Impact of Sowing Time on Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) Biomass Accumulation and Yield

Chickpea growth, development and grain yield are affected by a range of climatic and environmental factors. Experiments were conducted across four sowing dates from mid-April to the end of May, over two years at Trangie in central western New South Wales (NSW), and Leeton, Wagga Wagga and Yanco (one year) in southern NSW, to examine the influence of sowing time on biomass accumulation, grain yield and plant yield components. Climatic and experimental location data were recorded during the growing seasons. Early sowing (mid-April) resulted in taller plants, higher bottom and top pod heights, fewer pods, more unfilled pods and greater biomass accumulation, but low harvest index due to reduced grain yield compared with late sowing (end of May). Grain number was positively correlated with grain yield and was the main yield component accounting for most of the variation in yield. There was largely a positive correlation between biomass and yield, especially with delayed sowing except for Leeton experiments. This study concludes that sowing around the end of April in central western NSW and mid-May in southern NSW is conducive to higher grain yield as it minimises exposure to abiotic stresses at critical growth periods and allows efficient conversion of biomass to grain yield.

Crime, Sensation, and Empire

<p><b>The 1857 criminal trial of Madeleine Smith for the murder of Pierre Emile L’Angelier became a cause célèbre throughout the British world. Enmeshed with scandal and speculation, it involved a secret affair between a young upper middle-class Glasgow woman and her older foreign lover of lower social standing; accusations of arsenic poisoning that led to his demise; erotic love letters that were read out in court; and an inconclusive—and uniquely Scottish—verdict of ‘not proven’. In 1866, a butcher under the name of Thomas Castro from Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, claimed to be the heir to an ancient English baronetcy: the Tichborne estates. Similarly described as its own cause célèbre, the Tichborne baronetcy case spanned two long-running civil and criminal trials and led to a political movement in Britain that continued to take aim at political, legal, and religious institutions long after the trials had ended, in 1874.</b></p> <p>Although the crimes at the centre of the two cases were incongruous, both Madeleine Smith and the Tichborne Claimant ignited significant public debate over criminal procedures, class, gender, and identity. Smith’s case played a key role in the development of ‘sensation’ journalism and literature centred on the violent propensities that lurked beneath the seemingly respectable and repressive Victorian social code, while the Tichborne Claimant’s case confronted Britons with anxieties around the definition of ‘respectability’ and the homecoming of expatriates from the colonies.</p> <p>While coverage of the cases has been well-documented within Britain, less scholarly attention has been paid to their pervasive coverage in the colony of Australia. Both cases were major news items in the colonial press, as updates on the trials were sourced from British media outlets and published in local newspapers almost daily. So pervasive was the coverage that gossip and misinformation surrounding the two cases spread throughout Australia and, to a lesser extent, New Zealand, as speculation surrounded Smith’s later whereabouts over the late nineteenth century and questions about the Tichborne Claimant’s identity lingered.</p> <p>By examining the widespread coverage of the cases in Australia, this work explores how the cases harnessed the communicative powers of the press and stirred sensation in and outside of Britain. Both cases played a role in forging British-Australian transnational identities in the colonies, as Australian newspapers lent their unique voices to associated British metropolitan discussions and weighed in on the respective trial verdicts. With Smith embodying the perceived exodus of undesirable migrants to Australia and the Tichborne Claimant representing colonial life being brought back to the British metropole, Australian newspapers also used the cases to confront the way British metropolitan newspapers wrote about the colony. Fixation on the appearances, manners, and movements of Smith and the Tichborne Claimant, and the crimes with which they were implicated, meant that the Australian newspaper press became an arena for long-standing and far-reaching debate about class, social respectability, gender, sexuality, criminality, and colonial justice.</p>

Crime, Sensation, and Empire

<p><b>The 1857 criminal trial of Madeleine Smith for the murder of Pierre Emile L’Angelier became a cause célèbre throughout the British world. Enmeshed with scandal and speculation, it involved a secret affair between a young upper middle-class Glasgow woman and her older foreign lover of lower social standing; accusations of arsenic poisoning that led to his demise; erotic love letters that were read out in court; and an inconclusive—and uniquely Scottish—verdict of ‘not proven’. In 1866, a butcher under the name of Thomas Castro from Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, claimed to be the heir to an ancient English baronetcy: the Tichborne estates. Similarly described as its own cause célèbre, the Tichborne baronetcy case spanned two long-running civil and criminal trials and led to a political movement in Britain that continued to take aim at political, legal, and religious institutions long after the trials had ended, in 1874.</b></p> <p>Although the crimes at the centre of the two cases were incongruous, both Madeleine Smith and the Tichborne Claimant ignited significant public debate over criminal procedures, class, gender, and identity. Smith’s case played a key role in the development of ‘sensation’ journalism and literature centred on the violent propensities that lurked beneath the seemingly respectable and repressive Victorian social code, while the Tichborne Claimant’s case confronted Britons with anxieties around the definition of ‘respectability’ and the homecoming of expatriates from the colonies.</p> <p>While coverage of the cases has been well-documented within Britain, less scholarly attention has been paid to their pervasive coverage in the colony of Australia. Both cases were major news items in the colonial press, as updates on the trials were sourced from British media outlets and published in local newspapers almost daily. So pervasive was the coverage that gossip and misinformation surrounding the two cases spread throughout Australia and, to a lesser extent, New Zealand, as speculation surrounded Smith’s later whereabouts over the late nineteenth century and questions about the Tichborne Claimant’s identity lingered.</p> <p>By examining the widespread coverage of the cases in Australia, this work explores how the cases harnessed the communicative powers of the press and stirred sensation in and outside of Britain. Both cases played a role in forging British-Australian transnational identities in the colonies, as Australian newspapers lent their unique voices to associated British metropolitan discussions and weighed in on the respective trial verdicts. With Smith embodying the perceived exodus of undesirable migrants to Australia and the Tichborne Claimant representing colonial life being brought back to the British metropole, Australian newspapers also used the cases to confront the way British metropolitan newspapers wrote about the colony. Fixation on the appearances, manners, and movements of Smith and the Tichborne Claimant, and the crimes with which they were implicated, meant that the Australian newspaper press became an arena for long-standing and far-reaching debate about class, social respectability, gender, sexuality, criminality, and colonial justice.</p>

From the 1990s climate change has decreased cool season catchment precipitation reducing river heights in Australia’s southern Murray-Darling Basin

The Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) is Australia’s major agricultural region. The southern MDB receives most of its annual catchment runoff during the cool season (April–September). Focusing on the Murrumbidgee River measurements at Wagga Wagga and further downstream at Hay, cool season river heights are available year to year. The 27-year period April–September Hay and Wagga Wagga river heights exhibit decreases between 1965 and 1991 and 1992–2018 not matched by declining April-September catchment rainfall. However, permutation tests of means and variances of late autumn (April–May) dam catchment precipitation and net inflows, produced p-values indicating a highly significant decline since the early 1990s. Consequently, dry catchments in late autumn, even with average cool season rainfall, have reduced dam inflows and decreased river heights downstream from Wagga Wagga, before water extraction for irrigation. It is concluded that lower April–September mean river heights at Wagga Wagga and decreased river height variability at Hay, since the mid-1990s, are due to combined lower April–May catchment precipitation and increased mean temperatures. Machine learning attribute detection revealed the southern MDB drivers as the southern annular mode (SAM), inter-decadal Pacific oscillation (IPO), Indian Ocean dipole (IOD) and global sea-surface temperature (GlobalSST). Continued catchment drying and warming will drastically reduce future water availability.

Joyful information activities in serious leisure: looking for pleasure, passion and purpose

PurposeThis paper provides selective findings from a broader research project on information behaviours in serious leisure. This paper focuses on the positive feelings of information seeking and sharing in this context, aiming to capture and contextualise the joy of information embedded in and inspired by leisure activities.Design/methodology/approachThe required data were obtained using semi-structured interviews with 20 serious leisure participants from Wagga Wagga city in Australia, recruited via a maximum variation sampling technique. The data were fully transcribed and analysed based on a qualitative thematic analysis method.FindingsThe joy of information is embedded within a wide spectrum of information activities in serious leisure ranging from information seeking and browsing to information sharing and information creation. Among all these activities, information sharing with peers and a broader audience is the most joyful experience because it often generates social engagement, a sense of belonging and friendship. Moreover, serious leisure is a productive ground to transform hedonic wellness into eudaimonic well-being, while continuous information seeking and sharing play a significant role in achieving this goal.Practical implicationsInformation system designers can use the findings to consider the emotional aspects of information seeking and sharing to improve the usability of their products. At the policy level, cultural policy writers and decision-makers can make more informed decisions to support serious leisure.Originality/valueThis study explores the joyful aspects of information behaviour in a unique context. Exploring the joy of information is an emerging topic in human information behaviour scholarship, and the existing knowledge on this issue is still limited. This paper can contribute to creating new knowledge in this emerging area.

Inflows and river heights in Australia’s Murray Darling Basin: impacts of decreased catchment rainfall on water availability.

The Murray Darling Basin (MDB) is Australia’s most important agricultural region. The southern MDB receives most of its annual catchment runoff during the cool season (April-September). Focusing on the Murrumbidgee River measurements at Wagga Wagga and further downstream at Hay, river heights in the cool season decreased markedly in variability over a century prior to 1991. Box and whisker plots of 27-year April-September Hay and Wagga Wagga river heights reveal decreases not matched by declining April-September catchment rainfall. However, permutation tests of both means and variances of late autumn (April-May) dam catchment rainfall and inflows, produced p-values indicating a highly significant decline since the early 1990s. Consequently, dry catchments in late autumn, even with average cool season rainfall, have reduced dam inflows and decreased river heights downstream from Wagga Wagga, before water extraction for irrigation. It is concluded that lower April-September mean river heights at Wagga Wagga and decreased river height variability at Hay, since the mid-1990s, are due to combined lesser April-May catchment rainfall and increased mean temperatures. If these drying and warming trends continue, they will drastically reduce water availability for the Murrumbidgee River catchment and, consequently, for a vital part of the southern MDB.

When a Pandemic Cancels Pride: An Exploration of How Stakeholders Respond to the Cancellation of a Rural Australian Pride Event

Pride events challenge hegemonic notions of sexuality and gender within places they are held. This is particularly the case in rural communities that are perceived, rightly or wrongly, as prejudices towards individuals with a diverse sexuality or gender identity. However, while academic literature has extensively explored Pride events within an urban context, limited attention has been paid to the rural context, and still little to those in their infancy. This paper examines how stakeholders responded to the cancellation of a Pride event in the Australian rural township of Wagga Wagga due to COVID19. The pandemic, in this context, provided an opportunity to understand attitudes towards the event and its cancellation. Through this process, eight topics were identified as: council funding, cancellation as homophobic, last-minute cancellation, cancellation regretted, cancellation supported, organisers acknowledged, LGBTIQI+, and Pride event. Based on these findings, implications for the cancellation of social contentious events in response to such circumstances are identified. These implications suggest the need for a more considered approach to communicating about the cancellation to prevent allegations of prejudice and demonstrate the value of such events.