General procedure to initialize the cyclic soil water balance by the Thornthwaite and Mather method

The original Thornthwaite and Mather method, proposed in 1955 to calculate a climatic monthly cyclic soil water balance, is frequently used as an iterative procedure due to its low input requirements and coherent estimates of water balance components. Using long term data sets to establish a characteristic water balance of a location, the initial soil water storage is generally assumed to be at field capacity at the end of the last month of the wet season, unless the climate is (semi-) arid when the soil water storage is lower than the soil water holding capacity. To close the water balance, several iterations might be necessary, which can be troublesome in many situations. For (semi-) arid climates with one dry season, Mendon a derived in 1958 an equation to quantify the soil water storage monthly at the end of the last month of the wet season, which avoids iteration procedures and closes the balance in one calculation. The cyclic daily water balance application is needed to obtain more accurate water balance output estimates. In this note, an equation to express the water storage for the case of the occurrence of more than one dry season per year is presented as a generalization of Mendon a's equation, also avoiding iteration procedures

A Simple, Quick, and Precise Procedure for the Determination of Water in Organic Solvents

A procedure for the UV/VIS-spectroscopic determination of water by the use of a solvatochromic pyridiniumphenolate betaine is given. The water content of organic solvents is calculated by a two parameter equation from λmax of the dye. A typical, detection limit is of the order of 1 mg in 1 ml solvent for routine spectrometers. The parameters for the determination of water are given for a number of commonly used solvents

Glucocorticoids delivered by inorganic‐organic hybrid nanoparticles mitigate acute graft‐versus‐host disease and sustain graft‐versus‐leukemia activity

Glucocorticoids (GCs) are widely used to treat acute graft‐versus‐host disease (aGvHD) due to their immunosuppressive activity, but they also reduce the beneficial graft‐versus‐leukemia (GvL) effect of the allogeneic T cells contained in the graft. Here, we tested whether aGvHD therapy could be improved by delivering GCs with the help of inorganic–organic hybrid nanoparticles (IOH‐NPs) that preferentially target myeloid cells. IOH‐NPs containing the GC betamethasone (BMP‐NPs) efficiently reduced morbidity, mortality, and tissue damage in a totally MHC mismatched mouse model of aGvHD. Therapeutic activity was lost in mice lacking the GC receptor (GR) in myeloid cells, confirming the cell type specificity of our approach. BMP‐NPs had no relevant systemic activity but suppressed cytokine and chemokine gene expression locally in the small intestine, which presumably explains their mode of action. Most importantly, BMP‐NPs delayed the development of an adoptively transferred B cell lymphoma better than the free drug, although the overall incidence was unaffected. Our findings thus suggest that employing IOH‐NPs could diminish the risk of relapse associated with GC therapy of aGvHD patients while still allowing to efficiently ameliorate the disease

Determinação de coeficientes de cultura para o milho durante um experimento de evapotranspiração em um oxisol do Brasil

Soil water balance components were measured during two periods (from 1989 to 1991) on a Dark Red Latosol (oxisol) in Piracicaba,SP, Brazil. The change in soil water storage and the soil water fluxes at the lower limit of the rooting zone were calculated for a transect of 25 observation plots. Hydraulic head gradients were determined by tensiometer measurements. Soil water flux densities were estimated through Darcy's equation. The actual evapotranspiration of the crops and weeds and the actual evaporation of bare soil were obtained from the water balance equation and this for two periods under different crop rotations. For the first period the sequence was bare soil-corn-weeds and for the second period it was stubble mulch-weeds-corn. For assessing the crop coefficients the potential evapotranspiration was calculated according to two different methods. The first method was based on the modified Penman equation with grass as a reference crop, to obtain this way reference coefficients, and the second method was based on the pan "A" evaporation data in order to obtain pan coefficients. These coefficients were compared with the tabulated crop coefficients. In general when there was no shortage of water during the corn growth, the crop coefficients k c"A" and k c ref were very close to the k c values.Os componentes do balanço hídrico foram medidos durante dois períodos (de 1989 a 1991) em terra roxa estruturada, em Piracicaba,SP, Brasil. As variações de armazenamento de água e os fluxos de água no solo no limite inferior da zona radicular foram calculados para uma transeção de 25 parcelas experimentais. Gradientes hidráulicos foram determinados por meio de medidas tensiométricas. Densidades de fluxo de água foram estimadas através da equação de Darcy. A evapotranspiração atual das culturas e das ervas daninhas e a evaporação atual do solo nú foram obtidas da equação do balanço hídrico, para dois períodos, sob diferentes rotações de cultura. Para o primeiro período a seqüência foi solo nú - milho - ervas daninhas e para o segundo cobertura morta - ervas daninhas - milho. Para determinar os coeficientes de cultura, a evapotranspiração potencial foi calculada por dois métodos. O primeiro foi baseado na equação de Penman modificada, com a grama como cobertura de referência, obtendo assim os coeficientes de referência, e o segundo baseado no tanque de evaporação tipo classe "A", obtendo os coeficientes de tanque. Estes coeficientes foram comparados com os coeficientes de cultura tabulados. De uma forma geral, em períodos sem falta de água para a cultura, os coeficientes de referência e de tanque se assemelharam bastante aos coeficientes de cultura

Noise Thresholds for Higher Dimensional Systems using the Discrete Wigner Function

For a quantum computer acting on d-dimensional systems, we analyze the computational power of circuits wherein stabilizer operations are perfect and we allow access to imperfect non-stabilizer states or operations. If the noise rate affecting the non-stabilizer resource is sufficiently high, then these states and operations can become simulable in the sense of the Gottesman-Knill theorem, reducing the overall power of the circuit to no better than classical. In this paper we find the depolarizing noise rate at which this happens, and consequently the most robust non-stabilizer states and non-Clifford gates. In doing so, we make use of the discrete Wigner function and derive facets of the so-called qudit Clifford polytope i.e. the inequalities defining the convex hull of all qudit Clifford gates. Our results for robust states are provably optimal. For robust gates we find a critical noise rate that, as dimension increases, rapidly approaches the the theoretical optimum of 100%. Some connections with the question of qudit magic state distillation are discussed.Comment: 14 pages, 1 table; Minor changes vs. version

Dispersion of the high-energy phonon modes in Nd1.85_{1.85}Ce0.15_{0.15}CuO4_4

The dispersion of the high-energy phonon modes in the electron doped high-temperature superconductor Nd$_{1.85}$Ce$_{0.15}$CuO$_4$ has been studied by inelastic neutron scattering. The frequencies of phonon modes with Cu-O bond-stretching character drop abruptly when going from the Brillouin zone center along the [100]-direction; this dispersion is qualitatively similar to observations in the hole-doped cuprates. We also find a softening of the bond-stretching modes along the [110]-direction but which is weaker and exhibits a sinusoidal dispersion. The phonon anomalies are discussed in comparison to hole-doped cuprate superconductors and other metallic perovskites

Scalability of quantum computation with addressable optical lattices

We make a detailed analysis of error mechanisms, gate fidelity, and scalability of proposals for quantum computation with neutral atoms in addressable (large lattice constant) optical lattices. We have identified possible limits to the size of quantum computations, arising in 3D optical lattices from current limitations on the ability to perform single qubit gates in parallel and in 2D lattices from constraints on laser power. Our results suggest that 3D arrays as large as 100 x 100 x 100 sites (i.e., $\sim 10^6$ qubits) may be achievable, provided two-qubit gates can be performed with sufficiently high precision and degree of parallelizability. Parallelizability of long range interaction-based two-qubit gates is qualitatively compared to that of collisional gates. Different methods of performing single qubit gates are compared, and a lower bound of $1 \times 10^{-5}$ is determined on the error rate for the error mechanisms affecting $^{133}$Cs in a blue-detuned lattice with Raman transition-based single qubit gates, given reasonable limits on experimental parameters.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publication in Physical Review

Applied Remote Sensing Program (ARSP)

There are no author-identified significant results in this report

Entangling flux qubits with a bipolar dynamic inductance

We propose a scheme to implement variable coupling between two flux qubits using the screening current response of a dc Superconducting QUantum Interference Device (SQUID). The coupling strength is adjusted by the current bias applied to the SQUID and can be varied continuously from positive to negative values, allowing cancellation of the direct mutual inductance between the qubits. We show that this variable coupling scheme permits efficient realization of universal quantum logic. The same SQUID can be used to determine the flux states of the qubits.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure