duced successfully on marginal lands, such as those affected by salinity, reduces the pressure to produce energy crops on land that would otherwise be used to produce food crops. In this paper, the degree of salinity tolerance of "Red River" prairie cordgrass (Spartina pectinata Link) and "Cave-in-Rock" switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.) was determined by evaluating seed germination, plant growth, ion uptake, and leaf anatomical feature responses in saline conditions. Red River seeds retained 50% of germination potential under high salinity up to 300 mM NaCl, whereas Cave-in-Rock seed germination was reduced by 80% at 300 mM NaCl. Red River seedlings survived up to 500 mM NaCl, while more than 30% of Cave-in-Rock did not survive above 100 mM NaCl in greenhouse experiments. Red River produced more biomass and second-generation tillers and had a greater root and shoot biomass ratio than Cave-in-Rock under all salinity ranges. Sodium accumulation in shoots of Cave-in-Rock increased with increasing salinity, whereas Red River maintained a low level of sodium in biomass through salt-gland exclusion. The increasing rate of selectivity coefficient for potassium over sodium in Red River was higher than in Cave-in-Rock with increasing salinity. Although seed germination and plant growth decreased as salinity increased, Red River retained its potential of seed germination and to produce new tillers and biomass under salinity stress.

Coronavirus has had a large-scale impact on transportation. This study attempts to assess the effects of COVID-19 on biking. Bikeshare data was used to understand the impacts of COVID-19 during the initial wave of the disease on biking in New York City, Boston, and Chicago. As the cases increased, these cities experienced a reduction in bikeshare trips, and the reductions were different in the three cities. Correlations were developed between COVID-19 cases and various bikeshare related variables. The study period was split into three phases—no COVID-19 phase, cases increasing phase, and cases decreasing phase—to examine how the residents of the three cities reacted during the different phases of the coronavirus spread. While bike trips decreased, the average duration of the trips increased during the pandemic. NYC’s average trip duration was consistently less than that of Boston and Chicago, which could be due to its sprawl (NYC is considered as more compact and connected compared to the other two cities).

In most software development organizations, there is seldom a one-to-one mapping between software developers and development tasks. It is frequently necessary to concurrently assign individuals to multiple tasks, and to assign more than one individual to work cooperatively on a single task. A principal goal in making such assignments should be to minimize the effort required to complete each task. But what impact does the manner in which developers are assigned to tasks have on the effort requirements? This paper identifies four task assignment factors: team size, concurrency, intensity and fragmentation. These four factors are shown to improve the predictive ability of the well-known Intermediate COCOMO cost estimation model. A parsimonious effort estimation model is also derived that utilizes a subset of the task assignment factors and Unadjusted Function Points. For the data examined, this parsimonious model is shown to have goodness of fit and quality of estimation superior to that of the COCOMO model, while utilizing fewer cost factors.

Recently introduced forage and energy sorghums (Sorghum bicolor L. Moench) have potential as cellulosic biofuel feedstocks in the Midwest. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the effect of N fertilization on biomass yield and to determine the relationship between biomass yield and plant height, leaf development, and leaf area index (LAI) on two forage and two energy sorghum hybrids in four central and southern Illinois (IL) environments. Sorghum hybrids were evaluated in Urbana in 2009 under four N rates and in Urbana, Dixon Springs, and Perry in 2010 under five N rates. Forage sorghums harvested twice (summer and fall) annually produced less biomass than the energy sorghums harvested once in the fall both in 2009 and 2010. Averaged across all environments in 2010, maximum biomass yields were 30.1 Mg DM ha−1 for the energy sorghums and 19.2 Mg DM ha−1 for the forage sorghums at the 224 kg N ha−1 application rate. Biomass yields, LAI, and plant‐height responses to N applications were observed up to 150 kg N ha−1 in 2009 and up to 224 kg N ha−1 in 2010. Leaf development was linearly related to growing‐degree days and the average number of fully expanded leaves on the energy sorghum reached 28 in Perry‐10 with the longest growing season. Photoperiod‐sensitive energy and forage sorghums have potential in central and southern IL as bioenergy feedstocks because these grasses continue vegetative growth until late September, and therefore, produce large amounts of biomass.