Purpose: This paper identifies the stakeholders of System of Rice Intensification (SRI), their roles and actions and the supporting and enabling environment of innovation in the state as the elements of the Agricultural Innovation Systems (AIS) in SRI in Tripura state of India and studies the relationship matrix among the stakeholders.…

In July 2009 four faculty members from four different institutions created a blog to educate consumers and professionals about plant-related issues. Online resources were used to measure the number of times that the blog was viewed and its impacts. The blog averages about 200 views a day, and 80% of those responding to a survey could name specific…

The STEM team at the University of Worcester support STEM activities in schools in Herefordshire and Worcestershire. Part of this help includes suggesting activities for STEM clubs. As the biologist on the team author, Sue Howarth was asked by teachers for ideas to use in biology clubs. This article was prompted by feedback that these ideas might…

Smart phone applications are rapidly gaining popularity, and Extension programs are eager to use this teaching tool. But developing an application can be time intensive and costly. Students in environmental horticulture at the University of Florida teamed with the Florida-Friendly Landscaping™ program to develop an application with an extensive…

Teaching design to middle and high school students can be challenging. One of the first procedures in teaching design is to help students gather information that will be useful in the design phase. An early stage of engineering design as described by Lewis (2005), calls for the designer to establish the state of the art of the problem. During this…

Landscape work is dangerous. In the Southeast, Hispanic workers predominate in landscape industries. The incidence of functional illiteracy in this group of workers is high. A pictorial knowledge-based evaluation instrument was developed to measure the effectiveness of the trainings. No reading skills were required to take the evaluation. The…

In 2005, turfgrass was estimated to cover approximately 20 million ha of urbanized land. That area is increasing with rapid urbanization, stressing the importance of water conservation in the lawn and landscape industry. Turfgrasses have been identified for replacement by presumably more water-efficient ornamental plant species to conserve water.…

In this work, we examine middle school students' understanding of the greenhouse effect and global warming. We designed and refined a technology-enhanced curriculum module called "Global Warming: Virtual Earth". In the module activities, students conduct virtual experiments with a visualization of the greenhouse effect. They analyze data and draw…

"My thumb got me into this!" declares the new APPA President Mary Vosevich when asked how she entered the field of educational facilities management. It was 1984, and Vosevich, a Midwest native, was working at Monsanto in St. Louis as a research biologist, having earned her B.S. in horticulture/agriculture from the University of…

Within the now extensive recent literature on cultures of nature, agriculture has received less attention than might have been expected given its threshold role in transforming human relations with the earth and with plants and animals. The concept and practice of agriculture can be understood as central to the emergence and maintenance of the…

A tool from social marketing can help Extension agents understand distinct audience segments among their constituents. Defining targeted audiences for Extension programming is a first step to influencing behavior change among the public. An online survey was conducted using an Extension email list for urban households receiving a monthly lawn and…

We study the greenhouse effect on a model satellite consisting of a tungsten sphere surrounded by a thin spherical, concentric glass shell, with a small gap between the sphere and the shell. The system sits in vacuum and is heated by sunlight incident along the "z"-axis. This development is a generalization of the simple treatment of the…

Purpose: Changing research design and methodologies regarding how researchers articulate with end-users of technology is an important consideration in developing sustainable agricultural practices. This paper analyzes a joint experiment as a multi-stakeholder process and contributes to understand how the way of organizing social learning affects…

At its Wakehurst Place garden in West Sussex, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, has established the UK home of one of the world's largest conservation projects, the Millennium Seed Bank (MSB) partnership, a global project to conserve biodiversity by collecting and preserving seeds. This article describes what the MSB partnership does, how seeds are…

For many people, domestic bliss does not involve cleaning, home repairs, or yard work. That doesn't mean that their vision of a happy home involves a dirty, broken-down house with an unkempt yard. It simply means that they prefer to pay others to do the grittier tasks of residential upkeep. And in doing so, they create employment opportunities for…