Phosphorus-Nitrogen Interaction in Fire Retardants and Its Impact on the Chemistry of Treated Wood.

This work focuses on the changes in the chemical composition of wood caused by impregnation with fire retardants such as guanidine carbonate (GC), urea (U), diammonium phosphate (DAP) and their mixtures. The treated wood was tested using the oxygen index (LOI), Py-GC/MS analysis and FTIR Spectroscopy. The wood was vacuum treated at a pressure of 0.

Can plants build their niche through modulation of soil microbial activities linked with nitrogen cycling? A test with Arabidopsis thaliana.

In natural systems, different plant species have been shown to modulate specific nitrogen (N) cycling processes so as to meet their N demand, thereby potentially influencing their own niche. This phenomenon might go beyond plant interactions with symbiotic microorganisms and affect the much less explored plant interactions with free-living microorganisms involved in soil N cycling, such as nitrifiers and denitrifiers. Here, we investigated variability in the modulation of soil nitrifying and denitrifying enzyme activities (NEA and DEA, respectively), and their ratio (NEA : DEA), across 193 Arabidopsis thaliana accessions.

Top on a smooth plane.

We investigate the dynamics of a sliding top that is a rigid body with an ideal sharp tip moving in a perfectly smooth horizontal plane, so no friction forces act on the body. We prove that this system is integrable only in two cases analogous to the Euler and Lagrange cases of the classical top problem. The cases with the constant gravity field with acceleration g≠0 and without external field g=0 are considered.

Characterisation of populations at risk of sub-optimal dosing of artemisinin-based combination therapy in Africa.

Selection of resistant malaria strains occurs when parasites are exposed to inadequate antimalarial drug concentrations. The proportion of uncomplicated falciparum malaria patients at risk of being sub-optimally dosed with the current World Health Organization (WHO) recommended artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) is unknown. This study aims to estimate this proportion and the excess number of treatment failures (recrudescences) associated with sub-optimal dosing in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Destructive relativity.

The description of dynamics for high-energy particles requires an application of the special relativity theory framework, and analysis of properties of the corresponding equations of motion is very important. Here, we analyze Hamilton equations of motion in the limit of weak external field when potential satisfies the condition 2V(q)≪mc2. We formulate very strong necessary integrability conditions for the case when the potential is a homogeneous function of coordinates of integer non-zero degrees.