Three species of woody plants, Ilex crenata 'Helleri', Juniperus chinensis procumbens 'Nana', and Ligustrum lucidum, were grown in one-liter containers filled with pine bark to determine Fe and Mn requirements with regard to rate and ratio. FeEDTA and MnEDTA were applied at either a 2:1 or 1:2 ratio of Fe:Mn at 5 concentrations each, 3 times per week with each irrigation. Medium solutions were collected every 21 days on one species and analyzed for Fe and Mn levels. Dry weight and tissue Fe and Mn levels were determined for all three species. Neither rate nor ratio of applied Fe and Mn had an effect on shoot dry weights. Control treatments, in general, had the lowest medium solution and tissue levels of Fe and Mn, however, there was no difference in dry weights between control and treatment plants. These results suggest that pine bark supplies adequate levels of Fe and Mn for growth under the conditions of this study. In a second study, three sources of Fe and Mn were applied to Tagetes erecta 'Inca' growing in 500 cc plastic pots containing sieved pine bark at 3 lime rates: 0, 3, and 6 kg m⁻³. Sources of Fe and Mn were pre-plant Micromax, liquid sulfate salts, and liquid chelates applied in the irrigation water. No difference in growth between micronutrient sources was detected, however, growth was greater at the 3 and 6 kg m⁻³ lime rates. Levels of Fe and Mn in medium solution and tissue decreased with increasing lime rate, with availability of Fe and Mn greatest with chelate as the source, regardless of lime rate. A similar study was conducted with a control and liquid sulfate treatment. There was no difference in dry weight between the sulfate treatment and the control, except at 0 kg m⁻³ lime where the control plants were larger. Again, lime additions increased growth, and Fe and Mn availability in medium solution and tissue levels decreased. These results suggest that if Fe and Mn additions are needed, all sources provide adequate Fe and Mn for growth. / M.S.

Over the last decade, container technology has fundamentally changed the landscape of commercial cloud computing services. In contrast to traditional VM technologies, containers theoretically provide the same process isolation guarantees with less overhead and additionally introduce finer grained options for resource allocation. Cloud providers have widely adopted container based architectures as the standard for multi-tenant hosting services and rely on underlying security guarantees to ensure that adversarial workloads cannot disrupt the activities of coresident containers on a given host. Unfortunately, recent work has shown that the isolation guarantees provided by containers are not absolute. Due to inconsistencies in the way cgroups have been added to the Linux kernel, there exist vulnerabilities that allow containerized processes to generate "out of band" workloads and negatively impact the performance of the entire host without being appropriately charged. Because of the relative complexity of the kernel, discovering these vulnerabilities through traditional static analysis tools may be very challenging. In this work, we present TORPEDO, a set of modifications to the SYZKALLER fuzzing framework that creates containerized workloads and searches for sequences of system calls that break process isolation boundaries. TORPEDO combines traditional code coverage feedback with resource utilization measurements to motivate the generation of "adversarial" programs based on user-defined criteria. Experiments conducted on the default docker runtime runC as well as the virtualized runtime gVisor independently reconfirm several known vulnerabilities and discover interesting new results and bugs, giving us a promising framework to conduct more research. / Master of Science / Over the last decade, container technology has fundamentally changed the landscape of commercial cloud computing services. By abstracting away many of the system details required to deploy software, developers can rapidly prototype, deploy, and take advantage of massive distributed frameworks when deploying new software products. These paradigms are supported with corresponding business models offered by cloud providers, who allocate space on powerful physical hardware among many potentially competing services. Unfortunately, recent work has shown that the isolation guarantees provided by containers are not absolute. Due to inconsistencies in the way containers have been implemented by the Linux kernel, there exist vulnerabilities that allow containerized programs to generate "out of band" workloads and negatively impact the performance of other containers. In general, these vulnerabilities are difficult to identify, but can be very severe. In this work, we present TORPEDO, a set of modifications to the SYZKALLER fuzzing framework that creates containerized workloads and searches for programs that negatively impact other containers. TORPEDO uses a novel technique that combines resource monitoring with code coverage approximations, and initial testing on common container software has revealed new interesting vulnerabilities and bugs.

Cranes are increasingly used in transportation and construction. increasing demand and faster requirements necessitate better and more efficient controllers to guarantee fast turn-around time and to meet safety requirements. Container cranes are used extensively in ship-to-port and port-to-ship transfer operations. In this work, we will extend the recently developed delayed position feedback controller to container cranes. In contrast with traditional work, which models a crane as a simple pendulum consisting of a hoisting cable and a lumped mass at its end, we have modeled the crane as a four-bar mechanism. The actual configuration of the hoisting mechanism is significantly different from a simple pendulum. It consists typically of a set of four hoisting cables attached to four different points on the trolley and to four points on a spreader bar. The spreader bar is used to lift the containers. Therefore, the dynamics of hoisting assemblies of large container cranes are different from that of a simple pendulum. We found that a controller which treats the system as a four-bar mechanism has an improved response. We developed a controller to meet the following requirements: traverse an 80-ton payload 50 m in 21.5 s, including raising the payload 15 m at the beginning and lowering the payload 15 m at the end of motion, while reducing the sway to 50 mm within 5.0 s at the end of the transfer maneuver. The performance of the controller has been demonstrated theoretically using numerical simulation. Moreover, the performance of the controller has been demonstrated experimentally using a 1/10th scale model. For the 1/10th scale model, the requirements translate into: traverse an 80 kg payload 5 m in 6.8 s, including raising 1.5 m at the beginning and lowering 1.5 m at the end of motion, while reducing the sway to 5 mm in under 1.6 s. The experiments validated the controller. / Master of Science

Growing landscape trees in containers is a common practice in the nursery industry. In the southeastern United States, pine bark is often used as a container substrate, and two common amendments to pine bark are lime and micronutrients. In this study, three experiments were conducted to determine the effect of these amendments on the growth of a wide range of landscape tree species grown in pine bark. In the first experiment, nine species of landscape trees [Acer palmatum (Japanese maple), Acer saccharum (sugar maple), Cercis canadensis (redbud), Cornus florida (flowering dogwood), Cornus kousa (kousa dogwood), Koelreuteria paniculata (golden-rain tree), Magnolia x soulangiana (magnolia), Nyssa sylvatica (blackgum), and Quercus palustris (pin oak)] were grown from seed in two pine barks: pH 4.7 (low) and 5.1 (high). Preplant amendment treatments to each pine bark (Pinus taeda) were: with or without dolomitic limestone (3.57 kg.m-3) and with or without micronutrients (0.9 kg.m-3, Micromax™). The same experiment was repeated using Koelreuteria paniculata and Quercus palustris, the same lime and micronutrient treatments, and two pine barks: pH 5.1 (low) and 5.8 (high). In both experiments, micronutrients increased shoot dry mass and height for all species, while lime decreased shoot dry mass and height for all species. Effect of bark type in the first experiment was variable, while shoot dry mass and height were highest in the low pH bark when the experiment was repeated. Substrate solution element concentrations increased when micronutrients were added, decreased when lime was added, and in general, concentrations were higher in low pH bark than in high pH bark. In the third experiment, Koelreuteria paniculata was grown from seed in pine bark amended with 0, 1.2, 2.4, or 3.6 kg.m-3 dolomitic limestone and 0 or 0.9 kg.m-3 micronutrients (Micromax™). Initial pH for each lime rate was 4.0, 4.5, 5.0, and 5.5, respectively. Adding micronutrients increased shoot dry mass and height. Lime increased growth only at the 1.2 kg.m-3 rate. In general, substrate solution element concentrations increased when micronutrients were added and decreased when lime was added. In all three experiments, adding micronutrients was necessary regardless of pine bark pH, while adding lime was not necessary. / Master of Science

Improving water efficiency is and will continue to be a top concern to meet the world food production demands for a growing population. By having a clear understanding of water efficiencies, communities will be able to address these concerns from an economic standpoint and use more productive methods to grow food and limit water consumption. This study examines the water efficiencies of three irrigation methods over a single growing season in southeastern Oklahoma. Two crops, tomatoes and cucumbers, were grown using drip irrigation, a self-wicking container, and a non-circulating hydroponics barrel. Results at the end of the season showed the drip irrigation method had the highest water efficiency in terms of yield of product over water applied for both crops. The drip irrigation method also had the lowest associated set up costs and second lowest time requirements after the hydroponics method. These results were found to be consistent with other studies that compared drip irrigation to other irrigation methods and showed drip to have the highest water efficiencies.

Analysis of trnasporter's liability in container traffic in terms of law.

Thesis (M. A. Agriculture (Plant Protection)) -- University of Limpopo, 2019 / The influence of cultural practices can be modified by environmental conditions such as container-type or positioning. The objective of the study was to determine whether container-type and positioning would have an influence on the growth of tomato plants and suppression of Meloidogyne javanica exposed to biomuti (Trial 1) and Afrikelp (Trial 2). Different container-types were filled with approximately 10.4 L growing mixture comprising steam-pasteurised sandy loam soil and Hygromix-T at 3:1 (v/v) ratio. The containers were established in microplots at 0.6 m × 0.6 m spacing, with treatments being brown pot-below; brown pot-above, black pot-below, black pot-above, plastic bag-above and plastic bag-below. Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) cv. 'Floradade' seedlings were each transplanted and irrigated with 500 ml chlorine-free tapwater every other day. Seven days after transplanting, each plant was inoculated with 2000 eggs and second-stage juveniles (J2) of M. javanica. Biomuti and Afrikelp, obtained from the Agricultural Research Council (ARC) Vegetable, Ornamentals and Plants (VOP), were applied in separate trials weekly at 2.5%. At 56 days after inoculation, plant growth including selected nutrient elements and nematode variables were measured. Data were subjected to analysis of variance, with separation of means achieved using Fisher’s Least Significant Difference test at the probability level of 5%. In the biomuti trial, container-type and positioning had a significant effect on plant height, fruit number, dry root mass, dry shoot mass and fruit mass, contributing 82, 48, 44, 85 and 89% in total treatment variation (TTV) of the respective variables. Relative to brown pot-below; black pot above, plastic bag-above and brown pot-above reduced plant variables, whereas treatment effects were not significant on nematode variables. In the Afrikelp trial, trends where similar to those in biomuti, treatments had highly significant effects on xvi plant height, dry root mass, dry shoot mass and gall rating, contributing 91, 88, 66 and 60% in TTV of the respective variables. Relative to brown pot-below; black pot above, plastic bag-above and brown pot-above reduced the plant variables, but had no significant effects on nematode variables. Generally, plastic bags and polyethylene pots below-ground improved most plant growth variables when compared to those in containers positioned above-ground.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibility to effectivize local networks and databases using unikernels and compare this to containers. This could also apply to reliability of executing programs the same way on different hardware in software development. Method – Two experiments have been performed to explore if the purpose could be realized, quantitative data have been gatheredand displayed in both cases. Python-scripts have been used to start C-scripts, acting client and server. Algorithms have been timed running in unikernels as well as in containers along with compared measurements of memory in multiple simultaneous instantiations. Findings – Intermittent response times spiked made the data hard to parse correctly. Containers had a lower average response time when running lighter algorithms. The average response times of unikernels dives below that of containers when heavier programs are simulated. Few minor bugs were discovered in Unikraft unikernels. Implications – unikernels havecharacteristics that make them more suitable for certain tasks compared to their counterpart, this is also true for containers. Unikraft unikernels are unstable which makes it seem like containers are faster during lighter simulations. Unikernels are onlyfaster and more secure if the tools used to build them does so in a manner that makes them stable. Limitations – The lack of standards, the lack of a support community together with the fact that unikernels is a small and niche field means that unikernels have a relatively high learning curve. Keywords – Unikraft, Unikernels, Docker, Container / Syfte – Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka möjligheten att effektivisera lokala nätverk och databaser med hjälp av unikernels och att jämföra denna möjlighet med containrar. Detta kan även gälla utveckling av programvara för att säkerställa att programvaran exekveras på servern på exakt samma sätt som den tidigare gjort lokalt på utvecklarens lokala dator. Metod – Två experiment utförs för att undersöka om det går besvara syftet, kvantitativa data samlas in i båda fallen, datan är även redovisad kvantitativt. Python-script används föratt starta C-script som agerar klient och server. Tidtagning på algoritmer i unikernels respektive containrar samt minnesanvändning vid multipel instansiering mättes för att analyseras och jämföras. Resultat – Intermittenta svarstids-toppar gjorde datan från unikernels svår att korrekt utvärdera. Containrar hade ett lägre medelvärde på svarstider vid mindre krävande algoritm-användning. Unikernels medelvärde dyker under container-svarstiderna när mer krävande program simuleras. Några små buggar upptäcktesi Unikraft unikernels. Implikationer – Unikernels har egenskaper som gör de mer passande för vissa uppgifter jämfört med dess motsvarighet medan detsamma gäller för Containrar. Unikraft unikernels är instabila och ger därfören bild av att containrar vidmindre processorkrävande program faktiskt är snabbare än unikernels. Unikernels är bara snabbare och säkrare i den mån verktyget som bygger dem, gör det på ett sätt att de är stabila. Begränsningar – Avsaknaden av standarder, avsaknaden av ett communitysom kan svara på frågor tillsammans med att unikernelsär ett litet och nischat fält gör att unikernels har en relativ hög inlärningskurva. Nyckelord – Unikernel, Unikraft, Container, Docker

The growth of distributed applications stand on a foundation of containers and their communication and have seen the rise and fall of many implementations throughout the years with a mix of proprietary and open sources. Today there are two implementations widely used as a result of the popularity of the huge project Kubernetes: CRI-O and Containerd. Both with the edge responsibility of managing containers using similar underlying software raising the question; do they have any implications on the containers they spawn? This thesis investigate these implementations from a performance perspective with a custom developed tool for direct communication to them and run a suite of benchmarks within the containers created by each. The suite consists of tests for throughput, latency, cpu, memory, random file read/write and sequential file read/write. Results conclude they perform similarly in all, but the file tests which showed overall CRI-O dominating in write speed and Containerd dominating the read speed.

[pt] Apesar da dimensão continental brasileira, da grandeza de sua costa e da proximidade entre o litoral e os grandes centros urbanos, o transporte de cargas em contêineres utilizando a cabotagem ainda é muito restrito no Brasil. Neste cenário, para ganhar espaço, os armadores brasileiros de cabotagem buscam oferecer serviços porta-a-porta, conseguindo economias de escala na contratação dos fornecedores que realizam as pontas rodoviárias, aumentando assim a competitividade da cabotagem com seu principal concorrente, o modal rodoviário. Neste trabalho são apresentados dois modelos que visam minimizar o custo total de contratação de fornecedores rodoviários para uma lista de demandas que devem ser atendidas. O primeiro é um modelo matemático de programação linear inteira, o segundo é um algoritmo que utiliza uma heurística gulosa. Os modelos foram desenvolvidos e testados em cenários reais, vividos por armador de cabotagem brasileiro durante um período de tempo determinado. Os resultados dos dois modelos, que são comparados entre si e com as soluções realizadas manualmente por funcionários do armador de cabotagem, mostram que as soluções dos modelos de otimização são muito melhores do que as soluções manuais. Os resultados mostram ainda que o algoritmo guloso alcança resultados muito próximos aos do método exato, mostrando ser de grande utilidade dada a facilidade de sua implantação. / [en] Despite the Brazilian continental scale, the magnitude of its coastline and the proximity between the coast and the large urban centers, the transport of cargo in containers using cabotage is still very limited in Brazil. In this scenario, the Brazilian cabotage ship-owners seek to provide door-to-door services, achieving economies of scale in procurement for suppliers that perform road ends, thus increasing the competitiveness of cabotage with its main competitor, the transportation by trucks. This work presents two models that aim to minimize the total cost of hiring road suppliers to a list of demands that must be performed. The first is a mathematical model based on integer linear programming, the second is an algorithm that uses a greedy heuristic. The models were developed and tested in real scenarios, experienced by a Brazilian cabotage ship-owner for a period of time. The results of the two models, which are compared among each other and with the manually solutions performed by the company’s employees, show that the solutions of optimization models are much better than the manual solutions. The results also show that the greedy algorithm achieves very close results to the exact method, proving to be very useful given the ease of its implementation.