INBREEDING AND INBREEDING DEPRESSION IN SLOVENIAN HOLSTEIN POPULATION

Analysis of inbreeding and inbreeding depression was done on the data of routine breeding value estimation for milk production data on Holstein population in Slovenia. A pedigree file of 106 433 animals born from 1952 to 2005 was investigated for the occurrence of inbreeding. The maximum inbreeding was 37.5. However average inbreeding coefficients of inbred cows (1.3 %) and of all cows with test day records (0.989 %) were low. Daily milk, protein, and fat yield of first five lactation for 86 122 cows were analyzed. Inbreeding was included in the animal model as a linear covariate. The regression coefficients of milk, fat, and protein yield, multiplied with 305 days present inbreeding depression of lactation yields, were -22.17 kg, -0.601 kg and -0.387 kg respectively, for 1 % of inbreeding

Does the European Union have a reverse gear? Policy dismantling in a hyperconsensual polity

The financial crisis has triggered demands to halt and even reverse the expansion of European Union (EU) policies. But have these and previous demands actually resulted in policy dismantling? The existing literature has charted the rise of dismantling discourses such as subsidiarity and better regulation, but has not examined the net effect on the acquis. For the first time, this contribution addresses this gap in the literature through an empirical study of policy change between 1992 and 2014. It is guided by a coding framework which captures the direction of policy change. It reveals that, despite its disposition towards consensualism, the EU has become a new locus of policy dismantling. However, not all policies targeted have been cut; many have stayed the same and some have even expanded. It concludes by identifying new directions for research on a topic that has continually fallen into the analytical blind spot of EU scholars

An Online Museum of Stories: Literary Travel Writing for Cultural Tourism Development

With rising tourism interest in cultural heritage, destination management organisations, museums and other cultural institutions are seeking methods of unlocking the intangible cultural heritage of local residents and sharing that before it is lost. This is specific knowledge of the uses and practices of disappearing spaces in towns, of plants and their uses as foodstuffs, and in clothing and of work practices that were more in-tune with local, sustainable production. This contribution outlines new methods for building the ethnographic museum as a museum of stories, and proposes a model that explores narrative through literary travel writing for a new public

Building the Ethnopôle: Eliciting and Sharing Ethnobotanical Knowledge in Tourism Development

With rising tourism interest in cultural heritage, destination management organisations, museums and other cultural institutions are seeking methods of unlocking the intangible cultural heritage of local residents and sharing that before it is lost. This is specific knowledge of the uses and practices of disappearing urban space, of plants and foodstuffs, of clothing and of work practices that were more in-tune with local, sustainable production. With the emergence of post-humanism, based on Deleuze’s reading of Spinoza’s ethics, this contribution outlines new methodologies in building the ethnopôle, and proposes a model for transmission that explores narrative knowing through literary travel writing for a new public

Digital quantum simulation of spin models with circuit quantum electrodynamics

Systems of interacting quantum spins show a rich spectrum of quantum phases and display interesting many-body dynamics. Computing characteristics of even small systems on conventional computers poses significant challenges. A quantum simulator has the potential to outperform standard computers in calculating the evolution of complex quantum systems. Here, we perform a digital quantum simulation of the paradigmatic Heisenberg and Ising interacting spin models using a two transmon-qubit circuit quantum electrodynamics setup. We make use of the exchange interaction naturally present in the simulator to construct a digital decomposition of the model-specific evolution and extract its full dynamics. This approach is universal and efficient, employing only resources which are polynomial in the number of spins and indicates a path towards the controlled simulation of general spin dynamics in superconducting qubit platforms.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figure

Superconducting quantum simulator for topological order and the toric code

Topological order is now being established as a central criterion for characterizing and classifying ground states of condensed matter systems and complements categorizations based on symmetries. Fractional quantum Hall systems and quantum spin liquids are receiving substantial interest because of their intriguing quantum correlations, their exotic excitations and prospects for protecting stored quantum information against errors. Here we show that the Hamiltonian of the central model of this class of systems, the Toric Code, can be directly implemented as an analog quantum simulator in lattices of superconducting circuits. The four-body interactions, which lie at its heart, are in our concept realized via Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices (SQUIDs) that are driven by a suitably oscillating flux bias. All physical qubits and coupling SQUIDs can be individually controlled with high precision. Topologically ordered states can be prepared via an adiabatic ramp of the stabilizer interactions. Strings of qubit operators, including the stabilizers and correlations along non-contractible loops, can be read out via a capacitive coupling to read-out resonators. Moreover, the available single qubit operations allow to create and propagate elementary excitations of the Toric Code and to verify their fractional statistics. The architecture we propose allows to implement a large variety of many-body interactions and thus provides a versatile analog quantum simulator for topological order and lattice gauge theories

Buried graphene heterostructures for electrostatic doping of low-dimensional materials

The fabrication and characterization of steep slope transistor devices based on low-dimensional materials requires precise electrostatic doping profiles with steep spatial gradients in order to maintain maximum control over the channel. In this proof-of-concept study we present a versatile graphene heterostructure platform with three buried individually addressable gate electrodes. The platform is based on a vertical stack of embedded titanium and graphene separated by an intermediate oxide to provide an almost planar surface. We demonstrate the functionality and advantages of the platform by exploring transfer and output characteristics at different temperatures of carbon nanotube field-effect transistors with different electrostatic doping configurations. Furthermore, we back up the concept with finite element simulations to investigate the surface potential. The presented heterostructure is an ideal platform for analysis of electrostatic doping of low-dimensional materials for novel low-power transistor devices

Transfer-free graphene passivation of sub 100 nm thin Pt and Pt–Cu electrodes for memristive devices

Memristive switches are among the most promising building blocks for future neuromorphic computing. These devices are based on a complex interplay of redox reactions on the nanoscale. Nanoionic phenomena enable non-linear and low-power resistance transition in ultra-short programming times. However, when not controlled, the same electrochemical reactions can result in device degradation and instability over time. Two-dimensional barriers have been suggested to precisely manipulate the nanoionic processes. But fabrication-friendly integration of these materials in memristive devices is challenging.Here we report on a novel process for graphene passivation of thin platinum and platinum/copper electrodes. We also studied the level of defects of graphene after deposition of selected oxides that are relevant for memristive switching

Observation of the Crossover from Photon Ordering to Delocalization in Tunably Coupled Resonators

Networks of nonlinear resonators offer intriguing perspectives as quantum simulators for non-equilibrium many-body phases of driven-dissipative systems. Here, we employ photon correlation measurements to study the radiation fields emitted from a system of two superconducting resonators, coupled nonlinearly by a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID). We apply a parametrically modulated magnetic flux to control the linear photon hopping rate between the two resonators and its ratio with the cross-Kerr rate. When increasing the hopping rate, we observe a crossover from an ordered to a delocalized state of photons. The presented coupling scheme is intrinsically robust to frequency disorder and may therefore prove useful for realizing larger-scale resonator arrays