Effects of replacing different proportions of barley grain by barley fibre on performance of dairy bulls

The objective of the present experiment was to study the effects of partial replacement of barley grain with barley fibre (BF) on animal performance, carcass traits and diet digestibility of growing dairy bulls. The feeding experiment comprised 20 Finnish Ayrshire bulls and 12 Holstein-Friesian bulls, and four treatments (8 bulls per treatment). There were four diets with two offered at stage 1 (from the initiation of the study to 450 kg live weight) and four at stage 2 (from 450 kg live weight to slaughter). The control diet (BF0) included grass silage (460 g kg–1 dry matter) and barley grain (540), BF25 diet included grass silage (460), barley grain (405) and BF (135), BF50 diet included grass silage (460), barley grain (270) and BF (270), and BF75 diet included grass silage (460), barley grain (135) and BF (405). At stage 1 there were only two treatments (BF0 and BF50) and at stage 2, all four treatments were included. All bulls were fed total mixed ration ad libitum. The mean initial live weight of the bulls was 261 kg and the mean final live weight 650 kg. At stage 1 there were no significant treatment differences in dry matter, energy or protein intakes or in live weight gain. At stage 2, replacing barley grain with BF led to a linear decrease of daily live weight gain (P < 0.05) and a linearly reduced feed conversion (kg dry matter kg–1 live weight gain) (P < 0.05). The apparent digestibility of the organic matter and neutral detergent fibre decreased linearly with increasing BF supplementation (P < 0.001). The dressing proportion and the carcass fat score decreased linearly (P < 0.05) with partial replacement of barley grain with BF. On carcass conformation, treatment had a significant (P < 0.05) quadratic effect: the BF25 and BF50 diets were classified highest. The results indicate that 50% of barley starch can be replaced with BF without affecting growth, but feed efficiency factors may decrease when barley starch is replaced with BF. At 75% replacement, feed intake was reduced, which resulted in a lower energy intake and reduced level of performance

Need for protein supplementation in the diet of growing dairy bulls fed total mixed ration based on moderate digestible grass silage and barley

The objective of the present experiment was to study the need for the protein supplementation in the diet of growing dairy bulls (initial live weight 272 ± 28.5 kg and final live weight 666 ± 31.2 kg, on average) fed total mixed ration based on moderate digestible grass silage and barley. The experiment comprised 24 Finnish Ayrshire bulls and 8 Holstein-Friesian bulls and included four treatments. The control diet (C) consisted of moderate digestible (653 g digestible organic matter in dry matter (DM) grass silage (450 g kg-1 DM), barley grain (275) and barley fibre (275) without protein supplementation. Three isonitrogenous experimental diets included also extra protein, i.e. (1) rapeseed meal (RSM) (supplementation 530 g DM per animal day-1), (2) wet distillers’ solubles (WDS) (600 g) and (3) a mixture of barley protein (90% of fresh weight) and wet distillers’ solubles (10) (BPWDS) (480 g). In all isonitrogenous diets the crude protein content of concentrate increased from 137 to 150 g kg-1 DM (9%) compared with the C diet. All bulls were fed total mixed ration ad libitum. The energy content of all diets was 11.6 MJ kg-1 DM. The live weight gain of the bulls tended to be higher with the BPWDS diet than with the C diet (C 1214 vs. BPWDS 1301 g d-1; p = 0.10), but the treatments had no significant effect on carcass gain, feed conversion or slaughter parameters. Only the BPWDS diet differed significantly from the C diet in DM (C 9.69 vs. BPWDS 10.38 kg DM d-1; p < 0.01) and energy intake (C 112.4 vs. BPWDS 120.3 MJ d-1; p < 0.05). The apparent organic matter digestibility (OMD) was 5% higher in the BPWDS diet than in the C diet (p < 0.001), but the RSM and WDS diets did not differ from the C diet in OMD. The results indicate that the supply of protein in dairy bulls is most probably adequate with moderate digestible, well-preserved grass silage and barley-based concentrates when intake of digestible organic matter is high enough to support microbial protein synthesis in the rumen

A Wolter type I LAMAR

Observational objectives for the LAMAR and their influence on the instrument design are discussed. It is concluded that the most important design parameter is the angular resolution of the LAMAR modules since it so strongly influences sensitivity, optical identifications, source confusion, spectral resolution for objective gratings and the ability to resolve small extended sources. A high resolution Wolter Type I LAMAR module is described, its hardware status discussed, and the performance of a LAMAR observatory presented. A promising technique for enhancing the reflectivity of Wolter Type I X-ray optics in a selected bandpass at high energy has been investigated and the performance of the LAMAR module, utilizing this method, has been calculated

Der wandernde Apfel

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Bundle methods in nonsmooth DC optimization

Due to the complexity of many practical applications, we encounter optimization problems with nonsmooth functions, that is, functions which are not continuously differentiable everywhere. Classical gradient-based methods are not applicable to solve such problems, since they may fail in the nonsmooth setting. Therefore, it is imperative to develop numerical methods specifically designed for nonsmooth optimization. To date, bundle methods are considered to be the most efficient and reliable general purpose solvers for this type of problems. The idea in bundle methods is to approximate the subdifferential of the objective function by a bundle of subgradients. This information is then used to build a model for the objective. However, this model is typically convex and, due to this, it may be inaccurate and unable to adequately reflect the behaviour of the objective function in the nonconvex case. These circumstances motivate to design new bundle methods based on nonconvex models of the objective function. In this dissertation, the main focus is on nonsmooth DC optimization that constitutes an important and broad subclass of nonconvex optimization problems. A DC function can be presented as a difference of two convex functions. Thus, we can obtain a model that utilizes explicitly both the convexity and concavity of the objective by approximating separately the convex and concave parts. This way we end up with a nonconvex DC model describing the problem more accurately than the convex one. Based on the new DC model we introduce three different bundle methods. Two of them are designed for unconstrained DC optimization and the third one is capable of solving also multiobjective and constrained DC problems. The finite convergence is proved for each method. The numerical results demonstrate the efficiency of the methods and show the benefits obtained from the utilization of the DC decomposition. Even though the usage of the DC decomposition can improve the performance of the bundle methods, it is not always available or possible to construct. Thus, we present another bundle method for a general objective function implicitly collecting information about the DC structure. This method is developed for large-scale nonsmooth optimization and its convergence is proved for semismooth functions. The efficiency of the method is shown with numerical results. As an application of the developed methods, we consider the clusterwise linear regression (CLR) problems. By applying the support vector machines (SVM) approach a new model for these problems is proposed. The objective in the new formulation of the CLR problem is expressed as a DC function and a method based on one of the presented bundle methods is designed to solve it. Numerical results demonstrate robustness of the new approach to outliers.Monissa käytännön sovelluksissa tarkastelun kohteena oleva ongelma on monimutkainen ja joudutaan näin ollen mallintamaan epäsileillä funktioilla, jotka eivät välttämättä ole jatkuvasti differentioituvia kaikkialla. Klassisia gradienttiin perustuvia optimointimenetelmiä ei voida käyttää epäsileisiin tehtäviin, sillä epäsileillä funktioilla ei ole olemassa klassista gradienttia kaikkialla. Näin ollen epäsileään optimointiin on välttämätöntä kehittää omia numeerisia ratkaisumenetelmiä. Näistä kimppumenetelmiä pidetään tällä hetkellä kaikista tehokkaimpina ja luotettavimpina yleismenetelminä kyseisten tehtävien ratkaisemiseksi. Ideana kimppumenetelmissä on approksimoida kohdefunktion alidifferentiaalia kimpulla, joka on muodostettu keräämällä kohdefunktion aligradientteja edellisiltä iteraatiokierroksilta. Tätä tietoa hyödyntämällä voidaan muodostaa kohdefunktiolle malli, joka on alkuperäistä tehtävää helpompi ratkaista. Käytetty malli on tyypillisesti konveksi ja näin ollen se voi olla epätarkka ja kykenemätön esittämään alkuperäisen tehtävän rakennetta epäkonveksissa tapauksessa. Tästä syystä väitöskirjassa keskitytään kehittämään uusia kimppumenetelmiä, jotka mallinnusvaiheessa muodostavat kohdefunktiolle epäkonveksin mallin. Pääpaino väitöskirjassa on epäsileissä optimointitehtävissä, joissa funktiot voidaan esittää kahden konveksin funktion erotuksena (difference of two convex functions). Kyseisiä funktioita kutsutaan DC-funktioiksi ja ne muodostavat tärkeän ja laajan epäkonveksien funktioiden osajoukon. Tämä valinta mahdollistaa kohdefunktion konveksisuuden ja konkaavisuuden eksplisiittisen hyödyntämisen, sillä uusi malli kohdefunktiolle muodostetaan yhdistämällä erilliset konveksille ja konkaaville osalle rakennetut mallit. Tällä tavalla päädytään epäkonveksiin DC-malliin, joka pystyy kuvaamaan ratkaistavaa tehtävää tarkemmin kuin konveksi arvio. Väitöskirjassa esitetään kolme erilaista uuden DC-mallin pohjalta kehitettyä kimppumenetelmää sekä todistetaan menetelmien konvergenssit. Kaksi näistä menetelmistä on suunniteltu rajoitteettomaan DC-optimointiin ja kolmannella voidaan ratkaista myös monitavoitteisia ja rajoitteellisia DC-optimointitehtäviä. Numeeriset tulokset havainnollistavat menetelmien tehokkuutta sekä DC-hajotelman käytöstä saatuja etuja. Vaikka DC-hajotelman käyttö voi parantaa kimppumenetelmien suoritusta, sitä ei aina ole saatavilla tai mahdollista muodostaa. Tästä syystä väitöskirjassa esitetään myös neljäs kimppumenetelmä konvergenssitodistuksineen yleiselle kohdefunktiolle, jossa kerätään implisiittisesti tietoa kohdefunktion DC-rakenteesta. Menetelmä on kehitetty erityisesti suurille epäsileille optimointitehtäville ja sen tehokkuus osoitetaan numeerisella testauksella Sovelluksena väitöskirjassa tarkastellaan datalle klustereittain tehtävää lineaarista regressiota (clusterwise linear regression). Kyseiselle sovellukselle muodostetaan uusi malli hyödyntäen koneoppimisessa käytettyä SVM-lähestymistapaa (support vector machines approach) ja saatu kohdefunktio esitetään DC-funktiona. Näin ollen yhtä kehitetyistä kimppumenetelmistä sovelletaan tehtävän ratkaisemiseen. Numeeriset tulokset havainnollistavat uuden lähestymistavan robustisuutta ja tehokkuutta

Excitons in Perovskites Microscopic Modelling of Exciton Spectra in Perovskites and Exciton-Phonon Coupling

Perovskites are interesting materials due to their special optoelectronic properties — properties already being used in photovoltaics and potentially in future light-emitters. Since perovskites exhibit strongly bound excitons, the excitons are, often still at room temperature, crucial to consider. In this work a model aimed at describing the excitonic landscape in 2D and 3D perovskites has been developed. The model includes the exchange interaction giving rise to an exciton fine structure consisting of optically active and inactive exciton states, the latter with lower energy. The model is further extended by inclusion of a magnetic field, necessary in experimental setups to probe the inactive states. The developed model captures the qualitative excitonic aspects of 3D perovskites predicting three optically active states and one inactive, but is incomplete in the 2D case predicting two active and two inactive states. The incompleteness is probably related to the treatment of the confined direction in 2D. Further, the exciton phonon scattering between active and inactive states is modelled. For applications the phonon scattering is important since high scattering rates will transfer many excitons from optically active states to the inactive one with lower energy, reducing the light emission. However, indications of a phonon bottleneck — reduced scattering rate — have been observed. Assuming spin conservation, the phonon scattering between active and non-active states is found to be non-existing — thus further confirming the phonon bottleneck. The model contributes to better microscopic understanding of the exciton-phonon coupling in perovskites

Tilinpäätösanalyysi

Pienissä ja keskisuurissa yrityksissä, jossa omistajat osallistuvat varsinaiseen työn tekemiseen, ei välttämättä ole aikaa, kiinnostusta eikä tietämystä syventyä perusteellisesti yrityksensä taloudellisen tilanteen selvittämiseen. Nämä edellä mainitut seikat vaikuttivat siihen, että toimeksiantaja halusi antaa yrityksensä taloudellisen tilanteen syvällisemmän tarkastelun tehtäväksi tämän opinnäytetyöprosessin kautta. Opinnäytetyössä haettiin vastauksia siihen, mikä on toimeksiantaja yrityksen oma taloudellinen tilanne, millainen se on verrattuna alan muihin toimijoihin ja mihin seikkoihin analyysin perusteella pitäisi kiinnittää huomiota. Opinnäytetyön tavoite oli antaa toimeksiantajalle selkeä kuva yrityksen taloudellisesta tilanteesta, jotta sen pohjalta pystyttäisiin puuttumaan mahdollisiin epäkohtiin liiketoiminnan kannattavuudessa, vakavaraisuudessa tai maksuvalmiudessa sekä parantamaan niiden kehitystä tulevaisuudessa. Opinnäytetyön tarkoituksena oli tehdä toimeksiantajalle tilinpäätösanalyysiraportti. Tilinpäätöstiedot oikaistiin, laskettiin tunnusluvut ja suoritettiin niiden vertailu yrityksen tilikausien välillä sekä toimialan keskimääräisiin lukuihin. Työn teoreettisessa osassa käsitellään tilinpäätöksen sisältöä ja sen oikaisua, tilinpäätösanalyysia, tilinpäätösanalyysitekniikoita ja tunnuslukuanalyysia. Työn empiirinen osa koostuu tilinpäätöstietojen oikaisusta ja tilinpäätösanalyysista. Analyysissa tarkastellaan yrityksen prosenttilukumuotoisia tilinpäätöslaskelmia, kassavirtalaskelmaa, kannattavuutta, vakavaraisuutta ja maksuvalmiutta aikasarja-analyysina ja toimialavertailuna. Työn aineistona käytettiin yrityksen tasekirjoja vuosilta 2011 – 2014, yrityksen toimitusjohtajan haastattelua ja muuta aiheeseen liittyvää materiaalia. Yrityksen liikevaihto on viime vuosien aikana kasvanut, mutta kannattavuus heikentynyt. Liiketoiminta on ollut kannattavaa, mutta sen parantamiseen ja tasaamiseen tulisi kiinnittää huomiota. Yrityksen vakavaraisuus on ollut hyvä ja velkarasitus turvallisella tasolla investoinneista huolimatta. Maksuvalmius on ollut kunnossa huolimatta myyntisaamisten pitkistä kiertoajoista. Yrityksen vakavaraisuus ja maksuvalmius turvaavat pohjan liiketoiminnalle, mutta kannattavuuden tulisi parantua, jotta pitkän aikavälin toimintaedellytykset säilyisivät turvallisella tasolla.Small and medium-sized enterprises, where the owners are involved in working on daily basis, do not necessarily have the time, the interest or the knowledge to focus thoroughly on their financial situation. Taking these above-mentioned considerations into account, the client company wanted to have an in-depth examination of the company's financial situation, through this thesis. This study sought answers to such questions as, what the client company's financial situation is, what it is compared to competitors in the same field and which factors the attention should be paid to, on the basis of this study. The objective of the thesis was to give the client a clear picture of the company's financial situation, so that any shortcom-ings in the business profitability, solvency and liquidity could be rectified, and their future development could be enhanced. The purpose of the thesis was to write a finan-cial analysis report to the client. The financial statements were adjusted, key figures calculated and a comparison was conducted between the company's accounting periods. The figures were also compared to those of the line of business. The theoretical part of the thesis dealt with the contents of the financial statements and their adjustments, financial analysis and its techniques, as well as statistical analysis. The empirical part of the study consisted of the adjustment of financial statements and financial statement analysis. The analysis examined the company's financial statements in percentages, cash flow statements, profitability, solvency and liquidity as a time series analysis and through industrial benchmarking. The material of the thesis consisted of the company's balance books for the years 2011 - 2014, the interview of the company's CEO and other material related to the topic. The company's turnover has grown in recent years, but the profitability has weakened. The business has been profitable, but more attention should be paid to stabilizing and developing it. The solvency of the company has been good and the debt burden on a safe level, in spite of the investments. The liquidity has also been good despite the long turnover time of the accounts receivable. The solvency and liquidity of the company safeguard a stable base for business, but the profitability should be improved so that long-term operational preconditions could remain on a safe level

Shared Stories of Rescue Cats : Online Narratives and Affective Resonance

This thesis examines Facebook posts that Finnish animal welfare associations have published about rescue cats. The object of analysis is established as ‘rescue cat stories’ – a particular kind of narrative that tells the story of one or many cats who are rescued or attempted to be rescued by people who work or volunteer for animal welfare associations. Drawing from the fields of feminist animal studies and critical animal studies, the analysis discusses what thematic elements are prominent in viral rescue cat stories that promote neutering and how these stories are constructed narratively and affectively in a social media environment. The research material consists of four individual narratives: three stories of individual cats and one story of a feral cat colony. In order to locate the research topic, the study discusses what kind of differences and similarities there are in animal welfare, animal rights, and animal liberation philosophies, how the philosophies tend to interlock in certain contexts, and where animal rescue work is located in relation to other forms of animal advocacy. Finnish animal rescue work, which has previously been marginalised in academic research, is regarded with a feminist sensitivity that pays heed to the gendered nature of the caring work that rescue workers are involved in while also taking into account the risk of speciesism that follows from considering only some species as ‘protectable’ and ‘lovable’. In agreement with recent research that has been conducted in the field of feminist animal studies, the analysis contests the stark binary of abolitionism and welfarism and suggests that it is crucial to consider interspecies entanglements without resorting to ableist rationalisations that argue that it would be better for dependent domesticated animals to go extinct than to live as vulnerable beings. The topic of the research is analysed thematically with the help of Sara Ahmed’s theorisation of affects, affective economies, and sticky concepts and Susanna Paasonen’s theorisation of viscerally grabbing resonances. Additionally, Ruth Page’s delineation of mediated narrative analysis is employed in order to distinguish what is characteristic of stories that are shared in a social media environment. The methodological concept of ‘shared stories’ further informs the multimodal, mediated, and participatory nature of narratives that are produced, reproduced, and encountered in a social media environment. The analysis identified the act of naming, death, and mourning as prominent thematic elements that form the backbone of viral rescue cat stories. While the act of naming serves an important role in establishing cats as individuals, it does not seem to entail as much power to ignite the affective economy of a shared story as the aspects of death and mourning do. The goal of all the stories studied in the thesis is to promote feline neutering, but neutering as such does not seem to be sticky enough to ignite the affective economy of a post. Therefore, the research material suggests that the kind of stories that provided a sufficiently contextualised account of naming, death (or the risk of death), and mourning were more likely to grab the audience and generate interactions. Finally, the analysis concludes by stating that while it is possible that the affect-based focus on sharing a particular kind of reaction entails the risk of resonating in anthropocentric registers, other-oriented animal narratives can also have the power of inspiring simulative, other-directed empathy

Nutrient losses from organic and conventional crop rotations - a case study on fine sand soil

P and N losses were highest from the conventional crop rotation. The losses were most affected by single management practices. The four-year study is, however, too short for soil derived, long-term differences to come fully out in the leaching losses

Die Tungusen und ihre Kontakte mit anderen Völkern

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