Nitrogen-15 and sulfur-35 balances for fertilizers applied to transplanted rainfed lowland rice

A field experiment was conducted on a poorly-drained Aeric Paleaquult in northeastern Thailand to determine the effect of N and S fertilizers on yield of rainfed lowland rice (Oryza sativa L.) and to determine the fate of applied¹⁵N- and³⁵S-labeled fertilizers. Rice yield and N uptake increased with applied N but not with applied S in either sulfate or elemental S (ES) form. Rice yield was statistically greater for deep placement of urea as urea supergranules (USG) than for all other N fertilizer treatments that included prilled urea (PU), urea amended with a urease inhibitor (phenyl phosphorodiamidate), and ammonium phosphate sulfate (16% N, 8.6% P).The applied¹⁵N-labeled urea (37 kg N ha^–1) not recovered in the soil/plant system at crop maturity was 85% for basal incorporation, 53% for broadcast at 12 days after transplanting (DT), 27% for broadcast at 5–7 days before panicle initiation (DBPI), and 49% for broadcast at panicle initiation (PI). The basal incorporated S (30 kg ha^–1) not recovered in the soil/plant system at crop maturity was 37% for sulfate applied as single superphosphate (SSP) and 34% for ES applied as granulated triple superphosphate fortified with S (S/GTSP). Some basal incorporated¹⁵N and³⁵S and some broadcast¹⁵N at PI was lost by runoff. Heavy rainfall at 3–4 days after basal N incorporation and at 1 day after PI resulted in water flow from rice fields at higher elevation and total inundation of the 0.15-m-high¹⁵N and³⁵S microplot borders. Unrecovered¹⁵N was only 14% for 75 kg urea-N ha^–1 deep placed as USG at transplanting. This low N loss from USG indicated that leaching was not a major N loss mechanism and that deep placement was relatively effective in preventing runoff loss.In order to assess the susceptibility of fertilizer-S to runoff loss, a subsequent field experiment was conducted to monitor³⁵S activity in floodwater for 42 days after basal incorporation of SSP and S/GTSP. Maximum³⁵S recoveries in the floodwater were 19% for SSP after 7 days and 7% for S/GTSP after 1 day. Recovery of³⁵S in floodwater after 14 days was 12% for SSP and 3% for S/GTSP.This research suggests that on poorly drained soils with a low sorption capacity, a sizeable fraction of the fertilizer S and N remains in the floodwater following application. Runoff could then be an important mechanism of nutrient loss in areas with high probability for inundation following intense rainfall.     

Crash costs by body part injured, fracture involvement, and threat-to-life severity. United States, 2000

This paper presents costs per US motor vehicle crash victim differentiated into many more diagnostic categories than prior estimates. These unit costs, which include the first keyed to the 1990 edition of Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) threat-to-life severity scores, are reported by body part, whether a fracture/dislocation was involved, and the maximum AIS score among the victim's injuries. This level of detail allows for a more accurate estimation of the social costs of motor vehicle crashes. It also allows for reliable analyses of interventions targeting narrow ranges of injuries. The paper updates the medical care data underlying the US crash costs from 1979 to 1986 to the mid 1990s and improves on prior productivity cost estimates. In addition to presenting the latest generation of crash victim costs, this paper analyzes the effects of applying injury costs classified by AIS code from the 1985 edition to injury incidence data coded with the 1990 edition of AIS. This long-standing practice results in inaccurate cost-benefit analyses that typically overestimate benefits. This problem is more acute when old published costs adjusted for inflation are used rather than the recent costs.     

Doping-induced broadening of the hole density-of-states in conducting polymers

The density-of-states distribution in conducting polymers reflects the energy disorder caused by electrostatic and steric interactions resulting from the different environment in which each molecule is placed. In case of p-doping (oxidation), the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) manifold spreads in energy following a distribution as a result of long-range electrostatic (dipolar) interactions with the surrounding disordered host. In this paper the repercussion of the dipolar disorder on electrochemical signals of standard polypyrrole films is explored. The analysis is based on the chemical capacitance variation with the applied potential in experiments performed in quasi-equilibrium conditions. In addition to the Gaussian shape of cyclic voltammograms at low-doping levels, the model is able to qualitatively account for the current plateau usually observed at high oxidation potentials. This approach allows to estimating the dipolar moment associated to the polymer/dopant complex.     

High-throughput approach to the catalytic combustion of diesel soot II: Screening of oxide-based catalysts

Following the development of a high-throughput (HT) methodology for the evaluation of diesel soot oxidation catalysts in a 16 parallel channels reactor, a library of over 60 catalysts was tested under optimized conditions. The catalyst compositions were chosen to include solids which specific properties like oxygen storage capacity, oxygen mobility and ionic conductivity. The key parameters for high activity appear related to the presence of active and mobile surface oxygen species, and to an appropriate catalyst particle size in order to favour the number of contacts with the soot. In contrast, high oxygen storage capacity and bulk oxygen ion mobility do not appear as relevant properties for high catalytic activity. Nine new formulations were found to perform better than the reference catalyst “high surface area (HSA) ceria” (Rhodia).     

Modeling of switching frequency instabilities in buck‐based DC–AC H‐bridge inverters

In this paper, the dynamical behavior of a full bridge DC–AC buck inverter controlled by fixed frequency and PWM is studied. After showing that the system can undergo both period‐doubling and Neimark–Sacker bifurcation at the fast scale (switching period) by using the exact switching model, an exact solution discrete‐time model able to predict both instability phenomena is derived. The model is obtained without making the quasi‐static approximation and it can be used to obtain the useful operation region in the multi‐dimensional design parameter space from time domain simulations in a very fast and accurate manner. Based on the study of the system, some design guidelines are provided. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Double‐frequency buck converter as a candidate topology for integrated envelope elimination and restoration applications in power supply of RFPAs

This paper proposes the use of double‐frequency (DF) buck converter architecture consisting of a merged structure of high and low frequency buck cells as a candidate topology for envelope elimination and restoration (EER) applications and integrated power supply of RF power amplifiers (RFPA) to obtain favorable tradeoffs in terms of efficiency, switching ripple, bandwidth, and tracking capability. It is shown that having two degrees of freedom in designing the DF buck helps to achieve high efficiency, low output ripples, and tracking capability with low ripples, simultaneously. A comparison analysis is done with regards to the mentioned performance indexes with the standard and three‐level buck converters; in addition, the results are validated in HSPICE in BSIM3V3 0.35‐µm CMOS process. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A rheometry method to assess the evaporation-induced mechanical strength development of polymer solutions used for membrane applications

Rotational and oscillatory shear rheometry were used to quantify the flow behavior under minimal and significant solvent evaporation conditions for polymer solutions used to fabricate isoporous asymmetric membranes by the self-assembly and non-solvent induced phase separation (SNIPS) method. Three different A-B-C triblock terpolymer chemistries of similar molar mass were evaluated: polyisoprene-b-polystyrene-b-poly(4-vinylpyridine) (ISV); polyisoprene-b-polystyrene-b-poly(N,N-dimethylacrylamide) (ISD); and polyisoprene-b-polystyrene-b-poly(tert-butyl methacrylate) (ISB). Solvent evaporation resulted in the formation of a viscoelastic film typical of asymmetric membranes. Solution viscosity and film viscoelasticity were strongly dependent on the chemical structure of the triblock terpolymer molecules. A hierarchical magnitude (ISV > ISB > ISD) was observed for both properties, with ISV solutions displaying the greatest solution viscosity, fastest film strength development, and greatest strength magnitude. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2019 , 136, 47038.     

PMSS: A programmable memory system and scheduler for complex memory patterns

HPC industry demands more computing units on FPGAs, to enhance the performance by using task/data parallelism. FPGAs can provide its ultimate performance on certain kernels by customizing the hardware for the applications. However, applications are getting more complex, with multiple kernels and complex data arrangements, generating overhead while scheduling/managing system resources. Due to this reason all classes of multi threaded machines–minicomputer to supercomputer–require to have efficient hardware scheduler and memory manager that improves the effective bandwidth and latency of the DRAM main memory. This architecture could be a very competitive choice for supercomputing systems that meets the demand of parallelism for HPC benchmarks. In this article, we proposed a Programmable Memory System and Scheduler (PMSS), which provides high speed complex data access pattern to the multi threaded architecture. This proposed PMSS system is implemented and tested on a Xilinx ML505 evaluation FPGA board. The performance of the system is compared with a microprocessor based system that has been integrated with the Xilkernel operating system. Results show that the modified PMSS based multi-accelerator system consumes 50% less hardware resources, 32% less on-chip power and achieves approximately a 19x speedup compared to the MicroBlaze based system.     

Exploded views for volume data

Exploded views are an illustration technique where an object is partitioned into several segments. These segments are displaced to reveal otherwise hidden detail. In this paper we apply the concept of exploded views to volumetric data in order to solve the general problem of occlusion. In many cases an object of interest is occluded by other structures. While transparency or cutaways can be used to reveal a focus object, these techniques remove parts of the context information. Exploded views, on the other hand, do not suffer from this drawback. Our approach employs a force-based model: the volume is divided into a part configuration controlled by a number of forces and constraints. The focus object exerts an explosion force causing the parts to arrange according to the given constraints. We show that this novel and flexible approach allows for a wide variety of explosion-based visualizations including view-dependent explosions. Furthermore, we present a high-quality GPU-based volume ray casting algorithm for exploded views which allows rendering and interaction at several frames per second.     

Approximation for scheduling on uniform nonsimultaneous parallel machines

We consider the problem of scheduling on uniform machines which may not start processing at the same time with the purpose of minimizing the maximum completion time. We propose using a variant of the MULTIFIT algorithm, LMULTIFIT, which generates schedules which end within 1.382 times the optimal maximum completion time for the general problem, and within \(\sqrt{6}/2\) times the optimal maximum completion time for problem instances with two machines. Both developments represent improvements over previous results. We prove that LMULTIFIT worst-case bounds for scheduling on simultaneous uniform machines are also LMULTIFIT worst-case approximation bounds for scheduling on nonsimultaneous uniform machines and show that worst-case approximation bounds of MULTIFIT variants for simultaneous uniform machines from previous literature also apply to LMULTIFIT. We also comment on how a PTAS for scheduling on a constant number of uniform machines with fixed jobs can be used to obtain a PTAS for scheduling on a constant number of uniform nonsimultaneous parallel machines.