Optimising Agronomic Options At The Farm Scale

Strategic planning and policy development for environmentally sustainable and economically viable management options for the rice based farming systems require the assessment of management options using mathematical models which integrate our understanding of water and salt movement with economic considerations at both the farm and regional scales. This project also had strong links with LWRRDC/MIL/CSIRO project on optimising irrigation intensities in the Murray Valley. During this project a standalone farm scale hydrological economic model SWAGMAN Farm (Salt Water and Groundwater MANagement) was developed and customised for situations in the Coleambally and Murray Irrigation Areas. The model processes were developed and refined by using feed back from irrigation managers, regulators and community groups. The following major achievements have been made: · Collection of crop, soil, irrigation, climatic and economic data sets for fourteen farms in the Murray Irrigation Districts · Rigorous validation of model processes by applying the model to fourteen farms with a range of enterprise, soil and groundwater conditions. · Development of simulation and optimisation modes in SWAGMAN Farm to assess environmental and economic impacts of existing and optimal cropping patterns · Various improvements of water and salt balance processes to suit conditions in the Murray Districts and the Coleambally Irrigation Area · Incorporation of soil water content accounting which provides flexibility in the representation of various starting soil profile water content conditions, water availability to crops and rational computation of recharge and watertable rise during the cropping and fallow periods · Development of a Windows based GAMS independent version of SWAGMAN Farm. GAMS (General Algebraic Modelling System) was an expensive software platform for the previous version with inflexible licence requirements. The new version written in C++ language uses Microsoft Access databases and will be linked with a GIS interface in near future. These sensitivity runs and model developments gained the confidence of members of the steering committee who provided vital inputs throughout this project. While considerable progress was made, they see the need for the work to continue to the stage where it can be applied to assist strategic planning and policy development, taking into account local regional conditions. Parallel to the modelling project an intensive paddock water monitoring project titled “Rigorously determined water balance benchmarks for irrigated crops and pasture’ was also initiated by the steering committee with the assistance of CSIRO, MIL, NSW Agriculture and LWRRDC. The purpose of the monitoring project was to further customise SWAGMAN Farm to local conditions and to validate the model results with the field data. Since monitoring projects take significant time in setting up and calibrating equipment, data analysis has only recently started, however initial comparisons of model results with the field results suggest that the improved SWAGMAN Farm can reasonably simulate field situations. However this work needs to continue to maximise the benefits of the paddock water balance monitoring. However, due to the wide range of groundwater, enterprise and soil conditions in the irrigation areas, SWAGMAN Farm needs to be applied to every farm to develop soundly based policy options. The need for application to individual farms is further driven by the complex regional groundwater interactions causing reversal (downward to upward and local discharge zones) of leakage rates in parts of the irrigation areas e.g. Murray Valley. This project has demonstrated that it is possible to develop methodology which helps assess optimal irrigation intensity within a multitude of biophysical and socio-economic constraints. The methods developed have scientific validity in capturing and representing key processes, and have community acceptance as a way of examining options that are important to them

Electrical characterization of the soft breakdown failure mode in MgO layers

The soft breakdown (SBD) failure mode in 20 nm thick MgO dielectric layers grown on Si substrates was investigated. We show that during a constant voltage stress, charge trapping and progressive breakdown coexist, and that the degradation dynamics is captured by a power-law time dependence. We also show that the SBD current-voltage (I-V) characteristics follow the power-law model I = aVb typical of this conduction mechanism but in a wider voltage window than the one reported in the past for SiO2. The relationship between the magnitude of the current and the normalized differential conductance was analyzed

A stochastic space-time rainfall forecasting system for real time flow forecasting I: Development of MTB conditional rainfall scenario generator

International audienceThe need for the development of a method for generating an ensemble of rainfall scenarios, which are conditioned on the observed rainfall, and its place in the HYREX programme is discussed. A review of stochastic models for rainfall, and rainfall forecasting techniques, is followed by a justification for the choice of the Modified Turning Bands (MTB) model in this context. This is a stochastic model of rainfall which is continuous over space and time, and which reproduces features of real rainfall fields at four distinct scales: raincells, cluster potential regions, rainbands and the overall outline of a storm at the synoptic scale. The model can be used to produce synthetic data sets, in the same format as data from a radar. An inversion procedure for inferring a construction of the MTB model which generates a given sequence of radar images is described. This procedure is used to generate an ensemble of future rainfall scenarios which are consistent with a currently observed storm. The combination of deterministic modelling at the large scales and stochastic modelling at smaller scales, within the MTB model, makes the system particularly suitable for short-term forecasts. As the lead time increases, so too does the variability across the set of generated scenarios. Keywords: MTB model, space-time rainfall field model, rainfall radar, HYREX, real-time flow forecasting</p

Filamentary Star Formation in NGC 1275

We examine the star formation in the outer halo of NGC~1275, the central galaxy in the Perseus cluster (Abell 426), using far ultraviolet and optical images obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope. We have identified a population of very young, compact star clusters with typical ages of a few Myr. The star clusters are organised on multiple-kiloparsec scales. Many of these star clusters are associated with "streaks" of young stars, the combination of which has a cometary appearance. We perform photometry on the star clusters and diffuse stellar streaks, and fit their spectral energy distributions to obtain ages and masses. These young stellar populations appear to be normal in terms of their masses, luminosities and cluster formation efficiency; <10% of the young stellar mass is located in star clusters. Our data suggest star formation is associated with the evolution of some of the giant gas filaments in NGC~1275 that become gravitationally unstable on reaching and possibly stalling in the outer galaxy. The stellar streaks then could represent stars moving on ballistic orbits in the potential well of the galaxy cluster. We propose a model where star-forming filaments, switched on ~50~Myr ago and are currently feeding the growth of the NGC~1275 stellar halo at a rate of ~2-3 solar masses per year. This type of process may also build stellar halos and form isolated star clusters in the outskirts of youthful galaxies.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

Microwave Dielectric Loss at Single Photon Energies and milliKelvin Temperatures

The microwave performance of amorphous dielectric materials at very low temperatures and very low excitation strengths displays significant excess loss. Here, we present the loss tangents of some common amorphous and crystalline dielectrics, measured at low temperatures (T < 100 mK) with near single-photon excitation energies, using both coplanar waveguide (CPW) and lumped LC resonators. The loss can be understood using a two-level state (TLS) defect model. A circuit analysis of the half-wavelength resonators we used is outlined, and the energy dissipation of such a resonator on a multilayered dielectric substrate is considered theoretically.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Applied Physics Letter

A generalized framework unifying image registration and respiratory motion models and incorporating image reconstruction, for partial image data or full images

Surrogate-driven respiratory motion models relate the motion of the internal anatomy to easily acquired respiratory surrogate signals, such as the motion of the skin surface. They are usually built by first using image registration to determine the motion from a number of dynamic images, and then fitting a correspondence model relating the motion to the surrogate signals. In this paper we present a generalized framework that unifies the image registration and correspondence model fitting into a single optimization. This allows the use of 'partial' imaging data, such as individual slices, projections, or k-space data, where it would not be possible to determine the motion from an individual frame of data. Motion compensated image reconstruction can also be incorporated using an iterative approach, so that both the motion and a motion-free image can be estimated from the partial image data. The framework has been applied to real 4DCT, Cine CT, multi-slice CT, and multi-slice MR data, as well as simulated datasets from a computer phantom. This includes the use of a super-resolution reconstruction method for the multi-slice MR data. Good results were obtained for all datasets, including quantitative results for the 4DCT and phantom datasets where the ground truth motion was known or could be estimated