An overview on problems and prospects of transplanted maize with special reference to India

Transplanting is the technique of moving of a plant from one location to another. This strategy is commonly practiced to establish crops when conditions are less favourable for direct seeding.  Birds and squirrels damage to seedlings of maize is a serious problem resulting in poor crop stand and low yield. Delayed germination and plant growth receives a major setback due to late sowing of maize which reduces grain yield; however, reduction of yield can be compensated by transplantation technique. Transplanting of maize is a strategy that can be used to achieve optimum plant densities, better crop stand and obviously to get optimum yield. It reduces the nutrient requirement and also shortens the growth period of crop that helps farmers to harvest a third crop in intensive cropping system. Transplanted crop produces about 15.44% higher grain yield and can be harvested 10-12 days earlier that of direct seeding crop, so, late maturity high yielding cultivars can be fitted in to available growing season. Though, there are several advantages of transplanted maize, it is not popular in India due to lack of awareness, lacking in proper rational scientific technology and very little information about age of seedling and optimum dose of nutrient. Farmers can be benefitted if proper technology regarding age of seedling, process of transplanting and other cultivation techniques of raising transplanted maize is supplied to them

Generation of strain-induced pseudo-magnetic field in a doped type-II Weyl semimetal

In Weyl semimetals, there is an intriguing possibility of realizing a pseudo-magnetic field in presence of small strain due to certain special cases of static deformations. This pseudo-magnetic field can be large enough to form quantized Landau levels and thus become observable in Weyl semimetals. In this paper, we experimentally show the emergence of a pseudo-magnetic field (~ 3 Tesla) by Scanning Tunneling Spectroscopy (STS) on the doped Weyl semimetal Re-MoTe2, where distinct Landau level oscillations in the tunneling conductance are clearly resolved. The crystal lattice is intrinsically strained where large area STM imaging of the surface reveals differently strained domains where atomic scale deformations exist forming topographic ripples with varying periodicity in the real space. The effect of pseudo-magnetic field is clearly resolved in areas under maximum strain.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

Topological superconductors from a materials perspective

Topological superconductors (TSCs) have garnered significant research and industry attention in the past two decades. By hosting Majorana bound states which can be used as qubits that are robust against local perturbations, TSCs offer a promising platform toward (non-universal) topological quantum computation. However, there has been a scarcity of TSC candidates, and the experimental signatures that identify a TSC are often elusive. In this perspective, after a short review of the TSC basics and theories, we provide an overview of the TSC materials candidates, including natural compounds and synthetic material systems. We further introduce various experimental techniques to probe TSC, focusing on how a system is identified as a TSC candidate, and why a conclusive answer is often challenging to draw. We conclude by calling for new experimental signatures and stronger computational support to accelerate the search for new TSC candidates.Comment: 42 pages, 6 figure