in iran, onion plants are currently broadcast over the majority of onion fields and weeding and harvesting are done manually by seasonal workers. at harvest time, 40 worker-days are required to onion dig just one hectare. this cost could be saved if the operation could be carried out by machine. rear-mounted diggers can only be implemented if 40 cm spacing between rows is allowed for each tract...

The finite size effects of nanoparticles on the atomic pair distribution functions (PDF) are discussed by calculating the radial distribution functions (RDF) on nanoparticles with various shapes, such as sheet, belt, rod, tube and sphere, assuming continua. Their characteristics are shown depending on the shapes and the sizes of the nanoparticles. The formulas of a PDF analysis which take accou...

Ceramic bearing balls are desirable for use in high-temperature and nonlubricative environments because of their ability to retain high mechanical strength and reduced wear. However, because ceramics are brittle, it is very important to inspect ceramic parts for the existence of small (l-10 pm) surface defects. The contact-contact resonant sphere technique has been shown to be able to detect th...

In this review, changes in aggregation induced by thermodynamic parameters, namely concentration and temperature are discussed. Most of these changes are concerned with sphere-to-rod transitions. On the other hand, the use of an external trigger such as light can induce large aggregation changes in photosurfactant systems. This is discussed in the second part of this review and several examples...

A series of sphere-rod shape amphiphiles, in which a [60]fullerene (C60) sphere was connected to the center of an oligofluorene (OF) rod through a rigid linkage (OF-C60), were designed and synthesized. Alkyl chains of various lengths were attached onto the OFs on both sides of the C60 spheres. These compounds, denoted as alkyl-OF-C60, were fully characterized by (1)H NMR, (13)C NMR, and FTIR sp...

A mathematical derivation of an analytical expression is presented to evaluate the van der Waals interaction between a sphere and a cylindrical rod. This expression then is applied to study the growth of one-dimensional nanostructures, such as nanorods, using a common growth mechanism in colloidal chemistry, the oriented attachment growth mechanism. Parameters associated with the dimensions and...

Nanoparticles are being extensively researched as a noninvasive method for selectively targeting and killing cancer cells. We present a method for modeling the thermal activation of a gold nanoparticle and the thermal response of its surrounding medium under single and multi-pulse excitation. It is found that the effective heating range of a nanoparticle is determined by both shape (sphere vs. ...

Powder mixture rules derived from the filler particles with the shapes of sphere, cylinder or rod, and lamella or disk with random distributions are studied in this paper. Three ceramic powders of fillers with dielectric constants of 10, 20, and 36, respectively, are adopted. The experimentaldielectric constantsof ceramicdispersions in thepolyethylenematrix atmicrowave frequency are compared to...