Recurrent deficit irrigation and fruit harvest affect tree water relations and fruitlet growth in ‘Valencia’ orange

Background. Partial rootzone drying is an irrigation strategy known for increasing water use efficiency without significantly affecting tree water status. ‘Valencia’ oranges have a very long development period and nearly mature fruit and new fruitlets may be present at the same time on the tree, competing for water and assimilates. Objectives. The present study investigates the effect of recurrent deficit irrigation and fruit harvest on tree water status and fruitlet growth of ‘Valencia’ orange. Methods. Forty-eight adult trees were exposed to three irrigation treatments for seven years (2007-2013): irrigation with 100% of ETc (CI), continuous deficit irrigation (DI, 50% of CI) and partial root-zone drying (PRD, 50% of CI on alternated sides of the root-zone). In spring 2014, stem water potential (Ψstem) and continuous measurements of sap flow and fruitlet growth were recorded before (May) and after (June) the harvest of mature fruit. Results. No differences in Ψstem were found among irrigation treatments, while Ψstem was lower in June than in May at midday. In both May and June, sap flow density (not sap flow per tree) was higher in DI than in CI and PRD trees suggesting more efficient water uptake/transport in the former. In May, DI and PRD fruit showed lower daily relative growth rate (RGR) than CI fruit due to a possible shortage of carbon and nutrients. After removing mature fruits, differences among irrigation treatments were canceled. Sap flow was directly related to fruit RGR at low sap flow rates, but inversely related to RGR at high sap flow rates. Conclusions. Our data show that the presence of maturing fruit does not impact the water status of ‘Valencia’ trees, while it may transiently limit fruitlet growth (by source limitation) in deficit irrigated trees

Toward the valorization of olive (Olea europaea var. europaea L.) biodiversity: horticultural performance of seven Sicilian cultivars in a hedgerow planting system

An intense survey of the Sicilian's olive growing areas for autochthonous germplasm, mainly represented by centennials olive trees (Olea europaea var. europaea L.) apparently older then III centuries, started at the beginning of the 1980s and resulted in the selection of more than 150 cultivars and accessions. This germplasm was propagated in a nursery, by grafting onto seedlings of Olea europaea L., and planted in an experimental orchard, in an olive district located in the South-west of the Island, where they were evaluated for over 30 years and selected for their early bearing, high and constant productivity, as well as high oil content of the fruits and excellent chemical (oleic acid and phenol content) and organoleptic profile of the oil. This paper reports data on the horticultural performances (production, vigor, crop efficiency and oil quality) of four cultivars (\u2018Kalat\u2019, \u2018Olivo di Mandanici\u2019, \u2018Abunara\u2019 and \u2018Minuta\u2019), selected within the Sicilian's autochthonous germplasm trained as 'Free Palmetta' and tested in a hedgerow planting system at three different planting densities: 500, 666 and 1000 trees ha-1. The cultivar \u2018Nocellara del Belice\u2019, \u2018Cerasuola, and \u2018Biancolilla\u2019, widely cultivated in the area where the trial was carried out, were used as references. The outstanding performance of the cultivar \u2018Kalat\u2019 at planting density of 1000 trees ha 121, suggests that this cultivar can be a promising choice for the super high density orchards (SHD). The other cultivars tested did not performed as \u2018Kalat\u2019 and seem not suitable for SHD planting system due to their high vigor. The hedgerow planting system tested, in the first 6 years of planting, increaseed productivity of all cultivars compared to traditional olive orchard typical of the area where the trial was conducted. This hedgerow olive orchard may represent a valid solution to increase orchard productivity and to reduce harvest costs by mechanization, depending on tree high, with straddle or side by side canopy contact machines. Achieve higher yield and reducing management costs using autochthonous, resilient cultivars, could be a new strategy to counteract climate changes. The unique organoleptic profiles of the oils obtained from the cultivars tested, could improve the offer of tasty, flavored and nutraceutical extra virgin olive oils in the international markets. Results highlight the importance of preserving and valorizing biodiversity to increase productivity and resiliency of agricultural systems, facing continuous, fast and deep social and environmental changes

Long-Term Maraviroc Use As Salvage Therapy in HIV-2 Infection

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Increasing Dominance - the Role of Advertising, Pricing and Product Design

Despite the empirical relevance of advertising strategies in concentrated markets, the economics literature is largely silent on the effect of persuasive advertising strategies on pricing, market structure and increasing (or decreasing) dominance. In a simple model of persuasive advertising and pricing with differentiated goods, we analyze the interdependencies between ex-ante asymmetries in consumer appeal, advertising and prices. Products with larger initial appeal to consumers will be advertised more heavily but priced at a higher level - that is, advertising and price discounts are strategic substitutes for products with asymmetric initial appeal. We find that the escalating effect of advertising dominates the moderating effect of pricing so that post-competition market shares are more asymmetric than pre-competition differences in consumer appeal. We further find that collusive advertising (but competitive pricing) generates the same market outcomes, and that network effects lead to even more extreme market outcomes, both directly and via the effect on advertising

Statistical contributions

Publisher Copyright: © 2022 Author(s).Border officers of Lisbon airport (Portugal) are, as professionals from other sectors of activity, exposed to various psychosocial stressors in their workplace. Thus, monitoring the professionals of this security service is important to understand their situation, because working under conditions of prolonged excessive stress (distress) can lead to burnout syndrome, with negative consequences for workers, organization and economy. In this study a Portuguese version of the Shirom-Melamed Burnout Measure (SMBM), validated internationally, was used in a survey to assess the "feeling of burnout"of those workers. The SMBM has 14 questions that correspond to manifest variables expressed in a Likert-type scale of 7 categories, which operationalize the latent variables: emotional exhaustion, cognitive fatigue (or weariness) and physical fatigue, considered three facets of burnout. Based on a sample, some descriptive statistics were obtained, and to compare the latent variables mentioned in two groups of workers, created by the dichotomous variable years of service (A: maximum 2 years and B: more than 2 years), a parametric test was applied, with and without outliers. The means of the scores of the three latent variables are less than 5 and the same happens with the latent variable feeling of burnout (which may be indicative of the absence of problems in this domain). In the comparison of groups A and B, for a significance level of 5%, only when considering the results with the full dataset (i.e. with outliers) were identified statistically significant differences were identified in the means of the scores of latent variables emotional exhaustion and feeling of burnout.publishersversionpublishe

L-Mn dielectronic recombination of cerium ions in a room-temperature EBIT

Funding Information: P A and F G acknowledge the FCT through Project Number UID/04559/2020 (LIBPhys), and contract No. UI/BD/151000/2021. This research has been carried out under the High Performance Computing Chair—a R&D infrastructure (based at the University of Évora; PI: M Avillez), endorsed by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), and involving a consortium of higher education institutions (University of Algarve, University of Évora, New University of Lisbon, and University of Porto), research centres (CIAC, CIDEHUS, CHRC), enterprises (HPE, ANIET, ASSIMAGRA, Cluster Portugal Mineral Resources, DECSIS, FastCompChem, GeoSense, GEOtek, Health Tech, Starkdata), and public/private organizations (Alentejo Tourism-ERT, KIPT Colab). W B -N acknowledges the GET_INvolved Programme at FAIR/GSI (www.fair-center.eu/get_involved) and the JIPhD program through contract POWR.03.05.00-00-Z309/17-00. Publisher Copyright: © 2024 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd.We explore the dielectronic recombination structures at the electron beam ion trap at Jagiellonian University in Cracow, emited by cerium that is produced by the high-current cathode made of iridium and cerium. Small amounts of these elements evaporate from the cathode and form low-intensity admixtures within the electron-ion plasma in the EBIT. Their presence and specific ionic population can be observed by examining the spectral characteristics resulting from the DR process. Results have been compared with flexible atomic code calculations, working in unresolved transition array mode, providing identification of the charge states. Here we show that this mode provides quick calculations of very complex data with enough reliability for experimental comparison. These observations highlight which DR features and corresponding charge states that should be present in spectra obtained in EBITs with similar cathode specifications.publishersversionpublishe

A guided tour of asynchronous cellular automata

Research on asynchronous cellular automata has received a great amount of attention these last years and has turned to a thriving field. We survey the recent research that has been carried out on this topic and present a wide state of the art where computing and modelling issues are both represented.Comment: To appear in the Journal of Cellular Automat

Adaptive multi-polling scheduler for QoS support of video transmission in IEEE 802.11e WLANs

The 802.11E Task Group has been established to enhance quality of service (QoS) provision for time-bounded services in the current IEEE 802.11 medium access control protocol. The QoS is introduced throughout hybrid coordination function controlled channel access (HCCA) for the rigorous QoS provision. In HCCA, the station is allocated a fixed transmission opportunity (TXOP) based on its TSPEC parameters so that it is efficient for constant bit rate streams. However, as the profile of variable bit rate traffics is inconstant, they are liable to experience a higher delay especially in bursty traffic case. In this paper, we present a dynamic TXOP assignment algorithm called adaptive multi-polling TXOP scheduling algorithm (AMTXOP) for supporting the video traffics transmission over IEEE 802.11e wireless networks. This scheme invests a piggybacked information about the size of the subsequent video frames of the uplink streams to assist the hybrid coordinator accurately assign the TXOP according to actual change in the traffic profile. The proposed scheduler is powered by integrating multi-polling scheme to further reduce the delay and polling overhead. Extensive simulation experiments have been carried out to show the efficiency of the AMTXOP over the existing schemes in terms of the packet delay and the channel utilization