Sizing milking groups in small cow dairies of mediterranean countries

A dairy farmer chooses the number of milking groups in function of the herd size, stall type and milking system also in small cow dairies (number of animals lower than 100–120). In these dairies, there are different milking systems (bucket, trolley, pipeline, little autotandem, herringbone or parallel parlors) and each of them has a different work routine. The knowledge of the routine is the starting point for assessing the milking installation, because it determines the number of milked cows per hour. Different milking systems have common tasks (as pre-dipping, inspecting foremilk, udder preparation, attaching teat cups, post-dipping), but in the meantime there are different operations that characterize each specific routine (e.g., animal entry and exit if there is a parlor, bucket, trolley or milking group positioning if tie-stall). For this reason, we surveyed twenty small dairy farms located in the Piedmont Region (Italy) with different milking systems to correctly acquire the specific milking routines. Different models were therefore studied using the observed routines in in the examined farms. These models were then used to calculate the number of milked cows per hour and the number of milking groups. The main findings were simple equations, specific for each milking system, easily accessible by the farmer to correctly size his milking system

Recovering a lost baseline: missing kelp forests from a metropolitan coast

© 2008 AuthorThere is concern about historical and continuing loss of canopy-forming algae across the world’s temperate coastline. In South Australia, the sparse cover of canopy-forming algae on the Adelaide metropolitan coast has been of public concern with continuous years of anecdotal evidence culminating in 2 competing views. One view considers that current patterns existed before the onset of urbanisation, whereas the alternate view is that they developed after urbanisation. We tested hypotheses to distinguish between these 2 models, each centred on the reconstruction of historical covers of canopies on the metropolitan coast. Historically, the metropolitan sites were indistinguishable from contemporary populations of reference sites across 70 km (i.e. Gulf St. Vincent), and could also represent a random subset of exposed coastal sites across 2100 km of the greater biogeographic province. Thus there was nothing ‘special’ about the metropolitan sites historically, but today they stand out because they have sparser covers of canopies compared to equivalent locations and times in the gulf and the greater province. This is evidence of wholesale loss of canopy-forming algae (up to 70%) on parts of the Adelaide metropolitan coast since major urbanisation. These findings not only set a research agenda based on the magnitude of loss, but they also bring into question the logic that smaller metropolitan populations of humans create impacts that are trivial relative to that of larger metropolitan centres. Instead, we highlight a need to recognise the ecological context that makes some coastal systems more vulnerable or resistant to increasing human-domination of the world’s coastlines. We discuss challenges to this kind of research that receive little ecological discussion, particularly better leadership and administration, recognising that the systems we study out-live the life spans of individual research groups and operate on spatial scales that exceed the capacity of single research providers.Sean D. Connell, Bayden D. Russell, David J. Turner, Scoresby A. Shepherd, Timothy Kildea, David Miller, Laura Airoldi, Anthony Cheshir

Modelling competitive delamination and debonding phenomena in composite T-Joints

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Healthcare prioritisation at the local level: a socio-technical approach

Cost effectiveness analysis is a systematic tool to inform resource allocation decision in healthcare. There is extensive evidence, however, that the tool is difficult to apply in practice, particularly at the level of local health planners, because it is not accessible to those involved in the prioritisation process and not embeds assumptions which are felt to be unacceptable for ethical or other reasons. Pragmatic tools such as Program Budgeting and Marginal Analysis appear to be more suitable for supporting local decisions by engaging stakeholders in a deliberative process. Unlike cost-effectiveness analysis, however, these tools are hard to relate to widely accepted health economic principles. This paper presents a socio-technical approach which draws explicitly on health economic theory and in a practical and reproduceable way through an action research case study with a local healthcare planner of the English National Health Service. Through close and iterative work with those responsible for allocating resources we present a formal model to capture the objectives of the health planners, a communicative procedure and interactive elicitation methods to help key stakeholders to articulate their knowledge and values. The approach proved accessible and acceptable and has been used in making spending decisions

Characterization of the interface between composites and embedded Fiber Optic sensors or NiTiNOL wires

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Stochastic blockmodels and community structure in networks

Stochastic blockmodels have been proposed as a tool for detecting community structure in networks as well as for generating synthetic networks for use as benchmarks. Most blockmodels, however, ignore variation in vertex degree, making them unsuitable for applications to real-world networks, which typically display broad degree distributions that can significantly distort the results. Here we demonstrate how the generalization of blockmodels to incorporate this missing element leads to an improved objective function for community detection in complex networks. We also propose a heuristic algorithm for community detection using this objective function or its non-degree-corrected counterpart and show that the degree-corrected version dramatically outperforms the uncorrected one in both real-world and synthetic networks.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figure

Ignitor: Physics and Progress Towards Ignition

Thermonuclear ignition condition for deuterium-tritium plasmas can be achieved in compact, high magnetic field devices such as Ignitor. The main scientific goals, the underlying physics basis, and the most relevant engineering solutions of this experiment are described. Burning plasma conditions can be reached either with ohmic heating only or with small amount of auxiliary power in the form of ICRH waves, and this condition can be sustained for a time considerably longer than all the relevant plasma time scales. In the reference operating scenario, no transport barriers are present, and the resulting thermal loads on the plasma facing component are estimated to be rather modest, thanks to the high edge density and low edge temperature that ensure an effective intrinsic radiating mantle in elongated limiter configurations. Enhanced confinement regimes can also be obtained in configurations with double X-points near the first wall

Interlaminar Response of LSI-Produced C/SiC Ceramic Matrix Composites: Experiments and Modelling

This work investigates the interlaminar properties of a C/SiC composite produced by Liquid Silicon Infiltration, combining experiments based on Double Cantilever Beam tests and numerical analyses. Experimentally, a method to obtain pre-cracks with sharp tips at precise locations is proposed, and specimens with different thickness are used to investigate the effects of bending stress states in the delamination process. The properties of tri-linear Cohesive Zone Models for the modelling of delamination are identified numerically, by using automatic regression techniques without requiring additional assumptions or testing. Fiber bridging effects were observed and modelled, including the evaluation of the process zone lengths with different experimental, analytical, and numerical methods. Overall, the work provides a qualitative insight in the delamination process of long fiber reinforced C/SiC laminates produced with a cost-affordable technique and proposes an experimental and numerical protocol to characterize and model delamination phenomena, taking into account the scattering of material properties