The impacts of increased heat stress events on wheat yield under climate change in China

China is the largest wheat producing country in the world. Wheat is one of the two major staple cereals consumed in the country and about 60% of Chinese population eats the grain daily. To safeguard the production of this important crop, about 85% of wheat areas in the country are under irrigation or high rainfall conditions. However, wheat production in the future will be challenged by the increasing occurrence and magnitude of adverse and extreme weather events. In this paper, we present an analysis that combines outputs from a wide range of General Circulation Models (GCMs) with observational data to produce more detailed projections of local climate suitable for assessing the impact of increasing heat stress events on wheat yield. We run the assessment at 36 representative sites in China using the crop growth model CSM-CropSim Wheat of DSSAT 4.5. The simulations based on historical data show that this model is suitable for quantifying yield damages caused by heat stress. In comparison with the observations of baseline 1996-2005, our simulations for the future indicate that by 2100, the projected increases in heat stress would lead to an ensemble-mean yield reduction of –7.1% (with a probability of 80%) and –17.5% (with a probability of 96%) for winter wheat and spring wheat, respectively, under the irrigated condition. Although such losses can be fully compensated by CO2 fertilization effect as parameterized in DSSAT 4.5, a great caution is needed in interpreting this fertilization effect because existing crop dynamic models are unable to incorporate the effect of CO2 acclimation (the growth enhancing effect decreases over time) and other offsetting forces

FILM CONDENSATION OF R-11 VAPOR ON SINGLE HORIZONTAL ENHANCED CONDENSER TUBES

The heat transfer performance of R-11 vapor condensing on single horizontal trapezodially shaped integral-fin tubes has been investigated by systematically varying the fin density, the semi-vertex angle, and the fin height. For the nine copper tubes tested, the best performance has been obtained with a tube having a fin density of 1417 fpm, a semi-vertex angle of 10 deg, and a fin height of 1.22 mm. This tube has yielded a maximum value of the heat transfer coefficient of 16,500 W/m<SUP>2</SUP> K at a Δ T of about 3 K, corresponding to an enhancement ratio of 10.3. The performance of the tube has been further improved by fabricating from it "specially enhanced" tubes having axial grooves of varying height. An enhancement ratio of 12.3 has been obtained with this type of tube

Self-healing of fractured GaAs nanowires

In-situ deformation experiments were carried out in a transmission electron microscope to investigate the structural response of single crystal GaAs nanowires (NWs) under compression. A repeatable self-healing process was discovered in which a partially fractured GaAs NW restored its original single crystal structure immediately after an external compressive force was removed. Possible mechanisms of the self-healing process are discussed

Magnetism of Co-doped ZnO epitaxially grown on a ZnO substrate

In order to unravel the magnetism of Co-doped ZnO films, we have performed rigorous experiments on Co-doped ZnO grown on O-polar ZnO (0001̄) substrates by molecular beam epitaxy. We find that the ZnO:Co with Co composition less than 20% is paramagnetic even at low temperatures, whereas that with Co composition of 20% shows ferromagnetism at room temperature. Although an additional n-type doping with Ga increases the magnitude of magnetization, the origin of the observed ferromagnetism is not carrier induced, as confirmed by electric-field effect measurements. Three-dimensional atom probe tomography shows that Co ions are randomly distributed, indicating that Co clustering or spinodal decomposition is not the origin of the ferromagnetism either. One possible mechanism for the ferromagnetism is hydrogen-facilitated interaction, which is supported experimentally by magnetic measurements on hydrogen-treated ZnO:Co as well as theoretically by first-principles calculation. © 2012 American Physical Society