485 research outputs found
Catch crop strategy and nitrate leaching following grazed grass-clover
Cultivation of grassland presents a high risk of nitrate leaching. This study aimed to determine if leaching could be reduced by growing spring barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) as a green crop for silage with undersown Italian ryegrass (Lolium multiflorum Lam.) compared with barley grown to maturity with or without an undersown conventional catch crop of perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.). All treatments received 0,60 or 120 kg of ammonium-N ha-1 in cattle slurry. In spring 2003, two grass-clover fields (3 and 5 years old, respectively, with different management histories) were ploughed. The effects of the treatments on yield and nitrate leaching were determined in the first year, while the residual effects of the treatments were determined in the second year in a crop of spring barley⁄perennial ryegrass. Nitrate leaching was estimated in selected treatments using soil water samples from ceramic cups. The experiment showed that compared with treatments without catch crop, green barley⁄Italian ryegrass reduced leaching by 163–320 kg Nha-1, corresponding to 95–99%, and the perennial ryegrass reduced leaching to between 34 and 86 kg Nha-1, corresponding to a reduction of 80 and 66%. Also, in the second growing season, leaching following catchcrops was reduced compared with the bare soil treatment. It was concluded that the green barley⁄Italian ryegrass offers advantages not only for the environment but also for farmers, for whom it provides a fodder high in roughage and avoids the difficulties with clover fatigue increasingly experienced by Danish farmers
Geotomography with solar and supernova neutrinos
We show how by studying the Earth matter effect on oscillations of solar and
supernova neutrinos inside the Earth one can in principle reconstruct the
electron number density profile of the Earth. A direct inversion of the
oscillation problem is possible due to the existence of a very simple analytic
formula for the Earth matter effect on oscillations of solar and supernova
neutrinos. From the point of view of the Earth tomography, these oscillations
have a number of advantages over the oscillations of the accelerator or
atmospheric neutrinos, which stem from the fact that solar and supernova
neutrinos are coming to the Earth as mass eigenstates rather than flavour
eigenstates. In particular, this allows reconstruction of density profiles even
over relatively short neutrino path lengths in the Earth, and also of
asymmetric profiles. We study the requirements that future experiments must
meet to achieve a given accuracy of the tomography of the Earth.Comment: 35 pages, 7 figures; minor textual changes in section
Coulomb and nuclear breakup effects in the single neutron removal reaction 197Au(17C,16C gamma)X
We analyze the recently obtained new data on the partial cross sections and
parallel momentum distributions for transitions to ground as well as excited
states of the 16C core, in the one-neutron removal reaction 197Au(17C,16C
gamma)X at the beam energy of 61 MeV/nucleon. The Coulomb and nuclear breakup
components of the one-neutron removal cross sections have been calculated
within a finite range distorted wave Born approximation theory and an eikonal
model, respectively. The nuclear contributions dominate the partial cross
sections for the core excited states. By adding the nuclear and Coulomb cross
sections together, a reasonable agreement is obtained with the data for these
states. The shapes of the experimental parallel momentum distributions of the
core states are described well by the theory.Comment: Revtex format, two figures included, to appear in Phys. Rev. C.
(Rapid communications
Dynamical description of the breakup of one-neutron halo nuclei 11Be and 19C
We investigate the breakup of the one-neutron halo nuclei 11Be and 19C within
a dynamical model of the continuum excitation of the projectile. The time
evolution of the projectile in coordinate space is described by solving the
three-dimensional time dependent Schroedinger equation, treating the
projectile-target (both Coulomb and nuclear) interaction as a time dependent
external perturbation. The pure Coulomb breakup dominates the relative energy
spectra of the fragments in the peak region, while the nuclear breakup is
important at higher relative energies. The coherent sum of the two
contributions provides a good overall description of the experimental spectra.
Cross sections of the first order perturbation theory are derived as a limit of
our dynamical model. The dynamical effects are found to be of the order of
10-15% for the beam energies in the range of 60 - 80 MeV/nucleon. A comparison
of our results with those of a post form distorted wave Born approximation
shows that the magnitudes of the higher order effects are dependent on the
theoretical model.Comment: 15 pages, ReVTeX, 5 figures, typos corrected, accepted for
publication in Physical Review
Exact/heuristic hybrids using rVNS and hyperheuristics for workforce scheduling
In this paper we study a complex real-world workforce scheduling
problem. We propose a method of splitting the problem into smaller parts and
solving each part using exhaustive search. These smaller parts comprise a
combination of choosing a method to select a task to be scheduled and a method
to allocate resources, including time, to the selected task. We use reduced
Variable Neighbourhood Search (rVNS) and hyperheuristic approaches to
decide which sub problems to tackle. The resulting methods are compared to
local search and Genetic Algorithm approaches. Parallelisation is used to
perform nearly one CPU-year of experiments. The results show that the new
methods can produce results fitter than the Genetic Algorithm in less time and
that they are far superior to any of their component techniques. The method
used to split up the problem is generalisable and could be applied to a wide
range of optimisation problems
Core excitation in Coulomb breakup reactions
Within the pure Coulomb breakup mechanism, we investigate the one-neutron
removal reaction of the type A(a,b)X with Be and C
projectiles on a heavy target nucleus Pb at the beam energy of 60
MeV/nucleon. Our intention is to examine the prospective of using these
reactions to study the structure of neutron rich nuclei. Integrated partial
cross sections and momentum distributions for the ground as well as excited
bound states of core nuclei are calculated within the finite range distorted
wave Born approximation as well as within the adiabatic model of the Coulomb
breakup. Our results are compared with those obtained in the studies of the
reactions on a light target where the breakup proceeds via the pure nuclear
mechanism. We find that the transitions to excited states of the core are quite
weak in the Coulomb dominated process as compared to the pure nuclear breakup.Comment: Revtex format, five postscript figures included, to appear in Phys.
Rev.
Radiative cooling of carbon cluster anions C2n+1− (n = 3–5)
Radiative cooling of carbon cluster anions C2n+1− (n = 3–5) is investigated using the cryogenic electrostatic ion storage ring DESIREE. Two different strategies are applied to infer infrared emission on slow (milliseconds to seconds) and ultraslow (seconds to minutes) timescales. Initial cooling of the ions over the millisecond timescale is probed indirectly by monitoring the decay in the yield of spontaneous neutralization by thermionic emission. The observed cooling rates are consistent with a statistical model of thermionic electron emission in competition with infrared photon emission due to vibrational de-excitation. Slower cooling over the seconds to minutes timescale associated with infrared emission from low-frequency vibrational modes is probed using time-dependent action spectroscopy. For C9− and C11−, cooling is evidenced by the time-evolution of the yield of photo-induced neutralization following resonant excitation of electronic transitions near the detachment threshold. The cross-section for resonant photo-excitation is at least two orders of magnitude greater than for direct photodetachment. In contrast, C7− lacks electronic transitions near the detachment threshold
Local search for the surgery admission planning problem
We present a model for the surgery admission planning problem, and a meta-heuristic algorithm for solving it. The problem involves assigning operating rooms and dates to a set of elective surgeries, as well as scheduling the surgeries of each day and room. Simultaneously, a schedule is created for each surgeon to avoid double bookings. The presented algorithm uses simple Relocate and Two-Exchange neighbourhoods, governed by an iterated local search framework. The problem's search space associated with these move operators is analysed for three typical fitness surfaces, representing different compromises between patient waiting time, surgeon overtime, and waiting time for children in the morning on the day of surgery. The analysis shows that for the same problem instances, the different objectives give fitness surfaces with quite different characteristics. We present computational results for a set of benchmarks that are based on the admission planning problem in a chosen Norwegian hospital
Study of Inclusive J/psi Production in Two-Photon Collisions at LEP II with the DELPHI Detector
Inclusive J/psi production in photon-photon collisions has been observed at
LEP II beam energies. A clear signal from the reaction gamma gamma -> J/psi+X
is seen. The number of observed N(J/psi -> mu+mu-) events is 36 +/- 7 for an
integrated luminosity of 617 pb^{-1}, yielding a cross-section of
sigma(J/psi+X) = 45 +/- 9 (stat) +/- 17 (syst) pb. Based on a study of the
event shapes of different types of gamma gamma processes in the PYTHIA program,
we conclude that (74 +/- 22)% of the observed J/psi events are due to
`resolved' photons, the dominant contribution of which is most probably due to
the gluon content of the photon.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, Accepted by Phys. Lett.
Search for charginos in e+e- interactions at sqrt(s) = 189 GeV
An update of the searches for charginos and gravitinos is presented, based on
a data sample corresponding to the 158 pb^{-1} recorded by the DELPHI detector
in 1998, at a centre-of-mass energy of 189 GeV. No evidence for a signal was
found. The lower mass limits are 4-5 GeV/c^2 higher than those obtained at a
centre-of-mass energy of 183 GeV. The (\mu,M_2) MSSM domain excluded by
combining the chargino searches with neutralino searches at the Z resonance
implies a limit on the mass of the lightest neutralino which, for a heavy
sneutrino, is constrained to be above 31.0 GeV/c^2 for tan(beta) \geq 1.Comment: 22 pages, 8 figure
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