Energy efficiency and industrial output : the case of the iron and steel industry

The iron and steel industry is one of the most carbon emitting and energy consuming sectors in Europe. At the same time this sector is of high economic importance for the European Union. Therefore, while public environmental and energy policies target this sector, there is political concern that it suffers too much from these policy measures. Various actors fear a policy-induced decline in steel production, and possibly an international reallocation of production plants. This study analyzes the role that input prices and public policies may play in attaining an environmentally more sustainable steel production and how this - in turn - affect total steel output. As we find out for examples of major European steel producing countries, a kind of rebound effect of energy-efficiency improvements in steel production on total steel output may arise

Genomik-basierte Verbesserung des heimischen Sojazuchtmaterials und Etablierung eines molekularen Screeningsystems für Soja-Pathogene

Zur Einleitung von Pflanzenschutzmaßnahmen bei Soja ist es essentiell, Informationen über vorhandene Pathogene zu gewinnen. Basierend auf der quantitativen Real Time-PCR wurden Einzelnachweise für die Hauptpathogene der Sojabohne in Deutschland entwickelt. Die Pathogenität der Krankheitserreger wurde geprüft und das Inokulationsverfahren für weitere Untersuchungen etabliert. Erste Mehrfach-Nachweise für verschiedene Erreger und Probentypen wurden entwickelt, die für eine frühzeitige Detektion von Erregern in Soja-Proben (Saatgut, Pflanze, Boden) verwendet werden können. Im Rahmen des Projekts wurde zudem durch Kombination von aktuellen und zukünftigen Klimaparametern sowie Genotypisierungs- und Phänotypisierungsdaten eine Kernkollektion von Akzessionen erstellt, die sich durch eine hohe Diversität auszeichnet und sich für den Anbau unter den Bedingungen von Zentraleuropa eignet. Dabei wurden neue Gene für Umweltadaptation identifiziert, für die molekulare Marker für die Züchtung entwickelt werden, und geeignete Akzessionen für die Einkreuzung in aktuelle Züchtungsprogramme wurden selektiert. Die Ergebnisse zeigen außerdem klar, dass hochertragreiche Linien gezüchtet werden können, um die Sojaanbauregion nach Norden zu erweitern. Zudem bieten die gewonnenen Varianzkomponenten, Heritabilitäten und Merkmalskorrelationen eine solide Grundlage für die Gestaltung von Zuchtprogrammen, insbesondere auch von Speed-Breeding Programmen, die zukünftig mit genomischer und phänomischer Selektion beschleunigt werden können. Es wurden bereits erste Linien an die private Pflanzenzüchtung abgegeben, die in weiteren Prüfungen ermitteln, ob die Linien als Sorten zugelassen werden können. Gerade in kühleren Lagen, wie z.B. in Norddeutschland, ist die Gefahr von Ertragseinbußen auf Grund von Kühlestress groß. In diesem Projekt wurden Linien von Kreuzungsnachkommenschaften und ein diverses Set aus Genbankakzessionen hinsichtlich ihres Hülsenansatzes nach einer Kühlestressphase charakterisiert. Das Testsystem führte zu reproduzierbaren Ergebnissen und es wurden erste QTL für den Hülsenansatz unter Stressbedingungen ermittelt

Segmenting Motion Capture Data Using a Qualitative Analysis

Many interactive 3D games utilize motion capture for both character animation and user input. These applications require short, meaningful sequences of data. Manually producing these segments of motion capture data is a laborious, time-consuming process that is impractical for real-time applications. We present a method to automatically produce semantic segmentations of general motion capture data by examining the qualitative properties that are intrinsic to all motions, using Laban Movement Analysis (LMA). LMA provides a good compromise between high-level semantic features, which are difficult to extract for general motions, and lowlevel kinematic features, which often yield unsophisticated segmentations. Our method finds motion sequences which exhibit high output similarity from a collection of neural networks trained with temporal variance. We show that segmentations produced using LMA features are more similar to manual segmentations, both at the frame and the segment level, than several other automatic segmentation methods

Psychological preparation and postoperative outcomes for adults undergoing surgery under general anaesthesia

Acknowledgements We wish to dedicate this work to the memory of Christian Osmer, a dedicated, caring doctor who was committed to achieving the best care for his patients and their relatives. He saw his contribution to this project as a way of advancing best care for surgical patients. We are very grateful for his valuable input to this work and the pleasure we had in working with him. We are grateful to Karen Hovhanisyan (former Trials Search Co-ordinator, Cochrane Anaesthesia, Critical and Emergency Care Group (ACE)) for carrying out the electronic database searches and to Jane Cracknell (Managing Editor, ACE) for her support throughout the review process. We would also like to thank W Alastair Chambers and Manjeet Shehmar for clinical advice relating to judgements about general anaesthesia usage, and Yvonne Cooper and Louise Pike who retrieved documents and screened papers as research assistants in earlier stages of the review. We are grateful to the following colleagues who helped us with foreign language papers - either by screening papers or by providing translation: Stefano Carrubba, Chuan Gao, Chen Ji, Kate Rhie, Reza Roudsari and Alena Vasianovich. We would like to thank Andy Smith (content editor), Nathan Pace (statistical editor), Michael Donnelly, Allan Cyna and Michael Wang (peer reviewers), and Shunjie Chua (consumer referee) for their help and editorial advice during the preparation of this systematic review. We would also like to thank Andrew Smith (content editor), Nathan Pace (statistical editor), Michael Wang and Allan Cyna (peer reviewers), and Lynda Lane (Cochrane Consumer Network representative) for their help and editorial advice during the preparation of the protocol (Powell 2010). Sources of support Internal sources Manchester Centre for Health Psychology, University of Manchester, UK. An award of £2000 was received to support research assistant costs. External sources British Academy, UK. We received a small research grant of £7480 to support research assistant costs.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Enhanced sequential carrier capture into individual quantum dots and quantum posts controlled by surface acoustic waves

Individual self-assembled Quantum Dots and Quantum Posts are studied under the influence of a surface acoustic wave. In optical experiments we observe an acoustically induced switching of the occupancy of the nanostructures along with an overall increase of the emission intensity. For Quantum Posts, switching occurs continuously from predominantely charged excitons (dissimilar number of electrons and holes) to neutral excitons (same number of electrons and holes) and is independent on whether the surface acoustic wave amplitude is increased or decreased. For quantum dots, switching is non-monotonic and shows a pronounced hysteresis on the amplitude sweep direction. Moreover, emission of positively charged and neutral excitons is observed at high surface acoustic wave amplitudes. These findings are explained by carrier trapping and localization in the thin and disordered two-dimensional wetting layer on top of which Quantum Dots nucleate. This limitation can be overcome for Quantum Posts where acoustically induced charge transport is highly efficient in a wide lateral Matrix-Quantum Well.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figure

Investigating behavioural and computational approaches for defining imprecise regions

People often communicate with reference to informally agreedplaces, such as “the city centre”. However, views of the spatial extent of such areas may vary, resulting in imprecise regions. We compare perceptions of Sheffield’s City Centre from a street survey to extents derived from various web-based sources. Such automated approaches have advantages of speed, cost and repeatability. We show that footprints from web sources are often in concordance with models derived from more labour-intensive methods. Notable exceptions however were found with sources advertising or selling residential property. Agreement between sources was measured by aggregating them to identify locations of consensus

Novel Methods for Surface EMG Analysis and Exploration Based on Multi-Modal Gaussian Mixture Models

<div><p>This paper introduces a new method for data analysis of animal muscle activation during locomotion. It is based on fitting Gaussian mixture models (GMMs) to surface EMG data (sEMG). This approach enables researchers/users to isolate parts of the overall muscle activation within locomotion EMG data. Furthermore, it provides new opportunities for analysis and exploration of sEMG data by using the resulting Gaussian modes as atomic building blocks for a hierarchical clustering. In our experiments, composite peak models representing the general activation pattern per sensor location (one sensor on the long back muscle, three sensors on the gluteus muscle on each body side) were identified per individual for all 14 horses during walk and trot in the present study. Hereby we show the applicability of the method to identify composite peak models, which describe activation of different muscles throughout cycles of locomotion.</p></div