1,594 research outputs found
Water use and yields of no-till managed dryland grasspea and yellow pea under different planting configurations
Grasspea (GP) (Lathyrus sativus) is a drought-tolerant legume that can be grown for forage and grain. It has potential value to be used as a nitrogen-fixing crop in dryland rotations with non-legume grain crops. However, the agronomy of GP for the Central Great Plains region have not been investigated. The objective of this research was to compare the grain and biomass yield, as well as N accumulation of GP relative to field pea (FP) in two planting configurations. We carried out a 3-year field experiment to compare dryland GP with Admiral yellow field pea (Pisum sativum) in two configurations: (1) a wide row spacing with lower population (WL) with 76-cm rows with 75 kg seeds planted per ha, and (2) a narrower row spacing with a higher population (NH) with 19-cm rows with 136 kg seeds planted per ha. We measured the biomass, grain yield, N content, and soil water use. Our results show that the NH treatment out-yielded the WL treatment in both pea species. The GP had higher yield than FP on the lowest yielding year, while FP yielded better when overall yields were higher. Biomass production was also higher for the NH configuration, and GP was a higher biomass producer than FP over the 3-year study. The GP had higher N concentration in shoots and seed compared to FP, indicating higher N-fixing capacity. The FP matured faster than GP, and had marginally higher grain water use efficiency than GP. Our results show that GP is a viable alternative legume for the Central Great Plains, with comparable yields in low precipitation years. However, the longer growing season required by GP to mature has water use implications in years with reduced water availability in mid to late summer
Protocols for entanglement transformations of bipartite pure states
We present a general theoretical framework for both deterministic and
probabilistic entanglement transformations of bipartite pure states achieved
via local operations and classical communication. This framework unifies and
greatly simplifies previous works. A necessary condition for ``pure
contraction'' transformations is given. Finally, constructive protocols to
achieve both probabilistic and deterministic entanglement transformations are
presented.Comment: 7 pages, no figures. Version slightly modified on Physical Review A
reques
A model-theoretic interpretation of environmentally-induced superselection
Environmentally-induced superselection or "einselection" has been proposed as
an observer-independent mechanism by which apparently classical systems
"emerge" from physical interactions between degrees of freedom described
completely quantum-mechanically. It is shown that einselection can only
generate classical systems if the "environment" is assumed \textit{a priori} to
be classical; einselection therefore does not provide an observer-independent
mechanism by which classicality can emerge from quantum dynamics. Einselection
is then reformulated in terms of positive operator-valued measures (POVMs)
acting on a global quantum state. It is shown that this re-formulation enables
a natural interpretation of apparently-classical systems as virtual machines
that requires no assumptions beyond those of classical computer science.Comment: 15 pages, 1 figure; minor correction
Prediction Validation of Two Glycaemic Control Models in Critical Care
Invited paperMetabolic models can substantially improve control of hyperglycaemia in critically ill patients. Control efficacy depends on how accurately a model-based system is able to predict future blood
glucose (BG) concentrations after a glycaemic control intervention. This research compares two metabolic models in terms of their predictive power. 30 minutes to 10 hour forward predictions
are made using the Glucosafe model (GS) and a clinically tested model (CC) from Christchurch in a retrospective study of 11 hyperglycemic patients, 6 from New Zealand and 5 from Denmark.
Median and ranges of prediction errors are similar for predictions up to 360 minutes. Both models make better predictions on the Danish patients. At long prediction times of more than 5 hours,
GS predictions tend to be more accurate in the cohort from New Zealand whereas the CC model tends to predict better in the cohort from Denmark. However, differences in root mean square (RMS) of prediction errors are not greater than 4–5% in both cohorts. For both models,
outlying prediction errors are dominated by single patients, particularly type 1 diabetic patients. GS predicted BG values are generally higher compared to CC predicted values. As expected, the
RMS prediction error increases with prediction interval for both models and cohorts. Results show the potential of both models for use in prospective clinical trials with longer than 120 min sampling intervals, though predictive power is probably related to the type of cohort in terms of admission type, degree of illness and glycaemic stability
Comparison of Identification Methods of a Time-varying Insulin Sensitivity Parameter in a Simulation Model of Glucose Metabolism in the Critically Ill
6-pages (invited)Models of glucose metabolism can help to simulate and predict the blood glucose
response in hyperglycaemic, critically ill patients. Model prediction performance depends on a su ciently accurate estimation of the patient's time-varying insulin sensitivity. The work presents three least squares approaches, the integral method and a Bayesian method that have been compared by prediction accuracy on an absolute and on a relative scale. Clinical data yields 1491 blood glucose predictions based on 10 critically ill patients were processed. The
Bayesian approach proved to be best with small errors (9:7% absolute percent error, 14:7 root mean square of logarithmic error for prediction times 2h), and fewer and smaller outliers compared to the other methods. Computationally, the Bayesian method took 1.5 times longer per prediction compared to the fastest method. It can be concluded that a Bayesian parameter estimation gives safe and e ective results for the insulin sensitivity estimation for this model
Epidemiology and integrated control of Potato Late Blight in Europe
Phytophthora infestans, the causal agent of late blight, is a major threat to potato production in northwestern Europe. Before 1980, the worldwide population of P. infestans outside Mexico appeared to be asexual and to consist of a single clonal lineage of A1 mating type characterized by a single genotype. It is widely believed that new strains migrated into Europe in 1976 and that this led to subsequent population changes including the introduction of the A2 mating type. The population characteristics of recently collected isolates in NW Europe show a diverse population including both mating types, sexual reproduction and oospores, although differences are observed between regions. Although it is difficult to find direct evidence that new strains are more aggressive, there are several indications from experiments and field epidemics that the aggressiveness of P. infestans has increased in the past 20 years. The relative importance of the different primary inoculum sources and specific measures for reducing their role, such as covering dumps with plastic and preventing seed tubers from becoming infected, is described for the different regions. In NW Europe, varieties with greater resistance tend not to be grown on a large scale. From the grower’s perspective, the savings in fungicide input that can be achieved with these varieties are not compensated by the higher (perceived) risk of blight. Fungicides play a crucial role in the integrated control of late blight. The spray strategies in NW Europe and a table of the specific attributes of the most important fungicides in Europe are presented. The development and use of decision support systems (DSSs) in NW Europe are described. In The Netherlands, it is estimated that almost 40% of potato growers use recommendations based on commercially available DSS. In the Nordic countries, a new DSS concept with a fixed 7-day spray interval and a variable dose rate is being tested. In the UK, commercially available DSSs are used for c. 8% of the area. The validity of Smith Periods for the new population of P. infestans in the UK is currently being evaluated
Enriquecimiento cognoscitivo: el hombre visto como sistema abierto
Texto sobre las aportaciones y los beneficios de la perspectiva psicológica del enriquecimiento cognoscitivo para la intervención educativa y terapéutica con personas que demuestran desempeño retardado y otros tipos de desviación emocional o conductual. Se incluye también texto sobre el Primer Coloquio Internacional de Psicología Comunitaria y la Décima Semana de Psicología en el ITESO
Faithful remote state preparation using finite classical bits and a non-maximally entangled state
We present many ensembles of states that can be remotely prepared by using
minimum classical bits from Alice to Bob and their previously shared entangled
state and prove that we have found all the ensembles in two-dimensional case.
Furthermore we show that any pure quantum state can be remotely and faithfully
prepared by using finite classical bits from Alice to Bob and their previously
shared nonmaximally entangled state though no faithful quantum teleportation
protocols can be achieved by using a nonmaximally entangled state.Comment: 6 page
Constrained Gauge Fields from Spontaneous Lorentz Violation
Spontaneous Lorentz violation realized through a nonlinear vector field
constraint of the type ( is the proposed scale for
Lorentz violation) is shown to generate massless vector Goldstone bosons,
gauging the starting global internal symmetries in arbitrary relativistically
invariant theories. The gauge invariance appears in essence as a necessary
condition for these bosons not to be superfluously restricted in degrees of
freedom, apart from the constraint due to which the true vacuum in a theory is
chosen by the Lorentz violation. In the Abelian symmetry case the only possible
theory proves to be QED with a massless vector Goldstone boson naturally
associated with the photon, while the non-Abelian symmetry case results in a
conventional Yang-Mills theory. These theories, both Abelian and non-Abelian,
look essentially nonlinear and contain particular Lorentz (and ) violating
couplings when expressed in terms of the pure Goldstone vector modes. However,
they do not lead to physical Lorentz violation due to the simultaneously
generated gauge invariance.Comment: 15 pages, minor corrections, version to be published in Nucl. Phys.
Constant magnetic field in closed string theory: an exactly solvable model
We consider a simple model describing a closed bosonic string in a constant
magnetic field. Exact conformal invariance demands also the presence of a
non-trivial metric and antisymmetric tensor (induced by the magnetic field).
The model is invariant under target space duality in a compact Kaluza-Klein
direction introduced to couple the magnetic field. Like open string theory in a
constant gauge field, or closed string theory on a torus, this model can be
straightforwardly quantized and solved with its spectrum of states and
partition function explicitly computed. Above some critical value of the
magnetic field an infinite number of states become tachyonic, suggesting a
presence of phase transition. We also construct heterotic string
generalisations of this bosonic model in which the constant magnetic field is
embedded either in the Kaluza-Klein or internal gauge group sector.Comment: 39 pages, harvmac (some corrections and addenda; version to appear in
Nuclear Physics
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