To cultivate zooplankton species with highly fragile mucoid structures, a new type of cultivation device was developed, which uses a novel method to gently circulate the water in the culture vessel. Using this device, a species of the fritillarid appendicularia (Fritillaria sp.) collected in Sagami Bay was successfully cultivated. This form resembles Fritillaria haplostoma or Fritillaria formica tuberculata, but some taxonomical characteristics differed from those of the latter forms. A novel device comprising a polycarbonate bucket with a motor-driven rotating cylinder inserted into the water in the bucket was developed and maintained Fritillaria sp. over ten filial generations in the laboratory. The animals reached trunk lengths of 1026 ± 85 μm (mean ± SD) four days after fertilization at 23°C. The instantaneous growth rates were calculated as 1.11–1.72 at 20–26°C, representing a 3.0–5.6-fold daily increase in body weight. The house constructed by this species is extraordinarily fragile, typically has a barrel-like or cylindrical shape, and accommodates its entire body and food-concentrating filter. At 23°C, the species produced houses at a rate of 28 ± 2.8 houses d−1. The new device is useful for the continuous cultivation of the fragile form of fritillarid appendicularia, and even for various other zooplankton. It also shows that Fritillaria sp. could be a significant secondary producer and transporter of organic matter in marine ecosystems due to its high growth and house production rates.

Ethnohistoric accounts indicate that the people of Australia's Channel Country engaged in activities rarely recorded elsewhere on the continent, including food storage, aquaculture and possible cultivation, yet there has been little archaeological fieldwork to verify these accounts. Here, the authors report on a collaborative research project initiated by the Mithaka people addressing this lack of archaeological investigation. The results show that Mithaka Country has a substantial and diverse archaeological record, including numerous large stone quarries, multiple ritual structures and substantial dwellings. Our archaeological research revealed unknown aspects, such as the scale of Mithaka quarrying, which could stimulate re-evaluation of Aboriginal socio-economic systems in parts of ancient Australia.

The invasion of waterhemp into northern sugarbeet growing regions has prompted producers to re-integrate inter-row cultivation into weed management programs, as no currently registered herbicides can control glyphosate-resistant waterhemp POST in crop. Inter-row cultivation was a common weed control practice in sugarbeet until the release of glyphosate-resistant sugarbeet cultivars in 2008 made the use of inter-row cultivation unnecessary. In the late 2010s, producers began again to use inter-row cultivation to remove weeds that glyphosate did not control, but producers need information on the effectiveness and safety of inter-row cultivation when used with soil-residual herbicide programs. Efficacy and tolerance field experiments were conducted in Minnesota and North Dakota from 2017 to 2019. Results from the efficacy experiment demonstrated that cultivation improved waterhemp control 11% and 12%, 14 and 28 d after treatment, respectively. Waterhemp response to cultivation was dependent on crop canopy and precipitation after cultivation. Cultivation had minimal effect on waterhemp density in three environments, but at one environment, near Galchutt, ND in 2019, waterhemp density increased 600% and 196%, 14 and 28 d after treatment, respectively. Climate data indicated that in 2019 Galchutt, ND received 105 mm of precipitation in the 14 d following cultivation and had an open crop canopy that probably contributed to further weed emergence. Results from the tolerance experiment demonstrated that root yield and recoverable sucrose were not affected by cultivation timing or number of cultivations. In one environment, cultivating reduced sucrose content by 0.8% regardless of date or cultivation number, but no differences were found in four environments. Damage/destruction of leaf tissue from in-season cultivation is probably responsible for the reduction in sucrose content. Results indicate that cultivation can be a valuable tool to control weeds that herbicide cannot, but excessive rainfall and open crop canopy following cultivation can create an environment conducive to further weed emergence.

Expansion of cultivated lands and field management impacts greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture soils. Soils naturally cycle GHGs and can be sources or sinks depending on physical and chemical properties affected by cultivation and management status. We looked at how cultivation history influences GHG emissions from subtropical soils. We measured CO2, N2O, and CH4 fluxes, and soil properties from newly converted and continuously cultivated lands during the summer rainy season in calcareous soils from south Florida. Newly converted soils had more soil organic matter (OM), more moisture, higher porosity, and lower bulk density, leading to more GHG emissions compared to historically cultivated soils. Although more nutrients make newly converted lands more desirable for cultivation, conversion of new areas for agriculture was shown to release more GHGs than cultivated lands. Our data suggest that GHG emissions from agricultural soils may decrease over time with continued cultivation.

Many of us are all too familiar with the experience of taking pleasure in things we feel we ought not, and of finding it frustratingly hard to bring our pleasures into line with our moral judgements. As a value dualist, Kant draws a sharp contrast between the two sources of practical motivation: pleasure in the agreeable and respect for the moral law. His ethics might thus seem to be an unpromising source for help in thinking about how we can bring our agreeable pleasures into line with our moral values. But I argue that a careful reading of Kant’s texts reveals a helpfully realistic view about the extent to which we can modify our agreeable pleasures. On my interpretation, Kant shows us how to hold together two seemingly incompatible ideas: on the one hand, that pleasure in the agreeable is resistant to rational direction, and on the other hand, that we can cultivate these pleasures with a view to ethical self-transformation.

Commentators disagree about Kant’s view on the proper treatment of emotions. In contrast to a tendency in this literature to treat them uniformly, I argue that, according to Kant, feelings (but not affects) require cultivation, and inclinations – although they can and perhaps may be cultivated – generally require discipline. The appropriate treatment for emotions depends on their susceptibility to rational constraint and on the threat they pose to rational deliberation. Although I read Kant as recommending that we cultivate certain emotions, I argue that my reading is not vulnerable to Thomason’s recent pertinent objections to such readings.

A current goal among many scientific disciplines is to incorporate data on past human land use and climate change into current global climate and vegetation models. Here, we used existing archaeological and paleoecological data to provide a spatiotemporal reconstruction of human history in Greater Amazonia over the Holocene. We used an ensemble distribution model based on a database of georeferenced 14C-dated material and environmental factors to predict the changes in spatial distributions of past human occupation sites. We ran these models for the precultivation (13,000–6000 yr ago), early cultivation (6000–2500 yr ago), and late cultivation (2500–500 yr ago) periods. The ensemble models suggest that people mostly inhabited the peripheral areas of Greater Amazonia and the eastern sections of the main Amazon River and its larger tributaries during the precultivation period. Human populations began growing exponentially through the early cultivation period, and people spread and expanded into the interior forests and along river channels in western Amazonia. Populations continued growing through the late cultivation period in these same regions. Our results suggest that many forests, particularly in the peripheral regions and riverine locations, may still be in recovery from disturbances that have occurred repeatedly through the Holocene.

The Amazon is one of the few independent centres of plant domestication in the world, yet archaeological and ethnographic evidence suggest a relatively recent transition to agriculture there. In order to make sense of this time lag, the authors propose the use of the concept of ‘familiarisation’ instead of ‘domestication’, to explain Amazonian plant management, and the long-term relationship between plants and people in the region. This concept allows them to cast a fresh eye over ancient and contemporary patterns of plant cultivation and management that may be distinct to the ones described for the Old World.

Research on Late Bronze Age relations between Egyptians and local nomadic or semi-nomadic Libyans has hitherto focused almost exclusively on Egyptian textual and iconographic sources. Recent archaeological evidence for grain production and agrarian practice at the Egyptian fortress of Zawiyet Umm el-Rakham allows us to address this imbalance, in combination with ethnographic data and cross-cultural parallels drawn from nomad-sedentary interactions in the Near East. Results suggest that Egyptian subsistence in this relatively isolated outpost of the New Kingdom Empire was probably dependent upon Libyan manpower and their knowledge of local environmental conditions and effective farming methods.

Population growth has been evoked both as a causal factor and consequence of the transition to agriculture. The use of radiocarbon (14C) dates as proxies for population allows for reevaluations of population as a variable in the transition to agriculture. In Korea, numerous rescue excavations during recent decades have offered a wealth of 14C data for this application. A summed probability distribution (SPD) of 14C dates is investigated to reconstruct population trends preceding and following adoptions of food production in prehistoric Korea. Important cultivars were introduced to Korea in two episodes: millets during the Chulmun Period (ca. 6000–1500 BCE) and rice during the Mumun Period (ca. 1500–300 BCE). The SPD suggests that while millet production had little impact on Chulmun populations, a prominent surge in population appears to have followed the introduction of rice. The case in prehistoric Korea demonstrates that the adoption of food production does not lead inevitably towards sustained population growth. Furthermore, the data suggest that the transition towards intensive agriculture need not occur under conditions of population pressure resulting from population growth. Rather, intensive rice farming in prehistoric Korea began during a period of population stagnation.

The escalating evolution of weed species resistant to acetolactase synthase (ALS)-inhibitor herbicides makes alternative weed control strategies necessary for field crops that are dependent on this herbicide group. A fully integrated strategy that combined increased crop seeding rates (2X or 4X recommended), mechanical weed control with a minimum-tillage rotary hoe, and reduced-rate non–ALS inhibitor herbicides was compared with herbicides, rotary hoe, and seeding rates alone as a method of controlling ALS inhibitor–tolerant Indian mustard as a model weed. The full-rate herbicide treatment had the lowest weed biomass (98% reduction) and the highest yield of all treatments in 3 of 4 site-years, regardless of seeding rate. The fully integrated treatment at the 4X seeding rate had weed suppression rates equal to the full herbicide treatment at the recommended seeding rate. The fully integrated and reduced-rate herbicide treatments at the 4X seeding rate reduced weed biomass by 89% and 83%, respectively, compared with the control at the recommended seeding rate. The rotary hoe treatment alone resulted in poor weed control (≤38%), even at the highest seeding rate. Fully integrated and reduced-rate herbicide treatments at 2X and 4X seeding rates had yields equal to those of the full herbicide treatment at the recommended seeding rate. Partially or fully integrated weed control strategies that combine increased crop seeding rates and reduced-rate non–ALS inhibitor herbicides, with or without the use of a rotary hoe, can control weeds resistant to ALS-inhibitor herbicides, while maintaining crop yields similar to those achieved with full-rate herbicides. However, combining increased seeding rate, reduced-rate herbicides, and mechanical rotary hoe treatment into a fully integrated strategy maximized weed control, while reducing reliance on and selection pressure against any single weed control tactic.

One way of understanding Kant’s views about moral emotions is the cultivation view. On this view, emotions play a role in Kantian morality provided they are properly cultivated. I evince a sceptical position about the cultivation view. First, I show that the textual evidence in support of cultivation is ambiguous. I then provide an account of emotions in Kant’s theory that explains both his positive and negative views about them. Emotions capture our attention such that they both disrupt the mind’s composure and serve as a surrogate for reason. As such, Kant cannot recommend that we cultivate our emotions.

Leaf cuticle micromorphology has been cited as an important set of taxonomic characters in gymnosperms, but previous studies have largely been based on small sample sizes. The premise of this study was to understand whether external factors affect cuticular micromorphology of Podocarpaceae. Two example species, Prumnopitys andina and Podocarpus salignus, were studied. Of 21 sampled characters, nine (c.43% of the total) were visually assessed as being moderately reliable or highly reliable for taxonomic discrimination for both species, with an additional six (c.29%) being moderately reliable or highly reliable for only one or other of the example species, and six characters (c.29%) unreliable for both. Seven of the most variable stomatal characters were selected for further analysis to establish whether environmental factors affect them. The relationship between these seven stomatal characters, the environment and climate was analysed using the R ‘vegan’ package and climate data gathered from WorldClim. Our results showed that both species had larger stomata in moist and shady conditions, and a higher density of (smaller) stomata in sunny and drier conditions. An additional novel finding was the presence of stomata on the adaxial leaf surface in 46% of samples of Prumnopitys andina: the first record of adaxial stomata in this species, highlighting the necessity of studying multiple samples of a given species. In conclusion, these results indicate that larger sample sizes than have hitherto been employed in cuticle micromorphological studies are necessary to fully document the amount of phenotypic variation that exists.