Maintenance breeding of conservation cereal varieties

The experiments shows that within the heritage material, varieties are identified with unique quality traits, including taste, colour and backing quality, which are not found in high yielding modern varieties available for organic farming. The paper presents the second year result of field evaluation of 212 Scandinavian heritage varieties grown on two sites in Denmark in 2007

Impact of lowered vehicle weight of electric autonomous tractors in a systems perspective

Modern agriculture rely on heavy machinery that has increased risk of detrimental soil compaction of arable fields. This can lead to negative effects such as reduced yields, reduced field trafficability and increased fuel use. Electric, autonomous tractors makes it possible to replace one heavy machine with several lighter without increased labour costs. In this study, the economic and environmental effects of reduced soil compaction for smaller autonomous tractors were assessed and compared to a scenario with conventional tractors. A discrete event simulation of a Swedish 200 ha grain farm with clay soil was used for the calculations. The electric, autonomous system had lower soil compaction impacts as well as other benefits, and reduced cost in total from 385 to 258 euro ha-1 and the climate impact from 270 to 77 kg CO2eq ha-1 compared to the conventional scenario. Soil compaction constituted 20% of the cost and 26% of the climate impact for the conventional scenario. It was concluded that soil compaction was impactful in machinery studies, especially on heavier soil like clay, and should not be omitted. Soil compaction avoidance alone was not impactful enough to warrant a change to electric, autonomous tractors but it reinforced already existing trends and further improved the cost and environmental benefits

A comprehenisve analysis of benchmark 4: Pre-strain effect on springback of 2D draw bending

In order to be able to form high strength steels with low ductility, multi-step forming processes are becoming more common. Benchmark 4 of the NUMISHEET 2011 conference is an attempt to imitate such a process. A DP780 steel sheet with 1.4 mm thickness is considered. In order to understand the pre-strain effect on subsequent forming and springback, a 2D draw-bending is considered. Two cases are studied: one without pre-strain and one with 8% pre-stretching. The draw-bending model is identical to the "U-bend" problem of the NUMISHEET'93 conference. The purpose of the benchmark problem is to evaluate the capability of modern FE-methods to simulate the forming and springback of these kinds of problems. The authors of this article have previously made exhaustive studies on material modeling in applications to sheet metal forming and springback problems, [1],[2],[3]. Models for kinematic hardening, anisotropic yield conditions, and elastic stiffness reduction have been investigated. Also procedures for material characterization have been studied. The material model that mainly has been used in the current study is based on the Banabic BBC2005 yield criterion, and a modified version of the Yoshida-Uemori model for cyclic hardening. This model, like a number of other models, has been implemented as User Subroutines in LS-DYNA. The effects of various aspects of material modeling will be demonstrated in connection to the current benchmark problems. The provided material data for the current benchmark problem are not complete in all respects. In order to be able to perform the current simulations, the authors have been forced to introduce a few additional assumptions. The effects of these assumptions will also be discussed

Performance comparison of charging systems for autonomous electric field tractors using dynamic simulation

A model simulating an autonomous battery electric vehicle system for agricultural field use was created, assuming a 200-ha conventional cereal farm in Swedish conditions. The different subsystems were verified against sources in the literature, field experiments and general common practice. The model was used to compare two different charging systems (conductive charging and battery exchange) for battery electric tractors to each other. A comparative simulation was made with conventional diesel systems (fully autonomous or manned for 10 h d(-1)). The simulation results indicated that battery exchange was generally a faster system than conductive charging. The results also showed that both electric systems were able to achieve similar active time during spring field operations as a corresponding system of a simulated manned diesel tractor for battery sizes from 50 kWh and charge powers from 50 kW. (C) 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of IAgrE

Sequence signature analysis of chromosome identity in three Drosophila species

BACKGROUND: All eukaryotic organisms need to distinguish each of their chromosomes. A few protein complexes have been described that recognise entire, specific chromosomes, for instance dosage compensation complexes and the recently discovered autosome-specific Painting of Fourth (POF) protein in Drosophila. However, no sequences have been found that are chromosome-specific and distributed over the entire length of the respective chromosome. Here, we present a new, unbiased, exhaustive computational method that was used to probe three Drosophila genomes for chromosome-specific sequences. RESULTS: By combining genome annotations and cytological data with multivariate statistics related to three Drosophila genomes we found sequence signatures that distinguish Muller's F-elements (chromosome 4 in D. melanogaster) from all other chromosomes in Drosophila that are not attributable to differences in nucleotide composition, simple sequence repeats or repeated elements. Based on these signatures we identified complex motifs that are strongly overrepresented in the F-elements and found indications that the D. melanogaster motif may be involved in POF-binding to the F-element. In addition, the X-chromosomes of D. melanogaster and D. yakuba can be distinguished from the other chromosomes, albeit to a lesser extent. Surprisingly, the conservation of the F-element sequence signatures extends not only between species separated by approximately 55 Myr, but also linearly along the sequenced part of the F-elements. CONCLUSION: Our results suggest that chromosome-distinguishing features are not exclusive to the sex chromosomes, but are also present on at least one autosome (the F-element) in Drosophila

En studie kring venture capital i forskningsparker

Problem Vi har inför genomförandet av studien identifierat två problem. - Vilken typ av företag är lokaliserade i forskningsparken Ideon och hur ser förekomsten av venture capital ut bland dessa? - Är venture capital-situationen annorlunda för företag som valt att lokalisera sig i en forskningspark? Syfte Ett av två delsyften är att göra en kartläggning av företagen i forskningsparken Ideon och förekomsten av venture capital bland dessa. Vårt huvudsyfte, är att undersöka vilka eventuella effekter faktumet att ett företag som söker venture capital är lokaliserat i en forskningspark har, och om detta avviker från de generella sambanden inom venture capital-teorin. Metod Vi har i vår studie arbetat med kvantitativ metod. Sju hypoteser har formulerats och operationaliserats i en enkätstudie. Frågorna i enkäten är både av öppen och stängd karaktär, beroende på vad vi vill få reda på. Vår svarsfrekvens är 46,5%. Slutsatser Vi anser oss ha funnit tendenser till att venture capital-situationen för företag lokaliserade i en forskningspark ser annorlunda ut jämfört med generella samband på några punkter. En stor andel av de investeringar som har genomförts har riktat sig mot företag i sådd- och start-up-fasen. Geografisk närhet mellan investerare och forskningsparksföretag tenderar vara viktigt då företaget befinner sig i de tidigare faserna. Dessutom anser forskningsparksföretagen sig uppleva legitimitet som följd av lokaliseringen i forskningsparken

A SiGe 8-Channel Comparator for Application in a Synthetic Aperture Radiometer

We present a high-speed low-power 8-channel comparator tailored for the application of sampling antenna signals in a cross-correlator system for space-borne synthetic aperture radiometer instruments. Features like clock return path, per-channel offset calibration and bias current tuning make the comparator adaptable and gives the possibility to adjust the comparator for low power consumption, while keeping performance within the requirements of the cross-correlator system. The comparator has been implemented and fabricated in a 130-nm SiGe BiCMOS process. Measurements show that the comparator can perform sampling at a rate of 4.5 GS/s with a power consumption of 48 mW/channel or 1 GS/s with a power consumption of 17 mW/channel

Temperature stability of intersubband transitions in AlN/GaN quantum wells

Temperature dependence of intersubband transitions in AlN/GaN multiple quantum wells grown with molecular beam epitaxy is investigated both by absorption studies at different temperatures and modeling of conduction-band electrons. For the absorption study, the sample is heated in increments up to $400^\circ$C. The self-consistent Schr\"odinger-Poisson modeling includes temperature effects of the band-gap and the influence of thermal expansion on the piezoelectric field. We find that the intersubband absorption energy decreases only by $\sim 6$ meV at $400^\circ$C relative to its room temperature value

Correlators for Interferometric Radiometry in Remote Sensing Applications, A Scaling Perspective

Correlators are extensively used in the field of radio interferometry. Two different types are considered for two applications; autocorrelators for spectrometry and cross-correlators for aperture synthesis. We concentrate on satellite-based applications where power budgets are very restrictive. Several satellites are already employing correlators for interferometric measurements, and future projects are targeting even larger systems in terms of spectral channels in the case of spectrometry and baseline counts in the case of aperture synthesis. Thus, it is important to develop correlators with increasing channel count, either using ASIC technology scaling or by constructing larger systems from several ASICs. Building on earlier ASIC designs, we examine how larger correlator systems can be constructed and the implications this has, in terms of power dissipation, system complexity, and ASIC count. Our findings indicate that, for large systems, having a very high channel count per ASIC is indeed of interest for keeping system complexity and power dissipation down by reducing both ASIC and I/O count, especially for cross-correlators