducted over two years to investigate the effect of Coriaria arborea, a native nitrogen-fixing shrub, on soil seed banks at sites representing a post-volcanic successional sequence on Mt Tarawera, New Zealand. The sites ranged from bare volcanic ash and lapilli substrate, through low-growing pre-Coriaria vegetation, to dense stands of Coriaria scrub. Soils (to a depth of 50 mm) under recently established Coriaria and older stands had more seedlings (1096 and 1585 seedlings 0.4 m-2, respectively) and species (37 and 45 species 0.4 m-2, respectively) emerge than where there was no Coriaria (243-320 seedlings 0.4 m-2, 14-25 species 0.4 m-2) and were the only soils with Coriaria seedlings. In total, 3488 seedlings representing 63 taxa were recorded. Seeds were still germinating after 24 months but rates declined markedly in the second year. For example, Coriaria reached a germination peak at 8 weeks but continued to germinate sporadically over the 2-year period. Tree species present in young forest within 0.5 km of the sites were absent. Establishment of Coriaria greatly accelerated an underlying trend of gradually increasing abundance and diversity of seeds in the soil with vegetation age. Adventive, wind-dispersed, and annual species were over-represented in the seed banks compared with the regional evergreen forest-dominated flora. These proportions are expected to decline as succession to forest gradually occurs

An operational system for subject switching between controlled vocabularies: A computational linguistics approach

The NASA Lexical Dictionary (NLD), a system that automatically translates input subject terms to those of NASA, was developed in four phases. Phase One provided Phrase Matching, a context sensitive word-matching process that matches input phrase words with any NASA Thesaurus posting (i.e., index) term or Use reference. Other Use references have been added to enable the matching of synonyms, variant spellings, and some words with the same root. Phase Two provided the capability of translating any individual DTIC term to one or more NASA terms having the same meaning. Phase Three provided NASA terms having equivalent concepts for two or more DTIC terms, i.e., coordinations of DTIC terms. Phase Four was concerned with indexer feedback and maintenance. Although the original NLD construction involved much manual data entry, ways were found to automate nearly all but the intellectual decision-making processes. In addition to finding improved ways to construct a lexical dictionary, applications for the NLD have been found and are being developed

Australian Sheep Industry CRC: Economic Evaluations of Scientific Research Programs

By the end of its seven-year term in 2007-08, the Australian Sheep Industry CRC (Sheep CRC) will have received total funds of about $90 million, that comprises Commonwealth and industry funding of$30 million, and in-kind contributions valued at $60 million. This level of public and private funding emphasises the need for the Sheep CRC to demonstrate that its research programs will generate sound economic returns to all stakeholders. This paper reports an evaluation of the potential economic value of the achievements of the Sheep CRC at the midpoint of its term of operations at which it has some completed research and a large volume of research in progress. The main question that has been addressed in this evaluation concerns the nature and likely magnitude of the potential benefits relative to the costs of their realisation. The economic methods and other procedures that were used to answer this question, the evaluation scenarios and the results obtained are described. Based on the defined with- and without-Sheep CRC evaluation scenarios, the ‘bottom-line’ result was that the Sheep CRC’s scientific research programs have the potential to deliver a total incremental benefit with a 20-year net present value (NPV) of$191.3 million, and a total benefit-cost ratio (BCR) of 8.1:1 (both at a 5% real rate of discount), indicating that the Sheep CRC’s total research investment over all programs has the potential to return about $8 for every$1 of research investment funds.sheep research, economic evaluations, economic-surplus- benefit-cost analysis., Agribusiness, Farm Management, Livestock Production/Industries, Production Economics, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, Q160,

Electrochemical behaviour of dissolved proton species in room temperature ionic liquids.

Understanding the nature of dissolved species in ionic liquids is important, particularlywhen using them as reaction media to replace volatile organic solvents. Electrochemicaltechniques such as cyclic voltammetry and potential-step chronoamperometry are verypowerful tools used to study electrochemical reactions, elucidate mechanisms andquantify diffusion parameters. These techniques have been used in various studies on thebehaviour of dissolved species in ionic liquids. Particularly, the behaviour of hydrogen or?protic? species in ionic liquids can give some insight into the hydrogen bondingcharacteristics of the ionic liquids (individual cation/anion combination) and eventuallythe pH properties of the solvents. We have looked 1,2 at the direct oxidation of hydrogengas in ten ionic liquids with various cation/anion combinations. The mechanism involvesthe two-electron oxidation of hydrogen to the electrogenerated proton, which is thoughtto then combine with the anion (A-) of the ionic liquid. The appearance and position ofthe reverse (reduction) peak on the voltammogram is thought to depend on three factors:(1) the stability of the solvated proton, HA, (2) the position of equilibrium of theprotonation reaction HA = H+ + A-, and (3) any follow-up chemistry e.g. dissociation orreaction of the solvated proton, HA. This is discussed for all ten ionic liquids studied.Solubilities of hydrogen gas are found to be in the range ca. 3-10 mM and diffusioncoefficients are calculated to be of the order 10-10 m2 s-1, with no evidence that the Stokes-Einstein law applies for the diffusion of hydrogen gas in ionic liquids

Parasite co-infection: an ecological, molecular and experimental perspective.

Laboratory studies of pathogens aim to limit complexity in order to disentangle the important parameters contributing to an infection. However, pathogens rarely exist in isolation, and hosts may sustain co-infections with multiple disease agents. These interact with each other and with the host immune system dynamically, with disease outcomes affected by the composition of the community of infecting pathogens, their order of colonization, competition for niches and nutrients, and immune modulation. While pathogen-immune interactions have been detailed elsewhere, here we examine the use of ecological and experimental studies of trypanosome and malaria infections to discuss the interactions between pathogens in mammal hosts and arthropod vectors, including recently developed laboratory models for co-infection. The implications of pathogen co-infection for disease therapy are also discussed

Aplikasi Marketing Mobile System pada PT. Tunas Dwipa Matra Jakarta

Tujuan dari penulisan skripsi adalah untuk membantu meringankan kerja tim marketing yang lokasinya jauh dari kantor dalam memberi data pengajuan kredit motor honda dan mengakses informasi melalui smartphone dengan sistem operasi android sehingga lebih efisien, bisa diakses dimanapun dan kapanpun. Metode penelitian yang digunakan adalah metode analisis, metode perancangan, dan metodologi pengumpulan data, penulis menggunakan metode observasi, wawancara, teknik studi pustaka, pada metode analisis penulis menganalisa kebutuhan dan melalui hasil tesebut penulis merancang tahapan yang akan dilakukan. Aplikasi yang dibangun menggunakan bahasa pemrograman java (eclipse) dengan menggunakan android SDK (Software Development Kit) sebagai pengembang. Hasil yang dicapai adalah dengan adanya aplikasi yang dibangun dapat mempermudah kerja tim marketing yang jaraknya jauh dari kantor dalam menginput data pengajuan kredit dan mengakses informasi melalui smartphone berbasis android. Kesimpulan yang didapat adalah seteleh aplikasi diimplementasikan terlihat bahwa kerja tim marketing lebih ringan dan efesien. Pengguna aplikasi harus memiliki username dan password untuk login ke aplikasi