The Changing role of agriculture in Dutch society

Dutch agriculture has undergone significant changes in the past century, similar to many countries in the European Union. Due to economies of scale and in order to remain economically profitable, it became necessary for farmers to increase farm size, efficiency and external inputs, while minimizing labour use per hectare. The latter has resulted in fewer people working in the agricultural sector. Consequently, Dutch society gradually lost its connection to agricultural production. This divergence resulted in a poor image for the agricultural sector, because of environmental pollution, homogenization of the landscape, outbreaks of contagious animal diseases and reduced animal welfare. Although the general attitude towards agriculture seems to have improved slightly in recent years, there is still a long way to go in regaining this trust. In order to keep the Dutch countryside viable, farmers are considered indispensable. However, their methods of production should match the demands of society in terms of sustainability. This applies both to farming systems that are used in a monofunctional way (production only) and to multifunctional farming systems. For researchers involved in development of these farming systems, this requires new capabilities; contrary to the situation in the past, citizens and stakeholder groups now demand involvement in the design of farming systems. In the current paper, it is suggested that, besides traditional mainstream agriculture, other alternative farming systems should be developed and implemented. Hence, Dutch agricultural research should remain focused on the cutting edge of economy and society. Despite all efforts, not all of these newly developed systems will acquire a position within the agricultural spectrum. However, some of the successful ones may prove extremely valuable

Effect of Carbon-Doping in Bulk Superconducting MgB2 Samples

Bulk superconducting samples of MgB2 were prepared by solid state reaction of stoichiometric quantities of Mg turnings and B in a sealed Ta cylinder at 890 C for 2 hours. The as-synthesized MgB2 samples had a Tc of 39 K, as defined as the onset of diamagnetism. The crystal symmetry was found to be hexagonal with lattice parameters, a=3.0856 A, and c=3.5199 A, similar to the literature values. To study the effect of carbon doping in MgB2, various C-containing samples of x varying from 0 to 1.00 in MgB2-xCx were prepared. Magnetic characterizations indicate that the Tc onset is same for pure and C-doped samples for x = 0.05, and 0.10. However, the shielding signal decreased monotonically with C content, apparently due to the presence of carbon on the grain boundaries that isolates grains and prevents flow of supercurrents on the perimeter.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure

Holographic Construction of Technicolor Theory

We construct a dual description of technicolor theory based on the D4/D8 brane configuration. A strongly-coupled technicolor theory is identified as the effective theory on D-branes, and from the gauge/gravity correspondence, we explore the weakly-coupled holographic description of dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking. It is found from the D-brane probe action that the masses of W and Z bosons are given by the decay constant of technipion, and the technimesons become hierarchically heavy. Moreover, the couplings of heavier modes to standard model fermions are rather suppressed. The oblique correction parameters are also evaluated and found to be small except for the S parameter, which can be reduced by modifying the model. The fermion fields are introduced at the intersections of D-branes and their masses are generated via massive gauge bosons from open strings stretching between D-branes.Comment: 23 pages; references added, minor change

Semilocal convergence of a continuation method with Hölder continuous second derivative in Banach spaces

AbstractIn this paper, the semilocal convergence of a continuation method combining the Chebyshev method and the convex acceleration of Newton’s method used for solving nonlinear equations in Banach spaces is established by using recurrence relations under the assumption that the second Frëchet derivative satisfies the Hölder continuity condition. This condition is mild and works for problems in which the second Frëchet derivative fails to satisfy Lipschitz continuity condition. A new family of recurrence relations are defined based on two constants which depend on the operator. The existence and uniqueness regions along with a closed form of the error bounds in terms of a real parameter α∈[0,1] for the solution x∗ is given. Two numerical examples are worked out to demonstrate the efficacy of our approach. On comparing the existence and uniqueness regions for the solution obtained by our analysis with those obtained by using majorizing sequences under Hölder continuity condition on F″, it is found that our analysis gives improved results. Further, we have observed that for particular values of the α, our analysis reduces to those for the Chebyshev method (α=0) and the convex acceleration of Newton’s method (α=1) respectively with improved results

Active vibration control (AVC) of a satellite boom structure using optimally positioned stacked piezoelectric actuators

In this paper, results for active vibration control predicted from experimental measurements on a lightweight structure are compared with purely computational predictions. The structure studied is a 4.5m long satellite boom consisting of 10 identical bays with equilateral triangular cross sections. First, the results from a Fortran code that is based on a receptance analysis are validated against the experimental forced response of the boom structure. Exhaustive searches are then carried out to find the optimum positions for one and two actuators. Finally, a genetic algorithm is employed to find high-quality positions for three actuators on the structure that will achieve the greatest reductions in vibration transmission. Having found these actuator positions, experiments are then carried out to verify the quality of the theoretical predictions. It was found that the attenuation achievable in practice for one, two and three actuators were, respectively, 15.1, 26.1 and 33.5 dB

Active vibration control (AVC) of a satellite boom structure using optimally positioned stacked piezoelectric actuators

In this paper, results for active vibration control predicted from experimental measurements on a lightweight structure are compared with purely computational predictions. The structure studied is a 4.5m long satellite boom consisting of 10 identical bays with equilateral triangular cross sections. First, the results from a Fortran code that is based on a receptance analysis are validated against the experimental forced response of the boom structure. Exhaustive searches are then carried out to find the optimum positions for one and two actuators. Finally, a genetic algorithm is employed to find high-quality positions for three actuators on the structure that will achieve the greatest reductions in vibration transmission. Having found these actuator positions, experiments are then carried out to verify the quality of the theoretical predictions. It was found that the attenuation achievable in practice for one, two and three actuators were, respectively, 15.1, 26.1 and 33.5 dB

Optimization of culture conditions for antimetabolite production by a rare tea garden actinobacterial isolate, Amycolatopsis sp. ST-28

Background: Microbial metabolites are of great importance to the pharmaceutical industries. There is an urgent need of novel microbial metabolites in the present scenario to combat antimicrobial resistance. Selection and screening of potent microbial strains for production of antimicrobial metabolites as well as optimization of their culture conditions is of utmost importance in drug discovery. Therefore, the study was carried out to evaluate the effect of nutritional and cultural conditions on the production of bioactive metabolites by a rare tea garden actinobacterial strain Amycolatopsis sp. ST-28.Materials and methods: Submerged fermentation of the actinobacterial isolate was carried out on different culture media and different culture conditions such as carbon and nitrogen sources, inoculum volume, pH, fermentation period and agitation speed. The culture filtrate was assayed against Staphylococcus aureus. Agar well diffusion method was employed to determine the maximum diameter of zone of inhibition (mm). The dried mycelial weight (mg) in a fixed volume of culture media was used for the determination of the total biomass produced.Results: Maximum bioactive metabolite and biomass production was observed when submerged fermentation was carried out with mannose and peptone respectively as a sole carbon and nitrogen source. Maintaining other environmental parameters viz. inoculum 11% (v/v), pH of 6.5, temperature of 32ºC and incubation period of 11 days at 150 rpm were found optimum for maximum antimicrobial activity.Conclusion: This study demonstrated optimized cultural conditions for improved production of antimicrobial compound by Amycolatopsis sp. ST-28Keywords: Amycolatopsis, antimicrobial, submerged fermentation, optimizatio

Positivity of High Density Effective Theory

We show that the effective field theory of low energy modes in dense QCD has positive Euclidean path integral measure. The complexity of the measure of QCD at finite chemical potential can be ascribed to modes which are irrelevant to the dynamics at sufficiently high density. Rigorous inequalities follow at asymptotic density. Lattice simulation of dense QCD should be possible using the quark determinant calculated in the effective theory.Comment: 10 pages, Revised version, to appear in Rapid Communications of Physical Review

The Complexity of Nash Equilibria in Stochastic Multiplayer Games

We analyse the computational complexity of finding Nash equilibria in stochastic multiplayer games with $\omega$-regular objectives. We show that restricting the search space to equilibria whose payoffs fall into a certain interval may lead to undecidability. In particular, we prove that the following problem is undecidable: Given a game~$\mathcal{G}$, does there exist a pure-strategy Nash equilibrium of~$\mathcal{G}$ where player 0 wins with probability~$1$. Moreover, this problem remains undecidable if it is restricted to strategies with (unbounded) finite memory. However, if randomised strategies are allowed, decidability remains an open problem; we can only prove NP-hardness in this case. One way to obtain a provably decidable variant of the problem is to restrict the strategies to be positional or stationary. For the complexity of these two problems, we obtain a common lower bound of NP and upper bounds of NP and PSPACE respectively. Finally, we single out a special case of the general problem that, in many cases, admits an efficient solution. In particular, we prove that deciding the existence of an equilibrium in which each player either wins or loses with probability~$1$ can be done in polynomial time for games where, for instance, the objective of each player is given by a parity condition with a bounded number of priorities