Search results for "RFA"
showing 10 items of 11106 documents
Polymerizable and polymeric zwitterionic surfactants: 2. Surface activity and aggregation behaviour in aqueous systems
1991
Abstract The surfactant properties of a series of permanently zwitterionic monomers and polymers were studied with respect to structural variations. A strong influence of the molecular geometry on solubility and aggregation behaviour was observed, in particular for the polymers. Whereas all monomers were water-soluble and true surfactants, the water solubility of the polymers was restricted to selected geometries. Water-soluble polymers showed the properties of classical polysoaps, i.e. low surface activity and solubilization power for hydrophobic solutes. In contrast, water-insoluble polymers formed stable monolayers at the air-water interface and could be deposited onto solid substrates b…
Surface plasmon-polariton amplifiers
2012
Propagation of surface plasmons at metal surfaces is receiving much interest nowadays because of its broad range of potential applications, like subwavelength photonics or biosensing. Although plasmonic devices achieve unique properties, surface plasmons suffer from high attenuation because of the absorption losses in the metal. This limitation can be overcome by providing the material adjacent to the metal with optical gain. Under these conditions, absorption losses are compensated and the propagation length of the plasmon is significantly increased. In this work, a review of plasmonic amplifiers is presented. To this end, the state of the art of such devices and the propagation characteri…
Geodetic and geological evidence of active tectonics in south-western Sicily (Italy)
2014
Abstract Integrated geological, geodetic and marine geophysical data provide evidence of active deformation in south-western Sicily, in an area spatially coincident with the macroseismic zone of the destructive 1968 Belice earthquake sequence. Even though the sequence represents the strongest seismic event recorded in Western Sicily in historical times, focal solutions provided by different authors are inconclusive on possible faulting mechanism, which ranges from thrusting to transpression, and the seismogenic source is still undefined. Interferometric (DInSAR) observations reveal a differential ground motion on a SW–NE alignment between Campobello di Mazara and Castelvetrano (CCA), locate…
Thermodynamic properties of a liquid–vapor interface in a two-component system
2010
Abstract We report a complete set of thermodynamic properties of the interface layer between liquid and vapor two-component mixtures, using molecular dynamics. The mixtures consist of particles which have identical masses and diameters and interact with a long-range Lennard-Jones spline potential. The potential depths in dimensionless units for like interactions is 1 (for component 1) and 0.8 (for component 2). The surface excess entropy decreases when the temperature increases, so the surface has a negative excess heat capacity. This is a consequence of the fact that the surface tension decreases to zero at the critical point, proportional to ( T C , i − T ) 2 ν . The surface entropy decre…
Thermodynamic properties and conductivities of some dodecylsurfactants in water
1988
Densities, heat capacities, enthalpies of dilution, osmotic coefficients and conductivities are reported for dodecylamine hydrochloride, dodecyldimethylammonium and dodecyltrimethylammonium chloride in water over a wide range of concentration. The last two properties were also measured for dodecyltrimethylammonium bromide. From the thermodynamic data partial molar volumes, heat capacities and relative enthalpies and nonideal free energies and entropies were derived as a function of the surfactant concentration. The cmc's and degree of counterion dissociation were also calculated from the transport properties. It is shown that the trends of volumes, enthalpies, free energies and entropies ar…
Daily evapotranspiration assessment by means of residual surface energy balance modeling: A critical analysis under a wide range of water availability
2012
Summary An operational use of the actual evapotranspiration assessed by remote sensing approaches requires the integration of instantaneous fluxes to daily values. This is commonly achieved under the hypotheses of daytime self-preservation of evaporative fraction and negligible daily ground heat flux. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effect of these assumptions on estimate daily evapotranspiration over a full phenological cycle, including phases characterized by significant changes both in net radiation and vegetation cover. To assess the reliability of these hypotheses, the observations made by a flux tower, installed within a homogeneous field of cereal located in the valley part …
Comparing actual evapotranspiration and plant water potential on a vineyard
2011
Agricultural water requirement in arid and semi-arid environments represents an important fraction of the total water consumption, suggesting the need of appropriate water management practices to sparingly use the resource. Furthermore the quality and quantity of some crops products, such as grape, is improved under a controlled amount of water stress. The latter is related, on a side to actual evapotranspiration (ET) through water demand, on the other side to plant water content through leaf water potential. Residual energy balance approaches based on remote sensing allow to estimate the spatial distribution of daily actual ET at plant scale, representing an useful tool to detect its spati…
Actual evapotranspiration assessment by means of a coupled energy/hydrologic balance model: Validation over an olive grove by means of scintillometry…
2010
Summary A coupled energy/hydrologic model was applied to simulate the exchange of energy and water in the soil–plant-atmosphere system (SPA). The model, which uses a “two-source” approach to estimate the energy fluxes, and the “force-restore” approach to represent the water balance, was validated by means of evapotranspiration measurements collected via scintillometry and soil moisture measurements collected via time domain reflectometry (TDR) in a Sicilian olive grove. The comparison between measured and estimated fluxes values at an hourly scale showed good agreement. Additional comparisons on a daily timescale confirmed the model’s applicability for quantifying crop water requirements. A…
Predicting soil and plant water status dynamic in olive orchards under different irrigation systems with Hydrus-2D: Model performance and scenario an…
2018
The paper analyzes the performance of Hydrus-2D model to simulate the dynamic of soil water contents and transpiration fluxes in an olive orchard in which two different irrigation systems were used in 2011 and 2012. The relationship between measured midday stem water potential, MSWP, and simulated relative transpiration (ratio between simulated actual and maximum crop transpiration), Ks, was also identified with the aim to use the model for crop water status predictions. Finally, a scenario analysis was carried out for irrigation management purposes, by considering the level of crop water stress achieved in the different phases of the vegetative growth. The results evidenced that active roo…
Spatial sharpening of land surface temperature for daily energy balance applications
2008
ABSTRACT Daily high spatial resolution assessment of actual evapotranspiration is essential for water management and crop water requirement estimation under stress conditions. The application of energy balance models usually requires satellite observations of radiometric surface temperat ure with high geometrical and temporal resolutions. By now, however, high spatial resolution (~ 100 m) is available with low time fre quency (approximately every two weeks); at the opposite daily acquisition are characterised by poor spatial resolution. The analysis of vegetation index (VI) and land surface temperature (LST) spatial relationship, shows in substance a scale invariant behaviour [1] ; this con…