8,058 research outputs found
Opportunities for reducing environmental emissions from forage-based dairy farms
Modern dairy production is inevitably associated with impacts to the environment and the challenge for the industry today is to increase production to meet growing global demand while minimising emissions to the environment. Negative environmental impacts include gaseous emissions to the atmosphere, of ammonia from livestock manure and fertiliser use, of methane from enteric fermentation and manure management, and of nitrous oxide from nitrogen applications to soils and from manure management. Emissions to water include nitrate, ammonium, phosphorus, sediment, pathogens and organic matter, deriving from nutrient applications to forage crops and/or the management of grazing livestock. This paper reviews the sources and impacts of such emissions in the context of a forage-based dairy farm and considers a number of potential mitigation strategies, giving some examples using the farm-scale model SIMSDAIRY. Most of the mitigation measures discussed are associated with systemic improvements in the efficiency of production in dairy systems. Important examples of mitigations include: improvements to dairy herd fertility, that can reduce methane and ammonia emissions by up to 24 and 17%, respectively; diet modification such as the use of high sugar grasses for grazing, which are associated with reductions in cattle N excretion of up to 20% (and therefore lower N losses to the environment) and potentially lower methane emissions, or reducing the crude protein content of the dairy cow diet through use of maize silage to reduce N excretion and methane emissions; the use of nitrification inhibitors with fertiliser and slurry applications to reduce nitrous oxide emissions and nitrate leaching by up to 50%. Much can also be achieved through attention to the quantity, timing and method of application of nutrients to forage crops and utilising advances made through genetic improvements
The Offline Software Framework of the Pierre Auger Observatory
The Pierre Auger Observatory is designed to unveil the nature and the origins
of the highest energy cosmic rays. The large and geographically dispersed
collaboration of physicists and the wide-ranging collection of simulation and
reconstruction tasks pose some special challenges for the offline analysis
software. We have designed and implemented a general purpose framework which
allows collaborators to contribute algorithms and sequencing instructions to
build up the variety of applications they require. The framework includes
machinery to manage these user codes, to organize the abundance of
user-contributed configuration files, to facilitate multi-format file handling,
and to provide access to event and time-dependent detector information which
can reside in various data sources. A number of utilities are also provided,
including a novel geometry package which allows manipulation of abstract
geometrical objects independent of coordinate system choice. The framework is
implemented in C++, and takes advantage of object oriented design and common
open source tools, while keeping the user side simple enough for C++ novices to
learn in a reasonable time. The distribution system incorporates unit and
acceptance testing in order to support rapid development of both the core
framework and contributed user code.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, presented at IEEE NSS/MIC, 23-29 October 2005,
Puerto Ric
Dispersal of human and plant pathogens biofilms via nitric oxide donors at 4°C
Recent studies suggest that nitric oxide donors capable of manipulating nitric oxide-mediated signaling in bacteria could induce dispersal of biofilms. Encased in extracellular polymeric substances, human and plant pathogens within biofilms are significantly more resistant to sanitizers. This is particularly a problem in refrigerated environments where food is processed. In an exercise aimed to study the potential of nitric oxide donors as biofilm dispersal in refrigerated conditions, we compared the ability of different nitric oxide donors (SNAP, NO-aspirin and Noc-5) to dislodge biofilms formed by foodborne, human and plant pathogens treated at 4 °C. The donors SNAP and Noc-5 were efficient in dispersing biofilms formed by Salmonella enterica, pathogenic Escherichia coli and Listeria innocua. The biomasses were decreased up to 30 % when compared with the untreated controls. When the plant pathogens Pectobacterium sp. and Xanthomonas sp. were tested the dispersion was mainly limited to Pectobacterium carotovorum biofilms, decreasing up to 15 % after exposure to molsidomine. Finally, the association of selected nitric oxide donors with sanitizers (DiQuat, H2O2, peracetic acid and PhenoTek II) was effective in dispersing biofilms. The best dispersal was achieved by pre-treating P. carotovorum with molsidomine and then peracetic acid. The synergistic effect was estimated up to ~35 % in dispersal when compared with peracetic acid alone. The association of nitric oxide donors with sanitizers could provide a foundation for an improved sanitization procedure for cleaning refrigerate environments
Generation of decoherence-free displaced squeezed states of radiation fields and a squeezed reservoir for atoms in cavity QED
We present a way to engineer an effective anti-Jaynes-Cumming and a
Jaynes-Cumming interaction between an atomic system and a single cavity mode
and show how to employ it in reservoir engineering processes. To construct the
effective Hamiltonian, we analyse considered the interaction of an atomic
system in a \{Lambda} configuration, driven by classical fields, with a single
cavity mode. With this interaction, we firstly show how to generate a
decoherence-free displaced squeezed state for the cavity field. In our scheme,
an atomic beam works as a reservoir for the radiation field trapped inside the
cavity, as employed recently by S. Pielawa et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 240401
(2007)] to generate an Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen entangled radiation state in
high-Q resonators. In our scheme, all the atoms have to be prepared in the
ground state and, as in the cited article, neither atomic detection nor precise
interaction times between the atoms and the cavity mode are required. From this
same interaction, we can also generate an ideal squeezed reservoir for atomic
systems. For this purpose we have to assume, besides the engineered atom-field
interaction, a strong decay of the cavity field (i.e., the cavity decay must be
much stronger than the effective atom-field coupling). With this scheme, some
interesting effects in the dynamics of an atom in a squeezed reservoir could be
tested
Projeto-piloto de promoção comercial de frutas da produção integrada: fundamentos e resultados.
bitstream/item/59966/1/CNPUV-CIR.TEC.-80-08.pd
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