BioConcens: Biomass and bioenergy production agriculture – consequences for soil fertility, environment, spread of animal parasites and socio-economy

The research programme called “international research cooperation and organic integrity” was commenced for a period 2006-2010. It is coordinated by DARCOF (The Danish Research Centre for Organic Farming). The whole programme, with acronym DARCOF III, consists of 15 projects (http://www.darcof.dk/research/darcofiii/index.html). One of them is BIOCONCENS - Biomass and bioenergy production in organic farming – consequences for soil fertility, environment, spread of animal parasites and socio-economy (http://www.bioconcens.elr.dk/uk/). The production of bioenergy in organic agriculture (OA) can reduce its dependency of fossil fuels and decrease green house gasses emission; consequently it will increase sustainability of organic farms. Biorefinery concept based on co-production of biogas, bioethanol and protein fodder in organic farming will be developed within the BIOCONCENS project and the background for the project and the different work packages will be presented in this paper

Herbicide Control of Tall Larkspurs on Mountain Rangeland

Tall larkspurs kill more cattle on mountain rangelands than any other plant or disease. Tall larkspurs are principal components of tall forb communities and occur in patches associated with snow drifts in mountain big sagebrush, aspen and subalpine plant communities. Controlling larkspur patches can substantially reduce cattle deaths (3). Larkspur will never be eradicated, but if its density could be reduced to where a cow could not eat enough larkspur, fast enough, death losses can be reduced

Abelian Higgs Hair for Rotating and Charged Black Holes

We study the problem of vortex solutions in the background of rotating black holes in both asymptotically flat and asymptoticlly anti de Sitter spacetimes. We demonstrate the Abelian Higgs field equations in the background of four dimensional Kerr, Kerr-AdS and Reissner-Nordstrom-AdS black holes have vortex line solutions. These solutions, which have axial symmetry, are generalization of the Nielsen-Olesen string. By numerically solving the field equations in each case, we find that these black holes can support an Abelian Higgs field as hair. This situation holds even in the extremal case, and no flux-expulsion occurs. We also compute the effect of the self gravity of the Abelian Higgs field show that the the vortex induces a deficit angle in the corresponding black hole metrics.Comment: 22 pages, 16 figures, a section about the vortex self gravity on Kerr black hole added, extremal black holes considered, one figure changed, one reference adde

Pulses in the Zero-Spacing Limit of the GOY Model

We study the propagation of localised disturbances in a turbulent, but momentarily quiescent and unforced shell model (an approximation of the Navier-Stokes equations on a set of exponentially spaced momentum shells). These disturbances represent bursts of turbulence travelling down the inertial range, which is thought to be responsible for the intermittency observed in turbulence. Starting from the GOY shell model, we go to the limit where the distance between succeeding shells approaches zero (``the zero spacing limit'') and helicity conservation is retained. We obtain a discrete field theory which is numerically shown to have pulse solutions travelling with constant speed and with unchanged form. We give numerical evidence that the model might even be exactly integrable, although the continuum limit seems to be singular and the pulses show an unusual super exponential decay to zero as $\exp(- \mathrm{const} \sigma^n)$ when $n \to \infty$, where $\sigma$ is the {\em golden mean}. For finite momentum shell spacing, we argue that the pulses should accelerate, moving to infinity in a finite time. Finally we show that the maximal Lyapunov exponent of the GOY model approaches zero in this limit.Comment: 27 pages, submitted for publicatio

Biomass and bioenergy production in organic agriculture. Consequences for soil fertility, environment, spread of animal parasites and socio-economy. BioConcnes, a 4-year interdisciplinary project.

Energy production and energy use in organic agriculture (OA) need to be addressed in order to reduce the reliance on non-renewable fossil fuels and minimize greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Thus, there is an obligation to find consensus between the apparent opposing aims of renewable (bio) energy production and soil fertility in OA. This project aims at designing and evaluate a combined concept for biomass and bio-energy production in OA, while considering soil fertility

Catastrophic emplacement of giant landslides aided by thermal decomposition: Heart Mountain, Wyoming

The Heart Mountain landslide of northwest Wyoming is the largest known sub-aerial landslide on Earth. During its emplacement more than 2000 km3 of Paleozoic sedimentary and Eocene volcanic rocks slid >45 km on a basal detachment surface dipping 2°, leading to 100 yr of debate regarding the emplacement mechanisms. Recently, emplacement by catastrophic sliding has been favored, but experimental evidence in support of this is lacking. Here we show in friction experiments on carbonate rocks taken from the landslide that at slip velocities of several meters per second CO2 starts to degas due to thermal decomposition induced by flash heating after only a few hundred microns of slip. This is associated with the formation of vesicular degassing rims in dolomite clasts and a crystalline calcite cement that closely resemble microstructures in the basal slip zone of the natural landslide. Our experimental results are consistent with an emplacement mechanism whereby catastrophic slip was aided by carbonate decomposition and release of CO2, allowing the huge upper plate rock mass to slide over a ‘cushion’ of pressurized material

Vortex Holography

We show that the Abelian Higgs field equations in the four dimensional anti de Sitter spacetime have a vortex line solution. This solution, which has cylindrical symmetry in AdS$_4$, is a generalization of the flat spacetime Nielsen-Olesen string. We show that the vortex induces a deficit angle in the AdS$_4$ spacetime that is proportional to its mass density. Using the AdS/CFT correspondence, we show that the mass density of the string is uniform and dual to the discontinuity of a logarithmic derivative of correlation function of the boundary scalar operator.Comment: LaTeX, 20 pages, 4 eps figures, references and two paragraphs added, to appear in Nucl. Phys.