THE INFLUENCE OF PROTECTING METHOD ON PHYSIOLOGICAL INDICES AT CAPSICUM GROWN ON SANDY SOILS

Research conducted in the field of plant physiology aimed at monitoring physiological reactions under the influence of climatic and agrotechnical factors. Agrotechnical factors can lead in order to increase photosynthetic efficiency, which influence qualitative and quantitative the production of pepper grown on sandy soils. The methods used to protect contributed to achieving a different microclimate, with positive impact both on plant metabolism and the earliness and high production compared to control plants unprotected. The amount of water in the leaves recorded values between 84% at plants protected with mulch and 88% at plants protected with Agryl. The dried substance hasregistered values between 12% at plants protected with Agryl and 16% at plants protected with mulch. At plants protected with Agrylis ensuredan aeration and circulation of air currents, maintaining a maximum foliar humidity. The rate of photosynthesis in April registered high values at the protected plants, compared with the unprotected plants. Foliar hydration registered high values due to rainfalls, which ensured a good supply of water at this stage of vegetation. Leaf transpiration rate recorded high values in May at 12 o'clock, ranging from 7,41 to 11,84 mmol H2O/m2/s, pepper being a plant that consumes a large amount of water

Loss aversion under prospect theory: A parameter-free measurement

A growing body of qualitative evidence shows that loss aversion, a phenomenon formalized in prospect theory, can explain a variety of field and experimental data. Quantifications of loss aversion are, however, hindered by the absence of a general preference-based method to elicit the utility for gains and losses simultaneously. This paper proposes such a method and uses it to measure loss aversion in an experimental study without making any parametric assumptions. Thus, it is the first to obtain a parameter-free elicitation of prospect theory's utility function on the whole domain. Our method also provides an efficient way to elicit utility midpoints, which are important in axiomatizations of utility. Several definitions of loss aversion have been put forward in the literature. According to most definitions we find strong evidence of loss aversion, at both the aggregate and the individual level. The degree of loss aversion varies with the definition used, which underlines the need for a commonly accepted definition of loss aversion

Mining the ESO WFI and INT WFC archives for known Near Earth Asteroids. Mega-Precovery software

The ESO/MPG WFI and the INT WFC wide field archives comprising 330,000 images were mined to search for serendipitous encounters of known Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) and Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs). A total of 152 asteroids (44 PHAs and 108 other NEAs) were identified using the PRECOVERY software, their astrometry being measured on 761 images and sent to the Minor Planet Centre. Both recoveries and precoveries were reported, including prolonged orbital arcs for 18 precovered objects and 10 recoveries. We analyze all new opposition data by comparing the orbits fitted before and after including our contributions. We conclude the paper presenting Mega-Precovery, a new online service focused on data mining of many instrument archives simultaneously for one or a few given asteroids. A total of 28 instrument archives have been made available for mining using this tool, adding together about 2.5 million images forming the Mega-Archive.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astronomische Nachrichten (Sep 2012

Finding the Needle in a Haystack: Who are the Most Central Authors Within a Domain?

The speed at which new scientific papers are published has increased dramatically, while the process of tracking the most recent publications having a high impact has become more and more cumbersome. In order to support learners and researchers in retrieving relevant articles and identifying the most central researchers within a domain, we propose a novel 2-mode multilayered graph derived from Cohesion Network Analysis (CNA). The resulting extended CNA graph integrates both authors and papers, as well as three principal link types: coauthorship, co-citation, and semantic similarity among the contents of the papers. Our rankings do not rely on the number of published documents, but on their global impact based on links between authors, citations, and semantic relatedness to similar articles. As a preliminary validation, we have built a network based on the 2013 LAK dataset in order to reveal the most central authors within the emerging Learning Analytics domain.This study is part of the RAGE project. The RAGE project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 644187. This publication reflects only the author's view. The European Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains

REACTION OF SUNFLOWER GENOTYPES TO THERMAL STRESS CONDITIONS IN THE SANDY SOILS AREA OF SOUTHERN OLTENIA

The researches carried out during 2016-2017 at RDCSPS Dabuleni aimed at the behavior of biological sunflower material, created at NARDI Fundulea, under conditions of thermal water stress from the sandy soils in southern Oltenia. The results obtained at 109 sunflower genotypes underline the favorability of Romania's southern area for sunflower culture. It showed significantly distinct positive correlation between the rate of  photosynthesis in the plant, and photosynthetic active radiation (r = 0.282 **) as well as between foliar sweating rate and leaf surface temperature (0.412 **). The production was differentiated according to the genotype and the climatic conditions of the agricultural year, ranging from 2299-5180 kg / ha, with an average of 4307 kg / ha

PRODUCTION STATUS OF BIOMASS PELLETS – REVIEW

The use of biomass has become extremely important for the production of clean energy from renewable sources. This is due to the continuously increased need for energy, to the possible depletion of conventional fossil fuels in the near future, and also to the regulations of European Union on the need to reduce significantly the emissions of greenhouse gases. This paper presents a synthesis on the raw materials used for pellets production, some of the important characteristics of pellets (density, ash content and heating power), and also data on the status of pellets production and consumption in different countries. Latest reported data show that the European Union is the biggest wood pellets producer globally, with a production of 13.5 million tonnes in 2014. Romania’s pellets production in 2014 was of 740000 tonnes, and estimations are that in 2020 it will exceed 1.2 million tonnes

Classification of Russian textbooks by grade level and topic using ReaderBench

This article analyzes automated methods for classifying Russian-language textbooks in two dimensions, and precisely on the topic of the text and its complexity, reflected by the corresponding school level (class

BEHAVIOR OF SOME POTATO VARIETIES UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF THE THERMO-HYDRIC STRESS FACTORS SPECIFIC TO THE SANDY SOILS AREA

During the vegetation period, was analyzed the diurnal and seasonal variation of the physiological processes (the rate of photosynthesis and foliar transpiration) at 4 varieties and 2 lines of potato grown on sandy soils. The rate of photosynthesis showed a diurnal variation, being influenced by the active radiation in photosynthesis and air and soil humidity, as well as by the studied varieties and lines. In the tuber growth phase, the average of photosynthesis oscillated between 12,49μmol CO2/m2/s at the Castrum variety and 21,03 μmol CO2/m2/s at the L 15-1677/31. At this stage of vegetation, the L 15 line  was net detached of the other varieties, having a maximum photosynthesis which has positively influenced the production of tubers, recorded at 45 days after the emergence of plants (42,4 tons/ha). The high air temperature of 37,3 °C and the relative air humidity below 30% increased the evaporation of water through foliar transpiration at all varieties and lines studied. High values at the transpiration rate were recorded at 12-15 o'clock, when the action of stress factors was maximal, at the Sarmis variety (8,35mmol H2O/m2/s), and at line L 15-1677/31 (8,74 mmol H2O/m2/s)

Influenţa perioadei de păstrare asupra variaţiei conţinutului de fenoli la cireşe

The paper deals with bio-compounds preservation in soft fruits during storage in order to allow their consumption in off-season. The work addresses sweet cherries, the most popular consumed fruits in countries across the temperate regions like Romania, which the consumer can enjoy only in May-July period. Consequently, the aim of the study was to evaluate the influence of storage conditions on the yield of biologically active compounds. In this respect, the content of total phenols and flavonoids, and free radical scavenging activity have been analyzed in order to enable consumers to choose the most efficient storage method. The best characteristics cultivar offering the potential prospects for growers is also highlighted. Sweet cherries provided by ‘New Star’, ‘Celeste’ and ‘Giant Red’ cultivars were stored for 7 days in refrigerated and freezing conditionsand then subjected to the extraction method with hydrochloric acid in methanol. Using Folin-Ciocâlteu method total phenols content of the extracts was determined. The flavonoid content was identified using an adapted method based on rutin as reference sample. The free radical scavenging activity(EC50)of the extracts was determined using stabile 2,2 diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl radical. The results showed that high phenols and flavonoids contents are in ‘N Star’ cultivar (0.144 g in fresh fruits and 0.129 g refrigerated ones) while the free radical scavenging activity is better conserved in frozen fruits from ‘Celeste’ cultivar (5.94 mg/mL)