Developing sustainable banana production systems: a case study from tropical Australia

The north Queensland banana industry is under pressure from government and community expectations to exhibit good environmental stewardship. The industry is situated on the high-rainfall north Queensland coast adjacent to 2 natural icons, the Great Barrier Reef to the east and World Heritage-listed rain forest areas to the west. The main environmental concern is agricultural industry pollutants harming the Great Barrier Reef. In addition to environmental issues the banana industry also suffers financial pressure from declining margins and production loss from tropical cyclones. As part of a broader government strategy to reduce land-based pollutants affecting the Great Barrier Reef, the formation of a pilot banana producers group to address these environmental and economic pressures was facilitated. Using an integrated farming systems approach, we worked collaboratively with these producers to conduct an environmental risk assessment of their businesses and then to develop best management practices (BMP) to address environmental concerns. We also sought input from technical experts to provide increased rigour for the environmental risk assessment and BMP development. The producers' commercial experience ensured new ideas for improved sustainable practices were constantly assessed through their profit-driven 'filter' thus ensuring economic sustainability was also considered. Relying heavily on the producers' knowledge and experience meant the agreed sustainable practices were practical, relevant and financially feasible for the average-sized banana business in the region. Expert input and review also ensured that practices were technically sound. The pilot group producers then implemented and adapted selected key practices on their farms. High priority practices addressed by the producers group included optimizing nitrogen fertilizer management to reduce runoff water nitrification, developing practical ground cover management to reduce soil erosion and improving integrated pest management systems to reduce pesticide use. To facilitate wider banana industry understanding and adoption of the BMP's developed by the pilot group, we conducted field days at the farms of the pilot group members. Information generated by the pilot group has had wider application to Australian horticulture and the process has been subsequently used with the north Queensland sugar industry. Our experiences have shown that integrated farming systems methodologies are useful in addressing complex issues like environmental and economic sustainability. We have also found that individual horticulture businesses need on-going technical support for change to more sustainable practices. One-off interventions have little impact, as farm improvement is usually an on-going incremental process. A key lesson from this project has been the need to develop practical, farm scale economic tools to clarify and demonstrate the financial impact of alternative management practices. Demonstrating continued profitability is critical to encourage widespread industry adoption of environmentally sustainable practices

DAQ00129 Improving the Integration of Legumes in Grain and Sugarcane Farming Systems in Southern Queensland

The farming systems and agribusinesses of the inland Burnett and southern coastal cropping regions of Queensland are becoming increasingly interlinked as grain legume crops, a key component of dryland cropping systems, become more firmly entrenched in the coastal sugarcane cropping areas. Soybeans, peanuts and possibly winter cereals like barley have a real and demonstrated role in sugarcane rotations, and assistance with the integration of those crops into viable and sustainable cropping systems with sugarcane will be critical to the futuer development of these industries.

Maximising profitability with limited water in cotton farming systems

Diminishing water supply, changing weather patterns and pressure to enhance environmental flows are making it imperative to optimise water use efficiency (WUE) on cotton/grain farming systems. Growers are looking for better strategies to make the best use of limited water, but it is still not clear how to best use the available water at farm and field scale. This research project investigated the impact of management strategies to deal with limited water supplies on the yield and quality of irrigated cotton and wheat. The objectives were: (1) to develop irrigation management guidelines for the main irrigated crops on the Darling Downs for full- and deficitirrigation scenarios, taking into account the critical factors that affect irrigation decisions at the local level, (2) to quantify the evapotranspiration (ET) of Bollgard II cotton and wheat and its relationship to yield and quality under full- and deficit-irrigation scenarios, and (3) to increase industry awareness and education of farming systems practises for optimised economic water use efficiency.Objective (1) was addressed by (A) collaborating with ASPRU to develop the APSFarm model within APSIM to be able to perform multi-paddock simulations. APSFarm was then tested by conducting a case study at a farm near Dalby, and (B) conducting semi-structured interviews with individual farmers and crop consultants on the Darling Downs to document the strategies they are using to deal with limited water. Objective (2) was addressed by (A) building and installing 12 large (1 m x 1m x 1.5 m) weighing lysimeters to measure crop evapotranspiration. The lysimeters were installed at the Agri-Science Queensland research station at Kingsthorpe in November 2008, (B) conducting field experiments to measure crop evapotranspiration and crop development under four irrigation treatments, including dryland, deficit-irrigation, and full irrigation. Field experiments were conducted with cotton in 2007-08 and 2008-09, and with wheat in 2008 and 2009, and (C) collaborating with USQ on a PhD thesis to quantify the impact of crop stress on crop evapotranspiration and canopy temperature. Glasshouse experiments were conducted with wheat in 2008 and with cotton in 2008-09. Objective (3) was addressed by (A) conducting a field day at Kingsthorpe in 2009, which was attended by 80 participants, (B) presenting information in conferences in Australia and overseas, (D) presenting information at farmers meeting, (E) making presentations to crop consultants, and (F) preparing extension publications.As part of this project we contributed to the development of APSfarm, which has been successfully applied to evaluate the feasibility of practices at the whole-farm scale. From growers and crop consultants interviews we learned that there is a great variety of strategies, at different scales, that they are using to deal with limited water situation. These strategies will be summarised in the "e;Limited Water Guidelines for the Darling Downs"e; that we are currently preparing. As a result of this project, we now have a state-of-the-art lysimeter research facility (23 large weighing lysimeters) to be able to conduct replicated experiments to investigate daily water use of a variety of crops under different irrigation regimes and under different environments. Under this project, a series of field and glasshouse experiments were conducted with cotton and wheat, investigating aspects like: (A) quantification of daily and seasonal crop water use under nonstressed and stressed conditions, (B) impact of row configuration on crop water use, (C) impact of water stress on yield, evapotranspiration, crop vegetative and reproductive development, soil water extraction pattern, yield and yield quality. The information obtained from this project is now being used to develop web-based tools to help growers make planning and day-to-day irrigation decisions.

Peptide models for the bacteriorhodopsin chromophore. Retinylidene-lysine systems containing aspartic acid and serine residues

The retinylidene Schiff base derivative of seven lysine containing peptides have been prepared in order to investigate solvent and neighboring group effects, on the absorption maximum of the protonated Schiff base chromophore. The peptides studied are Boc-Aib-Lys-Aib-OMe (1), Boc-Ala-Aib-Lys-OMe (2), Boc-Ala-Aib-Lys-Aib-OMe (3), Boc-Aib-Asp-Aib-Aib-Lys-Aib-OMe (4), Boc-Aib-Asp-Aib-Ala-Aib-Lys-Aib-OMe (5), Boc-Lys-Val-Gly-Phe-OMe (6) and Boc-Ser-Ala-Lys-Val-Gly-Phe-OMe (7). In all cases protonation shifts the absorption maxima to the red by 3150–8450 cm-1. For peptides 1–3 the protonation shifts are significantly larger in nonhydrogen bonding solvents like CHCl3 or CH2Cl2 as compared to hydrogen bonding solvents like CH3OH. The presence of a proximal Asp residue in 4 and 5 results in pronounced blue shift of the absorption maximum of the protonated Schiff base in CHCl3, relative to peptides lacking this residue. Peptides 6 and 7 represent small segments of the bacteriorhodopsin sequence in the vicinity of Lys-216. The presence of Ser reduces the magnitude of the protonation shift.

Design challenges for electronic medication administration record systems in residential aged care facilities: A formative evaluation

Introduction Electronic medication administration record (eMAR) systems are promoted as a potential intervention to enhance medication safety in residential aged care facilities (RACFs). The purpose of this study was to conduct an in-practice evaluation of an eMAR being piloted in one Australian RACF before its roll out, and to provide recommendations for system improvements. Methods A multidisciplinary team conducted direct observations of workflow (n=34 hours) in the RACF site and the community pharmacy. Semi-structured interviews (n=5) with RACF staff and the community pharmacist were conducted to investigate their views of the eMAR system. Data were analysed using a grounded theory approach to identify challenges associated with the design of the eMAR system. Results The current eMAR system does not offer an end-to-end solution for medication management. Many steps, including prescribing by doctors and communication with the community pharmacist, are still performed manually using paper charts and fax machines. Five major challenges associated with the design of eMAR system were identified: limited interactivity; inadequate flexibility; problems related to information layout and semantics; the lack of relevant decision support; and system maintenance issues.We suggest recommendations to improve the design of the eMAR system and to optimize existing workflows. Discussion Immediate value can be achieved by improving the system interactivity, reducing inconsistencies in data entry design and offering dedicated organisational support to minimise connectivity issues. Longer-term benefits can be achieved by adding decision support features and establishing system interoperability requirements with stakeholder groups (e.g. community pharmacies) prior to system roll out. In-practice evaluations of technologies like eMAR system have great value in identifying design weaknesses which inhibit optimal system use.

Dynamics of a class of social interaction systems

A mathematical model of social interaction in the form of two coupler! first-order non-linear differential equations, forms the topic of this study. This non-conservative model io representative of such varied social interaction problems as coexisting sub-populations of two different species, arms race between two rival countries and the like. Differential transformation techniques developed elsewhere in the literature are seen to be effective tools of dynamic analysis of this non-linear non-conservative mode! of social interaction process.

Scaling for binary liquid systems and ferromagnets under pressure

Scaling relations between the critical indices are derived for two similar systems exhibiting λ lines: binary liquid systems and ferromagnets under pressure. In addition to the usual scaling relations, this procedure gives information about other weakly divergent quantities like isothermal compressibility and thermal expansion. Suggestions for more detailed investigations are made.

High-Rate Space-Time Coded Large-MIMO Systems: Low-Complexity Detection and Channel Estimation

In this paper, we present a low-complexity algorithm for detection in high-rate, non-orthogonal space-time block coded (STBC) large-multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems that achieve high spectral efficiencies of the order of tens of bps/Hz. We also present a training-based iterative detection/channel estimation scheme for such large STBC MIMO systems. Our simulation results show that excellent bit error rate and nearness-to-capacity performance are achieved by the proposed multistage likelihood ascent search (M-LAS) detector in conjunction with the proposed iterative detection/channel estimation scheme at low complexities. The fact that we could show such good results for large STBCs like 16 X 16 and 32 X 32 STBCs from Cyclic Division Algebras (CDA) operating at spectral efficiencies in excess of 20 bps/Hz (even after accounting for the overheads meant for pilot based training for channel estimation and turbo coding) establishes the effectiveness of the proposed detector and channel estimator. We decode perfect codes of large dimensions using the proposed detector. With the feasibility of such a low-complexity detection/channel estimation scheme, large-MIMO systems with tens of antennas operating at several tens of bps/Hz spectral efficiencies can become practical, enabling interesting high data rate wireless applications.

Tradeoff between PAPR reduction and decoding complexity in transformed OFDM systems

It is known that in an OFDM system using Hadamard transform or phase alteration before the IDFT operation can reduce the Peak-to-Average Power Ratio (PAPR). Both these techniques can be viewed as constellation precoding for PAPR reduction. In general, using non-diagonal transforms, like Hadamard transform, increases the ML decoding complexity. In this paper we propose the use of block-IDFT matrices and show that appropriate block-IDFT matrices give lower PAPR as well as lower decoding complexity compared to using Hadamard transform. Moreover, we present a detailed study of the tradeoff between PAPR reduction and the ML decoding complexity when using block-IDFT matrices with various sizes of the blocks.

A new approach to the study of non-linear non-autonomous systems

In this paper, a new approach to the study of non-linear, non-autonomous systems is presented. The method outlined is based on the idea of solving the governing differential equations of order n by a process of successive reduction of their order. This is achieved by the use of “differential transformation functions”. The value of the technique presented in the study of problems arising in the field of non-linear mechanics and the like, is illustrated by means of suitable examples drawn from different fields such as vibrations, rigid body dynamics, etc.

Drop formation studies in liquid—liquid systems

Benzene drops were formed in continuous media of water and glycerine of varying physical properties. The effect on drop volumes of variables like volumetric flow-rate, interfacial tension, continuous phase viscosity and capillary diameter was studied. An equation has been developed, based on a two stage drop formation mechanism, which predicts drop volumes within an average error of 7 per cent for the range of physical properties employed in this investigation.

Mass Spectrometry Informatics in Systems Biology

Mass spectrometry (MS) became a standard tool for identifying metabolites in biological tissues, and metabolomics is slowly acknowledged as a legitimate research discipline for characterizing biological conditions. The computational analyses of metabolomics, however, lag behind compared with the rapid advances in analytical aspects for two reasons. First is the lack of standardized data repository for mass spectra: each research institution is flooded with gigabytes of mass-spectral data from its own analytical groups and cannot host a world-class repository for mass spectra. The second reason is the lack of informatics experts that are fully experienced with spectral analyses. The two barriers must be overcome to establish a publicly free data server for MS analysis in metabolomics as does GenBank in genomics and UniProt in proteomics. The workshop brought together bioinformaticians working on mass spectral analyses in Finland and Japan with the goal to establish a consortium to freely exchange and publicize mass spectra of metabolites measured on various platforms computational tools to analyze spectra spectral knowledge that are computationally predicted from standardized data. This book contains the abstracts of the presentations given in the workshop. The programme of the workshop consisted of oral presentations from Japan and Finland, invited lectures from Steffen Neumann (Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry), Matej Oresic (VTT), Merja Penttila (VTT) and Nicola Zamboni (ETH Zurich) as well as free form discussion among the participants. The event was funded by Academy of Finland (grants 139203 and 118653), Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS Japan-Finland Bilateral Semi- nar Program 2010) and Department of Computer Science University of Helsinki. We would like to thank all the people contributing to the technical pro- gramme and the sponsors for making the workshop possible. Helsinki, October 2010 Masanori Arita, Markus Heinonen and Juho Rousu

Developing Peer-To-Peer Web Applications

As the virtual world grows more complex, finding a standard way for storing data becomes increasingly important. Ideally, each data item would be brought into the computer system only once. References for data items need to be cryptographically verifiable, so the data can maintain its identity while being passed around. This way there will be only one copy of the users family photo album, while the user can use multiple tools to show or manipulate the album. Copies of users data could be stored on some of his family members computer, some of his computers, but also at some online services which he uses. When all actors operate over one replicated copy of the data, the system automatically avoids a single point of failure. Thus the data will not disappear with one computer breaking, or one service provider going out of business. One shared copy also makes it possible to delete a piece of data from all systems at once, on users request. In our research we tried to find a model that would make data manageable to users, and make it possible to have the same data stored at various locations. We studied three systems, Persona, Freenet, and GNUnet, that suggest different models for protecting user data. The main application areas of the systems studied include securing online social networks, providing anonymous web, and preventing censorship in file-sharing. Each of the systems studied store user data on machines belonging to third parties. The systems differ in measures they take to protect their users from data loss, forged information, censorship, and being monitored. All of the systems use cryptography to secure names used for the content, and to protect the data from outsiders. Based on the gained knowledge, we built a prototype platform called Peerscape, which stores user data in a synchronized, protected database. Data items themselves are protected with cryptography against forgery, but not encrypted as the focus has been disseminating the data directly among family and friends instead of letting third parties store the information. We turned the synchronizing database into peer-to-peer web by revealing its contents through an integrated http server. The REST-like http API supports development of applications in javascript. To evaluate the platform’s suitability for application development we wrote some simple applications, including a public chat room, bittorrent site, and a flower growing game. During our early tests we came to the conclusion that using the platform for simple applications works well. As web standards develop further, writing applications for the platform should become easier. Any system this complex will have its problems, and we are not expecting our platform to replace the existing web, but are fairly impressed with the results and consider our work important from the perspective of managing user data.

Developing Peer-To-Peer Web Applications

As the virtual world grows more complex, finding a standard way for storing data becomes increasingly important. Ideally, each data item would be brought into the computer system only once. References for data items need to be cryptographically verifiable, so the data can maintain its identity while being passed around. This way there will be only one copy of the users family photo album, while the user can use multiple tools to show or manipulate the album. Copies of users data could be stored on some of his family members computer, some of his computers, but also at some online services which he uses. When all actors operate over one replicated copy of the data, the system automatically avoids a single point of failure. Thus the data will not disappear with one computer breaking, or one service provider going out of business. One shared copy also makes it possible to delete a piece of data from all systems at once, on users request. In our research we tried to find a model that would make data manageable to users, and make it possible to have the same data stored at various locations. We studied three systems, Persona, Freenet, and GNUnet, that suggest different models for protecting user data. The main application areas of the systems studied include securing online social networks, providing anonymous web, and preventing censorship in file-sharing. Each of the systems studied store user data on machines belonging to third parties. The systems differ in measures they take to protect their users from data loss, forged information, censorship, and being monitored. All of the systems use cryptography to secure names used for the content, and to protect the data from outsiders. Based on the gained knowledge, we built a prototype platform called Peerscape, which stores user data in a synchronized, protected database. Data items themselves are protected with cryptography against forgery, but not encrypted as the focus has been disseminating the data directly among family and friends instead of letting third parties store the information. We turned the synchronizing database into peer-to-peer web by revealing its contents through an integrated http server. The REST-like http API supports development of applications in javascript. To evaluate the platform s suitability for application development we wrote some simple applications, including a public chat room, bittorrent site, and a flower growing game. During our early tests we came to the conclusion that using the platform for simple applications works well. As web standards develop further, writing applications for the platform should become easier. Any system this complex will have its problems, and we are not expecting our platform to replace the existing web, but are fairly impressed with the results and consider our work important from the perspective of managing user data.

Unusual metallic-like transport near the percolation threshold

In multiwall carbon nanotube (MWNT)-polystyrene (PS) composites, a weak temperature dependence of conductivity has been observed at a percolation threshold of 0.4 wt %. The power law [sigma(T)proportional to T-0.3] behavior indicates metallic-like behavior, unlike the usual activated transport for systems near the percolation threshold. The low field positive magnetoconductance follows H-2 dependence, due to the weak localization in disordered metallic systems. The marginal metallic nature of MWNT-PS at percolation threshold is further verified from the negligible frequency dependence of conductivity, in the temperature range of 300 to 5 K. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3455895]