SP307-P-Home Nut Tree Plan

Edible nuts produced commercially in the United States include pecan, English walnut, filbert, pistachio, almond and macadamia. Those for which no sizable commercial industry exists include black walnut, hickory, butternut and chestnut. Of those listed, pistachio, almond and macadamia are not adapted to Tennessee growing conditions. Several of the others have certain characteristics which limit areas of the state in which they may be grown and fruited consistently. This factsheet may aid in selection of nut trees for planting in Tennessee. Figures given in the table are approximate values. They will vary depending on site, cultural practices and weather conditions. Grafted trees are suggested when planting for nut production. When compared to trees grown from seed (seedlings), grafted trees generally bear crops at a much younger age. Also, grafted trees and the nuts they produce will be like the parent trees, while those grown from seed may vary considerably. If trees are to be grown from seed, realize that the nuts need to be stratified before they will germinate and grow. Stratification involves exposing nuts to a cold, moist environment for a given period of time, usually about 90 days, before the nuts will germinate and grow normally. Stratification may be achieved by planting nuts in the fall and letting Mother Nature provide the cold, moist conditions or by placing the nuts in a moist medium such as peat moss, sand or paper towels. The medium is then put in a plastic bag, sealed and refrigerated for the necessary period of time. Once the stratification period has been satisfied, the nuts should be planted. Be careful to avoid letting the nuts dry out during the interval between stratification and planting. Plant the nuts about 2 to 3 inches deep. Most nut crops perform best on a deep, welldrained, loamy soil having a pH of about 6 to 7

NUT wormholes

We show that supercritically charged black holes with NUT provide a new setting for traversable wormholes. This does not require exotic matter, a price being the Misner string singularities. Without assuming time periodicity to make Misner strings unobservable, we show that, contrary to expectations, geodesics do not stop there. Moreover, since there is no central singularity the space-time turns out to be geodesically complete. Another unpleasant feature of spacetimes with NUTs is the presence of regions where the azimuthal angle $\varphi$ becomes timelike, signalling the appearance of closed timelike curves (CTCs). We show that among them there are no closed timelike or null geodesics, so the freely falling observers should not encounter causality violations. Considering worldlines of charged particles, we find that, although these can become closed in the vicinity of the wormhole throat for large enough charge-to-mass ratio, the non-causal orbits are still disconnected from the distant zones. All these findings support our feeling that wormholes with NUTs deserve to be taken seriously. Integrating the geodesic equations completely, we demonstrate the existence of timelike and null geodesics connecting two asymptotic regions of the wormhole, such that the tidal forces in the throat are reasonably small. We discuss bounds on the NUT charge which follow from the Schwinger pair creation and ionization thresholds and speculate that such NUT wormholes could be present in some galactic centers.Comment: Journal version. New references added, discussion part slightly modifie

Generalized No-U-Turn Sampler for Lagrangian Monte Carlo

The focus of this work is to efficiently sample from a given target distribution using Monte Carlo Makov Chain (MCMC). This work presents No-U-Turn Sampler Lagrangian Monte Carlo with the Monge metric. It is an efficient MCMC sampler, with adaptive metric, fast computations and with no need to hand-tune the hyperparameters of the algorithm, since the parameters are automatically adapted by extending the No-U-Turn Sampler (NUTS) to Lagrangian Monte Carlo (LMC). This work begins by giving an introduction of differential geometry concepts. The Monge metric is then constructed step by step, carefully derived from the theory of differential geometry giving a formulation that is not restricted to LMC, instead, it is applicable to any problem where a Riemannian metric of the target function comes into play. The main idea of the metric is that it naturally encodes the geometric properties given by the manifold constructed from the graph of the function when embedded in higher dimensional Euclidean space. Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) and LMC are MCMC samplers that work on differential geometry manifolds. We introduce the LMC sampler as an alternative to Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC). HMC assumes that the metric structure of the manifold encoded in the Riemannian metric to stay constant, whereas LMC allows the metric to vary dependent on position, thus, being able to sample from regions of the target distribution which are problematic to HMC. The choice of metric affects the running time of LMC, by including the Monge metric into LMC the algorithm becomes computationally faster. By generalizing the No-U-Turn Sampler to LMC, we build the NUTS-LMC algorithm. The resulting algorithm is able to estimate the hyperparameters automatically. The NUTS algorithm is constructed with a distance based stopping criterion, which can be replaced by another stopping criteria. Additionally, we run LMC-Monge and NUTS-LMC for a series of traditionally challenging target distributions comparing the results with HMC and NUTS-HMC. The main contribution of this work is the extension of NUTS to generalized NUTS, which is applicable to LMC. It is found that LMC with Monge explores regions of target distribution which HMC is unable to. Furthermore, generalized NUTS eliminates the need to choose the hyperparameters. NUTS-LMC makes the sampler ready to use for scientific applications since the only need is to specify a twice differentiable target function, thus, making it user friendly for someone who does not wish to know the theoretical and technical details beneath the sampler

Europe integrates less than you think: Evidence from the market for corporate control in Europe and the US

National borders are still strong barriers for mergers and acquisitions in Europe. We estimate a gravity equation model based on NUTS 2-regions and find that the restraining impact of national borders decreased by about a third between 1990 and 2007. However, there has been no significant change since 1997, i.e., two years before the introduction of the Euro. To benchmark our results we run a corresponding analysis within the United States using the ten federal OMB regions as country equivalents. The 'quasi border'-effect in the US is weaker than in the EU and even declines more during the same time period. We conclude that European integration policy has little effect on fostering cross-border transactions. --European integration,corporate control,border effects

Bayesian Estimation of Mixture IRT Models using NUTS

The No-U-Turn Sampler (NUTS) is a relatively new Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm that avoids the random walk behavior that common MCMC algorithms such as Gibbs sampling or Metropolis Hastings usually exhibit. Given the fact that NUTS can efficiently explore the entire space of the target distribution, the sampler converges to high-dimensional target distributions more quickly than other MCMC algorithms and is hence less computational expensive. The focus of this study is on applying NUTS to one of the complex IRT models, specifically the two-parameter mixture IRT (Mix2PL) model, and further to examine its performance in estimating model parameters when sample size, test length, and number of latent classes are manipulated. The results indicate that overall, NUTS performs well in recovering model parameters. However, the recovery of the class membership of individual persons is not satisfactory for the three-class conditions. Also, the results indicate that WAIC performs better than LOO in recovering the number of latent classes, in terms of the proportion of the time the correct model was selected as the best fitting model. However, when the effective number of parameters was also considered in selecting the best fitting model, both fully Bayesian fit indices perform equally well. In addition, the results suggest that when multiple latent classes exist, using either fully Bayesian fit indices (WAIC or LOO) would not select the conventional IRT model. On the other hand, when all examinees came from a single unified population, fitting MixIRT models using NUTS causes problems in convergence

Benefits of the Mediterranean Diet: Insights From the PREDIMED Study

The PREDIMED (PREvención con DIeta MEDiterránea) multicenter, randomized, primary prevention trial assessed the long-term effects of the Mediterranean diet (MeDiet) on clinical events of cardiovascular disease (CVD). We randomized 7447 men and women at high CVD risk into three diets: MeDiet supplemented with extra-virgin olive oil (EVOO), MeDiet supplemented with nuts, and control diet (advice on a low-fat diet). No energy restriction and no special intervention on physical activity were applied. We observed 288 CVD events (a composite of myocardial infarction, stroke or CVD death) during a median time of 4.8 years; hazard ratios were 0.70 (95% CI, 0.53-0.91) for the MeDiet + EVOO and 0.70 (CI, 0.53-0.94) for the MeDiet + nuts compared to the control group. Respective hazard ratios for incident diabetes (273 cases) among 3541 non-diabetic participants were 0.60 (0.43-0.85) and 0.82 (0.61-1.10) for MeDiet + EVOO and MeDiet + nuts, respectively versus control. Significant improvements in classical and emerging CVD risk factors also supported a favorable effect of both MeDiets on blood pressure, insulin sensitivity, lipid profiles, lipoprotein particles, inflammation, oxidative stress, and carotid atherosclerosis. In nutrigenomic studies beneficial effects of the intervention with MedDiets showed interactions with several genetic variants (TCF7L2, APOA2, MLXIPL, LPL, FTO, M4CR, COX-2, GCKR and SERPINE1) with respect to intermediate and final phenotypes. Thus, the PREDIMED trial provided strong evidence that a vegetable-based MeDiet rich in unsaturated fat and polyphenols can be a sustainable and ideal model for CVD prevention

Letter Written by Edith Speert to Victor A. Speert Dated October 11, 1944

[Transcription begins] Wednesday—10/11/44 My most adorable darling, Most of the time I’m busily occupied, but sweetheart, being without you is so terribly hard—no work or anything could substitute for you. I stood in line this morning 30 min. & got your films—they are the “super XX” so you can use them in any weather or time of day except night. I sent them in your Xmas package. I went to the Kodak shop on 9th & Euclid (I heard they were going to have films today) & the line went halfway around the block. Please, darling, if you want more films, write me a request & then, after a couple of weeks, I’ll get you some; but—I must have a request. This letter will be kind of short as I’m very tired. People came to say “good bye” to Mort—especially people with eligible daughters, & stayed & talked until 9 p.m. & then, good-night; but no, Mother had to tell folks to please come see my room. Nuts! Mort has discouraged me in anything I want to buy you—that’s why your Xmas package will be so rotten—in my estimation. Anything I want to get he says, “don’t bother—it’ll be issued, he doesn’t need it or, he can get it himself.” Perhaps he is right?—Huh? I’m getting to meet some of the children’s parents & as a whole they seem to be a very interested group. Some night when I have a little bit more time & not so tired, I’ll write in detail. Dennis is adjusting beautifully, but Douglas—not so well. I adore you! Forever your— Edith [Transcription ends

Letter Written by Edith Speert to Victor A. Speert Dated October 11, 1944

[Transcription begins] Wednesday—10/11/44 My most adorable darling, Most of the time I’m busily occupied, but sweetheart, being without you is so terribly hard—no work or anything could substitute for you. I stood in line this morning 30 min. & got your films—they are the “super XX” so you can use them in any weather or time of day except night. I sent them in your Xmas package. I went to the Kodak shop on 9th & Euclid (I heard they were going to have films today) & the line went halfway around the block. Please, darling, if you want more films, write me a request & then, after a couple of weeks, I’ll get you some; but—I must have a request. This letter will be kind of short as I’m very tired. People came to say “good bye” to Mort—especially people with eligible daughters, & stayed & talked until 9 p.m. & then, good-night; but no, Mother had to tell folks to please come see my room. Nuts! Mort has discouraged me in anything I want to buy you—that’s why your Xmas package will be so rotten—in my estimation. Anything I want to get he says, “don’t bother—it’ll be issued, he doesn’t need it or, he can get it himself.” Perhaps he is right?—Huh? I’m getting to meet some of the children’s parents & as a whole they seem to be a very interested group. Some night when I have a little bit more time & not so tired, I’ll write in detail. Dennis is adjusting beautifully, but Douglas—not so well. I adore you! Forever your— Edith [Transcription ends

Trophic relationships between palms and bruchids (Coleoptera: Bruchidae: Pachymerini) in Peruvian Amazonia

Qualitative and quantitative host plant data are provided for palm bruchids in a part of Amazonia from where previously few or no data were available. The host range and geographical distribution of several species are extended. The role of fruit structure on susceptibility to bruchid infestation and fruit maturity on oviposition site selection is discussed. The importance of mesologic conditions, particularly in areas subjected to flooding, on population dynamics of palm seed beetles is stressed. A specialist parasitoid of Caryoborus serripes, which is a specific predator of Astrocaryum nuts, is recorded for the first time; a trichogrammatid parasitic on the eggs of the same bruchid is also identified