Seven half-day regional listening sessions were held between December 2016 and April 2017 with groups of diverse stakeholders on the issues and potential solutions for herbicide-resistance management. The objective of the listening sessions was to connect with stakeholders and hear their challenges and recommendations for addressing herbicide resistance. The coordinating team hired Strategic Conservation Solutions, LLC, to facilitate all the sessions. They and the coordinating team used in-person meetings, teleconferences, and email to communicate and coordinate the activities leading up to each regional listening session. The agenda was the same across all sessions and included small-group discussions followed by reporting to the full group for discussion. The planning process was the same across all the sessions, although the selection of venue, time of day, and stakeholder participants differed to accommodate the differences among regions. The listening-session format required a great deal of work and flexibility on the part of the coordinating team and regional coordinators. Overall, the participant evaluations from the sessions were positive, with participants expressing appreciation that they were asked for their thoughts on the subject of herbicide resistance. This paper details the methods and processes used to conduct these regional listening sessions and provides an assessment of the strengths and limitations of those processes.

Herbicide resistance is ‘wicked’ in nature; therefore, results of the many educational efforts to encourage diversification of weed control practices in the United States have been mixed. It is clear that we do not sufficiently understand the totality of the grassroots obstacles, concerns, challenges, and specific solutions needed for varied crop production systems. Weed management issues and solutions vary with such variables as management styles, regions, cropping systems, and available or affordable technologies. Therefore, to help the weed science community better understand the needs and ideas of those directly dealing with herbicide resistance, seven half-day regional listening sessions were held across the United States between December 2016 and April 2017 with groups of diverse stakeholders on the issues and potential solutions for herbicide resistance management. The major goals of the sessions were to gain an understanding of stakeholders and their goals and concerns related to herbicide resistance management, to become familiar with regional differences, and to identify decision maker needs to address herbicide resistance. The messages shared by listening-session participants could be summarized by six themes: we need new herbicides; there is no need for more regulation; there is a need for more education, especially for others who were not present; diversity is hard; the agricultural economy makes it difficult to make changes; and we are aware of herbicide resistance but are managing it. The authors concluded that more work is needed to bring a community-wide, interdisciplinary approach to understanding the complexity of managing weeds within the context of the whole farm operation and for communicating the need to address herbicide resistance.

Mount Erebus is the most active volcano on the Antarctic continent, and it has the most geographically and physically isolated geothermal soil on Earth. Preliminary genetic analysis of the microbial community present in the 65°C subsurface soil of Tramway Ridge, on Mount Erebus, revealed a unique high temperature ecosystem, with the dominant members possessing little genetic similarity to known bacteria. This study investigated the metabolism and physiology of this intriguing ecosystem using physical-chemical soil surveying, community-based phenotypic arrays, nutritional enrichment experiments and pyrosequencing. Results have provided new insights into the metabolic requirements and putative roles of specific organisms, as well as the significance of specific carbon and nitrogen sources. In enrichment experiments bicarbonate slowed down an otherwise dramatic shift in community structure. This suggests that bicarbonate maintains the native community in vitro by supplying an essential inorganic compound that is utilized for slow, autotrophic growth. This approach shows potential as a model for future investigations of cultivation resistant thermophilic communities.

Evidence is provided to prove that the nutritional malady, Coast Disease, which affects sheep de-pastured without change on the shell-sand littoral of South Australia is due solely to the inability of the pastures to provide the quantity of cobalt and copper necessary to fulfil the nutritional requirements of grazing sheep.

An experiment started in 1936 in which five evenly matched groups of young cross-bred ewe hoggets were dosed thrice weekly with cobalt, copper, cobalt plus copper, and with cobalt plus copper together with iron, manganese, zinc and nickel is described.

The effects of cobalt deficiency and of varying degrees of copper deficiency in young sheep were investigated.

Five of six evenly matched groups of hoggets aged about 8 months when transferred to the deficient pastures were supplemented with the equivalent of 1 mg. Co/day, 10 mg. Cu/day, 1 mg Co + 1 mg. Cu/day, 1 mg. Co + 5 mg. Cu/day, 1 mg. Co + 10 mg. Cu/day, respectively, administered thrice weekly as a drench; the sixth group was untreated.

All individuals that received no cobalt developed typical symptoms of cobalt deficiency and most of them died within a year. After 11 months the remaining cases were removed to the laboratory. They were then in the advanced stages of the terminal cachexia.