Article history: Received 7 July 2014 Received in revised form 17 September 2014 Accepted 3 December 2014 Available online 15 December 2014 Phytic acid is the major storage form of phosphorus in cereals. It binds with nutritionally important metals and affects mineral bioavailability. The present study analyzed phytic acid, inorganic phosphorus (IP) content, seed weight, and grain yield in 98 s...

Various diffusion raodels can be applied to Rb-Sr systems in cooling rocks. It is argued that a closed-system diffusioncontrolled model, inw3lving local equilibrium along grain boundaries, is most appropriate for describing the exchange of Sr isotopes between minerals in a rock sample during cooling. A finite-difference numerical method is used to solve the diffusion and mass-balance equations....

Mineral surfaces play a critical role in the solar nebula as a catalytic surface for chemical reactions and potentially acted as a source of water during Earth's accretion by the adsorption of water molecules to the surface of interplanetary dust particles. However, nothing is known about how mineral surfaces respond to short-lived thermal fluctuations that are below the melting temperature of ...

[1] Contaminant migration through the vadose zone may be influenced by the presence of mineral colloids that are mobilized during infiltration events. In this work, we report model calculations and experimental data on the role of pore water ionic strength in the transport of silica colloids through water-saturated and unsaturated porous media. The transport model solves the advection-dispersio...

We use the ultrasonic transmission method to measure P-, SH-, and SV-wave velocities for Chelmsford Granite, Chicopee Shale, and Berea Sandstone in different directions up to 1000 bars confining pressure. The velocity measurements indicate that these three rocks are elastically anisotropic. The stiffness constants, dynamic Young's moduli, dynamic Poisson's ratios, and dynamic bulk moduli of the...

Seedlings of three rice (Oryza sativa L.) varieties (one indica, ARC5955; and two japonica, Nipponbare and Koshihikari) with or without pre-colonization by the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus Funneliformis mosseae were transplanted into an upland field and grown to maturity. Pre-colonization had no effect on the yield of Nipponbare or Koshihikari. However, pre-colonized ARC5955 exhibited a strong...

Reactive transport models that describe mineral reactions in porous media rely on laboratory measurements of rate parameters that may fail to represent reactions defined at larger averaging scales. In recently completed work, we used pore-scale network models to investigate the effects of heterogeneities in pore structure and mineral distribution on geochemical reaction rates in porous media. O...

Low soil fertility and high weed infestation are the main culprits for the declining maize production inWestern Kenya. Technology packages to address these constraints exist, but their effectiveness is likely to be influenced by variability in soil types and farm management practices in the region. Trials were conducted during the 2008/2009 cropping seasons to investigate the nutrient use e...

Effects of organic manure (poultry manure) applied alone and integrated with inorganic fertilizer (urea) on yield and yield component, N-uptake and soil fertility in wheat-maize cropping system was evaluated in a field experiment at Nuclear Institute for Food and Agriculture, Peshawar, Pakistan. Poultry manure was applied alone and were integrated in different proportions with mineral nitrogeno...