Regulation of nitrogen uptake and assimilation: Effects of nitrogen source, root-zone pH, and aerial CO2 concentration on growth and productivity of soybeans

An important feature of controlled-environment crop production systems such as those to be used for life support of crews during space exploration is the efficient utilization of nitrogen supplies. Making decisions about the best sources of these supplies requires research into the relationship between nitrogen source and the physiological processes which regulate vegetative and reproductive plant growth. Work done in four areas within this research objective is reported: (1) experiments on the effects of root-zone pH on preferential utilization of NO3(-) versus NH4(+) nitrogen; (2) investigation of processes at the whole-plant level that regulate nitrogen uptake; (3) studies of the effects of atmospheric CO2 and NO3(-) supply on the growth of soybeans; and (4) examination of the role of NO3(-) uptake in enhancement of root respiration

Nitrogen uptake and utilization by intact plants

The results of experiments support the proposed conceptual model that relates nitrogen uptake activity by plants as a balanced interdependence between the carbon-supplying function of the shoot and the nitrogen-supplying function of the roots. The data are being used to modify a dynamic simulation of plant growth, which presently describes carbon flows through the plant, to describe nitrogen uptake and assimilation within the plant system. Although several models have been proposed to predict nitrogen uptake and partitioning, they emphasize root characteristics affecting nutrient uptake and relay on empirical methods to describe the relationship between nitrogen and carbon flows within the plant. Researchers, on the other hand, propose to continue to attempt a mechanistic solution in which the effects of environment on nitrogen (as well as carbon) assimilation are incorporated through their direct effects on photosynthesis, respiration, and aging processes

Exact Wave Solutions to 6D Gauged Chiral Supergravity

We describe a broad class of time-dependent exact wave solutions to 6D gauged chiral supergravity with two compact dimensions. These 6D solutions are nontrivial warped generalizations of 4D pp-waves and Kundt class solutions and describe how a broad class of previously-static compactifications from 6D to 4D (sourced by two 3-branes) respond to waves moving along one of the uncompactified directions. Because our methods are generally applicable to any higher dimensional supergravity they are likely to be of use for finding the supergravity limit of time-dependent solutions in string theory. The 6D solutions are interesting in their own right, describing 6D shock waves induced by high energy particles on the branes, and as descriptions of the near-brane limit of the transient wavefront arising from a local bubble-nucleation event on one of the branes, such as might occur if a tension-changing phase transition were to occur.Comment: 22 pages, 1 figure. Minor clarifications added. Accepted in JHE

Massive Cosmologies

We explore the cosmological solutions of a recently proposed extension of General Relativity with a Lorentz-invariant mass term. We show that the same constraint that removes the Boulware-Deser ghost in this theory also prohibits the existence of homogeneous and isotropic cosmological solutions. Nevertheless, within domains of the size of inverse graviton mass we find approximately homogeneous and isotropic solutions that can well describe the past and present of the Universe. At energy densities above a certain crossover value, these solutions approximate the standard FRW evolution with great accuracy. As the Universe evolves and density drops below the crossover value the inhomogeneities become more and more pronounced. In the low density regime each domain of the size of the inverse graviton mass has essentially non-FRW cosmology. This scenario imposes an upper bound on the graviton mass, which we roughly estimate to be an order of magnitude below the present-day value of the Hubble parameter. The bound becomes especially restrictive if one utilizes an exact self-accelerated solution that this theory offers. Although the above are robust predictions of massive gravity with an explicit mass term, we point out that if the mass parameter emerges from some additional scalar field condensation, the constraint no longer forbids the homogeneous and isotropic cosmologies. In the latter case, there will exist an extra light scalar field at cosmological scales, which is screened by the Vainshtein mechanism at shorter distances.Comment: 21 page

Scaling Solutions to 6D Gauged Chiral Supergravity

We construct explicitly time-dependent exact solutions to the field equations of 6D gauged chiral supergravity, compactified to 4D in the presence of up to two 3-branes situated within the extra dimensions. The solutions we find are scaling solutions, and are plausibly attractors which represent the late-time evolution of a broad class of initial conditions. By matching their near-brane boundary conditions to physical brane properties we argue that these solutions (together with the known maximally-symmetric solutions and a new class of non-Lorentz-invariant static solutions, which we also present here) describe the bulk geometry between a pair of 3-branes with non-trivial on-brane equations of state.Comment: Contribution to the New Journal of Physics focus issue on Dark Energy; 28 page

An Investigation of the Post-laryngectomy Swallow Using Videofluoroscopy and Fiberoptic Endoscopic Evaluation of Swallowing (FEES)

open acces

Automated production of high rep rate foam targets

Manufacturing low density targets in the numbers needed for high rep rate experiments is highly challenging. This report summarises advances from manual production to semiautomated and the improvements that follow both in terms of production time and target uniformity. The production process is described and shown to be improved by the integration of an xyz robot with dispensing capabilities. Results are obtained from manual and semiautomated production runs and compared. The variance in the foam thickness is reduced significantly which should decrease experimental variation due to target parameters and could allow for whole batches to be characterised by the measurement of a few samples. The work applies to both foil backed and free standing foam targets.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Kicking the Rugby Ball: Perturbations of 6D Gauged Chiral Supergravity

We analyze the axially-symmetric scalar perturbations of 6D chiral gauged supergravity compactified on the general warped geometries in the presence of two source branes. We find all of the conical geometries are marginally stable for normalizable perturbations (in disagreement with some recent calculations) and the nonconical for regular perturbations, even though none of them are supersymmetric (apart from the trivial Salam-Sezgin solution, for which there are no source branes). The marginal direction is the one whose presence is required by the classical scaling property of the field equations, and all other modes have positive squared mass. In the special case of the conical solutions, including (but not restricted to) the unwarped `rugby-ball' solutions, we find closed-form expressions for the mode functions in terms of Legendre and Hypergeometric functions. In so doing we show how to match the asymptotic near-brane form for the solution to the physics of the source branes, and thereby how to physically interpret perturbations which can be singular at the brane positions.Comment: 21 pages + appendices, references adde