On-the-go yield and sugar sensing in grape harvester

This paper summarises the results of a joint R+D project between university and industry. The study was developed at the Alt Penedès region, in Barcelona, during the 2006 and 2007 (on 3, 22, 69 fields respectively). The quality sensors set-up in year 2007, mounted on a New Holland SB55 grape harvester, were: two load cells, one refractometer, an ambient temperature prove and a GPS antenna, while in 2006 only the load cells and the GPS performed properly. The method used for this study is as follows: 1. Data recording from GPS and Logger (the latter is use for according and digitalising the sensor signal); 2. Wireless download of data to a PC; 3. Automatic data integration in a single file; 4. Lane automatic identification based on trajectory angles, machine forward speed determination, effective time calculation, masic flow, kg/m, and total amount harvested, kg/hopper, computation of characteristic soluble solid content and temperature during harvest; 5. Data broadcasting through GPRS to the winery; 6. Comparison of transmitted data with the invoice of the winery containers. After the season was finished, a data post processing was performed in order to a assess the causes of isolated incidences that were registered in 10 fields. Also a recalibration of the sensors for future seasons was performed. At current stage R 2 of 0.9547 is found between winery and in field yield data. Beside georeference data were gathered and compare to the remote photos in “Instituto Cartográfico de Cataluña”. Site-specific yield maps and speed maps have been computed while broad soluble solid information is not available due to slight dysfunctions of the grape juice pumping system towards to the refractometer

Post- and peritraumatic stress in disaster survivors: An explorative study about the influence of individual and event characteristics across different types of disasters

Background: Examination of existing research on posttraumatic adjustment after disasters suggests that survivors’ posttraumatic stress levels might be better understood by investigating the influence of the characteristics of the event experienced on how people thought and felt, during the event as well as afterwards. Objective: To compare survivors’ perceived post- and peritraumatic emotional and cognitive reactions across different types of disasters. Additionally, to investigate individual and event characteristics. Design: In a European multi-centre study, 102 survivors of different disasters terror attack, flood, fire and collapse of a building were interviewed about their responses during the event. Survivors’ perceived posttraumatic stress levels were assessed with the Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R). Peritraumatic emotional stress and risk perception were rated retrospectively. Influences of individual characteristics, such as socio-demographic data, and event characteristics, such as time and exposure factors, on post- and peritraumatic outcomes were analyzed. Results: Levels of reported post- and peritraumatic outcomes differed significantly between types of disasters. Type of disaster was a significant predictor of all three outcome variables but the factors gender, education, time since event, injuries and fatalities were only significant for certain outcomes. Conclusion: Results support the hypothesis that there are differences in perceived post- and peritraumatic emotional and cognitive reactions after experiencing different types of disasters. However, it should be noted that these findings were not only explained by the type of disaster itself but also by individual and event characteristics. As the study followed an explorative approach, further research paths are discussed to better understand the relationships between variables

Extracción de características de la cubierta vegetal del viñedo mediante imágenes RGB y RGIR obtenidas de forma dinámica

Diversas investigaciones han intentado resolver el problema de identificación de frutos u hojas mediante imágenes digitales, pero sólo lo han logrado parcialmente. Por esto, el objetivo de este trabajo es explorar una metodología de identificación que permita estimar áreas de hojas y racimos en viñedos, empleando imágenes en el espectro visible (RGB) y en el infrarrojo cercano (RGIR). El problema de la identificación fue abordando por dos vías, forma y color. En el caso de la identificación por forma se empleó la transformada circular de Hough y en el de la identificación por color se emplearon las técnicas de clasificación no supervisada denominadas kmeans y Fuzzy c-means. Se determinó que la clasificación mediante k-means sobre el espacio L*a*b*, para imágenes RGB y sobre el índice SAVI en las imágenes RGIR, son las técnicas más adecuadas. En cuanto a la identificación por forma, ésta resultó aplicable sólo en condiciones muy particulare

Testing MOS precipitation downscaling for ENSEMBLES regional climate models over Spain

Model Output Statistics (MOS) has been recently proposed as an alternative to the standard perfect prognosis statistical downscaling approach for Regional Climate Model (RCM) outputs. In this case, the model output for the variable of interest (e.g. precipitation) is directly downscaled using observations. In this paper we test the performance of a MOS implementation of the popular analog methodology (referred to as MOS analog) applied to downscale daily precipitation outputs over Spain. To this aim, we consider the state‐of‐the‐art ERA40‐driven RCMs provided by the EU‐funded ENSEMBLES project and the Spain02 gridded observations data set, using the common period 1961–2000. The MOS analog method improves the representation of the mean regimes, the annual cycle, the frequency and the extremes of precipitation for all RCMs, regardless of the region and the model reliability (including relatively low‐performing models), while preserving the daily accuracy. The good performance of the method in this complex climatic region suggests its potential transferability to other regions. Furthermore, in order to test the robustness of the method in changing climate conditions, a cross‐validation in driest or wettest years was performed. The method improves the RCM results in both cases, especially in the former

Chemical and spectrometric studies of soil humic acids

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:D70558/82 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo