Black soil, green rice

Stephan M. Haefel

Wisconsin\u27s 2011 Act 108, Legislative Inaction, and Severe Racial Disparity: A Recipe for a Fair Housing Violation

When individuals are released from prison, the biggest predictor of whether they will reoffend or successfully reenter society is whether the recently released individual has access to stable housing. Unfortunately, nearly every avenue to housing requires passing a criminal background check. Recognizing this as posing a nearly insurmountable barrier to accessing stable housing upon release from prison, Seattle, Washington; Minneapolis, Minnesota; and San Francisco, California have all enacted ordinances regulating the use of background checks to help ensure access to stable housing for formerly incarcerated individuals. Madison, Wisconsin, and other Wisconsin cities had similar ordinances that regulated the use of background checks in housing. Those ordinances were abrogated in 2011 through Act 108, which prohibited localities from regulating landlords and instead reserved that power to the state government. In the eleven years that have passed since Act 108, the state legislature has not passed any legislation that would alleviate the burden of finding stable housing for recently released convicts. This Comment suggests that, in light of guidance issued in 2016 from the Department of Housing and Urban Development which explained that pretextual use of criminal background checks to deny housing may be actionable under the Fair Housing Act, the inability of localities to regulate the use of criminal records in housing prevents Wisconsin localities from “affirmatively further[ing] fair access to housing for all.

Integrated nutrient management and LCC based nitrogen management on soil fertility and yield of rice (Oryza Sativa L.)

The experiment was conducted at lowland series of wet lands, International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) Farm, Los Banos, Laguna, Philippines. The rice variety PSBRc 82 was raised during wet season (June – October), and the experiment was laid out in randomized block design with four replications. There were eleven treatments viz., control, recommended NPK fertilizer, -N, -P, -K, LCC 3, LCC 4, LCC 5, 100% N as fresh rice straw, 50% N through rice straw compost and 50% N as poultry manure and 50% N as combined organic manures (RSC + PM). The P and K were applied to all the treatments except -P and –K treatments, respectively. The fertilizer N @ 90 kg ha-1, P2O5 @ 40 kg ha-1 and K2O @ 60 kg ha-1 were applied in the form of urea, super phosphate and muriate of potash respectively. The application of N at 90 kg level as 50% through RSC + 50% N as PM registered higher available N, P and K contents of soil during different growth stages as compared to the other treatment combinations including recommended NPK fertilizers. The growth and yield attributes were also found to be improved by the above treatment resulting in more grain and straw yield. With regard to N management, LCC 4 and 5 based N applications recorded higher grain yield as a result of higher soil available nutrients during the critical growth stages.Srinivasagam Krishnakumar and Stephan Haefel