The impact of seeding date on the yield and quality of oats

Non-Peer ReviewedMost of the research conducted on the optimum seeding date of oats has been done outside of western Canada. The objective of this research is measure the effect of planting dates and cultivars on the yield and quality of oats. Four seeding dates, early May, Mid May, early June, and mid June and four cultivars, AC Medallion, AC Juniper, CDC Boyer and CDC Pacer were used. Delayed seeding resulted in reduced yield and quality of oats. Seeding dates had a larger effect on yield and quality than cultivars except when a high level of crown rust was present in the field. Early and mid May planting dates tend to provide farmers with the least amount of risk when growing oats

Impact of tillage system, preceding crops, and P fertilizer on economic performance of flax production

Non-Peer ReviewedConservation farming is a system approach that considers all factors that affect production. Reduced tillage is one of the methods of conservation farming and is becoming increasingly popular on the prairie. This will impact directly on nutrient availability and on fertilizer and other chemical management decisions. Phosphorus (P) supply, and its availability in early stages of plant growth, is critical to the determination of optimum crop yield. Producers frequently avoid P application in flax and increase the P supply in the preceding crops since flax is very sensitive to seed-placed applications of monoammonium phosphate. Along with supplying residual P, a preceding crop such as wheat and canola may also have different impacts on yield and performance of flax depending upon its association with mycorrhizae. Since flax is a highly mycorrhizal crop, it is possible that mycorrhizal associations could be responsible for part of the positive response that flax shows in zero-till systems and the limited P response observed in recent studies. If so then P fertility requirements in flax could be greatly affected by the tillage system and by whether the preceding crop was mycorrhizal or not. Phosphorus fertilization could possibly be reduced or eliminated in flax grown in zero-till following a mycorrhizal crop and optimized in flax grown under conventional tillage management. By more clearly defining the P requirements of flax, canola and wheat grown under different management systems, it is possible to reduce inputs while maintaining or improving crop yield and quality. While many research studies have evaluated the economic impact of tillage systems on N fertility requirements, there has been very limited information available on the economic impact of tillage management and P phytoavailability or on the impact of the tillage system and past phosphorus fertilizer management on phosphorus response of crops. The objective of this study is to evaluate the economic impact of flax on tillage system, P fertilizer application, preceding crop, and level of P fertilizer applied in preceding crop

Calculation of AGARD Wing 445.6 Flutter Using Navier-Stokes Aerodynamics

An unsteady, 3D, implicit upwind Euler/Navier-Stokes algorithm is here used to compute the flutter characteristics of Wing 445.6, the AGARD standard aeroelastic configuration for dynamic response, with a view to the discrepancy between Euler characteristics and experimental data. Attention is given to effects of fluid viscosity, structural damping, and number of structural model nodes. The flutter characteristics of the wing are determined using these unsteady generalized aerodynamic forces in a traditional V-g analysis. The V-g analysis indicates that fluid viscosity has a significant effect on the supersonic flutter boundary for this wing

Sources and contributions of wood smoke during winter in London: Assessing local and regional influences

Determining the contribution of wood smoke to air pollution in large cities such as London is becoming increasingly important due to the changing nature of domestic heating in urban areas. During winter, biomass burning emissions have been identified as a major cause of exceedances of European air quality limits. The aim of this work was to quantify the contribution of biomass burning in London to concentrations of PM2:5 and determine whether local emissions or regional contributions were the main source of biomass smoke. To achieve this, a number of biomass burning chemical tracers were analysed at a site within central London and two sites in surrounding rural areas. Concentrations of levoglucosan, elemental carbon (EC), organic carbon (OC) and KC were generally well correlated across the three sites. At all the sites, biomass burning was found to be a source of OC and EC, with the largest contribution of EC from traffic emissions, while for OC the dominant fraction included contributions from secondary organic aerosols, primary biogenic and cooking sources. Source apportionment of the EC and OC was found to give reasonable estimation of the total carbon from non-fossil and fossil fuel sources based upon comparison with estimates derived from 14C analysis. Aethalometer-derived black carbon data were also apportioned into the contributions frombiomass burning and traffic and showed trends similar to those observed for EC. Mean wood smoke mass at the sites was estimated to range from 0.78 to 1.0 μgm-3 during the campaign in January–February 2012. Measurements on a 160m tower in London suggested a similar ratio of brown to black carbon (reflecting wood burning and traffic respectively) in regional and London air. Peaks in the levoglucosan and KC concentrations were observed to coincide with low ambient temperature, consistent with domestic heating as a major contributing local source in London. Overall, the source of biomass smoke in London was concluded to be a background regional source overlaid by contributions from local domestic burning emissions. This could have implications when considering future emission control strategies during winter and may be the focus of future work in order to better determine the contributing local sources

On the speed of constraint propagation and the time complexity of arc consistency testing

Establishing arc consistency on two relational structures is one of the most popular heuristics for the constraint satisfaction problem. We aim at determining the time complexity of arc consistency testing. The input structures $G$ and $H$ can be supposed to be connected colored graphs, as the general problem reduces to this particular case. We first observe the upper bound $O(e(G)v(H)+v(G)e(H))$, which implies the bound $O(e(G)e(H))$ in terms of the number of edges and the bound $O((v(G)+v(H))^3)$ in terms of the number of vertices. We then show that both bounds are tight up to a constant factor as long as an arc consistency algorithm is based on constraint propagation (like any algorithm currently known). Our argument for the lower bounds is based on examples of slow constraint propagation. We measure the speed of constraint propagation observed on a pair $G,H$ by the size of a proof, in a natural combinatorial proof system, that Spoiler wins the existential 2-pebble game on $G,H$. The proof size is bounded from below by the game length $D(G,H)$, and a crucial ingredient of our analysis is the existence of $G,H$ with $D(G,H)=\Omega(v(G)v(H))$. We find one such example among old benchmark instances for the arc consistency problem and also suggest a new, different construction.Comment: 19 pages, 5 figure

Heavy mass expansion, light-by-light scattering and the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon

Contributions from light-by-light scattering to (g_\mu-2)/2, the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon, are mediated by the exchange of charged fermions or scalar bosons. Assuming large masses M for the virtual particles and employing the technique of large mass expansion, analytical results are obtained for virtual fermions and scalars in the form of a series in (m_\mu /M)^2. This series is well convergent even for the case M=m_\mu. For virtual fermions, the expansion confirms published analytical formulae. For virtual scalars, the result can be used to evaluate the contribution from charged pions. In this case our result confirms already available numerical evaluations, however, it is significantly more precise.Comment: revtex4, eps figure

Measurement of the partial widths of the Z into up- and down-type quarks

Using the entire OPAL LEP1 on-peak Z hadronic decay sample, Z -> qbarq gamma decays were selected by tagging hadronic final states with isolated photon candidates in the electromagnetic calorimeter. Combining the measured rates of Z -> qbarq gamma decays with the total rate of hadronic Z decays permits the simultaneous determination of the widths of the Z into up- and down-type quarks. The values obtained, with total errors, were Gamma u = 300 ^{+19}_{-18} MeV and Gamma d = 381 ^{+12}_{-12} MeV. The results are in good agreement with the Standard Model expectation.Comment: 22 pages, 5 figures, Submitted to Phys. Letts.

Measurement of the Strong Coupling alpha s from Four-Jet Observables in e+e- Annihilation

Data from e+e- annihilation into hadrons at centre-of-mass energies between 91 GeV and 209 GeV collected with the OPAL detector at LEP, are used to study the four-jet rate as a function of the Durham algorithm resolution parameter ycut. The four-jet rate is compared to next-to-leading order calculations that include the resummation of large logarithms. The strong coupling measured from the four-jet rate is alphas(Mz0)= 0.1182+-0.0003(stat.)+-0.0015(exp.)+-0.0011(had.)+-0.0012(scale)+-0.0013(mass) in agreement with the world average. Next-to-leading order fits to the D-parameter and thrust minor event-shape observables are also performed for the first time. We find consistent results, but with significantly larger theoretical uncertainties.Comment: 25 pages, 15 figures, Submitted to Euro. Phys. J.

A measurement of the tau mass and the first CPT test with tau leptons

We measure the mass of the tau lepton to be 1775.1+-1.6(stat)+-1.0(syst.) MeV using tau pairs from Z0 decays. To test CPT invariance we compare the masses of the positively and negatively charged tau leptons. The relative mass difference is found to be smaller than 3.0 10^-3 at the 90% confidence level.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, Submitted to Phys. Letts.

Measurement of Rb in e+e- Collisions at 182 - 209 GeV

Measurements of Rb, the ratio of the bbbar cross-section to the qqbar cross- section in e+e- collisions, are presented. The data were collected by the OPAL experiment at LEP at centre-of-mass energies between 182 GeV and 209 GeV. Lepton, lifetime and event shape information is used to tag events containing b quarks with high efficiency. The data are compatible with the Standard Model expectation. The mean ratio of the eight measurements reported here to the Standard Model prediction is 1.055+-0.031+-0.037, where the first error is statistical and the second systematic.Comment: 21 pages, 5 figures, Submitted to Phys. Letts