Can Livestock Farming Benefit from Industry 4.0 Technology? Evidence from Recent Study

The term ”Agriculture 4.0” emerged from the term “Industry 4.0” like amany other “4.0” terms. However, are Industry 4.0 technologies and concepts really applicable to agriculture? Are the benefits that Industry 4.0 brings to industrial use cases transferable to livestock farming? This paper tries to answer this question for the three dominant sectors of livestock farming in Central Europe and Germany: Poultry, pig fattening, and dairy farming. These sectors are analyzed along with the eight most relevant Industry 4.0 benefits. The results show that only part of the Industry 4.0 benefits are relevant for livestock farming in a similar manner as in industrial production. Due to basic differences between industrial and livestock farming use cases, some of the benefits must be adapted. The presence of individual living animals and the strong environmental impact of livestock farming affect the role of digital individualization and demand orientation. The position of livestock farming within the value chain minimizes the need for flexibilization. The introduction and adoption of Industry 4.0 concepts and technologies may contribute significantly to transforming agriculture into something that may be called Agriculture 4.0. Technologies are indispensable for this development step, but vocational education and open-mindedness of farmers towards Industry 4.0 is essential as well

Multi-messenger observations of a binary neutron star merger

On 2017 August 17 a binary neutron star coalescence candidate (later designated GW170817) with merger time 12:41:04 UTC was observed through gravitational waves by the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors. The Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor independently detected a gamma-ray burst (GRB 170817A) with a time delay of ~1.7 s with respect to the merger time. From the gravitational-wave signal, the source was initially localized to a sky region of 31 deg2 at a luminosity distance of 40+8-8 Mpc and with component masses consistent with neutron stars. The component masses were later measured to be in the range 0.86 to 2.26 Mo. An extensive observing campaign was launched across the electromagnetic spectrum leading to the discovery of a bright optical transient (SSS17a, now with the IAU identification of AT 2017gfo) in NGC 4993 (at ~40 Mpc) less than 11 hours after the merger by the One- Meter, Two Hemisphere (1M2H) team using the 1 m Swope Telescope. The optical transient was independently detected by multiple teams within an hour. Subsequent observations targeted the object and its environment. Early ultraviolet observations revealed a blue transient that faded within 48 hours. Optical and infrared observations showed a redward evolution over ~10 days. Following early non-detections, X-ray and radio emission were discovered at the transient’s position ~9 and ~16 days, respectively, after the merger. Both the X-ray and radio emission likely arise from a physical process that is distinct from the one that generates the UV/optical/near-infrared emission. No ultra-high-energy gamma-rays and no neutrino candidates consistent with the source were found in follow-up searches. These observations support the hypothesis that GW170817 was produced by the merger of two neutron stars in NGC4993 followed by a short gamma-ray burst (GRB 170817A) and a kilonova/macronova powered by the radioactive decay of r-process nuclei synthesized in the ejecta

The GenTree Platform: growth traits and tree-level environmental data in 12 European forest tree species

Background: Progress in the field of evolutionary forest ecology has been hampered by the huge challenge of phenotyping trees across their ranges in their natural environments, and the limitation in high-resolution environmental information. Findings: The GenTree Platform contains phenotypic and environmental data from 4,959 trees from 12 ecologically and economically important European forest tree species: Abies alba Mill. (silver fir), Betula pendula Roth. (silver birch), Fagus sylvatica L. (European beech), Picea abies (L.) H. Karst (Norway spruce), Pinus cembra L. (Swiss stone pine), Pinus halepensis Mill. (Aleppo pine), Pinus nigra Arnold (European black pine), Pinus pinaster Aiton (maritime pine), Pinus sylvestris L. (Scots pine), Populus nigra L. (European black poplar), Taxus baccata L. (English yew), and Quercus petraea (Matt.) Liebl. (sessile oak). Phenotypic (height, diameter at breast height, crown size, bark thickness, biomass, straightness, forking, branch angle, fructification), regeneration, environmental in situ measurements (soil depth, vegetation cover, competition indices), and environmental modeling data extracted by using bilinear interpolation accounting for surrounding conditions of each tree (precipitation, temperature, insolation, drought indices) were obtained from trees in 194 sites covering the species’ geographic ranges and reflecting local environmental gradients. Conclusion: The GenTree Platform is a new resource for investigating ecological and evolutionary processes in forest trees. The coherent phenotyping and environmental characterization across 12 species in their European ranges allow for a wide range of analyses from forest ecologists, conservationists, and macro-ecologists. Also, the data here presented can be linked to the GenTree Dendroecological collection, the GenTree Leaf Trait collection, and the GenTree Genomic collection presented elsewhere, which together build the largest evolutionary forest ecology data collection available

Between but not within species variation in the distribution of fitness effects

New mutations provide the raw material for evolution and adaptation. The distribution of fitness effects (DFE) describes the spectrum of effects of new mutations that can occur along a genome, and is therefore of vital interest in evolutionary biology. Recent work has uncovered striking similarities in the DFE between closely related species, prompting us to ask whether there is variation in the DFE among populations of the same species, or among species with different degrees of divergence, i.e., whether there is variation in the DFE at different levels of evolution. Using exome capture data from six tree species sampled across Europe we characterised the DFE for multiple species, and for each species, multiple populations, and investigated the factors potentially influencing the DFE, such as demography, population divergence and genetic background. We find statistical support for there being variation in the DFE at the species level, even among relatively closely related species. However, we find very little difference at the population level, suggesting that differences in the DFE are primarily driven by deep features of species biology, and that evolutionarily recent events, such as demographic changes and local adaptation, have little impact

Numerical characterization of complex torus quotients

26 pages. Comments are very welcome.International audienceThis article gives a characterization of quotients of complex tori by finite groups acting freely in codimension two in terms of a numerical vanishing condition on the first and second Chern class. This generalizes results previously obtained by Greb-Kebekus-Peternell in the projective setting, and by Kirschner and the second author in dimension three. As a key ingredient to the proof, we obtain a version of the Bogomolov-Gieseker inequality for stable sheaves on singular spaces, including a discussion of the case of equality

Numerical characterization of complex torus quotients

26 pages. Comments are very welcome.International audienceThis article gives a characterization of quotients of complex tori by finite groups acting freely in codimension two in terms of a numerical vanishing condition on the first and second Chern class. This generalizes results previously obtained by Greb-Kebekus-Peternell in the projective setting, and by Kirschner and the second author in dimension three. As a key ingredient to the proof, we obtain a version of the Bogomolov-Gieseker inequality for stable sheaves on singular spaces, including a discussion of the case of equality

Open Access für die Rechtswissenschaft - Pflicht oder Privatsache? Tagungsbericht zur Konferenz vom 18. und 19. Oktober 2018

Die Rechtswissenschaften und insbesondere auch die in diesem Bereich Forschenden leben und profitieren vom interdisziplinären und internationalen Austausch. Die am 18. und 19. Oktober 2018 in den Räumlichkeiten des Exzellenzcluster Normative Orders der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt am Main abgehaltene Tagung war ein ausgezeichnetes Zeugnis dafür. Vertreterinnen und Vertreter aus Wissenschaft und Praxis sowie aus dem Bibliotheks- und dem Verlagswesen trafen sich unter dem Titel Open Access für die Rechtswissenschaft – Pflicht oder Privatsache?, um schweizerische, österreichische und deutsche Perspektiven auf das Thema zu diskutieren. Sie alle waren der Einladung zur ersten Veranstaltung dieser Art durch HANJO HAMANN, Senior Research Fellow am Max-Planck-Institut zur Erforschung von Gemeinschaftsgütern in Bonn, sowie DANIEL HÜRLIMANN, Assistenzprofessor für Wirtschaftsrecht mit Schwerpunkt Informationsrecht von der Universität St.Gallen, und ALEXANDER PEUKERT, Professor für Bürgerliches Recht und Wirtschaftsrecht mit Schwerpunkt Immaterialgüterrecht von der heimischen Goethe-Universität, gefolgt

Égalité dans l'inégalité de Miyaoka-Yau et uniformisation des paires klt à courbure négative

Let (X, ∆) be a compact Kähler klt pair, where K_X + ∆ is ample or numerically trivial, and ∆ has standard coefficients. We show that if equality holds in the orbifold Miyaoka-Yau inequality for (X, ∆), then its orbifold universal cover is either the unit ball (ample case) or the affine space (numerically trivial case).Soit (X,∆) une paire klt compacte et kählérienne avec K_X+∆ ample ou numériquement trivial et où ∆ est à coefficients standard. Nous montrons que si l'inégalité de Miyaoka-Yau orbifold pour (X,∆) est une égalité, le revêtement universel orbifold de la paire est alors soit la boule unité (cas ample), soit l'espace affine (cas numériquement trivial)