Användning av geografiskt informationssystem (GIS) vid studier av nötkreatur i landskapet

The Animal Protection Agency was in 2006, commissioned by the Government to: Evaluate how free range animals in the winter, can be kept and managed with special emphasis to animal welfare. The Animal Protection Agency was closed later in 2006 and the commission moved to the Swedish Board of Agriculture. The keeping of free range out wintered cattle, certain basic requirement are needed: by regulation, cattle should have access to a lying hall or other building that gives protection against aversive weather and wind and should offer a dry and clean lying area. There is a possibility for farmers that get an exemption from this regulation. But cases regarding farms which have had difficulties for this exemption has led to a discussion about if the animals can get the same protection in the nature which is comparable to a lying- hall. In a project, a group of researcher from Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, should investigate how cattle uses the natural vegetation and landscape as protection for aversive weather and how lying areas are characterized. The aim with this work was to test the methodology that is intended to be used in the project. The approach covers production of map analysis through GIS (geographic information systems), position determination through GPS (global position system) and use of weather information to get a data set which could be used for a statistical analysis. In this study, data from an existing farm which normally out winters cattle, were used. Realistic landscape and vegetation conditions were thus used for the methology testing. A literature survey was also done on the topic and the equipment that can be used in the coming experiments was tested. The conclusion was that the methodology can be used in future studies, but some changes are also proposed for the future studies.Den 18 maj 2006 gav regeringen Djurskyddsmyndigheten i uppdrag att: utvärdera hur djur som går ute om vinter ska kunna hållas och skötas med beaktande av djurskyddet. När Djurskyddsmyndigheten lades ner 2006 så övergick uppdraget på Jordbruksverket. För att få ha s.k. utegångsdjur, ställs vissa grundkrav på djurägaren att nötkreatur som hålls utomhus vintertid ska ha tillgång till en ligghall eller annan byggnad som ger skydd mot väder och vind samt att den erbjuder en torr och ren liggplats. Det finns en möjlighet för lantbrukaren att få dispens från detta krav, men dispensförfarandet har lett till en diskussion om djuren kan tillgodose sig samma skydd i naturen som en ligghall kan erbjuda. En forskargrupp från SLU ska under åren 2008- 2010 göra en studie som undersöker i vilken utsträckning nötkreatur utnyttjar den naturliga vegetationen som skydd för väder och vind, samt vad som karaktäriserar deras liggplats. Syftet med detta arbete var att testa den metodik som är tänkt att användas i studien. Metodiken omfattar framtagning av kartanalys genom GIS (geografiskt informationssystem), positionsbestämning genom GPS (globalt position system) och användning av väderdata för att åstadkomma ett dataset som kan användas för statistisk analys. Denna studie har utgått från en befintlig gård, där verkliga förutsättningar i terrängen har använts för att studera arbetsgången av de fortsatta försöken. En litteraturstudie är gjord över tidigare vetenskapliga artiklar som har anknytning till studien och utrustning som kan användas i de återkommande försöken. Slutsatsen blev att metodiken kan användas för att utföra fortsatta studier. Arbetet innehåller även förlag till förändringar i vidare försök

Comparing National Museums: Methodological Reflections

The article sets out to define the need for comparing national museums as complex cultural processes. To do this questions are developed that concern the workings of institutions as arenas for cultural policy and identity politics in relation to central fields of knowledge. Methodological considerations for designing a comparative project are presented, and finally four fields of comparative endeavours related to different sets of state-making processes are presented: An all-encompassing European comparison (including colonial endeavours) on the path taken by various nations to establish the place of national museums and the role they play in the creation of community. An in-depth study of how the national display in a selection of countries creates visions of cultural community. How do they deal with differences and belongings on a super-national level and how do they relate to regional differences? From a citizens' perspective the intentions of cultural policy or institutional ambitions might be of little importance. This part will simulate visitor experience of national narratives in a comparative selection of capitals from project one, in order to develop an understanding of how citizen experience relates to the more structural findings in the other sub-projects and hence map in what directions citizenship and community are moving through contemporary displays of national community. The place of national museums in changing knowledge regimes

A Unified Active Learning Framework for Annotating Graph Data with Application to Software Source Code Performance Prediction

Most machine learning and data analytics applications, including performance engineering in software systems, require a large number of annotations and labelled data, which might not be available in advance. Acquiring annotations often requires significant time, effort, and computational resources, making it challenging. We develop a unified active learning framework, specializing in software performance prediction, to address this task. We begin by parsing the source code to an Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) and augmenting it with data and control flow edges. Then, we convert the tree representation of the source code to a Flow Augmented-AST graph (FA-AST) representation. Based on the graph representation, we construct various graph embeddings (unsupervised and supervised) into a latent space. Given such an embedding, the framework becomes task agnostic since active learning can be performed using any regression method and query strategy suited for regression. Within this framework, we investigate the impact of using different levels of information for active and passive learning, e.g., partially available labels and unlabeled test data. Our approach aims to improve the investment in AI models for different software performance predictions (execution time) based on the structure of the source code. Our real-world experiments reveal that respectable performance can be achieved by querying labels for only a small subset of all the data

Validating a common tick survey method: cloth-dragging and line transects

Cloth-dragging is the most widely-used method for collecting and counting ticks, but there are few studies of its reliability. By using cloth-dragging, we applied a replicated line transects survey method, in two areas in Sweden with different Ixodes ricinus tick-densities (low at Grimsö and high at Bogesund) to evaluate developmental stage specific repeatability, agreement and precision in estimates of tick abundance. 'Repeatability' was expressed as the Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC), 'agreement' with the Total Deviation Index (TDI) and 'precision' by the coefficient of variation (CV) for a given dragging distance. Repeatability (ICC) and agreement (TDI) were higher for the most abundant instar (nymphs) and in the area of higher abundance. At Bogesund tick counts were higher than at Grimsö and so also repeatability, with fair to substantial ICC estimates between 0.22 and 0.75, and TDI ranged between 1 and 44.5 counts of difference (thus high to moderate agreement). At Grimsö, ICC was poor to moderate and ranged between 0 and 0.59, whereas TDI remained low with estimates lower or equal to 1 count (thus high agreement). Despite a 100-fold lower abundance at Grimsö, the same level of precision for nymphs could be achieved with a 70% increase of dragging effort. We conclude that the cloth-dragging technique is useful for surveying ticks' and primarily to estimate abundance of the nymphal stage, whereas it rarely will be recommended for larvae and adults

The programming language GCLA: A definitional approach to logic programming

We present a logic programming language, GCLA (Generalized horn Clause LAnguage), that is based on a generalization of Prolog. This generalization is unusual in that it takes a quite different view of the meaning of a logic program--a "definitional" view rather than the traditional logical view. GCLA has a number of noteworthy properties, for instance hypothetical and non-monotonic reasoning. This makes implementation of reasoning in knowledge-based systems more direct in GCLA than in Prolog. GCLA is also general enough to incorporate functional programming as a special case. GCLA and its syntax and semantics are described. The use of various language constructs are illustrated with several examples

Disease Burden Attributed to Drug use in the Nordic Countries: a Systematic Analysis for the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2019

The Nordic countries share similarities in many social and welfare domains, but drug policies have varied over time and between countries. We wanted to compare differences in mortality and disease burden attributed to drug use over time. Using results from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study, we extracted age-standardized estimates of deaths, DALYs, YLLs and YLDs per 100 000 population for Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden during the years 1990 to 2019. Among males, DALY rates in 2019 were highest in Finland and lowest in Iceland. Among females, DALY rates in 2019 were highest in Iceland and lowest in Sweden. Sweden have had the highest increase in burden since 1990, from 252 DALYs to 694 among males, and from 111 to 193 among females. Norway had a peak with highest level of all countries in 2001–2004 and thereafter a strong decline. Denmark have had the most constant burden over time, 566–600 DALYs among males from 1990 to 2010 and 210–240 DALYs among females. Strict drug policies in Nordic countries have not prevented an increase in some countries, so policies need to be reviewed.publishedVersio