Self-sufficiency with vitamins and minerals on organic dairy farms

Self-sufficiency of nutrients is a central element in the organic farming principles. In a project involving five private organic dairy farms, we aimed to achieve self-sufficiency in vitamins and minerals at farm level. All the herds are fed 100% organically grown feed, but so far supplements of minerals and vitamins based on inorganic and synthetic products are imported to all farms. The same level and type of supplement was used for the cows all year round, even though all cows were on grass for at least 150 days during the summer period. The average daily intake from the supplement for a lactating cow was 751 mg E vitamin, 111 mg Cu, and 558 mg Zn. The content of vitamin and minerals in the home-grown feeds was modelled taking into account the effect of choice of crops; conservation method; season, plant development and climate conditions at harvest; quality of the silage production, and duration of storage. The modelled contents of vitamins in the main ingredients in the feed ration were verified by measuring the actual vitamin content in the silage at harvest as well as losses during storage. As an example, at one of the farms, where the feed intake was based on 85% grass clover crops during the summer but only 68% during the winter, the home-grown feed could supply the cows with enough vitamin E according to the requirement (800 mg/day) during the summer feeding but not during the winter period. The Cu requirement (10 mg/kg DM) could not be met from home-grown feed during any season. However, supplements of vitamins and minerals secure that requirement was met. The final outcome of the project will result in strategies for achieving self-sufficiency in vitamins and minerals at individual farms through optimization of the choice of forage crops and management of feed production

Computational Vector Mechanics in Atmospheric and Climate Modeling

The mathematical underpinnings of vector analysis are reviewed as they are applied in the development of the ensemble of numeric statements for subsequent matrix solution. With the continued advances in computational power, there is increased interest in the field of atmospheric modelling to decrease the computational scale to a micro‐scale. This interest is partially motivated by the ability to solve large scale matrix systems in the number of occasions to enable a small‐scale time advancement to be approximated in a finite‐difference scheme. Solving entire large scale matrix systems several times a modelling second is now computationally feasible. Hence the motivation to increase computational detail by reducing modelling scale

Toward an Energy Efficient Language and Compiler for (Partially) Reversible Algorithms

We introduce a new programming language for expressing reversibility, Energy-Efficient Language (Eel), geared toward algorithm design and implementation. Eel is the first language to take advantage of a partially reversible computation model, where programs can be composed of both reversible and irreversible operations. In this model, irreversible operations cost energy for every bit of information created or destroyed. To handle programs of varying degrees of reversibility, Eel supports a log stack to automatically trade energy costs for space costs, and introduces many powerful control logic operators including protected conditional, general conditional, protected loops, and general loops. In this paper, we present the design and compiler for the three language levels of Eel along with an interpreter to simulate and annotate incurred energy costs of a program.Comment: 17 pages, 0 additional figures, pre-print to be published in The 8th Conference on Reversible Computing (RC2016

Type of atrial fibrillation and clinical outcomes in patients with heart failure and reduced ejection fraction

Background: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is common in heart failure (HF), but the outcome by type of AF is largely unknown. Objectives: This study investigated outcomes related to type of AF (paroxysmal, persistent or permanent, or new onset) in 2 recent large trials in patients with HF with reduced ejection fraction. Methods: The study analyzed patients in the PARADIGM-HF (Prospective comparison of ARNI with ACEI to Determine Impact on Global Mortality and morbidity in Heart Failure) and ATMOSPHERE (Aliskiren Trial to Minimize Outcomes in Patients with Heart Failure) trials. Multivariable Cox regression models were used to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) for outcomes related to AF type. Results: Of 15,415 patients, 5,481 (35.6%) had a history of AF at randomization, and of these, 1,645 (30.0%) had paroxysmal AF. Compared with patients without AF, patients with paroxysmal AF at randomization had a higher risk of the primary composite endpoint of cardiovascular death or HF hospitalization (HR: 1.20; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.09 to 1.32; p < 0.001), HF hospitalization (HR: 1.34; 95% CI: 1.19 to 1.51; < 0.001), and stroke (HR: 1.34; 95% CI: 1.02 to 1.76; p = 0.037), whereas the corresponding risks in patients with persistent or permanent AF were not elevated. Neither type of AF was associated with higher mortality. New onset AF was associated with the greatest risk of adverse outcomes: primary endpoint (HR: 2.21; 95% CI: 1.80 to 2.71), HF hospitalization (HR: 2.11; 95% CI: 1.58 to 2.81), stroke (HR: 2.20; 95% CI: 1.25 to 3.88), and all-cause mortality (HR: 2.26; 95% CI: 1.86 to 2.74), all p values < 0.001, compared with patients without AF. Anticoagulants were used less often in patients with paroxysmal (53%) and new onset (16%) AF than in patients with persistent or permanent AF (71%). Conclusions: Among HF patients with a history of AF, those with paroxysmal AF were at greater risk of HF hospitalization and stroke than were patients with persistent or permanent AF, underlining the importance of anticoagulant therapy. New onset AF was associated with increased risk of all outcomes. (Prospective comparison of ARNI with ACEI to Determine Impact on Global Mortality and Morbidity in Heart Failure [PARADIGM-HF]; NCT01035255) (Aliskiren Trial to Minimize Outcomes in Patients with Heart Failure [ATMOSPHERE]; NCT00853658

Detecting Determinacy in Prolog Programs: 22nd International Conference, ICLP 2006, Seattle, WA, USA, August 17-20, 2006. Proceedings

In program development it is useful to know that a call to a Prolog program will not inadvertently leave a choice-point on the stack. Determinacy inference has been proposed for solving this problem yet the analysis was found to be wanting in that it could not infer determinacy conditions for programs that contained cuts or applied certain tests to select a clause. This paper shows how to remedy these serious deficiencies. It also addresses the problem of identifying those predicates which can be rewritten in a more deterministic fashion. To this end, a radically new form of determinacy inference is introduced, which is founded on ideas in ccp, that is capable of reasoning about the way bindings imposed by a rightmost goal can make a leftmost goal deterministic