Water use of two corn varieties, drought resistant and drought sensitive

In order to understand the mechanism of water use and drought resistance of corn, it is necessary to study effects of these characteristics on water use and drought resistance and to be able to quantify the effects. Two corn hybrids, Pioneer 3343 (P3343) and Pioneer 3379 (P3379) known as drought sensitive and drought resistant, respectively, with a sorghum hybrid, Pioneer 8086 (P8086) as control, were investigated. Our study included measurements of leaf resistance, total plant leaf area, plant height, root weight, and plant water potential and permanent wilting points of soil water content. Experiments were conducted in the greenhouse, growth chamber, and field over a three year period;The field and greenhouse results show that P3379 had greater total plant leaf area, and higher transpiration rates but shorter plant height. The P3379 had the lower permanent wilting point (soil moisture content), and higher water consumption than P3343 in greenhouse experiments. However, there were no differences in soil moisture and grain yield in the field studies. If P3379 is considered to be drought resistant plant, it may be characterized as a water spender that can resist mild drought because it has more available water from its lower permanent wilting point that may result in lower leaf resistance;A computerized model was developed to evaluate plant water use in terms of physiological, morphological and phenological features. The model includes simulation of temperature and vapor profiles in a corn canopy, radiation penetration in the canopy, and development of leaf area index and plant height. The inputs for the model include daily and hourly weather data, maximum plant leaf area, planting date, silking data, maturity date, and planting density. Outputs are daily transpiration, daily plant water use, cumulative water use, total plant leaf area and leaf area index;The validation study indicated that the calculated plant water use and leaf area development agree well with measurements. The sensitivity study showed that plant total leaf area significantly influenced plant water use, especially when leaf area index was low. Increase of leaf area with a fixed planting density would increase plant water use in a growing season. The effect of silking date on plant water use was not as significant as leaf area. However, silking date is an indicator of plant water use. (Abstract shortened by UMI.

Quantifying jet transport properties via large pTp_T hadron production

Nuclear modification factor $R_{AA}$ for large $p_T$ single hadron is studied in a next-to-leading order (NLO) perturbative QCD (pQCD) parton model with medium-modified fragmentation functions (mFFs) due to jet quenching in high-energy heavy-ion collisions. The energy loss of the hard partons in the QGP is incorporated in the mFFs which utilize two most important parameters to characterize the transport properties of the hard parton jets: the jet transport parameter $\hat q_{0}$ and the mean free path $\lambda_{0}$, both at the initial time $\tau_0$. A phenomenological study of the experimental data for $R_{AA}(p_{T})$ is performed to constrain the two parameters with simultaneous $\chi^2/{\rm d.o.f}$ fits to RHIC as well as LHC data. We obtain for energetic quarks $\hat q_{0}\approx 1.1 \pm 0.2$ GeV$^2$/fm and $\lambda_{0}\approx 0.4 \pm 0.03$ fm in central $Au+Au$ collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200$ GeV, while $\hat q_{0}\approx 1.7 \pm 0.3$ GeV$^2$/fm, and $\lambda_{0}\approx 0.5 \pm 0.05$ fm in central $Pb+Pb$ collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=2.76$ TeV. Numerical analysis shows that the best fit favors a multiple scattering picture for the energetic jets propagating through the bulk medium, with a moderate averaged number of gluon emissions. Based on the best constraints for $\lambda_{0}$ and $\tau_0$, the estimated value for the mean-squared transverse momentum broadening is moderate which implies that the hard jets go through the medium with small reflection.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, revised versio

Effects of initial state fluctuations on jet energy loss

The effect of initial state fluctuations on jet energy loss in relativistic heavy-ion collisions is studied in a 2+1 dimension ideal hydrodynamic model. Within the next-to-leading order perturbative QCD description of hard scatterings, we find that a jet loses slightly more energy in the expanding quark-gluon plasma if the latter is described by the hydrodynamic evolution with fluctuating initial conditions compared to the case with smooth initial conditions. A detailed analysis indicates that this is mainly due to the positive correlation between the fluctuation in the production probability of parton jets from initial nucleon-nucleon hard collisions and the fluctuation in the medium density along the path traversed by the jet. This effect is larger in non-central than in central relativistic heavy ion collisions and also for jet energy loss that has a linear than a quadratic dependence on its path length in the medium

Lasso adjustments of treatment effect estimates in randomized experiments

We provide a principled way for investigators to analyze randomized experiments when the number of covariates is large. Investigators often use linear multivariate regression to analyze randomized experiments instead of simply reporting the difference of means between treatment and control groups. Their aim is to reduce the variance of the estimated treatment effect by adjusting for covariates. If there are a large number of covariates relative to the number of observations, regression may perform poorly because of overfitting. In such cases, the Lasso may be helpful. We study the resulting Lasso-based treatment effect estimator under the Neyman-Rubin model of randomized experiments. We present theoretical conditions that guarantee that the estimator is more efficient than the simple difference-of-means estimator, and we provide a conservative estimator of the asymptotic variance, which can yield tighter confidence intervals than the difference-of-means estimator. Simulation and data examples show that Lasso-based adjustment can be advantageous even when the number of covariates is less than the number of observations. Specifically, a variant using Lasso for selection and OLS for estimation performs particularly well, and it chooses a smoothing parameter based on combined performance of Lasso and OLS

Punch-through jets in A+AA+A collisions at RHIC/LHC

High $p_T$ single and dihadron production is studied within a NLO pQCD parton model with jet quenching in high energy $A+A$ collisions at the RHIC/LHC energy. A simultaneous $\chi^2$-fit to both single and dihadron spectra can be achieved within a narrow range of energy loss parameter. Punch-through jets are found to result in the dihadron suppression factor slightly more sensitive to medium than the single hadron suppression factor at RHIC. Such jets at LHC are found to dominate high $p_T$ dihadron production and the resulting dihadron spectra are more sensitive to the initial parton distribution functions than the single hadron spectra.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, proceedings for the 20th international conference on ultra-relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions (QM2008), Jaipur, India, February 4-10, 200

Suppression of high pTp_{T} hadrons in Pb+PbPb+Pb Collisions at LHC

Nuclear modification factor $R_{AA}(p_{T})$ for large transverse momentum pion spectra in $Pb+Pb$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=2.76$ TeV is predicted within the NLO perturbative QCD parton model. Effect of jet quenching is incorporated through medium modified fragmentation functions within the higher-twist approach. The jet transport parameter that controls medium modification is proportional to the initial parton density and the coefficient is fixed by the RHIC data on suppression of large $p_{T}$ hadron spectra. Data on charged hadron multiplicity $dN_{ch}/d\eta=1584 \pm 80$ in central $Pb+Pb$ collisions from the ALICE Experiment at the LHC are used to constrain the initial parton density both for determining the jet transport parameter and the 3+1D ideal hydrodynamic evolution of the bulk matter that is employed for the calculation of $R_{PbPb}(p_{T})$ for neutral pions.Comment: 7 pages in RevTex, 3 figures (some typos corrected

Gamma-Jet Tomography of Quark-Gluon Plasma in High-Energy Nuclear Collisions

Within the next-to-leading order (NLO) perturbative QCD (pQCD) parton model, suppression of away-side hadron spectra associated with a high $p_{T}$ photon due to parton energy loss is shown to provide a complete tomographic picture of the dense matter formed in high-energy heavy-ion collisions at RHIC. Dictated by the shape of the $\gamma$-triggered jet spectrum in NLO pQCD, hadron spectra at large $z_T=p_T^{h}/p_T^{\gamma} \stackrel{>}{\sim} 1$ are more susceptible to parton energy loss and therefore are dominated by surface emission of $\gamma$-triggered jets, whereas small $z_{T}$ hadrons mainly come from fragmentation of jets with reduced energy from volume emission. These lead to different centrality dependence of the hadron suppression in different regions of $z_{T}$.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, proceedings for QM 2009 conferenc

A NLO analysis on fragility of dihadron tomography in high energy AAAA collisions

The dihadron spectra in high energy $AA$ collisions are studied within the NLO pQCD parton model with jet quenching taken into account. The high $p_T$ dihadron spectra are found to be contributed not only by jet pairs close and tangential to the surface of the dense matter but also by punching-through jets survived at the center while the single hadron high $p_T$ spectra are only dominated by surface emission. Consequently, the suppression factor of such high-$p_T$ hadron pairs is found to be more sensitive to the initial gluon density than the single hadron suppression factor.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, proceedings for the 19th international Conference on ultra-relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions (QM2006), Shanghai, China, November 14-20, 200

Regional Variation in Temperature Humidity Index for Poultry Housing

A building thermal model was used to compute hourly values of temperature humidity index (THI) for a broiler house with and without an evaporative misting system. Hourly summer time weather data for 238 U.S.A. locations covering 30 years were used to develop extreme occurrences of THI. Results were incorporated into a Geographical Information System (GIS) database to create isolines of THI and percentage of hours exceeding a heat stress threshold. Regional variations in misting as a suitable cooling technique are presented in terms of hours reduction in annual heat stress. The technique may be used for assisting in management decisions regarding poultry facilities housing design and siting, and with appropriate THI may be extended to other livestock production