CAP-reform and the provision of non-commodity outputs in Brandenburg

This paper presents an attempt to model the response of selected farms to decoupled direct payments and the associated impact on the provision of a defined set of non-commodity outputs (NCO’s) using a combined modelling approach consisting of the AgriPoliS and MODAM models. AgriPoliS focuses on the socio-economic dimension of multifunctionality at the individual farm and regional levels and explicitly models heterogeneous farms (in size, location and efficiency) within a competitive and dynamic environment. The linear-programming model MODAM allows a detailed representation of production processes and their impact on the environmental dimension of multifunctionality at the farm level. We simulate the impact of a uniform area payment and a fully decoupled single farm payment. Our case study region is the district Ostprignitz-Ruppin in Brandenburg. Results show that the decoupling schemes create a trade-off between the NCO’s and that adjustment reactions differ between farms depending on their legal form, size, and production.decoupling, multifunctionality, non-commodity outputs, modelling, simulation, policy analysis, ecological indicators, Agricultural and Food Policy, Land Economics/Use,

LCA of mechanical biological treatment of residual MSW in the city of Rome: current practices vs. alternative strategies

Mechanical Biological Treatment (MBT) is being increasingly adopted throughout the EU as one of the main elements of integrated waste management strategies with the aim of diverting waste from landfills and reducing the environmental impacts of waste landfilling, mainly related to leachate and biogas production and composition. Italy, in particular, has a long tradition in mechanical biological treatment of residual municipal solid waste (MSW), i.e. the unsorted waste remaining after at-source segregation and collection of recyclable fractions. According to the Italian Environmental Agency, in 2014 a total of 117 MBT plants were in operation in Italy, treating roughly 9 million ton of waste, corresponding to 32% of the yearly amount of produced MSW. Furthermore, in some Regions (e.g. Lazio Region), due to the establishment of more restrictive regional laws and regulations compared to National legislation, unsorted MSW waste has to be preliminarily treated through mechanical and biological processes before it can be landfilled or thermally treated, leading to the key role of the MBT technology within this context. The main environmental benefits of a MBT plant are generally associated to the recovery of recyclable materials (such as plastics, paper, metals and compost), the production of high calorific combustibles (i.e. Refuse Derived Fuel, RDF) for energy recovery and the biological stabilization of putrescible organic matter in waste in order to reduce methane and leachate emissions of treated waste when disposed of in landfills. Despite these advantages, potential environmental impacts may be generated also from MBT plant operations and, moreover, from downstream treatments and disposal of MBT output flows. Depending on the MBT facility configuration, the feedstock source, the biological treatment (e.g. aerobic, anaerobic or a combination of the two) and post-treatments (e.g. maturation), the quality of MBT produced wastes and, hence, potential emissions related to their disposal may significantly vary. The present study aims at evaluating the overall environmental burdens related to the current practices adopted for the management of unsorted MSW in the municipality of Rome (Lazio Region, Italy), which is essentially based on MBT plants, by Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) employing the waste-LCA model EASETECH using operational and experimental data. Previous LCA studies on MBT systems recognized the global environmental benefits of MBTs compared to direct landfilling but only few highlighted the need of carefully accounting for the downstream management of residuals and sorted fractions (e.g. the recovery of recyclables, RDF incineration, wastewater treatment, landfilling of stabilized waste and other residues), and of including uncertainties related to LCA modelling and inventory analysis (see e.g. Montejo et al., 2013; Beylot et al., 2015). For this reason, in the present study, emphasis was placed on the development of a robust and specific MBT inventory, through the collection of operational data from a MBT plant of the city of Rome, and characterization data of all input and output waste streams obtained through several sampling campaigns. The experimental data were interpreted and modelled in order to estimate the liquid and gaseous emissions that can be assumed as representative in a landfill disposal scenario for the analyzed system. Furthermore, experimental results were used to identify feasible alternative strategies for managing MBT output wastes. Up to now, only RDF (24.7% of the unsorted feed MSW) is sent to incineration for energy recovery, whereas all other residues (heavy scraps, stabilized MBT waste and stabilization scraps), corresponding to 55% of unsorted MSW, are landfilled. However, with the introduction of Solid Recovered Fuel (SRF) instead of RDF, and new standard values for SRF classification based on specific chemical and physical waste properties, it appears that thermal treatment may be applied also to MBT scrap flows such as heavy scraps and/or stabilization scraps. Incineration of these two flows was hence included in the LCA study and compared to the current practice of scraps landfilling in terms of total environmental impacts. References: Montejo et al., 2013. Journal of Environmental Management. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2013.05.063 Beylot et al., 2015. Waste Management. doi: 10.1016/j.wasman.2015.01.

Constraints on Beta Functions from Duality

We analyze the way in which duality constrains the exact beta function and correlation length in single-coupling spin systems. A consistency condition we propose shows very concisely the relation between self-dual points and phase transitions, and implies that the correlation length must be duality invariant. These ideas are then tested on the 2-d Ising model, and used towards finding the exact beta function of the $q$-state Potts model. Finally, a generic procedure is given for identifying a duality symmetry in other single-coupling models with a continuous phase transition.Comment: LaTeX, 6 page

Fra produktionsbaseret til arealbaseret emissionsberegning. Del 1: Vurdering af grundlag

Denne rapport er udarbejdet af Aarhus Universitet for Miljøstyrelsen, som har udbedt sig en videnskabelig vurdering af, om det er muligt at basere beregninger af emissioner af ammoniak og lugt på grundlag af produktionsarealer i stalde og gødningslagre i stedet for, som nu, på mængden af udskilt kvælstof fra husdyr i forbindelse med ansøgning af og kontrol med miljøgodkendelser. Nærværende rapport behandler første del af opgaven, hvori behandles en række principielle spørgsmål stillet af Miljøstyrelsen til et ændret beregningsregime, herunder definition af produktionsareal, beregningsgrundlag for stalde med dybstrøelse, vurdering af forslag udarbejdet af SEGES om virkemidler knyttet til fodereffektivitet, samt vurdering af beregningsmetoder foreslået af SEGES i forhold til nye arealrelaterede emissionsfaktorer.Denne rapport er udarbejdet af Aarhus Universitet for Miljøstyrelsen, som har udbedt sig en videnskabelig vurdering af, om det er muligt at basere beregninger af emissioner af ammoniak og lugt på grundlag af produktionsarealer i stalde og gødningslagre i stedet for, som nu, på mængden af udskilt kvælstof fra husdyr i forbindelse med ansøgning af og kontrol med miljøgodkendelser. Nærværende rapport behandler første del af opgaven, hvori behandles en række principielle spørgsmål stillet af Miljøstyrelsen til et ændret beregningsregime, herunder definition af produktionsareal, beregningsgrundlag for stalde med dybstrøelse, vurdering af forslag udarbejdet af SEGES om virkemidler knyttet til fodereffektivitet, samt vurdering af beregningsmetoder foreslået af SEGES i forhold til nye arealrelaterede emissionsfaktorer

Two-Loop Beta Functions Without Feynman Diagrams

Starting from a consistency requirement between T-duality symmetry and renormalization group flows, the two-loop metric beta function is found for a d=2 bosonic sigma model on a generic, torsionless background. The result is obtained without Feynman diagram calculations, and represents further evidence that duality symmetry severely constrains renormalization flows.Comment: 4 pp., REVTeX. Added discussion on scheme (in)dependence; final version to appear in Phys. Rev. Let

Improving access to endogenous DNA in ancient bones and teeth

Poor DNA preservation is the most limiting factor in ancient genomic research. In the majority of ancient bones and teeth, endogenous DNA molecules represent a minor fraction of the whole DNA extract, rendering shot-gun sequencing inefficient for obtaining genomic data. Based on ancient human bone samples from temperate and tropical environments, we show that an EDTA-based enzymatic ‘pre-digestion’ of powdered bone increases the proportion of endogenous DNA several fold. By performing the pre-digestion step between 30 min and 6 hours on five bones, we observe an asymptotic increase in endogenous DNA content, with a 2.7-fold average increase reached at 1 hour. We repeat the experiment using a brief pre-digestion (15 or 30 mins) on 21 ancient bones and teeth from a variety of archaeological contexts and observe an improvement in 16 of these. We here advocate the implementation of a brief pre-digestion step as a standard procedure in ancient DNA extractions. Finally, we demonstrate on 14 ancient teeth that by targeting the outer layer of the roots we obtain up to 14 times more endogenous DNA than when using the inner dentine. Our presented methods are likely to increase the proportion of ancient samples that are suitable for genome-scale characterization.Full Tex

Human Cardiovascular Adaptation to Short-Term Weightlessness

No abstract availabl

Fluid Shifts, Vasodilatation and Ambulatory Blood Pressure Reduction During Long Duration Spaceflight

To investigate how fluid shifts, blood pressure and systemic vascular resistance adapt to long duration (3-6 months) spaceflight