Potential food production from forage legume-based-systems in Europe: an overview

peer-reviewedIntensification of EU livestock farming systems has been accompanied by the development of maize silage and intensively fertilised grasses at the expense of forage legume crops. However in the new context of agriculture, the development of forage legumes constitutes one of the pillars for future livestock farming systems with high environmental and economical performances. Yield benefits of grass-clover mixtures are equivalent fertiliser N inputs of 150 to 350 kg/ha, and productive grass-clover mixtures can fix 100 to 380 kg N per hectare symbiotically from the atmosphere. Animal intake of legumes is high and the rate of decline of legume nutritional quality with advancing maturity is less than for grasses, especially in the case of white clover, which makes mixed pastures easier to manage. Animal performances at grazing are identical or higher on clover-enriched pastures. Due to their high protein concentration, conserved forage legumes fit well with maize silage. Forage legumes increase the concentration of beneficial α-linolenic acid in ruminant products. Environmental balance of forage legumes is positive. Increasing the proportion of white clover at the expense of mineral N fertilisation can reduce the risk of nitrate leaching. Because forage legumes only require solar energy to fix N from the air, they also reduce energy consumption and associated impacts. They contribute to reduce the global warming potential of livestock systems by reducing emission of enteric methane and nitrous oxide from pasture and crop production. As an element of arable crop rotations, grass-clover leys suppress pests, diseases and weeds, improve soil structure and prevent soil erosion and nitrate leaching. Nevertheless, forage legumes have some limitations: expensive to harvest, difficulties of conservation, management of the associations. To take full advantage of forage legumes in the future, new research and development are required as well as financial support from the EU

Including virtual photons in strong interactions

In the perturbative field-theoretical models we investigate the inclusion of the electromagnetic interactions into the purely strong theory that describes hadronic processes. In particular, we study the convention for splitting electromagnetic and strong interactions and the ambiguity of such a splitting. The issue of the interpretation of the parameters of the low-energy effective field theory in the presence of electromagnetic interactions is addressed, as well as the scale and gauge dependence of the effective theory couplings. We hope, that the results of these studies are relevant for the electromagnetic sector of ChPT.Comment: Talk presented at the International conference on Quarks and Nuclear Physics, June 9-14, 2002, Juelich, German

On the Connectivity of Unions of Random Graphs

Graph-theoretic tools and techniques have seen wide use in the multi-agent systems literature, and the unpredictable nature of some multi-agent communications has been successfully modeled using random communication graphs. Across both network control and network optimization, a common assumption is that the union of agents' communication graphs is connected across any finite interval of some prescribed length, and some convergence results explicitly depend upon this length. Despite the prevalence of this assumption and the prevalence of random graphs in studying multi-agent systems, to the best of our knowledge, there has not been a study dedicated to determining how many random graphs must be in a union before it is connected. To address this point, this paper solves two related problems. The first bounds the number of random graphs required in a union before its expected algebraic connectivity exceeds the minimum needed for connectedness. The second bounds the probability that a union of random graphs is connected. The random graph model used is the Erd\H{o}s-R\'enyi model, and, in solving these problems, we also bound the expectation and variance of the algebraic connectivity of unions of such graphs. Numerical results for several use cases are given to supplement the theoretical developments made.Comment: 16 pages, 3 tables; accepted to 2017 IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC

Optical Stark Effect and Dressed Excitonic States in a Mn-doped Quantum Dot

We report on the observation of spin dependent optically dressed states and optical Stark effect on an individual Mn spin in a semiconductor quantum dot. The vacuum-to-exciton or the exciton-to-biexciton transitions in a Mn-doped quantum dot are optically dressed by a strong laser field and the resulting spectral signature is measured in photoluminescence. We demonstrate that the energy of any spin state of a Mn atom can be independently tuned using the optical Stark effect induced by a control laser. High resolution spectroscopy reveals a power, polarization and detuning dependent Autler-Townes splitting of each optical transition of the Mn-doped quantum dot. This experiment demonstrates a complete optical resonant control of the exciton-Mn system

Are aerobic fitness and repeated sprint ability linked to fatigue in professional soccer match-play? A pilot study

This investigation examined the association between aerobic fitness and repeated sprint ability and match-related fatigue in 9 professional outfield soccer players. Aerobic fitness using maximal aerobic speed (MAS) was determined via a continuous progressive incremental running test conducted on a motorised treadmill. A repeated sprint ability test (6 successive 6 s sprints separated by 20 s passive recovery) was performed on a non-motorised treadmill to determine mean and best sprint times and a percentage decrement score (%PD). A total of 114 observations of physical performance derived using computerised time motion analyses were collected from 33 matches. Correlations between fitness test and match-play measures were examined for 1) accumulated fatigue: percentage difference between halves for total distance covered per minute, distance run at high-intensities (HIR, actions for 1s duration, >19.1 km/h) per minute, mean recovery time between high-intensity runs, and percentage difference between the distance covered in HIR in the first 5- and 15-minute periods versus the final 5- and 15-minute periods respectively in normal time; and for 2) transient fatigue: percentage difference between the distance covered in HIR in a peak 5-minute period and the subsequent 5-minute period and for the latter compared to the mean for all other 5-minute periods. No significant relationships were observed between MAS and fatigue scores (magnitude of associations: trivial to large). For mean and best sprint times and %PD, the only reported significant correlation (r=0.77, magnitude of association: very large, p<0.05) was between %PD and the % difference across halves for mean recovery time between high-intensity runs (magnitude of other associations: small to large). Criterion measures from tests of aerobic fitness and repeated sprint ability might not accurately depict a player’s capacity to resist fatigue during professional soccer competition

Squad management, injury and match performance in a professional soccer team over a Championship-winning season

Squad management, injury and physical, tactical and technical match performance were investigated in a professional soccer team across five consecutive league seasons (2008–2013, 190 league games) with specific focus on a championship-winning season (2010/11). For each player, match participation and time-loss injuries were recorded, the latter prospectively diagnosed by the team's physician. Defending and attacking tactical and technical performance indicators investigated included ball possession and possession in opponents' half, passes, forward passes, completed passes and forward passes, crosses and completed crosses, goal attempts and goal attempts on target, successful final third entries, free-kicks and 50/50 duels won/lost. Physical performance measures included total distance and distance covered at high-speeds (≥19.1 km/h). Results showed that during the 2010/11 season, squad utilisation was lowest potentially owing to the observed lower match injury occurrence and working days lost to injury thereby increasing player availability. In 2010/11, the team won both its highest number of points and conceded its lowest number of goals especially over the second half of this season. The team also won its highest number of games directly via a goal from a substitute and scored and conceded a goal first on the highest and lowest number of occasions, respectively. While multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) detected a significant difference in some attacking and defensive performance indicators across the five seasons, these were generally not distinguishing factors in 2010/11. Similarly, univariate ANOVAs showed a significant difference in running distances covered across seasons, but the trend was for less activity in 2010/11

Effective Lagrangians in bound state calculations

In order to investigate specific aspects of bound state calculations in a non-relativistic framework, we consider the energy-levels of a massive scalar particle, which moves in an external field and interacts in addition with a massless scalar particle. The discussion includes the following topics: dimensionally regularized bound-state calculations, ultraviolet finiteness of bound-state observables and their independence of the off-mass-shell behavior of Green functions, non-renormalizable interactions, structure of the non-relativistic two-point function, power counting and matching.Comment: 45 pages, 8 postscript figures, RevTeX styl

Female Genital Warts: Global Trends and Treatments

The increasing incidence of human papillomavirus (HPV) infection and HPV-associated conditions such as genital warts in women is a global concern. Genital warts are a clinical manifestation of HPV types 6 and 11, and are estimated to affect 1% of sexually active adults aged between 15 and 49. HPV infection is also strongly associated with cervical cancer, and is prevalent in as many as 99% of cases. The psychological stress of having genital warts is often greater than the morbidity of the disease, and therefore successful treatment is crucial. Current treatments are patient-applied and provider-administered therapies. Imiquimod 5% cream, a patient-applied therapy, is an efficacious treatment with tolerable side-effects and a low recurrence rate, and has the potential to be an effective strategy for the management of genital warts