The formation of volatile N-nitrosamines in grass and maize silages.

Normal grass or maize silage generally had N-nitrosamines 1 mu g/kg. Only in special conditions did maize silage have about 5 mu g/kg. (Abstract retrieved from CAB Abstracts by CABI’s permission

From creativity to innovation:Understanding and improving the evaluation and selection of ideas in educational settings

Creativity gives students the ability to generate novel and useful ideas for complex problems, but generating creative ideas alone is not enough to solve complex problems. It requires that students are able to evaluate their own and others’ ideas, select ideas to develop further, and abandon those that are unlikely to be successful. However, prior research has shown that students do not recognize creative ideas and have a tendency to reject highly creative ideas, and are more likely to select ideas that are consistent with social norms, and easy to understand. The aim of this thesis is to investigate whether the evaluation and selection of ideas can be improved in educational settings. The research found that students’ ability to evaluate creativity in products depends strongly on their discipline. Furthermore, by exposing students to the task before evaluating others’ ideas they become better able to recognize the creative and original ideas. However, students discard original ideas immediately when they know that they have to implement those ideas

The analysis of volatile N-nitrosamines in the rumen fluid of cows.

For 1 week 2 nonlactating Friesian cows were given hay with potassium nitrate 80 mg/kg bodyweight daily. Then nitrate 120 mg/kg was given into the rumen and rumen fluid was sampled every 15 min for the next 165 min. Greatest concentrations of nitrate, 3.9 and 2.9 mmol/litre in each cow, were present after 90 to 105 min. Dimethylnitrosamine was the only volatile N-nitrosamine found. (Abstract retrieved from CAB Abstracts by CABI’s permission

Climate adaptation on the crossroads of multiple boundaries. Managing boundaries in a complex programme context

Programme management is increasingly used in The Netherlands to realize more integrated regional development, where different sectoral policy objectives are combined. To understand how integration of different objectives is realized in programme management approaches, it is important to have in depth knowledge on how actors manage social, cognitive and physical boundaries. Therefore, this article analyses how actors manage boundaries in a regional integrative programme. Within this case we focus on two integration attempts: one which has succeeded relatively well and one which was less successful. The analysis shows the importance of boundary spanning actions, such as jointly working on strategy documents, organizing events where actors can formally and informally interact, and the activities of a political change agent. Adding to previous insights, we find four additional explanations for successful integration which shed new light on how boundaries can be best managed in future programmatic approaches: the influence of contextual factors on boundary management and its success, the need to address both the social and cognitive dimension of boundaries, the need to make the programme attractive for the actors governing the issues it wants to integrate with, and the role of boundary drawing to create an understanding and respect for boundaries

Effect of soil pH and ammonium and nitrate treatments on heavy metals in ryegrass from sludge-amended soil.

Perennial ryegrass was grown in pots on sludge-amended soil adjusted to 8 pH levels ranging from pH 4 to pH 7 and supplied with either ammonium sulphate or calcium nitrate. The chemical form in which N was applied influenced grass accumulations of Mn, Ni, Zn and Cd only when the difference in soil pH between the treatments, resulting from soil and plant factors, had developed to a sufficient extent to affect the availability of the contaminating metals for uptake by grass. (Abstract retrieved from CAB Abstracts by CABI’s permission

Effects of applications of sewage sludge and fertilizer nitrogen on cadmium and lead contents of grass.

During 5 successive years, 0, 6, 12 or 18 t/ha yr metal-bearing sewage sludge on a DM basis was applied to permanent grassland. Each sludge application was combined with various N treatments. Cd content of the grass increased considerably with increasing amounts of sewage sludge and fertilizer N; Cd content was higher in young than in old grass. The latter also applied to Pb but the increase in Pb content was less and the relation between the supply of Pb and the Pb content of the grass was poor. During the late autumn and winter the increase in Pb content was striking and was probably caused by pollution from the atmosphere. (Abstract retrieved from CAB Abstracts by CABI’s permission

Accumulation of heavy metals in the soil due to annual dressings with sewage sludge.

In a long term field experiment 0, 6, 12 or 18 tonnes/ha/yr of sewage sludge (dry matter basis) were applied to permanent grassland. Sludge application markedly increased the contents of Cd, Pb, Zn, Cu, Ni, Cr, Mo, to a depth of 15-25 cm, but Co, Mn and Fe contents were increased only in the surface 5 cm of soil. (Abstract retrieved from CAB Abstracts by CABI’s permission

Aziatische hoornaardarren

De Aziatische hoornaar (Vespa velutina) komt van nature voor in Zuidoost-Azië. De afgelopen tien jaar heeft de soort zich ook verspreid in Europa, inclusief Nederland en Vlaanderen (Tan et al., 2007; Wen et al., 2017). De Aziatische hoornaar jaagt op bijen en honing en vormt op deze manier een bedreiging voor bijenvolken

Monotonicity aspects of linguistic fuzzy models

Their interpretable model structure sets linguistic fuzzy m models apart from other modelling techniques and is considered their greatest asset. Therefore, in the identification process of a linguistic fuzzy model, the interpretability of the model should be safeguarded or at least be balanced against its accuracy. A good trade-off between accuracy and interpretability can be obtained by including as much qualitative knowledge as possible in the data-driven model identification process. Monotonicity is the type of qualitative knowledge that plays a central role in this dissertation. Monotone is hereby interpreted as order-preserving. This dissertation contributes to the ecological modelling domain by the application of fuzzy ordered classifiers to a habitat suitability modelling problem of river sites along springs to small rivers in the Central and Western Plains of Europe for 86 macroinvertebrate species. Furthermore, it contributes to the fuzzy modelling domain by (1) introducing an accurate and fast computational method for determining the crisp output of Mamdani-Assilian models applying the Center of Gravity defuzzification method and using fuzzy output partitions of trapezial membership functions, (2) presenting a new performance measure for fuzzy ordered classifiers, referred to as the average deviation (AD) as it takes the ordering of the output classes into account, (3) formulating guidelines for designers of monotone linguistic fuzzy models and (4) introducing a new inference procedure, called ATL-ATM inference, for linguistic fuzzy models with a monotone rule base