This study investigated the nutritional value of Dichrostachys cinerea subsp. nyassana pod meal (DCNPM), an abundant freely available feed resource derived from an invasive plant in Southern Africa, for weaned rabbits and piglets, and the ameliorative effect of wood ash extract (WAE) against deleterious effects of DCNPM tannins. In a completely randomised design (CRD), 16 weaned rabbits were randomly allocated to 4 dietary treatments (DCNPM at 0, 5, 10, and 20 %) with 4 replicate animals each, for 6 weeks (Exp. 1). ...

Sustainable rangeland management is crucial for maintaining forage resources in pastoral systems, globally. However, pastoral regions are often remote and therefore data poor when it comes to resource monitoring. We tested participatory mapping as a means to rapidly assess rangeland use to identify areas with high grazing pressure. Participatory geographic information system data and herbaceous biomass production data were collected and georeferenced to establish a grazing pressure index for a summer pasture in the ...

Alkali-metal phosphanides can be embedded into a [3]ferrocenophane scaffold giving rise to bicyclic ferrocenophanes [MFe(C5H4PtBu)2P] (M = Li, Na, K). Coordination of the alkali-metal ions takes place via the terminal phosphorus atoms adopting a puckered P3M four-membered ring. All compounds were characterized via single-crystal X-ray diffraction and multinuclear NMR spectroscopy (1H, 31P, 7Li), whereas 13C NMR data could only be recorded for the Li derivative, owing to the limited solubility of its heavier congeners ...

Renewable energies are necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in energy production, and biomass plays a dominant role in the renewable energy sector. Combustion of biomass constitutes an efficient conversion technique, but is hindered by harmful elements which are frequently contained in residual grassland biomass. We investigated the effect of leaching on solid fuel quality with three independent experiments including the following treatments: (1) with or without leaching, (2) with leaching at various water ...

C42H48FeNi2OP2, orthorhombic, Pbca (no. 61), a = 9.4551(4) Å, b = 19.7133(9) Å, c = 39.693(2) Å, V = 7398.4(6) Å3, Z = 8, Rgt(F) = 0.0598, wRref(F2) = 0.1481, T = 100(2) K.

Modeling the hydrologic responses to future changes of climate is important for improving adaptive water management. In the present application to the Zarrine River Basin (ZRB), with the major reach being the main inflow source of Lake Urmia (LU), firstly future daily temperatures and precipitation are predicted using two statistical downscaling methods: the classical statistical downscaling model (SDSM), augmented by a trend-preserving bias correction, and a two-step updated quantile mapping (QM) method. The general ...

Competing natural resources usage that leads to dramatic land use changes can threaten the balance of a social-ecological system. When this is the case, communities are directly exposed to the negative consequences of those land use changes. The Mashavera River Basin is considered one of the hotspots of environmental pollution in Georgia. This is of importance for public health because the food production from this basin meets a substantial proportion of the country’s food demand. The farmers’ perception of the water ...

Ecologically sound natural resources management is still the backbone of rural livelihoods in many regions of the world. The Altai-Dzungarian region between China and Mongolia constitutes an ideal site to study how political, economic, infrastructural, and cultural differences affect rural livelihoods. Structured semi-quantitative interviews were conducted with 483 households on both sides to characterise their current livelihood strategies and assess the importance of the various activities for the households’ current ...

Consumer attitudes toward consuming and buying locally produced food are well studied. By contrast, the topic of consumer preferences for local food, with a special emphasis on the role of norms, still lacks empirical evidence. To study the influence of norms and morals on the intention to buy local food products, a quantitative study (N = 327) focusing on external social and internalized moral norms was conducted using the constructs of the theory of planned behavior in combination with an extended norm taxonomy and ...

Monoaxial stretched PP-films are used for the manufacture of hot-compacted layered composites. These are layered with stretched co-extruded coupling agent films, and are consolidated to laminates by means of a hot-compaction process, which employs pressure and temperature. This paper aims to examine the influence of the process settings on the properties of the composites during the hot-compaction process. For this purpose, the mechanical values will be determined by means of tensile testing variously compacted and ...