721 research outputs found

    Economic Comparison of the Undercutter and Traditional Tillage Systems for Winter Wheat-Summer Fallow Farming

    Get PDF
    Wind erosion and blowing dust are major problems for traditional tillage winter wheat-summer fallow in eastern Washington. Wind erosion reduces soil productivity and dust particulates are a major air quality concern. Conservation tillage summer fallow can reduce wind erosion markedly, but is used by relatively few farmers in the low-precipitation (less than 12 inch/year) region of the Inland Pacific Northwest. Barriers to adoption include the cost of conservation tillage implements and reluctance to change "tried and proven"traditional tillage methods. This bulletin compares economic results for the V-sweep undercutter and traditional fallow tillage systems on a case study farm located near Ritzville, WA. The farm’s eight-year average wheat yield is 46 bu/ac. Grain yields are similar for the two systems. This study shows that the undercutter method of summer fallow farming is more profitable than the traditional system on the case study farm due to slightly lower production costs. The undercutter system is eligible for conservation payments, but the traditional system is not. Receipt of these payments further strengthens the profitability advantage of the undercutter systemcapital, labor, land and management resources, type and size of machinery complement

    The Case for Reduction

    Get PDF
    Critical discourse hardly knows a more devastating charge against theories, technologies, or structures than that of being reductive. Yet, expansion and growth cannot fare any better today. This volume suspends anti-reductionist reflexes to focus on the experiences and practices of different kinds of reduction, their generative potentials, ethics, and politics. Can their violences be contained and their benefits transported to other contexts?Introduction | CHRISTOPH F. E. HOLZHEY and JAKOB SCHILLINGER | 1–12The Case and the Signifier: Generalization in Freud’s Rat Man | IRACEMA DULLEY | 13–37Haptic Reductions: A Sceptic’s Guide for Responding to the Touch of Crisis | RACHEL AUMILLER | 39–61Disalienation and Structuralism: Fanon with Lévi-Strauss | CHRISTOPHER CHAMBERLIN | 61–89Black Box Allegories of Gulf Futurism: The Irreducible Other of Computational Capital | ÖZGÜN EYLÜL İŞCEN | 91–115Lines that Reduce: Biography, Palms, Borders | SAM DOLBEAR | 117–33Post-anti-identitarianism: The Forms of Contemporary Gender and Sexuality | BEN NICHOLS | 135–53Nothing Beyond the Name: Towards an Eclipse of Listening in the Psychotherapeutic Enterprise | SARATH JAKKA | 155–73Reduction in Computer Music: Bodies, Temporalities, and Generative Computation | FEDERICA BUONGIORNO | 175–90Reduction in Time: Kinaesthetic and Traumatic Experiences of the Present in Literary Texts | ALBERICA BAZZONI | 191–212Seeking Home: Vignettes of Homes and Homing | AMINA ELHALAWANI | 213–26Law Is Other Wor(l)ds | XENIA CHIARAMONTE | 227–50EXCURSUSOn the List | SAM DOLBEAR, BEN NICHOLS, and CLAUDIA PEPPEL | 253–61White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy | BEN NICHOLS | 263–65Proust List Impulse | SAM DOLBEAR | 267–70A List of Fears: Eva Kot’átková’s Asylum | CLAUDIA PEPPEL | 271–76How to Bake X Cake: Notes on the Recipe | IRACEMA DULLEY | 277–79Walking Away, Walking in Circles, Writing Lists | RACHEL AUMILLER | 281–83The Case for Reduction, ed. by Christoph F. E. Holzhey and Jakob Schillinger, Cultural Inquiry, 25 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2022) <https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-25

    Introduction

    Get PDF
    Christoph F. E. Holzhey and Jakob Schillinger, ‘Introduction’, in The Case for Reduction, ed. by Christoph F. E. Holzhey and Jakob Schillinger, Cultural Inquiry, 25 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2022), pp. 1-12 <https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-25_01

    Horned lark damage to pre-emerged canola seedlings

    Get PDF
    Winter canola (Brassica napus L.) is considered the most promising domestically-produced oilseed feed-stock for biodiesel production and for diversifying wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)-based cropping systems in the Inland Pacific Northwest, USA. Winter canola field experiments conducted in east-central Washington were completely destroyed, and commercial fields were damaged or destroyed, over several years by large flocks of horned larks (Eremophilia alperestis L.) that ate the cotyledon leaves of pre-emerged and newly-emerged seedlings. Numerous control methods were attempted in field experiments, including laying bird netting over the entire experiment, placement of a life-size predator decoy in a field experiment, loud propane-powered cannon blasts, and mixing garlic with canola seed before planting followed by spraying garlic water on the soil surface. None of the attempted control methods were successful. This is the first report in the literature of horned lark damage to pre-emerged and newly-emerged canola seedlings. We discuss questions relevant to our novel account as well as potential abatement using falcons and non-toxic chemical repellents for the protection of industrial canola crops associated with horned lark depredation

    Connecting continuum poroelasticity with discrete synthetic vascular trees for modeling liver tissue

    Full text link
    Computational simulations have the potential to assist in liver resection surgeries by facilitating surgical planning, optimizing resection strategies, and predicting postoperative outcomes. The modeling of liver tissue across multiple length scales constitutes a significant challenge, primarily due to the multiphysics coupling of mechanical response and perfusion within the complex multiscale vascularization of the organ. In this paper, we present a modeling framework that connects continuum poroelasticity and discrete vascular tree structures to model liver tissue across disparate levels of the perfusion hierarchy. The connection is achieved through a series of modeling decisions, which include source terms in the pressure equation to model inflow from the supplying tree, pressure boundary conditions to model outflow into the draining tree, and contact conditions to model surrounding tissue. We investigate the numerical behaviour of our framework and apply it to a patient-specific full-scale liver problem that demonstrates its potential to help assess surgical liver resection procedure

    Comparison of optical probes and X-ray tomography for bubble characterization in fluidized bed methanation reactors

    Get PDF
    The performance of many fluidized bed reactors strongly depends on the bubble behavior since they influence the mass transfer to the dense phase where the catalyst is present. An example is the methanation in a fluidized bed that allows for conversion of unsaturated hydrocarbons in the gasification gas without catalyst deactivation [1]. The BFB reactor is a very challenging step in the process chain to produce SNG out of biomass as feedstock since next to the bubble behavior a lot of other parameters like temperature, pressure, particle size, attrition of the catalyst, internals, bed height and reactor diameter etc. affect the overall performance. The focus of this research work lies on the determination of the bubble properties which are an important factor to model a bubbling fluidized methanation reactor in order to predict and optimize its performance and to support its scale-up [2]. Tomographic methods such as X-ray measurements are often used to characterize bubbles in a fluidized bed. Compared to intrusive measurement, e.g. optical probing, this method possesses the advantage of measuring bubbles throughout the entire cross section. However, X-ray measurements cannot be applied to all installation, especially not in large scale plants. For these purpose, we have developed optical probes that can be employed to investigate the fluidization state in a hot pilot scale reactor. A main drawback of the optical measurements lies in their locally limited detection of the hydrodynamic pattern since they are only able to measure at one point in the reactor. Therefore, conclusions on the bubble behavior of the whole cross section based on optical measurements are not easy to derive. To compare the influence of the measurement method on the measured bubble properties, in the scope of this study, an artificial optical signal is created out of the existing X-ray measurement data set for a cold flow model of the pilot scale methanation reactor. The obtained bubble properties of both methods (i.e. evaluation of the derived artificial optical probe signal and image reconstruction based on the original X-ray tomographic data) are compared with regard to the hold-up, bubble rise velocity and the bubble size (for the X-ray method) or chord length (for the optical evaluation method), respectively. The process to obtain an artificial optical signal is depicted in Figure 1. The comparison shows that for the evaluation of optical probe data, statistical effects have to be considered carefully. The detected mean chord length of the optical method does not represent the mean bubble size determined by the X-ray method. Moreover, also a difference in the bubble rise velocity was detected for some fluidization states. This knowledge may be the basis for the derivation of a statistically sound method to calculate different hydrodynamic properties in fluidized bed reactors based on optical probe measurements. Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

    Blockade of ιEβ7 integrin suppresses accumulation of CD8+ and Th9 lymphocytes from patients with IBD in the inflamed gut in vivo

    Get PDF
    Objective: Therapeutically targeting lymphocyte adhesion is of increasing relevance in IBD. Yet, central aspects of the action of anti-adhesion compounds are incompletely understood. We investigated the role of ιEβ7 and ι4β7 integrins and their blockade by vedolizumab and etrolizumab for trafficking of IBD T lymphocytes in an in vivo model of homing to and retention in the inflamed gut. Design: We explored integrin expression in IBD patients by flow cytometry and immunohistochemistry, while regulation of integrins was studied in T cell cultures. The functional relevance of integrins was assessed by adhesion assays and a recently established humanized mouse model in DSS-treated immunodeficient mice. Results: High expression of ιEβ7 was noted on CD8+ and CD4+ Th9 cells, while ι4β7 was expressed on CD8+, Th2 and Th17 cells. TCR stimulation and TGF-β were key inducers of ιEβ7 on human T cells, while butyric acid suppressed ιEβ7. In comparison to ι4β7 blockade via vedolizumab, blockade of β7 via etrolizumab surrogate antibody superiorly reduced colonic numbers of CD8+ and Th9 cells in vivo after 3 hours, while no difference was noted after 0.5 hours. AEβ7 expression was higher on CD8+ T cells from IBD patients under vedolizumab therapy. Conclusion: AEβ7 is of key relevance for gut trafficking of IBD CD8+ T cells and CD4+ Th9 cells in vivo and mainly retention might account for this effect. These findings indicate that blockade of ιEβ7 in addition to ι4β7 may be particularly effective in intestinal disorders with expansion of CD8+ and Th9 cells such as IBD
    • …
    corecore