Biochar influence on the development of spring wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) and acidity of soddy-podzolic soil in Western Siberia

The paper purpose was to establish the effect of applying biochar obtained from various organic wastes of agriculture (cow manure, straw), woodworking (pine sawdust) and food industry (pine nut shell), which are typical of Western Siberia, on the morphometric characteristics of plants (using spring wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) as the example) and the soddy-podzolic soil properties. The assessment of biochar influence was performed by a series of vegetation experiments using climatic chambers. As a result, it was found that the introduction of all the noted biochar types into the soil layer leads to a significant (p < 0.05) increase in the morphometric characteristics of spring wheat. For example, when applying the straw biochar to the soil, it results in growing the plant height to the node by 19%, while the number of leaves increased by 8% compared to the control variant. The introduction of biochar from manure leads to the increased length of the spring wheat root by 35%. Moreover, straw and manure biochars contribute to the reduction of soil acidity (increase in pH values from 7.1 to 7.4 and 7.8, respectively). The results of the comprehensive analysis indicate that the agronomic advantages of application of biochars obtained from wheat straw and cattle manure are better compared to biochars from pine sawdust and pine nut shells, which is due to higher concentration of nutrients and substances with alkaline reaction (carbonates and oxides) in the former. The results obtained are useful from the point of view of assessing the environmental risks when applying biochar ameliorants in soils typical of the boreal bioclimatic zone. Subsequent experiments, including studies of the joint application of biochars and fertilizers to the soil, will make it possible to develop recommendations for applying the thermal conversion technology for recycling the regional organic waste into ameliorants that improve soil quality and increase its fertility

Search for invisible decays of sub-GeV dark photons in missing-energy events at the CERN SPS

We report on a direct search for sub-GeV dark photons (A') which might be produced in the reaction e^- Z \to e^- Z A' via kinetic mixing with photons by 100 GeV electrons incident on an active target in the NA64 experiment at the CERN SPS. The A's would decay invisibly into dark matter particles resulting in events with large missing energy. No evidence for such decays was found with 2.75\cdot 10^{9} electrons on target. We set new limits on the \gamma-A' mixing strength and exclude the invisible A' with a mass < 100 MeV as an explanation of the muon g_\mu-2 anomaly.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures; Typos corrected, references adde

Fractals Model of Technology Efficiencies Probabilities for Flexible Use in Combat Units

Recent uncertain war challenges and innovative war games are strongly determined with combat and non-combat defense technologies. From the point of view of the missions tasks, these contents are usually composed of a combination of several particular capabilities such as the ability to defeat the enemy, capability to stabilize an operation, capability to lead peace keeping operations, etc. (Milinović et al., 2013). Whether a unit has relevancies as a combat power is obvious from the capability first expected, which includes organization and technology system capabilities to reliably defeat enemy forces to the level of disintegration and destruction. This capability is also a guaranty that the enemy’s action will be deterred, which is a presupposition for the successful execution of the stabilization role that in addition to other tasks, contains the role of preventing the spreading and development of war. Also, preventive missions include actions of peace keeping in the area of responsibilities on the risk level proportional to the employed combat power and its efficiency that a unit exposes. This indicates that tasks in missions of new military units could have opposite requirements, which reflects on the technology performances a unit needs to be equipped with. Combat power and efficiency of a unit are guaranties to stop the enemy and to maintain peace by the represented and exposed military power based on trained and effective technology with good performances