An 'across the fence' comparison of farmer paddocks with nearby virgin bush sites was made at 3 locations, to measure the effects of lupins and subterranean clover based pastures on the chemical properties of the soil. Estimated rates of acidification in the 0--60 cm depth were 0.29-0.55 kmol H+/ha.year for wheat-lupin paddocks and 0.16-0.21 kmol H+/ha.year for pasture paddocks. A significant p...

Factors governing the turnover of organic matter (OM) added to soils, including substrate quality, climate, environment and biology, are well known, but their relative importance has been difficult to ascertain due to the interconnected nature of the soil system. This has made their inclusion in mechanistic models of OM turnover or nutrient cycling difficult despite the potential power of these...

The hydrated electron is a crucial species in radiative processes, and it has been speculated that its behavior at the water surface could lead to specific interfacial chemical properties. Here, we address fundamental questions concerning the structure and energetics of an electron at the surface of water. We use the method of ab initio molecular dynamics, which was shown to provide a faithful ...

In order to relate the physical and chemical properties of carbon to the microphonic properties of this material, it has been found necessary to make measurements on physical quantities which are influenced by primary causes beyond the control of the observer. In many problems of the physical and engineering sciences it is possible for the observer to control within narrow limits, the causes of...

The hydrothermal alteration of mantle rocks (referred to as serpentinization) occurs in submarine environments extending from mid-ocean ridges to subduction zones. Serpentinization affects the physical and chemical properties of oceanic lithosphere, represents one of the major mechanisms driving mass exchange between the mantle and the Earth's surface, and is central to current origin of life h...

A variational optimization of the second-order density matrix under the P-, Q-, and G-conditions was carried out for a set of diatomic 14-electron molecules, including N(2), O(2) (2+), NO(+), CO, and CN(-). The dissociation of these molecules is studied by analyzing several chemical properties (dipole moments, population analysis, and bond indices) up to the dissociation limit (10 and 20 A). Se...

Photoswitchable molecules are able to isomerize between two metastable forms through light stimuli. Originally being studied by photochemists, this type of molecule has now found a wide range of applications within physics, chemistry and biology. The extensive usage of photochromic molecules is due to the two isomers having fundamentally different physical and chemical properties. The most impo...

Antibubbles are ephemeral objects. Their lifetime is driven by the slow drainage of the air shell from the bottom to the top of the antibubble under the action of hydrostatic pressure. We show in this paper that this argument is only valid if the water used to make the surfactant mixture is saturated in air. Otherwise, two paths are used by the air, which conduct to the thinning and the eventua...