Improving detection probabilities for pests in stored grain

BACKGROUND: The presence of insects in stored grains is a significant problem for grain farmers, bulk grain handlers and distributors worldwide. Inspections of bulk grain commodities is essential to detect pests and therefore to reduce the risk of their presence in exported goods. It has been well documented that insect pests cluster in response to factors such as microclimatic conditions within bulk grain. Statistical sampling methodologies for grains, however, have typically considered pests and pathogens to be homogeneously distributed throughout grain commodities. In this paper we demonstrate a sampling methodology that accounts for the heterogeneous distribution of insects in bulk grains. RESULTS: We show that failure to account for the heterogeneous distribution of pests may lead to overestimates of the capacity for a sampling program to detect insects in bulk grains. Our results indicate the importance of the proportion of grain that is infested in addition to the density of pests within the infested grain. We also demonstrate that the probability of detecting pests in bulk grains increases as the number of sub-samples increases, even when the total volume or mass of grain sampled remains constant. CONCLUSION: This study demonstrates the importance of considering an appropriate biological model when developing sampling methodologies for insect pests. Accounting for a heterogeneous distribution of pests leads to a considerable improvement in the detection of pests over traditional sampling models

Recent occurrence of Cylindrospermopsis raciborskii, in Waikato lakes of New Zealand.

Cylindrospermopsis raciborskii is a toxin-producing species of cyanobacteria that in autumn 2003 was recorded for the first time in three shallow (max. depth ≤5 m) Waikato lakes and a hydro-electric dam on the Waikato River, New Zealand. It formed water blooms at densities >100 000 cells/ml in Lakes Waahi and Whangape. Net rates of population growth >0.2 day-1 were recorded for C. raciborskii in Lakes Ngaroto, Waahi, and Karapiro, based on comparisons of low numbers (detection of cells/ml) from initial samples and its presence at bloom densities (>15 000 cells/ml) in the subsequent sample "x"-"y" days later. C. raciborskii may be well adapted to rapid proliferation in the Waikato lakes, which are eutrophic to hypertrophic, with high light attenuation, and where nitrogen (N) fixation may provide it with a competitive advantage over non-nitrogen fixing algae under N-limited conditions

'World' in middle Schelling: Why nature transcendentalizes

The importance of 'world' in Schelling's middle philosophy demonstrates that the famous Philosophical Inquiries into the Essence of Human Freedom (1809) retains its ontological value. Because world is not, as in Kant, a mathematical but rather a dynamic category, the ontological consequences of the articulation of the essence of human freedom entails that it, too, be articulated dynamically

Prospects for a post-Copernican dogmatism: On the antinomies of transcendental naturalism

The essay argues that the transcendental objection to dogmatism is the latter's prioritisation of being over acting. The transcendental alternative is, as in Kant and Fichte, to prioritise acting over being. Yet the naturalistic alternative to this, that nature be transcendentally responsible for being and acting, is never explored, a deficit this essay seeks to make good

Movements of the world: The sources of transcendental philosophy

A great difference is made to contemporary accounts of transcendental philosophy if the question is raised as to how far down its inquiries into the sources of cognitions extend. It is true that the transcendental deduction is designed to reset the orbit of metaphysics around experiences rather than things; and although there are exceptions, neither Kant nor his successor transcendentalists ceased to extend the inquiry into the ultimate grounds of cognition insofar as these are made possible not by objectives, but by what exceeds their being, that is, their formation. Indeed, it is in thinking sources, in descendence, that transcendental philosophy most achieves its objects

The law of insuperable environment: What is exhibited in the exhibition of the process of nature?

Once something is said of something else, this “what it is that exists” or X of which what is said is said, is augmented, however minimally, by its expression. Due to the resulting progressive series, asking after what it is of which what is said is said, cannot be answered by withdrawing what is said of it, by the ungeschenmachen of predication, but only by further augmentation, even if this consists in adding predicates that negate their predecessors. On the one hand, it may be said that here, yet again, philosophy finds the world well lost, for what is as it is remains unrecoverable once subject to augmentation. Yet what would this unaugmented X be

The Effect of Chronic Alcohol Consumption on Exercise-Induced Muscle Damage in Young Men

PURPOSE: To investigate the effects of chronic alcohol consumption on exercise-induced muscle damage of the knee extensors in young men. METHODS: Twenty-one males (age 21.9 ± 1.1 yr; weight 183.4 ± 27.6 lbs; height 174.0 ± 13.1 cm) performed 100 maximal eccentric contractions at 30°/sec of the knee extensors using their non-dominant leg. The isometric and isokinetic muscle strengths (60°/sec and 180°/sec) were measured pre-exercise and immediately, 24 h, 48 h, 72 h, 96 h, and 120 h post-exercise. Muscle soreness and plasma creatine kinase (CK) activity were measured pre-exercise and 24 h, 48 h, 72 h, 96 h, and 120 h post-exercise. Data were analyzed using two-way repeated-measures ANOVA to determine the main effects of time (exercise), group (non-drinker vs. frequent drinker), and their interaction terms. RESULTS: There were significant main effects of time for isometric strength (F6, 114 = 8.11, P \u3c 0.001), isokinetic strength at both 60°/sec ( F6, 114 = 11.02, P \u3c 0.001) and 180°/sec (F6, 114 = 9.88, P \u3c 0.001), muscle soreness (F5, 95 = 26.64, P \u3c 0.001), and plasma CK activity (F5, 70 = 5.15, P \u3c 0.001). There were no significant effects of group or interaction for any of the variables. CONCLUSION: There was not an evident effect of chronic alcohol consumption on exercise-induced muscle damage in young men. This may likely be due to the small sample size, the relatively small magnitude of muscle damage, the time of alcohol consumption relative to the bout of exercise, and the between-subjects study design

"Physics of the Idea": An Interview With Iain Hamilton Grant (2013)

This is an interview with the philosopher Iain Hamilton Grant, author of Idealism: The history of a philosophy (Acumen, 2011) and Philosophies of Nature After Schelling (Continuum, 2008)

The Man Without Others: Deleuze’s Structure-Other

One area of literary studies that can never be so casual in its treatment of the Other is that dedicated to postcolonial literature and theory. Indeed, at its very core stands the premise that Europe “consolidated itself as sovereign subject by defining its colonies as "Others", even as it constituted them, for purposes of administration and the expansion of markets, into programmed near-images of that very sovereign self” (Spivak 128). In one way or another, the vast majority of postcolonial theory emerges from this model in order to understand better the effects and affects of the colonial encounter – the colonial endeavor traced through the institutionalization of the Other. But, that is not to imply that the theorization of the Other in postcolonial thought is complete. Indeed, one lacuna in the literature is that which concerns the absence of others. Few have asked the important question, If the Other guarantees the self then what happens in its absence? Is it in fact possible not to conceive of the Other? It is by answering such questions that I hope to add further texture to this important concept. In order to do so I turn to the work of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze