Available water resources for agricultural irrigation have decreased worldwide in recent decades, prompting advances in water saving methods. In this study, soil water regime and water balance in a transplanted rice field with reduced irrigation (multiple shallow depth irrigations) in the Taihu Lake Basin of East China were observed and then evaluated using Hydrus-1D model during two consecutiv...

[1] To explore the role of hurricanes in the climate system, a detailed analysis is made of the bulk atmospheric moisture budget of Ivan in September 2004 and Katrina in August 2005 from simulations with the Weather and Research Forecasting (WRF) model at 4 km resolution without parameterized convection. Heavy precipitation exceeding 20 mm h 1 in the storms greatly exceeds the surface flux of m...

To evaluate the effects of long-term applications of phosphorus fertilizers on mobility of dissolved organic matter (DOM) and heavy metals in agricultural soils, a sandy soil and a loamy soil were spiked with ammonium phosphate at application rates of 0, 25, 50, 100, 250, and 500 mg P per kilogram of soil. A series of 15-cm long soil columns were constructed by packing incubated soils of varyin...

Rift Valley fever (RVF) is a zoonotic viral disease that can affect a variety of species, including ruminants and camels, causing high mortality in young animals and/or abortions in adults. The RVF virus is endemic mainly in subSaharan Africa, but it has also been seen in North Africa, and may have become established in Egypt. There are concerns that this virus might be spreading, after outbrea...

This is a study on the development of a practical road disaster management system for various natural disasters by applying risk management techniques. Risk is defined here as the product of the likelihood of disastrous event and its consequences. The road facilities targeted are bridges, embankments, tunnels, slopes, and so forth. Various natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis and hea...

Grass pollen belong to the most important allergen sources involved in the elicitation of allergic asthma. We have isolated cDNAs coding for Bermuda grass (Cynodon dactylon) and timothy grass (Phleum pratense) pollen allergens, belonging to a family of pectin-degrading enzymes (i.e., polygalacturonases). The corresponding allergens, termed Cyn d 13 and Phl p 13, represent glycoproteins of appro...

Neural networks are often used to model complex and nonlinear systems, as they can approximate nonlinear systems with arbitrary accuracy and can he trained from data. Amongst the neural networks, Associative Memory Networks (AMNs) are oflen used, since they are less computation intensive, and yet good generalization results can he obtained. However, this can only be achieved if the structure of...

The variability of summer precipitation in the southeastern United States is examined in this study using 60-yr (1948–2007) rainfall data. The Southeast summer rainfalls exhibited higher interannual variability with more intense summer droughts and anomalous wetness in the recent 30 years (1978–2007) than in the prior 30 years (1948–77). Such intensification of summer rainfall variability was c...