One of the widest ranging abiotic stresses in world agriculture arises from low zinc (Zn) availability in calcareous soils, particularly in cereals. Cereal species greatly differ in their zinc effici ency (ZE), defined in this article as the ability of a plant to grow and yield well under Zn deficiency. ZE has been attributed mainly to the effi ciency of acquisition of Zn under conditions of lo...

The use of subsurface drip irrigation (SDI) in row-crop agriculture is increasing because of potential increases in water and nutrient use efficiency. Research-based information is needed to manage N 'applications through SDI systems in field com (Zea-mays L.) production. This study was conducted to assess the effect of different inseason SDI system N application timings :on corn produ6tion and...

In this study, the failure behaviors of debris flows were studied by flume model tests with artificial rainfall and numerical simulations (PFC(3D)). Model tests revealed that grain sizes distribution had profound effects on failure mode, and the failure in slope of medium sand started with cracks at crest and took the form of retrogressive toe sliding failure. With the increase of fine particle...

on this site led to the discovery of K deficiency in cotton, which had been referred to earlier as “cotton rust” (Atkinson, 1891, 1892). Today, the experiment is a 3-year rotation of: 1) cotton followed by crimson clover, 2) corn harvested for grain and followed by winter wheat, and 3) soybeans double-cropped after the small grain is harvested. The soil is a Marvyn loamy sand (fine-loamy, silic...

This paper describes a GA for job shop scheduling problems. Using the Giffler and Thompson algorithm, we created two new operators, THX crossover and mutation, which better transmit temporal relationships in the schedule. The approach produced excellent results on standard benchmark job shop scheduling problems. We further tested many models and scales of parallel GAs in the context of job shop...

Our aim is to development of the inspection system of wooden chopsticks, and in this paper, we develop the prototype for high-class disposable wooden chopsticks by computer vision technology. We propose a method of inspecting the four items of fine grain sample, coarse grain sample, unpeeled sample, and defective sample. Moreover, we addressed not only the proposal of the algorithm but developm...

In this paper we present the different modelling problems which a Digital Signal Processing (DSP) application designer has to tackle while refining an abstract specification relying on coarse grain data (e.g. matrices) toward a hardware implementation model relying on fine grain data (e.g. scalar). To address this problematic, we propose a modelling framework which can be used to refine an algo...

The need to reduce soil erosion, maximize soil water conservation, and optimize grain production in dryland cropping systems in the Central Great Plains has culminated in development of nontilled fallow systems. These systems have greatly reduced the degree of soil disturbance, and the amount and degree of residue incorporation. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the influence of soi...

Slag-based silicate fertilizer has been widely used to improve soil silicon- availability and crop productivity. A consecutive early rice-late rice rotation experiment was conducted to test the impacts of steel slag on soil pH, silicon availability, rice growth and metals-immobilization in paddy soil. Our results show that application of slag at a rate above higher or equal to 1 600 mg plant-av...

The lack of freshwater-specific environmental information at sufficiently fine spatial grain hampers broad-scale analyses in aquatic biology, biogeography, conservation, and ecology. Here we present a near-global, spatially continuous, and freshwater-specific set of environmental variables in a standardized 1 km grid. We delineate the sub-catchment for each grid cell along the HydroSHEDS river ...