Influence of water supply on farm productivity in the north-eastern wheatbelt

In the area with reliable reticulated water supplies, average what yield, average wool production and average number of sheep per pastured hectare showed a positive correlation with annual rainfall in all but one year. By contrast, in the area served by on-farm water supplies only, average wheat yield and annual rainfall were strongly correlated, whereas average wool production and average number of sheep per pastured hectare showed a weaker correlation with annual rainfall. These correlations suggest tt on farms with a reliable water supply, livestock numbers have been adjusted annually to ensure optimum utilisation of available feed in all seasons

Ring-Pattern Dynamics in Smectic-C* and Smectic-C_A* Freely Suspended Liquid Crystal Films

Ring patterns of concentric 2pi-solitons in molecular orientation, form in freely suspended chiral smectic-C films in response to an in-plane rotating electric field. We present measurements of the zero-field relaxation of ring patterns and of the driven dynamics of ring formation under conditions of synchronous winding, and a simple model which enables their quantitative description in low polarization DOBAMBC. In smectic C_A* TFMHPOBC we observe an odd-even layer number effect, with odd number layer films exhibiting order of magnitude slower relaxation rates than even layer films. We show that this rate difference is due to much larger spontaneous polarization in odd number layer films.Comment: 4 RevTeX pgs, 4 eps figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. Let

Construction Superintendent Skill Sets

This is the first of a series of articles reviewing the results of an ongoing qualitative research project designed to document construction superintendent skill sets and develop postsecondary curricula to support superintendent education. Varying views of the role of the superintendent and an historical perspective are presented in a review of literature. The research methodology for the entire project, as well as this first phase, is presented. Data have been coded and analyzed from the interviews with seven superintendents to date and the results of these analyses are provided. Themes that emerged in these interviews include people skills, understanding the work and sequencing, organizational and managerial skills, scheduling, estimating, cost control/awareness, work ethic, and learning from other people. Insights into how the role of the superintendent has changed and the preparation needed for future superintendents also are provided from these interviews. These preliminary results indicate there is a role for colleges and universities in developing these skill sets, and that construction superintendents now are doing tasks formerly thought to be the responsibility of project managers. The Technology Age coupled with our litigious society is forcing the construction superintendent into a new role

Crop irrigation requirement program

This program was written as an aid for predicting the irrigation requirements of annual and perennial crops grown in different regions of Western Australia. The program can also be used as a guide for estimating irrigation requirements under different management strategies or for groundwater allocation

On the formation and evolution of magnetic chemically peculiar stars in the solar neighborhood

In order to put strict observational constraints on the evolutionary status of the magnetic chemically peculiar stars (CP2) of the upper main sequence, we have investigated a well established sample of galactic field CP2 objects within a radius of 200pc from the Sun in the (X,Y) plane. In total, 182 stars with accurate parallax measurements from the Hipparcos satellite were divided into Si, SiCr and SrCrEu subgroups based on classification resolution data from the literature. Primarily, it was investigated if the CP2 phenomenon occurs at very early stages of the stellar evolution, significantly before these stars reach 30% of their life-time on the main sequence. This result is especially important for theories dealing with stellar dynamos, angular momentum loss during the pre- as well as main sequence and stellar evolutionary codes for CP2 stars. For the calibration of the chosen sample, the well-developed framework of the Geneva 7-color and Stromgren uvbybeta photometric system was used. We are able to show that the CP2 phenomenon occurs continuously at the zero age main sequence for masses between 1.5 and 4.5M(sun}. The magnetic field strengths do not vary significantly during the evolution towards the terminal age main sequence. Only the effective temperature and magnetic field strength seem to determine the kind of peculiarity for those stars. We found several effects during the evolution of CP2 stars at the main sequence, i.e. there are two "critical" temperatures where severe changes take place. There is a transition between Si, SiCr and SrCrEu stars at 10000K whereas a significant decrease to almost zero of evolved SrCrEu objects with masses below 2.25M(sun) at 8000K occurs.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, accepted by A&

Superconductivity of repulsive spinless fermions with sublattice potentials

We explore unconventional superconductivity of repulsive spinless fermions on square and honeycomb lattices with staggered sublattice potentials. The two lattices can exhibit staggered d-wave and f-wave pairing respectively at low doping stemming from an effective two-valley band structure. At higher doping, in particular the square lattice displays a much richer phase diagram including topological p+ip superconductivity which is induced by a qualitatively different mechanism compared to the d-wave pairing. We illuminate this from several complementary perspectives: we analytically perform sublattice projection to analyze the effective continuum low-energy description and we numerically calculate the binding energies for pair and larger bound states for few-body doping near half filling. Furthermore, for finite doping, we present phase diagrams based on extensive FRG and and DMRG calculations