John Lamont of Benmore: a Highland planter who died ‘in harness’ in Trinidad

This article traces the rise of John Lamont, a Highland planter in nineteenth-century Trinidad. The island was subsumed into the British Empire in 1802, the third wave of colonization in the British West Indies and just thirty-two years before slavery was abolished. Many Scots travelled in search of wealth and this article reveals how one West India fortune was accumulated and repatriated to Scotland. John Lamont travelled from Argyll in the early 1800s, eventually becoming part of the Trinidad's plantocracy class and recipient of a major sum of compensation on the emancipation of slavery in 1834. Unlike many other Scots in the British West Indies, however, Lamont remained in situ in the post-emancipation period and was thus an exception to the sojourning mindset identified in previous studies. Lamont's status as an ‘every-day planter’ undoubtedly contributed to his major fortune which, despite his residency in the colonies, was dispersed in the lower Highlands of Scotland amongst his paternal family, the Lamonts of Knockdow. The article also surveys modern representations of John Lamont: a Highland planter who, in his own words, achieved his wish to die ‘in harness’ in Trinidad

Narrow Row Soybeans Alternative Systems

PDF pages:

Biochar from Pyrolysis of Biosolids for Nutrient Adsorption and Turfgrass Cultivation

At water resource recovery facilities, nutrient removal is often required and energy recovery is an ever-increasing goal. Pyrolysis may be a sustainable process for handling wastewater biosolids because energy can be recovered in the py-gas and py-oil. Additionally, the biochar produced has value as a soil conditioner. The objective of this work was to determine if biochar could be used to adsorb ammonia from biosolids filtrate and subsequently be applied as a soil conditioner to improve grass growth. The maximum carrying capacity of base modified biochar for NH3−N was 5.3 mg/g. Biochar containing adsorbed ammonium and potassium was applied to laboratory planters simulating golf course putting greens to cultivate Kentucky bluegrass. Planters that contained nutrient-laden biochar proliferated at a statistically higher rate than planters that contained biosolids, unmodified biochar, peat, or no additive. Nutrient-laden biochar performed as well as commercial inorganic fertilizer with no statistical difference in growth rates. Biochar from digested biosolids successfully immobilized NH3−N from wastewater and served as a beneficial soil amendment. This process offers a means to recover and recycle nutrients from water resource recovery facilities

The Power of Duples (in Self-Assembly): It's Not So Hip To Be Square

In this paper we define the Dupled abstract Tile Assembly Model (DaTAM), which is a slight extension to the abstract Tile Assembly Model (aTAM) that allows for not only the standard square tiles, but also "duple" tiles which are rectangles pre-formed by the joining of two square tiles. We show that the addition of duples allows for powerful behaviors of self-assembling systems at temperature 1, meaning systems which exclude the requirement of cooperative binding by tiles (i.e., the requirement that a tile must be able to bind to at least 2 tiles in an existing assembly if it is to attach). Cooperative binding is conjectured to be required in the standard aTAM for Turing universal computation and the efficient self-assembly of shapes, but we show that in the DaTAM these behaviors can in fact be exhibited at temperature 1. We then show that the DaTAM doesn't provide asymptotic improvements over the aTAM in its ability to efficiently build thin rectangles. Finally, we present a series of results which prove that the temperature-2 aTAM and temperature-1 DaTAM have mutually exclusive powers. That is, each is able to self-assemble shapes that the other can't, and each has systems which cannot be simulated by the other. Beyond being of purely theoretical interest, these results have practical motivation as duples have already proven to be useful in laboratory implementations of DNA-based tiles

Gift Exchange within a Firm: Evidence from a Field Experiment

We present results from a field experiment testing the gift-exchange hypothesis inside a tree-planting firm paying its workforce incentive contracts. Firm managers told a crew of tree planters they would receive a pay raise for one day as a result of a surplus not attribuable to past planting productivity. We compare planter productivity - the number of trees planted per day - on the day the gift was handed out with productivity on previous and subsequent days of planting on the same block, and thus under similar planting conditions. We find direct evidence that the gift had a significant and positive effect on daily planter productivity, controlling for planter-fixed effects, weather conditions and other random daily shocks. Moreover, reciprocity is the strongest when the relationship between planters and the firm is long term.Subsidy, Marginal Tax Reforms, Egypt

Luther v. Borden: A Taney Court Mystery Solved

It has not been generally remarked that Chief Justice Taney wrote surprisingly few of the Taney Court’s major opinions—those cases that tend to be anthologized and remembered by generalists. Those major cases which Taney did write are consistently about slavery (or states’ rights or state powers, which in Taney’s mind may have amounted to the same thing). There is a notable exception: Luther v. Borden—a case about the Guarantee Clause. This raises a question. Setting aside his opinions on slavery or states’ rights, what could have moved the author of Dred Scott, by consensus the worst Supreme Court opinion in history, to choose Luther v. Borden as one of the few remembered major opinions he did write? To begin to unravel this little mystery of history, a glimpse into the character and judgment of Roger Brooke Taney is offered, with an amusing parallel drawn between the respective nominations to the Supreme Court of Taney and Robert Bork. Luther is reconsidered in light of the Transcripts of Record, and with an unembarrassed presentism rather than historicism. In view of Chief Justice Warren’s thinking in Powell v. McCormack, much of Chief Justice Taney’s reasoning in Luther is shown not only to be evasive, illogical and unconvincing, but also intellectually dishonest, if he is to be credited with the understandings of law and its processes reasonably attributable to a former Attorney General of the United States. Even more disturbingly, Luther v. Borden can plausibly be read as having a darker side than is conventionally understood, with an impact of surprising magnitude and hurtfulness, placing it well within the ambitions of the author of Dred Scott

2000 Estimated Machinery Costs for South Carolina Farms

Farm Management,

Dry Bean Planter Type Trial

Dry beans (Phaseolus vulgaris), a high-protein pulse crop, have been grown in the Northeast since the 1800’s. As the local food movement expands, consumers are requesting more and more locally produced foods, and heirloom dry beans are no exception. Currently, the demand for heirloom dry beans has exceeded the supply. In an effort to support and expand the local bean market throughout the northeast, the University of Vermont Extension Northwest Crops and Soils Program established a trial to evaluate the impact of planter type on dry bean yield. This project was funded as part of a USDA NE-SARE Partnership Grant (PG16-049)

Minimum Tillage Corn Trial

Minimum tillage practices have tremendous potential to reduce expenses and potential negative environmental effects caused by intensive cropping operations. Conventional tillage practices require heavy machinery to work and groom the soil surface in preparation for the planter. The immediate advantage of reduced tillage for the farm operator is less fuel expense, equipment, time, and labor required. It’s also clear that intensive tillage potentially increases nutrient and soil losses to our surface waterways. By turning the soil and burying surface residue, more soil particles are likely to detach from the soil surface and run off from agricultural fields. Reducing the amount and intensity of tillage can help build soil structure and reduce soil erosion

2003 Estimated Machinery Costs for South Carolina Farms

Farm Management,