Ovulation rate (OR) and litter size (LS) were recorded in local hair sheep of Martinique and in local x Lacaune-viande crossbreeds, in order to assess prenatal losses. Local hair sheep LS and OR were 1.91 and 2.41, respectively. Prenatal losses increased with OR, from 0.22 (OR = 2) up to 1.50 (OR > 3). The ewes (69.7%) with LS = 1 had actually lost at least one ovum, against 25.9% of the ewes w...

Outbreaks of rice blast have been a threat to the global production of rice. Members of the Magnaporthe grisea species complex cause blast disease on a wide range of gramineous hosts, including cultivated rice and other grass species. Recently, based on phylogenetic analyses and mating tests, isolates from crabgrass were separated from the species complex and named M. grisea. Then other isolate...

An important aspect of the hunting strategy of neotropical social wasps (I-Iymenoplera: Vespidae) is where thcy hunt. Three species used two behavioural components in their se lection ofa place 10 search for prey. The wasps utili zed lhe odom of (j'eshly damaged leaves as cues (which could be synomones) to se lecl which leaves to inspect and also they remembered a place to which they were stron...

Silages made from directly cut or wilted Digitaria eriantha treated with or without molasses were evaluated to determine fermentative characteristics. The grass was harvested at the boot stage of growth and the material was ensiled in 1 kg mini-silos. Treatments were arranged in a factorial design of two moisture levels (directly cut or wilted) and two molasses addition (with or without molasse...

Substrate to grow Pleurotus ostreatus must be pasteurized in order to be used for commercial production of Oyster mushrooms. The pasteurizing treatment normally involves steam application during a variable time/temperature procedure. In this research we studied an alternative treatment by forming a substrate compost pile with sufficient size and moisture to generate the necessary heat for paste...

Eight naturally occurring marine-sponge derived sesquiterpenoid quinones were evaluated as potential inhibitors of pyruvate phosphate dikinase (PPDK), a C4 plant regulatory enzyme. Of these, the hydroxyquinones ilimaquinone, ethylsmenoquinone and smenoquinone inhibited PPDK activity with IC50's (reported with 95% confidence intervals) of 285.4 (256.4-317.7), 316.2 (279.2-358.1) and 556.0 (505.9...

Weed pressure in 1995 was incredible! What happened to produce such a glorious crop of weeds? The answer: drought! The Drought of 1995 and Weeds and Weed Control in 1996 Weed pressure in 1995 was, in a word, incredible! I toured many areas — golf courses, lawns, athletic fields, and institutional grounds — that were solid crabgrass, knotweed, clover, etc. In many of these areas, if there weren’...

Our aim in this paper is to explain some of the results about interacting particle systems to someone who has no knowledge of probability theory but unders tands w h a t it means to flip a coin wi th a probabili ty p of heads. In what follows we will discuss five models. The last three are h inted at in the title. The first two are simpler systems that will be useful in explaining the others. t...