Recent studies have shown that, in some species, xylem hydraulic conductivity (K(h)) increases with increasing cation concentration of xylem sap. Evidence indicates that K(h) increases as a result of the de-swelling of pit membrane pectins caused by cation neutralization of polygalacturonanes. We tested whether this ionic effect partly compensates for the embolism-induced loss of stem hydraulic...

Embolism repair and ionic effects on xylem hydraulic conductance have been documented in different tree species. However, the diurnal and seasonal patterns of both phenomena and their actual role in plants' responses to drought-induced xylem cavitation have not been thoroughly investigated. This study provides experimental evidence of the ability of three Mediterranean species to maintain hydra...

A frequent and well-founded criticism of the maximum a posteriori (MAP) and minimum mean squared error (MMSE) estimates of a continuous parameter γ taking values in a differentiable manifold Γ is that they are not invariant to arbitrary ‘reparametrizations’ of Γ. This paper clarifies the issues surrounding this problem, by pointing out the difference between coordinate invariance, which is a si...

We propose a new multivariate CUSUM control chart, which is based on selfadaption of its reference value according to the information of current process readings, to quickly detect the multivariate process mean shifts. By specifying the minimum magnitude of the process mean shift in terms of its non-centrality parameter, our proposed control chart can achieve an overall performance for detectin...

Assisting designers in writing high-quality specifications is an important step towards minimizing product defects and rework efforts. Drawing on the attractive performance of satisfiability solvers, in this paper, we present a SAT encoding that enables an efficient model-based diagnosis of LTL specifications in the context of behavioral samples (traces). The resulting diagnoses at operator lev...

An increased role for rail freight is an objective of the British government. Limited growth potential exists in rail’s traditional bulk markets, so more non-bulk volume is needed. This paper focuses on non-bulk rail freight activity in Britain, through deskbased research and company interviews. It considers changes in both the intermodal and traditional less-than-trainload (LTL) markets over t...