Breeding Reed Canarygrass as an Energy or Fibre Crop by Using Local Collected Wild Populations

Reed canarygrass (Phalaris arundinacea L.) has become interesting as an industrial crop in Sweden. The grass can be used as biofuel or fibre raw material for pulp production. New varieties have to be developed, with a quality different from forage varieties. High stem/ leaf-ratio, low content of ash and elements like silica, potassium and chlorine are important breeding goals. A Swedish project, aiming to evaluate local reed canarygrass populations, shows that there is some variation in these morphological and chemical characters which can be utilised in a breeding program

Design and material selection of a CO₂-powered beverage cooler

Includes bibliographical references.While training for a triathlon, 6-hour bike rides come with the territory. As a result, protein-based drinks are a must to keep nourished. Currently, the only way to keep a drink from spoiling is to have an insulated bottle. However, this does not actively keep the drink cool; it simply slows the rate of warming. This experiment was designed to create a drink holder that would use CO2 to actively cool a drink to maintain a desired temperature. To do this, coiled copper tubing was inserted into an insulated housing with a CO2 source attached to the other end. Between the combination of the insulated housing and CO2 bursts, the rate at which the drink warms is slowed and even reversed when CO2 is used. We hypothesized the concept that CO2 would actively cool the drink inside the bottle, and experimentation proved this to be accurate. Once proof of concept was established, the next step was to optimize when and how much CO2 was needed to maintain the desired temperature inside the bottle. Ultimately, smaller double bursts were found to be the most effective way of maintaining the temperature of the drink. Depending on the size of the CO2 bottle used, drinks are able to maintain proper temperatures up to 3-4 times longer than by insulation alone. This is significant because it shows the concept doesn't just work, but it makes a considerable difference from merely insulating the bottle. This experiment provided positive results, allowing future work to be focused on the ergonomics and practicality of the final design.B.S. (Bachelor of Science

Use of Biomass From Reed Canary Grass (Phalaris Arundinacea) as Raw Material for Production of Paper Pulp and Fuel

Reed canary grass (Phalaris arundinacea) has been investigated as a potential industrial crop in Sweden and other European countries. Reed canary grass (RCG) can be used as raw-material for paper pulp or as biofuel for combustion. A new harvest method, the delayed harvesting system, was developed which makes it possible to get dry, ready to store, material. The method reduces cost and improves quality of the product. The use of RCG as an industrial crop requires a completely different quality compared to forage. The important part is the cellulose while protein and mineral nutrients are disturbing the process both as a fuel and in fibre production. Different botanical parts of the plant have different quality; it is possible to further improve quality by fractionating and processing. So far all experiments have been conducted with varieties of RCG developed for forage use. A plant breeding programme has been started aiming at varieties suitable for the new area

Broadband, unpolarized repumping and clearout light sources for Sr+^+ single-ion clocks

Future transportable optical clocks require compact and reliable light sources. Here, broadband, unpolarized repumper and state clearout sources for Sr+ single-ion optical clocks are reported. These turn-key devices require no frequency stabilization nor external modulators. They are fiber based, inexpensive, and compact. Key characteristics for clock operation are presented, including optical spectra, induced light shifts and required extinction ratios. Tests with an operating single-ion standard show a clearout efficiency of 100%. Compared to a laser-based repumper, the achievable fluorescence rates for ion detection are a few tens of per cent lower. The resulting ion kinetic temperature is 1--1.5 mK, near the Doppler limit of the ion system. Similar repumper light sources could be made for Ca+ (866 nm) and Ba+ (650 nm) using semiconductor gain media.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figure

Model Generation to Support Model-Based Testing Applied on NASA DAT - An Experience Report

Model-based Testing (MBT), where a model of the system under tests (SUT) behavior is used to automatically generate executable test cases, is a promising and versatile testing technology. Nevertheless, adoption of MBT technologies in industry is slow and many testing tasks are performed via manually created executable test cases (i.e. test programs such as JUnit). In order to adopt MBT, testers must learn how to construct models and use these models to generate test cases, which might be a hurdle. An interesting observation in our previous work is that the existing manually created test cases often provided invaluable insights for the manual creation of the testing models of the system. In this paper we present an approach that allows the tester to first create and debug a set of test cases. When the tester is happy with the test cases, the next step is to automatically generate a model from the test cases. The generated model is derived from the test cases, which are actions that the system can perform (e.g. a button clicks) and their expected outputs in form of assert statements (e.g. assert data entered). The model is a Finite State Machine (FSM) model that can be employed with little or no manual changes to generate additional test cases for the SUT. We successfully applied the approach in a feasibility study to the NASA Data Access Toolkit (DAT), which is a web-based GUI. One compelling finding is that the test cases that were generated from the automatically generated models were able to detect issues that were not detected by the original set of manually created test cases. We present the findings from the case study and discuss best practices for incorporating model generation techniques into an existing testing process

Locally Perturbed Random Walks with Unbounded Jumps

In \cite{SzT}, D. Sz\'asz and A. Telcs have shown that for the diffusively scaled, simple symmetric random walk, weak convergence to the Brownian motion holds even in the case of local impurities if $d \ge 2$. The extension of their result to finite range random walks is straightforward. Here, however, we are interested in the situation when the random walk has unbounded range. Concretely we generalize the statement of \cite{SzT} to unbounded random walks whose jump distribution belongs to the domain of attraction of the normal law. We do this first: for diffusively scaled random walks on $\mathbf Z^d$ $(d \ge 2)$ having finite variance; and second: for random walks with distribution belonging to the non-normal domain of attraction of the normal law. This result can be applied to random walks with tail behavior analogous to that of the infinite horizon Lorentz-process; these, in particular, have infinite variance, and convergence to Brownian motion holds with the superdiffusive $\sqrt{n \log n}$ scaling.Comment: 16 page

Course design: considerations for trainers – a professional guide

Overview: This Professional Guide introduces a structured approach to course design, highlighting the importance of articulating learning outcomes commensurate with the cognitive complexity of the target learning, prior to devising learning experiences and course content. The specific focus here is on face-to-face activities, but the guidance is also relevant for those designing online courses