Offspring number and size are key traits determining an individual's fitness and a crop's yield. Yet, extensive natural variation within species is observed for these traits. Such variation is typically explained by trade-offs between fecundity and quality, for which an optimal solution is environmentally dependent. Understanding the genetic basis of seed size and number, as well as any possibl...

Why process at all? Of course, the answer is ultimately feed efficiency, producing the most milk, eggs, meat or fiber at the lowest possible cost. Particle size reduction as the first step in the feed manufacturing process works toward the goal of improved feed efficiency by increasing the surface area of the materials being processed. This increases the amount of materials exposed to the anima...

A total of 206 wheat and 200 barley farmers were interviewed in northeastern Syria to understand farmer perceptions and practice relating to modern varieties, seed sources and seed quality. Wheat farmers had better awareness and grew modern varieties (87%), applied fertilizers (99.5%), herbicides (93%), seed treatment (90%) or insecticides (41%). In contrast barley growers had low awareness (36...

time of acquisition desiccation tolerance in peanut seed during different growing stages was determined by evaluating seed moisture content, germination capability and electrical conductivity. it was done in research field of gorgan university of agricultural sciences and natural resources in completely block randomize design in four planting date and four replications. sampling was done weakly...

The National Collegiate Athletic Association's (NCAA) men's Division I college basketball tournament is an annual competition that draws widespread attention in the United States. Predicting the winner of each game is a popular activity undertaken by numerous websites, fans, and more recently, academic researchers. This paper analyzes the 29 tournaments from 1985 to 2013, and presents two model...

Abstract Seed size can have an impact on angiosperm reproductive fitness. Ecological theory predicts plants that will produce larger seeds in stressful environments to increase the chances of seedling survival and numerous small favourable conditions number recruits. We measured seed morphology seagrass Heterozostera nigricaulis from four populations under differing environmental South East Aus...

We analytically determine when a range of abstract social contagion models permit global spreading from a single seed on degree-correlated undirected random networks. We deduce the expected size of the largest vulnerable component, a network's tinderboxlike critical mass, as well as the probability that infecting a randomly chosen individual seed will trigger global spreading. In the appropriat...

Many studies have focused on the ecology of seed dimorphism, the production of two seed types by a single plant. Morphology and seed size are usually correlated, but how morphology affects germination percentage and seedling growth is poorly understood. Here we explicitly separate these effects for nine populations of the dimorphic species Tragopogon pratensis subsp. pratensis. Larger seeds yie...

A number of cryptographic schemes are built from (keyless) permutations, which are either designed in an ad-hoc fashion or are obtained by fixing the key in a block cipher. Security proofs for these schemes, however, idealize this permutation, i.e., making it random and accessible, as an oracle, to all parties. Finding plausible concrete assumptions on such permutations that guarantee security ...