Seven half-day regional listening sessions were held between December 2016 and April 2017 with groups of diverse stakeholders on the issues and potential solutions for herbicide-resistance management. The objective of the listening sessions was to connect with stakeholders and hear their challenges and recommendations for addressing herbicide resistance. The coordinating team hired Strategic Conservation Solutions, LLC, to facilitate all the sessions. They and the coordinating team used in-person meetings, teleconferences, and email to communicate and coordinate the activities leading up to each regional listening session. The agenda was the same across all sessions and included small-group discussions followed by reporting to the full group for discussion. The planning process was the same across all the sessions, although the selection of venue, time of day, and stakeholder participants differed to accommodate the differences among regions. The listening-session format required a great deal of work and flexibility on the part of the coordinating team and regional coordinators. Overall, the participant evaluations from the sessions were positive, with participants expressing appreciation that they were asked for their thoughts on the subject of herbicide resistance. This paper details the methods and processes used to conduct these regional listening sessions and provides an assessment of the strengths and limitations of those processes.

Herbicide resistance is ‘wicked’ in nature; therefore, results of the many educational efforts to encourage diversification of weed control practices in the United States have been mixed. It is clear that we do not sufficiently understand the totality of the grassroots obstacles, concerns, challenges, and specific solutions needed for varied crop production systems. Weed management issues and solutions vary with such variables as management styles, regions, cropping systems, and available or affordable technologies. Therefore, to help the weed science community better understand the needs and ideas of those directly dealing with herbicide resistance, seven half-day regional listening sessions were held across the United States between December 2016 and April 2017 with groups of diverse stakeholders on the issues and potential solutions for herbicide resistance management. The major goals of the sessions were to gain an understanding of stakeholders and their goals and concerns related to herbicide resistance management, to become familiar with regional differences, and to identify decision maker needs to address herbicide resistance. The messages shared by listening-session participants could be summarized by six themes: we need new herbicides; there is no need for more regulation; there is a need for more education, especially for others who were not present; diversity is hard; the agricultural economy makes it difficult to make changes; and we are aware of herbicide resistance but are managing it. The authors concluded that more work is needed to bring a community-wide, interdisciplinary approach to understanding the complexity of managing weeds within the context of the whole farm operation and for communicating the need to address herbicide resistance.

Recent droughts in Puerto Rico and throughout the Caribbean have emphasized the region's agricultural vulnerability to this hazard and the increasing need for adaptation mechanisms to support sustainable production. In this study, we assessed the geographic extent of agricultural conservation practices incentivized by US Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and evaluated their large-scale contribution to drought adaptability. We identified concentrations of drought-related practices (e.g. cover crops, ponds) applied between 2000 and 2016. Using information from spatial databases and interviews with experts, we assessed the spatial correlation between these practices and areas exposed to drought as identified by the US Drought Monitor. Between 2000 and 2016, Puerto Rico experienced seven drought episodes concentrated around the south, east and southeastern regions. The most profound drought occurred between 2014 and 2016 when the island experienced 80 consecutive weeks of moderate drought, 48 of severe drought and 33 of extreme drought conditions. A total of 44 drought-related conservation practices were applied at 6984 locations throughout 860 km2 of farmlands between 2000 and 2016 through the NRCS-Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP). Practices related to water availability were statistically clustered along the coasts, whereas soil and plant health practices were clustered in the mountainous region. While these concentrations strongly correlated with areas exposed to moderate drought conditions, >80% did not coincide with areas that experienced severe or extreme drought conditions, suggesting that areas highly exposed to drought conditions generally lacked drought preparedness assisted by EQIP. Climate projections indicate an increase in the frequency and intensity of drought events, particularly in the eastern region of Puerto Rico. Our analysis highlighted the need to implement more conservation practices in these areas subject to drought intensification and exposure. Government programs intended to address vulnerabilities and enhance capacity and resilience may not be reaching areas of highest exposure. Recommendations include raising producer awareness of past and future exposure and making programs more accessible to a broader audience.

Because individuals develop dementia as a manifestation of neurodegenerative or neurovascular disorder, there is a need to develop reliable approaches to their identification. We are undertaking an observational study (Ontario Neurodegenerative Disease Research Initiative [ONDRI]) that includes genomics, neuroimaging, and assessments of cognition as well as language, speech, gait, retinal imaging, and eye tracking. Disorders studied include Alzheimer’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, frontotemporal dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and vascular cognitive impairment. Data from ONDRI will be collected into the Brain-CODE database to facilitate correlative analysis. ONDRI will provide a repertoire of endophenotyped individuals that will be a unique, publicly available resource.

Roffelsen is an early Younge phase mortuary component in southwestern Ontario. The single burial feature is a pit containing the articulated skeletons of seven successively buried individuals, ranging in age from a few months to late middle age. All had been stripped of soft tissues, except for the connecting tissues that maintained their articulation. Most also had a disk cut from the cranium and a hole drilled near bregma. All but the infant display various forms of developmental failure of the outer and middle ear and the petrous portion of the temporal bone. The pit was apparently the burial facility for an extended family with significant hearing impairments. This disability may have limited their interaction with neighboring communities, perhaps even playing a role in their eventual disappearance as a separate community.

In small-scale testing at elevated temperatures, impurities in inert gases can pose problems so that testing in vacuum would be desirable. However, previous experiments have indicated difficulties with thermal stability and instrument noise. To investigate this, measurements of the temperature changes in a modified nanoindenter have been made and their influence on the displacement and load measurements is discussed. It is shown that controlling the temperatures of the indenter tip and the sample enabled flat punch indentations of gold, a good thermal conductor, to be carried out over several minutes at 665 °C in vacuum, as well as permitting thermal stability to be quickly re-established in site-specific microcompression experiments. This allowed compression of nickel superalloy micropillars up to sample temperatures of 630 °C with very low levels of oxidation after 48 h. Furthermore, the measured Young moduli, yield and flow stresses were consistent with literature data.

This article describes cracking during microcompression of Si, InAs, MgO, and MgAl2O4 crystals and compares this with previous observations on Si and GaAs micropillars. The most common mode of cracking was through-thickness axial splitting, the crack growing downward from intersecting slip bands in pillars above a critical size. The splitting behavior observed in all of these materials was quantitatively consistent with a previous analysis, despite the differences in properties and slip geometry between the different materials. Cracking above the slip bands also occurred either in the side or in the top surface of some pillars. The driving forces for these modes of cracking are described and compared with observations. However, only through-thickness axial splitting was observed to give complete failure of the pillar; it is, therefore, considered to be the most important in determining the brittle-to-ductile transitions that have been observed.