1,684 research outputs found
Managing Dairy Heifer Growth Investment
Accelerated prepubertal growth rates can lower heifer raising costs but may put heifers at risk for impaired mammary development and have been found to be detrimental decreased to milk production in the first lactation. The tradeoff between heifer raising costs and milk production loss is examined in a capital budgeting model. Monthly annuity net present value of a heifer investment through the first lactation is assessed for heifers calving at 20, 22, 24, 26 and 28 months of age. A 24 mo AFC base case strategy with 9009.5 kg subsequent first lactation milk yields 12.77/mo for 20 mo AFC; 5.12/mo for 26 mo AFC; $3.15/mo for 28 mo AFC). When milk production declines, revenues decline as do feed and marketing costs which are a function of milk produced. Adjusting for factors, breakeven milk production losses were 10.6 % for 20 mo AFC and 5.3 % for 22 mo AFC relative to the 24 mo AFC base. These results were not sensitive to the assumed discount rate, heifer feed costs or discount rate. Other operation-specific heifer management factors including calving season, reproduction, herd size/expansion considerations and, in the longer-term, heifer facilities investments may be more significant economically than the differences found in this analysis.Heifer growth, Economics, Investment, Livestock Production/Industries,
Coherent Umklapp Scattering of Light from Disordered Photonic Crystals
A theoretical study of the coherent light scattering from disordered photonic
crystal is presented. In addition to the conventional enhancement of the
reflected light intensity into the backscattering direction, the so called
coherent backscattering (CBS), the periodic modulation of the dielectric
function in photonic crystals gives rise to a qualitatively new effect:
enhancement of the reflected light intensity in directions different from the
backscattering direction. These additional coherent scattering processes,
dubbed here {\em umklapp scattering} (CUS), result in peaks, which are most
pronounced when the incident light beam enters the sample at an angle close to
the the Bragg angle. Assuming that the dielectric function modulation is weak,
we study the shape of the CUS peaks for different relative lengths of the
modulation-induced Bragg attenuation compared to disorder-induced mean free
path. We show that when the Bragg length increases, then the CBS peak assumes
its conventional shape, whereas the CUS peak rapidly diminishes in amplitude.
We also study the suppression of the CUS peak upon the departure of the
incident beam from Bragg resonance: we found that the diminishing of the CUS
intensity is accompanied by substantial broadening. In addition, the peak
becomes asymmetric.Comment: LaTeX, 8 two-column pages, 6 figures include
Minimally invasive reconstruction of lateral tibial plateau fractures using the jail technique: a biomechanical study
Background: This study described a novel, minimally invasive reconstruction technique of lateral tibial plateau fractures using a three-screw jail technique and compared it to a conventional two-screw osteosynthesis technique. The benefit of an additional screw implanted in the proximal tibia from the anterior at an angle of 90° below the conventional two-screw reconstruction after lateral tibial plateau fracture was evaluated. This new method was called the jail technique. Methods: The two reconstruction techniques were tested using a porcine model (n = 40). Fracture was simulated using a defined osteotomy of the lateral tibial plateau. Load-to-failure and multiple cyclic loading tests were conducted using a material testing machine. Twenty tibias were used for each reconstruction technique, ten of which were loaded in a load-to-failure protocol and ten cyclically loaded (5000 times) between 200 and 1000 N using a ramp protocol. Displacement, stiffness and yield load were determined from the resulting load displacement curve. Failure was macroscopically documented. Results: In the load-to-failure testing, the jail technique showed a significantly higher mean maximum load (2275.9 N) in comparison to the conventional reconstruction (1796.5 N, p  0.05). In cyclic testing, the jail technique also showed better trends in displacement that were not statistically significant. Failure modes showed a tendency of screws cutting through the bone (cut-out) in the conventional reconstruction. No cut-out but a bending of the lag screws at the site of the additional third screw was observed in the jail technique. Conclusions: The results of this study indicate that the jail and the conventional technique have seemingly similar biomechanical properties. This suggests that the jail technique may be a feasible alternative to conventional screw osteosynthesis in the minimally invasive reconstruction of lateral tibial plateau fractures. A potential advantage of the jail technique is the prevention of screw cut-outs through the cancellous bone.<br
Growth model with restricted surface relaxation
We simulate a growth model with restricted surface relaxation process in d=1
and d=2, where d is the dimensionality of a flat substrate. In this model, each
particle can relax on the surface to a local minimum, as the Edwards-Wilkinson
linear model, but only within a distance s. If the local minimum is out from
this distance, the particle evaporates through a refuse mechanism similar to
the Kim-Kosterlitz nonlinear model. In d=1, the growth exponent beta, measured
from the temporal behavior of roughness, indicates that in the coarse-grained
limit, the linear term of the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang equation dominates in short
times (low-roughness) and, in asymptotic times, the nonlinear term prevails.
The crossover between linear and nonlinear behaviors occurs in a characteristic
time t_c which only depends on the magnitude of the parameter s, related to the
nonlinear term. In d=2, we find indications of a similar crossover, that is,
logarithmic temporal behavior of roughness in short times and power law
behavior in asymptotic times
Universality in two-dimensional Kardar-Parisi-Zhang growth
We analyze simulations results of a model proposed for etching of a
crystalline solid and results of other discrete models in the 2+1-dimensional
Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) class. In the steady states, the moments W_n of
orders n=2,3,4 of the heights distribution are estimated. Results for the
etching model, the ballistic deposition (BD) model and the
temperature-dependent body-centered restricted solid-on-solid model (BCSOS)
suggest the universality of the absolute value of the skewness S = W_3 /
(W_2)^(3/2) and of the value of the kurtosis Q = W_4 / (W_2)^2 - 3. The sign of
the skewness is the same of the parameter \lambda of the KPZ equation which
represents the process in the continuum limit. The best numerical estimates,
obtained from the etching model, are |S| = 0.26 +- 0.01 and Q = 0.134 +- 0.015.
For this model, the roughness exponent \alpha = 0.383 +- 0.008 is obtained,
accounting for a constant correction term (intrinsic width) in the scaling of
the squared interface width. This value is slightly below previous estimates of
extensive simulations and rules out the proposal of the exact value \alpha=2/5.
The conclusion is supported by results for the ballistic deposition model.
Independent estimates of the dynamical exponent and of the growth exponent are
1.605 <= z <= 1.64 and \beta = 0.229 +- 0.005, respectively, which are
consistent with the relations \alpha + z = 2 and z = \alpha / \beta.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev.
On the Communication Complexity of Secure Computation
Information theoretically secure multi-party computation (MPC) is a central
primitive of modern cryptography. However, relatively little is known about the
communication complexity of this primitive.
In this work, we develop powerful information theoretic tools to prove lower
bounds on the communication complexity of MPC. We restrict ourselves to a
3-party setting in order to bring out the power of these tools without
introducing too many complications. Our techniques include the use of a data
processing inequality for residual information - i.e., the gap between mutual
information and G\'acs-K\"orner common information, a new information
inequality for 3-party protocols, and the idea of distribution switching by
which lower bounds computed under certain worst-case scenarios can be shown to
apply for the general case.
Using these techniques we obtain tight bounds on communication complexity by
MPC protocols for various interesting functions. In particular, we show
concrete functions that have "communication-ideal" protocols, which achieve the
minimum communication simultaneously on all links in the network. Also, we
obtain the first explicit example of a function that incurs a higher
communication cost than the input length in the secure computation model of
Feige, Kilian and Naor (1994), who had shown that such functions exist. We also
show that our communication bounds imply tight lower bounds on the amount of
randomness required by MPC protocols for many interesting functions.Comment: 37 page
Towards T1-limited magnetic resonance imaging using Rabi beats
Two proof-of-principle experiments towards T1-limited magnetic resonance
imaging with NV centers in diamond are demonstrated. First, a large number of
Rabi oscillations is measured and it is demonstrated that the hyperfine
interaction due to the NV's 14N can be extracted from the beating oscillations.
Second, the Rabi beats under V-type microwave excitation of the three hyperfine
manifolds is studied experimentally and described theoretically.Comment: 6 pages, 8 figure
EnzMet™: An Enzymatic Metallography Reagent for Accurately Delineating Neuronal Boundaries for Segmenting Gap Junction-Coupled Neurons in their Three-dimensional Space
Extended abstract of a paper presented at Microscopy and Microanalysis 2012 in Phoenix, Arizona, USA, July 29 - August 2, 201
Entangling power and operator entanglement in qudit systems
We establish the entangling power of a unitary operator on a general
finite-dimensional bipartite quantum system with and without ancillas, and give
relations between the entangling power based on the von Neumann entropy and the
entangling power based on the linear entropy. Significantly, we demonstrate
that the entangling power of a general controlled unitary operator acting on
two equal-dimensional qudits is proportional to the corresponding operator
entanglement if linear entropy is adopted as the quantity representing the
degree of entanglement. We discuss the entangling power and operator
entanglement of three representative quantum gates on qudits: the SUM, double
SUM, and SWAP gates.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figure. Version 3: Figure was improved and the MS was a
bit shortene
Non-deterministic Boolean Proof Nets
16 pagesInternational audienceWe introduce Non-deterministic Boolean proof nets to study the correspondence with Boolean circuits, a parallel model of computation. We extend the cut elimination of Non-deterministic Multiplicative Linear logic to a parallel procedure in proof nets. With the restriction of proof nets to Boolean types, we prove that the cut-elimination procedure corresponds to Non-deterministic Boolean circuit evaluation and reciprocally. We obtain implicit characterization of the complexity classes NP and NC (the efficiently parallelizable functions)
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