257 research outputs found
Ruminal Fill Effect of Forages: Prediction and Relationship with Voluntary Intake
Voluntary dry matter intake (VDMI) and rumen fill were measured on sheep fed with 18 forages ranging from wheat straw to lucerne hay. In vivo fill effect (IVFE i.e. rumen DM pool divided by VDMI), in situ degradability, cell-wall composition, pepsin-cellulase digestibility and in vitro gas production were determined. In situ estimated fill effect (ISFE) was calculated as the retention time of insoluble potential degradable and undegradable fractions using a constant rate of passage. ISFE and IVFE were highly correlated (r2=0.89) but ISFE values were lower than IVFE values because in situ degradability does not integrate comminution time of large particles. NDF content, pepsin-cellulase digestibility and gas production were good predictors of IVFE (r2=0.86, 0.90 and 0.91 respectively) and to a lesser extent of VDMI (r2=0.78, 0.88 and 0.84)
Transcriptional responses of Arabidopsis thaliana during wilt disease development caused by the soil-borne phytopathogenic bacterium, Ralstonia solanacearum
Analytic continuation of residue currents
Let be a complex manifold and f\colon X\to \C^p a holomorphic mapping
defining a complete intersection. We prove that the iterated Mellin transform
of the residue integral associated to has an analytic continuation to a
neighborhood of the origin in \C^p
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LDA Ensembles for Interactive Exploration and Categorization of Behaviors
We define behavior as a set of actions performed by some agent during a period of time. We consider the problem of analyzing a large collection of behaviors by multiple agents, more specifically, identifying typical behaviors as well as spotting behavior anomalies. We propose an approach leveraging topic modeling techniques -- LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) Ensembles -- for representing categories of typical behaviors by topics obtained through applying topic modeling to a behavior collection. When such methods are applied to text documents, the goodness of the extracted topics is usually judged based on the semantic relatedness of the terms pertinent to the topics. This criterion, however, may not be applicable to topics extracted from non-textual data, such as action sets, since relationships between actions may not be obvious. We have developed a suite of visual and interactive techniques supporting the construction of an appropriate combination of topics based on other criteria, such as distinctiveness and coverage of the behavior set. Our case studies in the operation behaviors in the security management system and visiting behaviors in an amusement park and the expert evaluation of the first case study demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach
Differential Forms on Log Canonical Spaces
The present paper is concerned with differential forms on log canonical
varieties. It is shown that any p-form defined on the smooth locus of a variety
with canonical or klt singularities extends regularly to any resolution of
singularities. In fact, a much more general theorem for log canonical pairs is
established. The proof relies on vanishing theorems for log canonical varieties
and on methods of the minimal model program. In addition, a theory of
differential forms on dlt pairs is developed. It is shown that many of the
fundamental theorems and techniques known for sheaves of logarithmic
differentials on smooth varieties also hold in the dlt setting.
Immediate applications include the existence of a pull-back map for reflexive
differentials, generalisations of Bogomolov-Sommese type vanishing results, and
a positive answer to the Lipman-Zariski conjecture for klt spaces.Comment: 72 pages, 6 figures. A shortened version of this paper has appeared
in Publications math\'ematiques de l'IH\'ES. The final publication is
available at http://www.springerlink.co
Knowledge-defined networking
The research community has considered in the past the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques to control and operate networks. A notable example is the Knowledge Plane proposed by D.Clark et al. However, such techniques have not been extensively prototyped or deployed in the field yet. In this paper, we explore the reasons for the lack of adoption and posit that the rise of two recent paradigms: Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Analytics (NA), will facilitate the adoption of AI techniques in the context of network operation and control. We describe a new paradigm that accommodates and exploits SDN, NA and AI, and provide use-cases that illustrate its applicability and benefits. We also present simple experimental results that support, for some relevant use-cases, its feasibility. We refer to this new paradigm as Knowledge-Defined Networking (KDN).Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft
Cement degradation in CO2 storage sites: a review on potential applications of nanomaterials
© 2018 The Author(s) Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) has been employed to reduce global warming, which is one of the critical environmental issues gained the attention of scientific and industrial communities worldwide. Once implemented successfully, CCS can store at least 5 billion tons of CO2per year as an effective and technologically safe method. However, there have been a few issues raised in recent years, indicating the potential leakages paths created during and after injection. One of the major issues might be the chemical interaction of supercritical CO2with the cement, which may lead to the partial or total loss of the cement sheath. There have been many approaches presented to improve the physical and mechanical properties of the cement against CO2attack such as changing the water-to-cement ratio, employing pozzolanic materials, and considering non-Portland cements. However, a limited success has been reported to the application of these approaches once implemented in a real-field condition. To date, only a few studies reported the application of nanoparticles as sophisticated additives which can reinforce oil well cements. This paper provides a review on the possible application of nanomaterials in the cement industry where physical and mechanical characteristics of the cement can be modified to have a better resistance against corrosive environments such as CO2storage sites. The results obtained indicated that adding 0.5 wt% of Carbon NanoTubes (CNTs) and NanoGlass Flakes (NGFs) can reinforce the thermal stability and coating characteristics of the cement which are required to increase the chance of survival in a CO2sequestrated site. Nanosilica can also be a good choice and added to the cement by as much as 3.0 wt% to improve pozzolanic reactivity and thermal stability as per the reports of recent studies
A revised method for estimating hepatitis B virus transfusion residual risk based on antibody to hepatitis B core antigen incident cases
BACKGROUND: To take into account the transient nature of hepatitis B virus (HBV) antigenemia, the calculation of HBV residual risk (RR), based on the incidence/window period model, is adjusted by a correction factor that adds uncertainty to the RR estimates. STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS: This new method to estimate the RR for HBV is a weighted sum of the RR derived from hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) incident cases and the one derived from antibody hepatitis B core antigen (HBc) incident cases. An anti-HBc incident case was defined as a donation from a blood donor who had made at least one anti-HBc–negative donation followed by a donation that was found positive with two different assays within a 3-year period and positive for at least one of the following markers: 1) antibody to hepatitis B e antigen or hepatitis B e antigen, 2) anti-HBc immunoglobulin M, 3) HBV DNA, 4) hepatitis B surface antibody without HBV vaccination history, or 5) HBV DNA retrospectively found in the previous donation. Five overlapping 3-year study periods between 2000 and 2006 were analyzed. RESULTS: The HBV RR estimated with the classical method ranged from 1.51 (2000-2002) to 0.69 per million donations in 2004 through 2006 with a decrease in 2002 through 2004 due to only two HBsAg incident cases reported in this period. By applying the revised model, the HBV RR ranged from 1.06 (2000-2002) to 0.49 per million donations (2004-2006), with a regular decrease. CONCLUSION: The new presented model provides HBV RR estimates that do not statistically differ from those obtained with the classical model; however, it provides more accurate data, especially in low endemic areas where the HBsAg incidence is low
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