Sectoral impacts on the diversity of carabid beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae) and their associated ecosystem service of biocontrol

This thesis aimed to provide an understanding of how human-induced changes in the economic sectors of agriculture and transport affect carabid diversity, potential carabidmediated biocontrol and predator-pest interactions. The research involved both observational and manipulative laboratory and field-based studies. Observational research consisted of two large-scale investigations of (1) the impact of Miscanthus and oilseed rape production (n=45) and (2) the impact of horticultural and ecological based landscaping of roadside verges (n=64). This research is the first record of carabid diversity, potential biocontrol and community assemblage with respect to bioenergy crop production and roadside landscaping in an Irish context and it is also an important addition to the limited knowledge of carabid populations in these ecosystems internationally. Manipulative work involved the examination of the role predator identity, diversity and biomass play in the suppression of pollen beetle larvae (an economically damaging insect pest of oilseed rape in Europe), using a novel experimental design called ‘simplex’. To complement this research, an additional field study on the impact of low and high oilseed rape pesticide management on carabid species richness and abundance, and crop yield, was also conducted. This research is a great contribution to the existing understanding of what constitutes the important components of predator biodiversity and expands the knowledge of the usefulness of carabid predators in the context of pollen beetle larvae control. In particular, the work shows that the abundance or biomass of beetles has an effect that is far larger than the effect of diversity on the capacity of beetles to consume prey. In turn, the field study showed that pesticide applications had little impact on yield, or carabid richness, but that carabid abundance/biomass declined drastically. The work provides compelling evidence that management practices erode the useful components of biodiversity that are essential for the delivery of biocontrol services.

Application of semi-automated strain analysis techniques and anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility in fold and thrust belts

Quantitative analysis of penetrative deformation in sedimentary rocks of fold and thrust belts has largely been carried out using clast based strain analysis techniques. These methods analyse the geometric deviations from an original state that populations of clasts, or strain markers, have undergone. The characterisation of these geometric changes, or strain, in the early stages of rock deformation is not entirely straight forward. This is in part due to the paucity of information on the original state of the strain markers, but also the uncertainty of the relative rheological properties of the strain markers and their matrix during deformation, as well as the interaction of two competing fabrics, such as bedding and cleavage. Furthermore one of the single largest setbacks for accurate strain analysis has been associated with the methods themselves, they are traditionally time consuming, labour intensive and results can vary between users. A suite of semi-automated techniques have been tested and found to work very well, but in low strain environments the problems discussed above persist. Additionally these techniques have been compared to Anisotropy of Magnetic Susceptibility (AMS) analyses, which is a particularly sensitive tool for the characterisation of low strain in sedimentary lithologies.

Civil Rights on the Cell Block: Race, Reform, and Violence in Texas Prisons and the Nation, 1945-1990

This study, "Civil Rights on the Cell Block: Race, Reform, and Violence in Texas Prisons and the Nation, 1945-1990," offers a new perspective on the historical origins of the modern prison industrial complex, sexual violence in working-class culture, and the ways in which race shaped the prison experience. This study joins new scholarship that reperiodizes the Civil Rights era while also considering how violence and radicalism shaped the civil rights struggle. It places the criminal justice system at the heart of both an older racial order and within a prison-made civil rights movement that confronted the prison's power to deny citizenship and enforce racial hierarchies. By charting the trajectory of the civil rights movement in Texas prisons, my dissertation demonstrates how the internal struggle over rehabilitation and punishment shaped civil rights, racial formation, and the political contest between liberalism and conservatism. This dissertation offers a close case study of Texas, where the state prison system emerged as a national model for penal management. The dissertation begins with a hopeful story of reform marked by an apparently successful effort by the State of Texas to replace its notorious 1940s plantation/prison farm system with an efficient, business-oriented agricultural enterprise system. When this new system was fully operational in the 1960s, Texas garnered plaudits as a pioneering, modern, efficient, and business oriented Sun Belt state. But this reputation of competence and efficiency obfuscated the reality of a brutal system of internal prison management in which inmates acted as guards, employing coercive means to maintain control over the prisoner population. The inmates whom the prison system placed in charge also ran an internal prison economy in which money, food, human beings, reputations, favors, and sex all became commodities to be bought and sold. I analyze both how the Texas prison system managed to maintain its high external reputation for so long in the face of the internal reality and how that reputation collapsed when inmates, inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, revolted. My dissertation shows that this inmate Civil Rights rebellion was a success in forcing an end to the existing system but a failure in its attempts to make conditions in Texas prisons more humane. The new Texas prison regime, I conclude, utilized paramilitary practices, privatized prisons, and gang-related warfare to establish a new system that focused much more on law and order in the prisons than on the legal and human rights of prisoners. Placing the inmates and their struggle at the heart of the national debate over rights and "law and order" politics reveals an inter-racial social justice movement that asked the courts to reconsider how the state punished those who committed a crime while also reminding the public of the inmates' humanity and their constitutional rights.

Producción hortícola : evolución del carbono orgánico edáfico de un argiudol típico con agregado de enmiendas

p.231-236

La ultraestructura de los panza blanca, moteados y vitreos, en tres especies de trigos cultivados : en la región semiárida trigera Argentina

p.65-72

Influencia de algunas variables edáficas en la extracción de microelementos en suelos de la zona maicera núcleo

p.47-52

Assessment of the nutritional value of wild leafy vegetables consumed in the Buhera District of Zimbabwe: a preliminary study

Wild leafy vegetables play a vital role in the livelihoods of many communities in Africa. The focus of this study was to investigate the nutritional value of wild vegetables commonly consumed by the people of Buhera District in the Manicaland province of Zimbabwe. A variety of vegetables including Amaranthus hybridus, Cleome gynandra, Bidens pilosa, Corchorus tridens, and Adansonia digitata were collected during a survey in Buhera District. Samples were processed employing traditional methods of cooking and drying, then subjected to proximate and micronutrient analyses. The results indicate that these vegetables were particularly high in calcium, iron, and vitamin C. Compared with Brassica napus (rape), Amaranthus hybridus contained twice the amount of calcium, with other nutrients almost in the same range. Compared with Spinacia oleracea (spinach), Amaranthus hybridus contained three times more vitamin C (44 mg/100 g). Calcium levels were 530 mg/100 g. Amaranthus hybridus was also found to contain 7, 13, and 20 times more vitamin C, calcium, and iron respectively compared with Lactuca sativa (lettuce). Cleome gynandra contained 14 mg/100 g, 115 mg/100 g, 9 mg/100 g of vitamin C, calcium, and iron respectively. Bidens pilosa was found to be a valuable source of vitamin C (63 mg/100 g), iron (15 mg/100 g), and zinc (19 mg/100 g), compared with Brassica oleracea (cabbage). The leaves of Corchorus tridens were an excellent source of vitamin C (78 mg/100 g), calcium (380 mg/100 g), and iron (8 mg/100 g). The Adansonia digitata leaves were also rich in vitamin C (55 mg/100 g), iron (23 mg/ 100 g), and calcium (400 mg/100 g). Based on these nutrient contents, the above vegetables will have potential benefits as part of feeding programmes, as well as their promotion as part of composite diet for vulnerable groups.

Joint distributions of waves and rain

The transfer of gases between the atmosphere and ocean is affected by a number of processes, of which wave action and rainfall are two of potential significance. Efforts have been made to quantify separately their contributions; however such assessments neglect the interaction of these phenomena. Here we look at the correlation statistics of waves and rain to note which regions display a strong association between rainfall and the local sea state. The conditional probability of rain varies from ~0.5% to ~15%, with most of the equatorial belt (which contains the ITCZ) showing a greater likelihood of rain at the lowest sea states. In contrast the occurrence of rain is independent of wave height in the Southern Ocean. The 1997/98 El Niño enhances the frequency of rain in some Pacific regions, with this change showing some association with wave conditions.

Las familias "Baeomycetaceae" e I"Icmadophilaceae" en la Península Ibérica

Se aportan datos morfológicos, químicos y de distribución de seis especies de las familias Baeomycetaceae (Baeomyces) e Icmadophilaceae (Dibaeis, Icmadophila, Thamnolia) presentes en la Península Ibérica. Se publican numerosas nuevas citas de Baeomyces rufus y de Dibaeis baeomyces, que constituyen las especies más frecuentes y abundantes en la península.

Long-term declining trend of zooplankton biomass in the Tropical Atlantic

We report evidences that the zooplankton biomass in the tropical Atlantic has declined with an almost 10-fold drop from the 1950s to 2000. The results of the multiple regression analysis showed that the decline in zooplankton biomass was positively related to the NAO-index and to phosphate concentration. We also found that the depth of the thermocline has decreased over the period of our investigation. Thus, the decline we report in zooplankton biomass may be related to the combined effect of two phenomena driven by global temperature increase: (1) the widening of the distributional range of tropical species due to the expansion of the ‘tropical belt’ and (2) a decrease in primary production resulting from the thinning of the thermocline. The decline of zooplankton biomass we report suggests that global warming of the ocean may be altering tropical food webs, and through them, it may also indirectly impact tropical oceans biogeochemical cycles.

Uncertainty estimates of remote sensing reflectance derived from comparison of ocean color satellite data sets

Assigning uncertainty to ocean-color satellite products is a requirement to allow informed use of these data. Here, uncertainty estimates are derived using the comparison on a 12th-degree grid of coincident daily records of the remote-sensing reflectance RRS obtained with the same processing chain from three satellite missions, MERIS, MODIS and SeaWiFS. The approach is spatially resolved and produces σ, the part of the RRS uncertainty budget associated with random effects. The global average of σ decreases with wavelength from approximately 0.7– 0.9 10−3 sr−1 at 412 nm to 0.05–0.1 10−3 sr−1 at the red band, with uncertainties on σ evaluated as 20–30% between 412 and 555 nm, and 30–40% at 670 nm. The distribution of σ shows a restricted spatial variability and small variations with season, which makes the multi-annual global distribution of σ an estimate applicable to all retrievals of the considered missions. The comparison of σ with other uncertainty estimates derived from field data or with the support of algorithms provides a consistent picture. When translated in relative terms, and assuming a relatively low bias, the distribution of σ suggests that the objective of a 5% uncertainty is fulfilled between 412 and 490 nm for oligotrophic waters (chlorophyll-a concentration below 0.1 mg m−3). This study also provides comparison statistics. Spectrally, the mean absolute relative difference between RRS from different missions shows a characteristic U-shape with both ends at blue and red wavelengths inversely related to the amplitude of RRS. On average and for the considered data sets, SeaWiFS RRS tend to be slightly higher than MODIS RRS, which in turn appear higher than MERIS RRS. Biases between mission-specific RRS may exhibit a seasonal dependence, particularly in the subtropical belt.

A machine vision approach to the grading of crushed aggregate

The grading of crushed aggregate is carried out usually by sieving. We describe a new image-based approach to the automatic grading of such materials. The operational problem addressed is where the camera is located directly over a conveyor belt. Our approach characterizes the information content of each image, taking into account relative variation in the pixel data, and resolution scale. In feature space, we find very good class separation using a multidimensional linear classifier. The innovation in this work includes (i) introducing an effective image-based approach into this application area, and (ii) our supervised classification using wavelet entropy-based features.

CCD photometry of distant comets. III - Ensemble properties of Jupiter-family comets

We describe the results of a ground-based observational "snapshot" study of Jupiter-family comets in the heliocentric range 2.29 AU less than or equal to R-h less than or equal to 5.72 AU. Results are presented based on observations from the 1m JKT on the island of La Palma. A total of 25 comets were targeted with 15 being positively detected. Broad-band VRI photometry was performed to determine dimensions, colour indices, and dust production rates in terms of the "A frho" formalism. The results for selected comets are compared with previous investigations. Ensemble properties of the Jupiter- family population have been investigated by combining the results presented here with those of Lowry et al. (1999), and Lowry & Fitzsimmons (2001). We find that the cumulative size distribution of the Jupiter-family comets can be described by a power law of the form; Sigma(> r) proportional to r(-1.6+/- 0.1). This size distribution is considerably shallower than that found for the observed Edgeworth-Kuiper belt objects, which may reflect either an intrinsic difference at small km- sizes in the belt, or the various processes affecting the nuclei of comets as their orbits evolve from the Edgeworth- Kuiper belt to the inner Solar system. Also, there would appear to be no correlation between nuclear absolute magnitude and perihelion distance. Finally, for the sample of active comets, there is a distinct correlation between absolute R band magnitude and perihelion distance, which can be explained by either a discovery bias towards brighter comets or in terms of "rubble" mantle formation.

Optical colors of 56 near-Earth objects: trends with size and orbit

We present the results of BVRIZ photometry of 56 near-Earth objects (NEOs) obtained with the 1-m Jacobus Kapteyn telescope on La Palma during 2000 and 2001. Our sample includes many NEOs with particularly deep 1 - mum pyroxene/olivine absorption bands, similar to Q-type asteroids. We also classify three NEOs with particularly blue colors. No D-type asteroids were found, placing an upper limit of similar to2% on the fraction of the NEO population originating in the outer main belt or the Trojan clouds. The ratio of dark to bright objects in our sample was found to be 0.40, significantly higher than current theoretical predictions. As well as classifying the NEOs, we have investigated color trends with size and orbit. We see a general trend for larger silicate objects to have shallower absorption bands but find no significant difference in the distribution of taxonomic classes at small and large sizes. Our data clearly show that different taxonomic classes tend to occupy different regions of (a, e) space. By comparing our data with current model predictions for NEO dynamical evolution we see that Q- R-, and V-type NEOs tend to have orbits associated with "fast track" delivery from the main belt, whereas S-type NEOs tend to have orbits associated with "slow track" delivery. This outcome would be expected if space weathering occurs on time scales of >10(6) years. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.