Ex-situ evaluation of morphological, agronomic and qualitative traits of a naturalized population of parsley (Petroselinum crispum (Mill) Nyman])

A naturalized population of parsley of the province of Trento, Italy, was evaluated ex-situ for its morphological and agronomic traits in a field trial in which it was compared with three commercial cultivars of the species. The naturalized population belongs to the smooth leaf type for the absence of curling, and differed from the other smooth leaf type accessions for the lower plant height, the smaller length of petiole and the prostrate attitude of the plant, all undesirable characteristics which make the harvest of plants more difficult. The yields of aerial parts and leaves were higher in the commercial cultivars, while the naturalized population had the highest yield and content of essential oil. Due to the high content and yield of essential oil, the naturalized population could be the object of an eventual breeding program aiming to improve the morphologic and agronomic undesirable characteristics

An adaptive agent-based system for deregulated smart grids

The power grid is undergoing a major change due mainly to the increased penetration of renewables and novel digital instruments in the hands of the end users that help to monitor and shift their loads. Such transformation is only possible with the coupling of an information and communication technology infrastructure to the existing power distribution grid. Given the scale and the interoperability requirements of such future system, service-oriented architectures (SOAs) are seen as one of the reference models and are considered already in many of the proposed standards for the smart grid (e.g., IEC-62325 and OASIS eMIX). Beyond the technical issues of what the service-oriented architectures of the smart grid will look like, there is a pressing question about what the added value for the end user could be. Clearly, the operators need to guarantee availability and security of supply, but why should the end users care? In this paper, we explore a scenario in which the end users can both consume and produce small quantities of energy and can trade these quantities in an open and deregulated market. For the trading, they delegate software agents that can fully interoperate and interact with one another thus taking advantage of the SOA. In particular, the agents have strategies, inspired from game theory, to take advantage of a service-oriented smart grid market and give profit to their delegators, while implicitly helping balancing the power grid. The proposal is implemented with simulated agents and interaction with existing Web services. To show the advantage of the agent with strategies, we compare our approach with the “base” agent one by means of simulations, highlighting the advantages of the proposal

Smart Meter Aware Domestic Energy Trading Agents

The domestic energy market is changing with the increasing availability of energy micro-generating facilities. On the long run, households will have the possibility to trade energy for purchasing to and for selling from a number of different actors. We model such a futuristic scenario using software agents. In this paper we illustrate an implementation including the interfacing with a physical Smart Meter and provide initial simulation results. Given the high autonomy of the actors in the domestic market and the complex set of behaviors, the agent approach proves to be effective for both modeling and simulating purposes