Effects of Row Spacings and Varieties on Grain Yield and Economics of Maize

Maize is the second most important crop of Nepal. The yield of the crop is low due to lack of appropriate plant density for the varieties. The field experiment was carried out to study the effect of different row spacings on different maize varieties at Deupur, Lamahi municipality of the dang district in province No. 5, Nepal during the rainy season from June to September, 2018. Four levels of spacings (boardcasting and three row spacings of 45, 60 and 75 cm) and two maize varieties (Rampur Composite and Arun-2) were evaluated using randomized complete block design with three replications. The highest grain yield was found in Rampur Composite and Arun-2 while they were planted with row spacing of 60 cm with plant to plant spacing of 25 cm. The highest grain yield, cob length, cob circumference, number of rows per cob, thousand grain weight  were reported when maize was planted in the  row spacing 60×25cm. Among the maize varieties, Rampur Composite produced the highest grain yield, cob length, cob circumference, number of rows per cob as compared to Arun-2. This study suggested that maize production can be maximized by cultivating maize varieties with row spacing of 60 cm with plant to plant spacing of 25 cm

CO Oxidation Over Au/TiO\u3csub\u3e2\u3c/sub\u3e Catalyst: Pretreatment Effects, Catalyst Deactivation, and Carbonates Production

A commercially available Au/TiO2 catalyst was subjected to a variety of thermal treatments in order to understand how variations in catalyst pretreatment procedures might affect CO oxidation catalysis. Catalytic activity was found to be inversely correlated to the temperature of the pretreatment. Infrared spectroscopy of adsorbed CO experiments, followed by a Temkin analysis of the data, indicated that the thermal treatments caused essentially no changes to the electronics of the Au particles; this, and a series of catalysis control experiments, and previous transmission electron microscopy (TEM) studies ruled out particle growth as a contributing factor to the activity loss. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy showed that pretreating the catalyst results in water desorption from the surface, but the observable water loss was similar for all the treatments and could not be correlated with catalytic activity. A Michaelis–Menten kinetic treatment indicated that the main reason for deactivation is a loss in the number of active sites with little changes in their intrinsic activity. In situ FTIR experiments during CO oxidation showed extensive buildup of carbonate-like surface species when the pretreated catalysts were contacted with the feed gas. A semi-quantitative infrared spectroscopy method was developed for comparing the amount of carbonates present on each catalyst; results from these experiments showed a strong correlation between the steady-state catalytic activity and amount of surface carbonates generated during the initial moments of catalysis. Further, this experimental protocol was used to show that the carbonates reside on the titania support rather than on the Au, as there was no evidence that they poison Au–CO binding sites. The role of the carbonates in the reaction scheme, their potential role in catalyst deactivation, and the role of surface hydroxyls and water are discussed

Influence of pH adjustment on physicochemical properties of microfiltration retentates of skim milk and rehydration properties of resulting powders

Effects of pH adjustment on physicochemical properties of microfiltration retentates of skim milk and rehydration of resulting micellar casein concentrate (MCC) powders were investigated. Aliquots of retentate (pH 6.9) were adjusted to pH 7.3, 7.6 or 7.6 followed by readjustment to pH 6.9 (6.9R) prior to powder preparation. The retentates with pH 6.9, 7.3, and 7.6 had casein micelle size of 179, 189 and 197 nm, respectively, while sample 6.9R had size of 183 nm, similar to retentate at pH 6.9. Higher retentate pH resulted in lower ionic calcium and higher conductivity, with sample 6.9R having higher values for both parameters than the pH 6.9 sample. The MCC powders displayed poorer wettability and enhanced dispersibility with increasing retentate pH. Interestingly, the 6.9R powder had the best wettability and dispersibility. This study demonstrated that pH-mediated modifications of the physicochemical properties of retentates improve the rehydration properties of resultant MCC powders

Evaluating Differences in the Active-Site Electronics of Supported Au Nanoparticle Catalysts Using Hammett and DFT Studies

Supported metal catalysts, which are composed of metal nanoparticles dispersed on metal oxides or other high-surface-area materials, are ubiquitous in industrially catalysed reactions. Identifying and characterizing the catalytic active sites on these materials still remains a substantial challenge, even though it is required to guide rational design of practical heterogeneous catalysts. Metal-support interactions have an enormous impact on the chemistry of the catalytic active site and can determine the optimum support for a reaction; however, few direct probes of these interactions are available. Here we show how benzyl alcohol oxidation Hammett studies can be used to characterize differences in the catalytic activity of Au nanoparticles hosted on various metal-oxide supports. We combine reactivity analysis with density functional theory calculations to demonstrate that the slope of experimental Hammett plots is affected by electron donation from the underlying oxide support to the Au particles

Completion of a Dislocated Metric Space

We provide a construction for the completion of a dislocated metric space (abbreviated d-metric space); we also prove that the completion of the metric associated with a d-metric coincides with the metric associated with the completion of the d-metric

Biodiversity inventories in high gear: DNA barcoding facilitates a rapid biotic survey of a temperate nature reserve

Comprehensive biotic surveys, or ‘all taxon biodiversity inventories’ (ATBI), have traditionally been limited in scale or scope due to the complications surrounding specimen sorting and species identification. To circumvent these issues, several ATBI projects have successfully integrated DNA barcoding into their identification procedures and witnessed acceleration in their surveys and subsequent increase in project scope and scale. The Biodiversity Institute of Ontario partnered with the rare Charitable Research Reserve and delegates of the 6th International Barcode of Life Conference to complete its own rapid, barcode-assisted ATBI of an established land trust in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada

TEST SCENARIOS GENERATION USING PATH COVERAGE

Testing is one of the very important component of software development process. Properly generated test sequences may not only locate the defects in software, but also help in reducing the high cost associated with software testing. It is often desired that test sequences should be automatically generated to achieve required test coverage. Automatic test sequence generation is a major problem in software testing. The aim of this study is to generate test sequences for source code using ModelJunit. ModelJUnit is a extended library of JUnit. We have generate automatic test sequences and some testing criterion coverage such as node coverage, edge coverage and edge pair coverage. This paper describes a systematic test sequence generation technique using the path based approach