21,834 research outputs found
Effect of farming system changes on life cycle assessment indicators for dairy farms in the Italian Alps.
In some Alpine areas dairy farming is going through a process of intensification with significant changes in farming systems. The aim of this study was to investigate environmental performance of a sample of 31 dairy farms in an Alpine area of Lombardy with different levels of intensification. A cradle to farm gate life cycle assessment was performed including the following impact categories: land use, non-renewable energy use, climate change, acidification and eutrophication. From a cluster analysis it resulted that the group of farms with lowest environmental impacts were characterized by low stocking density and production intensity; farms that combined good environmental performances with medium gross margins were characterized also by high feed self-sufficiency and lowland availability. Environmental impacts of dairy farms in the mountain areas could be mitigated by the improvement of forage production and quality and by the practice of summer highland grazing, that significantly reduced eutrophication per kg of milk of the less self-sufficient farms
A new Determination of the Extragalactic Background of Diffuse Gamma Rays taking into account Dark Matter Annihilation
The extragalactic background (EGB) of diffuse gamma rays can be determined by
subtracting the Galactic contribution from the data. This requires a Galactic
model (GM) and we include for the first time the contribution of dark matter
annihilation (DMA), which was previously proposed as an explanation for the
EGRET excess of diffuse Galactic gamma rays above 1 GeV.
In this paper it is shown that the newly determined EGB shows a
characteristic high energy bump on top of a steeply falling soft contribution.
The bump is shown to be compatible with a contribution from an extragalactic
DMA signal from weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) with a mass
between 50 and 100 GeV in agreement with the EGRET excess of the Galactic
diffuse gamma rays and in disagreement with earlier analysis. The remaining
soft contribution of the EGB is shown to resemble the spectra of the observed
point sources in our Galaxy.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures. Accepted by A&A, made Fig. 4 and table 1
consisten
Hands-On TAROT: Intercontinental use of the TAROT for Education and Public Outreach
The TAROT telescope has for primary goal the search for the prompt optical
counterpart of Cosmic Gamma-Ray Bursts. It is a completely autonomous 25cm
telescope installed near Nice (France), able to point any location of the sky
within 1-2 seconds. The control, scheduling, and data processing activities are
completely automated, so the instrument is completely autonomous. In addition
to its un-manned modes, we added recently the possibility to remotely control
the telescope, as a request of the "Hands-On Universe" (HOU) program for
exchange of time within automatic telescopes for the education and public
outreach. To this purpose we developed a simple control interface. A webcam was
installed to visualize the telescope. Access to the data is possible through a
web interface. The images can be processed by the HOU software, a program
specially suited for use within the classroom. We experienced these feature
during the open days of the University of California Berkeley and the Astronomy
Festival of Fleurance (France). We plan a regular use for an astronomy course
of the Museum of Tokyo, as well as for French schools. Not only does Hands-On
TAROT gives the general public an access to professional astronomy, but it is
also a more general tool to demonstrate the use of a complex automated system,
the techniques of data processing and automation. Last but not least, through
the use of telescopes located in many countries over the globe, a form of
powerful and genuine cooperation between teachers and children from various
countries is promoted, with a clear educational goal.Comment: 4 pages, Based on a demonstration presented at the ADASS X
Conference, Boston, MA, USA, October 2000, to appear in ASP Conf. Serie
Twisted Open Strings from Closed Strings: The WZW Orientation Orbifolds
Including {\it world-sheet orientation-reversing automorphisms}
in the orbifold program, we construct the operator
algebras and twisted KZ systems of the general WZW {\it orientation orbifold}
. We find that the orientation-orbifold sectors corresponding
to each are {\it twisted open} WZW strings, whose
properties are quite distinct from conventional open-string orientifold
sectors. As simple illustrations, we also discuss the classical (high-level)
limit of our construction and free-boson examples on abelian .Comment: 65 pages, typos correcte
Localized charge injection in SiO_2 films containing silicon nanocrystals
An atomic-force microscope (AFM) is used to locally inject, detect, and quantify the amount and location of charge in SiO2 films containing Si nanocrystals (size ~2â6 nm). By comparison with control samples, charge trapping is shown to be due to nanocrystals and not ion-implantation-induced defects in samples containing ion-beam-synthesized Si nanocrystals. Using an electrostatic model and AFM images of charge we have estimated the amount of charge injected in a typical experiment to be a few hundred electrons and the discharge rate to be ~35±15 e/min
Hands-On Universe: A Global Program for Education and Public Outreach in Astronomy
Hands-On Universe (HOU) is an educational program that enables students to
investigate the Universe while applying tools and concepts from science, math,
and technology. Using the Internet, HOU participants around the world request
observations from an automated telescope, download images from a large image
archive, and analyze them with the aid of user-friendly image processing
software. This program is developing now in many countries, including the USA,
France, Germany, Sweden, Japan, Australia, and others. A network of telescopes
has been established among these countries, many of them remotely operated, as
shown in the accompanying demo. Using this feature, students in the classroom
are able to make night observations during the day, using a telescope placed in
another country. An archive of images taken on large telescopes is also
accessible, as well as resources for teachers. Students are also dealing with
real research projects, e.g. the search for asteroids, which resulted in the
discovery of a Kuiper Belt object by high-school students. Not only Hands-On
Universe gives the general public an access to professional astronomy, but it
is also a more general tool to demonstrate the use of a complex automated
system, the techniques of data processing and automation. Last but not least,
through the use of telescopes located in many countries over the globe, a form
of powerful and genuine cooperation between teachers and children from various
countries is promoted, with a clear educational goal.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, to appear in the proceedings of the ADASS X
conference, Boston, October 2000, ASP conf. pro
A gobal fit to the anomalous magnetic moment, Higgs limit and b->s gamma in the constrained MSSM
New data on the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon together with the b->s
gamma decay rate and Higgs limits are considered within the supergravity
inspired constrained minimal supersymmetric model. We perform a global
statistical chi2 analysis of these data and show that the allowed region of
parameter space is bounded from below by the Higgs limit, which depends on the
trilinear coupling and from above by the anomalous magnetic moment.Comment: 3 pages, To appear in Proc. of SUSY01, Dubna (Russia
The coupling of a hearing aid loudspeaker membrane to visco-thermal air layers
Hearing aids and their components are becoming smaller. This presents new problems for the acoustical components, such as the loudspeaker. A circular membrane of a hearing aid loudspeaker is modeled in this paper. Neglecting air influences, the membrane and its suspension behave as a mass spring system. However, under operating conditions, thin layers of air on both sides of the membrane influence its behavior. Air can enter and leave these layers at certain locations on the circular edge of the layer. Since these air layers are thin, visco-thermal effects may have to be taken into account. Therefore, the air layers are not modeled by the wave equation, but by the low reduced frequency model that takes these visco-thermal effects into account. The equations of this model are solved in a polar coordinate system, using a wave-based method. The other acoustical parts of the hearing aid loudspeaker, and the membrane itself are modeled by simple lumped models. The emphasis in this paper is on the coupling of the viscothermal air layer model to the mechanical model of the membrane. Coupling of the air layer to other acoustical parts by using an impedance as boundary condition for the layer model, is also described. The resulting model is verified by experiments. The model and the measurements match reasonably well, considering the level of approximation with lumped parts
Very Constrained Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Models
We consider very constrained versions of the minimal supersymmetric extension
of the Standard Model (VCMSSMs) which, in addition to constraining the scalar
masses m_0 and gaugino masses m_{1/2} to be universal at some input scale,
impose relations between the trilinear and bilinear soft supersymmetry breaking
parameters A_0 and B_0. These relations may be linear, as in simple minimal
supergravity models, or nonlinear, as in the Giudice-Masiero mechanism for
generating the Higgs-mixing mu term. We discuss the application of the
electroweak vacuum conditions in VCMSSMs, which may be used to make a
prediction for tan beta as a function of m_0 and m_{1/2} that is usually
unique. We baseline the discussion of the parameter spaces allowed in VCMSSMs
by updating the parameter space allowed in the CMSSM for fixed values of tan
beta with no relation between A_0 and B_0 assumed {\it a priori}, displaying
contours of B_0 for a fixed input value of A_0, incorporating the latest CDF/D0
measurement of m_t and the latest BNL measurement of g_mu - 2. We emphasize
that phenomenological studies of the CMSSM are frequently not applicable to
specific VCMSSMs, notably those based on minimal supergravity, which require
m_0 = m_{3/2} as well as A_0 = B_0 + m_0. We then display (m_{1/2}, m_0) planes
for selected VCMSSMs, treating in a unified way the parameter regions where
either a neutralino or the gravitino is the LSP. In particular, we examine in
detail the allowed parameter space for the Giudice-Masiero model.Comment: 26 pages, 32 eps figure
AND Protocols Using Only Uniform Shuffles
Secure multi-party computation using a deck of playing cards has been a
subject of research since the "five-card trick" introduced by den Boer in 1989.
One of the main problems in card-based cryptography is to design
committed-format protocols to compute a Boolean AND operation subject to
different runtime and shuffle restrictions by using as few cards as possible.
In this paper, we introduce two AND protocols that use only uniform shuffles.
The first one requires four cards and is a restart-free Las Vegas protocol with
finite expected runtime. The second one requires five cards and always
terminates in finite time.Comment: This paper has appeared at CSR 201
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