Soil moisture: Some fundamentals

A brief tutorial on soil moisture, as it applies to agriculture, is presented. Information was taken from books and papers considered freshman college level material, and is an attempt to briefly present the basic concept of soil moisture and a minimal understanding of how water interacts with soil

Searching for magnetic monopoles trapped in accelerator material at the Large Hadron Collider

If produced in high energy particle collisions at the LHC, magnetic monopoles could stop in material surrounding the interaction points. Obsolete parts of the beam pipe near the CMS interaction region, which were exposed to the products of pp and heavy ion collisions, were analysed using a SQUID-based magnetometer. The purpose of this work is to quantify the performance of the magnetometer in the context of a monopole search using a small set of samples of accelerator material ahead of the 2013 shutdown.Comment: 11 page

Neutron irradiation of Am-241 effectively produces curium

Computer study was made on the production of multicurie amounts of highly alpha-active curium 242 from americium 241 irradiation. The information available includes curium 242 yields, curium composition, irradiation data, and production techniques and safeguards

SPS tune measurements

The SPS tune measurement system allows to measure the tunes of hadrons and leptons during the multi cycle. The system consists of several front end detectors and readout electronics in a VME chassis (BOSC system [1]) and kickers for beam excitation. The report summarizes the system layout and gives measurement examples. First results of multi FFT acquisitions during lepton cycles are given

Corn storage and marketing feasibility in northern Mississippi

Master of AgribusinessDepartment of Agricultural EconomicsDaniel M. O'BrienOn-farm grain storage plays a key role in the production and distribution of corn in the United States. It can have economic impacts on a farm’s profitability and production efficiency over time. With the free market system of the United States, market fundamentals are a key component of decisions made on the farm regarding construction of grain storage facilities and how they are used in marketing decisions throughout a given production and marketing year. This analysis researches how grain storage decisions in the Northern Mississippi area are effected by corn basis differentials between the Memphis, TN river market and the Northern Alabama corn market. Corn basis differentials are considered along with annual changes in corn futures market carry in response to variations in grain market fundamentals. The profitability of constructing, maintaining, and operating on-farm grain storage is analyzed based on the local history of the local corn market basis patterns and the carry priced into the corn futures market. Through this analysis it was found that the biggest obstacle affecting the profitability of on-farm grain storage was the upfront cost of the facility. As costs of the facility were incurred, grain had to be stored for longer periods of time in order to be profitable based on history of improved basis and market carry over time. On-farm storage became profitable over a shorter storage period once the upfront costs of grain storage and handling facilities were paid based on the operating costs and market conditions within the analysis. On-farm storage can be a useful tool for a farm to increase profitability over time, beyond the scope of this analysis. This analysis proves that in the Northern Mississippi area over time, grain storage can be profitable based on improved cash basis and futures market carry. However, due to ever-changing market conditions, on-farm grain storage does not replace the need for the development of grain marketing plans in order to increase the likelihood of profitability

Interactions of Heavy Hadrons using Regge Phenomenology and the Quark Gluon String Model

The search for stable heavy exotic hadrons is a promising way to observe new physics processes at collider experiments. The discovery potential for such particles can be enhanced or suppressed by their interactions with detector material. This paper describes a model for the interactions in matter of stable hadrons containing an exotic quark of charges $\pm {1/3}e$ or $\pm {2/3}e$ using Regge phenomenology and the Quark Gluon String Model. The influence of such interactions on searches at the LHC is also discussed