Socio-economic Analysis of Centralised Biogas Plants

The development of biogas technology in Denmark has been widely encouraged by the government over the last 15 years. The overall reasons for the government concern has been the increasing awareness that centralised biogas plants make a significant contribution to solve a range of problems in the fields of energy, agriculture and environment. This has been documented through related monitoring and R & D activities. To achieve a satisfactory evaluation of centralised biogas plants, a thorough socio – economic analysis is required. Such investigation has been accomplished, and the results are presented in this summary

An Economic and Environmental Analysis of Slurry Separation

With increased pressure to redistribute animal manure in order to lower the environmental pressure from agriculture, it seems obvious to consider processing slurry into nutrient rich fractions which can easily be transported. In this paper, an overall analysis of four different separation technologies is presented. The four technologies are Decanter, Funki Manura 2000, Green Farm Energy and Staring. These technologies are all implemented on a full scale in Denmark. In this paper both the economic and environmental aspects are considered, looking at the entire chain from stable to the field. The total investments range from 50,000 to 4 million Euros and the total net costs are from 1 to 7 Euros per tonne for the four different technologies. One of the clear environmental benefits is a better utilisation of phosphorus, but using phytase in feeding is a cheaper first step when reducing phosphorus surplus. Improved nitrogen utilisation is only apparent with the Staring and Green Farm Energy concepts. The conclusion is that the Funki Manura 2000 system is too expensive and the Decanter system a fairly cheap way to reduce phosphorus levels, but other benefits are limited. Staring and Green Farm Energy show the greatest potential, but these systems have not been running long enough to validate the expected results included in this paper.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Effective Sample Size: Quick Estimation of the Effect of Related Samples in Genetic Case-Control Association Analyses

Correlated samples have been frequently avoided in case-control
genetic association
 studies in part because the methods for handling them are either not
easily implemented or not widely known. We
advocate one method for case-control association analysis of correlated
samples -- the effective sample size method -- as a simple and
accessible approach that does not require specialized computer programs.
The effective sample size method captures the variance inflation
of allele frequency estimation exactly, and can be used to modify the
chi-square test statistic, p-value, and 95% confidence interval of
odds-ratio simply by replacing the apparent number of allele counts with the
effective ones. For genotype frequency estimation, although a single
effective sample size is unable to completely characterize the variance inflation,
an averaged one can satisfactorily approximate the simulated result.
The effective sample size method is applied to the rheumatoid arthritis
siblings data collected from the North American Rheumatoid Arthritis Consortium (NARAC)
to establish a significant association with the interferon-induced
helicasel gene (IFIH1) previously being identified as a type 1 diabetes
susceptibility locus. Connections between the effective sample size
method and other methods, such as generalized estimation equation,
variance of eigenvalues for correlation matrices, and genomic controls,
are also discussed.
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Breathing New Life into Interstitial Lung Disease in Rheumatoid Arthritis

Clinical heterogeneity is a hallmark of many autoimmune disorders, and clinical or subclinical pulmonary involvement is a common extraarticular feature of the rheumatoid arthritis (RA) phenotype. High-resolution computed tomography reveals evidence of pulmonary abnormalities in more than half of patients with RA, and clinically significant interstitial lung disease (ILD) will develop in approximately 10% of patients.It is currently difficult to identify these patients and to intervene early in the clinical course of their lung disease

The Circumstellar Environment of High Mass Protostellar Objects. III Evidence of Infall?

The results are presented of a molecular line survey to search for the spectral signature of infall towards 77 850 micron continuum sources believed to be candidate high mass protostellar objects. Up to six different transitions, HCO+ 1-0, 3-2 and 4-3, H2CO 2_12-1_11, N2H+ and H13CO+ 3-2, were observed towards each source. Towards the peak of the 850 micron emission, N2H+ was typically strong, with a peak antenna temperature of ~1.5K, with a typical linewidth of ~2km/s. The good agreement between the velocity and velocity width of the N2H+ and H13CO+ emission suggests that both species are tracing similar material in the sources. With respect to the velocity of the N2H+, there is a statistically significant excess of blue asymmetric line profiles in both the HCO+ 1-0 and H2CO transitions. This excess reaches levels similar to that seen towards samples of low mass protostars, and suggests that the material around these high mass sources is infalling. We identify 22 promising candidate infall sources which show at least one blue asymmetric line profile and no red asymmetric profiles. The infall velocity is estimated to be in the range of 0.1 km/s to 1 km/s with an implied mass accretion rate of between 2x10^{-4} Msol/yr and 10^{-3}Msol/yr.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics. Higher resolution versions of Figures 1 and 2 are available from http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/~gaf/Papers.htm

Inflammatory and Oxidative Stress Responses to High-Carbohydrate and High-Fat Meals in Healthy Humans

The postprandial state is hypothesised to be proinflammatory and prooxidative, but the relative contributions of fat versus carbohydrate are unclear. Therefore, we examined inflammation and oxidative stress responses in serum and skeletal muscle before and after 1000 kcal meals, which were high in either fat or carbohydrate in 15 healthy individuals. Serum and muscle expression of IL6 was elevated 3 hours after each meal, independently of macronutrient composition (P < 0.01). Serum IL18 was decreased after high-fat meal only (P < 0.01). Plasma total antioxidative status and muscle Cu/Zn-superoxide dismutase were decreased after high-carbohydrate meal only (P < 0.05). We conclude that a high-carbohydrate meal may evoke a greater postprandial oxidative stress response, whereas both fat and carbohydrate increased IL6. We speculate that the observed increases in postprandial IL6, without increases in any other markers of inflammation, may indicate a normal IL6 response to enhance glucose uptake, similar to its role postexercise