Ecoenzymes as Indicators of Compost to Suppress Rhizoctonia solani

Reports of disease suppression by compost are inconsistent likely because there are no established standards for feedstock material, maturity age for application, and application rate. The overall goal of the study was to evaluate a suite of biological indicators for their ability to predict disease suppression. Indicators included both commercial available methods for compost stability (Solvita™, respiration) and metrics of soil ecology not yet adopted by the compost industry (e.g., ecoenzymes, nematode community index). Damping-off by Rhizoctonia solani on radish was chosen as a model system given its global importance, competitiveness affected by carbon quality, and lack of disease management options for organic production. Biological indicators were evaluated for their ability to consistently differentiate among curing process, maturity, and feedstock material as a function of disease severity of a seedling bioassay and a compost extract assay to test competition with R. solani growth. Compost processed as vermicompost and anaerobic digestate were more suppressive against R. solani than windrow or aerated static pile. Mature composts were more suppressive than immature components. Feedstocks containing dairy manure and/or hardwood bark tended to have suppressive qualities. In contrast, poultry manure-based components were conducive to disease. Microbial ecoenzymes active on chitin and cellulose and nematode community indices were better predictors of disease suppressiveness than microbial respiration. These indicators are quicker than plant bioassays and could be adopted as tools to certify commercial products

The Problem With Violence: Exceptionality and Sovereignty in the New World

For many observers, the violent and often spectacular crime that takes place in particular Caribbean areas is evidence of a failure to create a growth-oriented economy and morally progressive ethos. It is a problem of culture, a mark of backwardness, an unsuccessful movement from savagery, or a failure to take advantage of post-World War II opportunities for development in political, economic, and socio-cultural fields. At the very least, it is something that marks the eScholarship provides open access, scholarly publishing services to the University of California and delivers a dynamic research platform to scholars worldwide. Caribbean—as well as some spaces within Latin America—as seeming to have taken a different path in relation to other New World trajectories. This article uses the case of Jamaica—itself often portrayed as exceptional within the region—to think through how, when, and why the US is, on one hand and from one perspective, written out of these narratives and, on the other and from alternative vantage points, central to them. In doing so, Thomas emphasizes the long-standing transnational dimension of violence in the postcolonial Americas, situating the New World as a single sphere of experience, in order to say something about the relationships among violence, the exploitation and settlement of the New World, sovereignty, and the various phases of modern capitalism

Instructional alternative for underprepared students

This quasi-experimental study examined the use of daily drills as a supplemental instructional alternative for underprepared students enrolled in General Psychology courses at a midwestern open-admission community college. Underprepared students were defined as those students whose Nelson-Denny Reading Test score fell below community college entrance level criteria. Daily one-minute drills of course content were provided to all participants in the experimental group. Lectures, discussion, and class activities were provided to both groups. The experimental and control group were compared using retention data, reading scores, and exam scores. Although more students in the experimental group withdrew from the course, most withdrew for reasons unrelated to course performance. All students who withdrew from the control section of the course were failing the course. Although not specifically addressed, both groups demonstrated significant improvement in vocabulary, comprehension, and reading rate. For each of the five course units a set of questions was repeated on the pretest, unit exam, and posttest. In both groups, comparisons of correctly answered exam questions revealed significant improvement from the pretest to the unit exams and from the pretest to the posttest. On four of the five units, only the experimental group increased the number of correctly answered questions from the unit exam to the posttest. Anecdotal reports of student behavior suggested that the control group participated in self-initiated course-related study activities that the experimental group did not. Although there were more underprepared students in the experimental group and the control group reported additional study activities, course-related exam scores were similar between groups. The possibility that the one-minute drills may have provided an instructional tool that substituted for alternative study activities suggests the benefit of additional study of this time efficient and low cost instructional alternative for underprepared college students

Development, Culture, and the Promise of Modern Progress

This essay investigates the key tensions that arise within Jamaica\u27s new cultural policy Toward Jamaica the Cultural Superstate. The argument presented in the paper is that culture is a tricky and potentially dangerous site upon which to hinge national development goals, even though the expansion of cultural industries may well represent a viable and potentially lucrative strategy for economic development. This is because invariably, culture cannot do the work policy makers would like it to do, and its invocation within policy spheres usually already signals a kind of developmental distress, a perceived need for retooling through a form of social engineering. In other words, culture (in the anthropological sense) reflects and shapes, yet cannot in and of itself solve the most pressing challenges facing Jamaica today

Book Review: Hsieh Liang-tso and the Analects of Confucius: Humane Learning as a Religious Quest

Hsieh Liang-tso is the first volume to explore Chinese traditions in the Academy Series sponsored by Oxford and the American Academy of Religion. Most previous titles in the series focus on Christianity, which perhaps explains Selover’s attention to the perspectives of comparative religions and comparative theology in his introduction. There he briefly traces the history of the issues concerning the religious dimensions of the Chinese literati tradition and outlines a comparative framework for approaching eleventh-century Chinese thought. Inspired by Robert Neville’s Beyond the Masks of God, Selover focuses in the introduction on four themes—scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. This framework, however, does not figure prominently until the conclusion. [excerpt