The importance of long‐term experiments in agriculture: their management to ensure continued crop production and soil fertility; the Rothamsted experience

Summary Long‐term field experiments that test a range of treatments and are intended to assess the sustainability of crop production, and thus food security, must be managed actively to identify any treatment that is failing to maintain or increase yields. Once identified, carefully considered changes can be made to the treatment or management, and if they are successful yields will change. If suitable changes cannot be made to an experiment to ensure its continued relevance to sustainable crop production, then it should be stopped. Long‐term experiments have many other uses. They provide a field resource and samples for research on plant and soil processes and properties, especially those properties where change occurs slowly and affects soil fertility. Archived samples of all inputs and outputs are an invaluable source of material for future research, and data from current and archived samples can be used to develop models to describe soil and plant processes. Such changes and uses in the Rothamsted experiments are described, and demonstrate that with the appropriate crop, soil and management, acceptable yields can be maintained for many years, with either organic manure or inorganic fertilizers. Highlights Long‐term experiments demonstrate sustainability and increases in crop yield when managed to optimize soil fertility. Shifting individual response curves into coincidence increases understanding of the factors involved. Changes in inorganic and organic pollutants in archived crop and soil samples are related to inputs over time. Models describing soil processes are developed from current and archived soil data

First principles electronic structure of spinel LiCr2O4: A possible half-metal?

We have employed first-principles electronic structure calculations to examine the hypothetical (but plausible) oxide spinel, LiCr2O4 with the d^{2.5} electronic configuration. The cell (cubic) and internal (oxygen position) structural parameters have been obtained for this compound through structural relaxation in the first-principles framework. Within the one-electron band picture, we find that LiCr2O4 is magnetic, and a candidate half-metal. The electronic structure is substantially different from the closely related and well known rutile half-metal CrO2. In particular, we find a smaller conduction band width in the spinel compound, perhaps as a result of the distinct topology of the spinel crystal structure, and the reduced oxidation state. The magnetism and half-metallicity of LiCr2O4 has been mapped in the parameter space of its cubic crystal structure. Comparisons with superconducting LiTi2O4 (d^{0.5}), heavy-fermion LiV2O4 (d^{1.5}) and charge-ordering LiMn2O4 (d^{3.5}) suggest the effectiveness of a nearly-rigid band picture involving simple shifts of the position of E_F in these very different materials. Comparisons are also made with the electronic structure of ZnV2O4 (d^{2}), a correlated insulator that undergoes a structural and antiferromagnetic phase transition.Comment: 9 pages, 7 Figures, version as published in PR

The Geminga Fraction

Radio-quiet gamma-ray pulsars like Geminga may account for a number of the unidentified EGRET sources in the Galaxy. The number of Geminga-like pulsars is very sensitive to the geometry of both the gamma-ray and radio beams. Recent studies of the shape and polarization of pulse profiles of young radio pulsars have provided evidence that their radio emission originates in wide cone beams at altitudes that are a significant fraction (1 -10%) of their light cylinder radius. Such wide radio emission beams will be visible at a much larger range of observer angles than the narrow core components thought to originate at lower altitude. Using 3D geometrical modeling that includes relativistic effects from pulsar rotation, we study the visibility of such radio cone beams as well as that of the gamma-ray beams predicted by slot gap and outer gap models. From the results of this study one can obtain revised predictions for the fraction of Geminga-like, radio quiet pulsars present in the gamma-ray pulsar population

Advances in multispectral and hyperspectral imaging for archaeology and art conservation

Multispectral imaging has been applied to the field of art conservation and art history since the early 1990s. It is attractive as a noninvasive imaging technique because it is fast and hence capable of imaging large areas of an object giving both spatial and spectral information. This paper gives an overview of the different instrumental designs, image processing techniques and various applications of multispectral and hyperspectral imaging to art conservation, art history and archaeology. Recent advances in the development of remote and versatile multispectral and hyperspectral imaging as well as techniques in pigment identification will be presented. Future prospects including combination of spectral imaging with other noninvasive imaging and analytical techniques will be discussed

Search for Higgs bosons decaying to tautau pairs in ppbar collisions at sqrt(s) = 1.96 TeV

We present a search for the production of neutral Higgs bosons decaying into tautau pairs in ppbar collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 1.96 TeV. The data, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5.4 fb-1, were collected by the D0 experiment at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider. We set upper limits at the 95% C.L. on the product of production cross section and branching ratio for a scalar resonance decaying into tautau pairs, and we then interpret these limits as limits on the production of Higgs bosons in the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM) and as constraints in the MSSM parameter space.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, submitted to PL

Measurement of three-jet differential cross sections d sigma-3jet / d M-3jet in p anti-p collisions at sqrt(s)=1.96 TeV

We present the first measurement of the inclusive three-jet differential cross section as a function of the invariant mass of the three jets with the largest transverse momenta in an event in p anti-p collisions at sqrt(s) = 1.96 TeV. The measurement is made in different rapidity regions and for different jet transverse momentum requirements and is based on a data set corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 0.7 fb^{-1} collected with the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider. The results are used to test the three-jet matrix elements in perturbative QCD calculations at next-to-leading order in the strong coupling constant. The data allow discrimination between parametrizations of the parton distribution functions of the proton.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables, submitted to Phys. Lett. B, corrected chi2 values for NNPD

Measurement of spin correlation in ttbar production using dilepton final states

We measure the correlation between the spin of the top quark and the spin of the anti-top quark in (ttbar -> W+ W- b bbar -> l+ nu b l- nubar bbar) final states produced in ppbar collisions at a center of mass energy sqrt(s)=1.96 TeV, where l is an electron or muon. The data correspond to an integrated luminosity of 5.4 fb-1 and were collected with the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron collider. The correlation is extracted from the angles of the two leptons in the t and tbar rest frames, yielding a correlation strength C= 0.10^{+0.45}_{-0.45}, in agreement with the NLO QCD prediction within two standard deviations, but also in agreement with the no correlation hypothesis.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, submitted to PL

Measurements of inclusive W+jets production rates as a function of jet transverse momentum in ppbar collisions at sqrt{s}=1.96 TeV

This Letter describes measurements of inclusive W (--> e nu) + n jet cross sections (n = 1-4), presented as total inclusive cross sections and differentially in the nth jet transverse momentum. The measurements are made using data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.2 fb-1 collected by the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider, and achieve considerably smaller uncertainties on W +jets production cross sections than previous measurements. The measurements are compared to next-to-leading order perturbative QCD (pQCD) calculations in the n =1-3 jet multiplicity bins and to leading order pQCD calculations in the 4-jet bin. The measurements are generally in agreement with pQCD predictions, although certain regions of phase space are identified where the calculations could be improved

Search for single top quarks in the tau+jets channel using 4.8 fb−1^{-1} of ppˉp\bar{p} collision data

We present the first direct search for single top quark production using tau leptons. The search is based on 4.8 fb$^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity collected in $p\bar{p}$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}$=1.96 TeV with the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider. We select events with a final state including an isolated tau lepton, missing transverse energy, two or three jets, one or two of them $b$ tagged. We use a multivariate technique to discriminate signal from background. The number of events observed in data in this final state is consistent with the signal plus background expectation. We set in the tau+jets channel an upper limit on the single top quark cross section of \TauLimObs pb at the 95% C.L. This measurement allows a gain of 4% in expected sensitivity for the observation of single top production when combining it with electron+jets and muon+jets channels already published by the D0 collaboration with 2.3 fb$^{-1}$ of data. We measure a combined cross section of \SuperCombineXSall pb, which is the most precise measurement to date.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figure