Innovation in Plant-Greenhouse Interactions and Crop Management

(Semi)-closed greenhouses allow for better control of climate conditions compared to conventional greenhouses. To make the high investments for such greenhouses economically feasible, substantial yield increases are necessary. In north-Europe supplementary assimilation light in greenhouse horticulture is increasingly used to improve yield and product quality to meet market demands for year-round production and to obtain a more regular labor demand throughout the year. Using inter-lighting instead of lights only on top of the crop, and Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs), could increase substantially light and energy efficiency. As soon as LEDs will reach high enough efficiency and feasible price, they are expected to replace high pressure sodium lamps in greenhouse horticulture. Another important issue is the choice of the greenhouse cover which should be optimized from the crop point of view. A cover with high transmission of light, but low transmission of NIR, results in a better climate during the warm season (reduced temperatures, less crop transpiration, higher CO2-concentration possible because of reduced ventilation demand). Increasing the diffusive power of the cover material could result in a better distribution of the radiation over the crop canopy, therefore leading to substantial increase in absorbed radiation (up to 20% for highly diffusive covers) and improving radiation use efficiency and yield. Under these new conditions (high CO2 and high light levels) other genotypes than the present cultivars may be superior. However, the possible effect of breeding especially for these new conditions is still little investigated. Under improved crop management, maintaining leaf area index high enough and controlling source-sink balance is discussed. In conclusion, there are a lot of possibilities to further improve yield and quality of greenhouse produce, and meanwhile reduce the input of fossil fuel energy

A Political Economy Model of Regulation Explained Through Fuzzy Logics

The basic problem of environmental regulation involves the government trying to induce a polluter to take socially desirable actions, which ostensibly are not in the best interest of the polluter. But the government may not always be able to precisely control the polluter. To further complicate matters the government faces a complex problem of determining exactly what level of pollution is best for society. In reality the government faces pressures from consumers and polluters. There are some important lessons to gather from the analysis of current models of regulation. One is that there are many imperfect links between the legislature and the pollution-generating process. In this case regulation may be excessively costly, may result in considerable cheating, and may result in excessive pollution. Another lesson is that legislature does not necessarily act as an efficient benevolent maximizer of social well-being. The authors intend in this paper to explain the current view of political models of regulation, analysing them for their complexity, and attempt to provide a reasonable explanation of their functioning recurring to fuzzy logics. Understanding how the browns and greens interact with the legislature and regulatory agencies can to some extent explain the current environmental regulations. The fuzzy approach, intends to allow for easier understanding of these interactions, and provide an answer for more effective decision making. Keywords: Environmental Regulation, Environmental Economics, Fuzzy Logics, Models, Pollution Control, Sustainability

Strength curves for web crippling design of cold-formed stainless steel hat sections

This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Elsevier in Thin-Walled Structures on 02/09/2014, available online: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0263823114002341?via%3Dihub The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.The web crippling design guides are based on empirical adjustments of available test data. These equations differ from the basic concept underpinning most of the other instabilities, the so-called strength curves. This investigation presents a new design approach for web crippling design of stainless steel hat sections based on strength curves controlled by slenderness-based functions ��(). The effects of web crippling on such cross-sections were studied numerically and the obtained results were used to derive the design expressions. Comparisons with tests and FE data, and with design guides show that the proposed design approach provides more accurate web crippling resistance.Research Fund for Coal and Stee

EVALUATION OF RURAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMMES FAILURES WITHIN THE 2007-13 REGIONAL POLICY FRAME

New 2007-13 planning framework of the EU keeps using economic criteria (GDP) to identify those regions requiring priority attention (convergence objective). Although these criteria are useful for the overall Regional Policy, nevertheless it might result some planning failures of the strategies of rural development. This work focuses in evaluating possible failures of the Rural Development Programmes. For this purpose, a wide range of member Estates and Regions has been selected and two analysis have been applied: first, the coherence analysis (in relation to the economic, social and environmental situation of territories); and second, the conflict (among the rural territories development objectives) analysis. As result of this evaluation, a typology of the analysed Rural Development Programmes will be shown, which identifies different cases of failures. This work concludes that the use of methodological criteria in Regional Policy complementing to the Efficiency criteria might improve the territorial cohesion process and reduce some of the analysed failures in rural areas.Rural Development Programmes, Regional Policy, European Union, Community/Rural/Urban Development,

The biogeographic basis of Ebola-virus disease outbreaks: A model for other zoonotic diseases?

We first determined the differential role of favorability of environmental conditions and mammalian chorotypes in explaining the presence of the Ebola virus in Africa. We then combined environmental factors and chorotypes using fuzzy logic, which better explained the distribution of Ebola virus. The core area for the virus was associated with human infections of known animal origin, with infections of unknown source detected in areas that are biogeographically more peripheral. Variation in the environmental favorability for disease outbreaks may be monitored using indices of macroclimatic oscillations. This may provide the basis for an early warning system based on the variation in macroclimatic indices and the locations where human contact with multiple animal species tend to occur. We propose to study the biogeography of zoonoses by: 1) determining the potential spatial distribution of these diseases, according to environmental factors and the biogeographic structure of animals linked to the zoonosis cycle; 2) search for relationships between disease outbreaks and global atmospheric oscillations to forecast periods of higher risk of emergence of the infectious diseases.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Invariant Measures and Statistical Solutions of the Globally Modified Navier-Stokes Equations

We obtain regularity results for solutions of the three dimensional system of globally modified Navier-Stokes equations, and we investigate the relationship between global attractors, invariant measures, time-average measures and statistical solutions of these system in the case of temporally independent forcing

Equivalence of Invariant Measures and Stationary Statistical Solutions for The Autonomous Globally Modified Navier-Stokes Equations

A new proof of existence of solutions for the three dimensional system of globally modified Navier-Stokes equations introduced in [3] by Caraballo, Kloeden and Real is obtained using a smoother Galerkin scheme. This is then used to investigate the relationship between invariant measures and statistical solutions of this system in the case of temporally independent forcing term. Indeed, we are able to prove that a stationary statistical solution is also an invariant probability measure under suitable assumptions

Pullback and Forward Attractors for a Damped Wave Equation with Delays

The existence of a pullback (and also a uniform forward) attractor is proved for a damped wave equation containing a delay forcing term which, in particular, covers the models of Sine-Gordon type. The result follows from the existence of a compact set which is uniformly attracting for the two-parameter semigroup associated to the model

Discretization of Asymptotically Stable Stationary Solutions of Delay Differential Equations with a Random Stationary Delay

We prove the existence of a stationary random solution to a delay random ordinary differential system which attracts all other solutions in both pullback and forwards senses. The equation contains a one-sided dissipative Lipschitz term without delay, while the random delay appears in a globally Lipschitz one. The delay function only needs to be continuous in time. Moreover, we also prove that the split implicit Euler scheme associated to the random delay differential system generates a discrete time random dynamical system which also possesses a stochastic stationary solution with the same attracting property, and which converges to the stationary solution of the delay random differential equation pathwise as the stepsize goes to zero