Harvest and post-harvest operations constitute principal constraints to rice production, especially in irrigated systems, because of the larger yield that has to be handled. Post-harvest crop losses of up to 35% have been reported and attributed to inefficiency of manual threshing of rice by small-scale farmers. This leads to poor grain quality and rejection of locally produced rice. The Africa...

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first in a four-part series of articles dealing with the Church’s ministry to the elderly. This article will attempt to give a brief profile of the problems faced by the aging. Succeeding articles will treat tradi­ tional Church responses to the needs of the elderly and look at some new approaches to the situa­ tion and new directions of action, including South Bend H...

GREEN-TREE RETENTION IN HARVEST UNITS: BOON OR BUST FOR BIODIVERSITY? i n s i d e How Much to Retain?.................................................... 3 What Pattern to Retain? .............................................. 3 A Forest Patch for a Lifeboat ..................................... 4 Demonstrating the Power of Experimental Studies ................................................... 5

Small rural Alaskan communities face many challenges surrounding rapid social and ecological change. The role of local subsistence resources may change over time because of changes in social perception, economic need, and cultural patterns of use. We look at the Bering Sea’s Pribilof Islands, comprising two very small communities, and investigate the relationship between the local residents and...

Stock-recruitment models have been used for decades in fisheries management as a means of formalizing the expected number of offspring that recruit to a fishery based on the number of parents. In particular, Ricker's stock recruitment model is widely used due to its flexibility and ease with which the parameters can be estimated. After model fitting, the spawning stock size that produces the ma...

The coordination of the timing of flowering with seasonal and development cues is a critical life-history trait that has been shaped by evolution to maximize reproductive success. Decades of studying many plant species have revealed several of the fascinating systems that plants have evolved to control flowering time: such as the perception of day length in leaves, which leads to the production...