28,421 research outputs found
Best Management Practices to Enhance Water Quality: Who is Adopting Them?
This study investigates the determinants affecting producers’ adoption of some Best Management Practices (BMPs). Priors about the signs of certain variables are explicitly accounted for by testing for inequality restrictions through importance sampling. Education, gender, age, and on-farm residence are found to have significant effects on the adoption of some BMPs. Farms with larger animal production are more apt to implement manure management practices, crop rotation, and riparian buffer strips. Also, farms with larger cultivated acres are more inclined to implement herbicide control practices, crop rotation, and riparian buffer strips. Belonging to an agro-environment club has a positive impact for most BMPs.adoption, Bayesian analysis, best management practices, priors, runoff, water quality, Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Crop Production/Industries, Farm Management, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Land Economics/Use, Livestock Production/Industries, Q12, Q25, C11,
An Overview of Variational Integrators
The purpose of this paper is to survey some recent advances in variational
integrators for both finite dimensional mechanical systems as well as continuum
mechanics. These advances include the general development of discrete
mechanics, applications to dissipative systems, collisions, spacetime integration algorithms,
AVI’s (Asynchronous Variational Integrators), as well as reduction for
discrete mechanical systems. To keep the article within the set limits, we will only
treat each topic briefly and will not attempt to develop any particular topic in
any depth. We hope, nonetheless, that this paper serves as a useful guide to the
literature as well as to future directions and open problems in the subject
Regolith production and transport at the Susquehanna Shale Hills Critical Zone Observatory, Part 2: Insights from meteoric 10Be
Regolith-mantled hillslopes are ubiquitous features of most temperate landscapes, and their morphology reflects the climatically, biologically, and tectonically mediated interplay between regolith production and downslope transport. Despite intensive research, few studies have quantified both of these mass fluxes in the same field site. Here we present an analysis of 87 meteoric 10Be measurements from regolith and bedrock within the Susquehanna Shale Hills Critical Zone Observatory (SSHO), in central Pennsylvania. Meteoric 10Be concentrations in bulk regolith samples (n=73) decrease with regolith depth. Comparison of hillslope meteoric 10Be inventories with analyses of rock chip samples (n=14) from a 24 m bedrock core confirms that >80% of the total inventory is retained in the regolith. The systematic downslope increase of meteoric 10Be inventories observed at SSHO is consistent with 10Be accumulation in slowly creeping regolith (∼ 0.2 cm yr-1). Regolith flux inferred from meteoric 10Be varies linearly with topographic gradient (determined from high-resolution light detection and ranging-based topography) along the upper portions of hillslopes at SSHO. However, regolith flux appears to depend on the product of gradient and regolith depth where regolith is thick, near the base of hillslopes. Meteoric 10Be inventories at the north and south ridgetops indicate minimum regolith residence times of 10.5 ± 3.7 and 9.1 ± 2.9 ky, respectively, similar to residence times inferred from U-series isotopes in Ma et al. (2013). The combination of our results with U-series-derived regolith production rates implies that regolith production and erosion rates are similar to within a factor of two on SSHO hillcrests. ©2013. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved
Ultraslow Electron Spin Dynamics in GaAs Quantum Wells Probed by Optically Pumped NMR
Optically pumped nuclear magnetic resonance (OPNMR) measurements were
performed in two different electron-doped multiple quantum well samples near
the fractional quantum Hall effect ground state nu=1/3. Below 0.5K, the spectra
provide evidence that spin-reversed charged excitations of the nu=1/3 ground
state are localized over the NMR time scale of ~40 microseconds. Furthermore,
by varying NMR pulse parameters, the electron spin temperature (as measured by
the Knight shift) could be driven above the lattice temperature, which shows
that the value of the electron spin-lattice relaxation time lies between 100
microseconds and 500 milliseconds at nu=1/3.Comment: 6 pages (REVTEX), 6 eps figures embedded in text; published version;
minor changes to match published versio
Photolytically generated aerosols in the mesosphere and thermosphere of Titan
Analysis of the Cassini Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer (UVIS) stellar and
solar occultations at Titan to date include 12 species: N (nitrogen),
CH (methane), CH (acetylene), CH (ethylene),
CH (ethane), CH (diacetylene), CH
(benzene), CN (dicyanodiacetylene), CN (cyanogen), HCN
(hydrogen cyanide), HCN (cyanoacetylene), and aerosols distinguished by a
structureless continuum extinction (absorption plus scattering) of photons in
the EUV. The introduction of aerosol particles, retaining the same refractive
index properties as tholin with radius 125 \AA and using Mie theory,
provides a satisfactory fit to the spectra. The derived vertical profile of
aerosol density shows distinct structure, implying a reactive generation
process reaching altitudes more than 1000 km above the surface. A photochemical
model presented here provides a reference basis for examining the chemical and
physical processes leading to the distinctive atmospheric opacity at Titan. We
find that dicyanodiacetylene is condensable at 650 km, where the
atmospheric temperature minimum is located. This species is the simplest
molecule identified to be condensable. Observations are needed to confirm the
existence and production rates of dicyanodiacetylene.Comment: A typo in Table 1 was made in the previous version. The corrected
tholin abundance is 4.6x10^11. ApJL in press. Will be published on June 1st,
or May 21 onlin
Role of Endophytes in Tall Fescue
Tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea Schreb.) is the most commonly grown cool season grass used for pastures in Arkansas. Most tall fescue contains a fungal endophyte (Acremonium coenophialum Morgan-Jones & Gams), which causes fescue toxicosis in livestock and costs cattle producers millions of dollars annually in lost production. Endophyte presence is known to reduce wild mammal populations in areas where tall fescue is prevalent. The endophyte spends its entire life cycle within the plant and is transmitted through the seed. The association is mutualistic with the plant providing nutrients for the endophyte and the endophyte conferring drought, insect, and nematode resistance to the plant. Several classes of alkaloids exist in endophyte-infected tall fescue including ergopeptides and lolines. The ergopeptides are animal toxins, where as lolines deter insects. Our present work is on elucidating physiological mechanisms explaining animal disorders and improved host drought tolerance due to endophyte, and on identifying endophyte strains that are not toxic to livestock but improve drought and pest resistance in tall fescue
Kac-Moody Symmetries of Ten-dimensional Non-maximal Supergravity Theories
A description of the bosonic sector of ten-dimensional N=1 supergravity as a
non-linear realisation is given. We show that if a suitable extension of this
theory were invariant under a Kac-Moody algebra, then this algebra would have
to contain a rank eleven Kac-Moody algebra, that can be identified to be a
particular real form of very-extended D_8. We also describe the extension of
N=1 supergravity coupled to an abelian vector gauge field as a non-linear
realisation, and find the Kac-Moody algebra governing the symmetries of this
theory to be very-extended B_8. Finally, we discuss the related points for the
N=1 supergravity coupled to an arbitrary number of abelian vector gauge fields
Disorder mediated splitting of the cyclotron resonance in two-dimensional electron systems
We perform a direct study of the magnitude of the anomalous splitting in the
cyclotron resonance (CR) of a two-dimensional electron system (2DES) as a
function of sample disorder. In a series of AlGaAs/GaAs quantum wells,
identical except for a range of carbon doping in the well, we find the CR
splitting to vanish at high sample mobilities but to increase dramatically with
increasing impurity density and electron scattering rates. This observation
lends strong support to the conjecture that the non-zero wavevector, roton-like
minimum in the dispersion of 2D magnetoplasmons comes into resonance with the
CR, with the two modes being coupled via disorder.Comment: accepted to PRB Rapid Com
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