Domenico Ditto

A component-Based Framework for Simulating Agricultural Production and Externalities

Although existing simulation tools can be used to study the impact of agricultural management on production activities in specific environments, they suffer from several limitations. They are largely specialized for specific production activities: arable crops/cropping systems, grassland, orchards, agro-forestry, livestock etc. Also, they often have a restricted ability to simulate system externalities which may have a negative environmental impact. Furthermore, the structure of such systems neither allows an easy plug-in of modules for other agricultural production activities, nor the use of alternative components for simulating processes. Finally, such systems are proprietary systems of either research groups or projects which inhibits further development by third parties.

Is Wave Mechanics consistent with Classical Logic

Contrary to a wide-spread commonplace, an exact, ray-based treatment holding for any kind of monochromatic wave-like features (such as diffraction and interference) is provided by the structure itself of the Helmholtz equation. This observation allows to dispel - in apparent violation of the Uncertainty Principle - another commonplace, forbidding an exact, trajectory-based approach to Wave Mechanics.

The Dynamics of Wave-Particle Duality

Both classical and wave-mechanical monochromatic waves may be treated in terms of exact ray-trajectories (encoded in the structure itself of Helmholtz-like equations) whose mutual coupling is the one and only cause of any diffraction and interference process. In the case of Wave Mechanics, de Broglie’s merging of Maupertuis’s and Fermat’s principles (see Section 3) provides, without resorting to the probability-based guidance-laws and flow-lines of the Bohmian theory, the simple law addressing particles along the Helmholtz rays of the relevant matter waves. The purpose of the present research was to derive the exact Hamiltonian ray-trajectory systems concerning, respectively, classical electromagnetic waves, non-relativistic matter waves and relativistic matter waves. We faced then, as a typical example, the numerical solution of non-relativistic wave-mechanical equation systems in a number of numerical applications, showing that each particle turns out to “dances a wave-mechanical dance” around its classical trajectory, to which it reduces when the ray-coupling is neglected. Our approach reaches the double goal of a clear insight into the mechanism of wave-particle duality and of a reasonably simple computability. We finally compared our exact dynamical approach, running as close as possible to Classical Mechanics, with the hydrodynamic Bohmian theory, based on fluid-like “guidance laws”.