FATIMA Czech pilot

In FATIMA project, a pilot site in Czechia was established to demonstrate how precision agriculture may serve for optimizing crop yields as well as for protection of water quality, since the pilot is located in Czech largest drinking water reservoir catchment. The pilot site Dehtáře is situated in the south-west Bohemo-Moravian Highland. The site contains tile drainage and is of very heterogeneous soil conditions; from shallow, light and stony Haplic Cambisols to heavy Haplic Gleysols, with profoundly different water regimes. For the field trial (spring barley in 2016), crop yield potential was determined from crop statuses as captured by satellite images) eight years back, assessed by Enhanced Vegetation Index. Based on this, as well as on a detailed soil survey and repeated soil sampling, variable fertilizer application zones (70 – 120%) were delineated and mineral fertilizers distributed accordingly with GPS operated spreader three times from late April to late May. The rest of the site was fertilized uniformly. Soil water regime (soil moisture, soil water potential) was monitored continuously on eight spots and real-time broadcasted by wireless sensor network to WEB GIS interface via SensLog solution, adopted from FOODIE project. In the same spots, soil water was sampled by gravitational soil lysimeters. Precise harvest showed a general agreement with the delineated application zones and yield potential, however, some ambiguities were revealed, most probably due to changeable soil water regime, as documented by the sensors, as well as due to variable soil chemical properties (low soil pH). Nevertheless, precisely applied fertilizer doses in the application zones brought about 10% higher crop yields with simultaneous better N crop efficiency. Soil water quality samples confirmed that heterogeneous doses of fertilizer in correctly delineated zones is a promising approach for improvement of groundwater quality especially in shallow soils with low water and nutrient retention abilit

Big Data in Agriculture – From FOODIE towards data bio

What’s the role of Big Data in the farming ecosystem? Farmers need to measure and understand the impact of a huge amount and variety of data which drive overall quality and yield of their fields. Among those are local weather data, GPS data, ortophotos, satellite imagery, soil specifics, soil conductivity, seed, fertilizer and crop protectant specifications and many more. Being able to leverage this data for running long and short term simulations in response to “events” like changed weather, market need or other parameters is indispensable for farmers in terms of maximizing their profits. IoT (Internet of Technology) including field sensors and machinery monitoring. The experimentation in FarmTelemetry project demonstrates that one average Czech farm (i.e. around 1’000 hectares) could generate daily 20 MegaBytes of data. This could be only for Czech Republic something between 30 and 50 GB per one day. We may easily reach Terabytes of data a day from agricultural basic monitoring by sensors in Europe. Together with satellite data agriculture will need to manage extremely large amount of data. On one side there is growing whole ecosystem with a strong need to secure Big Data from different repositories and heterogeneous sources. In some cases, sharing of data could be common interest, but on other side, there are also different interests and data could help to one part of value chain to take bigger part of profit. From this reason Big data are sensitive topics and trusting of producers about data security is essential. The producers of seeds and chemicals want to maximize their business with farmers. Our team stated implementation of Big Data technologies in frame of European 7FP project FOODIE. This work currently the work continue as part of DataBio project

Cultic resilience and inter-city engagement at the dawn of urban history: protohistoric Mesopotamia and the ‘city seals’, 3200-2750 BC

Within the context of early urbanism, elite groups developed the world’s earliest writing in Mesopotamia, 3200-2750 BC, comprising administrative documents in the form of inscribed clay tablets. How did these proto-literate urban communities engage with each other and what strategies did they employ to address major challenges to their survival? The ‘city seal’ evidence survives as seal impressions on clay bureaucratic artefacts, both inscribed tablets and impressed sealings. These impressions feature signs representing the names of Mesopotamian cities, many of them identifiable with known sites. The documents stand at the threshold of history, as the earliest evidence for inter-city engagement. Using an innovative methodology and interpretive framework of cultic resilience, we integrate archaeometric, iconographic, and functional analyses of the earliest stages of writing and sealing, to argue that the city seal evidence provides unique insights into inter-city cooperation by Mesopotamian cities during a critical episode of early urban development

Meteosat observation of the atmospheric entry of 2008 TC

We analyzed serendipitous observations by the Meteosat 8 weather satellite of the fireball caused by the entry of the small asteroid (or large meteoroid) 2008 TC3 over northern Sudan on October 7, 2008. Meteosat 8 scans the Earth in 5 min cycles. The fireball was captured in the 2:45 UT images in four visible-near infrared channels (0.6–1.6 μm) at a height of 45 km, and in eight mid infrared channels (3.9–13.4 μm) at a height of 33 km. The latter channels also detected at least two dust clouds deposited in the atmosphere at the heights of about 44 and 36 km. The dust deposition was a result of severe atmospheric fragmentation of the asteroid, accompanied by fireball flares, which could be detected in the light scattered by the Earth's surface. The fireball brightness was measured at two random heights, 45 and 37.5 km, where it reached -18.8 and -19.7 mag, respectively. The peak brightness was probably higher than -20 mag. The color temperature of the fireball at 45 km was $3650 \pm 100$ K. Infrared spectra of the fresh dust clouds were dominated by the 10 μm Si-O band caused by recondensed amorphous silicates. Five minutes later, the dust clouds were detected in absorption of thermal radiation of the Earth. At that time, the silicates were largely crystalline, suggesting silicate smoke temperatures exceeding 1000 K. The total mass of the silicate smoke was estimated to be $3100 \pm 600$ kg. More mass was probably contained in larger, micron sized, and colder dust particles resulting from incomplete sublimation of the asteroidal material and detected later by Meteosat 8 and 9 in scattered sunlight. Based on the heights of asteroid fragmentations, we guess that the bulk porosity of 2008 TC3 was of the order of 50%, i.e. higher than the porosity of the recovered meteorite Almahata Sitta

Benefits of Using Traffic Volumes Described on Examples in the Open Transport Net Project Pilot Regions

The paper describes the goals of the Open Transport Net project in the pilot regions for regional development and the motivation to use traffic volumes in order to reach the project objectives. In the introduction, a short overview of the Open Transport Net project is provided. It is followed by descriptions of the identified problems in the pilot regions and incentives to use traffic volumes for achieving good quality results. The basics of traffic volumes as well as their visualisation are further described and demonstrated including several examples

Evaluation of Effectiveness of Feedback‘s Amount

Information links are an integral part of the functioning of any real system (whether it is a biological system, the economic system of the state or the control system of the company). For proper operation of the system is necessary to have a well-defined information flows both: direct, indirect and feedback. The work is focused on feedback information links. Overall, the issue of the feedbacks is considered eminently as a theoretical domain and the practical consequences of the correct function or dysfunction feedbacks in real life are systematically not paying proper attention. It is ignored the need of purposeful use of feedback and improvement within the building or maintenance of systems at all levels and areas, including control systems. In the literature does not exist consensus on the existence and amount of feedback, which are - regardless of their structure and quality - the limiting factor in the practical performance of control system. This paper is focused on the resolution (or selection) feedbacks relevant to the effective performance of the functions of communication in the process of management and organizational structures of selected companies in the Czech Republic and quantitative expression of their relationship and the transmission reliability control and feedback information. The research was implemented in 178 farms. The output of theoretical and practical research is designed of mathematical model testing information links. This model was applied to the example of management information links within business processes and is also described in the paper

Evaluation of the Three-year Experience with All-ceramic Crowns with Polycrystalline Ceramic Cores

The objective of the study was to evaluate the clinical outcomes of all-ceramic crowns three years after placement of the restoration in the oral cavity. The aim of the present clinical study were surveyed the Procera®, Cercon® and LAVA™ systems. In total, 121 crowns were followed in 33 patients (7 men and 26 women) with an average age of 53.5 years. The eighty crowns were placed in anterior and forty one crowns in posterior teeth. The crowns were fabricated in two dental laboratories and delivered in two private dental practices. The clinical trial was conducted according to American Dental Association guidelines. The patients were requested to provide their consent to the regular clinical examination including radiographic and photographic records.  A total of 102 crowns were made of zirconium oxide ceramic cores – 58 Cercon®; 43 LAVA™, while 19 crowns were made of aluminum oxide cores Procera®. The veneering ceramic LAVA™ Ceram was used. The success rate was analyzed using Kaplan-Meier statistics and, in our case, the overall three-year success rate reached 96.7%.  All-ceramic crowns with polycrystalline ceramic cores have low susceptibility to fracture, in this study just 3.3%