Validation of Faecal NIRS for Monitoring the Diet of Confined and Grazing Goats

Goats are used for brush control and ecological management of Mediterranean grazing lands. Farmers are willing to cooperate with communities but they need an easy method to evaluate the daily intake of nutrients. A calibration of the chemical attributes of goats\u27 diets was set-up, based on faecal near infrared (NIR) spectra (Landau et al., 2004; Table 1). The accuracy of this methodology was estimated by using the standard error of cross-validation (SECV), which represents the variability in the difference between predicted and reference values when the equation is applied sequentially to subsets of data from the calibration data set. This procedure is justified in situations with calibration samples that are randomly selected from a natural population, but may give over-optimistic results, in particular if data are replicated. The standard error of prediction (SEP) represents the variability in the difference between predicted and reference values when the equation is applied to an external (i.e., not used in any step of the calibration) validation data set. (Naes et al., 2002). The aim of the present study was to test the robustness of predicting dietary CP, in vitro dry matter digestibility (IVDMD), and NDF percentages in goats\u27 diets, using faecal samples totally external to calibrations

Smooth Paths on Three Dimensional Lattice

A particular class of random walks with a spin factor on a three dimensional cubic lattice is studied. This three dimensional random walk model is a simple generalization of random walk for the two dimensional Ising model. All critical diffusion constants and associated critical exponents are calculated. Continuum field theories such as Klein-Gordon, Dirac and massive Chern-Simons theories are constructed near several critical points.Comment: 7 pages,NUP-A-94-

Room-temperature photon-number-resolved detection using a two-mode squeezer

We study the average intensity-intensity correlations signal at the output of a two-mode squeezing device with |N)⊠- |α) as the two input modes. We show that the input photon number can be resolved from the average intensity-intensity correlations. In particular, we show jumps in the average intensity-intensity correlations signal as a function of input photon number N. Therefore, we propose that such a device may be deployed as a photon-number-resolving detector at room temperature with high efficiency

Sub-shot-noise-limited phase estimation via SU(1,1) interferometer with thermal states

We theoretically study the phase sensitivity of an SU(1,1) interferometer with a thermal state and a squeezed vacuum state as inputs and parity detection as the measurement. We find that the phase sensitivity can beat the shot-noise limit and approaches the Heisenberg limit, with increasing input photon number, in an ideal situation. We also consider the e ect of various noises, including photon loss, dark counts, and thermal photon noise. Our results show that the phase sensitivity is below the shot-noise limit with photon loss and dark counts, but cannot beat the shot-noise limit in the presence of thermal noise

Lattice Green functions in all dimensions

We give a systematic treatment of lattice Green functions (LGF) on the $d$-dimensional diamond, simple cubic, body-centred cubic and face-centred cubic lattices for arbitrary dimensionality $d \ge 2$ for the first three lattices, and for $2 \le d \le 5$ for the hyper-fcc lattice. We show that there is a close connection between the LGF of the $d$-dimensional hypercubic lattice and that of the $(d-1)$-dimensional diamond lattice. We give constant-term formulations of LGFs for all lattices and dimensions. Through a still under-developed connection with Mahler measures, we point out an unexpected connection between the coefficients of the s.c., b.c.c. and diamond LGFs and some Ramanujan-type formulae for $1/\pi.$Comment: 30 page

Pilot scale production of novel calcium sulfoaluminate cement clinkers and development of thermal model

Pilot scale trials were successfully performed on the production of novel calcium sulfoaluminate (CSA) cement clinker in a direct natural gas heated rotary kiln at the IBU-tec facility in Germany. A raw meal throughput of ∼25 kg/h was fed to the rotary kiln heated by co-combustion of natural gas and elemental sulfur, with the latter serving as both fuel substitute and reactant, to partially or wholly replace gypsum as the source of sulfur in CSA production. A well-mixed heat transfer kiln model was developed to predict the overall kiln heat flux and gas temperature profiles, to account for gaseous radiative properties. The predicted gas temperature inside the kiln varied from 1566 K in the flame zone to 1019 K at the feed zone, with peak temperature approaching 1724 K. The combined emissivity of the CO2 and H2O gas mixture varied between 0.13 and 0.2 at these temperatures for partial pressure ratio PH2O/PCO2 of 1.7. The trial kiln has a low thermal efficiency of 3% of the total supplied energy. The simplistic model provided approximate performance predictions for the KDO kiln and also for different kiln sizes and can help to establish the effects of operating parameters on heat transfer trends