Physical Crust Formation on Sandy Soils and Their Potential to Reduce Dust Emissions from Croplands

The sandy croplands in the Free State have been identified as one of the main dust sources in South Africa. The aim of this study was to investigate the occurrence and strength of physical soil crusts on cropland soils in the Free State, to identify the rainfall required to form a stable crust, and to test their impact on dust emissions. Crust strength was measured using a fall cone penetrometer and a torvane, while laboratory rainfall simulations were used to form experimental crusts. Dust emissions were measured with a Portable In-Situ Wind Erosion Laboratory (PI-SWERL). The laboratory rainfall simulations showed that stable crusts could be formed by 15 mm of rainfall. The PI-SWERL experiments illustrated that the PM10 emission flux of such crusts is between 0.14% and 0.26% of that of a non-crusted Luvisol and Arenosol, respectively. The presence of abraders on the crust can increase the emissions up to 4% and 8% of the non-crusted dust flux. Overall, our study shows that crusts in the field are potentially strong enough to protect the soil surfaces against wind erosion during a phase of the cropping cycle when the soil surface is not protected by plants

The local electronic structure of alpha-Li3N

New theoretical and experimental investigation of the occupied and unoccupied local electronic density of states (DOS) are reported for alpha-Li3N. Band structure and density functional theory calculations confirm the absence of covalent bonding character. However, real-space full-multiple-scattering (RSFMS) calculations of the occupied local DOS finds less extreme nominal valences than have previously been proposed. Nonresonant inelastic x-ray scattering (NRIXS), RSFMS calculations, and calculations based on the Bethe-Salpeter equation are used to characterize the unoccupied electronic final states local to both the Li and N sites. There is good agreement between experiment and theory. Throughout the Li 1s near-edge region, both experiment and theory find strong similarities in the s- and p-type components of the unoccupied local final density of states projected onto an orbital angular momentum basis (l-DOS). An unexpected, significant correspondence exists between the near-edge spectra for the Li 1s and N 1s initial states. We argue that both spectra are sampling essentially the same final density of states due to the combination of long core-hole lifetimes, long photoelectron lifetimes, and the fact that orbital angular momentum is the same for all relevant initial states. Such considerations may be generically applicable for low atomic number compounds.Comment: 34 pages, 7 figures, 1 tabl

Optimal fishery with coastal catch

In many spatial resource models, it is assumed that an agent is able to harvest the resource over the complete spatial domain. However, agents frequently only have access to a resource at particular locations at which a moving biomass, such as fish or game, may be caught or hunted. Here, we analyze an infinite time‐horizon optimal control problem with boundary harvesting and (systems of) parabolic partial differential equations as state dynamics. We formally derive the associated canonical system, consisting of a forward–backward diffusion system with boundary controls, and numerically compute the canonical steady states and the optimal time‐dependent paths, and their dependence on parameters. We start with some one‐species fishing models, and then extend the analysis to a predator–prey model of the Lotka–Volterra type. The models are rather generic, and our methods are quite general, and thus should be applicable to large classes of structurally similar bioeconomic problems with boundary controls. Recommedations for Resource Managers Just like ordinary differential equation‐constrained (optimal) control problems and distributed partial differential equation (PDE) constrained control problems, boundary control problems with PDE state dynamics may be formally treated by the Pontryagin's maximum principle or canonical system formalism (state and adjoint PDEs). These problems may have multiple (locally) optimal solutions; a first overview of suitable choices can be obtained by identifying canonical steady states. The computation of canonical paths toward some optimal steady state yields temporal information about the optimal harvesting, possibly including waiting time behavior for the stock to recover from a low‐stock initial state, and nonmonotonic (in time) harvesting efforts. Multispecies fishery models may lead to asymmetric effects; for instance, it may be optimal to capture a predator species to protect the prey, even for high costs and low market values of the predators

On the infrared scaling solution of SU(N) Yang-Mills theories in the maximally Abelian gauge

An improved method for extracting infrared exponents from functional equations is presented. The generalizations introduced allow for an analysis of quite complicated systems such as Yang-Mills theory in the maximally Abelian gauge. Assuming the absence of cancellations in the appropriately renormalized integrals the only consistent scaling solution yields an infrared enhanced diagonal gluon propagator in support of the Abelian dominance hypothesis. This is explicitly shown for SU(2) and subsequently verified for SU(N), where additional interactions exist. We also derive the most infrared divergent scaling solution possible for vertex functions in terms of the propagators' infrared exponents. We provide general conditions for the existence of a scaling solution for a given system and comment on the cases of linear covariant gauges and ghost anti-ghost symmetric gauges.Comment: 23 pages, 10 figures; version coincides with version published in EPJ

Moderating Readers and Reading Online

Despite the proliferation of online forums for the discussion of literary texts, very little has been written to date on the management of these spaces and how this helps frame the kinds of discussion and interpretative work that take place. This article draws on a series of interviews with moderators of online book-related sites, alongside close analysis of online interactions between moderators and users to consider issues of authority, hierarchy, power and control, asking how these act to structure or facilitate acts of interpretation taking place online. We begin by outlining the moderator's role before conducting a brief review of existing scholarship on offline reading groups and online communities, to identify how social infrastructures are established and negotiated. The main body of the article draws upon interviews with moderators of two online literary forums – The Republic of Pemberley and The Guardian’s online Reading Group – to explore the ways in which each of the respective moderators frames his or her role. This is accompanied by an in-depth exploration of how the forms of interpretation we find on the two sites are shaped and directed by the moderators. The article concludes by reflecting upon some of the issues raised by this study and its methodology, particularly with regards to digital dualism and the blurring of the boundaries between the public and the private in online spaces

Accessing directly the properties of fundamental scalars in the confinement and Higgs phase

The properties of elementary particles are encoded in their respective propagators and interaction vertices. For a SU(2) gauge theory coupled to a doublet of fundamental complex scalars these propagators are determined in both the Higgs phase and the confinement phase and compared to the Yang-Mills case, using lattice gauge theory. Since the propagators are gauge-dependent, this is done in the Landau limit of 't Hooft gauge, permitting to also determine the ghost propagator. It is found that neither the gauge boson nor the scalar differ qualitatively in the different cases. In particular, the gauge boson acquires a screening mass, and the scalar's screening mass is larger than the renormalized mass. Only the ghost propagator shows a significant change. Furthermore, indications are found that the consequences of the residual non-perturbative gauge freedom due to Gribov copies could be different in the confinement and the Higgs phase.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, 1 table; v2: one minor error corrected; v3: one appendix on systematic uncertainties added and some minor changes, version to appear in EPJ

A discrete firefly algorithm to solve a rich vehicle routing problem modelling a newspaper distribution system with recycling policy

A real-world newspaper distribution problem with recycling policy is tackled in this work. In order to meet all the complex restrictions contained in such a problem, it has been modeled as a rich vehicle routing problem, which can be more specifically considered as an asymmetric and clustered vehicle routing problem with simultaneous pickup and deliveries, variable costs and forbidden paths (AC-VRP-SPDVCFP). This is the first study of such a problem in the literature. For this reason, a benchmark composed by 15 instances has been also proposed. In the design of this benchmark, real geographical positions have been used, located in the province of Bizkaia, Spain. For the proper treatment of this AC-VRP-SPDVCFP, a discrete firefly algorithm (DFA) has been developed. This application is the first application of the firefly algorithm to any rich vehicle routing problem. To prove that the proposed DFA is a promising technique, its performance has been compared with two other well-known techniques: an evolutionary algorithm and an evolutionary simulated annealing. Our results have shown that the DFA has outperformed these two classic meta-heuristics

Theoretical and practical convergence of a self-adaptive penalty algorithm for constrained global optimization

This paper proposes a self-adaptive penalty function and presents a penalty-based algorithm for solving nonsmooth and nonconvex constrained optimization problems. We prove that the general constrained optimization problem is equivalent to a bound constrained problem in the sense that they have the same global solutions. The global minimizer of the penalty function subject to a set of bound constraints may be obtained by a population-based meta-heuristic. Further, a hybrid self-adaptive penalty firefly algorithm, with a local intensification search, is designed, and its convergence analysis is established. The numerical experiments and a comparison with other penalty-based approaches show the effectiveness of the new self-adaptive penalty algorithm in solving constrained global optimization problems.The authors would like to thank the referees, the Associate Editor and the Editor-in-Chief for their valuable comments and suggestions to improve the paper. This work has been supported by COMPETE: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043 and FCT - Funda¸c˜ao para a Ciˆencia e Tecnologia within the projects UID/CEC/00319/2013 and UID/MAT/00013/2013.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio