Management & sustainability of stockless organic arable and horticultural systems

The essential difference between stockless and stocked systems is that the fertility building clover ley and other “forage crops” are not processed through an animal but instead are grown as green manures which are returned directly to the soil by mulching, incorporation or occasionally through composting of the green manure. Stockless systems provide no opportunity for the creation of straw and animal manure based farm yard manure or compost. While there is no research evidence that the lack of animals or manure based compost affects overall soil fertility and crop yield, there is some research evidence that animal manure enhances soil mychorrizae populations and soil organic matter accumulation. This effect might also be seen from the use of plant based compost, sometimes sourced off-farm as “green waste” in stockless systems, but there is no comparative work available. While the use of manures has the advantage of allowing movement of fertility around the farm within a rotation, grazing animals have the drawback of uneven dispersal of manure and urine and manure storage is liable to poor management and loss of nutrients. Green manures are fundamental to stockless systems, both as one or two year crops which are either mulched or incorporated or grown as short term catch crops or undersown crops. With appropriate selection and management of green manures there is potential for enhanced fertility building over that which is possible with grazed leys. The practical commercial experience of farmers using stockless rotations is stronger than the research would suggest in terms of supporting its technical success and viability. Weed control remains a serious problem for arable farms which requires very high standards of management. The demand for organic livestock products is increasing and the area of organic land producing feed grains is insufficient to support the required expansion. World demand for organic grains is increasing. The introduction of livestock on to specialist conventional cereal producing farms in many instances requires prohibitively expensive infrastructure costs. Stockless rotations utilising green manures to fix nitrogen as part of the rotation provide a technically feasible and profitable alternative. Stockless horticultural systems operated with or without the use of imported manure or compost offer potential for technically and financially viable systems provided that there is an appropriate balance of fertility building green manures and cash crops

A UNIFIED HARDWARE/SOFTWARE PRIORITY SCHEDULING MODEL FOR GENERAL PURPOSE SYSTEMS

Migrating functionality from software to hardware has historically held the promise of enhancing performance through exploiting the inherent parallel nature of hardware. Many early exploratory efforts in repartitioning traditional software based services into hardware were hampered by expensive ASIC development costs. Recent advancements in FPGA technology have made it more economically feasible to explore migrating functionality across the hardware/software boundary. The flexibility of the FPGA fabric and availability of configurable soft IP components has opened the potential to rapidly and economically investigate different hardware/software partitions. Within the real time operating systems community, there has been continued interest in applying hardware/software co-design approaches to address scheduling issues such as latency and jitter. Many hardware based approaches have been reported to reduce the latency of computing the scheduling decision function itself. However continued adherence to classic scheduler invocation mechanisms can still allow variable latencies to creep into the time taken to make the scheduling decision, and ultimately into application timelines. This dissertation explores how hardware/software co-design can be applied past the scheduling decision itself to also reduce the non-predictable delays associated with interrupts and timers. By expanding the window of hardware/software co-design to these invocation mechanisms, we seek to understand if the jitter introduced by classical hardware/software partitionings can be removed from the timelines of critical real time user processes. This dissertation makes a case for resetting the classic boundaries of software thread level scheduling, software timers, hardware timers and interrupts. We show that reworking the boundaries of the scheduling invocation mechanisms helps to rectify the current imbalance of traditional hardware invocation mechanisms (timers and interrupts) and software scheduling policy (operating system scheduler). We re-factor these mechanisms into a unified hardware software priority scheduling model to facilitate improvements in performance, timeliness and determinism in all domains of computing. This dissertation demonstrates and prototypes the creation of a new framework that effects this basic policy change. The advantage of this approach lies within it's ability to unify, simplify and allow for more control within the operating systems scheduling policy

ENG 1002G-007-040: Composition and Literature

Late-onset neonatal sepsis is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in neonates. Late-onset sepsis is usually defined as sepsis >72 hours after birth. Low birth weight and gestational age are inversely related to the development of late-onset sepsis. Gram-positive organisms appear to be the cause of the majority of the infections. Particularly coagulase-negative staphylococci have been implicated in late-onset neonatal sepsis. The pathophysiological mechanisms underlying the development of sepsis is a complex interaction between the invading pathogen and the neonate’s immune system. Diagnosing late-onset sepsis is extremely challenging due to unspecific symptoms and clinical signs which frequently can mimic other non-infectious etiologies. Blood cultures are time consuming and often yield false negative results. Markers and laboratory test used in the evaluation, such as white blood cell count, absolute neutrophil counts, immature-to-total neutrophil ratio, C-reactive protein, procalcitonin, tumor necrosis factor-α, serum amyloid A, IL-6, IL-8 and CD64 have been used to assist in the identification of late-onset sepsis. However, at present time no marker is individually sufficient to confirm the diagnosis. Usage of two or more markers with different properties, also measured in different time intervals often leads to increased diagnostic accuracy. This could be helpful for the clinicians in the diagnosis and management of late-onset sepsis. There are several novel biomarkers under investigation that appear promising for the future.Pojava kasne novorođenačke sepse je jedan od vodećih uzroka smrtnosti novorođenčadi. Kasna novorođenačka sepsa obično se definira kao sepsa koja nastaje nakon više od sedamdeset dva sata poslije rođenja. Niske težine novorođenčadi i gestacijska dob su obrnuto povezane s nastupom ove sepse. Čini se da su gram-pozitivni organizmi, a posebice koagulaza-negativni stafilokoki, najčešći uzročnici infekcija koje vode u novorođenačku sepsu. Patofiziološki mehanizmi iza nastanka sepse su složena interakcija između patogena i imunološkog sustava novorođenčeta. Dijagnosticiranje kasne novorođenačke sepse je iznimno zahtjevno zbog nespecifičnih simptoma i kliničkih znakova koji često mogu oponašati druga neinfektivna stanja. Bakterijske hemokulture uzimaju vremena i često su lažno negativne. Postoji više markera i laboratorijskih testova, kao što su broj bijelih krvnih stanica, apsolutni broj neutrofila, omjer ukupnih neutrofila, C-reaktivni protein, prokalcitonin, čimbenik nekroze tumora, serum amiloid A, IL-6, IL- 8 i CD64 koji se koriste u postavljanju dijagnoze kasne novorođenačke sepse. Međutim, trenutno nema specifičnih markera za pouzdano postavljanje dijagnoze. Kombiniranje dva ili više markera s različitim svojstvima koji su uzeti u različitim vremenskim razmacima, povećava dijagnostičku točnost. To bi moglo biti korisno za kliničare i u dijagnozi i liječenju kasne novorođenačke sepse. U toku su istraživanja na više različitih markera s obećavajućim izgledima

Shipboard aggregate power monitoring

Thesis (Nav. E. and S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2009.Includes bibliographical references (p. 96-100).Modem naval warships rely on vast arrays of sensor networks to evaluate the performance of mission critical systems. Although these sensor networks enable increased levels of automation, they are costly to install and to maintain. The power distribution network offers an alternative solution for tracking the performance of mission critical systems. Research conducted at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Laboratory for Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems (LEES) has proven that the power distribution network contains vital information that can provide performance monitoring and automatic diagnostic functions. This thesis will address the issue of sensor-count reduction through the application of Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring (NILM) technology. Theoretical studies and field experiments will be presented in order to demonstrate the NILM's ability to correlate load activity with power measured from an aggregate level in the distribution system. Additionally, a critical evaluation is conducted on the current NILM configuration's ability to perform automated classification. Findings will be supported using data collected from NILMs monitoring power flow on board the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter ESCANABA (WMEC-907).by Keith P. Douglas.Nav.E.and S.M

Senior Recital

List of performers and performances

Digital Energy Networks: A Post Occupancy Evaluation and Appraisal of an Intelligent Low Energy Lighting System

The reduction in the electrical power requirements of LED lighting and the coinciding advancements in digital technology have now enabled luminaires to be powered and controlled exclusively over safety extra low voltage (SELV) wiring systems. The implementation of LED luminaires powered via a centralised 48 Volt DC low-latency communication network, with the capability to gather real-time data, has provided the potential to yield considerable electrical energy savings within a building. This paper will present an appraisal of this technology and will examine the technologies potential to make electrical energy savings, improve the quality of lighting and achieve cost savings on an electrical distribution system within a building environment. The intelligent low voltage lighting system was tested in a controlled environment and the energy reduction methods employed in an existing installation over one year provided a further reduction in energy consumption compared to the system\u27s original settings. Furthermore, the ability of the system to enhance the buildings intelligence, in terms of monitoring space utilisation, traffic patterns and temperature

AMP: a new time-frequency feature extraction method for intermittent time-series data

The characterisation of time-series data via their most salient features is extremely important in a range of machine learning task, not least of all with regards to classification and clustering. While there exist many feature extraction techniques suitable for non-intermittent time-series data, these approaches are not always appropriate for intermittent time-series data, where intermittency is characterized by constant values for large periods of time punctuated by sharp and transient increases or decreases in value. Motivated by this, we present aggregation, mode decomposition and projection (AMP) a feature extraction technique particularly suited to intermittent time-series data which contain time-frequency patterns. For our method all individual time-series within a set are combined to form a non-intermittent aggregate. This is decomposed into a set of components which represent the intrinsic time-frequency signals within the data set. Individual time-series can then be _t to these components to obtain a set of numerical features that represent their intrinsic time-frequency patterns. To demonstrate the effectiveness of AMP, we evaluate against the real word task of clustering intermittent time-series data. Using synthetically generated data we show that a clustering approach which uses the features derived from AMP significantly outperforms traditional clustering methods. Our technique is further exemplified on a real world data set where AMP can be used to discover groupings of individuals which correspond to real world sub-populations

The IUCN Red List of Ecosystems: motivations, challenges, and applications

Abstract In response to growing demand for ecosystem-level risk assessment in biodiversity conservation, and rapid proliferation of locally tailored protocols, the IUCN recently endorsed new Red List criteria as a global standard for ecosystem risk assessment. Four qualities were sought in the design of the IUCN criteria: generality; precision; realism; and simplicity. Drawing from extensive global consultation, we explore trade-offs among these qualities when dealing with key challenges, including ecosystem classification, measuring ecosystem dynamics, degradation and collapse, and setting decision thresholds to delimit ordinal categories of threat. Experience from countries with national lists of threatened ecosystems demonstrates well-balanced trade-offs in current and potential applications of Red Lists of Ecosystems in legislation, policy, environmental management and education. The IUCN Red List of Ecosystems should be judged by whether it achieves conservation ends and improves natural resource management, whether its limitations are outweighed by its benefits, and whether it performs better than alternative methods. Future development of the Red List of Ecosystems will benefit from the history of the Red List of Threatened Species which was trialed and adjusted iteratively over 50 years from rudimentary beginnings. We anticipate the Red List of Ecosystems will promote policy focus on conservation outcomes in situ across whole landscapes and seascapes

Recent and Current Educational Research with and in Developing Countries by Researchers from Britain

SUMMARY A survey of British work on education in developing countries lists projects under a number of headings — from ‘qualifications and job selection’, to ‘small countries’, and ‘in service training’. The article ends with a plea for more interdisciplinary work, as well as more cross?national collaboration. RESUMEN Investigación educacional británica reciente con y en los países en desarrollo Este estudio del trabajo británico sobre educación en los países en desarrollo, proporciona una lista de proyectos bajo títulos que van desde ‘calificaciones y selección de trabajo’ a ‘países pequeños’ y ‘en capacitación de servicio’. El artículo termina solicitando mayor trabajo interdisciplinario y mayor colaboración bilateral. SOMMAIRE La récente recherche actuelle sur l'éducation par des chercheurs de Grande?Bretagne avec et dans les pays en voie de développement Un rapport du travail britannique sur l'éducation dans les pays en voie de développement énumère les projets sous différentes rubriques — de ‘qualifications et sélection d'emploi’, à ‘petits pays’, et ‘formation sur le tas’. L'article se termine par des arguments pour un travail plus interdisciplinaire, ainsi qu'une plus grande collaboration transnationale