496 research outputs found
Maize seed orientation in the substrate and its influences on germination, seedling structure, and transmission of Fusarium moniliforme
A research paper on maize seed orientation.The percentage of seedlings emerging during the first 4 days after sowing and the mesocotyl length after 7 days in sand at 25°C was strongly influenced by the orientation of the seed in the seedbed. Maize seeds emerged faster when oriented vertically with the pedicel end facing down (VD) or horizontally with the embryal side facing up (HU). The mesocotyl portion of the seedling was shorter (t 1mm) when sown at HU and VD, providing a fast and easy emergence to the seedling. It was much longer (20mm) when the seed was oriented horizontally with the embryal side facing down (HD) and vertically with the pedicel end facing up (VU). We concluded that the length of the mesocotyl portion of the seedling varies with the orientation of the seed in the substrate at the same depth.
The seeds sown in the orientation HU and VU disclosed a higher germination of 95 percent and 88 percent respectively, compared to the seeds sown in the orientation HD and VD which had 68 percent and 53 percent germination respectively. Seed to seedling transmission of Fusarium moniliforme was recorded at a ratio of 1:1 in the untreated seeds, and infection of the fungus was found in the third leaf lamina and other sections of 10 day old seedlings.
This demonstrates for the first time the systemic development of F. moniliforme above the crown portion of 10 day old seedlings. Treatment with Thiram contact fungicide improves the germination of highly infected seeds and also reduces the seed to seedling transmission of F. moniliforme. The efficiency of this seed treatment depended on the orientation of the seeds in the seedbed
Facet ridge end points in crystal shapes
Equilibrium crystal shapes (ECS) near facet ridge end points (FRE) are
generically complex. We study the body-centered solid-on-solid model on a
square lattice with an enhanced uniaxial interaction range to test the
stability of the so-called stochastic FRE point where the model maps exactly
onto one dimensional Kardar-Parisi-Zhang type growth and the local ECS is
simple. The latter is unstable. The generic ECS contains first-order ridges
extending into the rounded part of the ECS, where two rough orientations
coexist and first-order faceted to rough boundaries terminating in
Pokrovsky-Talapov type end points.Comment: Contains 4 pages, 5 eps figures. Uses RevTe
Entropy production and fluctuation relations for a KPZ interface
We study entropy production and fluctuation relations in the restricted
solid-on-solid growth model, which is a microscopic realization of the KPZ
equation. Solving the one dimensional model exactly on a particular line of the
phase diagram we demonstrate that entropy production quantifies the distance
from equilibrium. Moreover, as an example of a physically relevant current
different from the entropy, we study the symmetry of the large deviation
function associated with the interface height. In a special case of a system of
length L=4 we find that the probability distribution of the variation of height
has a symmetric large deviation function, displaying a symmetry different from
the Gallavotti-Cohen symmetry.Comment: 21 pages, 5 figure
Chiral phase properties of finite size quark droplets in the Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model
Chiral phase properties of finite size hadronic systems are investigated
within the Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model. Finite size effects are taken into
account by making use of the multiple reflection expansion. We find that, for
droplets with relatively small baryon numbers, chiral symmetry restoration is
enhanced by the finite size effects. However the radius of the stable droplet
does not change much, as compared to that without the multiple reflection
expansion.Comment: RevTex4, 9 pages, 6 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev.
Temperature Dependence of Facet Ridges in Crystal Surfaces
The equilibrium crystal shape of a body-centered solid-on-solid (BCSOS) model
on a honeycomb lattice is studied numerically. We focus on the facet ridge
endpoints (FRE). These points are equivalent to one dimensional KPZ-type growth
in the exactly soluble square lattice BCSOS model. In our more general context
the transfer matrix is not stochastic at the FRE points, and a more complex
structure develops. We observe ridge lines sticking into the rough phase where
thesurface orientation jumps inside the rounded part of the crystal. Moreover,
the rough-to-faceted edges become first-order with a jump in surface
orientation, between the FRE point and Pokrovsky-Talapov (PT) type critical
endpoints. The latter display anisotropic scaling with exponent instead
of familiar PT value .Comment: 12 pages, 19 figure
How do women prepare for pregnancy? Preconception experiences of women attending antenatal services and views of health professionals
Copyright: © 2014 Stephenson et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Main objective - To determine the extent to which women plan and prepare for pregnancy.
Methods - Cross-sectional questionnaire survey of pregnant women attending three maternity services in London about knowledge and uptake of preconception care; including a robust measure of pregnancy planning, and phone interviews with a range of health care professionals.
Main results - We recruited 1173/1288 (90%) women, median age of 32 years. 73% had clearly planned their pregnancy, 24% were ambivalent and only 3% of pregnancies were unplanned. 51% of all women and 63% of those with a planned pregnancy took folic acid before pregnancy. 21% of all women reported smoking and 61% reported drinking alcohol in the 3 months before pregnancy; 48% of smokers and 41% of drinkers reduced or stopped before pregnancy. The 51% of all women who reported advice from a health professional before becoming pregnant were more likely to adopt healthier behaviours before pregnancy [adjusted odds ratios for greatest health professional input compared with none were 2.34 (95% confidence interval 1.54–3.54) for taking folic acid and 2.18 (95% CI 1.42–3.36) for adopting a healthier diet before pregnancy]. Interviews with 20 health professionals indicated low awareness of preconception health issues, missed opportunities and confusion about responsibility for delivery of preconception care.
Significance of the findings - Despite a high level of pregnancy planning, awareness of preconception health among women and health professionals is low, and responsibility for providing preconception care is unclear. However, many women are motivated to adopt healthier behaviours in the preconception period, as indicated by halving of reported smoking rates in this study. The link between health professional input and healthy behaviour change before pregnancy is a new finding that should invigorate strategies to improve awareness and uptake of pre-pregnancy health care, and bring wider benefits for public health.Department of Healt
Universality class of the restricted solid-on-solid model with hopping
We study the restricted solid-on-solid (RSOS) model with finite hopping
distance , using both analytical and numerical methods. Analytically, we
use the hard-core bosonic field theory developed by the authors [Phys. Rev. E
{\bf 62}, 7642 (2000)] and derive the Villain-Lai-Das Sarma (VLD) equation for
the case which corresponds to the conserved RSOS (CRSOS) model
and the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) equation for all finite values of .
Consequently, we find that the CRSOS model belongs to the VLD universality
class and the RSOS models with any finite hopping distance belong to the KPZ
universality class. There is no phase transition at a certain finite hopping
distance contrary to the previous result. We confirm the analytic results using
the Monte Carlo simulations for several values of the finite hopping distance.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figure
Entanglement dynamics of three-qubit states in noisy channels
We study entanglement dynamics of the three-qubit system which is initially
prepared in pure Greenberger-Horne- Zeilinger (GHZ) or W state and transmitted
through one of the Pauli channels or the
depolarizing channel. With the help of the lower bound for three-qubit
concurrence we show that the W state preserves more entanglement than the GHZ
state in transmission through the Pauli channel . For the Pauli
channels and the depolarizing channel, however, the
entanglement of the GHZ state is more resistant against decoherence than the
W-type entanglement. We also briefly discuss how the accuracy of the lower
bound approximation depends on the rank of the density matrix under
consideration.Comment: 2 figures, 32 reference
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