Phase-dependent exciton transport and energy harvesting from thermal environments

Non-Markovian effects in the evolution of open quantum systems have recently attracted widespread interest, particularly in the context of assessing the efficiency of energy and charge transfer in nanoscale biomolecular networks and quantum technologies. With the aid of many-body simulation methods, we uncover and analyse an ultrafast environmental process that causes energy relaxation in the reduced system to depend explicitly on the phase relation of the initial state preparation. Remarkably, for particular phases and system parameters, the net energy flow is uphill, transiently violating the principle of detailed balance, and implying that energy is spontaneously taken up from the environment. A theoretical analysis reveals that non-secular contributions, significant only within the environmental correlation time, underlie this effect. This suggests that environmental energy harvesting will be observable across a wide range of coupled quantum systems.Comment: 5 + 4 pages, 3 + 2 figures. Comments welcom

Effect of Electrolyte Balance in Low-Protein Diets on Broiler Performance and Tibial Dyschondroplasia Incidence

A proper dietary electrolyte balance (DEB) is essential to ensure an optimum acid-base equilibrium and broiler performance. In low-CP diets, this balance can be affected by reduction of soybean meal and inclusion of high levels of synthetic amino acids. Although, some studies have related low-protein diets supplemented with amino acids and DEB, these relations are not well explained, because some research demonstrates confusion about the deficiency and balance of nutrients. The objective of these experiments was to evaluate the DEB effects of diets with low levels of protein supplemented with amino acids on broiler performance and bone development. Results indicated that DEB and CP content influenced broiler chick performance in the starter and growing periods. There was no significant effect due to the interaction between DEB and CP content for tibial dyschondroplasia incidence (TD) or in bone breaking resistance during the growing period of either experiment. The incidence of TD was reduced with 253 mEq/kg DEB in the starter period

Enzymes as Feed Additive to Aid in Responses Against Eimeria Species in Coccidia-Vaccinated Broilers Fed Corn-Soybean Meal Diets with Different Protein Levels

This research aimed to evaluate the effects of adding a combination of exogenous enzymes to starter diets varying in protein content and fed to broilers vaccinated at day of hatch with live oocysts and then challenged with mixed Eimeria spp. Five hundred four 1-d-old male Cobb-500 chickens were distributed in 72 cages. The design consisted of 12 treatments. Three anticoccidial control programs [ionophore (IO), coccidian vaccine (COV), and coccidia-vaccine + enzymes (COV + EC)] were evaluated under 3 CP levels (19, 21, and 23%), and 3 unmedicated-uninfected (UU) negative controls were included for each one of the protein levels. All chickens except those in unmedicated-uninfected negative controls were infected at 17 d of age with a mixed oral inoculum of Eimeria acervulina, Eimeria maxima, and Eimeria tenella. Live performance, lesion scores, oocyst counts, and samples for gut microflora profiles were evaluated 7 d postinfection. Ileal digestibility of amino acids (IDAA) was determined 8 d postinfection. Microbial communities (MC) were analyzed by G + C%, microbial numbers were counted by flow cytometry, and IgA concentrations were measured by ELISA. The lowest CP diets had poorer (P ≤ 0.001) BW gain and feed conversion ratio in the preinfection period. Coccidia-vaccinated broilers had lower performance than the ones fed ionophore diets during pre- and postchallenge periods. Intestinal lesion scores were affected (P ≤ 0.05) by anticoccidial control programs, but responses changed according to gut section. Feed additives or vaccination had no effect (P ≥ 0.05) on IDAA, and diets with 23% CP had the lowest (P ≤ 0.001) IDAA. Coccidial infection had no effect on MC numbers in the ileum but reduced MC numbers in ceca and suppressed ileal IgA production. The COV + EC treatment modulated MC during mixed coccidiosis infection but did not significantly improve chicken performance. Results indicated that feed enzymes may be used to modulate the gut microflora of cocci-vaccinated broiler chickens

FLICK: developing and running application-specific network services

Data centre networks are increasingly programmable, with application-specific network services proliferating, from custom load-balancers to middleboxes providing caching and aggregation. Developers must currently implement these services using traditional low-level APIs, which neither support natural operations on application data nor provide efficient performance isolation. We describe FLICK, a framework for the programming and execution of application-specific network services on multi-core CPUs. Developers write network services in the FLICK language, which offers high-level processing constructs and application-relevant data types. FLICK programs are translated automatically to efficient, parallel task graphs, implemented in C++ on top of a user-space TCP stack. Task graphs have bounded resource usage at runtime, which means that the graphs of multiple services can execute concurrently without interference using cooperative scheduling. We evaluate FLICK with several services (an HTTP load-balancer, a Memcached router and a Hadoop data aggregator), showing that it achieves good performance while reducing development effort

Growth and yield models in Spain: historical overview, contemporary examples and perspectives

Producción CientíficaIn this paper we present a review of forest models developed in Spain in recent years for both timber and non timber production and forest dynamics (regeneration, mortality,..). Models developed are whole stand, size (diameter) class and individual-tree. The models developed to date have been developed using data from permanent plots, experimental sites and the National Forest Inventory. In this paper we show the different sub-models developed so far and the friendly use software. Main perspectives of forest modelling in Spain are presented

Tracing drought effects from the tree to the stand growth in temperate and Mediterranean forests: insights and consequences for forest ecology and management

How drought affects tree and stand growth is an old question, but is getting unprecedented relevance in view of climate change. Stress effects related to drought have been mostly studied at the individual tree level, mostly investigating dominant trees and using their responses as indicator for the impact at the stand level. However, findings at tree and stand level may differ, as the stand responses include interactions and feedbacks that may buffer or aggravate what is observed at the individual tree level. Here, we trace drought effects on growth and development from tree to the stand scale. Therefore, we analyse annually measured data from long-term experiments in temperate and Mediterranean forests. With this analysis, we aim to disclose how well results of dominant tree growth reflect stand-level behaviour, hypothesizing that drought resistance of dominant trees’ can strongly deviate from the overall sensitivity of the stand. First, we theoretically derive how drought responses at the stand level emerge from the tree-level behaviour, thereby considering that potential drought resistance of individual trees is modulated by acclimation and tree–tree interactions at the stand level and that the overall stress response at the stand level results from species-specific and size-dependent individual tree growth and mortality. Second, reviewing respective peer-reviewed literature (24 papers) and complementing findings by own measurements (22 experiments) from temperate and Mediterranean monospecific and mixed-species forests, we are able to reveal main causes for deviations of tree-level and stand-level findings regarding drought stress responses. Using a long-term experiment in Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) KARST.) and European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.), we provide evidence that the species-dependent and size-dependent reactions matter and how the size–frequency distribution affects the scaling. We show by examples that tree-level derived results may overestimate growth losses by 25%. Third, we investigate the development of the growth dominance coefficient based on measurements gathered at the Bavarian forest climate stations. We show that drought changes stand biomass partitioning in favour of small trees, reduce social differentiation, and homogenize the vertical structure of forests. Finally, we discuss the drought-related consequences of the social class-specific growth reaction patterns for inventory and monitoring and highlight the importance of these findings for understanding site-specific stand dynamics, for forest modelling, and for silvicultural management

Requirements of Sodium and Chloride by Leghorn Laying Hens

Sodium and Cl are low-cost nutrients with great influence on feed conversion ratio (FCR), eggshell quality, and excreta moisture. Actual values of dietary requirements of these minerals for commercial laying hens are not well defined. These requirements were reevaluated in a factorial experiment using corn-soybean meal basal diets. No significant influence of Na and Cl levels was observed on egg production (%), egg weight (g), or feed intake (g/d), but levels of these minerals had variable effects on FCR, eggshell quality, and excreta moisture. The optimum requirement of Na changed according to the variable evaluated and level of Cl used