With global food demand expected to increase by 100% in the next 50 yr, urgency to combine comprehensive strategies for sustainable, efficacious, and environmentally sensible agronomic practices has never been greater. One effort for US meat bird management is to reduce NH(3) volatilization from litter to create a better growing environment for the birds, improve production efficiency, retain N...

For several years passive microwave observations have been used to retrieve soil moisture from the Earth’s surface. Low frequency observations have the most sensitivity to soil moisture, therefore the current Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) and future Soil Moisture Active and Passive (SMAP) satellite missions observe the Earth’s surface in the L-band frequency. In the past, several sate...

Until recently, computational power was insufficient to diagonalize atmospheric datasets of order 10 10 elements. Eigenanalysis of tens of thousands of variables now can achieve massive data compression for spatial fields with strong correlation properties. Application of eigenanalysis to 26,394 variable dimensions, for three severe weather datasets (tornado, hail and wind) retains 9 11 princip...

Soil moisture estimates are considered as a valuable input for various environment models including weather forecasting, water management, agriculture, and forestry applications. Generally, the network of soil moisture observations is not dense (typically only few observation points are available within each state) enough to meet the spatial resolution requirements of these applications. Theref...

Time domain reflectometry (TDR) is a prospective measurement technology for moisture content of sewage sludge composting material; however, a significant dependence upon temperature has been observed. The objective of this study was to assess the impacts of temperature upon moisture content measurement and determine if TDR could be used to monitor moisture content in sewage sludge compost acros...

The subgrid-scale representation of hydrometeor fields is important for calculating microphysical process rates. In order to represent subgrid-scale variability, the Cloud Layers Unified By Binormals (CLUBB) parameterization uses a multivariate probability density function (PDF). In addition to vertical velocity, temperature, and moisture fields, the PDF includes hydrometeor fields. Previously,...

in some conditions, to avoid deterioration and field losses of soybean seeds (glycine max merr.) from weathering at end of the season, farmers start to harvest seeds with a high moisture content and so, careful post-harvest drying would be required to maintain the physiological quality of seeds. response surface methodology (rsm) was used to optimize the operating conditions of soybean seed dry...

a fully instrumented air conditioning laboratory unit capable of controlling drying air temperature and humidity integrated with an instantaneous weighing thin layer drying system was used to investigate the thin layer drying behavior and desorption equilibrium moisture content of canola (brassica napus l.). to this aim, freshly harvested canola samples with moisture content of about 12±0.5% (d...

The effect of moisture content and temperature on the melt ̄ow behavior and the resulting morphology of thermoplastic starch (TPS)/ poly(hydroxy ester ether) blends is studied. The viscosity ratio (l) was found to vary over two orders of magnitude (0.1±10) with changes in the TPS moisture content (15±30%) and temperature (120±1608C). This had a substantial effect on the level of mixing, nature ...

Corn stover, a major crop‐based lignocellulosic biomass feedstock, is required to be at an optimum moisture content for efficient bioconversion processes. Environmental conditions surrounding corn stover, as in storage facilities, affect its moisture due to hygroscopic sorption or desorption. The measurement and modeling of sorption characteristics of corn stover and its leaf, husk, and stalk f...