Der Ökologische Gesamtzuchtwert für Fleckvieh, Braunvieh und Gelbvieh

Der ökologische Gesamtzuchtwert (ÖZW) ist ein Gesamtzuchtwert, der der Zuchtzielsetzung in der ökologischen Milchviehhaltung entspricht. Der ÖZW stellt eine „ökologische Reihung“ der aktuellen Besamungsbullen dar und ist ein wichtiges Hilfsmittel für die Zuchtarbeit im ökologisch arbeitenden Milchviehbetrieb. In den Ausführungen wird der ÖZW in seinen Einzelheiten beschrieben und aufgezeigt, dass ein ökologischer Zuchtwert nicht mit einem ökologisch orientierten Zuchtprogramm gleichzusetzen ist. Ein solches Programm ist aufgrund der geringen Anzahl von Herdbuchkühen in ökologischen Betrieben nicht durchführbar. Eine Beteiligung am bestehenden Zuchtprogramm ist bereits über Paarungsempfehlungen realisiert und sollte weiterentwickelt werden. Wenn es gelingt, den ÖZW durch die Einbeziehung der Ergebnisse neu entwickelter Zuchtwertschätzungen und durch die Aktualisierung der Gewichtungen der Einzelmerkmale an die neuesten wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnisse anzupassen, dann wird er auch zukünftig ein wesentlicher Grundstein für die Zuchtarbeit in der biologischen Milchviehzucht darstellen

AN EXPERIMENTAL ECONOMICS APPROACH TO ANALYZING PRICE DISCOVERY IN FORWARD AND SPOT MARKETS

Laboratory experiments are used to generate data that facilitate investigation of pricing behavior in forward and spot markets. Results suggest a tendency for prices in a spot market to converge to levels higher than those in a forward market. The difference in these market environments is the supply schedule. Buyers in a spot market are aware that supply is inelastic and become relatively aggressive bidders. Forward markets have a relatively elastic supply schedule and buyers fare better. This may motivate firms to promote forward markets and/or vertically integrate in the procurement of inputs.Experimental economics, Forward market, Price discovery, Spot market, Marketing,

Assessment of Alternative Sinusoidal Rumble Stripe Construction

Studies have shown that rumble strips installed on a roadway significantly reduce the number of accidents caused by lane departures. However, when a vehicle engages the strips, a loud exterior noise is generated in addition to the alerting in-cabin noise. The extraneous exterior noise can travel at least several hundred feet at a volume which is considered a nuisance by nearby residents. In the recent years, a new rumble strip design in the form of a sine wave has been reported to produce low exterior noise, while still providing adequate warnings for drivers. This study evaluated three sinusoidal rumble strips of different wavelengths—12, 18, and 24 inch. The rumble strips were quantitatively compared by measuring the noise inside and outside of the vehicle as well as the vibration of the front seat frame. Results showed that the sound responses varied across the vehicles. From the exterior, all three sinusoidal rumble strips were quieter than the traditional rumble strips, with a reduction in sound power by 5 to 11 dBA. Interior cabin sound level was similar to standard rumble strips, with some cases increasing between 2 and 9 dBA. The retro reflectivity tests also exceed the minimum threshold set by INDOT specifications. Sinusoidal rumbles strips are a promising technology that is well suited for lane departure warning in residential areas. The results from this study suggest that the 12 in wavelength has a desirable decrease in exterior noise while still maintaining adequate lane departure warning to the driver

Meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies for cattle stature identifies common genes that regulate body size in mammals

peer-reviewedH.D.D., A.J.C., P.J.B. and B.J.H. would like to acknowledge the Dairy Futures Cooperative Research Centre for funding. H.P. and R.F. acknowledge funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) within the AgroClustEr ‘Synbreed—Synergistic Plant and Animal Breeding’ (grant 0315527B). H.P., R.F., R.E. and K.-U.G. acknowledge the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Süddeutscher Rinderzüchter, the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Österreichischer Fleckviehzüchter and ZuchtData EDV Dienstleistungen for providing genotype data. A. Bagnato acknowledges the European Union (EU) Collaborative Project LowInputBreeds (grant agreement 222623) for providing Brown Swiss genotypes. Braunvieh Schweiz is acknowledged for providing Brown Swiss phenotypes. H.P. and R.F. acknowledge the German Holstein Association (DHV) and the Confederación de Asociaciones de Frisona Española (CONCAFE) for sharing genotype data. H.P. was financially supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) (grant PA 2789/1-1). D.B. and D.C.P. acknowledge funding from the Research Stimulus Fund (11/S/112) and Science Foundation Ireland (14/IA/2576). M.S. and F.S.S. acknowledge the Canadian Dairy Network (CDN) for providing the Holstein genotypes. P.S. acknowledges funding from the Genome Canada project entitled ‘Whole Genome Selection through Genome Wide Imputation in Beef Cattle’ and acknowledges WestGrid and Compute/Calcul Canada for providing computing resources. J.F.T. was supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture, under awards 2013-68004-20364 and 2015-67015-23183. A. Bagnato, F.P., M.D. and J.W. acknowledge EU Collaborative Project Quantomics (grant 516 agreement 222664) for providing Brown Swiss and Finnish Ayrshire sequences and genotypes. A.C.B. and R.F.V. acknowledge funding from the public–private partnership ‘Breed4Food’ (code BO-22.04-011- 001-ASG-LR) and EU FP7 IRSES SEQSEL (grant 317697). A.C.B. and R.F.V. acknowledge CRV (Arnhem, the Netherlands) for providing data on Dutch and New Zealand Holstein and Jersey bulls.Stature is affected by many polymorphisms of small effect in humans1. In contrast, variation in dogs, even within breeds, has been suggested to be largely due to variants in a small number of genes2,3. Here we use data from cattle to compare the genetic architecture of stature to those in humans and dogs. We conducted a meta-analysis for stature using 58,265 cattle from 17 populations with 25.4 million imputed whole-genome sequence variants. Results showed that the genetic architecture of stature in cattle is similar to that in humans, as the lead variants in 163 significantly associated genomic regions (P < 5 × 10−8) explained at most 13.8% of the phenotypic variance. Most of these variants were noncoding, including variants that were also expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) and in ChIP–seq peaks. There was significant overlap in loci for stature with humans and dogs, suggesting that a set of common genes regulates body size in mammals

Graphite-protected CsPbBr3 perovskite photoanodes functionalised with water oxidation catalyst for oxygen evolution in water

Metal-halide perovskites have been widely investigated in the photovoltaic sector due to their promising optoelectronic properties and inexpensive fabrication techniques based on solution processing. Here we report the development of inorganic CsPbBr3-based photoanodes for direct photoelectrochemical oxygen evolution from aqueous electrolytes. We use a commercial thermal graphite sheet and a mesoporous carbon scaffold to encapsulate CsPbBr3 as an inexpensive and efficient protection strategy. We achieve a record stability of 30 h in aqueous electrolyte under constant simulated solar illumination, with currents above 2 mA cm−2 at 1.23 VRHE. We further demonstrate the versatility of our approach by grafting a molecular Ir-based water oxidation catalyst on the electrolyte-facing surface of the sealing graphite sheet, which cathodically shifts the onset potential of the composite photoanode due to accelerated charge transfer. These results suggest an efficient route to develop stable halide perovskite based electrodes for photoelectrochemical solar fuel generation

ASABEPaperPythonTutorial

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Full Changelog&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;a href="https://github.com/venomj26/ASABEPaperPythonTutorial/commits/ASABEDraft1"&gt;https://github.com/venomj26/ASABEPaperPythonTutorial&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt

Multidimensional Multirate DOA Estimation in Beamspace

This paper presents a beamspace version of ESPRIT for uniform rectangular arrays which supports closed-form 2D angle estimation, automatically couples the two components of the source directions, and works with any front end beamformer. The proposed algorithm is based on the observation that beamspace noise eigenvectors can be transformed to vectors which are bandpass and have spectral nulls at the in-band source locations. This facilitates multirate processing (involving modulation to baseband, filtering, and decimation) and yields a space with dimensionality equal to the number of beams used to probe the subband, rather than the number of elements in the sensor array. The MUSIC algorithm can be applied to this noise subspace, but a computationally expensive search of the array manifold would be required. Therefore, a transformation matrix is developed which can be computed a priori and maps the beamspace signal eigenvectors to the corresponding signal subspace. The TLS-ESPRIT algorit..