AgroCycle – developing a circular economy in agriculture

Continuing population growth and increasing consumption are driving global food demand, with agricultural activity expanding to keep pace. The modern agricultural system is wasteful, with Europe generating some 700 million tonnes of agrifood (agricultural and food) waste each year. The Agricultural Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems (ACSES) at Harper Adams University is involved in a major research and innovation project (AgroCycle) on the application of the ‘circular economy’ across the agri-food sector. In the context of the agrifood chain, the ‘circular economy’ aims to reduce waste while also making best use of the ‘wastes’ produced by using economically viable processes and procedures to increase their value . Led by University College Dublin, AgroCycle is a Horizon 2020 collaborative project with 26 partners. AgroCycle will address such opportunities directly by implementation of the ‘circular economy’ across the agri-food sector. The authors will present (a) a summary of the AgroCycle project and (b) the role played by Harper Adams in the project in evaluating the potential for small-scale anaerobic digestion (AD) technology that can be applied on farm to provide local heat, energy and nutrient recovery from mixed agricultural wastes

Some recent radio talks.

Myxomatosis is losing its punch - By A. R. TOMLINSON, Chief Vermin Control Officer The results of the testing of field strains of myxomatosis just released by the Australian National University are of vital importance to every farmer in Western Australia. They show clearly that the predicted decline in the effectiveness of myxomatosis has occurred. Worse still, they reveal that the decline has been more rapid in some areas than observers anticipated. The importance of good seed in vegetable production. - By T. WACHTEL, Vegetable Adviser, Horticultural Division The seed is the foundation of the crop that eventually is to be harvested. As an American textbook on vegetable vegetable growing puts it: Within the seed coat may be locked up the key to future success or failure. A vegetable crop can be much poorer than the seed, but it cannot be better. Water conservation on the farm - By J. W. LEWIS, Irrigation Adviser, Bunbury Water conservation on the farm is becoming increasingly important in this State, and on most properties in the South-West water can be conserved easily and economically. Coupled with the use of modern spray irrigation systems, this trend may well revolutionise farming methods in years to come and lead the way to greater agricultural prosperity. Itch mite in sheep - By C. R. TOOP, Chief Veterinary Surgeon During the past 12 months there has been a sharp rise in the incidence of itch mite and many cases have been reported both from sheep markets and individual properties. The symptoms of itch mite infestation are very similar to those produced by hce but, unlike the sheep louse, the itch mite is invisible to the naked eye and the microscopic examination of scrapings taken from the skin after the wool has been closely clipped is necessary for its detection. Orchard irrigation - By J. CRIPPS, Horticultural Adviser There are no fruits grown in Western Australia which do not give larger crops if irrigated, although the majority of fruit growers do not have irrigation installations. Powdery mildew diseases in the home garden - By OLGA M. GOSS, B.Sc. Hons., Plant Pathologist Most of you will be only too familiar with the powdery mildew diseases which occur so frequently during the warmer months in your gardens. The most common plants badly affected by these diseases are grape vines, roses, hydrangeas, delphinium, Iagerstroemia and melons of various types. Cat Flu - A matter of serious concern - By J. SHILKIN, B.V.Sc, Veterinary Surgeon The importance of cats in the community is not generally realised by the public, yet severe epidemics among the feline population should be a matter of considerable concern. The presence of a reasonably large cat population in our cities is most important in keeping rat and mice numbers down to a low level, and their importance on farming properties is too well known to need any comment. Rat-borne diseases do occur m man in Australia and rats are always a potential danger as carriers and spreaders of some extremely serious diseases of man. Even good farmers can cause erosion. - By BRIAN MARSH, B.Sc. (Agric), Soil Conservation Adviser The particular aspects of soil conservation I am to discuss has not been publicised before, and the suggestions contained in this talk may be of use to you during seeding operations this year. It is often asked, Will the use of clover really prevent erosion

First-principles study of ternary fcc solution phases from special quasirandom structures

In the present work, ternary Special Quasirandom Structures (SQSs) for a fcc solid solution phase are generated at different compositions, $x_A=x_B=x_C=\tfrac{1}{3}$ and $x_A=\tfrac{1}{2}$, $x_B=x_C=\tfrac{1}{4}$, whose correlation functions are satisfactorily close to those of a random fcc solution. The generated SQSs are used to calculate the mixing enthalpy of the fcc phase in the Ca-Sr-Yb system. It is observed that first-principles calculations of all the binary and ternary SQSs in the Ca-Sr-Yb system exhibit very small local relaxation. It is concluded that the fcc ternary SQSs can provide valuable information about the mixing behavior of the fcc ternary solid solution phase. The SQSs presented in this work can be widely used to study the behavior of ternary fcc solid solutions.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figure

Some recent radio talks.

Light land development in the South - By A. S. WILD, Assistant Superintendent of Wheat Farming, Department of Agriculture. It is only since World War II ended that successful large scale development of light land near the south coast of this State has been undertaken, although the many millions of acres of treeless plain country throughout the agricultural areas have, for many years, presented a challenge to the pioneering ability of Western Australians. The use of hormones in viticulture - By L. T. JONES, Senior Plant Research Officer The discovery and proper use of plant hormones, or as they are more accurately termed, growth-regulating: substances, probably represents the greatest contribution which science has made to agriculture in the past few decades. It was the discovery by Kogl in 1934 that indole acetic acid was an active growth substance which led rapidly to the preparation and testing of large numbers of compounds of similar chemical structure and among these were found many substances which were very potent and also comparatively cheap to produce. Recent trends in viticulture in Western Australia - By W. R. JAMIESON, Viticulturist, Department of Agriculture, Perth Today I want to talk very briefly about some of the more recent trends in viticulture in this State. The commercial production of grapevines is centred mainly around the Swan Valley and as most of the suitable vineyard land in this area has been planted, growers are exploring avenues to increase the returns per acre. Methods of irrigation - By G. GAUNTLETT, Assistant Officer-in-Charge, Irrigation The success of an irrigation scheme depends on several factors. Important among these is the choice and design of the method to be adopted. There are two methods of irrigation, viz., surface and spray irrigation. Canker disease of Red-flowered gum - By W. P. CASS SMITH, B.Sc. (Agric), Government Plant Pathologist Of the many beautiful native plants in Western Australia, few are esteemed more than the red-flowered gum known botanically as Eucalyptus flcifolia. This shapely tree commences blossoming about Christmas time—and provides a magnificent display for several weeks—the blossom shades varying from dark red to pink. Why many beans grow crooked - By M. HARDIE, Vegetable Instructor Sometimes in the process of growing a crop, bean growers find a number of pods which, instead of being long and straight and suitable for marketing, are crooked or bent and quite unsuitable for sale unless beans are in very short supply. It is not unusual for a small number of pods to be affected in this way, generally at the tail-end of the crop, but occasionally the percentage may be high. When this happens the grower is often at a loss to account for his failure to grow a marketable crop. To the best of his ability he has followed methods which normally return a crop of first-grade pods and yet for some reason, his crop is an unpayable one and he is anxious to ascertain the cause. Salt land programme for Autumn - By T. C. STONEMAN, Adviser, Soil Conservation Service Now that summer is over and winter approaches, the time has come to decide what you\u27ll do with that salt problem on your farm. What you SHOULD do, will depend on how severely the area is affected. To make quite clear how the recommendations made by the Department of Agriculture can be applied I will deal with each degree of severity in turn. Orchard cover crops - By J. CRIPPS, Horticultural Adviser The sowing of a cover crop is one of those routine operations which the orchardist often undertakes without much thought, but it is an operation worthy of consideration. Lupin seed - By B. J. QUINLIVAN, B.Sc. (Agric), Botanist, Weeds and Seeds Branch The three types of lupins which we grow in this State are the New Zealand, the W.A. blue, and the yellow lupin. The first two types are very common, the New Zealand lupin being grown mainly in the South-West, while the W.A. lupin is grown over extensive areas of the central and northern wheatbelt, particularly on the sandier types of soil. Cereal rye will grow on wind-eroded areas - By G. H. BURVILL, Chief Plant Research Officer. Travelling around the wheatbelt, one often sees areas of sandy soil quite bare, A due to wind erosion. Surface soil blown from these patches has built up against fences, or as mounds in the nearby scrub. Many of the eroded places are quite small— perhaps less than an acre or only a few acres. But some are large, with one to three hundred acres of bare yellow sand. As much as two feet of soil has been blown from big areas. Autumn-winter feeding for the fat lamb flock - By N. DAVENPORT, Senior Adviser, Meat Production The autumn-winter period is the most important part of the year for the fat lamb crop from a feed point of view. It is important not only from the aspect of the wellbeing of the sheep, but also of the pasture. Pasture plants are living things, too, and they also require consideration and care for their development. When a new season pasture is kept hard grazed in those critical first few weeks of growth it cannot carry as many sheep over the season as one which is lightly stocked during that time. Plant diseases in the home garden - By W. P. CASS-SMITH, B.Sc. (Agric), Government Plant Pathologist Recently many home-gardeners have complained that plantings of vegetables or ornamentals are making unthrifty growth, in spite of liberal waterings and fertilisation. These symptoms are commonly caused by root-knot eelworm, a pest which has unfortunately become very widespread in the sandy soils adjacent to Perth, and in many other parts of this State. This eelworm parasite attacks the roots of many kinds of plants causing them to rot and to develop bead-like swellings or galls. As a result, the intake of plant food and water is restricted and stunting of the above-ground parts occurs. Principles of commercial beekeeping - By R. S. COLEMAN, R.D.A., Government Apiculturist We have many queries from small beekeepers, and from people who have never opened a hive, on how to break into full-time beekeeping. So it was thought that you would like to know just what are the principles of successful bee farming. Grasshoppers and locusts - By C. F. H. JENKINS, M.A., Government Entomologist Grasshoppers and locusts are among the most ancient enemies of mankind for they figured prominently in Biblical times, and periodically throughout the ages have devastated crops in all parts of the world. Acetonaemia in dairy cattle - By P. M. A. HARWOOD, M.R.C.V.S., Veterinary Officer Acetonaemia, more correctly known as ketosis is a metabolic disease. Unlike infectious diseases such as tuberculosis or mastitis, which are caused by microbes, metabolic diseases result from an upset in the normal bodily processes. Molybdenum for subterranean clover - By T. C. DUNNE, B.Sc. (Agric), Ph.D. (Calif.), Chief Plant Nutrition and Research Officer Subterranean clover is undoubtedly the most important pasture species in this State. Because it is a legume, it can make excellent growth on soils with a low nitrogen content. The nitrogen it needs is, of course, provided by bacteria which inhabit the nodules found on its roots. These bacteria provide nitrogen by taking it from the air and converting it to a form which can be used by the clover. However, it is now known that the bacteria can use the nitrogen of the air only if enough molybdenum is available to them. Cobalt deficiency in sheep and cattle - By C. R. TOOP, B.V.SC, Chief Veterinary Officer With the establishment of group settlements at Denmark after the first world war, it was observed that young cattle, although running on lush pastures, developed systems of unthriftness and wasting and usually died. Research conducted of Filmer and Underwood later revealed that this condition was caused by a deficiency of cobalt and that it could be cured and prevented by addition of this mineral to the diet. Cobalt deficiency has since been met with other parts of the State and was recently diagnosed in sheep at Mount Manypeaks

The sound of street corner society: UK grime music as ethnography

This article explores the ways in which popular music can be linked to ethnography. While there is a tradition of connecting popular music with sociology, this article posits a further resonance that is not so much theoretical as methodological. The article suggests that forms of contemporary popular music parallel key facets of ethnography, not simply in terms of sociological analysis, but with regard to popular music as an ethnographic resource, as ‘data’, and as the reflexive expression of Paul Willis’ conception of the ‘ethnographic imagination’; and the article argues that contemporary British hip-hop in the form of ‘grime’ is a potent exemplar. This is due to the resolutely cultural, spatial nature of grime music: a factor that marks out grime as a distinctive musical genre and a distinctive ethnographic form, as it is an experientially rooted music about urban locations, made from within those urban locations

First-principle solubilities of alkali and alkaline earth metals in Mg-B alloys

By devising a novel framework, we present a comprehensive theoretical study of solubilities of alkali (Li, Na, K, Rb, Cs) and alkaline earth (Be, Ca, Sr, Ba) metals in the he boron-rich Mg-B system. The study is based on first-principle calculations of solutes formation energies in MgB$_2$, MgB$_4$, MgB$_7$ alloys and subsequent statistical-thermodynamical evaluation of solubilities. The advantage of the approach consists in considering all the known phase boundaries in the ternary phase diagram. Substitutional Na, Ca, and Li demonstrate the largest solubilities, and Na has the highest (0.5-1 % in MgB$_7$ at $T=650-1000$ K). All the considered interstitials have negligible solubilities. The solubility of Be in MgB$_7$ can not be determined because the corresponding low-solubility formation energy is negative indicating the existence of an unknown ternary ground state. We have performed a high-throughput search of ground states in binary Mg-B, Mg-$A$, and B-$A$ systems, and we construct the ternary phase diagrams of Mg-B-$A$ alloys based on the stable binary phases. Despite its high temperature observations, we find that Sr$_{9}$Mg$_{38}$ is not a low-temperature equilibrium structure. We also determine two new possible ground states CaB$_{4}$ and RbB$_{4}$, not yet observed experimentally.Comment: 5 figure

Processes and experiences of creative cognition in seven Western classical composers

In a qualitative study, we explored the range of reflections and experiences involved in the composition of score-based music by administering a 15-item, open-ended, questionnaire to seven professional composers from Europe and North America. Adopting a grounded theory approach, we organized six different codes emerging from our data into two higher-order categories ( the act of composing and establishing relationships). Our content analysis, inspired by the theoretical resources of 4E cognitive science, points to three overlapping characteristics of creative cognition in music composition: it is largely exploratory, it is grounded in bodily experience, and it emerges from the recursive dialogue of agents and their environment. More generally, such preliminary findings suggest that musical creativity may be advantageously understood as a process of constant adaptation – one in which composers enact their musical styles and identities by exploring novel interactivities hidden in their contingent and historical milieux

Theatre and time ecology: deceleration in Stifters Dinge

This article explores the production of ‘time ecology’ in two works of postdramatic theatre: Heiner Goebbels’ Stifters Dinge (2007) and Philippe Quesne’s L’Effet de Serge (2007). By focusing on the practice of deceleration, it argues that theatre’s ecological potential resides not so much in its ability to represent the world, but rather in its capacity for producing new types of temporal experience that purposefully seek to break with modernity’s regime of historicity and the accelerated rhythms that it has given rise to. Importantly, my concern with deceleration is not an argument for slowness per se; on the contrary, I am interested in highlighting the presence of multiple and interpenetrating timescales and rhythms. As well as exposing the full extent of theatre’s temporal potential, such a concern with postdramatic ‘chronographies’ offers an implicit critique of dramatic theatre’s extant practices of eco-dramaturgy that, all too often, attempt to construct a linear narrative which is invested in conventional sequential models of temporality (beginning, middle, end)

Evaluation of toxicity after one-months treatment with Bauhinia forficata decoction in streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats

BACKGROUND: Previous experiments have shown that a decoction of Bauhinia forficata leaves reduces the changes in carbohydrate and protein metabolism that occur in rats with streptozotocin-induced diabetes. In the present investigation, the serum activities of enzymes known to be reliable toxicity markers were monitored in normal and streptozotocin-diabetic rats to discover whether the use of B. forficata decoction has toxic effects on liver, muscle or pancreas tissue or on renal microcirculation. METHODS: An experimental group of normal and streptozotocin-diabetic rats received an aqueous decoction of fresh B. forficata leaves (150 g/L) by mouth for 33 days while a control group of normal and diabetic rats received water for the same length of time. The serum activity of the toxicity markers lactate dehydrogenase, creatine kinase, amylase, angiotensin-converting enzyme and bilirubin were assayed before receiving B. forficata decoction and on day 19 and 33 of treatment. RESULTS: The toxicity markers in normal and diabetic rats were not altered by the diabetes itself nor by treatment with decoction. Whether or not they received B. forficata decoction the normal rats showed a significant increase in serum amylase activity during the experimental period while there was a tendency for the diabetic rats, both treated and untreated with decoction, to have lower serum amylase activities than the normal rats. CONCLUSIONS: Administration of an aqueous decoction of B. forficata is a potential treatment for diabetes and does not produce toxic effects measurable with the enzyme markers used in our study

Maintaining Disorder: Some Technical and Aesthetic Issues Involved in the Performance of Ligeti’s E´ tudes for Piano

This article examines some of the particular questions and associated strategies concerning matters of rhythm, perceived metre, notation, accentuation, line, physical approach to the keyboard, pedalling, and more in the performance of Ligeti’s Études for piano. I relate these issues to those encountered in earlier repertoire, including works of Schumann, Liszt, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Bartók and Blacher, and argue that particular approaches and attitudes to both technical and musical matters in the context of these Études can fundamentally affect the concept of the music. A particular focus is upon issues of continuity and discontinuity, and the ‘situation’ of these works within particular pianistic and other traditions by virtue of the approach taken to performance