The development of an integrated modelling system to support decisions on organic farms

This paper was presented at the UK Organic Research 2002 Conference of the Colloquium of Organic Researchers (COR). An Integrated Decision Support System (IDSS) is developed which synthesises current understanding of organic farming by means of a multiple objective framework incorporating GIS, biophysical models and socio-economic models of the farming goals. The IDSS uses a multitiered concept of a farming system as a collection of micro-enterprises at the field level, with individual resource endowments, objectives and activities. Farm-level decision drivers trickle down to affect the micro-level field enterprise selection. Biophysical models describe typical forage, cereal, root and legume output and a user-friendly interfaces permits easy access and output display via a GIS. A prototype of the IDSS framework, being developed as a part of the SAC organic research programme is presented

Global dimensions for the recognition of prototypical urban roads in large-scale vector topographic maps

CISRG discussion paper ; 1

Was Chinggis Khan Literate?

No abstrac

Craze initiation and growth in rigid PVC

The approach adopted here has been to look for discontinuities in the deformation behaviour of UPVC and to attempt to correlate these with the brittle failure process. This approach has the premise that deformation and the initiation of the failure process have a strong interaction, i.e. one perturbs the other. Evidence to support this interaction in UPVC (and other glassy amorphous polymers) is abundant. The connecting link between deformation and failure could well be craze initiation and growth

A tool to aid redesign of flexible transport services to increase efficiency in rural transport service provision

This research was supported by the Research Councils UK Digital Economy programme award (reference: EP/G066051/1) to the dot.rural Digital Economy Hub, at the University of Aberdeen.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Suppressed silicide formation in FePt thin films by nitrogen addition

Copyright © 2013 Elsevier. NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials Vol. 331 (2013), DOI: 10.1016/j.jmmm.2012.11.045FePt and FePtN thin films have been prepared on silicon substrates by the relatively new deposition technique known as High Target Utilization Sputtering. Films were annealed post-deposition at temperatures up to 800 °C in order to induce the high-anisotropy L10 phase. The FePt films initially showed an improvement in magnetic properties with annealing temperature, but for annealing above around 400 °C the magnetic properties deteriorated markedly. The magnetic properties of the FePtN films, however, continued to improve with increasing annealing temperature, right up to the maximum temperature applied of 800 °C. Analysis by X-ray diffraction revealed the formation of iron and platinum silicides in FePt films above 400 °C, but that such silicides are absent from the FePtN at all annealing temperatures except 800 °C. This behavior is attributed to the nitrogen in FePtN films reacting preferentially with the silicon in the substrate to form silicon nitride, thus suppressing the formation of platinum and iron silicides. Thus, by introducing nitrogen during the deposition of FePt films on Si substrates the formation of deleterious silicides appears to be suppressed during thermal treatment, thereby offering protection against silicon pollution.Plasma Quest Lt