777 research outputs found
Development of strategies to improve quality and safety and reduce cost of production in organic and ‘low input‘ crop production systems
The overall aims of organic and low input crop production include the economically viable and environmentally sound production of high quality food and feed. Technological bottlenecks in such systems include insufficient and instable yields and in some instances unsatisfactory processing, sensory and/or nutritional quality of the final product. Recently, concerns have also been raised that the intensive use of manures may lead to increased risk for contamination of food by enteropathogenic micro-organisms. Crop production in low input systems is based on key pillars, i.e. (i) a fertile soil which provides sufficient capacity to allow for plant growth while preventing soil-borne diseases, (ii) high quality, disease-free seeds and plant material, (iii) a crop-specific soil fertility management to provide sufficient nutrients for optimum plant growth, and (iv) adequate crop protection techniques to prevent damage due to noxious organisms. In the QLIF project we develop improved component strategies to overcome technological bottlenecks in annual (wheat, lettuce, tomato) and perennial (apple) crop production systems. In this paper we report the progress achieved so far
Silicon on Ceramic Process: Silicon Sheet Growth and Device Development for the Large-area Silicon Sheet and Cell Development Tasks of the Low-cost Solar Array Project
The technical and economic feasibility of producing solar cell quality sheet silicon was investigated. It was hoped this could be done by coating one surface of carbonized ceramic substrates with a thin layer of large-grain polycrystalline silicon from the melt. Work was directed towards the solution of unique cell processing/design problems encountered with the silicon-ceramic (SOC) material due to its intimate contact with the ceramic substrate. Significant progress was demonstrated in the following areas; (1) the continuous coater succeeded in producing small-area coatings exhibiting unidirectional solidification and substatial grain size; (2) dip coater succeeded in producing thick (more than 500 micron) dendritic layers at coating speeds of 0.2-0.3 cm/sec; and (3) a standard for producing total area SOC solar cells using slotted ceramic substrates was developed
Evaluation of the Effects of Pulsed Magnetic Field Treatment as a Nondestructive Treatment for Magnetic Materials
Pulsed magnetic treatment has been suggested as a nondestructive treatment of magnetic materials for reducing microscopic stress and strain in the materials. Systematic studies have been made to test the effect of pulsed magnetic field treatments in a variety of magnetic materials including bulk nickel and magnetic thin film samples. The treatment involves the application of a low frequency, periodic magnetic field superimposed with a high frequency pulse component followed by demagnetization. Equipment for applying the pulsed magnetic field treatment has been designed and constructed, together with computer software which was developed to allow complete control of the waveform, frequency and amplitude of the pulsed magnetic field profile. Various characterization techniques, including magnetic hysteresis, Barkhausen effect measurements and magnetic force microscopy, were used to test the effects of the pulsed magnetic field treatment. Present results indicate that the stress relief effect of the treatment on the samples, if there is any, is much weaker than claimed in previous studies
Determination of Omega_b From Big Bang Nucleosynthesis in the Presence of Regions of Antimatter
Production of regions of antimatter in the early universe is predicted in
many baryogenesis models. Small scale antimatter regions would annihilate
during or soon after nucleosynthesis, affecting the abundances of the light
elements. In this paper we study how the acceptable range in Omega_b changes in
the presence of antimatter regions, as compared to the standard big bang
nucleosynthesis. It turns out that it is possible to produce at the same time
both a low 4He value (Y_p < 0.240) and a low D/H value (D/H < 4e-5), but
overproduction of 7Li is unavoidable at large Omega_b.Comment: 9 pages, PRD version, ref. 6 correcte
Ornipressin in the treatment of functional renal failure in decompensated liver cirrhosis
In 11 patients with decompensated cirrhosis and deteriorating renal function, the effect of the vasoconstrictor substance 8-ornithin vasopressin (ornipressin; POR 8; Sandoz, Basel, Switzerland) on renal function, hemodynamic parameters, and humoral mediators was studied. Ornipressin was infused at a dose of 6 IU/h over a period of 4 hours. During ornipressin infusion an improvement of renal function was achieved as indicated by significant increases in inulin clearance (+65%), paraaminohippuric acid clearance (+49%), urine volume (+45%), sodium excretion (+259%), and fractional elimination of sodium (+130%). The hyperdynamic circulation was reversed to a nearly normal circulatory state. The increase in systemic vascular resistance (+60%) coincided with a decrease of a previously elevated renal vascular resistance (-27%) and increase in renal blood flow (+44%). The renal fraction of the cardiac output increased from 2.3% to 4.7% (P less than 0.05). A decline of the elevated plasma levels of noradrenaline (2.08-1.13 ng/mL; P less than 0.01) and renin activity (27.6-14.2 ng.mL-1.h-1; P less than 0.01) was achieved. The plasma concentration of the atrial natriuretic factor increased in most of the patients, but slightly decreased in 3 patients. The decrease of renal vascular resistance and the increase of renal blood flow and of the renal fraction of cardiac output play a key role in the beneficial effect of ornipressin on renal failure. These changes develop by an increase in mean arterial pressure, the reduction of the sympathetic activity, and probably of an extenuation of the splanchnic vasodilation. A significant contribution of atrial natriuretic factor is less likely. The present findings implicate that treatment with ornipressin represents an alternative approach to the management of functional renal failure in advanced liver cirrhosis
Lithium-6: A Probe of the Early Universe
I consider the synthesis of 6Li due to the decay of relic particles, such as
gravitinos or moduli, after the epoch of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. The
synthesized 6Li/H ratio may be compared to 6Li/H in metal-poor stars which, in
the absence of stellar depletion of 6Li, yields significantly stronger
constraints on relic particle densities than the usual consideration of
overproduction of 3He. Production of 6Li during such an era of non-thermal
nucleosynthesis may also be regarded as a possible explanation for the
relatively high 6Li/H ratios observed in metal-poor halo stars.Comment: final version, Physical Review Letters, additional figure giving
limits on relic decaying particle
Radiative decay of a massive particle and the non-thermal process in primordial nucleosynthesis
We consider the effects on big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) of the radiative
decay of a long-lived massive particle. If high-energy photons are emitted
after the BBN epoch ( sec), they may change the abundances of
the light elements through photodissociation processes, which may result in a
significant discrepancy between standard BBN and observation. Taking into
account recent observational and theoretical developments in this field, we
revise our previous study constraining the abundance of the
radiatively-decaying particles. In particular, on the theoretical side, it was
recently claimed that the non-thermal production of Li, which is caused by
the photodissociation of \hefour, most severely constrains the abundance of
the radiatively-decaying particle. We will see, however, it is premature to
emphasize the importance of the non-thermal production of Li because (i)
the theoretical computation of the Li abundance has large uncertainty due
to the lack of the precise understanding of the Li production cross
section, and (ii) the observational data of Li abundance has large errors.Comment: 15 pages, using REVTeX and 3 postscript figure
Excitons in a Photosynthetic Light-Harvesting System: A Combined Molecular Dynamics/Quantum Chemistry and Polaron Model Study
The dynamics of pigment-pigment and pigment-protein interactions in
light-harvesting complexes is studied with a novel approach which combines
molecular dynamics (MD) simulations with quantum chemistry (QC) calculations.
The MD simulations of an LH-II complex, solvated and embedded in a lipid
bilayer at physiological conditions (with total system size of 87,055 atoms)
revealed a pathway of a water molecule into the B800 binding site, as well as
increased dimerization within the B850 BChl ring, as compared to the
dimerization found for the crystal structure. The fluctuations of pigment (B850
BChl) excitation energies, as a function of time, were determined via ab initio
QC calculations based on the geometries that emerged from the MD simulations.
From the results of these calculations we constructed a time-dependent
Hamiltonian of the B850 exciton system from which we determined the linear
absorption spectrum. Finally, a polaron model is introduced to describe quantum
mechanically both the excitonic and vibrational (phonon) degrees of freedom.
The exciton-phonon coupling that enters into the polaron model, and the
corresponding phonon spectral function are derived from the MD/QC simulations.
It is demonstrated that, in the framework of the polaron model, the absorption
spectrum of the B850 excitons can be calculated from the autocorrelation
function of the excitation energies of individual BChls, which is readily
available from the combined MD/QC simulations. The obtained result is in good
agreement with the experimentally measured absorption spectrum.Comment: REVTeX3.1, 23 pages, 13 (EPS) figures included. A high quality PDF
file of the paper is available at
http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Publications/Papers/PDF/DAMJ2001/DAMJ2001.pd
Finding Plastic Patches in Coastal Waters using Optical Satellite Data
Satellites collecting optical data offer a unique perspective from which to observe the problem of plastic litter in the marine environment, but few studies have successfully demonstrated their use for this purpose. For the first time, we show that patches of floating macroplastics are detectable in optical data acquired by the European Space Agency (ESA) Sentinel-2 satellites and, furthermore, are distinguishable from naturally occurring materials such as seaweed. We present case studies from four countries where suspected macroplastics were detected in Sentinel-2 Earth Observation data. Patches of materials on the ocean surface were highlighted using a novel Floating Debris Index (FDI) developed for the Sentinel-2 Multi-Spectral Instrument (MSI). In all cases, floating aggregations were detectable on sub-pixel scales, and appeared to be composed of a mix of seaweed, sea foam, and macroplastics. Building first steps toward a future monitoring system, we leveraged spectral shape to identify macroplastics, and a Naïve Bayes algorithm to classify mixed materials. Suspected plastics were successfully classified as plastics with an accuracy of 86
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