European farmers' intentions to invest in 2014-2020: survey results

The present study aims to analyse farmers’ intentions to invest in the period 2014-2020, focussing on investments in land, buildings, machinery and equipment, training, and quotas and production rights. It provides up-to-date information on EU farm investment patterns that is not otherwise available in traditional agricultural statistics (such as Farm Accountancy Data Network or the Eurostat Farm Structure Survey). Use of the data in this study contributes to the general understanding of the determinants of investment decisions and farmers’ reaction to EU Agricultural policy.JRC.J.4-Agriculture and Life Sciences in the Econom

Differentiation between decomposed remains of human origin and bigger mammals

This study is a follow-up study in the search for a human specific marker in the decomposition where the VOC-profile of decomposing human, pig, lamb and roe remains were analyzed using a thermal desorber combined with a gas chromatograph coupled to a mass spectrometer in a laboratory environment during 6 months. The combination of 8 previously identified human and pig specific compounds (ethyl propionate, propyl propionate, propyl butyrate, ethyl pentanoate, 3-methylthio-1-propanol, methyl(methylthio)ethyl disulfide, diethyl disulfide and pyridine) was also seen in these analyzed mammals. However, combined with 5 additional compounds (hexane, heptane, octane, N-(3-methylbutyl)- and N-(2-methylpropyl)acetamide) human remains could be separated from pig, lamb and roe remains. Based on a higher number of remains analyzed, as compared with the pilot study, it was no longer possible to rely on the 5 previously proposed esters to separate pig from human remains. From this follow-up study reported, it was found that pyridine is an interesting compound specific to human remains. Such a human specific marker can help in the training of cadaver dogs or in the development of devices to search for human remains. However, further investigations have to verify these results.</p

Medical Findings and Toxicological Analysis in Infant Death by Balloon Gas Asphyxia:A Case Report

In recent years, the increasing number of asphyxiation cases due to helium inhalation is remarkable. All described cases in the literature where diagnosed as suicide. In this article, however, we describe a triple infant homicide in which helium, as balloon gas, was administered to three young children after sedation causing asphyxiation and death through the medical findings and toxicological analysis. During autopsy, in addition to standard toxicological samples, gas samples from lungs as well as lung tissue itself were directly collected into headspace vials. Besides routine toxicological analysis, which revealed toxic levels of doxylamine, qualitative analysis on gas and lung samples was performed using headspace gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. As carrier gas, the commonly used helium was replaced by nitrogen. In gas samples from lungs of all three children, no helium was found. Nevertheless, lung tissue samples were found positive on helium. Therefore, sedation followed by asphyxia due to helium inhalation can strongly be assumed as the cause of death of all three children.</p

Influence of power control strategies on the voltage profile in an islanded microgrid

The emergence of large amounts of distributed energy resources (DER) poses new challenges for the active participation of those units in the control of the grid. In this context, a recent development is the microgrid, which presents a coordinated approach for integrating the DER in the electrical grid. Microgrids are able to operate either connected to the distribution grid or in islanded mode. In this paper, the influence of different power control strategies of DER is studied with respect to the voltage profile in an islanded microgrid. A description of the control strategies is presented, as well as some simulation results for a basic microgrid

Amortissement actif des structures flexibles

Doctorat en sciences appliquéesinfo:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublishe

Transport phenomena in porous media / Phénomène de transport en milieux poreux

Porous media are ubiquitous in our common life : typically, the soil, our skin, our clothes, the coffee filters ... exhibit non-homogeneous properties (their porosity) which allow various fluids to flow across the solid matrix. Exploiting the porous properties of these materials is also frequent in the industry. Indeed, they are present in many application fields such as the forming of composite materials, clean motor devices, filtration systems, oil extraction, mixing devices, biological tissue substitution, etc. The objective of this thesis is to investigate the transport phenomena associated with a wide class of flows in porous media and to analyse more deeply the associated physical effects, as represented by the medium permeability and mechanical dispersion tensors. The present work has been carried out following a three-step strategy. Firstly, we have investigated the theory of transport in porous media and we have developed continuous and micro-macro physical models to represent the principal macroscopic flow effects taking into account the associated application conditions. Then we have studied the numerical solution of the resulting system while an experimental device has been set up in order to validate the entire strategy and the obtained simulation results. Finally, as applications of our developments, we have investigated some industrial flows pertaining to Liquid Moulding Technologies, and also the behaviour of cartilage as a porous medium, with a final comparison of numerical and experimental results.(FSA 3)--UCL, 200

Amortissement actif des structures flexibles

Doctorat en sciences appliquéesinfo:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublishe