FeederAnt - An autonomous mobile unit feeding outdoor pigs

Small robots and the concept of decentralized animal husbandry make it possible to renew the principles of organic agriculture. The farm animals will be able to use the same type of housing and are placed integrated with the fields. This is expected to achieve a better utilization of nutrients and a better survival rate for useful insects and micro organisms. The small fields are flexible and could fit to the variation in soil structure topography. This type of precision agriculture has the possibility of increasing biodiversity. The paper presents the concept of an autonomic feeding system for outdoor piglets. Initial results are presented using a remote controlled feeding unit (a prototype of the FeederAnt) to feed several pens with piglets. The FeederAnt drives into the grass paddocks twice a day and position itself in a new location for each feeding. This will help to distribute the manure from the animals evenly over the grass paddock to prevent point leaching of nutrients. The FeederAnt replaces many stationary feeding tables and reduce the amount of daily manual feeding routines. Further, it is expected that the problem with vermins will be solved since no feed residues will be left within the pens.

Influence of the biquadratic interlayer coupling in the specific heat of Fibonacci magnetic multilayers

A theoretical study of the specific heat C(T) as a function of temperature in Fibonacci magnetic superlattices is presented. We consider quasiperiodic structures composed of ferromagnetic films, each described by the Heisenberg model, with biquadratic and bilinear coupling between them. We have taken the ratios between the biquadratic and bilinear exchange terms according to experimental data recently measured for different regions of their regime. Although some previous properties of the spin wave specific heat are also reproduced here, new features appear in this case, the most important of them being an interesting broken-symmetry related to the interlayer biquadratic term.Comment: 13 pages, 4 ps figures, Submitted to Physica

An autonomous robot for feeding outdoor pigs

The objective of this is to develop a rational feeding technique for outdoor pigs and at the same time improve the outdoor system with regard to environmental impact and health. For a rational and competitive free ranch system ensuring high animal welfare and low environmental strain automation is crucial

Rare SLC13A1 variants associate with intervertebral disc disorder highlighting role of sulfate in disc pathology

Publisher Copyright: © 2022, The Author(s).Back pain is a common and debilitating disorder with largely unknown underlying biology. Here we report a genome-wide association study of back pain using diagnoses assigned in clinical practice; dorsalgia (119,100 cases, 909,847 controls) and intervertebral disc disorder (IDD) (58,854 cases, 922,958 controls). We identify 41 variants at 33 loci. The most significant association (ORIDD = 0.92, P = 1.6 × 10−39; ORdorsalgia = 0.92, P = 7.2 × 10−15) is with a 3’UTR variant (rs1871452-T) in CHST3, encoding a sulfotransferase enzyme expressed in intervertebral discs. The largest effects on IDD are conferred by rare (MAF = 0.07 − 0.32%) loss-of-function (LoF) variants in SLC13A1, encoding a sodium-sulfate co-transporter (LoF burden OR = 1.44, P = 3.1 × 10−11); variants that also associate with reduced serum sulfate. Genes implicated by this study are involved in cartilage and bone biology, as well as neurological and inflammatory processes.Peer reviewe

TRY plant trait database – enhanced coverage and open access

Plant traits—the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants—determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research spanning from evolutionary biology, community and functional ecology, to biodiversity conservation, ecosystem and landscape management, restoration, biogeography and earth system modelling. Since its foundation in 2007, the TRY database of plant traits has grown continuously. It now provides unprecedented data coverage under an open access data policy and is the main plant trait database used by the research community worldwide. Increasingly, the TRY database also supports new frontiers of trait‐based plant research, including the identification of data gaps and the subsequent mobilization or measurement of new data. To support this development, in this article we evaluate the extent of the trait data compiled in TRY and analyse emerging patterns of data coverage and representativeness. Best species coverage is achieved for categorical traits—almost complete coverage for ‘plant growth form’. However, most traits relevant for ecology and vegetation modelling are characterized by continuous intraspecific variation and trait–environmental relationships. These traits have to be measured on individual plants in their respective environment. Despite unprecedented data coverage, we observe a humbling lack of completeness and representativeness of these continuous traits in many aspects. We, therefore, conclude that reducing data gaps and biases in the TRY database remains a key challenge and requires a coordinated approach to data mobilization and trait measurements. This can only be achieved in collaboration with other initiatives

Repositioning of the global epicentre of non-optimal cholesterol

High blood cholesterol is typically considered a feature of wealthy western countries1,2. However, dietary and behavioural determinants of blood cholesterol are changing rapidly throughout the world3 and countries are using lipid-lowering medications at varying rates. These changes can have distinct effects on the levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol and non-HDL cholesterol, which have different effects on human health4,5. However, the trends of HDL and non-HDL cholesterol levels over time have not been previously reported in a global analysis. Here we pooled 1,127 population-based studies that measured blood lipids in 102.6 million individuals aged 18 years and older to estimate trends from 1980 to 2018 in mean total, non-HDL and HDL cholesterol levels for 200 countries. Globally, there was little change in total or non-HDL cholesterol from 1980 to 2018. This was a net effect of increases in low- and middle-income countries, especially in east and southeast Asia, and decreases in high-income western countries, especially those in northwestern Europe, and in central and eastern Europe. As a result, countries with the highest level of non-HDL cholesterol—which is a marker of cardiovascular risk—changed from those in western Europe such as Belgium, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Malta in 1980 to those in Asia and the Pacific, such as Tokelau, Malaysia, The Philippines and Thailand. In 2017, high non-HDL cholesterol was responsible for an estimated 3.9 million (95% credible interval 3.7 million–4.2 million) worldwide deaths, half of which occurred in east, southeast and south Asia. The global repositioning of lipid-related risk, with non-optimal cholesterol shifting from a distinct feature of high-income countries in northwestern Europe, north America and Australasia to one that affects countries in east and southeast Asia and Oceania should motivate the use of population-based policies and personal interventions to improve nutrition and enhance access to treatment throughout the world.</p

Økologisk teknologi:indikationer vedr. eksisterende samt innovative teknologier

Den fortsatte udvikling af det økologiske jordbrug indebærer bl.a., at der i stigende omfang inddrages eksisterende samt nye innovative teknologier/maskintyper og –systemer, som decideret er tilpasset det økologiske dyrkningsprincip. Dette er et resultat af den stigende professionalisme, specialisering og hensyntagen til rationelle produktionsmetoder blandt økologiske bedrifter, hvilket medfører en ændring fra kun at satse på ”naturlige” metoder til at opfatte teknologiens muligheder som en integreret del af den økologiske produktionsform. Rapporten beskriver udvalgte forhold omkring teknologi, som forventes at være aktuel i relation til en økologisk produktion. Omtalen er delt op på produktionsområder og koncentrerer sig om de områder i produktionen, som specielt kan opfattes som problemområder i en økologisk produktion, og hvor en teknologiadaption vil være interessan