Creating the Knowledge-structured Texts in Agriculture Companies: A Cost Modeling Approach

Agriculture is one of the most regulated sectors. Council regulations, national legal acts, subsidies, nature protection, market regulations and many other directives induce the necessity to work with a lot of text documents and to manage the knowledge in them. Thus, it is worth considering the creation of specifically designed internal documents to represent knowledge explicitly in so-called "knowledge-structured texts". However, it is a costly process to create the knowledge texts. The objective of this paper is to create a model that is capable of showing what time point the successive costs of the two types of text are equal at. Linking the methods of knowledge engineering and management is carried out with the help of an integrating element, i.e. general systems theory, through system dynamics. Despite an initial investment in the knowledge texts, the results show their potential for lowering the costs in the middle- and long-term horizons

Creating the Knowledge-structured Texts in Agriculture Companies: A Cost Modeling Approach

Agriculture is one of the most regulated sectors. Council regulations, national legal acts, subsidies, nature protection, market regulations and many other directives induce the necessity to work with a lot of text documents and to manage the knowledge in them. Thus, it is worth considering the creation of specifically designed internal documents to represent knowledge explicitly in so-called "knowledge-structured texts". However, it is a costly process to create the knowledge texts. The objective of this paper is to create a model that is capable of showing what time point the successive costs of the two types of text are equal at. Linking the methods of knowledge engineering and management is carried out with the help of an integrating element, i.e. general systems theory, through system dynamics. Despite an initial investment in the knowledge texts, the results show their potential for lowering the costs in the middle- and long-term horizons

Controlled reactive HiPIMS – effective technique for lowtemperature deposition of VO2-based multilayer coatings for smart window applications

Studentská vědecká konference je pořádána s podporou prostředků na specifický vysokoškolský výzkum SVK1-2018-024.Vanadium dioxide (VO2) is a technologically important thin film material of a high current world wide interest due to its reversible first-order thermochromic transition relatively near room temperature (approximately 68°C). Magnetron sputtering is probably the most important preparation technique of VO2 films, and numerous deposition pathways have been reported in recent years. The research in this area is focused on (at least) the following three challenges. First, doping of VO2 by other metals in order to decrease the transition temperature (Ttr) from 68 °C (bulk materials) or e.g. 50 °C (thin films) to the room temperature. Second, decreasing the deposition temperature (Tdep) of crystalline VO2 at least below 300 °C, ideally without any substrate bias and without any crystalline interlayer, in order (i) to facilitate the large-scale production by reducing the energy consumption and minimizing problems with temperature uniformity over large substrate surfaces, (ii) to limit the diffusion of harmful elements from substrates such as soda-lime glass and (iii) to allow deposition on temperaturesensitive plastic substrates. Third, improving the luminous transmittance (Tlum) and the modulation of the solar transmittance (Tsol) of the coatings by antireflection (AR) layers. (J. Houška et al. (2017)

The local impact of macrofauna and land‐use intensity on soil nutrient concentration and exchangeability in lowland tropical Peru

Agricultural expansion is a major driver of deforestation which has negative consequences for biodiversity and habitat stability. While sustainable farming is known to be beneficial for biodiversity and crop resilience, little is known about the impact of macrofauna and land‐use intensity on soil quality. In this study, we examine the relative effects of (a) soil macrofauna and (b) land use (primary forest, agroforestry, and annual crop) on element depletion rates, concentration, and exchangeability in standardized soil. We used microcosms with two different mesh sizes, 0.25 mm and 5andnbsp;mm, to exclude and include macrofauna, respectively. The microcosms were incubated for up to a year throughout which samples were collected without replacement. Macrofauna did not have a significant impact on any of the soil parameters which is likely to be due to the low diversity of termites in the sites. Land‐use intensity significantly affected cation depletion rates whose effects increased in order of primary forestandlt;agroforestryandlt;annual crop. At the end of the study, soil Mg+2andnbsp;concentration and Ca/Mg ratio in the agroforestry site differed from other land‐use sites. Our results suggest that both bottom‐up and top‐down interactions have major effects on soil conditions, and the results should therefore be used to advise future research and policy around land‐use management.</p

The local impact of macrofauna and land‐use intensity on soil nutrient concentration and exchangeability in lowland tropical Peru

Agricultural expansion is a major driver of deforestation which has negative consequences for biodiversity and habitat stability. While sustainable farming is known to be beneficial for biodiversity and crop resilience, little is known about the impact of macrofauna and land‐use intensity on soil quality. In this study, we examine the relative effects of (a) soil macrofauna and (b) land use (primary forest, agroforestry, and annual crop) on element depletion rates, concentration, and exchangeability in standardized soil. We used microcosms with two different mesh sizes, 0.25 mm and 5 mm, to exclude and include macrofauna, respectively. The microcosms were incubated for up to a year throughout which samples were collected without replacement. Macrofauna did not have a significant impact on any of the soil parameters which is likely to be due to the low diversity of termites in the sites. Land‐use intensity significantly affected cation depletion rates whose effects increased in order of primary forest&lt;agroforestry&lt;annual crop. At the end of the study, soil Mg+2 concentration and Ca/Mg ratio in the agroforestry site differed from other land‐use sites. Our results suggest that both bottom‐up and top‐down interactions have major effects on soil conditions, and the results should therefore be used to advise future research and policy around land‐use management.</p

Effect of

Amorphous Si-B-C-N alloys were deposited by reactive magnetron sputtering, and their high-temperature stability was investigated using a combined approach of experiment and molecular-dynamics simulations. We show that both a higher Si/C ratio and the addition of boron improve the thermal stability of the materials. We find that lifetimes of bonds of the same type are significantly longer at the higher Si/C ratio. The addition of boron results in a conversion of some of the electrons in lone pairs associated with nitrogen to bonding electrons. This increases the network's average coordination number. In both cases, the higher network coordination number and resulting lower diffusion, expressed in terms of longer bond lifetimes, shift decomposition reactions in materials to higher temperatures

Long-term forest soil acidification, nutrient leaching and vegetation development: Linking modelling and surveys of a primeval spruce forest in the Ukrainian Transcarpathian Mts.

The biogeochemical model MAGIC was applied to simulate long-term (1880–2050) soil and stratified soil solution (30 and 90 cm depth) chemistry at a spruce dominated site in the western Ukraine (Pop Ivan, 1480 m a.s.l.) to evaluate the effects of acid deposition on soil acidification in a less polluted region of Europe. Since 2008, sulphur (S) deposition of 9 kg ha−1 year−1 and nitrogen (N) deposition of 8.5 kg ha−1 year−1 have been measured at Pop Ivan. The recent deposition of S and N is about 30% and 50% of those values estimated for the early 1980s, respectively. Acidic deposition caused the depletion of base cations (Ca, Mg, Na, K) from the soil cation exchange complex, which resulted in a decrease of calcium and magnesium saturation between 1935 and 2008 in the top mineral soil (0–30 cm) and deeper mineral soil (30–80 cm) by 67% and 88%, respectively. Base cation leaching acted as the major buffer mechanism against incoming acidity, therefore the measured inorganic aluminium (Al) concentration in soil solutions is ca. 10 μmol L−1 and the subsequent molar (Ca + Mg + K)/Al ratio above 1. Recovery of the soil solution pH and Al is expected within the next 40 years, whereas the soil base saturation will only increase slowly, from 6% to 9.8% in the top soil and from 5.5% to 11% in the deeper mineral soil. Since the 1960s, modelled inorganic N leaching (as NO3) has started to increase following the trend in N deposition. Modelling and experimental evidence suggest that N availability from mineralization and deposition exceeds the rate of microbial and plant immobilization. Thus, soil N accumulation since the 1960s has been limited. A significant increase in nitrophilous species as well as a decrease of herb layer diversity was observed between 1936 and 1997