Buchweizen: ein Futtermittel für Legehennen?

Buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum) has a high ecological value due to the long and intensive flowering as well as its favorable impact on soil fertility. In addition, as a typical catch crop, it provides the possibility of a second harvest on arable land in moderate European regions. However, in Europe demand for buckwheat kernels as food is low. Therefore, the question arises whether cultivation of this plant could be promoted by using it as animal feed. In the current experiment, the extent to which buckwheat is consumed by laying hens was tested in conjunction with potential effects on egg yield and quality. Three groups of laying hens (n=13 per group) were fed a layer diet containing either 40% wheat, 40% hulled buckwheat or 40% crude buckwheat. Feeds were offered ad libitum in form of groats. Feed intake was measured and eggs were sampled before and during the experiment. Feed intake was significantly increased with crude buckwheat, as also were egg weights. Egg number was not affected. The weight and stability of the eggshell were significantly higher with crude buckwheat. The color of the yolk was slightly altered with hulled buckwheat. The results demonstrate that buckwheat is an interesting option as an ecologically and economically valuable feed source for layers, which at least does not cause negative impacts on feed intake and egg yield, compared to wheat

Greenhouse gas abatement on southern Australian grains farms: B iophysical potential and financial impacts

The agricultural sector generates a substantial proportion of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrous oxide (N2O). Changes to agricultural practices can provide GHG abatement by maintaining or increasing soil organic carbon (SOC) stored in soils or vegetation, or by decreasing N2O emissions. However, it can be difficult to identify practices that achieve net abatement because practices that increase SOC stocks may also increase N2O emissions from the soil. This study simulated the net on-farm GHG abatement and gross margins for a range of management scenarios on two grain farms from the western and southern grain growing regions of Australia using the Agricultural Production Systems sIMulator (APSIM) model. The soils and practices selected for the study were typical of these regions. Increased cropping intensity consistently provided emissions reductions for all site-soil combinations. The practice of replacing uncropped or unmanaged pasture fallows with a winter legume crop was the only one of nine scenarios to decrease GHG emissions and increase gross margins relative to baseline practice at both locations over the 100-year simulation period. The greatest abatement was obtained by combining this practice with an additional summer legume crop grown for a short period as green manure. However, adding the summer legume decreased farm gross margins because the summer crop used soil moisture otherwise available to the following cash crop, thus reducing yield and revenue. Annual N2O emissions from the soil were an order of magnitude lower from sandy-well-drained soils at the Western Australian location (Dalwallinu) than at the other location (Wimmera) with clay soil, highlighting the importance of interactions between climate and soil properties in determining appropriate GHG abatement practices. Thus, greatest abatement at Dalwallinu was obtained from maintaining or increasing SOC, but managing both N2O emissions and SOC storage were important for providing abatement at Wimmera

Coherent photon-photon interactions in very peripheral relativistic heavy ion collisions

Heavy ions at high velocities provide very strong electromagnetic fields for a very short time. The main characteristics of ultraperipheral relativistic heavy ion collisions are reviewed, characteristic parameters are identified. The main interest in ultraperipheral heavy ion collisions at relativistic ion colliders like the LHC is the interactions of very high energy (equivalent) photons with the countermoving (equivalent) photons and hadrons (protons/ions). The physics of these interactions is quite different from and complementary to the physics of the strong fields achieved with current and future lasers.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, invited talk presented at the ELI Workshop and School on Fundamental Physics with Ultra-high Fields (September 29- October 2, 2008, Frauenwoerth, German

Basic theory behind parameterizing atmospheric convection

Last fall, a network of the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST), called “Basic Concepts for Convection Parameterization in Weather Forecast and Climate Models” (COST Action ES0905; see http://w3.cost.esf.org/index.php?id=205&action_number=ES0905), organized a 10-day training course on atmospheric convection and its parameterization. The aim of the workshop, held on the island of Brac, Croatia, was to help young scientists develop an in-depth understanding of the core theory underpinning convection parameterizations. The speakers also sought to impart an appreciation of the various approximations, compromises, and ansatz necessary to translate theory into operational practice for numerical models

Mechanical vibrations of pendant liquid droplets

A simple optical deflection technique was used to monitor the vibrations of microlitre pendant droplets of deuterium oxide, formamide, and 1,1,2,2-tetrabromoethane. Droplets of different volumes of each liquid were suspended from the end of a microlitre pipette and vibrated using a small puff of nitrogen gas. A laser was passed through the droplets and the scattered light was collected using a photodiode. Vibration of the droplets resulted in the motion of the scattered beam and time-dependent intensity variations were recorded using the photodiode. These time- dependent variations were Fourier transformed and the frequencies and widths of the mechanical droplet resonances were extracted. A simple model of vibrations in pendant/sessile drops was used to relate these parameters to the surface tension, density and viscosity of the liquid droplets. The surface tension values obtained from this method were found to be in good agreement with results obtained using the standard pendant drop technique. Damping of capillary waves on pendant drops was shown to be similar to that observed for deep liquid baths and the kinematic viscosities obtained were in agreement with literature values for all three liquids studied

Socio-economic disadvantage is associated with heavier drinking in high but not middle-income countries participating in the International Alcohol Control (IAC) Study

INTRODUCTION AND AIMS: To investigate if socio-economic disadvantage, at the individual- and country-level, is associated with heavier drinking in some middle- and high-income countries. DESIGN AND METHODS: Surveys of drinkers were undertaken in some high- and middle-income countries. Participating countries were Australia, England, New Zealand, Scotland (high-income) and Peru, Thailand and Vietnam (middle-income). Disadvantage at the country-level was defined as per World Bank (categorised as middle-or high-income); individual-level measures were (i) years of education and (ii) whether and individual was under or over the poverty line in each country. Measures of heavier drinking were (i) proportion of drinkers that consumed 8+ drinks and (ii) three drinking risk groups (lower, increasing and higher). Multi-level logistic regression models were used. RESULTS: Individual-level measures of disadvantage, lower education and living in poverty, were associated with heavier drinking, consuming 8+ drinks on a typical occasion or drinking at the higher risk level, when all countries were considered together. Drinkers in the middle-income countries had a higher probability of consuming 8+ drinks on a typical occasion relative to drinkers in the high-income countries. Interactions between country-level income and individual-level disadvantage were undertaken: disadvantaged drinkers in the middle-income countries were less likely to be heavier drinkers relative to those with less disadvantage in the high-income countries. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS: Associations between socio-economic disadvantage and heavier drinking vary depending on country-level income. These findings highlight the value of exploring cross-country differences in heavier drinking and disadvantage and the importance of including country-level measurements to better elucidate relationships

The composition of the protosolar disk and the formation conditions for comets

Conditions in the protosolar nebula have left their mark in the composition of cometary volatiles, thought to be some of the most pristine material in the solar system. Cometary compositions represent the end point of processing that began in the parent molecular cloud core and continued through the collapse of that core to form the protosun and the solar nebula, and finally during the evolution of the solar nebula itself as the cometary bodies were accreting. Disentangling the effects of the various epochs on the final composition of a comet is complicated. But comets are not the only source of information about the solar nebula. Protostellar disks around young stars similar to the protosun provide a way of investigating the evolution of disks similar to the solar nebula while they are in the process of evolving to form their own solar systems. In this way we can learn about the physical and chemical conditions under which comets formed, and about the types of dynamical processing that shaped the solar system we see today. This paper summarizes some recent contributions to our understanding of both cometary volatiles and the composition, structure and evolution of protostellar disks.Comment: To appear in Space Science Reviews. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11214-015-0167-

Anthropogenic Space Weather

Anthropogenic effects on the space environment started in the late 19th century and reached their peak in the 1960s when high-altitude nuclear explosions were carried out by the USA and the Soviet Union. These explosions created artificial radiation belts near Earth that resulted in major damages to several satellites. Another, unexpected impact of the high-altitude nuclear tests was the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that can have devastating effects over a large geographic area (as large as the continental United States). Other anthropogenic impacts on the space environment include chemical release ex- periments, high-frequency wave heating of the ionosphere and the interaction of VLF waves with the radiation belts. This paper reviews the fundamental physical process behind these phenomena and discusses the observations of their impacts.Comment: 71 pages, 35 figure

An Integrated TCGA Pan-Cancer Clinical Data Resource to Drive High-Quality Survival Outcome Analytics

For a decade, The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) program collected clinicopathologic annotation data along with multi-platform molecular profiles of more than 11,000 human tumors across 33 different cancer types. TCGA clinical data contain key features representing the democratized nature of the data collection process. To ensure proper use of this large clinical dataset associated with genomic features, we developed a standardized dataset named the TCGA Pan-Cancer Clinical Data Resource (TCGA-CDR), which includes four major clinical outcome endpoints. In addition to detailing major challenges and statistical limitations encountered during the effort of integrating the acquired clinical data, we present a summary that includes endpoint usage recommendations for each cancer type. These TCGA-CDR findings appear to be consistent with cancer genomics studies independent of the TCGA effort and provide opportunities for investigating cancer biology using clinical correlates at an unprecedented scale. Analysis of clinicopathologic annotations for over 11,000 cancer patients in the TCGA program leads to the generation of TCGA Clinical Data Resource, which provides recommendations of clinical outcome endpoint usage for 33 cancer types