Fertilisation with compost: effects on soil phosphorus sorption and on phosphorus availability in acid soils.

Phosphate mineral fertilisers are manufactured from non-renewable resources.Soil fertilisation with composts is considered a good source of reuse nutrients such as phosphorus (P). The aim of this work was to evaluate the effect of compost fertilisation on soil P sorption and consequently on P availability. It was done an incubation experiment followed by a sorption experiment in a low-P acid soil fertilised with compost (CP) or single superphosphate (SSP). The P application rates were: 0, 6.5, 13, 26 and 52 (kg∙P∙ha−1). In CP treatments, the rates 26 and 52 kg∙P∙ha−1 were achieved by adding SSP to CP since it was not allowed to incorporate into soil more than 170 kg∙N∙ha−1 from organic amendments. Although SSP has a higher proportion of easily available P than CP (86% vs 50%), the results showed that after 140 days of soil incubation, the available P was higher in CP treatments compared with SSP at the same rate of P application. The sorption experiment showed that after incubation of the fertilised soils, the P sorption maximum had lower values in treatments with CP in combination with SSP compared with only SSP fertilisation and the bonding energy had a deeper decrease in the same treatments. Also, the Standard Phosphate Requirement decreased in the CP in combination with SSP treatments. The reduction of soil P sorption capacity after compost addition to soil highlights the need of reducing P fertilisation rates to achieve similar levels of available P compared with only SSP fertilisation.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Implicit and Implicit-Explicit Strong Stability Preserving Runge-Kutta Methods with High Linear Order

When evolving in time the solution of a hyperbolic partial differential equation, it is often desirable to use high order strong stability preserving (SSP) time discretizations. These time discretizations preserve the monotonicity properties satisfied by the spatial discretization when coupled with the first order forward Euler, under a certain time-step restriction. While the allowable time-step depends on both the spatial and temporal discretizations, the contribution of the temporal discretization can be isolated by taking the ratio of the allowable time-step of the high order method to the forward Euler time-step. This ratio is called the strong stability coefficient. The search for high order strong stability time-stepping methods with high order and large allowable time-step had been an active area of research. It is known that implicit SSP Runge-Kutta methods exist only up to sixth order. However, if we restrict ourselves to solving only linear autonomous problems, the order conditions simplify and we can find implicit SSP Runge-Kutta methods of any linear order. In the current work we aim to find very high linear order implicit SSP Runge-Kutta methods that are optimal in terms of allowable time-step. Next, we formulate an optimization problem for implicit-explicit (IMEX) SSP Runge-Kutta methods and find implicit methods with large linear stability regions that pair with known explicit SSP Runge-Kutta methods of orders plin=3,4,6 as well as optimized IMEX SSP Runge-Kutta pairs that have high linear order and nonlinear orders p=2,3,4. These methods are then tested on sample problems to verify order of convergence and to demonstrate the sharpness of the SSP coefficient and the typical behavior of these methods on test problems

Economic spillover study

The study examines available evidence of the linkages between the Alliance SSP area of the East Midlands and South Yorkshire. The study builds on scenario modelling conducted on behalf of the Alliance SSP using input-output analysis to approximate business and consumer spending links and leakages between the two areas. Using a best-case scenario from the associated SSP study we present leakage results from the simulation

Revisiting the Andean butterfly Eryphanis zolvizora group (Lepidoptera, Nymphalidae) : one or several species?

Eryphanis zolvizora (Hewitson, 1877) is a rare Andean endemic butterfly, described from Bolivia, which has been historically classified either as a unique species, or as part of a group of three allopatric species from Bolivia, Ecuador and Colombia. In this paper, the group is revised using more than 200 specimens housed in 35 European and North and South American public and private collections. For the first time, the presence of the group in Western Ecuador and Venezuela is confirmed, and important data on Peruvian populations are provided. In some populations, individual variations of genitalia are observed. Nevertheless, male genitalia allow the distinction of four geographical groups. Considering also habitus characters, eight taxa are distinguished and considered to be subspecies, of which five are new: Eryphanis zolvizora inca ssp. nov., Eryphanis zolvizora chachapoya ssp. nov., Eryphanis zolvizora casagrande ssp. nov., Eryphanis zolvizora reyi ssp. nov., and Eryphanis zolvizora isabelae ssp. nov. In the present state of knowledge, these taxa are allopatric, except for a possible geographic overlap in central Peru, where data are insufficient to prove sympatry. The “several subspecies vs. several species” dilemma is discussed, considering its impact for conservation action and policies

Can Power from Space Compete?

Satellite solar power (SSP) has been suggested as an alternative to terrestrial energy resources for electricity generation. In this study, we consider the market for electricity from the present to 2020, roughly the year when many experts expect SSP to be technically achievable. We identify several key challenges for SSP in competing with conventional electricity generation in developed and developing countries, discuss the role of market and economic analysis as technical development of SSP continues during the coming years, and suggest future research directions to improve understanding of the potential economic viability of SSP.

On the Metallicity-Color Relations and Bimodal Color Distributions in Extragalactic Globular Cluster Systems

We perform a series of numerical experiments to study how the nonlinear metallicity--color relations predicted by different stellar population models affect the color distributions observed in extragalactic globular cluster systems. % We present simulations in the $UBVRIJHK$ bandpasses based on five different sets of simple stellar population (SSP) models. The presence of photometric scatter in the colors is included as well. % We find that unimodal metallicity distributions frequently ``project'' into bimodal color distributions. The likelihood of this effect depends on both the mean and dispersion of the metallicity distribution, as well as of course on the SSP model used for the transformation. % Adopting the Teramo-SPoT SSP models for reference, we find that optical--to--near-IR colors should be favored with respect to other colors to avoid the bias effect in globular cluster color distributions discussed by \citet{yoon06}. In particular, colors such as \vh\ or \vk are more robust against nonlinearity of the metallicity--color relation, and an observed bimodal distribution in such colors is more likely to indicate a true underlying bimodal metallicity distribution. Similar conclusions come from the simulations based on different SSP models, although we also identify exceptions to this result.Comment: ApJ accepte