Predicting Field Water Balance, Crop Yield, and the Economics of Drainage Under Various Cropping Systems Using Drainmod

Subsurface drainage received considerable attention during the recent few years in South Dakota. While subsurface drainage is a widely accepted water management practice for increasing crop yield, research implicated tile drainage in surface and groundwater quality problems. Conservation practices such as crop rotation and controlled drainage may decrease tile flows and improve water quality. A two-year (2014-2015) subsurface drainage study was conducted at South Dakota State University Southeast Research Farm (SERF) near Beresford, South Dakota to evaluate the effectiveness of selected conservation practices in reducing drainage volume and nitrate losses. Six experimental plots, under corn-soybean rotation, divided into drained and undrained plots, were monitored for baseline data (i.e. drainage discharge, water table depth, infiltration, bulk density, and rainfall) collection. DRAINMOD was used with the baseline data to quantify the long-term hydrologic impacts of subsurface tile drainage on field water balance for different drainage conditions (conventional drainage, controlled drainage, and undrained condition) and cropping practices. Long-term simulations for 12-year period (2004-2015) were conducted to predict annual and monthly water balance, crop yield response under conventional drainage, controlled drainage, and undrained conditions for continuous corn, corn-soybean, soybean-corn, corn-wheat, wheat-corn, soybean-wheat, and wheat-soybean cropping practices. Average annual subsurface drainage results for continuous corn, corn-soybean, soybean-corn, corn-wheat, soybean-wheat, wheat-corn, and wheat-soybean cropping practices under controlled drainage showed drainage volume reduction of 28%, 24%, 24%, 52%, 37%, 54%, and 40%, respectively, compared to conventional drainage. Similarly, average annual surface runoff results for continuous corn, corn-soybean, soybean-corn, and wheat-soybean rotation under conventional drainage indicated runoff volume reduction of 72%, 75%, 71%, and 76%, respectively, compared to undrained conditions, and under controlled drainage runoff volume reductions for same cropping practices were 65%, 68%, 65%, and 66%, respectively, compared to undrained conditions. Average monthly water balance showed high ET water loss during the month of May to August and high drainage water loss during month of May and June. Drainage volume reduction of 57.0% was observed in June for wheat-corn rotation under controlled drainage compared to conventional drainage. Likewise, surface runoff volume reduction of 86.7%, and 70.0% in conventional drainage and 86.6% and 63.3% in controlled drainage for May and June was observed in soybean-corn rotation compared to undrained conditions. Predicted relative crop yield percentage showed high yield in soybean-corn, and corn-soybean rotation under conventional drainage and controlled drainage compared to all other cropping practices. Relative crop yield for soybean-corn and corn-soybean under conventional drainage was 81.6% and 80.9%, respectively, and under controlled drainage, relative yield was 81.8% and 81.7%, respectively. Crop relative yield results indicated better yield for soybean-corn followed by corn-soybean production under both conventional and controlled drainage compared to undrained conditions but economic analysis results showed better net annual return form soybean-corn rotation under controlled drainage compared to all other cropping practices in controlled drainage, conventional drainage, and undrained conditions

Analysis and Development of Efficient Task Scheduling Strategies in Heterogeneous Cloud Environment

In recent years, Cloud computing has become the integral part of information technology. Lots of research is being done from academic level to industry level. Cloud computing provides service to the users through internet and other distributed network environment on pay as you use basis and user demand basis. It provides an virtual environment of computing resources which can be utilized by cloud users and cloud applications. Scheduling in cloud systems is one of the biggest challenge. An efficient task scheduler is that which is flexible according to the changing environment of clouds and complexity of the submitted tasks. Efficient use of system and getting highest performance of the system is the primary goal of any task scheduling algorithm. Cloud service providers always struggles with problems such as load balancing, Task completion time and wastage of resources. This thesis basically focuses on Task completion time of tasks submitted to the virtual Machines (VMs). Multiple experiments has been performed in CloudSim 3.0.3 simulation toolkit. All the experimental results have been obtained from CloudSim by using base classes and libraries provided in toolkit. Without using any single physical machine CloudSim library gives an full environment for development and research the different techniques for simulation and modelling. Few most generic task scheduling strategies have been studied for this thesis. Based on the study a new strategy has been proposed. This new strategy is named as SCHFMC algorithm, it’s description and study has been provided in chapter 4. SCHFMC algorithm helps in allocating the tasks to the virtual machines (VMs) with varying processing capacity. It has an efficient way to utilise the full processing power of machine so that system can be active and alive without any failure. This algorithm reduces the total completion time of all tasks submitted to the virtual machines. This algorithm has performed better than generic task scheduling meth

Six Oceania microstates: The genesis of media accountability

Media accountability systems (M*A*S) have been slow to take root in Oceania. Apart from Papua New Guinea, Fiji is the trend-setter in the region. Following the establishment of the Fiji Media Council in the mid-1990s, several other South Pacific island countries were keen to the follow the lead. Tonga now has a similar body with a code of ethics and which includes public members empowered to receive and adjudicate on complaints against the media. In Samoa, a study has been carried out in order to establish a media council-type body. The Solomons Islands Media Council (SIMC) is an industry organisation that does not yet have a complaints procedure. It is considering including this mechanism in line with the Papua New Guinea Media Council with which it shares a website and has a cooperative agreement. This article examines the debate in six South Pacific island countries that have adopted, or are in the process of adopting, self-regulatory M*A*S mechanisms following government pressure. They are the Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu. The article also argues that there are other M*A*S that regional media can adopt besides media councils and this action would make it harder for governments to intervene and introduce regulation

The media and journalism challenges in Melanesia: Addressing the impacts of external and internal threats in Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.

This article advances discussions on media freedom and media development in Melanesia through the introduction of an ‘external’ and ‘internal’ threats analytical framework. Singling out the challenges and categorising them into these two main groups provides a clearer picture of the issues at stake, the links between them, and the need to address the situation holistically. External threats emanating from outside the media sector are often seen as more serious, and they often overshadow internal threats, which come from within the media sector. This article argues that both sets of threats have serious impacts on media and journalism in their own ways, and that both should be regarded equally. Furthermore, the linkages between these threats mean that one cannot be properly addressed without addressing the other. A key outcome of this discussion is a clearer understanding of how little control the media have over both external and internal threats, and how stakeholder support is needed to overcome some of the issues.  Because good journalism benefits the public, this article argues for increased public support for high-quality journalism that delivers a public benefit. &nbsp

Media ownership in Oceania: Three case studies in Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Tonga

The news media in Oceania are small but remarkably diverse and vigorous. Ownership ranges from large transnational corporations and robust local media companies, as in Fiji and Papua New Guinea, to local entrepreneurial and Government media interests, such as in Tonga and smaller South Pacific nations. News Corporation, through its South Pacific subsidaries, owns the two largest English-language dailies, The Fiji Times and the PNG Post-Courier, while the Malaysian timber company Rimbunan Hijau is a major media investor in Papua New Guinea (The National) as well as having interests in New Zealand and South-East Asia. Australia's Channel nine owns PNG's national TV broadcaster, EMTV, and New Zealand has played an important role in the development of Fiji Television. All three countries have had constitutional freedom of expression guarantees under assault in recent years and the role of the media in good governance has been an emerging theme. Three authors, prominent journalists (and, in the case of two, now also media edcators), analyse the trends in their countries.&nbsp

Investigating the impact of process optimization on productivity, product quality, cell metabolism, and intracellular environment

One of the key goals in process development for monoclonal antibodies is to improve productivity and product quality as needed. The early stage cell culture process developed for an antibody had titers averaging 4 g/L and variable aggregates levels within cell culture. Through process optimization work, involving changes in media formulations, feeding strategy, and process parameters, the final optimized process achieved industry leading titers (greater than 10 g/L) with consistently lower aggregate levels. To understand the impact of process optimization on the CHO cell metabolism and intracellular environment we evaluated 4 conditions: Early stage cell culture process, 2 intermediate processes, and the final optimized process. In this study we monitored multiple process performance attributes, cellular metabolites and indicators of intracellular health. The higher productivity processes had increased nutrient consumption, moderate oxidative stress and a more active unfolded protein response when compared with the early stage process. Additionally, aggregate levels were impacted by many process parameters. These findings shed important understanding into how cell culture process changes affect productivity and internal cell metabolism and are applicable to process optimization efforts to enhance productivity and product quality