6,822 research outputs found
Short-term effect of soil disturbance by mechanical weeding on plant available nutrients in an organic vs conventional rotations experiment
The question whether soil disturbance from mechanical weeding in organic systems affects nutrient release from organic matter in compost-amended soil was examined in a long-term organic-versus-conventional rotational cropping system experiment over three years. The experimental design included continuous snap beans, and a fully phased snap beans/fall rye crop rotation sequence. Treatments were combinations of yearly applied fertiliser (synthetic fertiliser, 1× compost, 3× compost) and weed control (herbicide, mechanical weeding). The 1× compost rate was calculated to deliver the equivalent of 50 kg N ha-1: equal to the rate ofN in the synthetic fertiliser treatments. Ion exchange membranes were buried for 24 hours following mechanical weeding in bean plots. Adsorbed ions were then eluted and quantified. Available ammonium-nitrogen was not affected byweeding treatment, but nitrate-nitrogen was consistently less in mechanically weeded plots than in plots treated with herbicide. Principal component analysis of NH4-N, NO3-N, P, K, Ca and Mg availabilities showed distinct groupings of treatments according to fertility treatment rather than weeding treatment. The effect of cropping sequence on available nutrients was pronounced (P ≤ 0.001) only in plots amended with synthetic fertilisers
Effect of magnetic field on the phase transition in a dusty plasma
The formation of self-consistent crystalline structure is a well-known
phenomenon in complex plasmas. In most experiments the pressure and rf power
are the main controlling parameters in determining the phase of the system. We
have studied the effect of externally applied magnetic field on the
configuration of plasma crystals, suspended in the sheath of a radio-frequency
discharge using the Magnetized Dusty Plasma Experiment (MDPX) device.
Experiments are performed at a fixed pressure and rf power where a crystalline
structure is formed within a confining ring. The magnetic field is then
increased from 0 to 1.28 T. We report on the breakdown of the crystalline
structure with increasing magnetic field. The magnetic field affects the
dynamics of the plasma particles and first leads to a rotation of the crystal.
At higher magnetic field, there is a radial variation (shear) in the angular
velocity of the moving particles which we believe leads to the melting of the
crystal. This melting is confirmed by evaluating the variation of the pair
correlation function as a function of magnetic field.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figure
In vivo nuclear magnetic resonance imaging
A number of physiological changes have been demonstrated in bone, muscle and blood after exposure of humans and animals to microgravity. Determining mechanisms and the development of effective countermeasures for long duration space missions is an important NASA goal. The advent of tomographic nuclear magnetic resonance imaging (NMR or MRI) gives NASA a way to greatly extend early studies of this phenomena in ways not previously possible; NMR is also noninvasive and safe. NMR provides both superb anatomical images for volume assessments of individual organs and quantification of chemical/physical changes induced in the examined tissues. The feasibility of NMR as a tool for human physiological research as it is affected by microgravity is demonstrated. The animal studies employed the rear limb suspended rat as a model of mucle atrophy that results from microgravity. And bedrest of normal male subjects was used to simulate the effects of microgravity on bone and muscle
Gauge Formulation of the Spinning Black Hole in (2+1)-Dimensional Anti-de Sitter Space
We compute the group element of SO(2,2) associated with the spinning black
hole found by Ba\~nados, Teitelboim and Zanelli in (2+1)-dimensional anti-de
Sitter space-time. We show that their metric is built with SO(2,2) gauge
invariant quantities and satisfies Einstein's equations with negative
cosmological constant everywhere except at . Moreover, although the metric
is singular on the horizons, the group element is continuous and possesses a
kink there.Comment: 10 page
Signatures of superconducting gap inhomogeneities in optical properties
Scanning tunneling spectroscopy applied to the high- cuprates has
revealed significant spatial inhomogeneity on the nanoscale. Regions on the
order of a coherence length in size show variations of the magnitude of the
superconducting gap of order or more. An important unresolved question
is whether or not these variations are also present in the bulk, and how they
influence superconducting properties. As many theories and data analyses for
high- superconductivity assume spatial homogeneity of the gap magnitude,
this is a pressing question. We consider the far-infrared optical conductivity
and evaluate, within an effective medium approximation, what signatures of
spatial variations in gap magnitude are present in various optical quantities.
In addition to the case of d-wave superconductivity, relevant to the high-
cuprates, we have also considered s-wave gap symmetry in order to provide
expected signatures of inhomogeneities for superconductors in general. While
signatures of gap inhomogeneities can be strongly manifested in s-wave
superconductors, we find that the far-infrared optical conductivity in d-wave
is robust against such inhomogeneity.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figure
Symmetry Breaking in the Schr\"odinger Representation for Chern-Simons Theories
This paper discusses the phenomenon of spontaneous symmetry breaking in the
Schr\"odinger representation formulation of quantum field theory. The analysis
is presented for three-dimensional space-time abelian gauge theories with
either Maxwell, Maxwell-Chern-Simons, or pure Chern-Simons terms as the gauge
field contribution to the action, each of which leads to a different form of
mass generation for the gauge fields.Comment: 16pp, LaTeX , UCONN-94-
Open ventral hernia repair with a composite ventral patch : final results of a multicenter prospective study
Background: This study assessed clinical outcomes, including safety and recurrence, from the two-year follow-up of patients who underwent open ventral primary hernia repair with the use of the Parietex (TM) Composite Ventral Patch (PCO-VP).
Methods: A prospective single-arm, multicenter study of 126 patients undergoing open ventral hernia repair for umbilical and epigastric hernias with the PCO-VP was performed.
Results: One hundred twenty-six subjects (110 with umbilical hernia and 16 with epigastric hernia) with a mean hernia diameter of 1.8cm (0.4-4.0) were treated with PCO-VP. One hundred subjects completed the two-year study. Cumulative hernia recurrence was 3.0% (3/101; 95%CI: 0.0-6.3%) within 24months. Median Numeric Rating Scale pain scores improved from 2 [0-10] at baseline to 0 [0-3] at 1 month (P<0.001) and remained low at 24months 0 [0-6] (P<0.001). 99% (102/103) of the patients were satisfied with their repair at 24months postoperative.
Conclusions: The use of PCO-VP to repair primary umbilical and epigastric defects yielded a low recurrence rate, low postoperative and chronic pain, and high satisfaction ratings, confirming that PCO-VP is effective for small ventral hernia repair in the two-year term after implantation.
Trial registration: The study was registered publically at clinicaltrials.gov (NCT01848184 registered May 7, 2013)
Bosonic D-branes at finite temperature with an external field
Bosonic boundary states at finite temperature are constructed as solutions of
boundary conditions at for bosonic open strings with a constant gauge
field coupled to the boundary. The construction is done in the
framework of thermo field dynamics where a thermal Bogoliubov transformation
maps states and operators to finite temperature. Boundary states are given in
terms of states from the direct product space between the Fock space of the
closed string and another identical copy of it. By analogy with zero
temperature, the boundary states heve the interpretation of -brane at
finite temperature. The boundary conditions admit two different solutions. The
entropy of the closed string in a -brane state is computed and analysed. It
is interpreted as the entropy of the -brane at finite temperature.Comment: 21 pages, Latex, revised version with minor corrections and
references added, to be published in Phys. Rev.
- …