3,811 research outputs found
Root Zone Sensors for Irrigation Management in Intensive Agriculture
Crop irrigation uses more than 70% of the worldâs water, and thus, improving irrigation efficiency is decisive to sustain the food demand from a fast-growing world population. This objective may be accomplished by cultivating more water-efficient crop species and/or through the application of efficient irrigation systems, which includes the implementation of a suitable method for precise scheduling. At the farm level, irrigation is generally scheduled based on the growerâs experience or on the determination of soil water balance (weather-based method). An alternative approach entails the measurement of soil water status. Expensive and sophisticated root zone sensors (RZS), such as neutron probes, are available for the use of soil and plant scientists, while cheap and practical devices are needed for irrigation management in commercial crops. The paper illustrates the main features of RZSâ (for both soil moisture and salinity) marketed for the irrigation industry and discusses how such sensors may be integrated in a wireless network for computer-controlled irrigation and used for innovative irrigation strategies, such as deficit or dual-water irrigation. The paper also consider the main results of recent or current research works conducted by the authors in Tuscany (Italy) on the irrigation management of container-grown ornamental plants, which is an important agricultural sector in Italy
A collimation system for ELI-NP Gamma Beam System - design and simulation of performance
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the performance and refine the design of the collimation system for the gamma radiation source (GBS) currently being realised at ELI-NP facility. The gamma beam, produced by inverse Compton scattering, will provide a tunable average energy in the range between 0.2 and 20Ă MeV, an energy bandwidth 0.5% and a flux of about 108Ă photons/s. As a result of the inverse Compton interaction, the energy of the emitted radiation is related to the emission angle, it is maximum in the backscattering direction and decreases as the angle increase [1,2]. Therefore, the required energy bandwidth can be obtained only by developing a specific collimation system of the gamma beam, i.e. filtering out the radiation emitted at larger angles. The angular acceptance of the collimation for ELI-NP-GBS must be continuously adjustable in a range from about 700 to 60Ă ĂÂŒrad, to obtain the required parameters in the entire energy range. The solution identified is a stack of adjustable slits, arranged with a relative rotation around the beam axis to obtain an hole with an approximately circular shape. In this contribution, the final collimation design and its performance evaluated by carrying out a series of detailed Geant4 simulations both of the high-energy and the low-energy beamline are presented
Raman Response in Doped Antiferromagnets
The resonant part of the electronic Raman scattering response is
calculated within the model on a planar lattice as a function of
temperature and hole doping, using a finite-temperature diagonalization method
for small systems. Results, directly applicable to experiments on cuprates,
reveal on doping a very pronounced increase of the width of the two-magnon
Raman peak, accompanied by a decrease of the total intensity. At the same time
the peak position does not shift substantially in the underdoped regime.Comment: 11 pages revtex, 3 postscript figures. Minor corrections and changes
from previous version, to be published in Phys. Rev.
Resonant two-magnon Raman scattering in parent compounds of high-T superconductors.
We propose a theory of two-magnon Raman scattering from the insulating parent
compounds of high-T superconductors, which contains information not only on
magnetism, but also on the electronic properties in these materials. We use
spin density wave formalism for the Hubbard model, and study diagrammatically
the profile of the two-magnon scattering and its intensity dependence on the
incoming photon frequency both for and in the
resonant regime, in which the energy of the incident photon is close to the gap
between conduction and valence bands. In the nonresonant case, we identify the
diagrams which contribute to the conventional Loudon-Fleury Hamiltonian. In the
resonant regime, where most of the experiments have been done, we find that the
dominant contribution to Raman intensity comes from a different diagram, one
which allows for a simultaneous vanishing of all three of its denominators
(i.e., a triple resonance). We study this diagram in detail and show that the
triple resonance, combined with the spin-density-wave dispersion relation for
the carriers, explains the unusual features found in the two-magnon profile and
in the two-magnon peak intensity dependence on the incoming photon frequency.
In particular, our theory predicts a maximum of the two-magnon peak intensity
right at the upper edge of the features in the optical data, which has been one
of the key experimental puzzles.Comment: Revtex, 12 postscript figures (uuencoded
Frontiers of beam diagnostics in plasma accelerators: measuring the ultra-fast and ultra-cold
Advanced diagnostics are essential tools in the development of plasma-based accelerators. The accurate measurement of the quality of beams at the exit of the plasma channel is crucial to optimize the parameters of the plasma accelerator. 6D electron beam diagnostics will be reviewed with emphasis on emittance measurement, which is particularly complex due to large energy spread and divergence of the emerging beams, and on femtosecond bunch length measurements
WIMPs search by scintillators: possible strategy for annual modulation search with large-mass highly-radiopure NaI(Tl)
The DAMA experiments are running deep underground in the Gran Sasso National
Laboratory. Several interesting results have been achieved so far. Here a
maximum likelihood method to search for the WIMP annual modulation signature is
discussed and applied to a set of preliminary test data collected with large
mass highly radiopure NaI(Tl) detectors. Various related technical arguments
are briefly addressed.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, LaTex. Contributed paper to TAUP97; to appear in
the Proceeding
Optimum spectral window for imaging of art with optical coherence tomography
Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) has been shown to have potential for important applications in the field of art conservation and archaeology due to its ability to image subsurface microstructures non-invasively. However, its depth of penetration in painted objects is limited due to the strong scattering properties of artistsâ paints. VIS-NIR (400 nm â 2400 nm) reflectance spectra of a wide variety of paints made with historic artistsâ pigments have been measured. The best spectral window with which to use optical coherence tomography (OCT) for the imaging of subsurface structure of paintings was found to be around 2.2 ÎŒm. The same spectral window would also be most suitable for direct infrared imaging of preparatory sketches under the paint layers. The reflectance spectra from a large sample of chemically verified pigments provide information on the spectral transparency of historic artistsâ pigments/paints as well as a reference set of spectra for pigment identification. The results of the paper suggest that broadband sources at ~2 microns are highly desirable for OCT applications in art and potentially material science in general
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