Storage of Wood Chips: Effect of Chip Size on Storage Properties

To make forest biomass more competitive, increased efficiency in the handling and supply system is needed, thus producing high-quality fuel at a lower cost. Operating costs can be reduced if the target chip size is increased, as this increases productivity and reduces chipper fuel consumption. However, the chips need to be stored in order to meet fluctuating seasonal demand and maintain high machine utilisation. Due to biomass degradation, storage of comminuted biomass can lead to high energy losses, but can also increase fuel quality, e.g. by reducing moisture content and increasing net calorific value. This study evaluated the effects of storage on dry matter losses and differences in fuel quality of the stored biomass for three target chip sizes and three materials during six months of storage. The results showed that coarse chips had significantly lower moisture content and lower energy losses after storage than fine chips. Overall, changes during storage resulted in an economic loss of 3–4% per oven-dry ton for fine chips, but an economic gain of 2–6% for coarse chips. Thus increased target chip size can increase the competitiveness of forest biomass through decreased production costs and reduced storage costs. It can also ensure higher, more consistent fuel quality

A Cross-Season Correspondence Dataset for Robust Semantic Segmentation

In this paper, we present a method to utilize 2D-2D point matches between images taken during different image conditions to train a convolutional neural network for semantic segmentation. Enforcing label consistency across the matches makes the final segmentation algorithm robust to seasonal changes. We describe how these 2D-2D matches can be generated with little human interaction by geometrically matching points from 3D models built from images. Two cross-season correspondence datasets are created providing 2D-2D matches across seasonal changes as well as from day to night. The datasets are made publicly available to facilitate further research. We show that adding the correspondences as extra supervision during training improves the segmentation performance of the convolutional neural network, making it more robust to seasonal changes and weather conditions.Comment: In Proc. CVPR 201

Characterization of the Zoarces viviparus liver transcriptome using massively parallel pyrosequencing

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The teleost <it>Zoarces viviparus </it>(eelpout) lives along the coasts of Northern Europe and has long been an established model organism for marine ecology and environmental monitoring. The scarce information about this species genome has however restrained the use of efficient molecular-level assays, such as gene expression microarrays.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In the present study we present the first comprehensive characterization of the <it>Zoarces viviparus </it>liver transcriptome. From 400,000 reads generated by massively parallel pyrosequencing, more than 50,000 pieces of putative transcripts were assembled, annotated and functionally classified. The data was estimated to cover roughly 40% of the total transcriptome and homologues for about half of the genes of <it>Gasterosteus aculeatus </it>(stickleback) were identified. The sequence data was consequently used to design an oligonucleotide microarray for large-scale gene expression analysis.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our results show that one run using a Genome Sequencer FLX from 454 Life Science/Roche generates enough genomic information for adequate <it>de novo </it>assembly of a large number of genes in a higher vertebrate. The generated sequence data, including the validated microarray probes, are publicly available to promote genome-wide research in <it>Zoarces viviparus</it>.</p

Towards Soft Circuit Breaking in Service Meshes via Application-agnostic Caching

Service meshes factor out code dealing with inter-micro-service communication, such as circuit breaking. Circuit breaking actuation is currently limited to an "on/off" switch, i.e., a tripped circuit breaker will return an application-level error indicating service unavailability to the calling micro-service. This paper proposes a soft circuit breaker actuator, which returns cached data instead of an error. The overall resilience of a cloud application is improved if constituent micro-services return stale data, instead of no data at all. While caching is widely employed for serving web service traffic, its usage in inter-micro-service communication is lacking. Micro-services responses are highly dynamic, which requires carefully choosing adaptive time-to-life caching algorithms. We evaluate our approach through two experiments. First, we quantify the trade-off between traffic reduction and data staleness using a purpose-build service, thereby identifying algorithm configurations that keep data staleness at about 3% or less while reducing network load by up to 30%. Second, we quantify the network load reduction with the micro-service benchmark by Google Cloud called Hipster Shop. Our approach results in caching of about 80% of requests. Results show the feasibility and efficiency of our approach, which encourages implementing caching as a circuit breaking actuator in service meshes

Adaptive and Application-agnostic Caching in Service Meshes for Resilient Cloud Applications

Service meshes factor out code dealing with inter-micro-service communication. The overall resilience of a cloud application is improved if constituent micro-services return stale data, instead of no data at all. This paper proposes and implements application agnostic caching for micro services. While caching is widely employed for serving web service traffic, its usage in inter-micro-service communication is lacking. Micro-services responses are highly dynamic, which requires carefully choosing adaptive time-to-life caching algorithms. Our approach is application agnostic, is cloud native, and supports gRPC. We evaluate our approach and implementation using the micro-service benchmark by Google Cloud called Hipster Shop. Our approach results in caching of about 80% of requests. Results show the feasibility and efficiency of our approach, which encourages implementing caching in service meshes. Additionally, we make the code, experiments, and data publicly available

The Influence of KCl and HCl on the High-Temperature Oxidation of a Fe-2.25Cr-1Mo Steel at 400\ua0\ub0C

The influence of alkali- and chlorine-containing compounds on the corrosion of superheater alloys has been studied extensively. The current paper instead investigates the corrosive effects of KCl and HCl under conditions relevant to waterwall conditions. A low-alloy (Fe-2.25Cr-1Mo) steel was exposed to KCl(s), 500\ua0vppm HCl(g) and (KCl + HCl) in the presence of 5%O2 and 20% H2O at 400\ua0\ub0C. The results indicate that alloy chlorination by KCl occurs by an electrochemical process, involving cathodic formation of chemisorbed KOH on the scale surface and anodic formation of solid FeCl2 at the bottom of the scale. The process is accompanied by extensive cracking and delamination of the iron oxide scale, resulting in a complex, convoluted scale morphology. Adding 500\ua0vppm HCl to the experimental environment (KCl + HCl) initially greatly accelerated the formation of FeCl2 at the scale/alloy interface. The accelerated alloy chlorination is attributed to HCl reacting with KOH at the scale surface, causing the cathodic process to be depolarized. A rapid slowing down of the rate of chlorination and corrosion in KCl + HCl environment was observed which was attributed to the electronically insulating nature of the FeCl2 layer which forms at the bottom of the scale, disconnecting the anodic and cathodic regions

Sensitive and robust gene expression changes in fish exposed to estrogen – a microarray approach

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Vitellogenin is a well established biomarker for estrogenic exposure in fish. However, effects on gonadal differentiation at concentrations of estrogen not sufficient to give rise to a measurable vitellogenin response suggest that more sensitive biomarkers would be useful. Induction of zona pellucida genes may be more sensitive but their specificities are not as clear. The objective of this study was to find additional sensitive and robust candidate biomarkers of estrogenic exposure.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Hepatic mRNA expression profiles were characterized in juvenile rainbow trout exposed to a measured concentration of 0.87 and 10 ng ethinylestradiol/L using a salmonid cDNA microarray. The higher concentration was used to guide the subsequent identification of generally more subtle responses at the low concentration not sufficient to induce vitellogenin. A meta-analysis was performed with data from the present study and three similar microarray studies using different fish species and platforms. Within the generated list of presumably robust responses, several well-known estrogen-regulated genes were identified. Two genes, confirmed by quantitative RT-PCR (qPCR), fulfilled both the criteria of high sensitivity and robustness; the induction of the genes encoding zona pellucida protein 3 and a nucleoside diphosphate kinase (nm23).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The cross-species, cross-platform meta-analysis correctly identified several robust responses. This adds confidence to our approach used for identifying candidate biomarkers. Specifically, we propose that analyses of an nm23 gene together with zona pellucida genes may increase the possibilities to detect an exposure to low levels of estrogenic compounds in fish.</p

1.6 GHz Low-Power Cross-Correlator System Enabling Geostationary Earth Orbit Aperture Synthesis

We present a 64-channel cross-correlator system for space-borne synthetic aperture imaging. Two different types of ASICs were developed to fit into this system: An 8-channel comparator ASIC implemented in a 130 nm SiGe BiCMOS process technology performs A/D conversion, while a single 64-channel digital cross-correlator ASIC implemented in a 65 nm CMOS process performs the signal processing. The digital ASIC handles 2016 cross-correlations at up to 3.6 GS/s and has a power dissipation of only 0.13 mW/correlation/GHz at a supply voltage of 1 V. The comparator ASIC can handle sample rates of at least 4.5 GS/s with a power dissipation of 47 mW/channel or 1 GS/s with a power dissipation of 17 mW/channel. The assembled system consists of a single board measuring a mere 136 x 136 mm(2) and weighing only 135 g. The assembled system demonstrates crosstalk of 0.04% between neighboring channels and stability of 800 s. We provide ASIC and system-board measurement results that demonstrate that aperture synthesis can be a viable approach for Earth observation from a geostationary Earth orbit