Virtual worlds and environments are becoming an increasingly central part of our lives, yet they are still far from accessible to the blind. This is especially unfortunate as such environments hold great potential for them for uses such as social interaction, online education and especially for use with familiarizing the visually impaired user with a real environment virtually from the comfort ...

A paper presented to this Association in 1961 summarised the results of investigations, carried out during the previous four years, on the r81e of nematodes in South African sugarcane fields.' This prqiect has continued to receive attention, and the present paper is an attempt at summarising and generalising upon the results of more recent investigations. Since much of the experimental work inv...

The history of the production of glass paperweights is obscure as is the history of glass making, the latter being traceable back to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries B.C. Though the idea of the glass paperweight originated in Venice the main decorative element, the millefiori cane, which ensured its popularity, was Egyptian in origin. The first glass paperweights contained ceramic figures...

Raw bagasse or sugar cane cellulosic residues were modified using acylation grafting with fatty acid. The capability of the grafted bagasse to absorb oil from aqueous solution was studied and compared with the raw bagasse. It was found that the grafted material was significantly more hydrophobic than the raw bagasse. This grafted bagasse had little affinity for water and good affinity for oil. ...

Hammersmith Hospital Du Cane Road London W12 0NN, UK e-mail: petros@imperial. ac.uk

Partitioning of dry matter (DM) in sugarcane is of interest for two fundamental reasons. Firstly sugar production depends directly on partitioning of biomass to the stalk and then to sucrose stored in the stalk. Secondly, various DM components of the stalk and particularly sucrose concentration are used to calculate the value of cane consignments delivered to the mill (Berding, 1997). The value...

When cane cuttings that have failed to germinate are dug up and examined, they are frequently found to be infested with the larvae and adults of Nitidulid beetles which, consequently, are often accused of responsibility for such failure. As additional evidence against them is adduced the rapidity with which replants may become infested in fields in which a high population of the beetles has bee...

In the present work, we investigated whether an auditory peripersonal space exists around the hand and whether such a space might be extended by a brief tool-use experience or by long-term experience using a tool in everyday life. To this end, we studied audio-tactile integration in the space around the hand and in far space, in blind subjects who regularly used a cane to navigate and in sighte...

Manual harvesting has predominated in the South African sugar industry since 1948, when sugarcane was first cropped at Compensation on the north coast of KwaZulu-Natal. However, as successive generations of labour have attained higher levels of education and their living standards have improved, employment aspirations have risen above the strenous but monotonous hand cutting of sugarcane, and t...