Maintenance breeding of conservation cereal varieties

The experiments shows that within the heritage material, varieties are identified with unique quality traits, including taste, colour and backing quality, which are not found in high yielding modern varieties available for organic farming. The paper presents the second year result of field evaluation of 212 Scandinavian heritage varieties grown on two sites in Denmark in 2007

Introduced Opuntia spp. in Madagascar : problems and opportunities

Several Opuntia species have been introduced to southern Madagascar and are today affecting the local economy. Especially the species Opuntia stricta has been recorded as a dangerous weed. The information about which species that are present and how they are affecting the life of the people in southern Madagascar has not earlier been described. In this study this information was collected using a semi-structured, open-ended interview technique. The aim was to describe how the Opuntia species are affecting the human livelihood and to describe the economical and nutritional importance of Opuntia spp. in ten study sites located in the Androy region in south Madagascar. In total 27 different Opuntia variants with local names was recorded and six of them was present in all study sites. Two species were having more impact than the others: 1) O. ficus-indica which fruit is an important food resource for humans and the cladodes are given as fodder to the livestock. 2) O. stricta which is a serious weed strongly affecting the economy and livelihood negatively in this region. The effect of O. stricta can be summarised in three categories: i) a weed problem. ii) loss in livestock. iii) a health problem. The important pastoralism in Androy is today highly depended to O. ficus-indica but seriously threatened by O. stricta

Lavfloran på almlågor

The interest in dead wood ecology has increased the last years. There have been many studies made on lichens on woody substrates of conifers in boreal forest, but this is the first study on the lichen flora on woody substrate in broad-leaved deciduous forest. In this study the lichen flora was inventoried on 30 decorticated logs of Wych elm, Ulmus glabra in three areas close to Ekoln bay in lake Mälaren South of Uppsala. Totally 36 lichen taxa and one non-lichenised fungus were recorded. According to literature 47 % of these lichen species were earlier not known as lignicolous. The study showed that the number of taxa increased with distance to the log base and decreased with measured log diameter. The highest diversity was found on logs in a stage of intermediate decay. One rare species was present on the logs, Bacidia vermifera.Under de senaste åren har intresset om ekologin kring död ved ökat. Det har gjorts en hel del studier kring lavar på barrträdsved i boreala skogar, men detta är den första studien av lavfloran på ädellövved. Trettio avbarkade lågor av skogsalm Ulmus glabra inventerades på tre platser vid Mälarviken Ekoln söder om Uppsala. Totalt hittades 36 taxa av lavar och en olicheniserad svamp. Av de funna arterna var enligt litteraturen 47 % inte kända som vedväxande. Antalet taxa ökade med avståndet till lågans bas och minskade med lågans uppmätta diameter. Högst diversitet fanns på lågorna med intermediär nedbrytningsgrad. En ovanlig art hittades på lågorna, nämligen Bacidia vermifera

Rural depopulation policies in Sweden: What can rural municipalities do to reverse a population decline?

There is an urbanization process going on all over the world and even if the process has a slower pace in Sweden now than during the industrialization period, the rural areas has experienced a general population decline the last two decades, despite a population growth nationally. This population decline has negative consequences for the Swedish rural municipalities and most of them uses, beside their mandatory welfare duties, various policies aimed towards having a positive population development. This study uses two different methods with one large N study and one small N study of rural municipalities with the intention of increase our understanding on how municipalities work to counter depopulation and what policies that actually have an impact on population changes, and whether or not these can be regarded as effective. The results show that municipalities work differently towards population changes and it is hard to make any conclusions about the effectiveness of the policies used. The conclusion is made that all municipalities face different prerequisites and there is no ‘one size fit all’ solution, and hence municipalities should focus on being as good as possible in their welfare duties

Monitoring sickness insurance claimants: evidence from a social experiment

The paper exploits a unique social experiment carried out in 1988 in Sweden to identify the effect of monitoring on sickness absence. The treatment consists of postponing the first formal point of monitoring during a sickness absence spell, a requirement for a doctor’s certificate, from day eight to day fifteen. The experiment was conducted in two geographical areas, and the treatment group was randomized by birth date. The results show strong effects on sickness absence duration from extending the waiting period in both areas. On average, the durations increased by 6.6 percent. No effect on incidence of sickness absence is found. A heterogeneity analysis reveals that monitoring affects men more than women.Absenteeism; sickness insurance; monitoring; social experiment

Modeling and Prediction of Radio Channels for Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing

In a wireless communication system, the channel is ever changing due to multipath properties such as excess delays and constructive and destructive interference. In a step to optimize system performance, it would be beneficial to have access to channel state information of both present subchannels' future development and subchannels outside the currently used frequency interval. In this thesis, radio channels for Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is concerned. Channels are modelled and a prediction algorithm appli-cable in time or frequency direction of the frequency response is developed. The algorithm derives an autoregressive (AR) model of the channel and exploits the close connection between prediction of a time discrete signal and an autoregres-sive process. The great over sampling at the receiver, compared to the maximum Doppler shift or maximum excess delay of the channel, yields it feasible to derive the model with decreased sampling rate and thus only use pilot symbols. This rate reduction gives longer accurate predictions but also an interpolation issue that is solved by Wiener filters. The mean performance of the approach is evaluated by calculating the root mean square error (RMSE) of predictions as functions of various channel and algorithm parameters. Simulations show that the algorithm is able to predict several coherence times or coherence bandwidths of a channel. The algorithm is also extended to use several OFDM symbols and an averaging finite impulse response (FIR) filter, yielding a considerable increase in prediction performance. It is also appraised as a tool for adaptive symbol mapping in a frequency interval not currently used. Results show an opportunity of substantially higher data throughput than for a mapping scheme based on the mean SNR of the channel

Skokie, the ACLU and the Endurance of Democratic Theory

ZnO nanorods (NRs) with high surface area to volume ratio and biocompatibility is used as an efficient photosensitizer carrier system and at the same time providing intrinsic white light needed to achieve cancer cell necrosis. In this letter, ZnO nanorods used for the treatment of breast cancer cell (T47D) are presented. To adjust the sample for intracellular experiments, we have grown the ZnO nanorods on the tip of borosilicate glass capillaries (0.5 mu m diameter) by aqueous chemical growth technique. The grown ZnO nanorods were conjugated using protoporphyrin dimethyl ester (PPDME), which absorbs the light emitted by the ZnO nanorods. Mechanism of cytotoxicity appears to involve the generation of singlet oxygen inside the cell. The novel findings of cell-localized toxicity indicate a potential application of PPDME-conjugated ZnO NRs in the necrosis of breast cancer cell within few minutes

Timing- and power-driven ALU design training using spreadsheet-based arithmetic exploration

We describe master-level design training that combines ALU design exercises based on commercial synthesis tools and arithmetic explorations based on spreadsheets. Despite its limited complexity, the ALU has a few important properties that make it suitable for our training; 1) the ALU subcircuits are diverse and contain both short and long timing paths, 2) timing-driven design is called for, since the ALU is a performance bottleneck, and 3) the ALU is continuously used, making power dissipation an important design parameter. After enforcing strict timing constraints during synthesis of the ALU, the students need to reconsider how to implement the arithmetic block, which initially is too slow. Here, performing arithmetic explorations inside an innovative spreadsheet environment helps to visualize circuit implementation tradeoffs. The final phase in the design training focuses on power analysis and demonstrates that the choice of timing constraint impacts power dissipation

ASIC Implementation of Time-Domain Digital Backpropagation with Deep-Learned Chromatic Dispersion Filters

We consider time-domain digital backpropagation with chromatic dispersion filters jointly optimized and quantized using machine-learning techniques. Compared to the baseline implementations, we show improved BER performance and >40% power dissipation reductions in 28-nm CMOS.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figures, updated reference list, added one sentence in the result section for clarit