Bordered pits play an important role in permitting water flow among adjacent tracheary elements in flowering plants. Variation in the bordered pit structure is suggested to be adaptive in optimally balancing the conflict between hydraulic efficiency (conductivity) and safety from air entry at the pit membrane (air seeding). The possible function of vestured pits, which are bordered pits with pr...

Nanoclays (NC) can serve as thixotropy modifiers for fresh concretes, and show potential to meet the rheological demands of 3D concrete printing. Here, we propose a dry dispersion technique that produces NC-coated cement compare conventional methods dispersion. Pastes incorporating NC were tested via shear rheology, scanning electron microscopy, isothermal calorimetry. Dry was found be most eff...

In direct seeding systems, soil strength variability and crop residues increase the difficulty of seeding operation. Especially when trying to achieve uniform seeding depth that will result in reliable seed germination and plant emergence. An advanced improvement has been accomplished using direct seeding systems. However, some problems still exist in soil-machine interaction due to various rea...

Seeding strategies have a major influence on the success of viral marketing campaigns, but previous studies using computer simulations and analytical models produced conflicting recommendations about the optimal seeding strategy. We therefore compare four different seeding strategies in two complementary small-scale field experiments as well as in one real-life viral marketing campaign that inv...

With the popularity of BitTorrent-like P2P applications, improving its performance has been an active research area. Super-seeding, a special upload policy for the initial seeder, improves the efficiency in producing multiple seeds and reduces the uploading bytes of content initiators, thus being highly expected as a promising solution for improving downloading performance while decreasing uplo...

This research studies the optimal seeding of a network of consumers who are potential adopters of a technology. This problem has a wide range of applications which include launching a network good, inducing network-based marketing, igniting collaboration in organizations, and stimulating R&D with local spillovers. I have two main results so far. The first result shows that when a firm is unawar...