Adapting weed management in rice to changing climates

This paper provides some of the scientific background on how projected environmental conditions could affect weeds and weed management in rice in Africa. Elevated CO2 levels may have positive effects on rice competitiveness with C4 weeds, but these are generally outnumbered by C3 species in weed populations of rice in Africa. Moreover, higher temperatures and drought will favor C4 over C3 plants. Increased CO2 levels may also improve tolerance of rice against parasitic weeds, while invasiveness of such species may be stimulated by soil degradation and more frequent droughts or floods. Elevated CO2 may increase belowground relative to aboveground growth, in particular of perennial (C3) species, rendering mechanical control less effective or even counterproductive. Increased CO2 levels, rainfall and temperature may also reduce the effectiveness of chemical control. The implementation of climate change adaptation technologies, such as drought-tolerant germplasm and water-saving irrigation regimes, will also have consequences for rice–weed competition. Rainfed production systems are hypothesized to be most vulnerable to direct effects of climate change (e.g. changes in rainfall patterns) and are likely to face increased competition from C4 and parasitic weeds. Bioticstress- tolerant rice cultivars to be developed for these systems should encompass weed competitiveness and parasitic-weed resistance. In irrigated systems, indirect effects will be more important and weed management strategies should be diversified to lessen dependency on herbicides and mechanical control, and be targeted to perennial rhizotomous (C3) weeds. Water-saving production methods that replace the weed-suppressive flood water layer by intermittent or continuous periods of aerobic conditions, necessitate additional weed management strategies to address the inherent increases in weed competition

Increasing paddy yields and improving farm management: results from participatory experiments with good agricultural practices (GAP) in Tanzania

Rice is an increasingly important commodity in sub-Saharan Africa. In Tanzania, the rice yield gap is as high as 87%, due to a combination of production constraints and sub-optimal crop management. Reducing this yield gap may be partly achieved through the introduction and dissemination of good agricultural practices (GAP). We conducted 18 farmer-managed on-farm trials in Tanzania, to test a set of GAP components against conventional farmers' practices (FP) for two consecutive growing seasons in 2013 and 2014. The objectives were: (1) to understand farmers' capabilities in implementing GAP; (2) to acquire better insights into the merits, relevance and suitability of individual GAP components; and (3) to provide a case study showing that exposure to good practices combined with the farmers' own experimentations can serve to improve and, trigger a positive change in the participating farmers' crop management. Compared to the farmers' own practices, average yield increases of 1 t paddy ha−1 in 2013 and 2.7 t ha−1 in 2014 were achieved when following GAP. These yield advantages were mainly obtained by a higher panicle number, improved harvest index and improved weed control. Farmers experienced difficulties with land levelling, planting or sowing in lines and using rotary weeders, but they were convinced that these technologies are important to boost their rice yields. The case of Tanzania shows that paddy yields can be substantially improved by GAP and that adoption of GAP by smallholder rice farmers can be triggered by stimulating experimentations with such practices on their own farms

Improving Instructional Practice: The Value of Classroom Goal Teams as Measured by Elementary Teachers\u27 Perceptions

Student achievement is in the forefront of education as never before. Educators, parents, business leaders, community members, and politicians are all actively watching reports of student achievement. Wong (2003) found in more than 200 studies, the only way to improve student achievement is with a knowledgeable and skillful teacher. The expertise of a teacher is a critical variable in effecting student achievement (Marzano, 2003). In this study, Classroom Goals Team Project (CGTP) was utilized as a professional development program to bring about improvements in teaching and learning in an effort to positively impact student achievement. The CGTP, implemented in a suburban school district in Nebraska, is a process where classroom teachers were asked to identify an area of concern within their classroom based upon student performance assessment data. The major finding of the CGTP indicates the teachers of this district view the CGTP as an effective professional development model and classroom goals team meetings were perceived as productive by 89% of the teachers. Other findings of this study focus on the impact of five constructs identified in the research as critical to effective professional development programs. These constructs are: learning community/ collaborative teams, quality teaching/ instructional practices, leadership, data driven decision making, and equity. A benefit of the CGTP was the foundation for fundamental change in attitudes and perceptions of what professional development looks like and sounds like in this district. Professional development has gone beyond a one day, shot in the dark event to a much higher level of active engagement and monitoring of successful implementation with consistent and frequent feedback from peers. Students had an increased opportunity to learn through the CGTP, which according to Berlinger & Biddle (1997) is the single most powerful predictor of student achievement. The results of the review of literature and the data from this study support the need to have a professional development program, which is .student achievement driven, and teacher focused in learning communities

A Robust Solution to the Super-Resolution Phase Problem in Scanning Transmission Electron Microscopy

From a set of images, each of poor resolution, recorded in a transmission microscope under many different incident angles of coherent illumination, it is possible to obtain wavelength-limited resolution even if there is a narrow aperture lying in the back-focal plane of the imaging lens. This is achieved by a deconvolution algorithm which retrieves the phase of the Fourier transform of the specimen. The method accounts for complex components in the transfer function of the lens, is not very sensitive to defocus and is remarkably resilient to noise. It may have important applications in overcoming the resolution limit in the scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM), where such data are readily available

An X-ray ptycho-tomography model of ‘Seeing order in “amorphous” materials’

The nature of the atomic structure of many non-crystalline materials remains a long-standing open question. We use X-ray scattering to model electron images of amorphous materials, where the analogue ‘atoms’ consist of 1μm diameter glass beads. The beads form a substantially random close-packed structure, but are partially ordered in places. X-ray ptycho-tomography reveals the exact position of the beads in 3D and so can be used to compare the modelled electron image with full knowledge of the underlying real structure. Using this, we repeat an experiment reported by Archie Howie and colleagues in 1978 that sought to test for real structure in bright-field electron images of amorphous materials; we demonstrate the validity of the technique, at least in the case of the resolution of the microscopes available at that time and the first Born approximation. We also illustrate how extremely demanding it would have been to infer 3D structure of amorphous material from pairs of stereoscopic images obtained with the same experimental kit: an approach that Archie proposed in the 1970s. We briefly discuss the possibility of using electron ptycho-tomography to solve the amorphous structure problem

Rhamphicarpa fistulosa, a widespread facultative hemi-parasitic weed, threatening rice production in Africa

Rhamphicarpa fistulosa is a facultative hemi-parasitic plant of the Orobanchaceae family, adapted to wet soils. Apart from tropical Australia, it is only found in sub-Saharan Africa, where it is considered a minor weed in cereal crops such as rice. Due to this status, the species has received only sporadic attention. Recent field observations and encounters with rice farmers in several African countries showed that R. fistulosa is, however, a more serious and increasing production constraint than previously thought. Results from a systematic literature review and a global herbarium study support this. The species has a broad distribution over Africa (at least 35 countries from Madagascar to Senegal and from Sudan to South Africa) and a wide range in altitude (0–2150 m a.s.l.) and environment (waterlogged swamps to moist free-draining uplands). Rhamphicarpa fistulosa is relatively independent and persistent because of the presumably wide host range, the facultative nature of its parasitism and its prolific seed (estimated 100 000 seeds m−2 under moderate infestation levels). Finally, R. fistulosa causes severe yield losses (average 60%) and high regional annual economic losses (estimated US $175 million), while effective control options are scant and awareness of the species among important R&D stakeholders is almost absent. An integrated approach is advocated to assist the rice sector to reduce current R. fistulosa-inflicted losses and to prevent further spread of the species into new areas

Influence of Atmospheric Turbulence on Optical Communications using Orbital Angular Momentum for Encoding

We describe an experimental implementation of a free-space 11-dimensional communication system using orbital angular momentum (OAM) modes. This system has a maximum measured OAM channel capacity of 2.12 bits/photon. The effects of Kolmogorov thin-phase turbulence on the OAM channel capacity are quantified. We find that increasing the turbulence leads to a degradation of the channel capacity. We are able to mitigate the effects of turbulence by increasing the spacing between detected OAM modes. This study has implications for high-dimensional quantum key distribution (QKD) systems. We describe the sort of QKD system that could be built using our current technology.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure

Noise models for low counting rate coherent diffraction imaging

International audienceCoherent diffraction imaging (CDI) is a lens-less microscopy method that extracts the complex-valued exit field from intensity measurements alone. It is of particular importance for microscopy imaging with diffraction set-ups where high quality lenses are not available. The inversion scheme allowing the phase retrieval is based on the use of an iterative algorithm. In this work, we address the question of the choice of the iterative process in the case of data corrupted by photon or electron shot noise. Several noise models are presented and further used within two inversion strategies, the ordered subset and the scaled gradient. Based on analytical and numerical analysis together with Monte-Carlo studies, we show that any physical interpretations drawn from a CDI iterative technique require a detailed understanding of the relationship between the noise model and the used inversion method. We observe that iterative algorithms often assume implicitly a noise model. For low counting rates, each noise model behaves differently. Moreover, the used optimization strategy introduces its own artefacts. Based on this analysis, we develop a hybrid strategy which works efficiently in the absence of an informed initial guess. Our work emphasises issues which should be considered carefully when inverting experimental data

Searching for order in atmospheric pressure plasma jets

The self-organized discharge behaviour occurring in a non-thermal radio-frequency plasma jet in rare gases at atmospheric pressure was investigated. The frequency of the azimuthal rotation of filaments in the active plasma volume and their inclination were measured along with the gas temperature under varying discharge conditions. The gas flow and heating were described theoretically by a three-dimensional hydrodynamic model. The rotation frequencies obtained by both methods qualitatively agree. The results demonstrate that the plasma filaments forming an inclination angle α with the axial gas velocity u z are forced to a transversal movement with the velocity ${u}_{\phi }=\tan (\alpha )\cdot {u}_{z}$, which is oriented in the inclination direction. Variations of ${u}_{\phi }$ in the model reveal that the observed dynamics minimizes the energy loss due to convective heat transfer by the gas flow. The control of the self-organization regime motivates the application of the plasma jet for precise and reproducible material processing