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Background: Although experimental results showed that epicutaneous exposure of urban ambient air pollution induces skin inflammation, its clinical relevance in the real-world setting has not been thoroughly examined yet. Objectives: This study investigated the short-term effect of ambient air pollution on the risk of hospital outpatient visits for eczematous skin disorders in seven metropolitan cities of South Korea. Methods: We conducted a time-stratified case-crossover study. Hourly mean concentrations of air pollutants(PM10, PM2.5, SO2, NO2) and meteorological data were obtained from the Ministry of Environment. The percent increase in the risk of outpatient visits associated with an interquartile range increase in particulate matters was determined by conditional logistic regression analysis after adjusting for national holidays and meteorological factors. Results: Among the types of air pollutants, both PM10 and SO2 were most significantly associated with an increased risk of outpatient visits for eczematous dermatitis. The effect of air pollutants on the outpatient visits was largely confined between lag 0 to 4. Cumulative lag analysis showed a gradual increase in outpatient visits by PM10 and SO2. Sensitivity analysis demonstrated significantly increased cumulative risks for atopic dermatitis, allergic contact dermatitis, and irritant dermatitis during lag 0-4. Conclusion: Our results suggest that ambient air pollution increases the risk of outpatient visits for eczematous skin diseases

The levels of vitamins B2 (riboflavin) and B6 (pyridoxine) in the main edible parts of five crops in the Amaranthaceae family, namely Amaranthus spp. (amaranth grain), Beta vulgaris subsp. vulgaris var. cicla (Swiss chard leaf), B. vulgaris subsp. vulgaris var. conditiva (beet root), Chenopodium quinoa (quinoa grain), and Spinacia oleracea (spinach leaf) were analysed by high-performance liquid chromatography with a fluorescence detector (HPLC-FLD). This analysis detected both vitamins in all of the samples. The highest content of vitamin B2 was found in spinach leaf (0.439 ± 0.094 μg/g FW). Amaranth grain (0.431 ± 0.023 μg/g FW) and quinoa grain (0.419 ± 0.055 μg/g FW) showed similar vitamin B2 content to that of spinach leaf. The highest content of vitamin B6 was found in quinoa grain (0.321 ± 0.030 μg/g FW), followed by amaranth grain (0.184 ± 0.003 μg/g FW). Taken together, the main edible parts of crops in the Amaranthaceae family, especially quinoa grain, might be a good vegetable source for the consumption of both vitamins, and these results could serve as valuable preliminary data for estimating both vitamin contents of crops in the Amaranthaceae family.

The nature of a neutrino, whether it is a Dirac type or Majorana type, may be comprehensively probed using their quantum statistical properties. If the neutrino is a Majorana fermion, then by definition it is identical and indistinguishable from the corresponding antineutrino. When a Majorana neutrino and antineutrino are pair produced, the corresponding state has to obey the Pauli principle unlike in the Dirac case. We use this property to distinguish between the two cases using the process $B^0 \to \mu^-\,\mu^+\,\nu_\mu\,\bar{\nu}_\mu$. We show that the two cases differ dramatically in a special kinematic scenario where, in the rest frame of the parent $B$ meson, the muons fly away back-to-back (i.e. fly with 3-momenta of equal magnitudes but opposite directions), and so do the neutrino and antineutrino. Unlike any other scenario, we know the energies and magnitudes of $3$-momenta of both the neutrino and the antineutrino in this back-to-back configuration without even directly measuring them. This provides a way of avoiding the constraint imposed by the `practical Dirac-Majorana confusion theorem', as one need not fully integrate over neutrino and antineutrino in this case. As a true signature of the universal principle of quantum statistics which does not depend on the size of the mass of the particle but its spin, the difference between Dirac and Majorana cases in this special kinematic configuration does survive independent of the neutrino mass as long as neutrino mass is nonzero. The analysis presented here is applicable immediately to several other processes with the same final state as in the case of $B^0$ decay without any major change., Comment: 30 pages, 5 figures, updated references, typos corrected, for published version visit the DOI

We present, how a systematic study of $B \to D\ell N$ ($D \to K \ell N$) decays with $\ell=\mu,\tau$, at Belle II (BESIII) can provide unambiguous signature of a heavy neutrino $N$ and/or constrain its mixing with active neutrinos $\nu_\ell$, which is parameterized by $|U_{\ell N}|^2$. Our constraint on $|U_{\mu N}|^2$ that can be achieved from the full Belle II data is comparable with what can be obtained from the much larger data set of the upgraded LHCb. Additionally, our method offers better constraint on $|U_{\mu N}|^2$ for mass of sterile neutrino $m_N < 2$ GeV. We can also probe the Dirac and Majorana nature of $N$ by observing the sequential decay of $N$, including suppression from observation of a displaced vertex as well as helicity flip, for Majorana $N$., Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures. This is a pre-print of an article published in European Physical Journal C. The final authenticated version is available online at https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-020-8310-2

As international conferences continue to proliferate, up-to-date information on what influences potential delegates' decisions about which meetings to attend can be key to attracting larger numbers of registrations. Based on this premise, in this study the important choice factors that influence individual attendance at international hospitality and tourism conferences are first assessed, followed by a determination of attendees' preferences for registration payment options (full payment vs. customized) and communication media types. This article also investigates how such choice factors and preferences are influenced by attendees' individual characteristics, providing insight into the possible effects of attendee overall profiles. The discussion draws on an online questionnaire that was distributed to a convenience sample ( N = 277) of academics and postgraduate students in the discipline of hospitality and tourism. The findings reveal four major choice factors: educational opportunities, career development, travelability, and destination stimuli. Several significant findings related to attendees' individual characteristics, as well as differences between preferred communication media, were also found. The implications of the findings, particularly for organizers of international conferences in hospitality and tourism, are then discussed.

We investigate rare decays of Higgs via exchange of two almost degenerate heavy on-shell Majorana neutrinos Nj (j = 1, 2): Γ± = Γ(h → νkNj→ νkℓ±π∓), and into the open quark channels Γ± = Γ(h → νkNj→ νkℓ±UD), where UD are two jets of open quarks ($$ \overline{U}D $$ U ¯ D , or $$ U\overline{D} $$ U D ¯ , where U = u, c and D = d, s). The related CP violation asymmetry ACP = (Γ−− Γ+)/(Γ− + Γ+) is studied in detail. We take into account the N1-N2 overlap and oscillation effects. We can see that for certain, presently acceptable, range of input parameters, such decays with open quark channels, and their asymmetries, could be detected in the International Linear Collider (ILC).

We achieved a detection limit of 400 ppmv N2O (5.5× 10 − 5 absorbance) at 19 °C and 4.0 µm, using emission from an interband cascade light-emitting device (ICLED) in combination with detection by a resonant cavity IR detector (RCID). These results demonstrate the feasibility of combining ICLEDs and RCIDs on a single mass-produced chip for optical gas sensing.

Recent rapid thinning of West Antarctic ice shelves are believed to be caused by intrusions of warm deep water that induce basal melting and seaward meltwater export. This study uses data from three bottom-mounted mooring arrays to show seasonal variability and local forcing for the currents moving into and out of the Dotson ice shelf cavity. A southward flow of warm, salty water had maximum current velocities along the eastern channel slope, while northward outflows of freshened ice shelf meltwater spread at intermediate depth above the western slope. The inflow correlated with the local ocean surface stress curl. At the western slope, meltwater outflows followed the warm influx along the eastern slope with a ~2-3 month delay. Ocean circulation near Dotson Ice Shelf, affected by sea ice distribution and wind, appears to significantly control the inflow of warm water and subsequent ice shelf melting on seasonal time-scales.

The disagreement between the standard model prediction and the experimental measurement of muon anomalous magnetic moment can be alleviated by invoking an additional particle which is either a vector boson ($X_1$) or a scalar ($X_0$). This new particle, with the mass $m_X \lesssim 2 m_\mu$, can be searched for in the decay $J/\psi \to \mu^- \mu^+ X$, where $X$ is missing. Our numerical study shows that the search is quite feasible at the BESIII experiment in the parameter space allowed by muon $g-2$ measurements., Comment: 16 pages, 10 figures, 2 tables, References updated

Clustering analysis using air parcel trajectories is actively used to investigate transport patterns of pollutants. To estimate the impact of nuclide dispersion from nuclear accident, comprehensive information based on long-term meteorological data is required to eatablish a complete and efficient public protection plan. Most of nuclear plants in South Korea are located in a complex terrain near coastal area that involves complicated meteorological phenomenon such as sea breezes and mountain-valley breezes. Robust approach based on long-term climatrological data is required to fully resolve the impacts near Korean nuclear power plants. In this study, we assessed the impacts of potential nuclear accident in South Korea by clustering dispersion patterns using 10-year meteorological data. Flow patterns are clustered using trajectory cluster analysis, and then combined with dispersion simulations to demonstrate the clustered dispersion patterns by each season and nuclear power plant. The long-term meteorological simulations from 2007 to 2016 were used to evaluate the potential impact of nuclear accidents in Korea, and the modeling framework was designed to show the impact map according to the flow patterns near each nuclear power plant. NOAA HYSPLIT modeling additional clustering analysis suggests that two or three cluster patterns for each power plant can be used. A total of 38 flow patterns are classified near the four nuclear plants in the previous season based on a 10-year wind field analysis. Korea has very complex terrain and coastal areas, and more sophisticated modeling efforts are needed to fully understand the more realistic dispersion characteristics of air masses. In terms of space-time resolution, updating land use information for simulation is very important for weather simulation near the surface of Korea. The results of this study can be used as a guideline for constructing a modeling framework for nuclide diffusion simulations, but given these complex simulation configurations, the results demonstrated in the current study are should be interpreted with caution.

In this article we study the rare B-meson decay via two on-shell almost-degenerate Majorana Heavy Neutrinos, into two charged leptons and two pseudoscalar mesons ($$B^{\pm } \rightarrow D^0 \ell ^{\pm }_1 \ell ^{\pm }_2 \pi ^{\mp }$$ B ± → D 0 ℓ 1 ± ℓ 2 ± π ∓ ). We consider the scenario where the heavy neutrino masses are $$\sim 2$$ ∼ 2 GeV and the heavy-light mixing coefficients are $$|B_{\ell N}|^2 \sim 10^{-5}$$ | B ℓ N | 2 ∼ 10 - 5 , and evaluate the possibility to measure the CP-asymmetry at Belle II. We present some realistic conditions under which the asymmetry could be detected.

PURPOSE The influence of the dipeptidyl peptidase-IV inhibitor gemigliptin alone or in combination with the histone deacetylase inhibitor PXD101 on survival of thyroid carcinoma cells was investigated. METHODS SW1736, TPC-1, 8505C and BCPAP human thyroid carcinoma cells were used. To assess cell survival, cell viability, the percentage of viable cells and dead cells, cytotoxic activity, ATP levels and FACS analysis were measured. To validate the impact of gemigliptin combined with PXD101, the interactions were estimated by obtaining combination index in cells treated with two agents. RESULTS In cells treated with gemigliptin or PXD101, cell viability, the percentage of viable cells and ATP levels were reduced, and the percentage of dead cells and cytotoxic activity were elevated. In cells treated with both gemigliptin and PXD101, compared with PXD101 alone, cell death was augmented, and all of the combination index values were lower than 1.0, suggesting the synergism between gemigliptin and PXD101. The percentage of apoptotic cells, and the protein levels of Bcl2 and cleaved poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase were elevated, and the protein levels of xIAP and survivin were reduced. The protein levels of phospho-Akt and phospho-AMPK were elevated, and cell migration was reduced. CONCLUSIONS Our results demonstrate that gemigliptin induces cytotoxicity in thyroid carcinoma cells. Moreover, gemigliptin has a synergistic activity with PXD101 in the induction of cell death through involvement of Bcl2 family proteins, xIAP and survivin as well as mediation of Akt and AMPK in thyroid carcinoma cells.

Chronic stress can be a precipitating factor in the onset of depression. Lentiviral-mediated knockdown of HCN1 protein expression and reduction of functional Ih produce antidepressant behavior. However, whether h-channels are altered in an animal model of depression is not known. We found that perisomatic HCN1 protein expression and Ih-sensitive physiological measurements were significantly increased in dorsal but not in ventral CA1 region/neurons following chronic unpredictable stress (CUS), a widely accepted model for major depressive disorder. Cell-attached patch clamp recordings confirmed that perisomatic Ih was increased in dorsal CA1 neurons following CUS. Furthermore, when dorsal CA1 Ih was reduced by shRNA-HCN1, the CUS-induced behavioral deficits were prevented. Finally, rats infused in the dorsal CA1 region with thapsigargin, an irreversible inhibitor of the SERCA pump, exhibited anxiogenic-like behaviors and increased Ih, similar to that observed following CUS. Our results suggest that CUS, but not acute stress, leads to an increase in perisomatic Ih in dorsal CA1 neurons and that HCN channels represent a potential target for the treatment of major depressive disorder.

The effects of electron beam (EB) irradiation on the superconducting critical temperature (Tc) and critical current density (Jc) of YBCO films were studied. The YBCO thin films were irradiated using a KAERI EB accelerator with an energy of 0.2 MeV and a dose of 1015–1016 e/cm2. A small Tc decrease and a broad superconducting transition were observed as the EB dose increased. The value of Jcs (at 20 K, 50 K and 70 K) increased at doses of 7.5×1015 and 2.2×1016 e/cm2. However, Jcs decreased as the dose increased further. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis showed that the c axis of YBCO was elongated and the full width at half maximum (FWHM) increased as the dose increased, which is strong evidence of the atomic displacement by EB irradiation. The transmission electron microscopy (TEM) showed that the amorphous layer formed in the vicinity of the surfaces of the irradiated films. The amorphous phase was often present as an isolated form in the interior of the films. In addition to the formation of the amorphous phase, many striations running along the a-b direction of YBCO were observed. The high magnification lattice image showed that the striations were stacking faults. The enhancement of Jc by EB irradiation is likely to be due to the lattice distortion and the formation of defects such as vacancies and stacking faults. The decrease in Jc at a high EB dose is attributed to the extension of the amorphous region of a non-superconducting phase.

Decays of heavy pseudoscalar mesons $B$, ${B}_{c}$, ${B}_{s}$, and ${D}_{s}$ at the LHCb upgrade are considered, which produce either two equal sign muons or taus. In addition, we consider the analogous decays with opposite sign muons or taus. All these decays are considered to be mediated by a heavy on-shell neutrino $N$. Such decays of $B$ mesons, if not detected, will give, in general, stringent upper bounds on the heavy-light mixing parameter $|{U}_{\ensuremath{\mu}N}{|}^{2}$ as a function of the neutrino mass ${M}_{N}\ensuremath{\sim}1\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{GeV}$, principally due to the large expected number of produced mesons $B$. While some of the decays of the other mentioned mesons are attractive due to a weaker Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa suppression, the expected produced number of such mesons is significantly smaller that of $B$'s; therefore, the sensitivity bounds from such decays are, in general, comparable or less restrictive. When $\ensuremath{\tau}$ pairs are produced, only two types of such decays are significant: ${B}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}$, ${B}_{c}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{\ensuremath{\tau}}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}{\ensuremath{\tau}}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}{\ensuremath{\pi}}^{\ensuremath{\mp}}$ (and ${\ensuremath{\tau}}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}{\ensuremath{\tau}}^{\ensuremath{\mp}}{\ensuremath{\pi}}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}$), giving us stringent upper bounds on $|{U}_{\ensuremath{\tau}N}{|}^{2}$; the other decays with a pair of $\ensuremath{\tau}$, such as ${B}^{0}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{D}^{(*)\ensuremath{-}}{\ensuremath{\tau}}^{+}{\ensuremath{\tau}}^{+}{\ensuremath{\pi}}^{\ensuremath{-}}$ (and ${D}^{(*)\ensuremath{-}}{\ensuremath{\tau}}^{+}{\ensuremath{\tau}}^{\ensuremath{-}}{\ensuremath{\pi}}^{+}$), are prohibited or very suppressed by kinematics.

Eustoma (Eustoma grandiflorum), also called lisianthus, belongs to the family Gentianaceae and is cultivated for flower production globally (1), including in Korea. At least 10 viruses can infect eustoma, including Cucumber mosaic virus (genus Cucumovirus), Tobacco mosaic virus (genus Tobamovirus), Tomato spotted wilt virus (genus Tospovirus), and Tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV, genus Begomovirus) (1,2). In December 2012, disease symptoms such as leaf curling and stunting were observed on eustoma plants grown in Gumi, Korea, where TYLCV outbreak was reported on tomato farms. In a eustoma greenhouse, about 5% of eustoma plants showed the leaf curling and stunting symptoms. Total DNA was isolated from 15 symptomatic eustoma plants with a Viral Gene-spin Viral DNA/RNA Extraction Kit (iNtRON Biotechnology, Seongnam, Korea) and viral DNA was amplified by rolling circle amplification (TempliPhi Amplification Kit, GE Healthcare Life Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden) following the manufacturer's instructions. All amplicons were digested with the restriction enzyme SacI (TaKaRa Bio, Shiga, Japan) and 2.8-kb DNA fragments were verified on an agarose gel. Fifteen digested DNA fragments were purified from the gel, ligated into pGEM-T easy vector (Promega, Madison, WI), and sequenced (Macrogen, Seoul, Korea, GenBank Accession No. KF225312.1). A BLAST search exhibited a 99% identity to TYLCV previously reported in Korea (GenBank HM856911.1). This is the first report of TYLCV in eustoma plants in Korea. To identify the movement and replication of TYLCV in infected eustoma plants, PCR and Southern hybridization analysis were performed with samples from four organs (flower, leaf, stem, and root) of three individual TYLCV-infected plants. TYLCV TYL DNA from each organ sample was amplified using 2× Taq PCR MasterMix (Bioneer, Daejeon, Korea) with TYLCV-specific primers (TYLCV-F: 5′-ATATTACCGGATGGCCGCGCCT-3′, CV-R: 5′-TCCACGGGGAACATCAGGGCTT-3′). Single-stranded as well as double-stranded TYLCV DNA were identified from all organs of symptomatic eustoma, indicating TYLCV can replicate and move systemically in eustoma plants. Whitefly (Bemisia tabaci)-mediated plant-to-plant viral transmission was performed with one TYLCV-infected eustoma plant and five healthy eustoma plants and revealed that 80% (4 of 5) of the eustoma plants were infected by whitefly-mediated transmission. These results indicate that TYLCV-infected eustoma plants could act as virus reservoirs to healthy eustoma plants as well as other potential TYLCV hosts, such as tomatoes. In Korea, TYLCV has been the most notorious plant virus since 2008 (3), but, until now, TYLCV infection in eustoma plants has not been reported in Korea. References: (1) C. C. Chen et al. Plant Dis. 84:506, 2000. (2) A. Kritzman et al. Plant Dis. 84:1185, 2000. (3) H. Lee et al. Mol. Cells 30:467, 2010.

The nanocomposite magnets attract great interest in the study of high-performance magnets. Here, the micromagnetic simulations have been performed to investigate the effects of various microstructural factors such as grain geometry, grain size, and volume fraction on the performance of a soft-in-hard-matrix nanostructured Nd2Fe14B/α-Fe isotropic magnet. It is found that there is very little dependence of remanence on the geometry of the soft phase. The coercivity decreases with increasing the soft grain size, whereas it has a variation tendency depending on the size of hard grain size. In contrast to a significant role of soft-sphere geometry in anisotropic nanocomposites (Skomski et al 2013 IEEE Trans. Magn. 49 3215), the energy product of the soft-sphere system simulated here is slightly increased ( ⩽ 8 kJ m−3), compared with that of the soft-cylinder system. In the meantime, a significant enhancement in energy product with increasing the soft grain size is observed only when the hard grain size is less than 15 nm. Our simulation predicts the highest energy product of 347 kJ m−3 with a hard grain size of 5 nm and a soft-sphere size of 12.4 nm (30 vol% of the soft phase). It is shown that the effective magnetocrystalline anisotropy is responsible for the variation in coercivity, based on its quantitative evaluation for the soft-sphere system.

Main text A pilot study for the thickness measurement of HfO2 films was performed by the Surface Analysis Working Group (SAWG) of the Consultative Committee for Amount of Substance (CCQM). The aim of this pilot study was to ensure the equivalency in the measurement capability of national metrology institutes for the thickness measurement of HfO2 films. In this pilot study, the thicknesses of six HfO2 films with nominal thickness from 1 nm to 4 nm were measured by X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS), X-ray Reflectometry(XRR), X-ray Fluorescence Analysis (XRF), Transmission Electron Spectroscopy (TEM), Spectroscopic Ellipsometry (SE) and Rutherford Backscattering Spectrometry (RBS). The reference thicknesses were determined by mutual calibration of a zero-offset method (Medium Energy Ion Scattering Spectroscopy (MEIS) of KRISS) and a method traceable to the length unit (the average thicknesses of three XRR data except the thinnest film). These reference thicknesses are traceable to the length unit because they are based on the traceability of XRR. For the thickness measurement by XPS, the effective attenuation length of Hf 4f electrons was determined. In the cases of XRR and TEM, the offset values were determined from a linear fitting between the reference thicknesses and the individual data by XRR and TEM. The amount of substance of HfO2, expressed as thickness of HfO2 films (in both linear and areal density units), was found to be a good subject for a CCQM key comparison. To reach the main text of this paper, click on Final Report. The final report has been peer-reviewed and approved for publication by the CCQM.

(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)Managing exploitation of ground water for agriculture and controlling nonpoint-source pollution for public health have long been important issues for economists and agricultural policymakers. In response to growing public concern about ground water depletion and nonpoint-source contamination, the U.S. Congress established, as part of the 1996 Farm Act, an agricultural cost-share program known as the Environmental Quality Incentive Program (EQIP) to encourage producers to adopt resource-conserving and environmentally beneficial agricultural practices. However, there were some changes to EQIP in the 2008 Farm Bill.1 For applications that included water conservation or irrigation-efficiency conservation practices, the 2008 Farm Bill required the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to give priority to applications that demonstrated a reduction in water use by the agricultural operation:2As a condition of receiving a higher ranking with the grouping of water conservation applications, the producer agrees not to use any associated water savings to bring new land under irrigation production, excluding incidental land needed for efficient operations. (Section 2503-Environmental Quality Incentives Program)Irrigation practices that improved the efficiency of water use included precision irrigation systems, automation of irrigation systems, and newer sensor-controlled equipment (Lichtenberg, Majsztrik, and Saavoss 2015).Since then, numerous studies have analyzed agricultural cost-sharing programs using a variety of models, including dynamic models of management of exploitation of ground water and nonpoint-source pollution (Wu et al. 1994, Kim, Schaible, and Daberkow 2000), mathematical programming models for conservation of irrigation water (Huffacker and Whittlesey 2003,Scheierling, Young, and Cardon 2006), risk-programming models for conservation of ground water (Peterson and Ding 2005), and multi-year optimization models for conservation of ground water (Ward et al. 2008).While numerous empirical studies have suggested that cost-sharing programs are unlikely to reduce either use of irrigation water or nonpoint-source pollution (Huffaker and Whittlesey 2003,Pfeiffer and Lin 2014, Ward et al. 2008, Wu et al. 1994), a few studies have provided some support for cost-sharing programs by demonstrating that optimal applications of irrigation and fertilization do not respond monotonically to changes in the efficiency of the irrigation system. Peterson and Ding (2005) found that an irrigation system that provides intermediate efficiency (sprinklers) results in greater water use while a high-efficiency irrigation system (drip) results in less use of water than an inefficient flood irrigation system. Similarly, Kim, Schaible, and Daberkow (2000) found that adoption of cost-shared center-pivot systems reduces contamination of ground water while other irrigation systems (tail-water recovery and surge flow) result in continued deterioration of the quality of ground water. The changes in the EQIP program in 2008 reduce conversion of acres from dryland to irrigated operations involving high-value crops, potentially changing the results found in prior studies.We revisit the effects of the EQIP cost-share program on conservation of ground water and management of nonpoint-source pollution by ameliorating the shortcomings of the hydrologic and economic models used in previous studies, in which (i) a partial analysis was associated with the effects of the costshare program on either conservation of ground water or nonpoint-source pollution but not both, (ii) economic benefits from irrigation water and nitrogen fertilizer uses were overestimated, (iii) the delayed response associated with nitrate leaching and ground water return flows was omitted, (iv) critical elements of the nutrient cycle were omitted, and, most importantly, (v) the process of developing and adopting induced irrigation technologies was omitted. …

Drought conditions at a given location evolve randomly through time and are typically characterized by severity and duration. Researchers interested in modeling the economic effects of drought on agriculture or other water users often capture the stochastic nature of drought and its conditions via multiyear, stochastic economic models. Three major sources of uncertainty in application of a multiyear discrete stochastic model to evaluate user preparedness and response to drought are: (1) the assumption of independence of yearly weather conditions, (2) linguistic vagueness in the definition of drought itself, and (3) the duration of drought. One means of addressing these uncertainties is to re-cast drought as a stochastic, multiyear process using a “fuzzy” semi-Markov process. In this paper, we review “crisp” versus “fuzzy” representations of drought and show how fuzzy semi-Markov processes can aid researchers in developing more robust multiyear, discrete stochastic models.

We analyze, in a fully model-independent manner, the effects of new physics on a few semi-hadronic three-body meson decays of the type $P_i \to P_f f_1 f_2$, where $P_i$, $P_f$ are well chosen pseudo-scalar mesons and $f_{1,2}$ denote fermions out of which at least one gets detected in experiments. We find that the angular distribution of events of these decays can probe many interesting new physics, such as the nature of the intermediate particle that can cause lepton-flavor violation, or presence of heavy sterile neutrino, or new intermediate particles, or new interactions. We also provide angular asymmetries which can quantify the effects of new physics in these decays. We illustrate the effectiveness of our proposed methodology with a few well chosen decay modes showing effects of certain new physics possibilities without any hadronic uncertainties., 13 pages, 6 figures, added more references

In the semiconductor chip manufacturing industry, a method of evaluating characteristics by applying a direct circuit edit at an already manufactured chip level is widely used in order to shorten the product development time and release the product to the market in a short time. [1] This is because, when the fab process is performed by modifying the mask to improve the characteristics as in the conventional method, it takes a lot of time and cost for feedback. Feedback of semiconductor characteristics through circuit edit can save 10-20 times in terms of cost and time. As the process becomes more complex and the pattern size becomes smaller, its benefits become even greater. However, when the chip level circuit edit is applied to the Chip Scale Package (CSP) IC, it is very difficult to apply a general method of the frontside circuit edit, so that the success rate of the circuit edit is lowered. In order to solve this problem, a circuit edit method in the backside direction of the chip has been attempted for many years. [2, 3] However, the backside circuit edit (BCE) has more difficulties than the frontside circuit edit. A typical issue is how to uniformly and precisely control and remove the backside Si of the circuit edit area. The following three points should be considered for this. First, the uniformity of the remaining silicon thickness should be high. Second, it is necessary to control the thickness of remaining silicon to an appropriate thickness in the process of removing backside silicon. Third, it is important not to damage the peripheral circuit during etching and deposition. In this paper, we propose a method to increase the backside circuit edit success rate of CSP IC using Al or Cu metal by controlling these three factors effectively.