Effect of mechanical soil treatment in blueberry orchards

From June 2004 onwards a trial was conducted on a blueberry farm in the Lüneburg Heath, Northern Germany, in which methods of mechanical soil cultivation were compared with mulching. The aim was to determine how far the mechanical methods and equipment established for soil management in viniculture and pomiculture can be adapted to blueberry cultivation, and can be improved. The results showed a clear advantage of the methods based on mulch technology in the shape of increased yields. Whilst the mechanical treatments provided acceptable weed control, they cannot be recommended for routine use at present because of strong yield reductions associated with damage to the shallow root system of highbush blueberry shrubs

Thermal treatment and mechanical properties of aluminum-2021

Mechanical properties, after thermal treatments, are summarized for sheet and plate of copper-rich, high-strength, heat-treatable aluminum-2021. The alloy is quench sensitive, quench rate and variations in aging affect corrosion behavior. Aging effects on yield strength, tensile strength, and elongation of sheet and plate are compared

Short-term effect of soil disturbance by mechanical weeding on plant available nutrients in an organic vs conventional rotations experiment

The question whether soil disturbance from mechanical weeding in organic systems affects nutrient release from organic matter in compost-amended soil was examined in a long-term organic-versus-conventional rotational cropping system experiment over three years. The experimental design included continuous snap beans, and a fully phased snap beans/fall rye crop rotation sequence. Treatments were combinations of yearly applied fertiliser (synthetic fertiliser, 1× compost, 3× compost) and weed control (herbicide, mechanical weeding). The 1× compost rate was calculated to deliver the equivalent of 50 kg N ha-1: equal to the rate ofN in the synthetic fertiliser treatments. Ion exchange membranes were buried for 24 hours following mechanical weeding in bean plots. Adsorbed ions were then eluted and quantified. Available ammonium-nitrogen was not affected byweeding treatment, but nitrate-nitrogen was consistently less in mechanically weeded plots than in plots treated with herbicide. Principal component analysis of NH4-N, NO3-N, P, K, Ca and Mg availabilities showed distinct groupings of treatments according to fertility treatment rather than weeding treatment. The effect of cropping sequence on available nutrients was pronounced (P ≤ 0.001) only in plots amended with synthetic fertilisers

Implications of a Quantum Mechanical Treatment of the Universe

We attempt to treat the very early Universe according to quantum mechanics. Identifying the scale factor of the Universe with the width of the wave packet associated with it, we show that there cannot be an initial singularity and that the Universe expands. Invoking the correspondence principle, we obtain the scale factor of the Universe and demonstrate that the causality problem of the standard model is solved.Comment: LaTex, 5 pages, 1 figure, to be published in Mod. Phys. Lett.

Characterization of the mechanical behaviour of both fusion zone and base metal of electron beam welded TA6V titanium alloy

The fusion zone of an electron beam welded Ti-6Al-4V alloy presents a a' martensitic structure which leads to a change of mechanical properties. Starting from two manufacturing processing routes for the alloy (1) a b processing followed by the weld (which will be considered as the reference microstructures), (2) an a+b processing followed by welding and a post weld heat treatment (PWHT), the microstructure can be adjusted to avoid local difference of strength, fatigue properties and impact toughness. This results from the optimisation of the process and of the PWHT. The present work investigates the mechanical behaviour and the damage mechanism of both base metal and fusion zone in regards to the microstructure and to the heat treatment parameters

A wave-mechanical treatment of the Mills-Nixon effect

The Mills-Nixon effect has been examined by a very simple wave-mechanical treatment. This has led to the conclusion that the effect of saturated side rings upon the ratio of the coefficients of the wave-functions of the two Kekulé structures is relatively small, being not more than about 6 per cent., and that the benzene ring retains the greater part of its stabilising resonance energy. Nevertheless, making the reasonable assumption that the ratio of the activation energies, for reaction as either one of the two Kekulé structures, depends upon the square of the ratio of coefficients, it is possible to account for the experimental facts. The effect which bending two valencies has upon the angles between the other valencies projecting from the benzene ring is found to be very small

Self-adjoint extensions and spectral analysis in Calogero problem

In this paper, we present a mathematically rigorous quantum-mechanical treatment of a one-dimensional motion of a particle in the Calogero potential $\alpha x^{-2}$. Although the problem is quite old and well-studied, we believe that our consideration, based on a uniform approach to constructing a correct quantum-mechanical description for systems with singular potentials and/or boundaries, proposed in our previous works, adds some new points to its solution. To demonstrate that a consideration of the Calogero problem requires mathematical accuracy, we discuss some "paradoxes" inherent in the "naive" quantum-mechanical treatment. We study all possible self-adjoint operators (self-adjoint Hamiltonians) associated with a formal differential expression for the Calogero Hamiltonian. In addition, we discuss a spontaneous scale-symmetry breaking associated with self-adjoint extensions. A complete spectral analysis of all self-adjoint Hamiltonians is presented.Comment: 39 page

Fluctuations in the Site Disordered Traveling Salesman Problem

We extend a previous statistical mechanical treatment of the traveling salesman problem by defining a discrete "site disordered'' problem in which fluctuations about saddle points can be computed. The results clarify the basis of our original treatment, and illuminate but do not resolve the difficulties of taking the zero temperature limit to obtain minimal path lengths.Comment: 17 pages, 3 eps figures, revte

The effect of material cyclic deformation properties on residual stress generation by laser shock processing

Laser shock processing (LSP) is a mechanical surface treatment to induce a compressive residual stress state into the near surface region of a metallic component. The effect of the cyclic deformation properties of ductile materials on the final residual stress fields obtained by LSP is analysed. Conventional modelling approaches either use simple tensile yield criteria, or isotropic hardening models if cyclic straining response is considered for the material during the peen processing. In LSP, the material is likely to be subject to cyclic loading because of reverse yielding after the initial plastic deformation. The combination of experiment and modelling shows that the incorporation of experimentally-determined cyclic stress-strain data, including mechanical hysteresis, into material deformation models is required to correctly reflect the cyclic deformation processes during LSP treatment and obtain accurate predictions of the induced residual stresses.</p