The application of agrochemical sprays to the aerial parts of crop plants is an important agricultural practice world-wide. While variable effectiveness is often seen in response to foliar treatments, there is abundant evidence showing the beneficial effect of foliar fertilizers in terms of improving the metabolism, quality, and yields of crops. This mini-review is focused on the major bottlene...

In the present paper, an experimental assessment was performed on the transient thermal performance of a heat sink filled by a phase change material (PCM) and PCM embedded with carbon nanofibers (CNFs) and titania (TiO2) nanoparticles as nanostructured materials. In order to enhance the thermal conductivity of PCM, CNFs and TiO2 nanoparticles at different loadings (0.5wt. % and 2 wt.% of CNFs a...

We used estimates of autotrophic respiration (RA), net primary productivity (NPP) and soil CO2 evolution (Sff), to develop component carbon budgets for 12-year-old loblolly pine plantations during the fifth year of a fertilization and irrigation experiment. Annual carbon use in RA was 7.5, 9.0, 15.0, and 15.1MgCha 1 in control (C), irrigated (I), fertilized (F) and irrigated and fertilized (IF)...

Human subjects decide when to sink a xed cost C to seize an irreversible investment opportunity whose value V is governed by Brownian motion. The optimal policy is to invest when V rst crosses a threshold V ∗ = (1+w∗)C, where the wait option premiumw∗ depends on drift, volatility, and expiration hazard parameters. Subjects in the Low w∗ treatment on average invest at values quite close to opt...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Fruit set in indeterminate plant species largely depends on the balance between source and sink strength. Plants of these species show fluctuations in fruit set during the growing season. It was tested whether differences in fruit sink strength among the cultivars explained the differences in fruit-set patterns. METHODS Capsicum was chosen as a model plant. Six cultivars w...

Regional groundwater flow systems often contain both strong sinks and weak sinks. A strong sink extracts water from the entire aquifer depth, while a weak sink lets some water pass underneath or over the actual sink. The numerical groundwater flow model MODFLOW may allow a sink cell to act as a strong or weak sink, hence extracting all water that enters the cell or allowing some of that water t...

Ground-source heat pumps are an efficient technology for heating and cooling in buildings. However, the main limitation of their widespread application is borehole exchanger’s (BHE) high investment cost. Hybridizing GSHP systems may overcome this limitation. This research work analyzes long-term energy performance a dual-source pump (DSHP) system, which uses air or ground as external heat/sink ...

By: Resnik, Jack

Received: 12 November 2002 / Accepted: 22 May 2003 / Published: 31 December 2003 __________________________________________________________________________________ Abstract: Based on a model of a two-heat-reservoir heat engine with a finite high-temperature source and bypass heat leak, the optimal configuration of the cycle is found for the fixed cycle period with another linear heat transfer l...