5,271 research outputs found
Some aspects of organic agriculture development in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Numerous authors and documents (IFOAM, OECD) focused social capital as critical for sustainable human and economic development. In this context social benefits that arise from organic farming is one of the factors that balance «competition» between organic and conventional agriculture. The paper presents some of the results of 6-years project on introducing and development of organic agriculture in the West Balkan countries, specified in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The authors discuss possibilities of organic farming as a matrix for overcoming social tensions and interpersonal relations created in war. Experiences from project indicate that systems of norms and standards and networking needed in exchange of experiences asked for collective action. Work in groups, separated by ethnic and social barriers at the beginning of the project, gradually changed to partnership based on individual contribution, regardless the «start positions». The approach: from environment, health and social aspects toward market and economic values, that offer or-ganic agriculture, could be instrumented in this sense, according to the project's results
Measurement of Antenna Surfaces from In- and Out-Of-Focus Beam Maps using Astronomical Sources
We present a technique for the accurate estimation of large-scale errors in
an antenna surface using astronomical sources and detectors. The technique
requires several out-of-focus images of a compact source and the
signal-to-noise ratio needs to be good but not unreasonably high. For a given
pattern of surface errors, the expected form of such images can be calculated
directly. We show that it is possible to solve the inverse problem of finding
the surface errors from the images in a stable manner using standard numerical
techniques. To do this we describe the surface error as a linear combination of
a suitable set of basis functions (we use Zernike polynomials). We present
simulations illustrating the technique and in particular we investigate the
effects of receiver noise and pointing errors. Measurements of the 15-m James
Clerk Maxwell telescope made using this technique are presented as an example.
The key result is that good measurements of errors on large spatial scales can
be obtained if the input images have a signal-to-noise ratio of order 100 or
more. The important advantage of this technique over transmitter-based
holography is that it allows measurements at arbitrary elevation angles, so
allowing one to characterise the large scale deformations in an antenna as a
function of elevation.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures (accepted by Astronomy & Astrophysics
Out-Of-Focus Holography at the Green Bank Telescope
We describe phase-retrieval holography measurements of the 100-m diameter
Green Bank Telescope using astronomical sources and an astronomical receiver
operating at a wavelength of 7 mm. We use the technique with parameterization
of the aperture in terms of Zernike polynomials and employing a large defocus,
as described by Nikolic, Hills & Richer (2006). Individual measurements take
around 25 minutes and from the resulting beam maps (which have peak signal to
noise ratios of 200:1) we show that it is possible to produce low-resolution
maps of the wavefront errors with accuracy around a hundredth of a wavelength.
Using such measurements over a wide range of elevations, we have calculated a
model for the wavefront-errors due to the uncompensated gravitational
deformation of the telescope. This model produces a significant improvement at
low elevations, where these errors are expected to be the largest; after
applying the model, the aperture efficiency is largely independent of
elevation. We have also demonstrated that the technique can be used to measure
and largely correct for thermal deformations of the antenna, which often exceed
the uncompensated gravitational deformations during daytime observing.
We conclude that the aberrations induced by gravity and thermal effects are
large-scale and the technique used here is particularly suitable for measuring
such deformations in large millimetre wave radio telescopes.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures (accepted by Astronomy & Astrophysics
ALMA Temporal Phase Stability and the Effectiveness of Water Vapor Radiometer
Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) will be the world largest
mm/submm interferometer, and currently the Early Science is ongoing, together
with the commissioning and science verification (CSV). Here we present a study
of the temporal phase stability of the entire ALMA system from antennas to the
correlator. We verified the temporal phase stability of ALMA using data, taken
during the last two years of CSV activities. The data consist of integrations
on strong point sources (i.e., bright quasars) at various frequency bands, and
at various baseline lengths (up to 600 m). From the observations of strong
quasars for a long time (from a few tens of minutes, up to an hour), we derived
the 2-point Allan Standard Deviation after the atmospheric phase correction
using the 183 GHz Water Vapor Radiometer (WVR) installed in each 12 m antenna,
and confirmed that the phase stability of all the baselines reached the ALMA
specification. Since we applied the WVR phase correction to all the data
mentioned above, we also studied the effectiveness of the WVR phase correction
at various frequencies, baseline lengths, and weather conditions. The phase
stability often improves a factor of 2 - 3 after the correction, and sometimes
a factor of 7 improvement can be obtained. However, the corrected data still
displays an increasing phase fluctuation as a function of baseline length,
suggesting that the dry component (e.g., N2 and O2) in the atmosphere also
contributes the phase fluctuation in the data, although the imperfection of the
WVR phase correction cannot be ruled out at this moment.Comment: Proc. SPIE 8444-125, in press (7 pages, 4 figures, 1 table
Self-Corrective Dynamic Networks via Decentralized Reverse Computations
The feasibility of large-scale decentralized networks for local computations, as an alternative to big data systems that are often privacy-intrusive, expensive and serve exclusively corporate interests, is usually questioned by network dynamics such as node leaves, failures and rejoins in the network. This is especially the case when decentralized computations performed in a network, such as the estimation of aggregation functions, e.g. summation, are linked to the actual nodes connected in the network, for instance, counting the sum using input values from only connected nodes. Reverse computations are required to maintain a high aggregation accuracy when nodes leave or fail. This paper introduces an autonomic agent-based model for highly dynamic self-corrective networks using decentralized reverse computations. The model is generic and equips the nodes with the capability to disseminate connectivity status updates in the network. Highly resilient agents to the dynamic network migrate to remote nodes and orchestrate reverse computations for each node leave or failure. In contrast to related work, no other computational resources or redundancy are introduced. The self-corrective model is experimentally evaluated using real-world data from a smart grid pilot project under highly dynamic network adjustments that correspond to catastrophic events with up to 50% of the nodes leaving the network. The model is highly agile and modular and is applied to the large-scale decentralized aggregation network of DIAS, the Dynamic Intelligent Aggregation Service, without major structural changes in its design and operations. Results confirm the outstanding improvement in the aggregation accuracy when self-corrective actions are employed with a minimal increase in communication overhead
Structural and electrical properties of Ti doped α-Fe2O3
In this work we have analyzed the effects of Ti doping on structural and electrical properties of α-Fe2O3. When the amount of added Ti (5 wt.%TiO2) was within the solubility degree and XRD, SEM and EDS analysis revealed a homogenous hematite structure, with lattice parameters a= 5.03719(3) Å, c=13.7484(1) Å slightly increased due to incorporation of Ti into the rhombohedral hematite lattice. Higher amounts of Ti (10 wt.%TiO2) resulted in the formation of pseudobrookite, besides hematite, confirmed by SEM and EDS analysis. Studies of electric properties in the temperature range 25-225oC at different frequencies (100 - 1Mz) showed that Ti doping improved electrical conductivity. Impedance analysis was performed using an equivalent circuit, showing one relaxation process and suggesting dominant grain boundary contribution. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. III45014 i br. III43008
Environmental transmission of generalized anxiety disorder from parents to children:Worries, experiential avoidance, and intolerance of uncertainty
Quickly fading afterimages: hierarchical adaptations in human perception
Afterimages result from a prolonged exposure to still visual stimuli. They
are best detectable when viewed against uniform backgrounds and can persist for
multiple seconds. Consequently, the dynamics of afterimages appears to be slow
by their very nature. To the contrary, we report here that about 50% of an
afterimage intensity can be erased rapidly--within less than a second. The
prerequisite is that subjects view a rich visual content to erase the
afterimage; fast erasure of afterimages does not occur if subjects view a blank
screen. Moreover, we find evidence that fast removal of afterimages is a skill
learned with practice as our subjects were always more effective in cleaning up
afterimages in later parts of the experiment. These results can be explained by
a tri-level hierarchy of adaptive mechanisms, as has been proposed by the
theory of practopoiesis.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figure
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