Agricultural biogas plants based on energy crops gain more and more importance because of numerous energetic, environmental and agricultural benefits. In contrast to older biogas plants, the newest generation of biogas plants is equipped with modern ICA equipment and reliable machines/engines. In this paper, the authors present technical details and operational results of a modern full-scale ag...

Keywords: recombinant DNA crops (plants or organisms), transgenic crops (or plants), genetically modified organisms (GMO), biological containment level (B1 and B2), physical containment level (P1, P2, P3 and P4), experiments using large scale culture

A wide range of physical and biological systems exhibit complex behaviours characterised by a scale-invariant structure of the fluctuations in their output signals. In the context of plant populations, scaling relationships are typically allometric. In this study, we analysed spatial variation in the size of maize plants (Zea Mays L.) grown in agricultural plots at constant densities and found ...

12 There is high intra-specific variability in susceptibility of plants to herbivores with potential 13 effects on the population dynamics of species, community composition, structure and function. 14 This variability can be partly explained by vegetation assemblages, i.e. associational effects yet, 15 it is still unclear how the spatial scale of plant associations modulates foraging choice of ...

In the Asian tropics, a conspicuous radiation of Macaranga plants is inhabited by obligately associated Crematogaster ants tending Coccus (Coccidae) scale insects, forming a tripartite symbiosis. Recent phylogenetic studies have shown that the plants and the ants have been codiversifying over the past 16-20 million years (Myr). The prevalence of coccoids in ant-plant mutualisms suggest that the...

Heat resources of small temperature difference are easily accessible, free and enormous on the Earth. Thermoelectric effects provide the technology for converting these heat resources directly into electricity. We present designs for electricity generators based on thermoelectric effects that utilize heat resources of small temperature difference, e.g., ocean water at different depths and geoth...

NOTICE This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States government. Neither the United States government nor any agency thereof, nor any of their employees, makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed, o...

As it is becoming easier and faster to generate various types of high-throughput data, one would expect that by now we should have a comprehensive systems-level understanding of biology, biochemistry, and physiology at least in major prokaryotic and eukaryotic model systems. Despite the wealth of available data, we only get a glimpse of what is going on at the molecular level from the global pe...

Many relevant process states in wastewater treatment are not measurable, or their measurements are subject to considerable uncertainty. This poses a serious problem for process monitoring and control. Model-based state estimation can provide estimates of the unknown states and increase the reliability of measurements. In this paper, an integrated approach is presented for the optimization-based...

ii Acknowledgment iv Dedication vii List of Figures xvii List of Tables xxiv Chapter 1: Introduction 1.1 Water Crisis in Arab Countries 1 1.2 Research Motivation 2 1.3 Research Aims and Significance 3 A. The Significance of Neural Networks for Modeling of Large-Scale 4 Commercial Water Desalination Plants. B. The Significance of Steady-State and Dynamic Simulations of a Large-Scale Commercial M...