Is it possible to increase the sustainability of arable and ruminant agriculture by reducing inputs?

Until recently, agricultural production was optimised almost exclusively for profit but now farming is under pressure to meet environmental targets. A method is presented and applied for optimising the sustainability of agricultural production systems in terms of both economics and the environment. Components of the agricultural production chain are analysed using environmental life-cycle assessment (LCA) and a financial value attributed to the resources consumed and burden imposed on the environment by agriculture, as well as to the products. The sum of the outputs is weighed against the inputs and the system considered sustainable if the value of the outputs exceeds those of the inputs. If this ratio is plotted against the sum of inputs for all levels of input, a diminishing returns curve should result and the optimum level of sustainability is located at the maximum of the curve. Data were taken from standard economic almanacs and from published LCA reports on the extent of consumption and environmental burdens resulting from farming in the UK. Land-use is valued using the concept of ecosystem services. Our analysis suggests that agricultural systems are sustainable at rates of production close to current levels practiced in the UK. Extensification of farming, which is thought to favour non-food ecosystem services, requires more land to produce the same amount of food. The loss of ecosystem services hitherto provided by natural land brought into production is greater than that which can be provided by land now under extensive farming. This loss of ecosystem service is large in comparison to the benefit of a reduction in emission of nutrients and pesticides. However, food production is essential, so the coupling of subsidies that represent a relatively large component of the economic output in EU farming, with measures to reduce pollution are well-aimed. Measures to ensure that as little extra land is brought into production as possible or that marginal land is allowed to revert to nature would seem to be equally well-aimed, even if this required more intensive use of productive areas. We conclude that current arable farming in the EU is sustainable with either realistic prices for products or some degree of subsidy and that productivity per unit area of land and greenhouse gas emission (subsuming primary energy consumption) are the most important pressures on the sustainability of farming

Geostationary earth climate sensor: Scientific utility and feasibility, phase A

The possibility of accurate broad band radiation budget measurements from a GEO platform will provide a unique opportunity for viewing radiation processes in the atmosphere-ocean system. The CSU/TRW team has prepared a Phase 1 instrument design study demonstrating that measurements of radiation budget are practical from geosynchronous orbit with proven technology. This instrument concept is the Geostationary Earth Climate Sensor (GECS). A range of resolutions down to 20 km at the top of the atmosphere are possible, depending upon the scientific goals of the experiment. These tradeoffs of resolution and measurement repeat cycles are examined for scientific utility. The design of a flexible instrument is shown to be possible to meet the two goals: long-term, systematic monitoring of the diurnal cycles of radiation budget; and high time and space resolution studies of regional radiation features

Out-of-plane magnetic domain structure in a thin film of La0.67Sr0.33MnO3 on SrTiO3 (001) observed by magnetic force microscopy

The room temperature out-of-plane magnetization of epitaxial thin films of La0.67Sr0.33MnO3 on SrTiO3 (001) has been investigated with magnetic force microscopy, using magnetic tips with very small coercivity, relative to the film. A clear magnetic pattern in the form of a checkerboard, with domain dimensions of a few hundred nanometers, was found for the thin, coherently strained films, which is approximately aligned along the maximum strain [110] and [1[overline 1]0] directions in the film. With increasing in-plane applied magnetic field, the magnetic contrast reduces, reflecting the rotation of the magnetization vector into the plane of the film. This process is reversible with the field. The out-of-plane magnetic pattern is not sensitive to rotation of the in-plane field. We attribute the observed out-of-plane magnetization component to an out-of-plane magnetic anisotropy, which is a remainder of the [111] magnetic easy axis in bulk La0.67Sr0.33MnO3 single crystal

Neutral Pion Distributions in PHENIX at RHIC

Transverse momentum spectra for identified $\pi^0$'s in the range 1 GeV/c $< p_T <$ 4 GeV/c have been measured by the PHENIX experiment in Au-Au collisions at $\sqrt{s}=130$ GeV. The spectra from peripheral nuclear collisions are consistent with the simple expectation of scaling the spectra from p+p collisions by the average number of nucleon-nucleon binary collisions. The spectra from central collisions and the ratio of central/peripheral spectra are significantly suppressed when compared to point-like scaling.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure

Integrating Neural Networks with a Quantum Simulator for State Reconstruction

We demonstrate quantum many-body state reconstruction from experimental data generated by a programmable quantum simulator, by means of a neural network model incorporating known experimental errors. Specifically, we extract restricted Boltzmann machine (RBM) wavefunctions from data produced by a Rydberg quantum simulator with eight and nine atoms in a single measurement basis, and apply a novel regularization technique to mitigate the effects of measurement errors in the training data. Reconstructions of modest complexity are able to capture one- and two-body observables not accessible to experimentalists, as well as more sophisticated observables such as the R\'enyi mutual information. Our results open the door to integration of machine learning architectures with intermediate-scale quantum hardware.Comment: 15 pages, 13 figure

To what extent do fiscal regimes equalize opportunities for income acquisition among citizens?.

This paper employs the theory of equality of opportunity, described in Roemer’s book (Equality of Opportunity, Harvard University Press, 1998), to compute the extent to which tax-and-transfer regimes in 11 countries equalize opportunities among citizens for income acquisition. Roughly speaking, equality of opportunity for incomes has been achieved in a country when it is the case that the distributions of post-fisc income are the same for different types of citizen, where a citizen’s type is defined by the socio-economic status of his parents. Intuitively, a country will have equalized opportunity if the chances of earning high (or low) income are equal for citizens from all family backgrounds. Of course, pre-fisc income distributions, by type, will not be identical, as long as the educational system does not entirely make up for the disadvantage that children, who come from poor families face, but the tax-and-transfer system can play a role in rectifying that inequality. We include, in our computation, two numbers that summarize the extent to which each country’s current fiscal regime achieves equalization of opportunities for income, and the deadweight loss that would be incurred by moving to the regime that does.Fiscal regimes; Equal opportunities; Income acquisition;