3,125 research outputs found
Technical note: Whole-pen assessments of nutrient excretion and digestibility from dairy replacement heifers housed in sand-bedded freestalls
Our objectives were to describe and test refined procedures for quantifying excreta produced from whole pens of dairy heifers. Previous research efforts attempting to make whole-pen measurements of excreta output have been complicated by the use of organic bedding, which requires cumbersome analytical techniques to quantify excreta apart from the bedding. Research pens equipped with sand-bedded freestalls offer a unique opportunity for refinement of whole-pen fecal collection methods, primarily because sand-bedded freestall systems contain no organic bedding; therefore, concentrations of ash within the manure, sand, and feces can be used to correct for contamination of manure by sand bedding. This study was conducted on a subset of heifers from a larger production-scale feeding trial evaluating ensiled eastern gamagrass [Tripsacum dactyloides (L.) L.] haylage (EGG) that was incorporated into a corn silage/alfalfa haylage-based blended diet at rates of 0, 9.1, 18.3, or 27.4% of total DM. The diet without EGG also was offered on a limited basis. Eighty Holstein dairy heifers were blocked (heavy weight, 424 ± 15.9 kg; light weight, 324 ± 22.4 kg) and then assigned to 10 individual pens containing 8 heifers/pen. One pen per block was assigned to each of the 5 research diets, and whole-pen fecal collections were conducted twice for each pen. Grab fecal samples also were gathered from individual heifers within each pen, and subsequent analysis of these whole-pen composites allowed reasonable estimates of OM and NDF excreta output. Under the conditions of our experimental design, pooled SEM for the excreta DM, OM, NDF, and NDF (ash corrected) output were 0.113, 0.085, 0.093, and 0.075 kg· heifer –1·d–1, respectively. For DM excretion, this represented about one-third of the SEM reported for previous whole-pen collections from bedded- pack housing systems. Subsequent calculations of apparent DM and OM digestibilities indicated that the technique was sensitive, and linear trends (P ≤ 0.027) associated with the inclusion rates of EGG within the diet were detected. This technique allows estimation of apparent diet digestibilities on multiple animals simultaneously, thereby mitigating the need for isolating individual animals to obtain digestibility coefficients. The approach appears viable but requires hand labor for collections of multiple pens and thorough mixing of large volumes of manure as well as analytical corrections for sand ingested by lounging heifers
A realistic two-lane traffic model for highway traffic
A two-lane extension of a recently proposed cellular automaton model for
traffic flow is discussed. The analysis focuses on the reproduction of the lane
usage inversion and the density dependence of the number of lane changes. It is
shown that the single-lane dynamics can be extended to the two-lane case
without changing the basic properties of the model which are known to be in
good agreement with empirical single-vehicle data. Therefore it is possible to
reproduce various empirically observed two-lane phenomena, like the
synchronization of the lanes, without fine-tuning of the model parameters
Spin-Boson Hamiltonian and Optical Absorption of Molecular Dimers
An analysis of the eigenstates of a symmetry-broken spin-boson Hamiltonian is
performed by computing Bloch and Husimi projections. The eigenstate analysis is
combined with the calculation of absorption bands of asymmetric dimer
configurations constituted by monomers with nonidentical excitation energies
and optical transition matrix elements. Absorption bands with regular and
irregular fine structures are obtained and related to the transition from the
coexistence to a mixing of adiabatic branches in the spectrum. It is shown that
correlations between spin states allow for an interpolation between absorption
bands for different optical asymmetries.Comment: 15 pages, revTeX, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
PP-waves with torsion and metric-affine gravity
A classical pp-wave is a 4-dimensional Lorentzian spacetime which admits a
nonvanishing parallel spinor field; here the connection is assumed to be
Levi-Civita. We generalise this definition to metric compatible spacetimes with
torsion and describe basic properties of such spacetimes. We use our
generalised pp-waves for constructing new explicit vacuum solutions of
quadratic metric-affine gravity.Comment: 17 pages, LaTeX2
Polymer-Based Batteries — Flexible and Thin Energy Storage Systems
Batteries have become an integral part of everyday life—from small coin cells to batteries for mobile phones, as well as batteries for electric vehicles and an increasing number of stationary energy storage applications. There is a large variety of standardized battery sizes (e.g., the familiar AA‐battery or AAA‐battery). Interestingly, all these battery systems are based on a huge number of different cell chemistries depending on the application and the corresponding requirements. There is not one single battery type fulfilling all demands for all imaginable applications. One battery class that has been gaining significant interest in recent years is polymer‐based batteries. These batteries utilize organic materials as the active parts within the electrodes without utilizing metals (and their compounds) as the redox‐active materials. Such polymer‐based batteries feature a number of interesting properties, like high power densities and flexible batteries fabrication, among many more
Fuzzy cellular model for on-line traffic simulation
This paper introduces a fuzzy cellular model of road traffic that was
intended for on-line applications in traffic control. The presented model uses
fuzzy sets theory to deal with uncertainty of both input data and simulation
results. Vehicles are modelled individually, thus various classes of them can
be taken into consideration. In the proposed approach, all parameters of
vehicles are described by means of fuzzy numbers. The model was implemented in
a simulation of vehicles queue discharge process. Changes of the queue length
were analysed in this experiment and compared to the results of NaSch cellular
automata model.Comment: The original publication is available at http://www.springerlink.co
Casimir forces in binary liquid mixtures
If two ore more bodies are immersed in a critical fluid critical fluctuations
of the order parameter generate long ranged forces between these bodies. Due to
the underlying mechanism these forces are close analogues of the well known
Casimir forces in electromagnetism. For the special case of a binary liquid
mixture near its critical demixing transition confined to a simple parallel
plate geometry it is shown that the corresponding critical Casimir forces can
be of the same order of magnitude as the dispersion (van der Waals) forces
between the plates. In wetting experiments or by direct measurements with an
atomic force microscope the resulting modification of the usual dispersion
forces in the critical regime should therefore be easily detectable. Analytical
estimates for the Casimir amplitudes Delta in d=4-epsilon are compared with
corresponding Monte-Carlo results in d=3 and their quantitative effect on the
thickness of critical wetting layers and on force measurements is discussed.Comment: 34 pages LaTeX with revtex and epsf style, to appear in Phys. Rev.
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