Comparative studies on energy balance components and their inter relations on soybean crop and bare soil in kharif season at Pune situated in semi-arid tract

Comparative studies of radiation balance components at different growth stages on soybean crop and bare soil were made at Central Agrometeorological Observatory (CAgMO), Pune. Continuous measurements of net, reflected and global solar radiations were made over cropped field as well as over bare soil all throughout the growth phases in kharif season of 1995. Net and reflected radiations and albedo over canopy were higher by 7, 26 and 25 per cent respectively than bare soil. The net short wave (absorbed) radiation and net long wave (out-going) radiation evaluated over the canopy were less than those over bare soil by 5 and 20 per cent respectively. The mean daily net, reflected, net short wave and net long wave (out-going) radiation were 9.86, 3.86, 15.35 and 5.49 MJm-2 respectively and the albedo was 20 per cent over soybean canopy whereas for bare soil they were 9.23, 3.07, 16.15 and 6.91 MJm-2 and 16 per cent respectively. The mean daily global solar radiation during the crop growing season was 19.20 MJm-2. The highest albedo (26 per cent) of the crop recorded in the 10th week after sowing (WAS) was in correspondence to maximum LAI (5.9) observed at pod formation stage.

RADIOIMMUNOASSAY FOR DETECTION OF ANTI-RINDERPEST ANTIBODIES IN CATTLES

Liquid Phase Radioimmunoassay (RIA) was developed to detect and measure anti-rinderpest immunoglobulins in field animals sera, within two hours. Rinderpest virus adapted on Vero cell line culture and antigen purified by treatment with Triton-Gentron 13 Butanol, and, labeled with I isotope, using chloramin T iodination method. Comparative studies for detecting anti-rinderpest immunoglobulin in 80 calves sera samples, using the developed assay in parallel with virus neutralization test (VNT). The study showed 58.75 % agreement between the two methods. However, 71 % of seven months old, non-vaccinated calves showed anti rinderpest antibodies in their sera, also 81 % of 10 months old vaccinated calves were developed antibodies in their blood. These results demonstrate the development of sensitive, specific and rapid quantitative / qualitative radioimmunoassay, necessary for screening the development of immunity against rinderpest in cattle.

DomArchive: a century of published dominance data

Dominance behaviours have been collected for many groups of animals since 1922 and serve as a foundation for research on social behaviour and social structure. Despite a wealth of data from the last century of research on dominance hierarchies, these data are only rarely used for comparative insight. Here, we aim to facilitate comparative studies of the structure and function of dominance hierarchies by compiling published dominance interaction datasets from the last 100 years of work. This compiled archive includes 436 datasets from 190 studies of 367 unique groups (mean group size 13.8, s.d. = 13.4) of 135 different species, totalling over 243 000 interactions. These data are presented in an R package alongside relevant metadata and a tool for subsetting the archive based on biological or methodological criteria. In this paper, we explain how to use the archive, discuss potential limitations of the data, and reflect on best practices in publishing dominance data based on our experience in assembling this dataset. This archive will serve as an important resource for future comparative studies and will promote the development of general unifying theories of dominance in behavioural ecology that can be grounded in testing with empirical data. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The centennial of the pecking order: current state and future prospects for the study of dominance hierarchies’.

Servants of two (or more) masters: Accounting for the complexity of intraparty candidate selection methods

Intraparty candidate selection methods are the drivers of many topics of interest to political scientists. Their operationalization, however, is made complicated because they tend to involve multiple selectorates that differ in their levels of inclusiveness and centralization and that play various roles within the process. This complexity poses a challenge for large- n comparative studies. Drawing on the Political Parties DataBase Round Two to analyze candidate selection methods in 184 parties from 35 democracies, we highlight the inadequacy of the currently available measures to correctly account for this complexity in large- n studies and offer improvements on this front. Specifically, we propose a continuous measure of inclusiveness that better captures the complexity of candidate selection methods and a new measure of complexity to facilitate future analyses into this feature. We recommend that scholars in other cross-national projects consider adopting similar or improved coding strategies in order to better capture these complexities.