scholarly journals Grapevine Cultivars, Trellis Systems, and Mechanization of the California Raisin Industry

2014 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 285-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew W. Fidelibus

Growers in California’s San Joaquin Valley produced >25% of the world’s raisins in 2012, with a farm-gate value of >$590 million, making the United States the leading global producer of raisins. California’s traditional raisin-making method is a laborious process in which clusters of grapes (Vitis vinifera) are harvested by hand onto paper trays, which are left in the vineyard to dry. The drying fruit may need to be turned or rolled, tasks requiring manual labor, and the trays of dried raisins are also picked up by hand. Most California raisins continue to be made in this way, but in recent years, the declining availability and increasing cost of labor has prompted many growers to implement one of two mechanized production systems, “continuous tray” (CT) or “dry-on-vine” (DOV). In CT systems, machines are used to pick the berries, lay them onto a tray, and pick up the dried raisins. The CT system could be considered a short-term strategy: it is compatible with existing conventional ‘Thompson Seedless’ raisin vineyards and has been widely adopted. The DOV system could be considered a medium-term strategy: it is best suited for vineyards specifically designed for DOV, with early ripening grapevine cultivars on expansive trellis systems, which ensures timely drying, and capitalizes on the fact that sunlit row middles are not needed for fruit drying. Grapevine breeding programs are currently working toward the development of raisin grape cultivars with fruitful basal nodes, with fruit that dry naturally upon ripening. This is a long-term strategy to further reduce labor needs by enabling mechanical pruning in winter and eliminating the need for cane severance in the summer.

2003 ◽  
Vol 20 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 46-82
Author(s):  
Fathi Malkawi

This paper addresses some of the Muslim community’s concerns regarding its children’s education and reflects upon how education has shaped the position of other communities in American history. It argues that the future of Muslim education will be influenced directly by the present realities and future trends within American education in general, and, more importantly, by the well-calculated and informed short-term and long-term decisions and future plans taken by the Muslim community. The paper identifies some areas in which a wellestablished knowledge base is critical to making decisions, and calls for serious research to be undertaken to furnish this base.


Electronics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 1151
Author(s):  
Carolina Gijón ◽  
Matías Toril ◽  
Salvador Luna-Ramírez ◽  
María Luisa Marí-Altozano ◽  
José María Ruiz-Avilés

Network dimensioning is a critical task in current mobile networks, as any failure in this process leads to degraded user experience or unnecessary upgrades of network resources. For this purpose, radio planning tools often predict monthly busy-hour data traffic to detect capacity bottlenecks in advance. Supervised Learning (SL) arises as a promising solution to improve predictions obtained with legacy approaches. Previous works have shown that deep learning outperforms classical time series analysis when predicting data traffic in cellular networks in the short term (seconds/minutes) and medium term (hours/days) from long historical data series. However, long-term forecasting (several months horizon) performed in radio planning tools relies on short and noisy time series, thus requiring a separate analysis. In this work, we present the first study comparing SL and time series analysis approaches to predict monthly busy-hour data traffic on a cell basis in a live LTE network. To this end, an extensive dataset is collected, comprising data traffic per cell for a whole country during 30 months. The considered methods include Random Forest, different Neural Networks, Support Vector Regression, Seasonal Auto Regressive Integrated Moving Average and Additive Holt–Winters. Results show that SL models outperform time series approaches, while reducing data storage capacity requirements. More importantly, unlike in short-term and medium-term traffic forecasting, non-deep SL approaches are competitive with deep learning while being more computationally efficient.


2008 ◽  
Vol 48 (7) ◽  
pp. 930 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. J. Cummins ◽  
C. A. Morris ◽  
B. W. Kirkpatrick

Long-term selection programs in the United States and New Zealand have developed twinning herds. In Nebraska, the United States Meat Animal Research Centre population had a calving rate of 1.56 per parturition in 2004. They have shown that the location of ovulation has an important effect on the success of pregnancy and that ovulations ≥3 are probably undesirable. These cattle have issues associated with calving difficulty and calf survival, which present challenges for commercial application. Intensive management using existing technology and/or future genetic improvement to address these traits are required to realise the potential benefits to beef production systems.


Modern Italy ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raffaella A. Del Sarto ◽  
Nathalie Tocci

Focusing on Italy's Middle East policies under the second Berlusconi (2001–2006) and the second Prodi (2006–2008) governments, this article assesses the manner and extent to which the observed foreign policy shifts between the two governments can be explained in terms of the rebalancing between a ‘Europeanist’ and a transatlantic orientation. Arguing that Rome's policy towards the Middle East hinges less on Italy's specific interests and objectives in the region and more on whether the preference of the government in power is to foster closer ties to the United States or concentrate on the European Union, the analysis highlights how these swings of the pendulum along the EU–US axis are inextricably linked to a number of underlying structural weaknesses of Rome's foreign policy. In particular, the oscillations can be explained by the prevalence of short-term political (and domestic) considerations and the absence of long-term, substantive political strategies, or, in short, by the phenomenon of ‘politics without policy’ that often characterises Italy's foreign policy.


2018 ◽  
Vol 99 (5) ◽  
pp. 1059-1064 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sourav Paul ◽  
Danilo Calliari

AbstractIn the Rio de la Plata salinity, temperature, chlorophyll a (chl a), and densities (ind. m−3) of the copepods Acartia tonsa and Paracalanus parvus were measured from January to November in 2003 by following a nested weekly and monthly design. Such sampling yielded two separate datasets: (i) Yearly Dataset (YD) which consists of data of one sampling effort per month for 11 consecutive months, and (ii) Seasonal Weekly Datasets (SWD) which consists of data of one sampling effort per week of any four consecutive weeks within each season. YD was assumed as a medium-term low-resolution (MTLR) dataset, and SWD as a short-term high-resolution (STHR) dataset. The hypothesis was, the SWD would always capture (shorter scales generally captures more noise in data) more detail variability of copepod populations (quantified through the regression relationships between temporal changes of salinity, temperature, chl a and copepod densities) than the YD. Analysis of both YD and SWD found that A. tonsa density was neither affected by seasonal cycles, nor temporal variability of salinity, temperature and chl a. Thus, compared to STHR sampling, MTLR sampling did not yield any further information of the variability of population densities of the perennial copepod A. tonsa. Analysis of SWD found that during summer and autumn the population densities of P. parvus had a significant positive relationship to salinity but their density was limited by higher chl a concentration; analysis of YD could not yield such detailed ecological information. That hints the effectiveness of STHR sampling over MTLR sampling in capturing details of the variability of population densities of a seasonal copepod species. Considering the institutional resource limitations (e.g. lack of long-term funding, manpower and infrastructure) and the present hypothesis under consideration, the authors suggest that a STHR sampling may provide useful complementary information to interpret results of longer-term natural changes occurring in estuaries.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marko Kovic ◽  
Christian Caspar ◽  
Adrian Rauchfleisch

Humankind is facing major challenges in the short-term, medium-term, and long-term future. Those challenges will have a profound impact on humankind’s future progress and wellbeing. In this whitepaper, we outline our understanding of humankind’s future challenges, and we describe the way in which we work towards identifying as well as managing them. In doing so, we pursue the overall goal of ZIPAR: We want to make the best future for humankind (ever so slightly) more probable.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason T. Wright ◽  
Michael P. Oman-Reagan

We discuss how visions for the futures of humanity in space and SETI are intertwined, and are shaped by prior work in the fields and by science fiction. This appears in the language used in the fields, and in the sometimes implicit assumptions made in discussions of them. We give examples from articulations of the so-called Fermi Paradox, discussions of the settlement of the Solar System (in the near future) and the Galaxy (in the far future), and METI. We argue that science fiction, especially the campy variety, is a significant contributor to the ‘giggle factor’ that hinders serious discussion and funding for SETI and Solar System settlement projects. We argue that humanity's long-term future in space will be shaped by our short-term visions for who goes there and how. Because of the way they entered the fields, we recommend avoiding the term ‘colony’ and its cognates when discussing the settlement of space, as well as other terms with similar pedigrees. We offer examples of science fiction and other writing that broaden and challenge our visions of human futures in space and SETI. In an appendix, we use an analogy with the well-funded and relatively uncontroversial searches for the dark matter particle to argue that SETI's lack of funding in the national science portfolio is primarily a problem of perception, not inherent merit.Also on arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.05318Please cite this version:Wright, Jason T., and Michael P. Oman-Reagan. “Visions of Human Futures in Space and SETI.” International Journal of Astrobiology, 2017, 1–12. doi:10.1017/S1473550417000222.


2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
pp. 0-0
Author(s):  
M.P. Hoang ◽  
K. Seresirikachorn ◽  
W. Chitsuthipakorn ◽  
K. Snidvongs

BACKGROUND: Intralymphatic immunotherapy (ILIT) is a new route of allergen-specific immunotherapy. Data confirming its effect is restricted to a small number of studies. METHODOLOGY: A systematic review with meta-analysis was conducted. The short-term (less than 24 weeks), medium-term (24-52 weeks), and long-term (more than 52 weeks) effects of ILIT in patients with allergic rhinoconjunctivitis (ARC) were assessed. The outcomes were combined symptom and medication scores (CSMS), symptoms visual analog scale (VAS), disease-specific quality of life (QOL), specific IgG4 level, specific IgE level, and adverse events. RESULTS: Eleven randomized controlled trials and 2 cohorts (483 participants) were included. Compared with placebo, short term benefits of ILIT for seasonal ARC improved CSMS, improved VAS and increased specific IgG4 level but did not change QOL or specific IgE level. Medium-term effect improved VAS. Data on the long-term benefit of ILIT remain unavailable and require longer term follow-up studies. There were no clinical benefits of ILIT for perennial ARC. ILIT was safe and well-tolerated. CONCLUSION: ILIT showed short-term benefits for seasonal ARC. The sustained effects of ILIT were inconclusive. It was well tolerated.


2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-122
Author(s):  
Jodi M. Smith ◽  
Vikas R. Dharnidharka

Significant progress has been made in pediatric kidney transplantation. Advances in immunosuppression have dramatically decreased rates of acute rejection leading to improved short term graft survival but similar improvements in long term graft survival remain elusive. Changes in allocation policy provide the pediatric population with timely access to transplant but there remains concern about the impact of less HLA matching and a decrease in living donors. This report presents data from North America on these successes and the ongoing challenges that face the pediatric transplant community.


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