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Master of Science / Department of Agronomy / David B. Mengel / Anhydrous ammonia (AA) is one of the most commonly used nitrogen (N) fertilizer sources for corn (Zea mays L.) in the US. Traditional knife applicators are slow, have high power requirements and create substantial soil disturbance. Thus, there is considerable interest in high speed, shallow placement, and low draft AA applicators like the newly introduced JD 2510 series, particularly for no-till production systems. The objective of this project was to compare a prototype high speed, low draft applicator (JD) with a traditional knife type AA applicator (TRAD) for irrigated and dryland corn production in the Kansas River Valley. Field studies were conducted from 2007 through 2009. Six N rates ranging from 0 – 224 kilograms N per hectare, in 45 kilogram increments, were applied at 3 application timings, Fall (FALL), Preplant (PRE), and Sidedress (SD) with both type applicators. Gaseous AA emissions were collected over a seven to nine day period after each application for both the TRAD and JD applicators for all application timings. The impact of applicator, timing and N rate was also measured on plant stand, earleaf N content, total N uptake, nitrogen use efficiency and grain yield. Statistically higher post application losses of ammonia at high N application rates were seen at all application timings with the JD applicator. However, these N losses were not of agronomic significance, and did not affect grain yield in 2007 or 2008. In 2009, there did appear to be a significant difference between applicators in grain yield, however this was primarily due to a significant yield decrease at the JD SD 224 kilograms N per hectare treatment from high application loss and resulting plant tissue damage. A significant response to N application was seen every year. Optimum N rate varied between years. FALL and PRE treatments had significantly higher grain yield than SD applications in 2008. However, in 2009 there was no significant difference in N application timing.

Published Article / A study involving two incubation experiments and a germination experiment in sandy soil was conducted to determine the influence of Multiplied Effective Micro-organisms (M-EM) that were exposed to different levels of irradiation and temperature fluctuation as well as prolonged storage, on the germination and seedling vigour of maize, sorghum and sunflower. Irrespective of poor handling and/or prolonged storage of M-EM, seed treatment with M-EM improved germination under optimal conditions for all crops compared to the control. Increased planting depths and cold stress were used to create conditions where seed treatment with M-EM may improve germination and seedling growth. Seed treatment with M-EM significantly improved germination and seedling vigour of the stress-tolerant maize cultivar following cold stress. Similar improved seedling vigour results were observed for the stress-tolerant sunflower cultivar at increased planting depth. It was concluded that the beneficial influence of M-EM as a seed treatment was remarkable, even after exposure of M-EM to unfavourable environmental conditions and prolonged storage before application. Further research under field conditions and in different cultivation systems are required before the large scale application of M-EM as seed treatment can be recommended.

This project aims to determine if and how the relatively new journalistic tool of Twitter is impacting journalistic decision-making and news production as a legitimate tool amongst sports writers. Using the methods of qualitative textual analysis and in-depth interviewing, this project analyzes the words and tweets of nine journalists at prominent U.S. newspapers in an attempt to fill a void in research among the topics of journalistic decision-making, sports journalism, and Twitter and to answer questions that arise from the marriage of a certain type of journalism and a particular new media platform.

Cataract is a condition in the eye that if left untreated, could lead to blindness. One of the effective ways to treat cataract is the removal of the cataractous natural crystalline lens and implantation of an artificial lens called an intraocular lens(IOL). The designs of the IOLs have shown improvements over the years to further imitate natural human vision. A need for an objective testing and analysis tool for the latest IOLs grow with the advancements of the IOLs.In this dissertation, I present a system capable of objective test and analysis of the advanced IOLs. The system consists of-Model eye into which an IOL can be inserted to mimic conditions of the human eye.-Modulation Transfer Function measurement setup capable of through-focus test for depth of field studies and polychromatic test for study of effects of chromatization.-Use of Defocus Transfer Function to simulate depth of field characteristic of rotationally symmetric multifocal designs and extension of the function to polychromatic conditions.-Several target imaging experiments for comparison of stray light artifacts and simulation using a non-sequential ray trace package.

Introduction: Currently, there are no objective techniques to assess burn depth. An early assessment of burn depth would enable accurate management decisions, which would improve patient outcomes. Near infrared (NIR) technology has shown promise as a non-invasive monitor of oxygenation and perfusion, and its potential to assess the depth of burn injuries has been investigated clinically over the past five years. The purpose of the thesis was to determine the capacity of NIR technology to differentiate acute thermal injuries. Methods: Burn sites (n=5) and control sites (n=5) were created on the dorsum of sixteen animals with brass rods held at constant pressure and heated to 100°C and 37.5°C respectively. NIR data was collected from the burns and control sites pre-burn, immediately post-burn, and 1, 12, 24, 36, 48 and 96 hours after the burn injury. Biopsies of the burn and control sites were acquired at each time point and used to confirm the depth of injury. NIR data was processed for the content of water, oxy-, deoxy- and methemoglobin. Results: Oxyhemoglobin and total hemoglobin decreased as burn depth increased. The proportion of oxy- and deoxyhemoglobin to total hemoglobin showed that the ratio of oxy- to deoxyhemoglobin decreased as burn injury increased. Methemoglobin levels as a ratio of total hemoglobin also showed that as the severity of injury increased the proportion of methemoglobin also increased. Finally, superficial partial thickness injuries (3 s and 12 s) showed early peak levels of water, which rapidly declined towards baseline. The deep partial thickness injuries (20 s and 30 s) do not experience peak levels and retain water over the course of the experiment. The full thickness injuries water levels remain close or below baseline levels throughout the experiment. Conclusion: NIR spectroscopy could distinguish burn depth using water, oxy-, met- and total hemoglobin as separate entities. The presence of methemoglobin in the burn wounds is a novel finding that has not been described previously in burn literature.

Due to the fast development in 3D technology during recent decades, many approaches in 3D representation technologies have been proposed worldwide. In order to get an accurate information to render a 3D representation, more data need to be recorded compared to normal video sequence. In this case, how to find an efficient way to transmit the 3D representation data becomes an important part in the whole 3D representation technology. Recent years, many coding schemes based on the principle of encoding the depth have been proposed. Compared to the traditional multiview coding schemes, those new proposed schemes can achieve higher compression efficiency. Due to the development of depth capturing technology, the accuracy and quality of the reconstructed depth image also get improved. In this thesis we propose an efficient depth data compression scheme for 3D images. Our proposed depth data compression scheme is platelet based coding using Lagrangian optimization, quadtree decomposition and quadratic curve fitting. We study and improve the original platelet based coding scheme and achieve a compression improvement of 1-2 dB compared to the original platelet based scheme. The experimental results illustrate the improvement provided by our scheme. The quality of the reconstructed results of our proposed curve fitting based platelet coding scheme are better than that of the original scheme.

A map is an embedding of the vertices and edges of a graph into a compact 2-manifold such that the remainder of the surface has components homeomorphic to open disks. With the goal of proving the Four Colour Theorem, Tutte began the field of map enumeration in the 1960's. His methods included developing the edge deletion decomposition, developing and solving a recurrence and functional equation based on this decomposition, and developing the medial bijection between two equinumerous infinite families of maps. Beginning in the 1980's Jackson, Goulden and Visentin applied algebraic methods in enumeration of non-planar and non-orientable maps, to obtain results of interest for mathematical physics and algebraic geometry, and the Quadrangulation Conjecture and the Map-Jack Conjecture. A special case of the former is solved by Tutte's medial bijection. The latter uses Jack symmetric functions which are a topic of active research. In the 1960's Walsh and Lehman introduced a method of encoding orientable maps. We develop a similar method, based on depth first search and extended to non-orientable maps. With this, we develop a bijection that extends Tutte's medial bijection and partially solves the Quadrangulation Conjecture. Walsh extended Tutte's recurrence for planar maps to a recurrence for all orientable maps. We further extend the recurrence to include non-orientable maps, and express it as a partial differential equation satisfied by the generating series. By appropriately interpolating the differential equation and applying the depth first search method, we construct a parameter that empirically fulfils the conditions of the Map-Jack Conjecture, and we prove some of its predicted properties. Arques and Beraud recently obtained a continued fraction form of a specialisation of the generating series for maps. We apply the depth search method with an ordinary differential equation, to construct a bijection whose existence is implied by the continued fraction.

In the present work I study temperature dependence of magnetic penetration depth in superconductors which allows us to determine the symetry of the order parameter, important for theoretical models. In conventional superconductors we talk about s-symetry. Energy gap is isotropic and as a consequence of this fact penetration depth grows exponencialy with the temperature. On the other hand, in unconventional superconductors with d-symetry we find the power dependence on the temperature. Anyway the exponent depends on impurities and structure of the material and the influence of these parametrs is not completely clear at the moment.