Pre-commercial thinning is a thinning method performed prior to trees reaching merchantable size, typically around 4.5 inches dbh (diameter at breast height measured at 4.5 ft. above the ground). The objective of a pre-commercial thinning is to release some trees in overstocked stands by reducing densities to prevent stagnation and increase the growth of the remaining trees. Many southern pine ...

Little knowledge exists about the degree of source, sink and source: sink limitations on mean seed weight in oilseed rape (Brassica napus L.). The objective of this work was to analyze the nature and magnitude on seed weight response to assimilate availability during the effective seed-filling period in oilseed rape. Three Argentinean varieties, Eclipse, Impulse, and Master, were grown under fi...

Motivation: Optimizing seed selection is an important problem in read mapping. The number of non-overlapping seeds a mapper selects determines the sensitivity of the mapper while the total frequency of all selected seeds determines the speed of the mapper. Modern seed-and-extend mappers usually select seeds with either an equal and fixed-length scheme or with an inflexible placement scheme, bot...

Unsupervised acoustic modeling can offer a cost and time effective way of creating a solid acoustic model for any under-resourced language. This paper explores the novel idea of using two independent ASR systems to transcribe new speech data, align and filter the ASR hypotheses and use the presumably correct transcriptions to iteratively improve the two seed ASR systems. In parallel, the newly ...

In image-guided brachytherapy (IGBT), accurate percutaneous intervention of needle and precise placement radiation sources are challenge tasks. In traditional prostate brachytherapy, needles are introduced through fixed, parallel holes of a template where the maneuverability of the needle is extremely limited. The accuracy and consistency of needle placement and seed delivery is subject to vari...

Complex networks are frequently used for modeling interactions in real-world systems in diverse areas, such as sociology, biology, information spreading and exchanging, scientometrics and many other different areas. One key topological feature of real-world complex networks is that nodes are arranged in tightly knit groups that are loosely connected one to each other. Such groups are called com...

1 Background and Aims Reduction in offspring fitness resulting from mating between 2 neighbors is interpreted as biparental inbreeding depression. However, little is known 3 about the relationship between the genetic relatedness of parents and the biparental 4 inbreeding depression in their progeny in natural populations. Here, the effect of kinship 5 between mates on the fitness of their proge...

Generalized pollination systems and autonomous self fertilization are traits that have been linked with plant invasiveness. However, whether specialized pollination requirements pose a significant barrier to plant invasions is not yet clear. Likewise, the contribution of pollinators to the fecundity of facultatively self pollinating invasive plant species is poorly understood. We addressed thes...

We investigated the reproductive biology of three plants endemic to rosemary scrub habitats on the Lake Wales Ridge of Florida, USA. We used hand-pollination experiments and observations of flowers and their insect visitors to determine their mating systems and pollination. Fruit or seed set after self pollination was 94, 97, and 8% of fruit or seed set after cross pollination in Eryngium cunei...

Winter chilling is of central importance in the phenology of temperate annual and perennial plants. Chilling accelerates flowering through the process of vernalization and breaks both bud and seed dormancy, permitting the onset of growth in the spring. The quantitative effects of chilling in floral promotion in winter annual Arabidopsis accessions are well-documented, but very little is known a...