Grass Growth Profiles in Brittany

For farmers, knowing the local grass growth profile and the possible variations between years is very helpful in managing grazing. Indeed, the comparison with herd needs and anticipated farm cover change allows decisions to be made that will maintain the cover at the desired level. This paper proposes a ten-days grass growth profile corresponding to Brittany’s different conditions of soil, climate and pasture management

Wideband current transformers for the surveillance of the beam extraction kicker system of the Large Hadron Collider

The LHC beam dumping system must protect the LHC machine from damage by reliably and safely extracting and absorbing the circulating beams when requested. Two sets of 15 extraction kicker magnets form the main active part of this system. A separate high voltage pulse generator powers each magnet. Because of the high beam energy and the consequences which could result from significant beam loss due to a malfunctioning of the dump system the magnets and generators are continuously surveyed in order to generate a beam abort as soon as an internal fault is detected. Amongst these surveillance systems, wideband current transformers have been designed to detect any erratic start in one of the generators. Output power should be enough to directly re-trigger all the power trigger units of the remaining 14 generators. The current transformers were developed in collaboration with industry. To minimize losses, high-resistivity cobalt alloy was chosen for the cores. The annealing techniques originally developed for LEP beam current measurement in collaboration between CERN and industry allowed to extend the frequency response beyond that of traditional core materials. The paper shows the results obtained, exposes the problems encountered with shielding, conductor position sensitivity, load resistor technology and their solutions. The know-how acquired during the collaboration was further applied by the industrial partner to cover a wider range of sensitivity, size and frequency

Effect of Farm Grass Cover at Turnout on the Grazing Management of Spring Calving Dairy Cows

Early spring grazing is an objective for most Irish dairy farmers. If more grass is included in the diet of the cow in early lactation, the profitability of the farm system can be increased. Post turnout, dairy cow feeding management varies with the amount of farm grass cover (FC) available. Experiments on the consequences of different FC at turnout require large resources and all scenarios cannot be accounted for. Consequently, a decision support system, Pâtur’IN (Delaby et al., this volume), was used to describe the effects of various FC at turnout on grazing management in spring

Effect of Strategy of Forage Supplementation and of Turnout Date in a Medium Stocking Rate System on the Main Characteristics of Dairy Cows Grazing

Having a stocking rate of 2.9 cows per hectare of grassland (35 ares/cow) in Brittany offers many options for turnout date and forage supplementation strategies. For a farmer, knowing the consequences of the different options during the course of the grazing season makes grazing management decisions easier. As experiments on grazing management require considerable resources and are hardly generalisable, various spring scenarios have been tested using a dynamic decision support system, Pâtur’IN (Delaby et al., this volume)

Struggling Readers Learning with Graphic-Rich Digital Science Text: Effects of a Highlight & Animate Feature and Manipulable Graphics.

Technology offers promise of ‘leveling the playing field’ for struggling readers. That is, instructional support features within digital texts may enable all readers to learn. This quasi-experimental study examined the effects on learning of two support features, which offered unique opportunities to interact with text. The Highlight & Animate Feature highlighted an important idea in prose, while simultaneously animating its representation in an adjacent graphic. It invited readers to integrate ideas depicted in graphics and prose, using each one to interpret the other. The Manipulable Graphics had parts that the reader could operate to discover relationships among phenomena. It invited readers to test or refine the ideas that they brought to, or gleaned from, the text. Use of these support features was compulsory. Twenty fifth grade struggling readers read a graphic-rich digital science text in a clinical interview setting, under one of two conditions: using either the Highlight & Animate Feature or the Manipulable Graphics. Participants in both conditions made statistically significant gains on a multiple choice measure of knowledge of the topic of the text. While there were no significant differences by condition in the amount of knowledge gained; there were significant differences in the quality of knowledge expressed. Transcripts revealed that understandings about light and vision, expressed by those who used the Highlight & Animate Feature, were more often conceptually and linguistically ‘complete.’ That is, their understandings included both a description of phenomena as well as an explanation of underlying scientific principles, which participants articulated using the vocabulary of the text. This finding may be attributed to the multiple opportunities to integrate graphics (depicting the behavior of phenomena) and prose (providing the scientific explanation of that phenomena), which characterized the Highlight & Animate Condition . Those who used the Manipulable Graphics were more likely to express complete understandings when they were able to structure a systematic investigation of the graphic and when the graphic was designed to confront their own naïve conceptions about light and vision. The Manipulable Graphics also provided a foothold for those who entered the study with very little prior knowledge of the topic.Ph.D.EducationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/60875/1/ndefranc_1.pd

Early Agriculture in the Maya Lowlands

Wetland research in northern Belize provides the earliest evidence for development of agriculture in the Maya Lowlands. Pollen data confirm the introduction of maize and manioc before 3000 B.C. Dramatic deforestation, beginning ca. 2500 B.C. and intensifying in wetland environments ca. 1500-1300 B.C., marks an expansion of agriculture, which occurred in the context of a mixed foraging economy. By 1000 B.C. a rise in groundwater levels led farmers to construct drainage ditches coeval with the emergence of Maya complex society ca. 1000-400 B.C. Field manipulations often involved minor modifications of natural hummocks. Canal systems are not as extensive in northern Belize as previously reported, nor is there evidence of artificially raised planting platforms. By the Classic period, wetland fields were flooded and mostly abandoned

Associating transcription factor-binding site motifs with target GO terms and target genes

The roles and target genes of many transcription factors (TFs) are still unknown. To predict the roles of TFs, we present a computational method for associating Gene Ontology (GO) terms with TF-binding motifs. The method works by ranking all genes as potential targets of the TF, and reporting GO terms that are significantly associated with highly ranked genes. We also present an approach, whereby these predicted GO terms can be used to improve predictions of TF target genes. This uses a novel gene-scoring function that reflects the insight that genes annotated with GO terms predicted to be associated with the TF are more likely to be its targets. We construct validation sets of GO terms highly associated with known targets of various yeast and human TF. On the yeast reference sets, our prediction method identifies at least one correct GO term for 73% of the TF, 49% of the correct GO terms are predicted and almost one-third of the predicted GO terms are correct. Results on human reference sets are similarly encouraging. Validation of our target gene prediction method shows that its accuracy exceeds that of simple motif scanning