Precision placement of fertiliser for optimising the early nutrition of vegetable crops: a review of the implications for the yield and quality of crops, and their nutrient use efficiency

The research outlined in this paper highlights the importance of the early nutrition of vegetable crops, and its long-term effects on their subsequent growth and development. Results are also presented to demonstrate how the nutrient supply during the establishment stages of young seedlings and transplants can be enhanced by targeting fertiliser to a zone close to their developing roots. Three different precision fertiliser placement techniques are compared for this purpose: starter, band or side-injected fertiliser. The use of each of these methods consistently produced the same (or greater) yields at lower application rates than those from conventional broadcast applications, increasing the apparent recovery of N, P and K, and the overall efficiency of nutrient use, while reducing the levels of residual nutrients in the soil. Starter fertilisers also advanced the maturity of some crops, and enhanced produce quality by increasing the proportions of the larger and/or more desirable marketable grades. The benefits of the different placement techniques are illustrated with selected examples from research at Warwick HRI using different vegetable crops, including lettuce, onion and carrot.

Correlations between thermal environment and egg quality of two layer commercial strains

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Denoising swallowing sound to improve the evaluator's qualitative analysis

Swallowing dynamics involves the coordination and interaction of several muscles and nerves which allow correct food transport from mouth to stomach without laryngotracheal penetration or aspiration. Clinical swallowing assessment depends on the evaluator's knowledge of anatomic structures and of neurophysiological processes involved in swallowing. Any alteration in those steps is denominated oropharyngeal dysphagia, which may have many causes, such as neurological or mechanical disorders. Videofluoroscopy of swallowing is presently considered to be the best exam to objectively assess the dynamics of swallowing, but the exam needs to be conducted under certain restrictions, due to patient's exposure to radiation, which limits periodical repetition for monitoring swallowing therapy. Another method, called cervical auscultation, is a promising new diagnostic tool for the assessment of swallowing disorders. The potential to diagnose dysphagia in a noninvasive manner by assessing the sounds of swallowing is a highly attractive option for the dysphagia clinician. Even so, the captured sound has an amount of noise, which can hamper the evaluator's decision. In that way, the present paper proposes the use of a filter to improve the quality of audible sound and facilitate the perception of examination. The wavelet denoising approach is used to decompose the noisy signal. The signal to noise ratio was evaluated to demonstrate the quantitative results of the proposed methodology. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Remote Sensing Detection of atmospheric pollutants using Lidar, Sodar and correlation with air quality data in an industrial area

Optical remote sensing techniques have obvious advantages for monitoring gas and aerosol emissions, since they enable the operation over large distances, far from hostile environments, and fast processing of the measured signal. In this study two remote sensing devices, namely a Lidar (Light Detection and Ranging) for monitoring the vertical profile of backscattered light intensity, and a Sodar (Acoustic Radar, Sound Detection and Ranging) for monitoring the vertical profile of the wind vector were operated during specific periods. The acquired data were processed and compared with data of air quality obtained from ground level monitoring stations, in order to verify the possibility of using the remote sensing techniques to monitor industrial emissions. The campaigns were carried out in the area of the Environmental Research Center (Cepema) of the University of São Paulo, in the city of Cubatão, Brazil, a large industrial site, where numerous different industries are located, including an oil refinery, a steel plant, as well as fertilizer, cement and chemical/petrochemical plants. The local environmental problems caused by the industrial activities are aggravated by the climate and topography of the site, unfavorable to pollutant dispersion. Results of a campaign are presented for a 24- hour period, showing data of a Lidar, an air quality monitoring station and a Sodar. © 2011 SPIE.

A sound education: Becoming aware of the sound around us

In this article it is intended to discuss the issue of noise pollution from an unusual point of view: noise pollution is not only the result of sound increase worldwide, but, particularly, the poor quality of our listening habits in modern life as well. In contemporary society we are subject to a considerable amount of stimulus to all our senses: vision, scent, taste and hearing which are becoming more and more insensible due to over exposure in our environment. These increased stimuli make us look for alternatives to reduce our ability to perceive them and be protected from injuries. However, our sensitivity will also decrease. In the specific case of environment noise, over exposure has made us forget the enchantment of certain sounds that used to give us pleasure or evoke good feelings by many ways, making us recall certain good things, bringing particular moments of our lives to our memory or even filling us with strong emotion. The Canadian composer and music educator, R. Murray Schafer, believes that noise pollution is the result of a society who became deaf. Closing our ears to noise protect us from noise pollution but also prevent us from grasping subtleties of listening. Contemporary world does not help us to be aware of sound in the space around us; acquiring this hearing ability is a matter of focus, interest and practice. Sound education exercises are aimed at children, teenagers and adults who want to improve their listening ability to environmental sounds, perceive its proprieties and learn how sound affects us and touches our feelings. The results are easy to accomplish and contribute to our awareness of the sound environment around us and to the conception of the environmental sound as a composition made by everybody and everything through positive actions, strong will and high sensitivity. Copyright © (2011) by the International Institute of Acoustics & Vibration.

The assessment of the quality of sugar using electronic tongue and machine learning algorithms

The correct classification of sugar according to its physico-chemical characteristics directly influences the value of the product and its acceptance by the market. This study shows that using an electronic tongue system along with established techniques of supervised learning leads to the correct classification of sugar samples according to their qualities. In this paper, we offer two new real, public and non-encoded sugar datasets whose attributes were automatically collected using an electronic tongue, with and without pH controlling. Moreover, we compare the performance achieved by several established machine learning methods. Our experiments were diligently designed to ensure statistically sound results and they indicate that k-nearest neighbors method outperforms other evaluated classifiers and, hence, it can be used as a good baseline for further comparison. © 2012 IEEE.

Quality of life in elderly adults before and after hearing aid fitting

Presbycusis is a common disorder in the elderly, which causes hearing loss and may contribute to the development of some psychiatric disorders, leading to isolation clue to communication difficulties in the social environment. Objective: To identify through the WHOQOL (World Health Organization Quality of Life Questionnaire), the quality of life of hearing impaired individuals before and after hearing aid fittings. Method: We had 30 individuals with hearing loss, all over 60 years of age - patients from a Speech Therapy Clinic. The patients answered the WHOQOL questions without the use of hearing aids; and after the effective use of a sound amplification device for a period of three months they answered it again. The WHOQOL - Bref consists of 26 questions, two general quality-of-life questions and 24 associated with four aspects: physical, psychological, environmental and social relations. Results: There was a significant improvement in quality of life in general, as far as leisure activities were concerned, there were no major changes regarding the frequency of negative feelings; even after the hearing aid fitting, the patients continue to have such feelings. Conclusion: The use of hearing aids favored the overall quality of life of the individuals evaluated.

The uncertainty in standardised sound power measurements: complying with ISO 17025

In the context of “testing laboratory” one of the most important aspect to deal with is the measurement result. Whenever decisions are based on measurement results, it is important to have some indication of the quality of the results. In every area concerning with noise measurement many standards are available but without an expression of uncertainty, it is impossible to judge whether two results are in compliance or not. ISO/IEC 17025 is an international standard related with the competence of calibration and testing laboratories. It contains the requirements that testing and calibration laboratories have to meet if they wish to demonstrate that they operate to a quality system, are technically competent and are able to generate technically valid results. ISO/IEC 17025 deals specifically with the requirements for the competence of laboratories performing testing and calibration and for the reporting of the results, which may or may not contain opinions and interpretations of the results. The standard requires appropriate methods of analysis to be used for estimating uncertainty of measurement. In this point of view, for a testing laboratory performing sound power measurement according to specific ISO standards and European Directives, the measurement of uncertainties is the most important factor to deal with. Sound power level measurement, according to ISO 3744:1994 , performed with a limited number of microphones distributed over a surface enveloping a source is affected by a certain systematic error and a related standard deviation. Making a comparison of measurement carried out with different microphone arrays is difficult because results are affected by systematic errors and standard deviation that are peculiarities of the number of microphones disposed on the surface, their spatial position and the complexity of the sound field. A statistical approach could give an overview of the difference between sound power level evaluated with different microphone arrays and an evaluation of errors that afflict this kind of measurement. Despite the classical approach that tend to follow the ISO GUM this thesis present a different point of view of the problem related to the comparison of result obtained from different microphone arrays.

Assessing the effectiveness of ISO 3382 for evaluating the acoustical quality of italian historical theatres: the case study of the Bonci Theatre

The present study concerns the acoustical characterisation of Italian historical theatres. It moved from the ISO 3382 which provides the guidelines for the measurement of a well established set of room acoustic parameters inside performance spaces. Nevertheless, the peculiarity of Italian historical theatres needs a more specific approach. The Charter of Ferrara goes in this direction, aiming at qualifying the sound field in this kind of halls and the present work pursues the way forward. Trying to understand how the acoustical qualification should be done, the Bonci Theatre in Cesena has been taken as a case study. In September 2012 acoustical measurements were carried out in the theatre, recording monaural e binaural impulse responses at each seat in the hall. The values of the time criteria, energy criteria and psycho-acoustical and spatial criteria have been extracted according to ISO 3382. Statistics were performed and a 3D model of the theatre was realised and tuned. Statistical investigations were carried out on the whole set of measurement positions and on carefully chosen reduced subsets; it turned out that these subsets are representative only of the “average” acoustics of the hall. Normality tests were carried out to verify whether EDT, T30 and C80 could be described with some degree of reliability with a theoretical distribution. Different results, according to the varying assumptions underlying each test, were found. Finally, an attempt was made to correlate the numerical results emerged from the statistical analysis to the perceptual sphere. Looking for “acoustical equivalent areas”, relative difference limens were considered as threshold values. No rule of thumb emerged. Finally, the significance of the usual representation through mean values and standard deviation, which may be meaningful for normal distributed data, was investigated.

Effectiveness of a nondestructive evaluation technique for assessing standing timber quality

The research presented in this thesis was conducted to further the development of the stress wave method of nondestructively assessing the quality of wood in standing trees. The specific objective of this research was to examine, in the field, use of two stress wave nondestructive assessment techniques. The first technique examined utilizes a laboratory-built measurement system consisting of commercially available accelerometers and a digital storage oscilloscope. The second technique uses a commercially available tool that incorporates several technologies to determine speed of stress wave propagation in standing trees. Field measurements using both techniques were conducted on sixty red pine trees in south-central Wisconsin and 115 ponderosa pine trees in western Idaho. After in-situ measurements were taken, thirty tested red pine trees were felled and a 15-foot-long butt log was obtained from each tree, while all tested ponderosa pine trees were felled and an 8 1/2 -foot-long butt log was obtained, respectively. The butt logs were sent to the USDA Forest Products Laboratory and nondestructively tested using a resonance stress wave technique. Strong correlative relationships were observed between stress wave values obtained from both field measurement techniques. Excellent relationships were also observed between standing tree and log speed-of-sound values.

The role of psychological stress in inflammatory bowel disease: quality assessment of methods of 18 prospective studies and suggestions for future research

BACKGROUND: Enquiries among patients on the one hand and experimental and observational studies on the other suggest an influence of stress on inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD). However, since this influence remains hypothetical, further research is essential. We aimed to devise recommendations for future investigations in IBD by means of scrutinizing previously applied methodology. METHODS: We critically reviewed prospective clinical studies on the effect of psychological stress on IBD. Eligible studies were searched by means of the PubMed electronic library and through checking the bibliographies of located sources. RESULTS: We identified 20 publications resulting from 18 different studies. Sample sizes ranged between 10 and 155 participants. Study designs in terms of patient assessment, control variables, and applied psychometric instruments varied substantially across studies. Methodological strengths and weaknesses were irregularly dispersed. Thirteen studies reported significant relationships between stress and adverse outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: Study designs, including accuracy of outcome assessment and repeated sampling of outcomes (i.e. symptoms, clinical, and endoscopic), depended upon conditions like sample size, participants' compliance, and available resources. Meeting additional criteria of sound methodology, like taking into account covariates of the disease and its course, is strongly recommended to possibly improve study designs in future IBD research.

Quality controls for two heel bone ultrasounds used in the Swiss Evaluation of the Methods of Measurement of Osteoporotic Fracture Risk Study

Because of the important morbidity and mortality associated with osteoporosis, it is essential to detect subjects at risk by screening methods, such as bone quantitative ultrasounds (QUSs). Several studies showed that QUS could predict fractures. None, however, compared prospectively different QUS devices, and few data of quality controls (QCs) have been published. The Swiss Evaluation of the Methods of Measurement of Osteoporotic Fracture Risk is a prospective multicenter study that compared three QUSs for the assessment of hip fracture risk in a population of 7609 women age >/=70 yr. Because the inclusion phase lasted 20 mo, and because 10 centers participated in this study, QC became a major issue. We therefore developed a QC procedure to assess the stability and precision of the devices, and for their cross-calibration. Our study focuses on the two heel QUSs. The water bath system (Achilles+) had a higher precision than the dry system (Sahara). The QC results were highly dependent on temperature. QUS stability was acceptable, but Sahara must be calibrated regularly. A sufficient homogeneity among all the Sahara devices could be demonstrated, whereas significant differences were found among the Achilles+ devices. For speed of sound, 52% of the differences among the Achilles+ was explained by the water s temperature. However, for broadband ultrasound attenuation, a maximal difference of 23% persisted after adjustment for temperature. Because such differences could influence measurements in vivo, it is crucial to develop standardized phantoms to be used in prospective multicenter studies.

Factors influencing the quality of the consultation process

Sport psychology services have become to be an important brick stone when building athletic success. The strive for better performance is not only a characteristic of athletes, but of the whole support system in top level sport including sport psychology. Sport psychology consultants are permanently challenged to deliver highest quality services to their clients if they do not want to lose their contracts. Sport psychologists are continuously improving their consulting skills, learn new intervention techniques, read scientific papers and, last but not least, gain experience by accumulating hours of deliberate practice (Ericsson) in sport psychology. Even with increasing experience, the consultant has a certain number of degrees of freedom and has to make a series of decisions about how he or she wants to work. Quality, however, depends on a number of issues, and not all of them are under direct control of the consultant. It is argued that, in order for these choices being good, the following factors - among others - must be considered: Who is seeking assistance? What are the "issues and problems" (Gardner & Moore, 2006) the athlete is confronted with? What kind of approaches do fit with the client's need? Who is the 'client' the sport psychologist is supposed to work with? If it is a team, is the sport psychologist supposed to work with a number of individuals, with the coach, or with the whole system? Where are the boundaries of the system? What is the role of the sport psychologist in the sport system? All these issues directly affect the process and outcome quality of the sport psychology consultant. A sound theoretical basis, in connection with a distinct philosophy of the intervention, is an important cornerstone for the quality of sport psychology consultation.

Towards science-based sediment quality standards-Effects of field-collected sediments in rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss).

Sediments can act as long-term sinks for environmental pollutants. Within the past decades, dioxin-like compounds (DLCs) such as polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (PCDDs), polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) have attracted significant attention in the scientific community. To investigate the time- and concentration-dependent uptake of DLCs and PAHs in rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) and their associated toxicological effects, we conducted exposure experiments using suspensions of three field-collected sediments from the rivers Rhine and Elbe, which were chosen to represent different contamination levels. Five serial dilutions of contaminated sediments were tested; these originated from the Prossen and Zollelbe sampling sites (both in the river Elbe, Germany) and from Ehrenbreitstein (Rhine, Germany), with lower levels of contamination. Fish were exposed to suspensions of these dilutions under semi-static conditions for 90 days. Analysis of muscle tissue by high resolution gas chromatography and mass spectrometry and of bile liquid by high-performance liquid chromatography showed that particle-bound PCDD/Fs, PCBs and PAHs were readily bioavailable from re-suspended sediments. Uptake of these contaminants and the associated toxicological effects in fish were largely proportional to their sediment concentrations. The changes in the investigated biomarkers closely reflected the different sediment contamination levels: cytochrome P450 1A mRNA expression and 7-ethoxyresorufin-O-deethylase activity in fish livers responded immediately and with high sensitivity, while increased frequencies of micronuclei and other nuclear aberrations, as well as histopathological and gross pathological lesions, were strong indicators of the potential long-term effects of re-suspension events. Our study clearly demonstrates that sediment re-suspension can lead to accumulation of PCDD/Fs and PCBs in fish, resulting in potentially adverse toxicological effects. For a sound risk assessment within the implementation of the European Water Framework Directive and related legislation, we propose a strong emphasis on sediment-bound contaminants in the context of integrated river basin management plans.

Current measurements below the ice in Eclipse Sound

Velocity and direction of the current under the sea ice of the EcIipse Sound between Baffin lsland and Bylot Island were measured with specially developed devices and registered on a recorder. During the period of registration (May-June 1972) an easterly current of 5-7 cm/s superimposed by tidal and local influences (max. 12 cm/s) was found. In addition , measurements of friction between steelcone surfaces und corresponding conical ice bores are reported on. The plotted results show the influence of ice-temperature, surface quality and in some cases the influence of time.