Field Of Grains Research Articles

Envisioning prairie agroecology: Farmer visual constructions of place-based ecological agriculture in Canada

Climate change is driving new challenges for farmers around the world, provoking a sense of urgency in the search for on-farm solutions and pathways to sustainable agricultural systems. While agroecology has gained recognition as a promising option for climate resilience, it remains nascent in the Canadian Prairies—a significant agricultural region dominated by large-scale conventional agriculture. Amid the sprawling fields of grains and oilseeds primarily destined for export markets, growing farm consolidation, and increased land concentration, farmers committed to ecological principles are building a prefigurative foundation for prairie agroecology. Far from cohering into a unified definition, this article captures what agroecology on the Prairies looks like. Through a community-engaged research design and in consultation with the National Farmers Union of Canada, we explore farmers’ reflections on agroecology and provide a participatory platform for farmer-led constructions of agroecology. Through dialogue with 19 farmers of different farm sizes and production types that began in the 2021 farming season—one marked by drought and extreme heat—we use photovoice, visual elicitation interviews, and participatory video to document and mobilize visual constructions of an emerging prairie agroecology. Despite a shared vision among the farmer participants about the need for a sustainability transition through diversified farming practices, three key questions emerged about the future of prairie agroecology: (1) Can prairie agroecology scale up and out, and if so, under what conditions? (2) To what extent is prairie agroecology possible without dense, place-based social networks? and (3) What are the possibilities for prairie agroecology when the future of farming in the region is uncertain, especially given the changing farmer demographics and Canada’s settler colonial context? We explore these questions and provide reflections on key issues confronting the future of prairie agroecology.

Intensification of the Grain Drying Process with an Ozone-Air Mixture

Background: The use of ozone allows not only to weaken the connection of moisture with the grain, but also, interacting with its internal components, the gas contributes to an increase in the temperature of the heap. Due to this, the grain must be heated for less time before reaching optimal parameters, which reduces the energy intensity of the drying process. At the same time, the separation of moisture from the grain occurs more intensively, since the gas in small concentrations improves the permeability of cell membranes, causes structural transformations of the integumentary tissues and promotes the orientation of water molecules around atomic oxygen. As a result, the drying time is significantly reduced. After treatment, the residual ozone decays to oxygen without polluting the environment. In addition, ozonation promotes deodorization, sanitation, sterilization of grain and equipment. However, the use of ozone-air mixture in grain drying in production is too insignificant due to the small experimental base and lack of practical recommendations. Purpose: Improving the efficiency of modern grain dryers through the use of the ozonation process. Materials and Мethods: The theoretical and methodological basis of the research was the work in the field of grain drying with an ozone-air mixture by leading Russian and foreign scientists, as well as their own research. The sources under study cover the first mentions of the use of ozone in grain drying and the subsequent development of this topic. The review included publications from various databases, among which are: e-library, Scopus, Web of Science, Agris, FIPS and others. Results: Hourly preliminary ozonation of grain with a humidity of 26.3% contributed to a decrease in the moisture content by 1.3% from the initial value. While in the control sample, which was not subjected to preliminary ozone treatment, the moisture content did not change over the same period. Subsequent drying of the exposed grain allowed for an hour of operation to remove 1.6% more moisture than that of the control sample. At the same time, the drying conditions of both batches of grain were identical. This indicates that the ventilation of grain with an ozone-air mixture is more effective than its presence in a buffer silo without processing. Conclusion: Pretreatment of a wet grain heap with an ozone-air mixture before feeding it to the grain dryer intensifies the process of subsequent grain drying. At the initial grain moisture content of 26.3%, hourly ozone treatment with an ozone concentration in an ozone-air mixture of 8 mg/m3 reduces the moisture content by 5.4% per hour of drying. Under the same conditions, in the experiment without processing for the same period, the decrease in grain moisture was 3.8%. Consequently, the proposed method of grain drying increases the efficiency of modern grain dryers.

A Reliable Traceability Model for Grain and Oil Quality Safety Based on Blockchain and Industrial Internet

Gain and oil are important compounds in global food supplies, and ensuring the quality and safety of grains and oil is a critical issue in the food supply chain security. Data traceability is the key factor in quality and safety management. Currently, it is a big challenge to ensure the reliability of data and guarantee the efficient exchange of data in various highly heterogeneous systems. To address this challenge, we develop a reliable traceability model applied to the grain and oil industry. In this paper, we first analyze the characteristics of the whole chain traceability information flow, and then we propose the concept that the connector for blockchain and industrial internet is suitable for data traceability in the grain and oil industry. Based on this concept, a reliable traceability model of grain and oil quality and safety is constructed. Finally, a reliable traceability prototype system for wheat quality and safety was designed, and the system implementation of the model was validated. The overall advantage of the proposed model is that the traceability information is safe and credible, the interaction is concise and efficient, and the security and full-process traceability of cross-chain information interaction are guaranteed. This paper fills the gap in the application of research chain network in the field of grain and oil traceability. Reference to this model can also be used to implement and adjust the traceability system, which is adaptable to stakeholders in the grain and oil industry. The model and techniques in this paper not only demonstrate value in real-world applications but also inspire further research in the field.

Тенденции в растениеводстве как фактор обеспечения продовольственной безопасности Пермского края

Abstract. Goal. The assessment of the main trends in the activity of agricultural producers in crop production was carried out in order to substantiate the possibilities of the Perm Region for self-sufficiency with the main types of food resources in the presence of adverse effects of natural and climatic conditions. Methods. A statistical analysis was carried out using grouping and comparison methods based on the official statistics of the Perm Region for 2016-2020. Results. In accordance with the social and geographical specifics of the Perm Region, on the territory of which rural areas predominate, the largest volume of crop production is produced in the households of the population (up to 58 %), whose activities are characterized by the lowest level of stability and are more susceptible to the negative impact of natural and climatic conditions. The activity of agricultural organizations (share up to 36 %) and farms (share up to 8 %) is more stable. A higher level of dependence on natural and climatic conditions was revealed in the field of potato production, a lower level – in the field of grain and vegetables production of protected soil. The risk is reinforced by the fact that up to 70 % of the natural volume of potatoes and more than 80% of vegetables are produced in households. With a decrease in the total sown area by 1.2 %, there is a decrease in the sown area of potatoes by 15 % and vegetables by 6 %. The identified trends allowed us to identify the risk of reducing the level of food self-sufficiency of the Perm Region with potatoes and vegetables. The insecurity of domestic potato consumption in the Perm Region is, according to preliminary data, 13 % in 2020. The presence of risk was also revealed for vegetables, the internal consumption of the region was provided with vegetable products of its own production by an average of 56% during the study period. The results obtained allow us to identify the directions of optimization of the Perm Region strategy in solving the problems of food self-sufficiency. Scientific novelty. The dynamics of factors of crop production (structure, yield, acreage, intensification) is assessed taking into account the social, geographical, natural and climatic specifics of the Perm Region through the prism of the impact on the regional food balance and the level of self-sufficiency of the region with potatoes and vegetables.

Investigation of the Thermal Field on Solid Propellant Grain with Cracks by Moving Particle Semi‐Implicit Method

AbstractUnder extreme operating conditions in gun barrel like high pressure and high temperature, fracture or cracks may propagate on solid propellant grains and become a threat to firing safety. The existence and the propagation of cracks will affect the combustion efficiency of solid propellant, and the thermal field of grain with cracks needs to be simulated. In this paper, we applied one of the Particle Methods, Moving Particle Semi‐implicit Method, to the investigation of the thermal field on solid propellant grain with cracks. An improved MPS operator is first introduced and the treatment on crack boundary including Robin boundary condition is also presented. The application of particle method to heat conduction is verified by the simulation of a seven‐perforated propellant grain under fixed temperature. Then, with different properties of cracks like the length, the number and the boundary conditions, the thermal field distribution of propellant grain and heat transfer efficiency are compared and analyzed.

SPREAD AND HARMFULNESS OF THE THRIPS TABACI LIND IN APPLE PLANTATIONS OF THE KRASNODAR TERRITORY

The results of daily phytosanitary monitoring of fruit plantations and literature data on biology, ecology, harmfulness of tobacco thrips (Thrips tabaci Lind.) are presented. In the apple agrocenoses of the Kuban and Black Sea zones of Krasnodar Territory, an increase in the harmfulness of representatives of the order Thysanoptera is observed. An increase in the number of tobacco thrips was noted, which led to a decrease in the quality of fruits. In the growing season of 2018, isolated symptoms of fruit damage by phytophagous were noted, in the growing season of 2019, fruit damage reached up to 2 %, in 2020 — 5-30 %. It was revealed that during the flowering period the number of T. tabaci Lind was 1-2 specimens per inflorescence; at the end of flowering, the amount of the pest increased by 5 times. High temperatures and lack of precipitation led to an outbreak of the pest population; in the first decade of June, 15 to 40 individuals were fixed per leaf. A high degree of damage to the tops of shoots, leaves and fruits was observed, the tissue in the feeding places of the pest was deformed, discolored, acquiring the appearance of whitish spots, which grew during the growth and ripening of fruits. It is known that the intensive development of thrips takes place in dry and hot years; the optimum temperature for the development of T. tabaci Lind is +25 °C. As a result of our monitoring, it was revealed that the maximum amount of the pest was observed during the period when high temperatures and low relative air humidity were noted — June and early July. The greatest number of the pest was found in areas bordering the fields of grain and tilled crops, while the number of phytophages at the time of registration reached 45 individuals per leaf and more. It should be noted that when the air temperature rises above +35 °C, the development of the phytophage stops, and the mortality rate of all stages sharply increases. To ensure a stable phytosanitary situation in fruit agrocenoses and prevent loss of fruit quality from damage by thrips, it is necessary to develop a set of measures to control the number of pests.

THE GROWING TECHNOLOGY OF MIXED SEEDED PLANTS AT STUBBLE-FIELD

One of the main measures to increase production in the field of grain and feed production in our republic is to increase the yield of grain and forage crops on plantations.The purpose of our research work is to study the effect of fertilization and irrigation rates on the yield, crop quality and soil fertility of crops sown in a mixture when planting honeysuckle. The results of research conducted in world agriculture show that mainly the yield and composition of mixed crops, the quality indicators of which depend on the components of the crops to be sown, their seeding rate and cultivation technology. As a result of studies conducted in the conditions of ancient irrigated gray-meadow soils of the Karabakh region of our republic, it was found that with 4 - fold vegetation irrigation (4200 m3), the yield of mixed sowing in the control version without fertilizers was 372 c/ha, while under the influence of mineral and organic mineral fertilizers, the yield increased and amounted to 447-627 c/ha. Based on the results of the study, it can be said that in order to obtain a high yield of green mass with the joint sowing of corn and soybeans, the optimal irrigation and fertilizer application rates were determined, the highest indicator was achieved in the variant where the fertilizer standards N120P150C150 were applied. In the course of the study, the influence of fertilizer application rates and optimization of the amount of irrigation on the quality indicators of feed, as well as on the yield obtained from mixed crops, was studied. As a result of the conducted analyses, the amount of raw protein, absolute dry matter, nitrate nitrogen in the natural mass, the yield of feed units per hectare and the amount of protein going for digestion were determined. Thus, the application of fertilizers within the optimal limits and the correct, timely supply of irrigation standards significantly increase the quality of the crop on a par with the yield on mixed crops, the soil fertility is preserved.

Quality alert from direct discrimination of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in edible oil by liquid-interfacial surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy

Edible oil is easy to be polluted by polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in production, processing, storage and use. Rapid screening of oil quality and safety is a huge demand in food industry and government regulation. Usually, sample pretreatment is needed for PAHs detection due to the complexity of the oil base but greatly limits the detection speed. Here we develop a liquid-interfacial surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) technology without sample pretreatment to realize the rapid and direct detection of ultra-trace PAHs in edible oil within 3 min. A quantitative analysis curve of benzopyrene (BaP) content in soybean oil is established in the range of 0.1 ppb–100 ppm with a high coefficient correlation (R2) of 0.9959 in curve fitting. It was found that only 4.5 h of frying would make the BaP content exceed the limit of 10 ppb in the Chinese Food Safety National Standard. Four common PAHs can be quickly identified in frying oil samples collected from special snack streets and the SERS profiles of soybean oil with adulteration of refined gutter oil could be well classified. This study paves a reliable method to rapid analyze edible oil with broad application prospects in the field of grain and oil safety.

ПРАВОВЕ РЕГУЛЮВАННЯ ЗОВНІШНЬОЕКОНОМІЧНОЇ ДІЯЛЬНОСТІ СУБ’ЄКТІВ ГОСПОДАРЮВАННЯ У СФЕРІ ВИРОЩУВАННЯ ЗЕРНОВИХ КУЛЬТУР В УКРАЇНІ: ТЕОРЕТИКО-ПРАВОВІ АСПЕКТИ

The article examines the definition of the term "foreign economic activity", analyses the definitions of foreign economic activity as well as legislation and theory formed in connection with the emergence, as well as the history of this term. Based on the results of the analysis of the definition of the term "foreign economic activity", its advantages and fragmentation and incompleteness are formulated in separate definitions, the need to highlight its complexity and multi-segment is emphasized, which are the objects, criteria and analytical features of economic management at micro level and legal regulation at macro level in this area. The article revealed the composition of the elements of the system of legal regulation of foreign economic activity, which includes: types of foreign economic activity, methods of foreign economic regulation, tools to influence foreign economic activity, subjects of foreign economic activity in Ukraine. The non-exclusive importance of legal regulation of foreign economic activity of economic entities in the field of grain growing is substantiated, namely the strategic importance of grain in the process of ensuring economic security of the country, including food, the priority of the grain market, which is enshrined in law. Based on the analysis of the system of legal regulation of foreign economic activity, a systematic approach to the interpretation of the category "legal regulation of foreign economic activity in the field of grain growing" is proposed. Improvement and specification of the specific category in the field of grain growing will create the necessary conditions for increasing the efficiency of using the existing potential at macro and micro levels. The proposals were made to improve the current legislation by eliminating the identified shortcomings in the definition of the term category in the interpretation of the concept of "foreign economic activity", what will promote the development of the system of legal regulation of foreign economic activity in the field and achieving the goals of sustainable development of Ukraine in accordance with the National Report of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine (2017), in particular, the legal regulation of investment insurance.

Particle dynamics in two-dimensional point-loaded granular media composed of circular or pentagonal grains

Granular packings exhibit significant changes in rheological and structural properties when the rotational symmetry of spherical or circular particles is broken. Here, we report on experiments exploring the differences in dynamics of a grain-scale intruder driven through a packing of either disks or pentagons, where the presence of edges and vertices on grains introduces the possibility of rotational constraints at edge-edge contacts. We observe that the intruder’s stick-slip dynamics are comparable between the disk packing near the frictional jamming fraction and the pentagonal packing at significantly lower packing fractions. We connect this stark contrast in packing fraction with the average speed and rotation fields of grains during slip events, finding that rotation of pentagons is limited and the flow of pentagonal grains is largely confined in front of the intruder, whereas disks rotate more on average and circulate around the intruder to fill the open channel behind it. Our results indicate that grain-scale rotation constraints significantly modify collective motion of grains on mesoscopic scales and correspondingly enhance resistance to penetration of a local intruder.

Tree of Life, and: Acquedotto, and: Only Snow Remains, and: Blue Vault, and: "Great poets"

Tree of Life, and: Acquedotto, and: Only Snow Remains, and: Blue Vault, and: "Great poets" Tomaž Šalamun Translated from the Slovenian by Brian Henry Tree of Life I was born in a field of grain and snapped my fingers.White chalk crossed the green blackboard.Dew set me on the ground.I played with pearls. Pastures leaned against my ear and the fields.The stars sizzled.Under a bridge I carved an inscription: I can't read.Factories were being washed with saltwater. Cherries were my soldiers.I threw gloves into the thorns.We ate fish with a golden bread knife.In the chandelier above the table not all the candles were lit. Mama played the piano.I climbed on my father's shoulders.I stepped on white mushrooms, watching clouds of dust.Through the room's window I touched the branches. [End Page 125] Acquedotto I should have been born in 1884 in Trieste,at the Acquedotto, but couldn't manage.I remember a three-story pink house,a furnished parlor on the first floor,and my great-grandfather, my father,how tense and alert he was every morningreading the stock market news, blowing cigar smokeinto the air and quickly calculating.When I had been inside my great-grandmotherfor four months, there was a meeting, which delayedmy arrival for two generations,the decision written down on a dazzling sheetof paper and placed in an envelope, sealedand sent to the Viennese archives.I remember that I decided to travelback toward the light, turned there onmy stomach and saw how a tall, elderlyman muttered, eyed a shelf, took someonefrom a neighboring shelf and shovedhis head toward a chute of air.I think I was seven years old,the replacement, my grandpa,may have been older, nine or ten.I was calm, but at the same time these events shook me.I remember that I was wasting away for a while,probably because of the too-strong light,then my lungs, like some bagsheld out beautifully, came the dayI attained the necessary muscle tone and I fell asleep.I knew that was my body down belowand I saw it in my sleep several times.It was a man of slow movements, with a mustache,all his life a dreamer, though a banker. [End Page 126] Only Snow Remains I think about God instead of thinking aboutsnow. That isn't true.God thinks about me and eats me.No one thinks about anyone.A stroller goes down the road.Snow falls when it falls.God is a total foreigner, planted by nothing.I would love to be planted like a willow.I would love to be planted like grass.And then I would fall on it like snow, softly.I would fall asleep and pull back the blanket of God, myskin, and vanish in the street, into the night.Yesterday I walked by a door.A door swinging from knees to chest.I wanted to go in and see if an angel was inside.There was an old man with a sombrero.With dark skin and even darker eyes.I poured out tequila.I tipped it back.And there was no sound like I'd turned ona faucet so that water flowed.I must drink the tequila.I must be a tree, planted in the earth, and open the door.I must meet the angel. [End Page 127] Blue Vault With your quiet, slender hand you switch off the stars.You give away my name like a bee does honey.Bite me! Scorch my eyes. A distantsea of buffalo in the ashen, greenair. The taste is exchangeable, I'm not.I am nailed to the cross and I consume yourfruit. Look: every drop of mymemory is a pulse of the arch, still nowsolidified in the miracle that the sky lives.An animal succumbs, kneels, is struck.You shake off the white puffs of the lights andthe inscription on your chest glows forno one. In your quiet, softmouth, you scorched my neck. [End Page 128] "Great poets" Great poets...

Strategy of development and export potential of the grain complex of Russia. Regional aspect

Abstract. Grain production and legal regulation of this industry are of paramount importance for the food security of the country. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to analyze the adopted laws and regulations governing relations in the field of grain and its processed products, as well as the state of grain growing in the Sverdlovsk region. The article uses the methods of analysis and synthesis, the method of generalization, the method of environmental forecasting, as well as the method of strategic planning. The results of this article are based on the fact that the Law of the Russian Federation No. 4973-1 “On Grain”, adopted on May 14, 1993 (currently not in full force), established in the first article that grain is a national treasure of the Russian Federation, one of the main factors of economic stability. By Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation No. 491 of August 4, 2005, state control over the quality and safety of grain, mixed feed and components for their production, as well as by-products of grain processing, is assigned to the Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Supervision. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that the Law “On Grain” has not become the main integrated legal act in the complex regulating relations in the field of grain growing. Therefore, at present, the most important legal act is the Long-term strategy for the development of the grain complex of the Russian Federation until 2035, which, according to the authors, should consider the organizational and economic mechanisms for the production of the grain complex in close interconnection, where high-quality grain should be provided with appropriate technologies at all stages of its production, as well as during transportation, storage and processing.

Biodiversity of Weeds in Fields of Grain in South-Eastern Poland

Analysis of weed infestation of selected fields of grain (winter wheat, spring wheat, spring triticale) was conducted between 2013 and 2016 in five commercial farms in south-eastern Poland (49°52’ N, 21°46’ E) based on a quantitative and qualitative (quadrat) method and an agro-phytosociological method. The quadrat analysis was conducted prior to weeding procedures, and the agro-phytosociological analysis by grain harvest. The biodiversity of weed communities was measured with the Shannon and Simpson indices. The degree of weed infestation of grain species was significantly differentiated by weeding procedures carried out by farmers. The highest share of weeds in grain crops included dicot weeds (80.6–86.4% of all species, depending on location), and the remaining weed groups were a much smaller issue. The greatest weed infestation was found in spring triticale, and the smallest in winter wheat. The highest Shannon biodiversity index was recorded in the field of triticale, and the lowest in the field of winter wheat. The Simpson index points to the greatest biodiversity in fields of triticale and the smallest in fields of spring wheat. The conducted research will help categorize segetal flora characteristics for a given crop, determine its quantity and species composition, and evaluate biodiversity of weeds in fields of grain.

Property and the Ideology of Improvement in María Amparo Ruiz de Burton's The Squatter and the Don and California Travel Narratives

Property and the Ideology of Improvement in María Amparo Ruiz de Burton's The Squatter and the Don and California Travel Narratives Valerie Sirenko (bio) In María Amparo Ruiz de Burton's The Squatter and the Don (1885), Don Mariano Alamar, a California rancher of Mexican heritage, or Californio, finds himself stuck in legal limbo while the US courts decide whether to confirm the title to his lands. In the meantime, white settlers have begun to stake claims to his land under the authority of the Homestead Act of 1862, which allowed heads of households to claim 160 acres of public land after five years of cultivating or "improving" it. Although the Homestead Act only permitted homesteading on public land, the settlers in Squatter are betting that Don Mariano's title will be denied by the courts and his private land will become part of the public domain. Ruiz de Burton's novel unpacks how legislation like the Homestead Act, the California Land Act of 1851, and the No Fence Law created a legal climate in which property disputes—regardless of the actual outcome in the courts—led to the dispossession of Californios because an uncertain title put this marginalized and racialized group in the disadvantageous position of depending on the Anglo American legal system. Even those whose titles were ultimately confirmed often lost their lands because decades of expensive litigation left many ranches heavily mortgaged.1 Ruiz de Burton's novel dramatizes how the US legal system cast Mexican American titles into question and facilitated Anglo American discursive and ideological interventions that altered the terms through which property would be legally understood. This essay examines the way Ruiz de Burton and other writers used late nineteenth-century print culture to fight for control over the terms through which [End Page 345] one could articulate a property claim within the competing US and Mexican legal traditions. Ruiz de Burton criticizes US legislation for deliberately designing the process of legal limbo as a strategy to dispossess the Californios. She suggests that the California Land Act caused "all the private land titles [to become] unsettled" because the law's true purpose was to "upset the rights of the Spanish population of the State of California" (84). In the meantime, Anglo American farmers are able to kill Don Mariano's cattle with legal impunity. Mariano argues that the laws protect one type of property—wheat crops—at the expense of another: cattle. According to Mariano, nefarious lawmakers use agriculture as a "pretext" while intending "in reality to destroy cattle and ruin the native Californians" (65). While Don Mariano makes plain his understanding of the racialized intent behind these laws, his argument primarily emphasizes the inefficiency and waste of a legal system that protects small amounts of grain at the expense of valuable cattle and capital: "By those laws any man can come to my land, for instance, plant ten acres of grain, without any fence, and then catch my cattle … until for such little fields of grain I may be obliged to pay thousands of dollars" (64). In contrast, as we will see, Anglo American narratives about California depict wheat farming as a more productive way to use the land, a rhetorical strategy that implicitly justifies stifling the cattle industry. The key operating term used to depict wheat farming as worthier of legal protection than cattle ranching was "improvement," a term that carried a long history in the Anglo American legal tradition as creating a property claim. During the rapid expansion of white settlers into California following the US–Mexican War, the ideology of "improvement" pitted white settlers, who intended to establish their title to the land through the labor of making the land more productive, against the Mexican American landholders whose titles derived from land grants. Ruiz de Burton's novel engages with the term "improvement" and its surrounding terms—"waste" and "vacancy"—by aligning her characters with the cultural logic that land belongs to those who make it productive. When one squatter proposes that "all we have to do is take their lands, and finish their [End Page 346] cattle," the honest but misguided squatter William Darrell disapproves of...

Extreme Strain Fluctuations in Polycrystalline Materials

The stochastic structure of polycrystalline materials causes a high inhomogeneity of the kinematic and force fields in grains of materials and large fluctuations of these fields. The inhomogeneity and fluctuations are insignificant in some cases, but they become crucial in the study of various critical phenomena whose occurrence strongly depends on the type of material microstructure. Fluctuations mainly arise due to the elastic interaction of grains, which has a long-range effect. Therefore, it is necessary to account for the interaction of a large number of grains, which is difficult to do using conventional methods (direct computer modeling and others). In the present paper, inhomogeneous mesostrain fluctuations in grains of polycrystalline materials were estimated using a field-theoretical approach to a boundary-value problem of microheterogeneous material deformation. Particular attention is paid to the calculation of extreme fluctuations that are important for some critical phenomena, such as, e.g., crack initiation under gigacycle fatigue when the macrostress amplitude and the mean stresses in grains are much lower than the quantities included in any macroscopic damage or fatigue criteria. Phe maximum mesostrains in grains can exceed several times the macrostrains. Extreme fluctuations in a grain are generated in grain clusters of specific configuration. Phe applied approach makes it possible to predict patterns of such clusters. Extreme fluctuations in the bulk grains of a polycrystalline body are much higher than in the surface grains, due to which the behavior of the material surface layers and bulk volumes is different. Quantitative data are given for the case of uniaxial tension of polycrystalline zinc.

Justification of methods for providing agricultural equipment to agricultural producers of the Lipetsk region

The Lipetsk region has great potential for the cultivation of crops. The priority direction in the field of grain growing in the region is wheat. The main link in the system of technological process in the field of crop production is technological support. Therefore, the purpose of our study is to identify the factors affecting the timely implementation of technological processes in the cultivation of grain crops in the territory of the Lipetsk region. Statistical research methods in dynamics show that the Lipetsk region has a high degree of yield compared with other regions of the Russian Federation. Also, a statistical analysis of the quantitative composition of combine harvesters of the Lipetsk region was made. Using the method of interviewing heads of agricultural organizations of the Lipetsk region, it was possible to establish whether there is a need to attract additional units of equipment to perform technological operations for the cultivation of crops. Based on the conclusions drawn from the analysis of factors, we have developed a proposal to create a regional machine-technological complex, which would reduce the technical and financial burden on agricultural enterprises by providing services for the provision of agricultural machinery for rent, as well as a number of other services used in implementation of technological processes in the cultivation of crops.

Great Plains Literature by Linda Ray Pratt

Reviewed by: Great Plains Literature by Linda Ray Pratt Matthew J. C. Cella Linda Ray Pratt, Great Plains Literature. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2018. 168 pp. Paper, $14.95; e-book, $14.95. Linda Pratt's Great Plains Literature is the fourth offering from the University of Nebraska Press's "Discover the Great Plains" series, published in collaboration with the Center for Great Plains Studies. The series introduces a general audience to various facets of the cultural and natural complexity of the Great Plains through a collection of texts organized around key topics; for example, other titles in the series include Great Plains Indians (David J. Wishart), Great Plains Bison (Dan O'Brien), and Great Plains Geology (R. F. Diffendal Jr.). In this spirit, Pratt's book offers the reader an accessible and thoughtfully structured literary history of the region. Focused on close readings of a representative set of texts—just over a dozen writers are examined—Great Plains Literature does not offer an all-inclusive overview of the Plains literary tradition but instead highlights how twentieth-century Plains literature engages with the rich history and the distinctive natural parameters of the region. As Pratt explains in the introduction, the book explores "the legacy of that past as it plays out in a contemporary society that both wants to forget and remember" (13). In this manner Pratt charts the legacy of the bioregion by consulting literary texts that chronicle the succession of cultural and natural changes that have accrued in the region from the troubling frontier era to the urbanization and rural exodus that characterizes the present-day Plains. The book is organized around a chronological series of cultural shifts that shape the region's history. The introductory chapter lays out the boundaries of the bioregion and presents some descriptions of first encounters with the unique landscape as documented in the journals of explorers like Henry Kelsey, Meriwether Lewis, and William Clark. In the second chapter Pratt explores the Plains frontier from the Native American perspective as she examines works by Zitkala-Ša, Nicholas Black Elk (with John Neihardt), and N. Scott Momaday in order to document the impact of Euro American settlement on the Indigenous communities. Chapters 3 and 4 focus respectively on the works of O. E. Rölvaag and Willa Cather and their [End Page 502] novels about the pioneers who worked to convert the arid grasslands into ordered fields of grain. In the Rölvaag chapter Pratt highlights the process of acculturation and adaptation on the Plains, noting how his trilogy about the Plains pioneers—and especially the first book, Giants in the Earth—illustrates not only changes to the landscape wrought by agricultural development but also "how the immigrant becomes American" through this work (45); in the chapter on Cather she notes an increasingly elegiac tone in Cather's Nebraska fiction as her protagonists, especially Jim Burden in My Ántonia and Niel Herbert in A Lost Lady, must confront the end of the pioneer era and the passing of the Old West. The fifth chapter looks at the social and ecological upheaval of the Dust Bowl era as reflected in Lois Hudson's Bones of Plenty and Mari Sandoz's Capital City. In these works, Pratt traces a growing social consciousness as these two writers engage the declining status of the twentieth-century Plains farmer, noting that, as she says about Hudson's novel, "the farmer is getting an unfair deal and needs to fight back against the rich men, the banks, corporate interests, the railroads, the government, and anything else that is trying to run American agriculture" (89). This "unfair deal" is one of the factors contributing to the massive depopulation of the deep rural Plains and the movement to metropolitan centers on the region's edges. Chapter 6 focuses on this urbanization and industrialization in the region as reflected in Tillie Olsen's Yonnondio, Meridel LeSeur's The Girl, and Rilla Askew's Fire in Beulah; collectively, these novels expose the class- and race-based tensions that many citizens of the Plains—especially the disenfranchised—face in the city. In the final chapter Pratt looks at Ted Kooser's poetry, Kent Haruf...

Finding God in Grain: Crop Circles, Rationality, and the Construction of Spiritual Experience

Crop circles, which are intricate geometric patterns cut in fields of grain, have taken on spiritual significance for thousands of people across the globe. Based on field work in southwest England and interviews with believers, I analyze the socially constructed bases of this form of “New Age” spirituality. Using a symbolic interactionist framework, I illustrate how believers define crop circles as spiritual using subjective and normative rationality. Crop circle culture furthers this construction by providing a normative foundation with which to understand and experience the circles, as well as a basis of legitimizing this intersubjective reality to skeptical outsiders. In these ways, and others, spiritual experience is constructed, maintained, and defended by the individual in a subcultural context.

Research on operation mode of abrasive grain during grinding

The processing of materials by cutting with an abrasive tool is carried out by means of thousands of grains bonded together as a single whole. The quality of the abrasive tool is defined by cutting properties of abrasive grains and depends on features of spreading the temperature field in time and in the abrasive grain volume. Grains are exposed to heating and cooling during work. It leads to undesired effects such as a decrease of durability of grain retention in the binder, hardness, intensification of diffusion and oxidation processes between the binder and the grain, the occurrence of considerable temperature stresses in the grain itself. The obtained equation which allows calculation of temperature field of grain for one rotation of grinding wheel shows that the temperature of the wheel depends on grinding modes and thermophysical properties of abrasive material. Thus, as the time of contact of grain with processed material increases, the temperature in the cutting area rises. As thermophysical properties increase, the temperature in cutting area decreases. Thermal working conditions are determined to be different from each other depending on contact time of the grain and the material. For example, in case of creep-feed grinding, the peak value of temperature is higher than during multistep grinding; the depth of expansion is greater. While the speed of the thermal process in creep-feed grinding is 2-3 times lower than in multistep grinding, the gradient reduces 3-4 times. The analysis of machining methods shows that creep-feed grinding ensures greater depth of grain heating, a smaller heating rate and a reduced velocity gradient. It causes a decrease of probable allotropic modifications and prevents from occurring of heat strokes - cracking of grains due to high temperature falls. Consequently, it is necessary to employ creep-feed grinding to increase the efficiency of abrasive tool employing. Three operation modes of grinding wheel including blunting, full self-sharpening, emergency wear and tear are determined as the result of the research on evaluation of cutting ability of grinding wheels. Recommendations for working capacity of grinding wheels in each operation mode and with a transition from one mode to another are given. As a result of the research, different dependencies were determined. They include dependencies, governing the extent of influence of granularity, difference in height and concentration of grains, geometry parameters of the detail to be machined and the grinding wheel on machining modes and the thickness of the layer cutoff by one grain. They have an influence on the grinding process.

Analysis of temperature field of grain and drying medium for grain drying integrated mechanical device.

In order to improve the working efficiency of the drying tower and the hot blast stove in the process of grain drying, this paper proposes a method to solve the problems of air pollution and energy waste caused by excessive combustion or insufficient combustion of the hot blast stove. Based on finite element analysis, this paper uses ANSYS software to simulate the drying process of grain. This paper briefly introduces the grain drying device model and working mechanism, analyzes the temperature field of the drying device, and studies the influence on the drying effect of the working parameters (hot water, hot air, hot air hot blast stove combustion temperature) during the grain drying process. The results show that the hot air temperature is 85°C, the hot water temperature is 90°C, the combustion chamber temperature is 480°C, the grain drying effect is good, the combustion efficiency of the combustion furnace is the best, and the energy utilization rate is the highest.