scholarly journals Effect of prefeeding, sowing rate and sowing pattern on efficacy of aerial 1080 poisoning of small-mammal pests in New Zealand

2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham Nugent ◽  
Bruce Warburton ◽  
Caroline Thomson ◽  
Peter Sweetapple ◽  
Wendy A. Ruscoe

Context Aerial poisoning using sodium fluoroacetate (1080) is an important but controversial technique used for large-scale control of brushtail possums (Trichosurus vulpecula) and other pests in New Zealand. The technique reliably produces near total kills of possums and rats, provided that many tens of baits (and therefore many tens of individually lethal doses) are sown for each target animal present. Aim The aim of this study was to further refine aerial 1080 poisoning by determining the effect of prefeeding, sowing rate, and sowing pattern on effectiveness. Methods Eighteen experimental treatments comprising all possible combinations of three sowing rates (1, 2, and 5 kg/ha of bait), three frequencies of non-toxic prefeed (0, 1, and 2) and two sowing patterns (parallel and cross-hatched) were applied to each of two forested areas. Treatment effectiveness was assessed from changes in the rate of interference recorded on baited cards for three species: possum, ship rat (Rattus rattus) and mouse (Mus musculus). Key results Outcomes were highly variable, ranging from increases in pest activity to near total reductions. Possum reductions were highest where one or two prefeeds were used, and at the higher sowing rates (2 or 5 kg/ha), but with some interactions between these factors. For rats, two prefeeds resulted in the highest reductions but sowing rate had no effect. For mice, post-poisoning indices were often high, indicating low effectiveness. Conclusions Some treatments were highly effective so poor kills were unlikely to have resulted from pests not encountering bait, or the bait being unpalatable. Rather they appeared to reflect sub-lethal poisoning either as a result of low acceptance (as a result of a lack of familiarity and/or satiation) or bait fragmentation. We infer that for possum and rats prefeeding helps reduce this risk of sub-lethal poisoning not only by increasing familiarity, but also (in conjunction with high sowing rates) by increasing the bait encounter rate, particularly for possums. Implications There is scope to further reduce the amount of toxic bait sown and the cost of poisoning, without compromising efficacy, by fine-tuning the balance between prefeeding and sowing rate based on which species are being targeted and, for possums, reducing bait fragmentation.

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine M. Febria ◽  
Maggie Bayfield ◽  
Kathryn E. Collins ◽  
Hayley S. Devlin ◽  
Brandon C. Goeller ◽  
...  

In Aotearoa New Zealand, agricultural land-use intensification and decline in freshwater ecosystem integrity pose complex challenges for science and society. Despite riparian management programmes across the country, there is frustration over a lack in widespread uptake, upfront financial costs, possible loss in income, obstructive legislation and delays in ecological recovery. Thus, social, economic and institutional barriers exist when implementing and assessing agricultural freshwater restoration. Partnerships are essential to overcome such barriers by identifying and promoting co-benefits that result in amplifying individual efforts among stakeholder groups into coordinated, large-scale change. Here, we describe how initial progress by a sole farming family at the Silverstream in the Canterbury region, South Island, New Zealand, was used as a catalyst for change by the Canterbury Waterway Rehabilitation Experiment, a university-led restoration research project. Partners included farmers, researchers, government, industry, treaty partners (Indigenous rights-holders) and practitioners. Local capacity and capability was strengthened with practitioner groups, schools and the wider community. With partnerships in place, co-benefits included lowered costs involved with large-scale actions (e.g., earth moving), reduced pressure on individual farmers to undertake large-scale change (e.g., increased participation and engagement), while also legitimising the social contracts for farmers, scientists, government and industry to engage in farming and freshwater management. We describe contributions and benefits generated from the project and describe iterative actions that together built trust, leveraged and aligned opportunities. These actions were scaled from a single farm to multiple catchments nationally.


2000 ◽  
Vol 151 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephan Wild-Eck ◽  
Willi Zimmermann

Two large-scale surveys looking at attitudes towards forests, forestry and forest policy in the second half ofthe nineties have been carried out. This work was done on behalf of the Swiss Confederation by the Chair of Forest Policy and Forest Economics of the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. Not only did the two studies use very different methods, but the results also varied greatly as far as infrastructure and basic conditions were concerned. One of the main differences between the two studies was the fact that the first dealt only with mountainous areas, whereas the second was carried out on the whole Swiss population. The results of the studies reflect these differences:each produced its own specific findings. Where the same (or similar) questions were asked, the answers highlight not only how the attitudes of those questioned differ, but also views that they hold in common. Both surveys showed positive attitudes towards forests in general, as well as a deep-seated appreciation ofthe forest as a recreational area, and a positive approach to tending. Detailed results of the two surveys will be available in the near future.


1999 ◽  
Vol 39 (10-11) ◽  
pp. 289-295
Author(s):  
Saleh Al-Muzaini

The Shuaiba Industrial Area (SIA) is located about 50 km south of Kuwait City. It accommodates most of the large-scale industries in Kuwait. The total area of the SIA (both eastern and western sectors) is about 22.98 million m2. Fifteen plants are located in the eastern sector and 23 in the western sector, including two petrochemical companies, three refineries, two power plants, a melamine company, an industrial gas corporation, a paper products company and, two steam electricity generating stations, in addition to several other industries. Therefore, only 30 percent of the land in the SIA's eastern sector and 70 percent of land in the SIA's western sector is available for future expansion. Presently, industries in the SIA generate approximately 204,000 t of solid waste. With future development in the industries in the SIA, the estimated quantities will reach 240,000 t. The Shuaiba Area Authority (SAA), a governmental regulatory body responsible for planning and development in the SIA, has recognized the problem of solid waste and has developed an industrial waste minimization program. This program would help to reduce the quantity of waste generated within the SIA and thereby reduce the cost of waste management. This paper presents a description of the waste minimization program and how it is to be implemented by major petroleum companies. The protocols employed in the waste minimization program are detailed.


Author(s):  
Zheng Zhou ◽  
Erik Saule ◽  
Hasan Metin Aktulga ◽  
Chao Yang ◽  
Esmond G. Ng ◽  
...  

Technologies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 2
Author(s):  
Ashish Jaiswal ◽  
Ashwin Ramesh Babu ◽  
Mohammad Zaki Zadeh ◽  
Debapriya Banerjee ◽  
Fillia Makedon

Self-supervised learning has gained popularity because of its ability to avoid the cost of annotating large-scale datasets. It is capable of adopting self-defined pseudolabels as supervision and use the learned representations for several downstream tasks. Specifically, contrastive learning has recently become a dominant component in self-supervised learning for computer vision, natural language processing (NLP), and other domains. It aims at embedding augmented versions of the same sample close to each other while trying to push away embeddings from different samples. This paper provides an extensive review of self-supervised methods that follow the contrastive approach. The work explains commonly used pretext tasks in a contrastive learning setup, followed by different architectures that have been proposed so far. Next, we present a performance comparison of different methods for multiple downstream tasks such as image classification, object detection, and action recognition. Finally, we conclude with the limitations of the current methods and the need for further techniques and future directions to make meaningful progress.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Peiran Zhang ◽  
Joseph Rufo ◽  
Chuyi Chen ◽  
Jianping Xia ◽  
Zhenhua Tian ◽  
...  

AbstractThe ability to precisely manipulate nano-objects on a large scale can enable the fabrication of materials and devices with tunable optical, electromagnetic, and mechanical properties. However, the dynamic, parallel manipulation of nanoscale colloids and materials remains a significant challenge. Here, we demonstrate acoustoelectronic nanotweezers, which combine the precision and robustness afforded by electronic tweezers with versatility and large-field dynamic control granted by acoustic tweezing techniques, to enable the massively parallel manipulation of sub-100 nm objects with excellent versatility and controllability. Using this approach, we demonstrated the complex patterning of various nanoparticles (e.g., DNAs, exosomes, ~3 nm graphene flakes, ~6 nm quantum dots, ~3.5 nm proteins, and ~1.4 nm dextran), fabricated macroscopic materials with nano-textures, and performed high-resolution, single nanoparticle manipulation. Various nanomanipulation functions, including transportation, concentration, orientation, pattern-overlaying, and sorting, have also been achieved using a simple device configuration. Altogether, acoustoelectronic nanotweezers overcome existing limitations in nano-manipulation and hold great potential for a variety of applications in the fields of electronics, optics, condensed matter physics, metamaterials, and biomedicine.


Nanomaterials ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 1646
Author(s):  
Jingya Xie ◽  
Wangcheng Ye ◽  
Linjie Zhou ◽  
Xuguang Guo ◽  
Xiaofei Zang ◽  
...  

In the last couple of decades, terahertz (THz) technologies, which lie in the frequency gap between the infrared and microwaves, have been greatly enhanced and investigated due to possible opportunities in a plethora of THz applications, such as imaging, security, and wireless communications. Photonics has led the way to the generation, modulation, and detection of THz waves such as the photomixing technique. In tandem with these investigations, researchers have been exploring ways to use silicon photonics technologies for THz applications to leverage the cost-effective large-scale fabrication and integration opportunities that it would enable. Although silicon photonics has enabled the implementation of a large number of optical components for practical use, for THz integrated systems, we still face several challenges associated with high-quality hybrid silicon lasers, conversion efficiency, device integration, and fabrication. This paper provides an overview of recent progress in THz technologies based on silicon photonics or hybrid silicon photonics, including THz generation, detection, phase modulation, intensity modulation, and passive components. As silicon-based electronic and photonic circuits are further approaching THz frequencies, one single chip with electronics, photonics, and THz functions seems inevitable, resulting in the ultimate dream of a THz electronic–photonic integrated circuit.


2021 ◽  
pp. 135910532110299
Author(s):  
Terise Broodryk ◽  
Kealagh Robinson

Although anxiety and worry can motivate engagement with COVID-19 preventative behaviours, people may cognitively reframe these unpleasant emotions, restoring wellbeing at the cost of public health behaviours. New Zealand young adults ( n = 278) experiencing nationwide COVID-19 lockdown reported their worry, anxiety, reappraisal and lockdown compliance. Despite high knowledge of lockdown policies, 92.5% of participants reported one or more policy breaches ( M  = 2.74, SD = 1.86). Counter to predictions, no relationships were found between anxiety or worry with reappraisal or lockdown breaches. Findings highlight the importance of targeting young adults in promoting lockdown compliance and offer further insight into the role of emotion during a pandemic.


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