Iterative optimization-based simulation in practice – simulation of the surface finishing at Salzgitter Flachstahl GmbH

The Salzgitter Flachstahl GmbH plans a shift in their production program, which might require adaptions in the logistics. A discrete event simulation model is used to evaluate the impact of the new production program on logistics and the effects of various adaptations. In practice, however, optimization algorithms are applied in this system to facilitate resource planning, e.g., for loading train wagons or crane scheduling. To develop a valid production system model, it was necessary to implement optimization algorithms directly within the simulation and execute them iteratively during the simulation run. Using this approach, different adaptions of the logistic system could be evaluated. The approach to implementing iterative optimization-based simulation in practice and the lessons learned are reported

Simulating water and nitrogen runoff with APSIM

To determine the impact of potential reductions of terrain-targeted nitrogen (N) fertilisation rates on N losses a simulation study was carried out using the Agricultural Production Systems Simulator (APSIM). To simulate N runoff a simple approach was used, in which runoff is based on the N concentration in the soil solution and an extraction coefficient. Firstly, APSIM parameters that have the largest effect on runoff of water and N were determined for terrains with different slopes for a poorly drained silt loam. A sensitivity analysis was then conducted to assess the effect of soil hydraulic properties and soil organic carbon content on runoff losses. Finally, APSIM was set up to simulate pasture production and water and N dynamics (including pasture N uptake, leaching and N runoff) for a farm on rolling hills in South Canterbury, New Zealand. Two different fertilisation approaches were used, either scheduled or based on the aboveground N concentration of the pasture. For the poorly drained silt loam, the rainfall intensity and the surface conductance had the highest effect on the amount of water lost by runoff. Soil hydraulic conductivity at saturation and field capacity, as well as plant available water content also controlled runoff of water and N, while the organic carbon content of the topsoil had less effect on N runoff. Both the extraction coefficient and the depth considered to exchange N with the runoff water affected the amount of N lost via runoff. Using the aboveground pasture N concentration prior to fertilisation had positive effects on pasture yield and reduced N runoff losses

Versioning Cultural Objects : Digital Approaches

This volume approaches an understanding of the term versioning in the broadest sense, discussing ideas about how versions differ across forms of media, including text, image, and sound. Versions of cultural objects are identified, defined, articulated, and analysed through diverse mechanisms in different fields of research. The study of versions allows for the investigation of the creative processes behind the conception of works, a closer inspection of their socio-political contexts, and promotes investigation of their provenance and circulation. Chapters in this volume include discussion of what a “version” means in different fields, case studies implementing digital versioning techniques, conceptual models for representing versions digitally, and computational and management issues for digital projects

Graph Data-Models and Semantic Web Technologies in Scholarly Digital Editing

This volume is based on the selected papers presented at the Workshop on Scholarly Digital Editions, Graph Data-Models and Semantic Web Technologies, held at the Uni- versity of Lausanne in June 2019. The Workshop was organized by Elena Spadini (University of Lausanne) and Francesca Tomasi (University of Bologna), and spon- sored by the Swiss National Science Foundation through a Scientific Exchange grant, and by the Centre de recherche sur les lettres romandes of the University of Lausanne. The Workshop comprised two full days of vibrant discussions among the invited speakers, the authors of the selected papers, and other participants.1 The acceptance rate following the open call for papers was around 60%. All authors – both selected and invited speakers – were asked to provide a short paper two months before the Workshop. The authors were then paired up, and each pair exchanged papers. Paired authors prepared questions for one another, which were to be addressed during the talks at the Workshop; in this way, conversations started well before the Workshop itself. After the Workshop, the papers underwent a second round of peer-review before inclusion in this volume. This time, the relevance of the papers was not under discus- sion, but reviewers were asked to appraise specific aspects of each contribution, such as its originality or level of innovation, its methodological accuracy and knowledge of the literature, as well as more formal parameters such as completeness, clarity, and coherence. The bibliography of all of the papers is collected in the public Zotero group library GraphSDE20192, which has been used to generate the reference list for each contribution in this volume. The invited speakers came from a wide range of backgrounds (academic, commer- cial, and research institutions) and represented the different actors involved in the remediation of our cultural heritage in the form of graphs and/or in a semantic web en- vironment. Georg Vogeler (University of Graz) and Ronald Haentjens Dekker (Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences, Humanities Cluster) brought the Digital Humanities research perspective; the work of Hans Cools and Roberta Laura Padlina (University of Basel, National Infrastructure for Editions), as well as of Tobias Schweizer and Sepi- deh Alassi (University of Basel, Digital Humanities Lab), focused on infrastructural challenges and the development of conceptual and software frameworks to support re- searchers’ needs; Michele Pasin’s contribution (Digital Science, Springer Nature) was informed by his experiences in both academic research, and in commercial technology companies that provide services for the scientific community. The Workshop featured not only the papers of the selected authors and of the invited speakers, but also moments of discussion between interested participants. In addition to the common Q&A time, during the second day one entire session was allocated to working groups delving into topics that had emerged during the Workshop. Four working groups were created, with four to seven participants each, and each group presented a short report at the end of the session. Four themes were discussed: enhancing TEI from documents to data; ontologies for the Humanities; tools and infrastructures; and textual criticism. All of these themes are represented in this volume. The Workshop would not have been of such high quality without the support of the members of its scientific committee: Gioele Barabucci, Fabio Ciotti, Claire Clivaz, Marion Rivoal, Greta Franzini, Simon Gabay, Daniel Maggetti, Frederike Neuber, Elena Pierazzo, Davide Picca, Michael Piotrowski, Matteo Romanello, Maïeul Rouquette, Elena Spadini, Francesca Tomasi, Aris Xanthos – and, of course, the support of all the colleagues and administrative staff in Lausanne, who helped the Workshop to become a reality. The final versions of these papers underwent a single-blind peer review process. We want to thank the reviewers: Helena Bermudez Sabel, Arianna Ciula, Marilena Daquino, Richard Hadden, Daniel Jeller, Tiziana Mancinelli, Davide Picca, Michael Piotrowski, Patrick Sahle, Raffaele Viglianti, Joris van Zundert, and others who preferred not to be named personally. Your input enhanced the quality of the volume significantly! It is sad news that Hans Cools passed away during the production of the volume. We are proud to document a recent state of his work and will miss him and his ability to implement the vision of a digital scholarly edition based on graph data-models and semantic web technologies. The production of the volume would not have been possible without the thorough copy-editing and proof reading by Lucy Emmerson and the support of the IDE team, in particular Bernhard Assmann, the TeX-master himself. This volume is sponsored by the University of Bologna and by the University of Lausanne. Bologna, Lausanne, Graz, July 2021 Francesca Tomasi, Elena Spadini, Georg Vogele

The nuclear receptors of Biomphalaria glabrata and Lottia gigantea: Implications for developing new model organisms

© 2015 Kaur et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are creditedNuclear receptors (NRs) are transcription regulators involved in an array of diverse physiological functions including key roles in endocrine and metabolic function. The aim of this study was to identify nuclear receptors in the fully sequenced genome of the gastropod snail, Biomphalaria glabrata, intermediate host for Schistosoma mansoni and compare these to known vertebrate NRs, with a view to assessing the snail's potential as a invertebrate model organism for endocrine function, both as a prospective new test organism and to elucidate the fundamental genetic and mechanistic causes of disease. For comparative purposes, the genome of a second gastropod, the owl limpet, Lottia gigantea was also investigated for nuclear receptors. Thirty-nine and thirty-three putative NRs were identified from the B. glabrata and L. gigantea genomes respectively, based on the presence of a conserved DNA-binding domain and/or ligand-binding domain. Nuclear receptor transcript expression was confirmed and sequences were subjected to a comparative phylogenetic analysis, which demonstrated that these molluscs have representatives of all the major NR subfamilies (1-6). Many of the identified NRs are conserved between vertebrates and invertebrates, however differences exist, most notably, the absence of receptors of Group 3C, which includes some of the vertebrate endocrine hormone targets. The mollusc genomes also contain NR homologues that are present in insects and nematodes but not in vertebrates, such as Group 1J (HR48/DAF12/HR96). The identification of many shared receptors between humans and molluscs indicates the potential for molluscs as model organisms; however the absence of several steroid hormone receptors indicates snail endocrine systems are fundamentally different.The National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research, Grant Ref:G0900802 to CSJ, LRN, SJ & EJR [www.nc3rs.org.uk]

Evaluating carbon storage, timber harvest, and habitat possibilities for a Western Cascades (USA) forest landscape

Forest policymakers and managers have long sought ways to evaluate the capability of forest landscapes to jointly produce timber, habitat, and other ecosystem services in response to forest management. Currently, carbon is of particular interest as policies for increasing carbon storage on federal lands are being proposed. However, a challenge in joint production analysis of forest management is adequately representing ecological conditions and processes that influence joint production relationships. We used simulation models of vegetation structure, forest sector carbon, and potential wildlife habitat to characterize landscape-level joint production possibilities for carbon storage, timber harvest, and habitat for seven wildlife species across a range of forest management regimes. We sought to (1) characterize the general relationships of production possibilities for combinations of carbon storage, timber, and habitat, and (2) identify management variables that most influence joint production relationships. Our 160 000-ha study landscape featured environmental conditions typical of forests in the Western Cascade Mountains of Oregon (USA). Our results indicate that managing forests for carbon storage involves trade-offs among timber harvest and habitat for focal wildlife species, depending on the disturbance interval and utilization intensity followed. Joint production possibilities for wildlife species varied in shape, ranging from competitive to complementary to compound, reflecting niche breadth and habitat component needs of species examined. Managing Pacific Northwest forests to store forest sector carbon can be roughly complementary with habitat for Northern Spotted Owl, Olive-sided Flycatcher, and red tree vole. However, managing forests to increase carbon storage potentially can be competitive with timber production and habitat for Pacific marten, Pileated Woodpecker, and Western Bluebird, depending on the disturbance interval and harvest intensity chosen. Our analysis suggests that joint production possibilities under forest management regimes currently typical on industrial forest lands (e.g., 40- to 80-yr rotations with some tree retention for wildlife) represent but a small fraction of joint production outcomes possible in the region. Although the theoretical boundaries of the production possibilities sets we developed are probably unachievable in the current management environment, they arguably define the long-term potential of managing forests to produce multiple ecosystem services within and across multiple forest ownerships

Digitale Erschließung und Sicherung von aktuellen archäologischen Befunden

Bei Projekten zur Digitalisierung in Geisteswissenschaften ist heute die Realisierung größerer, überregionaler und über das World Wide Web abfragbarer Lösungen erforderlich. Die Beiträge dieses Bandes wurden auf der Tagung des Staatsarchivs Hamburg und des Zentrums "Geisteswissenschaften in der digitalen Welt" an der Universität Hamburg am 10. und 11. April 2006 gehalten. Sie leisten einen interdisziplinären Beitrag zur erforderlichen Standardisierung dieser Angebote, die erst den dringend notwendigen Austausch erleichtern und die gemeinsame Nutzung strukturierter Daten ermöglichen kann.Today, digitization projects in the Humanities require the implementation of larger, supraregional solutions. The contributions in this volume were presented at the conference of the Hamburg State Archives and the Center for the Humanities in the Digital World at the University of Hamburg on April 10 and 11, 2006. They make an interdisciplinary contribution to the required standardisation of corresponding services which can only facilitate the urgently needed exchange of information and make it possible to share structured data

Historische Grundwissenschaften und die digitale Herausforderung

Unter Federführung von Eva Schlotheuber (Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf / VHD-Unterausschuss "Geschichte in der digitalen Welt") und Frank Bösch (Zentrum für die Zeithistorische Forschungen Potsdam / VHD-Unterausschuss "Audiovisuelle Quellen") verabschiedete der VHD ein Grundsatzpapier zum Status der Historischen Grundwissenschaften mit dem Titel "Quellenkritik im digitalen Zeitalter: Die Historischen Grundwissenschaften als zentrale Kompetenz der Geschichtswissenschaft und benachbarter Fächer". Das Grundsatzpapier, in dem auch ein forschungsstrategisches Interesse an den Grundwissenschaften in der digitalen Transformation zum Ausdruck kommt, wurde auf H-Soz-Kult veröffentlicht und mit einem Diskussionsforum begleitet. Dazu wurde aus dem breiten Spektrum der Historischen Kulturwissenschaften eine Reihe in- und ausländischer Kolleginnen und Kollegen zur Kommentierung und Diskussion eingeladen, um die Debatte zu stimulieren