Paul, Pope fire but Windies lose opener to England

first_imgCHITTAGONG, Bangladesh, (CMC):Half-centuries from Keemo Paul and Gidron Pope failed to save West Indies Under-19s from a 61-run loss to England Under-19s in their opening game of the Under-19 Cricket World Cup here Friday.Chasing an imposing 283 for victory at the Zahur Ahmed Chowdhury Stadium, West Indies collapsed for 221 all out off 43.4 overs, with Paul top scoring with an aggressive 65 and opener Pope gathering an equally fluent run-a-ball 60.However, the Caribbean side were hamstrung by the loss of two wickets off the first four deliveries of the innings and never recovered.Fast bowler Saqib Mahmood tormented the Windies with four for 42 while left-arm seamer Sam Curran (2-23) and leg-spinner Dan Lawrence (2-38) provided support with two wickets apiece.Earlier, England paced their innings well to reached 282 for seven off their 50 overs, after opting to bat first.Callum Taylor, with 59 and Lawrence, 55, stroked half-centuries while George Bartlett struck 48, James Burnham, 44, and Curran, 39.Pope was the best West Indies bowler, picking up two for 45 with his off spin.England benefited from several partnerships early on which provided the ideal foundation.Lawrence, who faced 56 balls and counted eight fours, posted 43 for the first wicket with Max Holden (4) before adding a further 41 for the second wicket with Burnham.When Lawrence was bowled by off-spinner Michael Frew in the 15th over, Burnham and Taylor put on 62 for the third wicket to give England momentum at the half-way stage of the innings.Pope got the breakthrough in the 28th over when he removed Burnham caught and bowled but Bartlett anchored two key partnerships to sustain the momentum, posting 50 for the fourth wicket with Taylor and another 67 for the fifth wicket with Curran.last_img read more

Road safety: motorists ‘must take responsibility’

first_img26 November 2013 Transport Minister Dipuo Peters has appealed to South African motorists to take their share of responsibility for the safety of the country’s roads. “We want you to always arrive alive at your destination,” Peters said during an interview on GCIS Radio on Friday. “It is important that our people take responsibility. The first line of responsibility is the driver, the passenger and the pedestrian.” On the same day as Peters was being interviewed, a bus crashed into a passenger car on the N1 near Makhado in Limpopo province, killing 11 people injuring 47 others. The minister said the government would enforce the rules and regulations by increasing the visibility of traffic officers and ensuring that those who speeded, overtook dangerously and drove under the influence of achohol were arrested. However, motorists also had to play their part in preventing accidents. “We want to make sure that South Africans stay alive this festive period. We are appealing to South Africans that it is in your own interest – for your own safety – to respect the rules of the road. “Let us make sure that the vehicles we drive are roadworthy. Truck drivers, make sure that you drive a truck that is roadworthy … Fleet owners, you will be held responsible if the vehicle that you give to the driver is not in a good condition.” She said the government had passed regulations on testing for alcohol which were starting to produce results, and was also working on regulations regarding the use of car seats for children. “If you have got children in the car, make sure that they are buckled up or get a car seat. We believe that it is important that children under 10 be kept safe in vehicles, because it is the children who are the ones that actually get more hurt. We want to make sure that parents take responsibility,” Peters said. “Lets us not have roads of death in South Africa, let’s have roads that lead to destinations of prosperity and unity.” Source: read more

Oxygen a vital nutrient for corn

first_imgShare Facebook Twitter Google + LinkedIn Pinterest John BrienThere are many things in life that we take for granted, such as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, April 15 being tax day and a salesman showing up just before you were wanting to leave early for the day! There are also some things in the world of crop production we take for granted — it will be hot in August and the weather forecast modules are always wrong after we mow hay.Crop nutrients can be taken for granted as well, with oxygen being one of those. Growers spend considerable amount of time talking and managing nutrients such as N, P and K (and if we are in a really risky group we may whisper the words boron and zinc). But to bring up oxygen at the coffee shop as a vital nutrient we should manage — that will reward you with the bill. The reality is, though, that a grower’s success is based on the oxygen levels in their soils, but the process of oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange happens so naturally and without intervention that it is all but taken for granted.Corn roots along with many of the microorganisms in the soil require oxygen to survive. Roughly 99% of the time the oxygen is supplied naturally by the soil respiring or “breathing” carbon dioxide out of the soil and taking in oxygen. The biological system is rather amazing in its complexity and simplicity. Oxygen is critical in the plant to help drive the manufacturing of energy used to grow and produce grain.The two main ways that plants gain energy to grow are photosynthesis and respiration. Photosynthesis requires sunlight to drive the process while respiration is known as the dark process because it basically occurs in the absence of sunlight. Therefore the green portion of the plant relies on photosynthesis to produce sugars in the day and then uses those sugars at night for respiration to gain energy for growth in the dark. Also non-green parts of the plant (such as the roots) use respiration to provide their needed energy. Here are the chemical reactions:Photosythesis: 6 CO2 + 12 H2O → C6H12O6 (Glucose) + 6 H2O + 6 O2Root Respiration: C6H12O6 (Glucose) + 6 O2 → 6 CO2 + 6 H2O + ENERGYWhy is all this important and why should any grower care? Great question and it is hard to believe that it took this long into the article for you to ask! Corn roots use respiration to “breathe.” Corn roots require oxygen to produce the energy to grow and live. The sugar is supplied from photosynthesis in the above portions of the plant and used by the roots during respiration to grow. Remember oxygen is overlooked a majority of the time because it is usually there in adequate amounts, but the one factor that greatly impacts oxygen levels in soils is soil moisture.The state has been receiving an excessive amount of rainfall for varying amounts of time depending on where you live. As the soil is filled with water, the oxygen is pushed out and there is limited to no supply for the corn roots to live and function. Typically the soil has a reservoir of about 24 hours of oxygen for the plants. The saturated soils are often blamed for stunted crop growth, but that is actually only part of the answer. The corn plants look the way they do because they are lacking oxygen to produce energy and to actively bring nutrients into the plant to support growth. The lack of oxygen leads to stunted plants that are showing numerous nutrient deficiencies. Although the plants are showing deficiencies the soils are more than likely not deficient, the plants just cannot take them up due to the lack of oxygen.What else does an oxygen deficient soil lead to? Denitrification is the main concern in soils that have been saturated and limited in oxygen. There is a group of microbes that have the ability to survive in oxygen depleted environments by “stealing” oxygen from molecules such as nitrate nitrogen. Here is how that works:NO3– → NO2– → NO + N2O → N2 (Gas)As the oxygen is taken off of the nitrate nitrogen molecule it becomes a gas and released into the environment and it is lost from the corn plant. The denitrification process is a huge robber of our nitrogen in saturated soils. Also, these microbes release toxins into the soil as they “breathe.” Those toxins are what causes saturated soils to smell bad.Saturated soils and stunted corn are not ideal, but understanding what is happening out in the fields will hopefully answer some of the questions that arise from the water logged fields of Ohio.last_img read more

Late planted corn?

first_imgShare Facebook Twitter Google + LinkedIn Pinterest With some “late” planting or replanting some are concerned already about whether or not we might be caught by a fall frost before maturity without a change in maturity selection. Not to worry. The corn plant has the ability to adapt to the later planting by advancing more rapidly through the growth stages. Work done at Purdue and Ohio State by graduate students of Bob Nielsen and Peter Thomison, shows that the number of growing degree days (GDD) needed from planting to maturity decreases by about seven GDDs per day of delayed planting. So even a hybrid planted on May 30 needs about 200 less GDDs to achieve maturity than a hybrid planted on May 1.last_img

VMware Changes the Game with Launch of Open Platform

first_imgTop Reasons to Go With Managed WordPress Hosting VMware is launching an open platform today called Cloud Foundry that provides developers with a choice of framework., app services and the flexibility to run on multiple cloud environments.Developers may launch the platform as a private, public or hybrid cloud environment. It can run inside the enterprise as virtual infrastructure, on a public cloud such as Amazon Web Services EC2 or as a hybrid cloud solution.The future of the cloud is one about the predominance of platforms. We’re seeing that reality emerge with this news from VMware. It also points to the increasing importance in providing developers a way to build apps without the usual hassles that come with getting them launched by the IT department.We have been highlighting this issue in the past few weeks in posts about companies such as SaaSGrid, which offers an internal platform for developers. Developers are increasingly adopting Agile methodologies, which is iterative in its approach. Agile requires updates that would normally take weeks to get approved by IT. Setting up a virtual infrastructure like CloudFoundry provides a secure place where developers can do test and development.Mozy Gets into the GameCloud Foundry will be run by the Mozy team, which is moving from EMC and will be part of VMware. VMware executives explained in an interview yesterday that the Mozy team has the experience of developing a backup service.Support for Frameworks and Application ServicesCloud Foundry also offers a choice of clouds, frameworks and application services. According to a draft blog post by VMware CTO Steve Herrod,the platform supports Spring, Grails, Node.js and Ruby on Rails with work already underway for other frameworks. It will be open to multiple services, provided by VMware or other vendors or communities. alex williams 8 Best WordPress Hosting Solutions on the Market A Web Developer’s New Best Friend is the AI Wai… Related Posts Initially VMware will provide basic services such as a relational database, but the choice will broaden quickly. He writes that other initial choices are MySQL, Redisand MongoDB. RabbitMQ will soon follow.Cloud Foundry will be available as a public cloud service at and as software that can be run according to the developer’s choice.Cloud ChoiceCloud Foundry can be used on public or private clouds. It runs on top ofvSphere and vCloud infrastructure but VMware says it can also run on top of other infrastructure clouds. At its launch today, RightScale is showing how Cloud Foundry can run on top of AWS. Its open architecture means that it can run on infrastructure technologies like Eucalyptus or OpenStack.It also has a software component. Herrod:We’ve even shrunk the cloud down to sit on a developer’s laptop. With the “Micro Cloud”, we have a version of Cloud Foundry that runs in a single virtual machine.This gives allows developers to build and test their applications on their ownmachine, with the confidence that their production environment is symmetrical tothe development environment. The Micro Cloud configuration of Cloud Foundrywill be available later this quarter from is the community open source project for the platform environment The code has been uploaded to GitHub. It is available under the Apache 2 license It will be governed like Spring, which has its roots as an open source project.SummaryCloud Foundry plays on the number of acquisitions that VMware has made in the past few years. Spring has been a jewel for VMware but now the other parts are falling into place. RabbitMQ and Gemstone are just two examples. The open play is a smart one. And the flexibility of the platform is key to its success. Cloud Foundry will without a doubt pose a real challenge to Google App Engine and other platforms such as Heroku and even Windows Azure. But this is a competitive space with new startups such as DotCloud offering a similar flexibility.Is VMware now becoming an open source company? It has the dominance in the virtualization market. Now may be the time it leverages that strength to provide an open environment that gives it leverage across the entire market. Why Tech Companies Need Simpler Terms of Servic… Tags:#cloud#news last_img read more

Efforts to Ban Gas Hookups in New Construction Widen

first_imgA campaign to lower carbon emissions by prohibiting fossil fuels connections in new buildings has moved to the East Coast. In mid-November, a town just outside Boston became the first in Massachusetts to ban oil and gas installation in new buildings as citizens there joined a number of California communities that have already enacted similar bylaws. There were only 3 votes against the proposal at a town meeting in Brookline, Massachusetts, The Boston Globe reported, as the community of roughly 58,000 voted to tackle climate change by requiring new homes to run on electricity alone.RELATED ARTICLESCarbon Emissions By the Construction IndustryAnother Look at Embodied CarbonBill to Cut New York City Carbon Emissions: $20 BillionReducing Carbon Emissions From Cars and Trucks Will Be HardEmbodied Carbon Emissions in Buildings The measure, which must still be approved by the state attorney general’s office, was opposed by oil and gas interests, real estate developers, and others. It affects both new construction and major renovations. “Prohibiting Brookline residents from choosing an affordable, reliable, and entirely legal heating fuel like natural gas or bioheat is outrageously unfair,” Stephen Dodge, executive director of the Massachusetts Petroleum Council, a trade association for the gas and oil industry, told the Globe. “If cities and towns can start trying to outlaw utilities licensed by the state Department of Public Utilities from serving willing customers who want to buy energy from them, we’re heading toward regulatory and legal chaos.” The real estate industry fears the measure would increase construction costs for new buildings and make utility expenses higher for homeowners. A court challenge is expected. Berkeley, California, became the first community in the country to take this step with a vote in July. More than a dozen other California communities have since followed suit. Proponents argue that every house and high-rise built today will be in place for decades, and so will the fossil fuel infrastructure unless steps are taken to convert buildings to fuels that are less damaging to the environment. USA Today reports that some 35% of U.S. households have gas stoves. The American Gas Association, a trade group representing more than 200 local gas companies, says an average of one new gas customer is added every minute. The fossil fuel bans that have been approved so far differ in some of the details. In Brookline, the measure allows exemptions for restaurants, medical labs, and other buildings when there are no realistic alternatives to burning fossil fuels, the Globe said. Waivers also could be considered by a new town board. Tamara C. Small, CEO of a trade group for the commercial real estate industry, said in a letter to the Brookline Planning Board that it was important not to hinder construction of new housing, or make it any more expensive for town residents. She also noted the region’s electricity grid relies mainly on natural gas, so the environmental benefits from the ban on new gas and oil hookups in buildings may be a while in coming. Climate chaos ahead without cuts, UN says Brookline’s initiative may seem trivial or disruptive to its critics, but supporters see efforts to phase out the use of fossil fuels as an urgently needed step. And scientists warn that efforts to cut carbon emissions to date have not been nearly enough to prevent catastrophic climate change. In a new report, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization said measurements of several greenhouse gases showed above average emissions in 2018 as CO2 levels reached an all time high. The gap between lower emissions targets adopted by many industrialized countries and what’s actually being dumped into the atmosphere are “glaring and growing,” The Guardian reported. Scientists warn that emissions must be cut by half by 2030 if the global temperature rise is to be limited to 1.5°C, the point beyond which climate change will be disastrous. That now seems unlikely to happen, WMO secretary general Petteri Taalas told the newspaper. “There is no sign of a slowdown, let alone a decline, despite all the commitments under the Paris agreement on climate change,” Taalas said. “We need to increase the level of ambition for the sake of the future welfare of mankind.” He added that the last time Earth had seen a comparable concentration of carbon dioxide was between 3 million and 5 million years ago, when the temperature was 2-3°C warmer and sea levels were between 10 and 20 meters higher. The WMO report published on November 25 said the global average concentration of CO2 was 407.8 parts per million in 2018, an increase from 405.5 ppm the year before. Averages are now 50% higher than they were before the industrial revolution began in the mid 18th century. John Sauven, head of Greenpeace UK, told The Guardian: “The number is the closest thing to a real-world Doomsday Clock, and it’s pushing us ever closer to midnight. Our ability to preserve civilization as we know it, avert the mass extinction of species, and leave a healthy planet to our children depend on us urgently stopping the clock.” -Scott Gibson is a contributing writer at Green Building Advisor and Fine Homebuilding magazine.last_img read more