AMORPH – Agricultural practise – mobility, availability and retention of phosphorus in soils

The project will focus on the potentially mobile dissolved and colloidal P covering a broad range of agricultural soil types and tyr to investigate how aspects of agricultural practices influence the potential P mobility.

Our group will mainly be involved in analysing the plant available P (Olsen P) in order to describe how the plant available P depends on explanatory variables.

The project is lead by Gitte Rubæk (Department of Agroecology and environment)

NLES4 – Nitrogen Leaching from agricultural fields

The purpose of the project is to improve the existing NLES3 model for prediction of nitrogen leaching under different growing conditions

Our group will be responsible for the statistical analyses of leaching recorded in trials and on private farms.

The project is lead by Uffe Jørgensen (Department of Agroecology and environment)

IMPACT – Impacts and adoption to climate change in cropping systems

The purpose of the project is to analyse likely impacts of climate change on arable cropping systems in Denmark with particular reference to drop quality, N cycling, nitrate leaching and changes in occurrence of pests and diseases.

Our group will mainly be involved in the analyses of existing long term trial in order to evaluate the effect of climate on crop yield.

The project is lead by Jørgen E. Olesen (Department of Agroecology and environment)

Wink screensnapshot software

Wink (http://www.debugmode.com/wink/) is a free software to catch screen-shots.

Main features:

1. three modi: 1) take single screen shots 2) take shots at each mouse OR key action 3) take at real time. You can change between these modi in a session.
2. You can choose to record a specific window only (for example slices) or the whole screen.
3. You can edit the final screenshots: add voice, add text elements.
4. You can interleave different sessions.
5. The final formal is an adobe Flash swf-file, which is started via an html file. Any user is able to download Flash from Adobe.

Two commerical alternatives are camtasisa (microsoft http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp about 300 dollar) and captivate (adobe http://www.adobe.com/products/captivate/ about 600 dollar).

Captive seems to be more like wink, as it allows to take individual snapshots. It has the addtitional freature to allow interative learning facilitites as quizzies etc.

See for a comparison of both:

http://www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=9393

Ulrich

ICA (independent component analysis)

Following the Epital-presentation in April, I surfed the web a bit about ICA (independent component analysis). It has - at least on the surface - a strong resemblance with factor analysis. Some web-links are:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Component_Analysis
http://www.sccn.ucsd.edu/~arno/indexica.html ("ICA for dummies")
http://www.cnl.salk.edu/~tewon/ica_cnl.html
http://www.cis.hut.fi/projects/ica/ (where additional links can be found)
A book on the topic is mentioned at http://www.cis.hut.fi/projects/ica/book

There are two R packages related to ICA: fastICA and mlica, see also http://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/Views/Multivariate.html

R for SAS and SPSS users

I came across this document - RforSAS&SPSSusers.pdf - which gives a nice R-introduction to people familiar with other statistical packages. It might be of use in connection with various courses.

Lameness of dairy cattle - early identification and consequences for behaviour and production

The purpose is to develop and optimize a novel tool for early identification of dairy cattle with lameness in order to increase animal welfare, product quality and producer profit. Moreover, the consequences of lameness for animal welfare and production will be illuminated.

Development of the Virtual Slaughter

The purpose of the project is to develop 3-D models of the body of slaughter pigs based on CT images for

 

1. Product optimization: characterization of slaughter quality is related to marked demands.
2. Product development: new dissections of the body performed via the virtual model can be analyzed with respect to slaughter quality and economical consequences.
3. Predictor finding: Identification of measurable characteristics of the slaughter body related to slaughter quality that can be used for online measurements and consultation for farmers under production.

Our group is responsible for the identification of measurable predictors (part 3). An experiment is conducted by Pia Nissen (Department of Food Science, DJF) to gain information about the development of the pig body and to test the robustness of predictors developed on already scanned slaughter pigs.

The project is lead by Eli Vibeke Olsen(Danish Meat Association) in collaboration with DTU and DJF.

 

Project repsonsible (part 3): Ulrich Halekoh

ulrich.halekoh@agrsci.dk

Project period: 2006-2008 (months 8)

AUREGAB - Automated registration of animal behaviour

The AUREGAB project aims at developing new tools for monitoring and for early identification of dairy cows with reduced appetite, with lameness problems and cows in heat. In the project we use Bluetooth technology for determining the positions and lying behaviour of the animals.

Project period: 2006-2008

Project participants from our group include Frede Aakman Tøgersen and Søren Højsgaard (project leader)

ILSORM - Integrated risk management

The ILSORM project is about integrated risk management in dairy production using information technology and other modern technologies. Some keywords for our activities in the project are: sensor measurements, dynamic models, decision making, optimal decisions.

Project period: 2007-2009.

Project participants from our group include Lars Relund Nielsen, Asger Roer Pedersen and Søren Højsgaard.