Optimal cultivar mixtures in focal plant diseases

This paper deals with a study on the effects of mixtures of partially resistant cultivars in focus forming plant diseases. The focus expansion velocity in a mixture of two partially resistant cultivars depends on four parameters, the focus expansion velocity in a crop of cultivar 1 only and in a crop of cultivar 2 only, the net-reproduction in a crop of cultivar 1 and of cultivar 2, respectively. An explicit equation is developed for the damage of a cultivar mixture where the crop is infected by two physiological races of the pathogen. It is shown that cultivar mixtures exist where damage is smaller than in crops of either of the two cultivars only. A simple explicit formula is given on the basis of which it can be decided whether an optimal mixture exists for a given pathosystem.     

The effects of acid rain and ozone on biomass and leaf area parameters of shortleaf pine (Pinus echinata Mill.)

Shortleaf pine (Pinus echinata Mill.) seedlings in 24 open-top chambers were exposed to combinations of ozone (carbon-filtered (control), ambient, 1.7 x ambient, and 2.5 x ambient) and acidic precipitation (pH 5.3, 4.3 and 3.3) for 16 months (1989 harvest) or 28 months (1990 harvest). Although the effects of acid rain were generally not significant, there was a trend toward increased aboveground biomass and leaf area in seedlings subjected to the low pH treatments. Because N concentrations in the soils generally increased with decreasing pH, we concluded that the effects of acid rain on aboveground biomass and leaf area were a consequence of an increasing concentration of soil N. In the 1989 harvest, seedlings in the 2.5 x ambient ozone treatment had significantly less biomass in all aboveground plant components and significantly less total leaf area than seedlings in the 1.7 x ambient ozone treatment. In the 1990 harvest, there were no significant effects of ozone on total aboveground biomass, although there was a trend toward reduced biomass in seedlings in the 2.5 x ambient ozone treatment. Both total leaf area and leaf biomass were significantly less in seedlings exposed to 2.5 x ambient ozone for 28 months than in both control seedlings and seedlings in the 1.7 x ambient ozone treatment. The greater, but not always significant, aboveground biomass and leaf area of seedlings in the 1.7 x ambient ozone treatment compared with control seedlings may be associated with the observed increase in soil nitrate concentration as a result of increased rates of leaf senescence and litterfall.     

Particles floating on a moving fluid: a dynamically comprehensible physical fractal

Measurements of the local dynamics on the surface of a fluid undergoing complicated motion allow prediction of the measured fractal dimension of an aggregate of passive, floating tracers. This realization of a strange attractor in physical space is a rare instance where there is a firm quantitative connection between the dimension of an experimentally observed fractal spatial pattern and the process producing it.     

Elderly migration and development in small communities

"This paper develops a conceptual model of the process of community change [in the United States] in response to elderly inmigration. Analysis of intra-regional variation in elderly migration patterns in Appalachia, and synthesis of an emergent literature on the benefits and costs of attracting elderly migrants, serve as a backdrop for case studies, based on field observations and interviews, of three contrasting Appalachian communities at different stages of development as retirement destinations."