295 research outputs found
AN ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF A CORN-SOYBEAN CROP ROTATION UNDER VARIOUS INPUT COMBINATIONS IN SOUTH CENTRAL TEXAS
Eight input combinations of commercial fertilizer, insecticides, and herbicides on a corn-soybean crop rotation in the Brazos River Bottom of Texas are evaluated. Input combinations which do not fully utilize all three inputs are consistently ranked higher by all criteria as the preferred input strategy for the corn-soybean rotation system. These results, which indicate limited input crop rotations that fall somewhere between the extremes of conventional agricultural production and organic agriculture, deserve further attention as a possible production alternative.corn, limited input, soybean, Crop Production/Industries,
Long-term accumulation of soil carbon and nitrogen in grazed bermudagrass pastures
Last updated: 10/22/201
Negotiating the Maze: Case based, Collaborative Distance Learning in Dentistry
The module was developed as an elective to give motivated senior dental students an opportunity to expand their horizons in planning oral rehabilitation. It comprised one tutor and 12 students, from five universities world-wide, communicating on the World Wide Web (WWW), to develop oral rehabilitation plans for simulated patients. Trigger material came from one of two Case Profiles and consisted of diagnostic casts and details of the clinical and radiographic examination in WWW/CD-ROM form. No background material was supplied as to the "patient's" age, sex, history or main concern(s). Students worked in groups of three, each student from a different location. Individual students were given a role within the group: "Patient", who developed a "personal background" belonging to the trigger examination material, "Academic" who identified state-of-the-art treatment options available for the dental treatment needs identified by the group and "General Practitioner" who tailored these options to the "patient's" needs and wants. Student feedback focused on their perception of their experience with the program in response to a questionnaire comprising 11 structured and four "open" questions. All students felt that the program increased their confidence in planning oral rehabilitation. Ten students felt that the "best thing about the program" was the interaction with students from other universities and the exposure to different philosophies from the different schools. Eight students mentioned their increased awareness of the importance of patient input into holistic planning. Under the heading "What was the worst thing", students cited some technical hitches and the snowball effect of two sluggish students who were not identified early enough and thus impacted negatively on the working of their groups. Student feedback showed that the module succeeded in its aims but needed modification to improve the logistics of working with an extended campu
DANSSino: a pilot version of the DANSS neutrino detector
DANSSino is a reduced pilot version of a solid-state detector of reactor
antineutrinos (to be created within the DANSS project and installed under the
industrial 3 GW(th) reactor of the Kalinin Nuclear Power Plant -- KNPP).
Numerous tests performed at a distance of 11 m from the reactor core
demonstrate operability of the chosen design and reveal the main sources of the
background. In spite of its small size (20x20x100 ccm), the pilot detector
turned out to be quite sensitive to reactor antineutrinos, detecting about 70
IBD events per day with the signal-to-background ratio about unity.Comment: 16 pages, 11 figures, 3 tables. arXiv admin note: substantial text
overlap with arXiv:1304.369
Search for sterile neutrinos at the DANSS experiment
DANSS is a highly segmented 1~m plastic scintillator detector. Its 2500
one meter long scintillator strips have a Gd-loaded reflective cover. The DANSS
detector is placed under an industrial 3.1~ reactor of the
Kalinin Nuclear Power Plant 350~km NW from Moscow. The distance to the core is
varied on-line from 10.7~m to 12.7~m. The reactor building provides about 50~m
water-equivalent shielding against the cosmic background. DANSS detects almost
5000 per day at the closest position with the cosmic
background less than 3. The inverse beta decay process is used to detect
. Sterile neutrinos are searched for assuming the model
(3 active and 1 sterile ). The exclusion area in the plane is obtained using a ratio of positron energy
spectra collected at different distances. Therefore results do not depend on
the shape and normalization of the reactor spectrum, as well
as on the detector efficiency. Results are based on 966 thousand antineutrino
events collected at 3 distances from the reactor core. The excluded area covers
a wide range of the sterile neutrino parameters up to
in the most sensitive region.Comment: 10 pages, 13 figures, version accepted for publicatio
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