Branched broomrape management is of increasing concern to California processing tomato growers. Field research was conducted in 2023 and 2024 to evaluate various application timings of chemigated rimsulfuron alone, preplant incorporated (PPI) sulfosulfuron paired with chemigated rimsulfuron, as well as foliar maleic hydrazide alone and paired with PPI sulfosulfuron and chemigated rimsulfuron. In 2023, all treatments with 70 g ai ha-1 rimsulfuron, alone or paired with PPI sulfosulfuron, reduced broomrape emergence 77 to 92% compared to the nontreated control. In 2024, broomrape pressure was higher, and all rimsulfuron treatments reduced broomrape emergence 68 to 86% compared to the control. In both years, five applications of foliar maleic hydrazide reduced broomrape emergence through at least midseason. The 2024 experiment included a combination treatment of PPI sulfosulfuron, chemigated rimsulfuron, and foliar maleic hydrazide, which resulted in fewer than four broomrape clusters per plot. In a 2024 grower-scale demonstration trial, two application regimes totaling 70 g ai ha-1 of chemigated rimsulfuron reduced broomrape emergence 83 to 89% compared to the control. Overall, chemigated rimsulfuron applied at various timings and rates totaling 70 g ai ha-1 reduced broomrape emergence by two-thirds or more compared to the nontreated plots. No crop injury was observed in trials with rimsulfuron, sulfosulfuron, or maleic hydrazide treatments in small plot trials or with rimsulfuron in the grower-scale demonstration trial. Under a recently approved 24(c) Special Local Need label, California growers can use three applications of rimsulfuron applied via chemigation to suppress broomrape in known infested fields or to reduce the risk of broomrape establishment in fields of concern for this quarantine pest. Promising results from sulfosulfuron and maleic hydrazide suggest that registering additional herbicides could help develop even more robust branched broomrape management programs.

This study investigated the factors influencing growers in the selection of seed suppliers in the Amhara region of Ethiopia. A total of 385 grower were selected using simple random sampling method. A mixed logit regression model was used to the analysis data that have 1284 observation. The result reveal that high seed purity was negatively related to the selection of alternative supplier. As the rating of seed purity increased, the probability of selecting very high-quality seed suppliers also increased. The availability of tree seeds during the desired time period had a significant influence. Higher perceived availability, categorized as high or very high, decreased the likelihood of promptly obtaining seeds from suppliers compared to when the seeds were not available. The evaluation rating of germination increases the probability of choosing suppliers with high or very high germination rates in the respective category. Growers with more experience are more likely to choose private enterprise suppliers. The implementation of appropriate quarantine measures has a positive influence on supplier selection for the groups AFE and EFD-CEC. Training in tree seed collection reduces the likelihood of choosing enterprise and AFE suppliers. Moreover, the successful production of a greater number of tree species in the nursery positively influences the probability of sourcing from enterprise suppliers. This analysis highlights the significance of seed purity, germination, quarantine measures, and the number of species produced, as factors that influence the likelihood of selecting alternative seed suppliers.

To delay paying wages to seamen, the late Stuart Navy issued them instead with “tickets” to be redeemed for cash after months or years of delay. Seamen often sold the tickets at deep discounts to ticket buyers, who became government creditors for unpaid wages, one of the largest items in the national debt. Ticket buyers were savagely attacked in pamphlets. This article is a preliminary exploration of ticket buying, focusing on the large minority of buyers who were women. It shows that many of them were in fact the wives and widows of the seamen, working in the crowded streets around the Navy Office and in the cottages of the maritime communities nearby. Navy pay books are introduced as a key source; the business of one trader is evaluated using her financial papers, and the work of others assessed from probate records. Ticket buying opened up related opportunities for women as brokers of deals and as professional receivers of wages. But while pawning could be used as protection against the growing hazard of unpaid tickets, even with deep discounts it was difficult to make even a moderate return in the trade. Ticket buying was not a route to fortunes.

Marcus Aemilius Lepidus was one of three Roman legati sent to Greece in 201/200 b.c.e. and ended up confronting Philip V of Macedon at Abydus. Scholars have debated whether this young man was already a senator by 201 or had yet to become one. This paper argues that he had actually been a senator since 216, enrolled in Buteo’s extraordinary lectio of one hundred and seventy-seven new senators, after he had gained a corona ciuica and spolia ex hoste during the early stages of the Hannibalic War.

Standardly, echo chambers are thought to be structures that we should avoid. Agents should keep away from them, to be able to assess a fuller range of evidence and avoid having their confidence in that information manipulated. This paper argues against that standard view. Not only can echo chambers be neutral or good for us, but the existing definitions apply so widely that such chambers are unavoidable. We are all in large numbers of echo chambers at any time – they can be found not just on social media or in political groups, but in almost every social or epistemic group we could categorise ourselves into. Because we are finite and fallible, we cannot escape them and need to exist in them just to get by. The concept, then, does not actually capture something as structurally problematic as the paradigmatic cases would suggest. Our way of using the term in social epistemology needs to change.

Community Coastal Zone Assessment Surveys (CCZASs) conducted on the Scottish coast aim to characterize and assess the significance, condition, and vulnerability of coastal archaeology and to prioritize assets most at risk. Two key differences from earlier coastal zone assessment survey methods are the use of coastline vulnerability models to target fieldwork and the involvement of the public in the surveys. This article details the methodology used to plan for, carry out, and disseminate results of the surveys, including the following: evaluating and targeting coastlines in a GIS framework to focus new coastal surveys in areas most susceptible to erosion, using SCAPE's coastal archaeology recording mobile application as our survey tool, managing data through SCAPE's Sites at Risk portal, involving local volunteers, and disseminating findings and data flow into regional and national historic environment databases. We discuss results and reflections from surveys of the Highland, Moray, and Aberdeenshire coastlines conducted in 2022 and conclude with general principles applicable beyond Scotland.

Robotic manipulation inherently involves contact with objects for task accomplishment. Traditional motion planning techniques, while having shown their success in collision-free scenarios, may not handle manipulation tasks effectively because they typically avoid contact. Although geometric constraints have been introduced into classical motion planners for tasks that involve interactions, they still lack the capability to fully incorporate contact. In addition, these planning methods generally do not operate on objects that cannot be directly controlled. In this work, building on a recently proposed framework for energy-based quasi-static manipulation, we propose an approach to manipulation planning by adapting a numerical continuation algorithm to compute the equilibrium manifold (EM), which is implicitly derived from physical laws. By defining a manipulation potential energy function that captures interaction and natural potentials, the numerical continuation approach is integrated with adaptive ordinary differential equations that converge to the EM. This allows discretizing the implicit manifold as a graph with a finite set of equilibria as nodes interconnected by weighted edges defined via a haptic metric. The proposed framework is evaluated with an inverted pendulum task, where the explored branch of the manifold demonstrates effectiveness.

Leonurus cardiaca is a perennial mint species with a long history of use as a medicinal herb. It produces a wide variety of phytochemicals with pharmacological properties that are used to treat anxiety and sleep disorders, cardiac disorders, and to reduce inflammation. Surprisingly, scant information is available concerning its seed germination ecology. Hence, this study investigated the presence/kind of seed dormancy and the effects of several environmental factors on seed germination and seedling emergence. Seeds were collected from three populations, and they were subjected to germination and seedling emergence experiments in which environmental factors, including temperature, light, cold stratification, pH, osmotic stress, and depth of burial, were manipulated. Non-stratified seeds germinated over a range of alternating temperature regimes from 20/10 to 30/20°C, but they did not germinate at 15/5°C. Optimum germination occurred between 25/15 and 30/20°C. The presence or absence of light did not affect germination. Cold stratification at 4°C enhanced germination at the two coolest temperature regimes. Seed germination occurred over a solution pH range of 5–10 and exceeded 55% in buffer solutions with pH 6–10. Low levels of osmotic stress reduced germination; only 3–8% of seeds germinated at −0.2 MPa. Maximum seedling emergence occurred when seeds were placed on the soil surface, and emergence decreased with increased burial depths to 5 cm. Overall, seeds exhibited germination characteristics associated with type 2 non-deep physiological dormancy at maturity. Seeds primarily germinated at incubation temperatures of ≥ 25/15°C; however, conditionally dormant seeds became nondormant after prolonged exposure to cold stratification.