Marketing Policy Options for Consumer Price Mitigation Actions in the 2008/09 Maize Marketing Season in Zambia.

1) Maize prices are rising rapidly in 2008 and are fast approaching import parity levels. 2) Maize traders, millers and farmers all agree that Zambia will likely require imports by early 2009 in order to avoid domestic maize supply shortages. 3) Official food balance sheets appear to have underestimated the demand for maize this year. They may also have slightly overestimated the size of the 2007/08 maize crop. Hence the slow government recognition of the need for maize imports. 4) As of late September 2008, neither the Government of Zambia (GRZ) nor the private sector have arranged to import maize from South Africa. Trade sources suggest informal imports from Tanzania are helping to relieve the likely shortfall. 5) Zambian policy makers face a delicate balancing act: they need to maintain remunerative prices for farmers, in order to stimulate maize supply response during the coming 2008/09 production season, while at the same time moderating maize meal price increases to protect urban consumers and the many rural households who are net buyers of maize. 6) The time to respond to this balancing act challenge is now rather than later in the marketing season when costs of supplies and transport will increase. 7) Several policy actions offer potential win/win options for balancing these twin concerns:food security, food policy, Zambia, maize, marketing, Crop Production/Industries, Q20,

Coordination of research design activities with contract projects: W-124-R and W-146-R

To research selected aspects of deer resource dynamics that have been identified as key components in the redefinition and/or implementation of deer management strategic plans and programs in northern New York

Variation in the flowering time orthologs BrFLC and BrSOC1 in a natural population of Brassica rapa.

Understanding the genetic basis of natural phenotypic variation is of great importance, particularly since selection can act on this variation to cause evolution. We examined expression and allelic variation in candidate flowering time loci in Brassica rapa plants derived from a natural population and showing a broad range in the timing of first flowering. The loci of interest were orthologs of the Arabidopsis genes FLC and SOC1 (BrFLC and BrSOC1, respectively), which in Arabidopsis play a central role in the flowering time regulatory network, with FLC repressing and SOC1 promoting flowering. In B. rapa, there are four copies of FLC and three of SOC1. Plants were grown in controlled conditions in the lab. Comparisons were made between plants that flowered the earliest and latest, with the difference in average flowering time between these groups ∼30 days. As expected, we found that total expression of BrSOC1 paralogs was significantly greater in early than in late flowering plants. Paralog-specific primers showed that expression was greater in early flowering plants in the BrSOC1 paralogs Br004928, Br00393 and Br009324, although the difference was not significant in Br009324. Thus expression of at least 2 of the 3 BrSOC1 orthologs is consistent with their predicted role in flowering time in this natural population. Sequences of the promoter regions of the BrSOC1 orthologs were variable, but there was no association between allelic variation at these loci and flowering time variation. For the BrFLC orthologs, expression varied over time, but did not differ between the early and late flowering plants. The coding regions, promoter regions and introns of these genes were generally invariant. Thus the BrFLC orthologs do not appear to influence flowering time in this population. Overall, the results suggest that even for a trait like flowering time that is controlled by a very well described genetic regulatory network, understanding the underlying genetic basis of natural variation in such a quantitative trait is challenging

High frequency oscillator comprising cointegrated thin film resonator and active device

A cointegrated high frequency oscillator including a thin film resonator and activedevices formed on the same semiconductor substrate and by a process which is compatible with formation of both the thin film resonator and the active devices. The processes utilized in formation of the thin film resonator are adapted to microelectronic processing techniques such that the steps of formation of the active devices and the thin film resonator can be intermixed to the degree necessary to allow, for example, the metallization layers to serve as elements both of the active devices and the thin film resonator

Guidelines for Integrating Deer and Timber Management in northern New York

To research selected aspects of deer resource dynamics that have been identified as key components in the redefinition and/or implementation of deer management strategic plans and programs in northern New York

Impact of spot reduction on the effectiveness of rescanning in pencil beam scanned proton therapy for mobile tumours.

Objective. In pencil beam scanning proton therapy, individually calculated and positioned proton pencil beams, also referred to as 'spots', are used to achieve a highly conformal dose distributions to the target. Recent work has shown that this number of spots can be substantially reduced, resulting in shorter delivery times without compromising dosimetric plan quality. However, the sensitivity of spot-reduced plans to tumour motion is unclear. Although previous work has shown that spot-reduced plans are slightly more sensitive to small positioning inaccuracies of the individual pencil beams, the resulting shorter delivery times may allow for more rescanning. The aim of this study was to assess the impact of tumour motion and the effectiveness of 3D volumetric rescanning for spot-reduced treatment plans.Approach.Three liver and two lung cancer patients with non-negligible motion amplitudes were analysed. Conventional and probabilistic internal target volume definitions were used for planning considering single or multiple breathing cycles respectively. For each patient, one clinical and two spot-reduced treatment plans were created using identical field geometries. 4D dynamic dose calculations were then performed and resulting target coverage (V95%), dose homogeneity (D5%-D95%) and hot spots (D2%) evaluated for 1-25 rescans.Main results. Over all patients investigated, spot reduction reduced the number of spots by 91% in comparison to the clinical plan, reducing field delivery times by approximately 50%. This reduction, together with the substantially increased dose per spot resulting from the spot reduction process, allowed for more rescans in the same amount of time as for clinical plans and typically improved dosimetric parameters, in some cases to values better than the reference static (3D calculated) plans. However, spot-reduced plans had an increased possibility of interference with the breathing cycle, especially for simulations of perfectly repeatable breathing.Significance.For the patients analysed in this study, spot-reduced plans were found to be a valuable option to increase the efficiency of 3D volumetric rescanning for motion mitigation, if attention is paid to possible interference patterns

Evolutionary and plastic responses to climate change in terrestrial plant populations

Abstract As climate change progresses, we are observing widespread changes in phenotypes in many plant populations. Whether these phenotypic changes are directly caused by climate change, and whether they result from phenotypic plasticity or evolution, are active areas of investigation. Here, we review terrestrial plant studies addressing these questions. Plastic and evolutionary responses to climate change are clearly occurring. Of the 38 studies that met our criteria for inclusion, all found plastic or evolutionary responses, with 26 studies showing both. These responses, however, may be insufficient to keep pace with climate change, as indicated by eight of 12 studies that examined this directly. There is also mixed evidence for whether evolutionary responses are adaptive, and whether they are directly caused by contemporary climatic changes. We discuss factors that will likely influence the extent of plastic and evolutionary responses, including patterns of environmental changes, species' life history characteristics including generation time and breeding system, and degree and direction of gene flow. Future studies with standardized methodologies, especially those that use direct approaches assessing responses to climate change over time, and sharing of data through public databases, will facilitate better predictions of the capacity for plant populations to respond to rapid climate change

Ultra-fast pencil beam scanning proton therapy for locally advanced non-small-cell lung cancers: field delivery within a single breath-hold.

PURPOSE The use of motion mitigation techniques such as breath-hold can reduce the dosimetric uncertainty of lung cancer proton therapy. We studied the feasibility of pencil beam scanning (PBS) proton therapy field delivery within a single breath-hold at PSI's Gantry 2. METHODS In PBS proton therapy, the delivery time for a field is determined by the beam-on time and the dead time between proton spots (the time required to change the energy and/or lateral position). We studied ways to reduce beam-on and lateral scanning time, without sacrificing dosimetric plan quality, aiming at a single field delivery time of 15 seconds at maximum. We tested this approach on 10 lung cases with varying target volumes. To reduce the beam-on time, we increased the beam current at the isocenter by developing new beam optics for PSI's PROSCAN beamline and Gantry 2. To reduce the dead time between the spots, we used spot-reduced plan optimization. RESULTS We found that it is possible to achieve conventional fractionated (2 Gy(RBE)/fraction) and hypofractionated (6 Gy(RBE)/fraction) field delivery times within a single breath-hold (<15 sec) for a variety non-small-cell lung cancer cases. CONCLUSION In summary, the combination of spot reduction and improved beam line transmission is a promising approach for the treatment of mobile tumours within clinically achievable breath-hold durations