Einfluss der Spaltenbodenreinigung in einem Rinderstall auf die Ammoniakemissionen

Ammonia emissions from barns have a severe impact on the environment. Especially dairy cattle, kept in loose housing, contribute to the total emission of ammonia up to 50%. Soiled walking areas like slatted floors, are realised as one of the main sources of the emission. In this study, a special cleaning device was used in order to remove manure from a slatted floor in an organically run dairy barn. It was investigated how the combination of a rubber-scraper, mechanical star discharge rotors and high-pressure water nozzles affects the ammonia emission from the floor. Six concrete test elements (55cm x 62cm x 20cm) were cut out of the existing slatted floor in order to be able to separate them from other sources of ammonia emission in the barn. With a wet-chemistry method, the ammonia emitted from the slatted floor was analysed. Compared to untreated control slats, a reduction of the amount of manure weighted on the clean test elements up to 33.2% could be observed. However, no significant effect of the cleaning of the slats on the ammonia emission could be detected

Efficient encoding of the weighted MAX k-CUT on a quantum computer using QAOA

The weighted MAX k-CUT problem consists of finding a k-partition of a given weighted undirected graph G(V,E) such that the sum of the weights of the crossing edges is maximized. The problem is of particular interest as it has a multitude of practical applications. We present a formulation of the weighted MAX k-CUT suitable for running the quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA) on noisy intermediate scale quantum (NISQ)-devices to get approximate solutions. The new formulation uses a binary encoding that requires only |V|log_2(k) qubits. The contributions of this paper are as follows: i) A novel decomposition of the phase separation operator based on the binary encoding into basis gates is provided for the MAX k-CUT problem for k >2. ii) Numerical simulations on a suite of test cases comparing different encodings are performed. iii) An analysis of the resources (number of qubits, CX gates) of the different encodings is presented. iv) Formulations and simulations are extended to the case of weighted graphs. For small k and with further improvements when k is not a power of two, our algorithm is a possible candidate to show quantum advantage on NISQ devices.Comment: 14 page

Førstelinjemedarbeidere og tjenesteinnovasjon: Hvordan bidrar førstelinjemedarbeidere til tjenesteinnovasjon i Telia?

Tema for denne bacheloravhandlingen er å utforske førstelinjemedarbeideres bidrag til tjenesteinnovasjon i telekommunikasjonsselskapet Telia. Selskapet jobber aktivt med å være en ledende innovatør og digital tilrettelegger i samfunnet. I denne oppgaven har vi undersøkt hvordan førstelinjemedarbeidernes ideer generes, hvilken rolle mellomleder har knyttet til å håndtere ideer og hvordan ledelsen involverer førstelinjemedarbeidere i innovasjonsprosesser. Oppgavens problemstilling er: Hvordan bidrar førstelinjemedarbeidere til tjenesteinnovasjon i Telia? På bakgrunn av problemstillingens omfang valgte vi å faktorisere den ned til tre forskningsspørsmål: F1: Hva kan førstelinjemedarbeidere bidra med? F2: Hvilken rolle har mellomleder i forbindelse med førstelinjemedarbeideres bidrag til tjenesteinnovasjon? F3: Hvordan involverer ledelsen førstelinjemedarbeidere i Telias tjenesteinnovasjon? For å besvare disse spørsmålene har vi benyttet oss av et enkeltcase-studie med intervjuer av førstelinjemedarbeidere, mellomledere og personer tilknyttet innovasjonsavdelingen i Telia. Våre funn indikerer at førstelinjemedarbeidere i Telia besitter et stort potensiale til å kunne bidra i tjenesteinnovasjon på bakgrunn av deres høye domenekunnskap. Deres posisjon som bindeledd mellom kunde og organisasjon anses å være kritisk for å kunne bidra effektivt i innovasjonsprosesser. For å forløse førstelinjemedarbeideres potensiale har mellomlederne en viktig rolle knyttet til idéhåndtering. På bakgrunn av at det ikke er tilrettelagt noen formaliserte strukturer for å effektivt kunne videreformidle ideer og gi feedback, tyder det på at det er mange ideer som aldri realiseres, og at dette har en negativ effekt på motivasjonen til kreativ tenking for de ansatte. Ideer utover hva som defineres som bricolage-innovasjon får dermed sjelden gjennomslag. På den andre siden har førstelinjemedarbeidere mulighet til å bidra med verdifull innsikt og ideer gjennom å delta i flere organiserte prosesser som arrangeres av ledelsen

Towards a European Health Research and Innovation Cloud (HRIC)

The European Union (EU) initiative on the Digital Transformation of Health and Care (Digicare) aims to provide the conditions necessary for building a secure, flexible, and decentralized digital health infrastructure. Creating a European Health Research and Innovation Cloud (HRIC) within this environment should enable data sharing and analysis for health research across the EU, in compliance with data protection legislation while preserving the full trust of the participants. Such a HRIC should learn from and build on existing data infrastructures, integrate best practices, and focus on the concrete needs of the community in terms of technologies, governance, management, regulation, and ethics requirements. Here, we describe the vision and expected benefits of digital data sharing in health research activities and present a roadmap that fosters the opportunities while answering the challenges of implementing a HRIC. For this, we put forward five specific recommendations and action points to ensure that a European HRIC: i) is built on established standards and guidelines, providing cloud technologies through an open and decentralized infrastructure; ii) is developed and certified to the highest standards of interoperability and data security that can be trusted by all stakeholders; iii) is supported by a robust ethical and legal framework that is compliant with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR); iv) establishes a proper environment for the training of new generations of data and medical scientists; and v) stimulates research and innovation in transnational collaborations through public and private initiatives and partnerships funded by the EU through Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe

CoNLL 2017 Shared Task : Multilingual Parsing from Raw Text to Universal Dependencies

The Conference on Computational Natural Language Learning (CoNLL) features a shared task, in which participants train and test their learning systems on the same data sets. In 2017, one of two tasks was devoted to learning dependency parsers for a large number of languages, in a real world setting without any gold-standard annotation on input. All test sets followed a unified annotation scheme, namely that of Universal Dependencies. In this paper, we define the task and evaluation methodology, describe data preparation, report and analyze the main results, and provide a brief categorization of the different approaches of the participating systems.Peer reviewe

Selection Signatures in Worldwide Sheep Populations

The diversity of populations in domestic species offers great opportunities to study genome response to selection. The recently published Sheep HapMap dataset is a great example of characterization of the world wide genetic diversity in sheep. In this study, we re-analyzed the Sheep HapMap dataset to identify selection signatures in worldwide sheep populations. Compared to previous analyses, we made use of statistical methods that (i) take account of the hierarchical structure of sheep populations, (ii) make use of linkage disequilibrium information and (iii) focus specifically on either recent or older selection signatures. We show that this allows pinpointing several new selection signatures in the sheep genome and distinguishing those related to modern breeding objectives and to earlier post-domestication constraints. The newly identified regions, together with the ones previously identified, reveal the extensive genome response to selection on morphology, color and adaptation to new environments

Multi-ancestry genome-wide association study of 21,000 cases and 95,000 controls identifies new risk loci for atopic dermatitis

Genetic association studies have identified 21 loci associated with atopic dermatitis risk predominantly in populations of European ancestry. To identify further susceptibility loci for this common, complex skin disease, we performed a meta-analysis of >15 million genetic variants in 21,399 cases and 95,464 controls from populations of European, African, Japanese and Latino ancestry, followed by replication in 32,059 cases and 228,628 controls from 18 studies. We identified ten new risk loci, bringing the total number of known atopic dermatitis risk loci to 31 (with new secondary signals at four of these loci). Notably, the new loci include candidate genes with roles in the regulation of innate host defenses and T cell function, underscoring the important contribution of (auto)immune mechanisms to atopic dermatitis pathogenesis

52 Genetic Loci Influencing Myocardial Mass.

BACKGROUND: Myocardial mass is a key determinant of cardiac muscle function and hypertrophy. Myocardial depolarization leading to cardiac muscle contraction is reflected by the amplitude and duration of the QRS complex on the electrocardiogram (ECG). Abnormal QRS amplitude or duration reflect changes in myocardial mass and conduction, and are associated with increased risk of heart failure and death. OBJECTIVES: This meta-analysis sought to gain insights into the genetic determinants of myocardial mass. METHODS: We carried out a genome-wide association meta-analysis of 4 QRS traits in up to 73,518 individuals of European ancestry, followed by extensive biological and functional assessment. RESULTS: We identified 52 genomic loci, of which 32 are novel, that are reliably associated with 1 or more QRS phenotypes at p < 1 × 10(-8). These loci are enriched in regions of open chromatin, histone modifications, and transcription factor binding, suggesting that they represent regions of the genome that are actively transcribed in the human heart. Pathway analyses provided evidence that these loci play a role in cardiac hypertrophy. We further highlighted 67 candidate genes at the identified loci that are preferentially expressed in cardiac tissue and associated with cardiac abnormalities in Drosophila melanogaster and Mus musculus. We validated the regulatory function of a novel variant in the SCN5A/SCN10A locus in vitro and in vivo. CONCLUSIONS: Taken together, our findings provide new insights into genes and biological pathways controlling myocardial mass and may help identify novel therapeutic targets