Fundamentals of organic agriculture

Organic agriculture can be traced back to the early 20th century, initiated by the Austrian spiritual philosopher Rudolf Steiner. It was later diversified by a number of key people, and more recent versions are guided by principles issued by the International Federation of Organic Agricultural Movements (IFOAM), founded in 1972. Organic practices were built upon the life philosophies and convictions of the founders regarding how to perceive nature. Today, those original views and ideas are considered as history. However, to understand the principles and opinions of modern organic agriculture, such as the exclusion of water-soluble inorganic fertilisers, we analysed the original ideas and arguments of the founders, who shared the common principle of relying on natural processes and methods, seen as a prerequisite for human health. For example, the British agriculturalist Sir Albert Howard, who together with Lady Eve Balfour founded the British Soil Association, claimed that healthy soils are the basis for human health on earth. In their view, healthy soils could only be obtained if the organic matter content was increased or at least maintained. Later, the German physician and microbiologist Hans-Peter Rusch together with the Swiss biologists Hans and Maria Müller, focused on applying natural principles in agriculture, driven by the conviction that nature is our master and always superior. Even though these early ideas have been abandoned or modified in modern organic agriculture, the principle of the founders regarding exclusion of synthetic compounds (fertilisers and pesticides) is still the main driver for choosing crops and pest control methods

Familial aggregation of atrial fibrillation in Iceland

To access publisher full text version of this article. Please click on the hyperlink in Additional Links fieldAIMS: To examine the heritability of atrial fibrillation (AF) in Icelanders, utilizing a nationwide genealogy database and population-based data on AF. AF is a disorder with a high prevalence, which has been known to cluster in families, but the heritability of the common form has not been well defined. METHODS AND RESULTS: The study population included 5269 patients diagnosed since 1987 and age-sex-matched controls randomly selected from the genealogy database. Kinship coefficients (KC), expressed as genealogical index of familiality (GIF = average KC x 100,000), were calculated before and after exclusion of relatives separated by one to five meiotic events. Risk ratios (RR) were calculated for first- to fifth-degree relatives. The average pairwise GIF among patients with AF was 15.9 (mean GIF for controls 13.9, 95%CI = 13.3, 14.4); this declined to 15.4 (mean GIF for controls 13.6, 95%CI = 13.1, 14.2) after exclusion of relatives separated by one meiosis and to 13.7 (mean GIF for controls 12.6, 95%CI = 12.1, 13.2), 12.7 (mean GIF for controls 11.9, 95%CI = 11.4, 12.4), and 11.3 (mean GIF for controls 10.6, 95%CI = 10.1, 11.1) after exclusion of relatives within two, three, and four meioses, respectively (all P<0.00001). RRs among relative pairs also declined incrementally, from 1.77 in first-degree relatives to 1.36, 1.18, 1.10, and 1.05 in second- through fifth-degree relatives (all P<0.001), consistent with the declining proportion of alleles shared identically by descent. When the analysis was limited to subjects diagnosed with AF before the age of 60, first-degree relatives of the AF cases were nearly five times more likely to have AF than the general population. CONCLUSION: AF shows strong evidence of heritability among unselected patients in Iceland, suggesting that there may be undiscovered genetic variants underlying the risk of the common form of AF

Keck and Mithouard

Article 28 is one of the key Treaty Articles concerning the integration of national markets. But finding the right way to apply Article 28 is far from being easy, as history shows. The ECJ has not been consistent in its case law on Article 28 EC. The main problem in its approach in the application of Article 28 has been the wideness of the Dassonville-formula, which by its wording catches smallest restrictions, and when such a rule is considered to catch indistinctly applicable measures, as was decided in Cassis de Dijon, the limits of the outer boundaries of Article 28 almost disappear, because almost every rule which regulates trade in the Member States can in fact be said to affect intra-Community trade in some way. This approach by the ECJ therefore led to problems in setting limits to the outer boundaries of the Article 28, as became obvious in Cinéthéque and later the Sunday trading cases. Before its ruling in Cinéthéque the ECJ seemed to make a distinction between equal burden and dual burden rules when applying Article 28 EC to limit its scope, and although that approach is primarily based on the question if there has been any discrimination, and not on the effect of the rule as in Dassonville, this approach at least made the application of Article 28 easier. But in Cinéthéque the ECJ decided to use a different approach, and applied Article 28 to an equal burden rule, and based this opinion on the presumption that the application of the system there might create barriers to intra-Community trade. In Cinéthéque the restriction was a complete ban on sale for a certain time, and maybe the ECJ felt that for that reason it was difficult to let the rule fall outside the scope of Article 28. But nevertheless this judgment clearly got the attention of traders and defence lawyers throughout Europe. This judgment meant that non-discriminating rules with little and uncertain potential effects on intra-Community trade could be tried before the ECJ. As an answer to criticism on this wide approach to apply Article 28 the ECJ gave the ruling in Keck, and there a new rule-based approach to Article 28 was presented. According to it certain selling arrangements would fall outside the scope of Article 28, if they fulfilled the conditions laid down in the judgment. But as has been pointed out by many, and perhaps most clearly by Advocate General Jacobs, this approach, to make a distinction between categories of rules, letting one category fall inside the scope of Article 28 but the other one outside its scope is not just. The presumption in Keck that ''selling arrangements'' are ''not by nature such as to prevent...access to the market'' is very questionable to say the least. It is right that restrictions on circumstances in which certain or all goods might be marketed do normally not obviously interfere with the free movement of goods but nevertheless it is clearly wrong to say that such a legislation never has effects on trade between Member States. Although its effects are probably most often insignificant it can in some circumstances have some effects. In my opinion Keck was not a good judgment. It was for example very unclear regarding the scope of the important phrase ''selling arrangements''. And in later cases the ECJ decided to interpret this phrase in a wide way, for example to advertising. In my opinion the ECJ should have applied Keck in a narrow way, making distinction between static and non-static selling arrangements, by not applying Keck to the ways which include how a manufacturer chooses to market his specific product. Then it could for example have avoided the difficulties it later experienced in applying Keck to advertising. Keck is an exception from the main rule in Article 28, and that should mean that it should be confined narrowly. Keck was intended to limit the scope of Article 28 which many commentators considered too unclear. It was clearly intended to open a way out of the scope of Article 28 for rules which only had uncertain and indirect effects on intra-Community trade. It was in other words intended to keep farfetched claims from falling within the scope of Article 28. But this could have been done with a different approach. The main problem in the application of Article 28 has been that the ECJ has constantly refused to apply a de minimis rule to limit its scope. But on the other hand the ECJ has, in cases such as Peralta and DIP SpA, stated that when the effects of a measure are too ''uncertain and indirect'' the measure should fall outside the scope of Article 28. In my opinion the ECJ could use this approach more frequently. It makes a lot more sense to let a rule fall outside the scope of Article 28 because of the fact that its effects are uncertain and indirect than basing the judgment on the fact that the rule falls inside the scope of a certain category of rules. By reaching the conclusion in Keck the ECJ went in my opinion too far from the essence of Article 28, Dassonville and Cassis. It is a fact that the effects of selling arrangements in the field of free movement of goods are generally uncertain and indirect and therefore they could in most cases fall outside the scope of Article 28, as the rules in Peralta and DIP SpA. It can even be said that there are certain similarities between the approaches in Peralta and DIP SpA on one hand and Keck on the other. In Peralta and DIP SpA the ECJ concluded that the rules fell outside the scope of Article 28 because their effect were ''too uncertain and indirect'', and the presumption in Keck that national rules which restrict certain selling arrangements do not hinder trade within the meaning of the Dassonville-formula is in fact based on a similar approach. The difference is that according to Keck, rules falling within a certain category of rules are presumed to have such indirect and uncertain effects. It has not yet been made clear by the ECJ if Keck should be applied to other fields than free movement of goods. In my opinion it should not. Although Keck was not the right approach to limit the outer boundaries of Article 28, it is true that the selling arrangements which were precluded from the application of Article 28 do not affect intra-Community trade in most circumstances. So the distinction made in Keck between rules regarding selling arrangements and other rules does make some sense in the field of goods. But the nature of the other fields is on the other hand different so even if a similar distinction can be made between rules in this field it would be wrong to let a category of rules fall outside the relevant Treaty Articles without further justifications. In the other fields this distinction can therefore not be made between categories of rules. Regarding how the ECJ has limited the scope of Articles 39 and 49 EC it is interesting to take a look at on what grounds the ECJ reached its conclusion in Graf. There it completely ignored Keck and stated that the effects of rules in question were too uncertain and indirect for the rules to be caught by Article 39. And I believe that the ECJ could use this kind of approach on more occasions, not only in those two fields, but also within the free movement of goods

Coordinated analysis of age, sex, and education effects on change in MMSE scores

Objectives. We describe and compare the expected performance trajectories of older adults on the Mini-Mental Status Examination (MMSE) across six independent studies from four countries in the context of a collaborative network of longitudinal studies of aging. A coordinated analysis approach is used to compare patterns of change conditional on sample composition differences related to age, sex, and education. Such coordination accelerates evaluation of particular hypotheses. In particular, we focus on the effect of educational attainment on cognitive decline.Method. Regular and Tobit mixed models were fit to MMSE scores from each study separately. The effects of age, sex, and education were examined based on more than one centering point.Results. Findings were relatively consistent across studies. On average, MMSE scores were lower for older individuals and declined over time. Education predicted MMSE score, but, with two exceptions, was not associated with decline in MMSE over time.Conclusion. A straightforward association between educational attainment and rate of cognitive decline was not supported. Thoughtful consideration is needed when synthesizing evidence across studies, as methodologies adopted and sample characteristics, such as educational attainment, invariably differ. © 2012 The Author

Biotransformation of brewer’s spent grain and application as a food ingredient in extruded breakfast cereals

Brewers' spent grain (BSG) is a beer brewing by-product, that mainly consists of fibers (more than 50%) and proteins (up to 30%). BSG has, due to its content, a big potential to be used in the food industry but it is currently used as animal feed or discarded. To improve BSG's usability as a food ingredient bioprocessing with slime producing lactic acid bacteria has been used in this project. Incorporation of fermented BSG as a food ingredient in breakfast cereals has been performed with extrusion method. A process and recipe have been developed to produce breakfast cereal prototypes. Evaluations of the taste and texture of the breakfast cereal prototypes have been performed with texture measurements but mainly with consumer panels (focus groups). The final breakfast cereal prototypes produced for the last focus group were all with 30% fermented BSG. The BSG were from three different breweries, Dugges, Senson and Peroni, and the fermentation was performed with and without slime production by the lactic acid bacteria. The most preferred breakfast cereal prototype was with BSG from the brewery Dugges and fermented with slime producing lactic acid bacteria. The conclusion of this master thesis project was that it is possible to make breakfast cereal products with a content of 30% fermented BSG with extrusion method with a pleasant taste and texture

Atomic Transfer for Distributed Systems

Building applications and information systems increasingly means dealing with concurrency and faults stemming from distribution of system components. Atomic transactions are a well-known method for transferring the responsibility for handling concurrency and faults from developers to the software\u27s execution environment, but incur considerable execution overhead. This dissertation investigates methods that shift some of the burden of concurrency control into the network layer, to reduce response times and increase throughput. It anticipates future programmable network devices, enabling customized high-performance network protocols. We propose Atomic Transfer (AT), a distributed algorithm to prevent race conditions due to messages crossing on a path of network switches. Switches check request messages for conflicts with response messages traveling in the opposite direction. Conflicting requests are dropped, obviating the request\u27s receiving host from detecting and handling the conflict. AT is designed to perform well under high data contention, as concurrency control effort is balanced across a network instead of being handled by the contended endpoint hosts themselves. We use AT as the basis for a new optimistic transactional cache consistency algorithm, supporting execution of atomic applications caching shared data. We then present a scalable refinement, allowing hierarchical consistent caches with predictable performance despite high data update rates. We give detailed I/O Automata models of our algorithms along with correctness proofs. We begin with a simplified model, assuming static network paths and no message loss, and then refine it to support dynamic network paths and safe handling of message loss. We present a trie-based data structure for accelerating conflict-checking on switches, with benchmarks suggesting the feasibility of our approach from a performance stand-point

Climate-Related Adaptations in the Human Skull: A Review of the Different Contemporary Theoretical Models and Methods

Questions regarding our ancestral species have always appealed to our curious side. Our first ancestral species lived in arboreal settings before gradually adapting to a more open, terrestrial environment. It can be observed in the fossil record that hominins began to show a greater degree of adaptations towards anatomical traits that would be beneficial in such environments. Significant changes can be seen as hominins migrated out of Africa and were subsequently exposed to different climates and ecological niches. Accordingly, gaining further knowledge about these climate-related adaptations is of prime interest for understanding the context from which our ancestors emerged and evolved. However, to understand these events it is important to develop useful theoretical frameworks which can aid researchers in tying such links between human morphological variation and climate. Theoretical frameworks are used to make sense of data and more focus must be on developing such frameworks. The conclusion of this thesis is that there are only two theoretical frameworks that can be useful to climate adaptation research: modern evolutionary theory and the ecological rules of Bergmann and Allen. However, more in-depth theoretical models are needed to bridge the gap between morphological variation and climate. This study will present theoretical models and methods, compare and discuss these theoretical frameworks and methodologies, and investigate any consistencies in the use of theories within the field. This thesis also aims to critically analyse and highlight the limitations of the discipline by addressing present issues. The final aim and purpose of this thesis is to better understand the need and significance of well-built theoretical frameworks and methods in achieving a better understanding of the links between climate and morphological variation.Arkeologi mastergradsoppgaveARK350MAHF-AR

Regulatory demands and risk assessment documentation for fire and explosion hazards in offshore petroleum activities connected to startup of Iceland’s Dreki Area

Master's thesis in Offshore technology : industrial asset managementSerious search has begun for oil and gas deposits within Iceland’s exclusive economic zone, more specifically in the Dreki area 335km north-east of Iceland. Icelandic authorities do not have the structure or experience to administrate and supervise offshore petroleum activities. It is however very important that these authorities are prepared if application for exploration drilling are handed in. To avoid starting at the beginning of the learning curve Icelandic authorities should look towards countries that are experienced in administrating and supervising such activities. Norwegian authorities have been quite responsive in adjusting their regulatory framework and regulatory regime to respond to recommended changes following major accidents and new challenges. Norwegian authorities base their regulatory framework on performance base regulations that are then supplemented with few specific requirements. This allows and encourages innovation and possible cost reductions. The chosen solution is however required to result the same performance or better than is required by legislation. The Norwegian management structure for offshore petroleum activities is quite simple. That is partly due to the fact that the Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA) takes on all matters concerning health, safety and the environment and from within collaborates and cooperates with other authorities regarding their respective area of expertise. Icelandic authorities should look towards the Norwegian approach to ensure safe extraction of oil and gas. There is noticeable movement internationally to separate the responsibilities of natural resource management and supervision of offshore petroleum activities. Icelandic authorities should implement performance based regulations and setup a simple management structure. It is suggested that the NEA holds the responsibility of awarding licenses for exploration and production. It is as well suggested that either the ICA or the AOSH take over the supervising responsibility and collaboration with other authorities as they hold considerable experience in processing and evaluating technical documents and information.Iceland Construction Authorit

Architecture and Execution Model for a Survivable Workflow Transaction Infrastructure

We present a novel architecture and execution model for an infrastructure supporting fault-tolerant, long-running distributed applications spanning multiple administrative domains. Components for both transaction processing and persistent state are replicated across multiple servers, en-suring that applications continue to function correctly de-spite arbitrary (Byzantine) failure of a bounded number of servers. We give a formal model of application execution, based on atomic execution steps, linearizability and a sep-aration between data objects and transactions that act on them. The architecture is designed for robust interoperability across domains, in an open and shared Internet computing infrastructure. A notable feature supporting cross-domain applications is that they may declare invariant constraints between data objects and furthermore declare dependencies on constraints maintained by other applications, leading to flexible, incidental atomicity between applications. The ar-chitecture is highly evolvable, maintaining system availabil-ity and integrity during upgrades to both application com-ponents and the system software itself

Development of nanofiber-reinforced hydrogel scaffolds for nucleus pulposus regeneration by a combination of electrospinning and spraying technique

In this work a new method is presented to efficiently produce hydrogel scaffolds reinforced with nanofibers to show enhanced mechanical properties and improved structural integrity. The method is based on a combination of air brush spraying of a hydrogel and electrospinning of nanofibers. With air brush spraying the controllability is enhanced and the potential for scale-up increased. The developed method was used to successfully reinforce gellan gum hydrogels with electrospun polycaprolactone nanofibers. Optical and rheological evaluations were performed and showed that parameters such as the amount of incorporated nanofibers, gellan gum concentration and calcium chloride (crosslinker) concentrations could be used to modulate material properties. Incorporation of a small amount of nanofibers had a reinforcing effect and resulted in a hydrogel with rheological properties similar to the human nucleus pulposus (NP). The method is flexible and carries potential for designing scaffolds for e.g. NP tissue regeneration.The authors gratefully acknowledge funding from the Disc Regeneration Project (grant agreement number: NMP-LA-2008-213904) from the European Community. Also, they acknowledge RISE Research Institutes of Sweden Holding AB for financial support of this study