Plant breeders often examine leaf size, plant height and photosynthetic capacity in an effort to increase wheat yield. This study was concerned with the relationship between these parameters in dwarf and semidwarf wheat cultivars (Triticum aestivum L.) with a wide range in flag leaf size. Photosynthetic capacity was measured at anthesis using photosynthesis versus intercellular CO2 response curves to determine maximum photosynthetic rate and ribulose-1,5- bisphosphate carboxylase efficiency. Leaf area, chlorophyll concentration, stomatal density, interveinal distance and dry mass partitioning were also examined. Smaller flag leaves had greater carboxylation efficiency and closer vein spacing. Dwarf wheat had higher chlorophyll concentrations and maximum photosynthetic rates at anthesis than the taller semi-dwarfs. Dwarf cultivars had lower photosynthetic rates before anthesis, suggesting preanthesis feedback inhibition of photosynthesis, possibly due to a smaller sink capacity of its stem.

Over the years, Utah has enjoyed the advantage of having natural agricultural resources that favor the production of livestock. Sheep and beef cattle do well on the desert and high mountain ranges that cover much of the state, Dairy cattle and wintering beef cattle use the alfalfa and native hay along with some corn silage that is grown in the irrigated valleys. Feed grains are grown in rotation with forage crops on irrigated land and also on dry land. Before 1950, the quantities of feed grains produced had been sufficient to meet the needs of dairy, range livestock and poultry. However, with the realization that Utah had a natural market position in relation to the coast markets, there developed an extensive poultry and livestock fattening business. Since that time Utah has been in the position of a feed grain deficit state. This has tended to raise the cost of feed grain by $10 to $12 per ton due to the transportation factor. Also, Utah's poultry industry relied partially upon feed wheat from northern Utah and southern Idaho, but with acreage allotments and price controls, the price of wheat increased to the point where it was no longer used as a poultry feed. As a consequence, poultry and egg producers also had to turn to importing more of their feed grains, which put them into a higher feed cost position along with the livestock feeder. In the past year, however, the price of feed wheat declined to the point where wheat was used extensively in livestock feed stuffs for the first time in years.

It is generally recognized that the State of Utah attempts to provide schooling to a higher proportion of youth than other states in the nation. Utah has the largest proportion of high school graduates (50 per cent) in its adult population, and also the highest median school years completed (12.2 years) by adults 25 years old and older. These are some of the highlights of the 1961 edition of the "Rankings of the States," an annual publication in which the National Education Association compares all 50 states in terms of educational effort and achievement.

This study aims to find a relationship between the distribution of locals inside of Sweden and the municipalities’ relative concentration of foreigners. With the usage of data found in the website Statistics Sweden, we aim to investigate the existence of any relationship between the local population size of a municipality against the number of foreigners present in said municipalities, and see whether foreigners and immigrants are more concentrated in more populated municipalities rather than less populated ones. We aim to do this by utilizing multiple regression and dummy variables to identify whether there is a significant extra negative or positive effect on foreigners. The answer seems to be that foreigners are in fact more concentrated in more locally populated municipalities, rather than less populated ones

No description available.

No description available.

Population structure in five African beef cattle breeds in South Africa was investigated, to assess the effect of animal recording in management of genetic diversity and genetic improvement. Pedigree records of 247,173 Afrikaner, 57,561 Boran, 198,557 Drakensberger, 256,692 Nguni and 55,309 Tuli breed were analysed using the online POPREP software system. Pedigree completeness over six generations varied with the lowest completeness in the Boran and the highest in the Afrikaner.The average generation interval ranged between 6.0 to 6.4 years. The rates of inbreeding per year were 0.03%, 0.04%, 0.06%, 0.07% and 0.08% in Boran, Nguni, Afrikaner, Drakensberger and Tuli respectively. Effective population sizes were 89, 107, 122, 191 and 364 in Tuli, Afrikaner, Drakensberger, Nguni and Boran respectively. Inbreeding and effective population size for the Boran was not a true reflection due to poor pedigree recording. These results indicate that none of the breeds are in critical limits of endangerment. Breeding values were regressed on birth year of each breed for weight traits; Kleiber ratio and scrotal circumference from 1986 to 2012. Genetic trends were stable for birth weights except the Afrikaner and Tuli. Genetic progress has been made in weaning and post weaning weights for all the breeds except for limited progress in the Nguni. Kleiber ratio and scrotal circumference in all measured breeds have shown good progress. The results of this study confirmed that recording of pedigree and performance records are effective in maintenance of genetic diversity and genetic improvement through selection based on EBVs of recorded traits. / Dissertation (MScAgric)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / tm2015 / Animal and Wildlife Sciences / MScAgric / Unrestricted

In this study, the material utilization efficiency in terms of cutting yield for two furniture frame models from a local upholstery company was evaluated using computer simulation software with optimization capacity. Effects of full panel size of wood-based composites, furniture frame number, and frame part shape and size on cutting yield were investigated. Simulation results indicate that the cutting yield is affected by full panel sizes and number of frames cut. Curve-shaped parts and small size parts can lower the material cutting yield. The overall material cutting yield obtained with simulation software can reach the range from 80 to 84%, which was higher than the current yield of 79.80% from the company. Optimum cutting yield of 84% can be achieved when 40 frames were produced with 4.5 by 8 feet panel.

This research had two main objectives: quantify surface-water and groundwater interactions along a stream reach, and determine the hydraulic conductivity at the site where two reservoirs are proposed. The objectives of this research aim to help maintain stream ecology and increase surface water storage for recreational and industrial purposes. The stream reach, located in the Pascagoula River Basin of southeast Mississippi, begins at Lake Okatibbee and terminates at Pascagoula into the Gulf of Mexico. Four USGS continuous gauging stations provided more than forty years of stream discharge data for a hydrograph baselow-recession analysis, which determined the baseflow component within the stream. The analysis showed that baseflow decreases along the stream reach and increases again before reaching the Gulf of Mexico. Thirteen borehole samples were collected at the sites of the proposed reservoirs in George County, Mississippi to determine the hydraulic conductivity of the sediments, which showed high a hydraulic conductivity.

<p> </p> <p>  Mass spectrometry (MS) plays an important role in nanomaterials research by facilitating the discovery of superatomic clusters and fullerenes, enabling the identification of atomically substituted clusters, and contributing to understanding mechanisms of cluster formation. In this dissertation, we used different mass spectrometry methods as well as ion soft-landing to address some of the ongoing challenges in cluster science. The first challenge is to extend the atom-by-atom substitution method, which is a promising strategy for designing new cluster-based materials, to a wider range of molecular clusters. Due to challenges associated with the synthesis, purification, and crystallization, this approach has been achieved only for a handful of gold and silver clusters. We extended this approach to enable the substitution of the first-row transitional metals into the core of Co6S8(PEt3)6 cluster, a well-defined metal chalcogenide superatomic cluster and a popular building block for designing novel 2D materials. This cluster is widely used in energy and electronic applications and is an excellent model system for computational studies of cluster-based materials. High-resolution MS analysis identified the formation of Co5MS8(PEt3)6+ (M=Mn, Fe, Ni) clusters, indicating that only Mn, Fe, and Ni atoms can be incorporated into the Co6S8 core using our synthetic method. A combination of mass spectrometric analysis and theoretical studies reaved that each heteroatom has different impact on the relative stability, core-ligand interaction, as well as optical, magnetic, and electrochemical properties of the cluster. </p> <p>Another challenge in the cluster science addressed in this work is the controlled activation of fully ligated clusters by ligand removal. Conventional activation methods such as thermolysis or chemical treatment do not provide sufficient control of the number of the removed ligands and often suffer from sintering of NCs as a result of excessive ligand removal and degradation of the destabilized NC cores. Using a specially-designed ion soft-landing instrument, we achieved a controlled removal of one or two phosphine ligands form the synthesized cobalt sulfide clusters using collision-induced dissociation (CID). The resulting fragments were mass selected and soft-landed onto surfaces. We found out that the reactivity of the fragment ions on surfaces may be controlled by altering the composition of the cluster core and ligand binding energy to the cluster. Although some of the fragments formed by removing one ligand including Co5FeS8(PEt3)5+ and Co6S8L(PPh3)5+ remain unreactive on surfaces, other fragments including Co6S8(PEt3)5+, Co5NiS8(PEt3)5+, and Co6S8(PEt3-xPhx) (x=1-2) undergo selective dimerization.  We observe that the reactivity of fragment ions produced by removing one surface ligand is controlled by the relative stability of the corresponding precursor ions towards fragmentation. In particular, fragment ions generated from more stable precursors undergo a selective dimerization reaction. In contrast, fragment ions produced from the least stable precursors remain largely unreactive on surfaces. In addition, we found that fragments generated by removing two surface ligands are highly reactive and undergo several nonselective reactions. This study demonstrates that fragment ions are unique building blocks that may undergo selective reactivity on surfaces to generate compounds that are difficult to prepare using conventional synthetic methods. We believe that the controlled preparation of fragment ions using ion soft-landing is a generalizable method to activate wide range of ligated nanoclusters which opens a direction for materials design and innovation.</p> <p>Finally, soft-landing of well-characterized redox-active polyatomic anions, PW12O403- (WPOM), was carried out to explore the distribution of pure mass selected anions on semiconducting vertically-aligned TiO2 nanotubes, which were used as a model system for 3D semiconductive materials. Energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) mapping analysis revealed that WPOMs form micron-size aggregates on top of the TiO2 NT and only penetrates 1-1.3 µm into the 10 µm-long nanotubes. This aggregation is attributed to the high resistance of TiO2. This is different from what we see on conductive substrates such as carbon nanotubes (CNTs) where a uniform distribution of ions is typically observed. This study provides valuable insight into the functionalization of porous semiconducting surfaces using mass selected ions for applications in energy storage and electronics.</p>