Barriers for developing more robust organic arable farming systems in practice

There is a gap between the scientific idea of robust and economically viable organic arable farming systems with optimized crop rotations for nutrient and pest management and how these systems look like in practice. In order to explore this gap, we visited and interviewed ten organic arable farms in Denmark. Our main findings are: 1) Organic arable farming operates in a very dynamic and changing environment in terms of prizing and market opportunities, and the main focus of the farm managements was the coping strategy within this changing environment; 2) The farming systems were continuously changing and developing, buying and renting more land, changing manure agreements and other forms of cooperation and arrangements; 3) Short term profit was paid much more attention than more theoretical expectation on long term profit or opportunities in relation to optimizing the production system. This again seems logical in relation to the very dynamic world that the farmers have to operate within; 4) Most of the farmers do not see their farm as a coherent system but as a coordination of a series of separate operations, which means that most decisions are taken with specific reference to the individual field in at the present situation without considering the long-term effects. Management focus is thus much more on solving problems as they are occurring, by adjusting their practice, than it is on developing a robust system preventing problems to occur. This partial focus is also strongly supported by the way in which extension services mostly operate

The Generic, Incommensurate Transition in the two-dimensional Boson Hubbard Model

The generic transition in the boson Hubbard model, occurring at an incommensurate chemical potential, is studied in the link-current representation using the recently developed directed geometrical worm algorithm. We find clear evidence for a multi-peak structure in the energy distribution for finite lattices, usually indicative of a first order phase transition. However, this multi-peak structure is shown to disappear in the thermodynamic limit revealing that the true phase transition is second order. These findings cast doubts over the conclusion drawn in a number of previous works considering the relevance of disorder at this transition.Comment: 13 pages, 10 figure

Ammonia emissions from deciduous forest after leaf fall

The understanding of biochemical feedback mechanisms in the climate system is lacking knowledge in relation to bi-directional ammonia (NH3) exchange between natural ecosystems and the atmosphere. We therefore study the atmospheric NH3 fluxes during a 25-day period during autumn 2010 (21 October to 15 November) for the Danish beech forest Lille Bøgeskov to address the hypothesis that NH3 emissions occur from deciduous forests in relation to leaf fall. This is accomplished by using observations of vegetation status, NH3 fluxes and model calculations. Vegetation status was observed using plant area index (PAI) and leaf area index (LAI). NH3 fluxes were measured using the relaxed eddy accumulation (REA) method. The REA-based NH3 concentrations were compared to NH3 denuder measurements. Model calculations of the atmospheric NH3 concentration were obtained with the Danish Ammonia MOdelling System (DAMOS). The relative contribution from the forest components to the atmospheric NH3 flux was assessed using a simple two-layer bi-directional canopy compensation point model. A total of 57.7% of the fluxes measured showed emission and 19.5% showed deposition. A clear tendency of the flux going from deposition of −0.25 ± 0.30 μg NH3-N m−2 s−1 to emission of up to 0.67 ± 0.28 μg NH3-N m−2 s−1 throughout the measurement period was found. In the leaf fall period (23 October to 8 November), an increase in the atmospheric NH3 concentrations was related to the increasing forest NH3 flux. Following leaf fall, the magnitude and temporal structure of the measured NH3 emission fluxes could be adequately reproduced with the bi-directional resistance model; it suggested the forest ground layer (soil and litter) to be the main contributing component to the NH3 emissions. The modelled concentration from DAMOS fits well the measured concentrations before leaf fall, but during and after leaf fall, the modelled concentrations are too low. The results indicate that the missing contribution to atmospheric NH3 concentration from vegetative surfaces related to leaf fall are of a relatively large magnitude. We therefore conclude that emissions from deciduous forests are important to include in model calculations of atmospheric NH3 for forest ecosystems. Finally, diurnal variations in the measured NH3 concentrations were related to meteorological conditions, forest phenology and the spatial distribution of local anthropogenic NH3 sources. This suggests that an accurate description of ammonia fluxes over forest ecosystems requires a dynamic description of atmospheric and vegetation processes

Generation and detection of a sub-Poissonian atom number distribution in a one-dimensional optical lattice

We demonstrate preparation and detection of an atom number distribution in a one-dimensional atomic lattice with the variance $-14$ dB below the Poissonian noise level. A mesoscopic ensemble containing a few thousand atoms is trapped in the evanescent field of a nanofiber. The atom number is measured through dual-color homodyne interferometry with a pW-power shot noise limited probe. Strong coupling of the evanescent probe guided by the nanofiber allows for a real-time measurement with a precision of $\pm 8$ atoms on an ensemble of some $10^3$ atoms in a one-dimensional trap. The method is very well suited for generating collective atomic entangled or spin-squeezed states via a quantum non-demolition measurement as well as for tomography of exotic atomic states in a one-dimensional lattice

Signatures of the superfluid to Mott insulator transition in equilibrium and in dynamical ramps

We investigate the equilibrium and dynamical properties of the Bose-Hubbard model and the related particle-hole symmetric spin-1 model in the vicinity of the superfluid to Mott insulator quantum phase transition. We employ the following methods: exact-diagonalization, mean field (Gutzwiller), cluster mean-field, and mean-field plus Gaussian fluctuations. In the first part of the paper we benchmark the four methods by analyzing the equilibrium problem and give numerical estimates for observables such as the density of double occupancies and their correlation function. In the second part, we study parametric ramps from the superfluid to the Mott insulator and map out the crossover from the regime of fast ramps, which is dominated by local physics, to the regime of slow ramps with a characteristic universal power law scaling, which is dominated by long wavelength excitations. We calculate values of several relevant physical observables, characteristic time scales, and an optimal protocol needed for observing universal scaling.Comment: 23 pages, 13 figure

Testing the Environmental Seismic Intensity Scale on Data Derived from the Earthquakes of 1626, 1759, 1819, and 1904 in Fennoscandia, Northern Europe

Earthquake environmental effects (EEEs) were compiled for the earthquakes of 1626, 1759, 1819, and 1904 in the Fennoscandian Peninsula, northern Europe. The principal source of information was the contemporary newspaper press. Macroseismic questionnaires collected in 1759 and 1904 were also consulted. We prepared maps showing newly discovered EEEs together with previously known EEEs and analyzed their spatial distribution. We assigned intensities based on the 2007 Environmental Seismic Intensity (ESI) scale to 27 selected localities and compared them to intensities assigned based on the 1998 European Macroseismic Scale. While the overall agreement between the scales is good, intensities may remain uncertain due to the sparsity of written documentation. The collected data sets are most probably incomplete but still show that EEEs are not unprecedented cases in the target region. The findings include landslides and rockfalls as well as cascade effects with a risk potential and widespread water movements up to long distances. The winter earthquake of 1759 cracked ice over a large area. This investigation demonstrates that the ESI scale also has practical importance for regions with infrequent EEEs

Antiferromagnetic noise correlations in optical lattices

We analyze how noise correlations probed by time-of-flight (TOF) experiments reveal antiferromagnetic (AF) correlations of fermionic atoms in two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) optical lattices. Combining analytical and quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) calculations using experimentally realistic parameters, we show that AF correlations can be detected for temperatures above and below the critical temperature for AF ordering. It is demonstrated that spin-resolved noise correlations yield important information about the spin ordering. Finally, we show how to extract the spin correlation length and the related critical exponent of the AF transition from the noise.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Structure of boson systems beyond the mean-field

We investigate systems of identical bosons with the focus on two-body correlations. We use the hyperspherical adiabatic method and a decomposition of the wave function in two-body amplitudes. An analytic parametrization is used for the adiabatic effective radial potential. We discuss the structure of a condensate for arbitrary scattering length. Stability and time scales for various decay processes are estimated. The previously predicted Efimov-like states are found to be very narrow. We discuss the validity conditions and formal connections between the zero- and finite-range mean-field approximations, Faddeev-Yakubovskii formulation, Jastrow ansatz, and the present method. We compare numerical results from present work with mean-field calculations and discuss qualitatively the connection with measurements.Comment: 26 pages, 6 figures, submitted to J. Phys. B. Ver. 2 is 28 pages with modified figures and discussion