Reforestation is a critical means of addressing the environmental and social problems of deforestation. China's Grain-for-Green Program (GFGP) is the world's largest reforestation scheme. Here we provide the first nationwide assessment of the tree composition of GFGP forests and the first combined ecological and economic study aimed at understanding GFGP's biodiversity implications. Across Chin...

Plastic film mulching (PM) is widely utilized for maize production in China. However, the effect of PM on the grain yield of crops has not been established, and the biochemical mechanism underlying the increase or decrease in grain yield under PM is not yet understood. Grain filling markedly affects the grain yield. The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of PM on maize grain...

There is little consensus about how natural (e.g. productivity, disturbance) and anthropogenic (e.g. invasive species, habitat destruction) ecological drivers influence biodiversity. Here, we show that when sampling is standardised by area (species density) or individuals (rarefied species richness), the measured effect sizes depend critically on the spatial grain and extent of sampling, as wel...

The objective of this study was to develop a flow model for grain combinesbased on the laboratory and field response of an impact based grain flow sensor. The grainflow model developed in this study is of first order with constant coefficients. A computercode was written to solve the model and to simulate the response of a yield sensor whoseresponse had been determined previously for various ty...

If you can look into the seeds of time, And say which grain will grow, and which will not, Speak then to me.

Although theory established the necessary conditions for diversification in temporally heterogeneous environments, empirical evidence remains controversial. One possible explanation is the difficulty of designing experiments including the relevant range of temporal grains and the appropriate environmental trade-offs. Here, we experimentally explore the impact of the grain on the diversification...

This investigation was done in order to study the response of grain yield and yield components of bread wheat cultivars to drought stress in western Iran in 2008-2009. The main plots were levels of drought stress (full irrigation, stress at early stem elongation, flowering and grain filling stages) and subplots were five cultivars (Chamran, Dez and Verinak). The results indicated that the effec...

Grain boundary motion may be accompanied with vacancy generation [1–4]. A typical case where a moving grain boundary produces vacancies is in primary recrystallisation, when the growth of a recrystallised grain at the cost of a grain with a large dislocation density involves release of excess free volume. Vacancies are also generated during grain growth, when the total volume of the grain bound...

The work is devoted to the problem of calculating surface roughness during magnetic abrasive processing. Cutting grains have random dimensional characteristics, are randomly located on tool, workpiece has an irregular profile. cutting parts partially remove chips and elastoplastically deform metal. Some vertices fall into marks formed by previous processing, some - from passage vertices. This p...