TRANSVERSAL DISTRIBUTION COMPARISON OF SOLID FERTILIZERS APPLIED OVER ANNUAL CROPS

Centrifugal spreaders dominate the application of solid materials in agriculture offering expressive operational field capacity and extended range of applied rates. Field tests for characterization of theirperformance are conducted without any physical obstacles (such as the presence of plants) during the parabolic trajectory of the falling particles of fertilizer to the soil. The purpose of this study was to comparatively evaluate the transverse distribution of solid fertilizers applied on cropped corn, soybeans and cotton. Evaluations of the spreaders were designed according to ASAE S341.3/99 Standard. Tests consisted in aligning side by side collectors in-between the cropped rows and weighting the material deposited. The results showed that transverse distribution of solid fertilizers applied over the cotton and corn crops is affected by the crop height, interfering directly on the effective width of the spreader application, which was not observedin the soybean crop, once the fertilizer application is done when the crop was still below the collector's height. The results suggest that evaluation of effective width of the spreaders application need to be done under real crop environment.

A spatial stochastic model for rumor transmission

We consider an interacting particle system representing the spread of a rumor by agents on the d-dimensional integer lattice. Each agent may be in any of the three states belonging to the set {0,1,2}. Here 0 stands for ignorants, 1 for spreaders and 2 for stiflers. A spreader tells the rumor to any of its (nearest) ignorant neighbors at rate lambda. At rate alpha a spreader becomes a stifler due to the action of other (nearest neighbor) spreaders. Finally, spreaders and stiflers forget the rumor at rate one. We study sufficient conditions under which the rumor either becomes extinct or survives with positive probability.