Testing and validating the CERES-wheat (Crop Estimation through Resource and Environment Synthesis-wheat) model in diverse environments

CERES-Wheat is a computer simulation model of the growth, development, and yield of spring and winter wheat. It was designed to be used in any location throughout the world where wheat can be grown. The model is written in Fortran 77, operates on a daily time stop, and runs on a range of computer systems from microcomputers to mainframes. Two versions of the model were developed: one, CERES-Wheat, assumes nitrogen to be nonlimiting; in the other, CERES-Wheat-N, the effects of nitrogen deficiency are simulated. The report provides the comparisons of simulations and measurements of about 350 wheat data sets collected from throughout the world

Physiological measures

Journal ArticleHistorically, psychophysiological measures have made an invaluable contribution to personality psychology. Questions regarding interindividual differences and intraindividual changes in emotion, cognition, motivation, arousal, and attention are core topics within personality psychology, and these questions are particularly amenable to a psychophysiological approach

Spontaneous countermeasures during polygraph examinations: an apparent exercise in futility

The frequency and effects of spontaneous countermeasures against a polygraph examination were examined in a mock employment screening study. Eighty subjects were debriefed concerning their use of spontaneous countermeasure following the completion of their Relevant-irrelevant employment screening polygraph examination. Overall, 53.8% of the participants reported the use of at least one spontaneous countermeasure. In a departure from other studies in this area, 30% of the truthful subjects reported trying some intervention in an effort to make themselves look more truthful. An ANOVA revealed neither main effects nor interactions involving the use of a spontaneous countermeasure

Sandpile avalanche dynamics on scale-free networks

Avalanche dynamics is an indispensable feature of complex systems. Here we study the self-organized critical dynamics of avalanches on scale-free networks with degree exponent $\gamma$ through the Bak-Tang-Wiesenfeld (BTW) sandpile model. The threshold height of a node $i$ is set as $k_i^{1-\eta}$ with $0\leq\eta<1$, where $k_i$ is the degree of node $i$. Using the branching process approach, we obtain the avalanche size and the duration distribution of sand toppling, which follow power-laws with exponents $\tau$ and $\delta$, respectively. They are given as $\tau=(\gamma-2 \eta)/(\gamma-1-\eta)$ and $\delta=(\gamma-1-\eta)/(\gamma-2)$ for $\gamma<3-\eta$, 3/2 and 2 for $\gamma>3-\eta$, respectively. The power-law distributions are modified by a logarithmic correction at $\gamma=3-\eta$.Comment: 8 pages, elsart styl

Molecular dynamics simulation of amphiphilic membrane and wormlike micelles: a multi-scale modelling approach to the design of visco-elastic surfactant solutions

Bilayer membranes and wormlike micelles have been studied using molecular–dynamics simulations. The structure of the worm is analysed in terms of radial density distribution functions, and mechanical properties such as the elastic modulus are calculated. From an analysis of the fluctuation spectra of the tensionless states, we have calculated bending rigidities. Micelles consisting of coarse–grained (CG) model surfactants are studied in order to map the properties of the atomistic micelle. We optimize the CG model with respect to the structure factor S(q) of the atomistic micelle. The mechanical properties thus obtained will be used as input for a mesoscopic model of wormlike micelles where the persistence length is the smallest length–scale

Scale-free random branching tree in supercritical phase

We study the size and the lifetime distributions of scale-free random branching tree in which $k$ branches are generated from a node at each time step with probability $q_k\sim k^{-\gamma}$. In particular, we focus on finite-size trees in a supercritical phase, where the mean branching number $C=\sum_k k q_k$ is larger than 1. The tree-size distribution $p(s)$ exhibits a crossover behavior when $2 < \gamma < 3$; A characteristic tree size $s_c$ exists such that for $s \ll s_c$, $p(s)\sim s^{-\gamma/(\gamma-1)}$ and for $s \gg s_c$, $p(s)\sim s^{-3/2}\exp(-s/s_c)$, where $s_c$ scales as $\sim (C-1)^{-(\gamma-1)/(\gamma-2)}$. For $\gamma > 3$, it follows the conventional mean-field solution, $p(s)\sim s^{-3/2}\exp(-s/s_c)$ with $s_c\sim (C-1)^{-2}$. The lifetime distribution is also derived. It behaves as $\ell(t)\sim t^{-(\gamma-1)/(\gamma-2)}$ for $2 < \gamma < 3$, and $\sim t^{-2}$ for $\gamma > 3$ when branching step $t \ll t_c \sim (C-1)^{-1}$, and $\ell(t)\sim \exp(-t/t_c)$ for all $\gamma > 2$ when $t \gg t_c$. The analytic solutions are corroborated by numerical results.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure

Chlorination as Drinking Water Disinfection Technique and Disinfection by Products: A Scientometric Analysis

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 2015, defined to achieve a better and more sustainable future, contains goal number 6 related to safe and affordable drinking water facility for all till 2030. The rural and remote areas in the developing countries predominantly face the scarcity of pathogen free drinking water leading to water borne diseases and deaths due to consumption of contaminated water indicating a need of advancement in the drinking water disinfection techniques. The paper discusses scientometric analysis of publication trends in chlorination as a popular disinfection techniques and research related to the Disinfection By Products (DBPs) that are produced due to the reaction between the disinfectant and naturally occurring organic matter in water. The analysis of the existing SCOPUS database from year 2000 to 2020, indicates total of 1279 journal articles, 138 conference proceedings, 88 review papers, and 57 other documents, with the key words ‘drinking water, disinfection, and chlorination’. As per the analysis, United States and China presented maximum publications related to drinking water disinfection using chlorination treatment. The analysis of literature also indicates that there is huge amount of literature related to the formation of alternative DBPs and their hazardous effects on human health. However, as per scopus database only three research documents are registered till date for the removal techniques of DBPs produced after the disinfection process, indicating a need of further research in this area. The literature also suggests the need to engender new technology or optimize the existing technology for minimizing the formation of DBPs

Parallel Mapper

The construction of Mapper has emerged in the last decade as a powerful and effective topological data analysis tool that approximates and generalizes other topological summaries, such as the Reeb graph, the contour tree, split, and joint trees. In this paper, we study the parallel analysis of the construction of Mapper. We give a provably correct parallel algorithm to execute Mapper on multiple processors and discuss the performance results that compare our approach to a reference sequential Mapper implementation. We report the performance experiments that demonstrate the efficiency of our method

Evolution of scale-free random graphs: Potts model formulation

We study the bond percolation problem in random graphs of $N$ weighted vertices, where each vertex $i$ has a prescribed weight $P_i$ and an edge can connect vertices $i$ and $j$ with rate $P_iP_j$. The problem is solved by the $q\to 1$ limit of the $q$-state Potts model with inhomogeneous interactions for all pairs of spins. We apply this approach to the static model having $P_i\propto i^{-\mu} (0<\mu<1)$ so that the resulting graph is scale-free with the degree exponent $\lambda=1+1/\mu$. The number of loops as well as the giant cluster size and the mean cluster size are obtained in the thermodynamic limit as a function of the edge density, and their associated critical exponents are also obtained. Finite-size scaling behaviors are derived using the largest cluster size in the critical regime, which is calculated from the cluster size distribution, and checked against numerical simulation results. We find that the process of forming the giant cluster is qualitatively different between the cases of $\lambda >3$ and $2 < \lambda <3$. While for the former, the giant cluster forms abruptly at the percolation transition, for the latter, however, the formation of the giant cluster is gradual and the mean cluster size for finite $N$ shows double peaks.Comment: 34 pages, 9 figures, elsart.cls, final version appeared in NP