Fault bars are common stress-induced feather abnormalities that could produce feather damage thus reducing flight performance. For that reason, it has been hypothesized that birds may have evolved adaptive strategies that reduce the costs of fault bars (the ‘fault bar allocation hypothesis’). An untested prediction of this hypothesis is that fault bars in important feathers for flight (wing and...

BACKGROUND In recent years, 10 major multinational food and beverage companies have worked together within the International Food and Beverage Alliance (IFBA) to increase their commitments to public health. Current IFBA commitments include initiatives to improve the nutrition quality of products and how these products are advertised to children. The impact and magnitude of IFBA member contribut...

the polarimetric entropy and the alpha angle are two important parameters for analyzing polarimetric synthetic aperture radar data. they demonstrate the degree of randomness in the polarization of the received signal and scattering mechanism of scatterers respectively. recently, there has been an increasing interest in compact polarimetry due to its advantages in comparison with full polarimetr...

A foodshed is a geographic area from which a population derives its food supply, but a method to determine boundaries of foodsheds has not been formalized. Drawing on the food–water–energy nexus, we propose a formal network science definition of foodsheds by using data from virtual water flows, i.e., water that is virtually embedded in food. In particular, we use spectral graph partitioning for...

A wide-spread belief that nested bars enhance gas inflow to the galactic centre has recently been contradicted by dynamical models in which inner bars seem to prohibit such inflow. Can the existing models of dynamically possible double bars be modified to enable strong inflow in the secondary bar? I present here simple dynamical arguments which imply that in general, double bars in resonant cou...

A set of vertical bars planted on given points of a horizontal line defines a fence composed of the quadrilaterals bounded by successive bars. A set of bars in the plane, each having one endpoint at the origin, defines an umbrella composed of the triangles bounded by successive bars. Given a collection of bars, we study how to use them to build the fence or the umbrella of maximum total area. W...

The bond characteristics of deformed reinforcing bars are investigated ctnd design equations for development and splice lengths are obtained with the goal of improving the bond strength of steel reinforcing bars to concrete. The research includes both experimental and analytical studies. The experimental studies involved evaluating the performance of deformed steel reinforcing bars with differe...

vetiver grass is known to survive under diverse soil and water conditions. in order to test its potential of salinity and aridity tolerance ability, the effect of salinity and aridity stress on the growth of the vetiveria zizanioides was studied by growing plants in arid soils that receiving salinity stress. the experiment was conducted in a greenhouse, arrangement in a completely randomized de...

[1] In this study we investigate forced bars that form in a channel with periodic width variations. A depth-averaged two-dimensional (2-D) model incorporating a simplified correction for the helical flows induced by streamline curvature is used to obtain analytical solution of bed deformation. Flume experiments are conducted to verify the model results. With the correction included, the 2-D mod...