Charged-Spray Deposition Characteristics Within Cereal Crops

Fluorescent tracer studies experimentally quantified the spatial distribution of droplet mass transfer and charge transfer characterizing three modes of electrostatic pesticide spraying onto barley-weed-soil target arrays. Droplet charging in the 1.5-4.5 mC/kg range provided significant deposition increases on all plant surfaces while beneficially reducing residues on underlying soil. With the intense space-charge spray clouds utilized (e.g., 10 μC/m3), externally applied driving fields as great as 37 kV/m provided no significant deposition increases but instead exacerbated gaseous charge exchange between the spray cloud and the target via undesirable leaf-tip coronas. Nonuniformity characterized deposition of both uncharged and charged sprays throughout the target array, with no improvement provided by spray-entrainment air velocities as great as 2 m/s. Results will guide prototype design by establishing the relative importance of the space charge, the applied field, and the aerodynamic force components for selectively targeting specific sites within living-plant arrays.     

The Economic Value of Groundwater Irrigation for Food Security Under Climate Change: Implication of Representative Concentration Pathway Climate Scenarios

Sustainable management of groundwater resources to support food security under the potential effects of climate change is an emerging area of research and particularly relevant in the context of Small Island Developing States. Employing three regional downscaled Representative Connection Pathway (RCP 2.6, RCP4.5, and RCP 8.5) emission scenarios that have been linked to an economic evaluation framework, the potential impact of climate change on groundwater scarcity, economic value of groundwater irrigation, food security, and farming livelihoods is investigated. A nonlinear hydro-economic framework, which integrates groundwater hydrology, climate data, land use, economics and institutions, has been applied for the island of Barbados. Results indicate that climate change would intensify the dependency on groundwater irrigation overtime, modulated by climate intensity. The strength of climate change will boost the marginal value of groundwater irrigation, as food price will scale up, presenting negative impacts on food security and reducing farming livelihoods. The climate change would also result in higher cost of producing foods resulting from increased cost of pumping, mainly driven by the effect of meeting abstraction needs for domestic and municipal consumption. Our primary results show that for a small island, sustaining groundwater resources will be a challenging objective to achieve under severe climate change.     

An Initial Inventory and Indexation of Groundwater Mega-Depletion Cases

The state of groundwater systems worldwide is presently not well defined, and in particular there is little context for agencies responsible for managing water resources to evaluate occurrences of groundwater depletion against other cases globally. In this study, an initial inventory of groundwater depletion problems is compiled and ranked to identify the world’s most critical cases, i.e. situations of groundwater mega-depletion. The ranking is based on an indexed approach that considers overdraft, drawdown and subsidence, plus the importance of the resources in terms of population-dependency and rates of extraction. The five most highly ranked depleted aquifers of the world include the shallow aquifers of the Hai River Plain (China), the Altiplano region (Spain), the Mexico Basin (Mexico), the Huang River basin (China) and the California Central Valley (USA). An abridged account of modelling to assess drawdown is described for the Hai River Plain, revealing that despite recharge in the order of 13,000 GL/yr, an overdraft of about 8,000 GL/yr is occurring to support the vast population of the region. This has led to up to 100 m of drawdown in places and reports of subsidence of several metres. The Hai River situation demonstrates that falling water levels may not act to alleviate pumping stresses; a symptom of unchecked extraction and an exemplary illustration of the tragedy of the commons. The causal factors leading to mega-depletion are varying across the globe and each mega-depletion case contains unique elements, although population appears to be an important factor.     

Voice over IP versus voice over frame relay

This paper presents a comparison of the voice‐enabling features of the Internet protocol (IP) and frame relay (FR) networks. The discussion focuses on the issues that affect the quality of service of voice applications and the relative suitability of IP and FR for delivering voice applications. This independent assessment serves to assist network managers in decision‐making regarding suitable packetized voice solutions. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Evolution of ion-induced ripple patterns on SiO2 surfaces

The evolution of nanoscale ripple patterns during sub-keV ion sputtering of thermally grown, fused and single crystalline SiO₂ surfaces has been investigated by means of atomic force microscopy. For all three materials, different dependencies of the ripple wavelength and the surface roughness on the ion fluence have been found. Within the Bradley-Harper model of pattern formation, the observed differences are consistent with different amounts of surface and near-surface mass transport by ion-enhanced viscous flow which might result from different surface energies of the SiO₂ specimens.     

La CLAve to increase psychosis literacy of Spanish-speaking community residents and family caregivers.

The authors developed and tested a 35-min psychoeducational program with the goal of increasing Spanish-speaking persons’ literacy of psychosis. The program uses popular cultural icons derived from music, art, and videos, as well as a mnemonic device—La CLAve (The Clue)—to increase (a) knowledge of psychosis, (b) efficacy beliefs that one can identify psychosis in others, (c) attributions to mental illness, and (d) professional help-seeking. Assessments were conducted before and after administering the program to both community residents (n = 57) and family caregivers of persons with schizophrenia (n = 38). For community residents, the authors observed increases across the 4 domains of symptom knowledge, efficacy beliefs, illness attributions, and recommended help-seeking. For caregivers, increases were observed in symptom knowledge and efficacy beliefs. La CLAve is a conceptually informed psychoeducational tool with a developing empirical base aimed at helping Spanish-speaking Latinos with serious mental illness obtain care in a timely manner. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Critical superparamagnetic/single-domain grain sizes in interacting magnetite particles: implications for magnetosome crystals

Magnetotactic bacteria contain chains of magnetically interacting crystals (magnetosome crystals), which they use for navigation (magnetotaxis). To improve magnetotaxis efficiency, the magnetosome crystals (usually magnetite or greigite in composition) should be magnetically stable single-domain (SSD) particles. Smaller single-domain particles become magnetically unstable owing to thermal fluctuations and are termed superparamagnetic (SP). Previous calculations for the SSD/SP threshold size or blocking volume did not include the contribution of magnetic interactions. In this study, the blocking volume has been calculated as a function of grain elongation and separation for chains of identical magnetite grains. The inclusion of magnetic interactions was found to decrease the blocking volume, thereby increasing the range of SSD behaviour. Combining the results with previously published calculations for the SSD to multidomain threshold size in chains of magnetite reveals that interactions significantly increase the SSD range. We argue that chains of interacting magnetosome crystals found in magnetotactic bacteria have used this effect to improve magnetotaxis.     

A pilot study of the efficacy of residuum lodges for managing sediment delivery to impoundment reservoirs

Residuum lodges comprise small dams constructed on feeder streams immediately before they enter a reservoir, behind which ponds form, where sediment is deposited. Despite their construction on many impoundment reservoirs (IRE) and catchwaters, little research has previously investigated their efficacy at removing sediments from feeder streams. The current pilot study has, therefore, been carried out at an IRE supplying Halifax, West Yorkshire, UK, where a residuum lodge was recently cleaned out. Sediment concentrations reaching the reservoir were reduced by up to 42% although no certain impacts were noted on the other water quality variables that were measured. Moreover, it was found that the clearance operation did not result in the release of excessive quantities of sediment into the reservoir. It was estimated that the cleared residuum lodge would take 12 years to refill. A survey of other residuum lodges in the Yorkshire region showed there to be considerable differences in their remaining capacities.     

Onset of convection in a horizontal porous layer driven by catalytic surface reaction on the lower wall

The onset of convection in a horizontal layer filled with a fluid-saturated porous medium is studied in this paper. On the lower wall there is an exothermic surface reaction, described by the Arrhenius kinetics, while the upper wall is subjected to uniform temperature and concentration. The problem, cast in dimensionless form, is governed by three dimensionless parameters pertaining to the exothermic reaction and the Lewis number. Once the basic state is solved, a linearized stability analysis is then performed and the resulting eigenvalue problem is solved using a conventional shooting method. One determines numerically the critical Rayleigh and wave numbers at the onset of convection, for various values of the problem parameters.     

Pyridine-catalyzed depolymerization of cellulose during carbanilation with phenylisocyanate in dimethylsulfoxide

Carbanilation reactions of cellulose samples (bleached cotton linters and Avicel) with phenylisocyanate in dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) were carried out at 60°C in the presence of various pyridine derivatives. The molecular weight distributions of the resulting cellulose tricarbanilates (CTCs) were measured by high-performance size exclusion chromatography. When pyridine or its derivatives were included in the reactions, the CTCs had reduced degree of polymerization (DP) values compared to those of CTCs prepared without the additives. The cellulose depolymerization was promoted by pyridines with electron-donating substituents and was not favored by pyridines with electron-withdrawing substituents nor with groups at positions ortho to the pyridine ring nitrogen atom. For the 3-, 4-, and 3,4- substituted pyridines, there was a linear relationship between log (weight-average CTC DP) and the pK_a (in water) of the pyridine derivative. For 2- and 2,6-substituted pyridines, the DP–pK_a relationships were different, probably because of steric effects of the different substituents ortho to the pyridine nitrogen atom. The optimum DMSO : pyridine solvent ratio for cellulose depolymerization during carbanilation in DMSO : pyridine mixtures was 3 : 1. All three components, phenylisocyanate, pyridine or its derivatives, and DMSO, are required for the depolymerization reaction. It is suggested that the depolymerization may be a consequence of cellulose oxidation by DMSO and/or cleavage of glucosidic bonds of partially carbanilated cellulose by reactions promoted by an enhanced solvent effect of DMSO.