8th GNSS Workshop - Dublin 2008

This repot covers the 8th GNSS workshop, jointly organised by the JRC and the Irish Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (DAFF) This series of JRC GNSS workshops aim to review and update the various technical aspects regarding the control methods. Under the workshop formula, the event also provides a forum to discuss issues freely and to provide a channel for all stakeholders, Member States, contractors and even auditors to express feedbackJRC.G.3-Agricultur

An exploration of synchronization solutions for parallel short-range optical interconnect in mesochronous systems

As a result of the increasing complexity of electronic chips, the bandwidths required for inter- and intra-chip communication are rapidly increasing. As optoelectronics provides high=bandwidth and high-density interconnection it is considered as a candidate for short-range interconnection. For such interconnections, situated at a low level in the systems hierarchy, the interconnect latency is extremely critical for the systems performance. This paper describes some methods for mesochronous synchronization, needed for such interconnections. It will be shown that it can be beneficial to use an additional optical link to transfer a synchronization signal. Such a reference signal can be used efficiently for phase detection, provided that the data skew is sufficiently small, and result in a decrease of the cost-per-link

Towards a tighter integration of generated and custom-made hardware

Most of today's high-level synthesis tools offer a fixed set of interfaces to communicate with the outer world. A direct integration of custom IF in the datapath would often be more beneficial than an integration using such communication interfaces. If a certain interface protocol is not offered by the tool, either translation blocks (wrappers) are needed or the code should be written at a lower level. The former solution may hurt the performance, while the latter one is often impossible using an untimed high-level description. In this paper interface protocols or sets of JP core accesses are first described at a low level as sets of operations with scheduling information (macros). During the synthesis process, corresponding function calls are mapped to these macros. This facilitates the integration of custom-made hardware and hardware generated by high-level synthesis tools

Findings from the 2010 and 2011 LPIS QA records produced by the MS in the frame of Comm. Reg. No 1122/2009 art. 6.2

This document reports on the JRC activities on and developments of the LPIS quality assurance (QA) framework during 2012. It coincided with the implementation of the first LPIS quality assessment by the Member States for the 2011 reporting year. This second year of implementation witnessed the refinement of the screening methodology and the development of a quality audit procedure, both supported by further automation of the LPIS QA portal. Two years of LPIS QA implementation was sufficient for a number of Member States to capitalize on the self-assessment possibilities of the framework and lead to the inauguration of some true national quality policies that cover many aspect of the LPIS management. Further analysis and a fine tuning of the quality control parameters remain necessary if the LPIS QA findings are to be applied on decisions regarding the performance of LPIS in IACS as a whole.JRC.H.4 - Monitoring Agricultural Resource

LPIS Workshop: 'LPIS applications and quality', Sofia (Bulgaria), 17-18 September, 2008

This report contains overview of annual workshop on Land Parcel Identification System (LPIS) which took place in Sofia (Bulgaria), 17-18th of September, 2008. The workshop is targeted the technological responsible persons from the member state administrations. This year workshop ¿LPIS applications and quality¿ aimed to identify and discuss the key technological issues and examples of solutions that are relevant for operating a LPIS in the environment of administration and control system for direct payments to the European farmers in the framework of the CAP. The topics covered during the workshop included: geomatics aspects of the LPIS; data quality issues with a focus on quality management and quality policy; interaction of LPIS applications with control process and monitoring of the rural development measures; country status reports, in particular focusing on ¿lessons learnt¿ during completion of LPIS in Bulgaria and Romania as well as pilot project of LPIS creation in Croatia.JRC.G.3-Agricultur

Discussion document on the introduction of monitoring to substitute OTSC - Supporting non-paper DS/CDP/2017/03 revising R2017/809

This discussion document builds upon the non-paper DS/CDP/2017/03 to introduce the possibility for substituting the OTSC by a system of monitoring for checking the fulfilment of land use/ land cover related CAP requirements. It describes the main concepts and components that need to be considered and developed for substituting the sampled on the spot checks of aid applications with a monitoring system on all of the applications. The goal is simplification and reduction of the burden of controls and especially for what concerns number of field visits. Such substitution requires a shift in thinking, procedures as well as technology and these are topics elaborated in some detail. An annex provides illustrations, examples, field cases and elaborations of the key topics. This document constitutes the Commission’s interpretation of common standards.JRC.D.5-Food Securit

Users’ Assessment of Orthoimage Photometric Quality for Visual Interpretation of Agricultural Fields

Land cover identification and area quantification are key aspects of implementing the European Common Agriculture Policy. Rightfulness of support provided to farmers is monitored using the Land Parcel Identification System (LPIS), with land cover identification performed by photointerpretation. While the geometric orthoimage quality required for correct photointerpretation is well understood, little is known about the photometric quality needed for LPIS applications. This paper analyzes the orthoimage quality characteristics chosen by authors as being most suitable for visual identification of agricultural fields. We designed a survey to assess users’ preferred brightness and contrast ranges for orthoimages used for LPIS purposes. Survey questions also tested the influence of a background color on the preferred orthoimage brightness and contrast, the preferred orthoimage format and color composite, assessments of orthoimages with shadowed areas, appreciation of image enhancements and, finally, consistency of individuals’ preferred brightness and contrast settings across multiple sample images. We find that image appreciation is stable at the individual level, but preferences do vary across respondents. We therefore recommend that LPIS operators be enabled to personalize photometric settings, such as brightness and contrast values, and to choose the displayed band combination from at least four spectral bands.JRC.H.4-Monitoring Agricultural Resource

Sensing of endogenous nucleic acids by ZBP1 induces keratinocyte necroptosis and skin inflammation

Aberrant detection of endogenous nucleic acids by the immune system can cause inflammatory disease. The scaffold function of the signaling kinase RIPK1 limits spontaneous activation of the nucleic acid sensor ZBP1. Consequently, loss of RIPK1 in keratinocytes induces ZBP1-dependent necroptosis and skin inflammation. Whether nucleic acid sensing is required to activate ZBP1 in RIPK1-deficient conditions and which immune pathways are associated with skin disease remained open questions. Using knock-in mice with disrupted ZBP1 nucleic acid–binding activity, we report that sensing of endogenous nucleic acids by ZBP1 is critical in driving skin pathology characterized by antiviral and IL-17 immune responses. Inducing ZBP1 expression by interferons triggers necroptosis in RIPK1-deficient keratinocytes, and epidermis-specific deletion of MLKL prevents disease, demonstrating that cell-intrinsic events cause inflammation. These findings indicate that dysregulated sensing of endogenous nucleic acid by ZBP1 can drive inflammation and may contribute to the pathogenesis of IL-17–driven inflammatory skin conditions such as psoriasis

Data Model for the Collaboration between Land Administration Systems and Agricultural Land Parcel Identification Systems

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union (EU) has dramatically changed after 1992, and from then on forward the CAP focussed on the management of direct income subsidies instead of production-based subsidies. For this purpose, Member States (MS) are expected to establish Integrated Administration and Control System (IACS), including a Land Parcel Identification System (LPIS) as the spatial part of IACS. Different MS have chosen different solutions for their LPIS. Currently, some MS based their IACS/LPIS on data from their Land Administration Systems (LAS), and many others use purpose built special systems for their IACS/LPIS. The issue with different IACS/LPIS is that they do not have standardized structures; rather, each represents a unique design in each MS, both in the case of LAS or special systems. In this study, we aim at designing a core data model for those IACS/LPIS based on LAS. For this purpose, we make use of the ongoing standardization initiatives for LAS (Land Administration Domain Model: LADM) and IACS/LPIS (LPIS Core Model: LCM). The data model we propose in this study implies the collaboration between LADM and LCM and includes some extensions. Some basic issues with the collaboration model are discussed within this study: registration of farmers, land use rights and farming limitations, geometry/topology, temporal data management etc. For further explanation of the model structure, sample instance level diagrams illustrating some typical situations are included. Key words: CAP, Rural Land Administration, IACS/LPIS, LADM, LCM, Standardization.JRC.H.4-Monitoring Agricultural Resource

Physiological and transcriptomic evidence for a close coupling between chloroplast ontogeny and cell cycle progression in the pennate diatom Seminavis robusta

Despite the growing interest in diatom genomics, detailed time series of gene expression in relation to key cellular processes are still lacking. Here, we investigated the relationships between the cell cycle and chloroplast development in the pennate diatom Seminavis robusta. This diatom possesses two chloroplasts with a well-orchestrated developmental cycle, common to many pennate diatoms. By assessing the effects of induced cell cycle arrest with microscopy and flow cytometry, we found that division and reorganization of the chloroplasts are initiated only after S-phase progression. Next, we quantified the expression of the S. robusta FtsZ homolog to address the division status of chloroplasts during synchronized growth and monitored microscopically their dynamics in relation to nuclear division and silicon deposition. We show that chloroplasts divide and relocate during the S/G2 phase, after which a girdle band is deposited to accommodate cell growth. Synchronized cultures of two genotypes were subsequently used for a cDNA-amplified fragment length polymorphism-based genome-wide transcript profiling, in which 917 reproducibly modulated transcripts were identified. We observed that genes involved in pigment biosynthesis and coding for light-harvesting proteins were up-regulated during G2/M phase and cell separation. Light and cell cycle progression were both found to affect fucoxanthin-chlorophyll a/c-binding protein expression and accumulation of fucoxanthin cell content. Because chloroplasts elongate at the stage of cytokinesis, cell cycle-modulated photosynthetic gene expression and synthesis of pigments in concert with cell division might balance chloroplast growth, which confirms that chloroplast biogenesis in S. robusta is tightly regulated