Sustainability and Agricultural Regeneration in Hungarian Agriculture

Generational renewal is a core issue in European agriculture. Despite the continuous efforts of governments and the EU Council, the ageing of farmers seems an unstoppable process, accompanied by land concentration, the decrease in agricultural activity and the transformation of the European countryside. Consequently, there is a very rich scientific literature analysing the problem; a great part of it argues that the young farmer problem consists, in fact, in a number of different problems, with these problems showing huge regional differences. Hungary, as a new member state, with a heterogeneous (both fragmented and concentrated) land-use structure offers a good field to analyse generational renewal. Our paper is based on the first results of an ongoing Horizon 2020 project analysing rural regeneration. As a part of the research study, 48 semi-structured interviews were conducted with young farmers, successors of farmers and new entrants into farming. In our paper, we explore how education, access to land and family traditions influenced generational renewal and how it impacts sustainability practices.

Humid and Thermal Oxidative Ageing of Radiation Cured Polymers—A Brief Overview

This article deals with the long-term behaviour of radiation cured polymers. Among the wide variety of possible ageing modes, the attention is focused on two key processes for users of radio-cured polymers: humid ageing of polymer glasses and thermal oxidative ageing of rubbers. These two processes are illustrated by numerous results coming from literature or our own research works. In both cases, the consequences of the structural modifications on the use properties (in particular, on mechanical properties) are described. It is found that the ageings of radiochemically and thermally cured polymers are not so different. It is thus concluded that a great part of the very abundant literature published on the ageing of thermally cured polymers remains exploitable for radio-cured polymers.

The Interplay between Pathophysiological Pathways in Early-Onset Severe Preeclampsia Unveiled by Metabolomics

Introduction: Preeclampsia is a multi-system disorder unique to pregnancy responsible for a great part of maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality. The precise pathogenesis of this complex disorder is still unrevealed. Methods: We examined the pathophysiological pathways involved in early-onset preeclampsia, a specific subgroup representing its most severe presentation, using LC-MS/MS metabolomic analysis based on multi-level extraction of lipids and small metabolites from maternal blood samples, collected at the time of diagnosis from 14 preeclamptic and six matched healthy pregnancies. Statistical analysis comprised multivariate and univariate approaches with the application of over representation analysis to identify differential pathways. Results: A clear difference between preeclamptic and control pregnancies was observed in principal component analysis. Supervised multivariate analysis using orthogonal partial least square discriminant analysis provided a robust model with goodness of fit (R2X = 0.91, p = 0.002) and predictive ability (Q2Y = 0.72, p < 0.001). Finally, univariate analysis followed by 5% false discovery rate correction indicated 82 metabolites significantly altered, corresponding to six overrepresented pathways: (1) aminoacyl-tRNA biosynthesis; (2) arginine biosynthesis; (3) alanine, aspartate and glutamate metabolism; (4) D-glutamine and D-glutamate metabolism; (5) arginine and proline metabolism; and (6) histidine metabolism. Conclusion: Metabolomic analysis focusing specifically on the early-onset severe form of preeclampsia reveals the interplay between pathophysiological pathways involved in this form. Future studies are required to explore new therapeutic approaches targeting these altered metabolic pathways in early-onset preeclampsia.

RESEARCHES ON THE TESTING IN LABORATORY CONDITIONS OF AN ECOLOGICAL CLIMATE SYSTEM USED FOR SELFPROPELED AGRICULTURAL MACHINES

Nowadays, cooling the air by means of climate maintenance systems is achieved, in most cases, using installations based on freon or other substances that cause pollution. Taking into account the fact that the EEC standards and regulations increase the emphasis on ensuring the quality, labour safety, health and environment, finding a solution for air conditioners that do not use a substance that causes pollution, has become a necessity. As a great part of farming work is done in the warmest periods of the year, temperatures being frequently over 35oC, it is necessary to equip the agricultural machines with air conditioners in order to achieve a thermic comfort in the cab. For this purpose, an air conditioner based on the process of water evaporation was designed, made and tested. The installation is able to cool the air that enters into the cab through the evaporation process that takes place in the special filling, with an efficiency of the mixing process more than 90%. Air passing sections are calculated so that they can assure both the quantity needed for climate maintenance in the cab (about 3.5 - 4 m3/min) and the relative speed between air and water in the filling, in order for the evaporation process to be conducted in the best conditions that were theoretical established.

Psychosis in Women: Time for Personalized Treatment

Early detection and prompt treatment of psychosis is of the utmost importance. The great variability in clinical onset, illness course, and response to pharmacological and psychosocial treatment is in great part gender-related. Our aim has been to review narratively the literature focusing on gender related differences in the psychoses, i.e., schizophrenia spectrum disorders. We searched the PubMed/Medline, Scopus, Embase, and ScienceDirect databases on 31 July 2021, focusing on recent research regarding sex differences in early psychosis. Although women, compared to men, tend to have better overall functioning at psychotic symptom onset, they often present with more mood symptoms, may undergo misdiagnosis and delay in treatment and are at a higher risk for antipsychotic drug-induced metabolic and endocrine-induced side effects. Furthermore, women with schizophrenia spectrum disorders have more than double the odds of having physical comorbidities than men. Tailored treatment plans delivered by healthcare services should consider gender differences in patients with a diagnosis of psychosis, with a particular attention to early phases of disease in the context of the staging model of psychosis onset.

198 Intrapulmonary shunt assessment in pulmonary arterial hypertension

Aims Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a rare, progressive disease with a poor prognosis. It is characterized by the presence of mean pulmonary arterial pressure (mPAP) ≥25 mmHg along with a pulmonary arterial wedge pressure (PAWP) ≤15 mmHg and pulmonary vascular resistance (PVR) &gt;3 Wood units at right heart catheterization, in the absence of other causes of pre-capillary PH such as PH due to lung diseases, chronic thromboembolic PH, or other rare diseases. Hypoxaemia is a frequent finding in patients with PAH and could be related to ventilation–perfusion mismatch, reduced diffusing capacity, decreased cardiac output, or the opening of intrapulmonary (IP) or intracardiac shunt. Purpose of the present study is to detect IP shunts in PAH patients and its determinants. Methods and results We retrospectively enrolled 29 PAH patients, collecting clinical parameters, haemodynamic and blood gas analysis at baseline and after specific therapies at follow-up. Shunt fraction was calculated by the formula (Cc—Ca)/(Cc—Cv) during oxygen supplementation (FiO2 100%). Intracardiac defects were excluded by echo contrast examination. As expected, after treatments our results showed a significant decrease of PAPm (−7.2 ± 11.6 mmHg) and a significant decrease of PVR (−2.1 ± 3.9 WU). However, it was reported a statistically significant decrease in Hb value (−1.2 ± 1.7 g/dl), in SpO2 (−2.1 ± 3.8%) and in the alveolar–arterial oxygen gradient (a-ADO2) (+54.5 ± 113.1 mmHg). 6MWT and NYHA decreased at follow-up but not statistically significance was detected. IP shunt increase was detected at follow-up after specific treatments (delta Shunt +6.9 ± 6.5%). At multivariate analysis delta PVR remains the only independent determinants of delta Shunts with a significative increment of shunts when PVR are reduced by more than three WU. Conclusions Specific PAH treatments determine a decrease of PVR, but a reverse correlation with IP shunt was noticed. Increase of IP shunt could be not a favourable clinical feature. In fact high IP shunt fraction could determine hypoxaemia and the need of a chronic oxygen supply therapy. Although a not statistically significant decrease of 6MWT and NYHA was found, it is reasonable that a long-standing hypoxaemia could reduce the aerobic function capacity. Ours results unfortunately were deeply influenced by the loss of a great part of elective patients during the pandemic, with the most part of data coming from patients needing hospitalization. This could explain why the delta shunt fraction is higher than expected.

Inverse effect and receptor dynamics – Coffee, Opium and Wine's secondary pharmacology

A homeopathic widespread belief is that the inversion of effect of the drugs in homeopathic medical practice is due to dilution or very low doses, but there are many homeopathic incoherencies. For example the first conception of the similia principle was obtained through planned, small sample, clinical experiments with ponderal/pharmacological doses in healthy and diseased subjects1. Furthermore the classical foundations of the similia principle in Organon2, the primary and secondary actions of drugs, were thought to be connected with opposite, time-dependent reactions of the body to high doses and the inversion of effect was seen in temporal sequence after a strong dose and not after changes of doses, so the idea that dilutions are responsible for inversion of effects is not suitable to the classical theory. And lastly homeopathic provings or pathogenetic trials have frequently mixed, unregarded to the doses, occasional toxicological symptoms and symptoms obtained through diluted substances3, reinforcing the idea that, on healthy subjects, in several cases many substances produce the same symptoms in pharmacological or infinitesimal doses. So at least the dose-dependent inversion of effect is not generalized in a great part of the collected symptoms. Biological foundations to similia principle have to be searched in other directions4, as in different sensitivity to drugs between health and disease, or in different time-dependent effect of drugs on specific, but different, cell sensitivity set point. In the vision described here both these possibilities represent the same phenomenon of altered cell sensitivity. It is aim of this article to show that the original hahnemannian idea to explain homeopathic similia principle starting from a pharmacological and biological point of view with ponderal doses, seems correct, rationally comprehensible and based on modern knowledges. The three pharmacologic examples that best illustrate this reasoning, coffe, opium and wine, will be discussed.

Novel Resin-Cement Blend to Improve Well Integrity

A good primary cementing job governs in a great part the producing performance of a well. Successful zonal isolation, which is the main objective of any cementing job, primarily depends on the right cement design. The resin-based cement system, which is a relatively new technology within the oil industry has the potential to replace conventional cement in critical primary cementing applications. This paper describes the lab-testing and field deployment of the resin-based cement systems. The resin-based cement systems were deployed in those well sections where a potential high-pressure influx was expected. The resin-based cement system, which was placed as a tail slurry was designed to have better mechanical properties as compared to the conventional cement systems. The paper describes the process used to get the right resin-based cement slurry design and how its application was important to the success of the cementing jobs. The cement job was executed successfully and met all the zonal-isolation objectives. The resin-based cement's increased shear bond strength and better mechanical properties were deemed to be instrumental in providing a reliable barrier that would thwart any future issues arising due to sustained casing pressure (SCP). This paper describes the required lab-testing, lab-evaluation, and the successful field deployment of the resin-based cement systems.

Overcoming Challenges of Applying Reinforcement Learning for Intelligent Vehicle Control

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a booming area in artificial intelligence. The applications of RL are endless nowadays, ranging from fields such as medicine or finance to manufacturing or the gaming industry. Although multiple works argue that RL can be key to a great part of intelligent vehicle control related problems, there are many practical problems that need to be addressed, such as safety related problems that can result from non-optimal training in RL. For instance, for an RL agent to be effective it should first cover all the situations during training that it may face later. This is often difficult when applied to the real-world. In this work we investigate the impact of RL applied to the context of intelligent vehicle control. We analyse the implications of RL in path planning tasks and we discuss two possible approaches to overcome the gap between the theorical developments of RL and its practical applications. Specifically, firstly this paper discusses the role of Curriculum Learning (CL) to structure the learning process of intelligent vehicle control in a gradual way. The results show how CL can play an important role in training agents in such context. Secondly, we discuss a method of transferring RL policies from simulation to reality in order to make the agent experience situations in simulation, so it knows how to react to them in reality. For that, we use Arduino Yún controlled robots as our platforms. The results enhance the effectiveness of the presented approach and show how RL policies can be transferred from simulation to reality even when the platforms are resource limited.

Energy efficiency of improved technologies and modern systems of bulk feed production of high quality on haylands of the Non-Chenrozem region

Исследования проводили в ФНЦ «ВИК им. В. Р. Вильямса» на базе трёх долголетних полевых экспериментов: в опыте 1 изучали многоукосное использование ранних и среднеспелых злаковых травостоев в среднем за 28 лет (1993–2020 годы), в опыте 2 — люцерно-злаковые травостои для позднего звена укосного конвейера в среднем за 7 лет пользования (2013–2020 годы), в опыте 3 проведено сравнение четырёх технологических систем создания и использования травостоев за последние 28 лет (в среднем за 47–74-й годы пользования, 1993–2020 годы). Цель исследований — определение агроэнергетической эффективности 15 технологий по созданию усовершенствованных злаковых и бобово-злаковых травостоев, а также шести систем ведения долголетних сенокосов при производстве сырья для заготовки высококачественного сена и сенажа. Применение нового метода агроэнергетической оценки антропогенных затрат не только подтверждает высокую экономическую эффективность создания сеяных травостоев на лугах, но и впервые в конкретных (цифровых) показателях устанавливает роль разнообразных природных факторов. На долголетних злаковых травостоях (в течение 28 лет жизни трав) обеспечивается производство сырьевой массы для заготовки объёмистых кормов (сена и сенажа) первого и второго классов. Совокупные антропогенные затраты энергии на этих травостоях в среднем за 28 лет составили 16,3–17,1 ГДж/га при двухукосной и 23,2–23,6 ГДж/га — при трёхукосной технологии, на люцерно-злаковых травостоях при двух укосах в среднем за 7 лет — 5,2–5,8 ГДж/га. Затраты окупались сбором обменной энергии на ранних и среднеспелых агроценозах с доминированием корневищных злаковых видов в 2,8–3,3 раза, а на люцерно-злаковых травостоях — в 10,6–11,0 раз. В структуре производства обменной энергии основная её часть обеспечивалась за счёт возобновляемых природных факторов: 67–70% — на злаковых травостоях и 90% — на бобово-злаковых долголетних травостоях. The research took place at the Federal Williams Research Center of Fodder Production and Agroecology and consisted of three long-term field trials. The trial 1 was aimed at studying the multi-cut use of short- and mid-season gramineous for 28 years (1993–2020). The trial 2 tested alfalfa-gramineous swards for late cutting for 7 years (2013–2020). The trial 3 compared four technological systems of sward development and cultivation for the last 28 years (1993–2020). The aim of this research was to determine the energy efficiency of 15 cultivation technologies for optimization of gramineous and legume-gramineous swards as well as six systems of long-term hayfield cultivation to obtain high-quality hay and haylage. New method evaluating anthropogenic costs proved high economic efficiency of sown swards but also showed the impact of various natural factors. Long-term gramineous swards (28 years of life) provided raw material for bulk feed production (hay and haylage) of the first and second grade. For such swards total anthropogenic costs amounted to 16.3–17.1 GJ ha-1 under two cuts and 23.2–23.6 GJ ha-1 — under three cuts for 28 years. For alfalfa-gramineous swards total anthropogenic costs amounted to 5.2–5.8 GJ ha-1 for 7 years. The costs were paid back by 2.8–3.3 times through the exchange energy yield from short- and mid-season ecosystems with higher proportion of rootstock grasses, from alfalfa-gramineous swards — by 10.6–11.0 times. The great part of exchange energy was provided through renewable natural factors: 67–70% — from gramineous swards and 90% — from the legume-gramineous ones.