In the last 60 years fertiliser use in agriculture has increased by 900%. However, it’s been reported that up to 80% of these fertilisers are not utilised by crops but are lost to the environment as nitrous oxide, ammonia and nitrate. Improving nitrogen use efficiency is recognised as one possible solution to reducing the sector’s environmental impact and optimising its productivity and sustainability in the face of increasing pressure to feed a growing population. Improving nitrogen use efficiency in crop production reviews recent advances in understanding nitrogen cycling in soil and best practices to assess crop nitrogen status, such as the use of proximal sensors and remote sensing techniques. The book considers developments in the use of inorganic nitrogen fertilisers and their effectiveness in optimising nitrogen use efficiency, as well as how more organic sources of nitrogen, such as livestock manure, can be optimised to achieve the same goal.

This volume constitutes the proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Social Informatics, SocInfo 2019, held in Doha, Qatar, in November 2019. The 17 full and 5 short papers presented in these proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected from 86 submissions. The papers presented in this volume cover a broad range of topics, ranging from the study of socio-technical systems, to computer science methods to analyze complex social processes, as well as social concepts in the design of information systems.

This volume is intended to supply some supplementary information about the gems and cameos published in A Collection of Classical and Eastern Intaglios, Rings and Cameos, published in 2003 as BAR 1136. In particular more information is presented on some of the pot-antique gems in the collection, and on the later gem mounts in which many of the Classical gems are now presented. There are also two more general essays about the reception of Classical gems and techniques in the Renaissance and 17th-19th centuries.

The German gem-engraver, medallist, and amateur scholar Lorenz Natter (1705-1763), was so impressed by the size and quality of the collections of ancient and later engraved gems which he found in Britain that he proposed the publication of an extraordinarily ambitious catalogue - Museum Britannicum - which would present engravings and descriptions of the most important pieces. He made considerable progress to this end, producing several hundred drawings, but in time he decided to abandon the near completed project in the light of the apparent lack of interest shown in Britain. Only one of the intended plates in its final form ever appeared, in a catalogue which he published separately for Lord Bessborough's collection. On Natter's death the single copy of his magnum opus vanished mysteriously, presumed lost forever. All hope of recovering Natter's unpublished papers seemed vain, and their very existence had come to be doubted. Yet they were to be found more than two hundred years after his death, in Spring 1975, when the classical scholar and renowned expert in gems, Oleg Neverov, chanced upon them at the bottom of a pile of papers in the archives of the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. Neverov and his colleague Julia Kagan carried out the initial research on the Hermitage manuscripts and produced the first published account of this archival treasure. The present volume builds upon their earlier work to produce the first comprehensive publication of Museum Britannicum, offering full discussion in English and presenting Natter's drawings and comments alongside modern information on the gems that can be identified and located through fresh research. This book is the result of a ten-year collaboration between scholars on the Beazley Archive gems research programme at Oxford's Classical Art Research Centre and the State Hermitage Museum. It fulfills Natter's vision for the Museum Britannicum - albeit two and a half centuries late - to the benefit of art historians, cultural historians, curators, and gem-lovers of today.

A large catalogue or, as the authors describe it, a 'descriptive handlist' of Greek, Etruscan, Roman, 17th-19th and Near Eastern intaglios, gems and finger rings from a private collection. Each example is chosen for its stylistic importance or for its subject matter and all are accompanied by a photograph.

The Collection was begun by the First Duchess of Northumberland in the early eighteenth century; but the greater part of it was made later in the century by Algernon Percy, First Earl of Beverley, during a tour of Europe while in the company of his mentor, Louis Dutens. Their success in France and Italy was such that it incited the jealousy of the Empress Catherine of Russia, herself a passionate collector. The range of objects - cameos, intaglios and finger rings of the highest quality - is considerable: Greek, Roman and Etruscan, as well as a notable assemblage of neoclassical signed gems by British artists. One jewel clearly provided inspiration for Michelangelo's painting of Adam on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. The Collection is little known, except by connoisseurs, but this volume brings to the attention of a broader audience many of the finest products of one of the oldest arts of the western world.