Newly discovered fossils of the Middle Triassic reptile Atopodentatus unicus call for a radical reassessment of its feeding behavior. The skull displays a pronounced hammerhead shape that was hitherto unknown. The long, straight anterior edges of both upper and lower jaws were lined with batteries of chisel-shaped teeth, whereas the remaining parts of the jaw rami supported densely packed needl...

Recent developments in biofuel demand and the rapid adoption of modern transgenic hybrids are changing production systems towards more corn after corn, more intensive tillage, higher plant populations, and ever higher crop residue levels at harvest. Meeting society’s needs for food, feed, and fuel from grain corn, and in the future from corn stover, requires continued refinement of tillage syst...

Introduction Direct energy expenses (diesel, gasoline, propane, electricity) total more than $1 billion annually for Iowa farmers. Farm management techniques such as adjusting tractor gear and throttle settings or reducing tillage depths can reduce diesel fuel consumption for row crop production. This study is being conducted over multiple years to measure the effects of energy management techn...

The control of the Mediterranean pine vole through manual bait placement is too fastidious. It prevents the realization of collective control on large areas. In this situation, mechanization is necessary. A burrow builder, made of a tubular ploughshare, has been devised in order to make artificial runs in the soil where baits may be deposited. This plough was successfully tested in fall 1989 in...

Fabricating stable functional devices at the atomic scale is an ultimate goal of nanotechnology. In biological processes, such high-precision operations are accomplished by enzymes. A counterpart molecular catalyst that binds to a solid-state substrate would be highly desirable. Here, we report the direct observation of single Si adatoms catalyzing the dissociation of carbon atoms from graphene...

the purpose of this research was to study and predict fuel consumption rate of tractor due to different aspect ratios of chisel plow blade and to determine a general relationship equation between aspect ratio ( ) and fuel consumption rate.  an itm-399 (81 kw) tractor and a mounted-type chisel plow with 9 shanks were used. the 5 and 10 cm width chisel blades were used. the experiments were condu...

This paper outlines an FPGA VLSI design methodology that was used to realize a fully functioning FPGA chip in 130nm CMOS with improved routability and memory robustness. The architectural design space exploration and synthesis capability were enabled by the Verilog-to-Routing CAD tool. The capabilities of this tool were extended to enable bitstream generation and deployment. To validate the arc...

The objective of this research is to quantify the effects of liquid swine manure application on antibiotic and nutrient (N and P) losses via surface runoff and subsurface drainage under a conventional (moldboard plowing) and a conservation (chisel plowing) tillage system. The field experiment is set up at the University of Minnesota Southwest Research and Outreach Center, Lamberton, Minnesota. ...

Tillage is one of the most important practices affecting soil physical and hydraulic properties. Its effects may vary intensely according to tillage method. This study aims evaluate different methods (moldboard plow+disk harrow, moldboard plow+rotary tiller chisel harrow) drainage (subsurface non-drainage) on properties in a clay loam soil. The experiment was conducted split-plot time statistic...