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Pasture Species Composition Under Differing Grazing Management
Get PDFMany philosophies exist regarding the management of pastures for grazing. Most philosophies focus on reaching one of two goals: maximizing pasture dry matter production or optimizing dry matter production and forage quality. Either method can have merit if utilized properly, though most ruminant species, including cattle and sheep, need to consume good quality pasture to attain proper health and high production. Regardless of which goal is pursued, minimizing production costs is a priority for most graziers. One method of improving forage quality in mixed pastures is to increase pasture legume content, which can be done through rotational grazing management under a system of management intensive grazing. However, there is differing evidence on how grazing should be managed to achieve this goal. This study sought to determine whether a fast, 10-14 day, “rototinuous” management or a slow, 20-28 day “rotational” management was more effective at retaining a common legume – red clover (Trifolium pratense) – throughout the growing season in mixed grass and legume pastures grazed by sheep. The initial hypothesis was that the rotational management would retain more clover throughout the growing season than the rototinuous management due to increased rest time between grazings. Pasture species composition was measured weekly from mid-May through mid-August using visual evaluation, where randomly placed quadrats were used to select areas for data collection. Measurements of the amount of clover present in each pasture were done both pre-grazing and post-grazing, and control quadrats were harvested, separated into grass and legume fractions, dried, and weighed every week to audit the accuracy of the visual evaluations. Throughout the experiment, the average amount of clover pre-grazing in the rotational treatment was greater than the amount in the rototinuous treatment. The rotational treatment maintained clover stands at around 30% of the total pasture mass during the experiment, while the rototinuous treatment began at around 30% clover but steadily lost clover at an absolute rate of 2% of total pasture mass each week. The post-grazing data showed that the rotational treatment had more clover than the rototinuous treatment throughout the experiment, but both treatments lost clover over time at an absolute rate of 1% of pasture mass each week. These results suggested that traditional rotational grazing was superior at retaining clover compared to rototinuous grazing. It was predicted that the greater amount of clover present in the rotational pastures can result in greater animal productivity and meat quality from harvested animals over a longer term than could be measured in the study.No embargoAcademic Major: Sustainable Plant System
Effective Routing in Payment Channel Networks using Spanning Trees
Get PDFIn today’s world, the demand for cryptocurrencies is increasing, making scalability a significant challenge. Payment Channel Networks (PCNs) have emerged as a viable solution. However, PCNs still face challenges in routing payments effectively. Payments typically flow over a single channel in one direction, leading to channel depletion and failed trans- actions in that direction. Consequently, na ̈ıve routing schemes, such as shortest path routing, can exhaust critical channels and freeze the sys- tem. To address these issues, we present STR (Spanning Tree Routing), an algorithm that leverages the entire network and rebalances channel capacities dynamically. We are able to route large transactions over low- capacity channels while utilizing a larger portion of the network. Our experimental studies show that STR performs significantly better in net- work scenarios of low demand density, where traffic predominantly flows in one direction when compared with the shortest path algorithm. In such scenarios, STR algorithm provides performance improvement by a factor of 50 compared to the shortest path algorithm and also leads to fewer imbalanced channels.No embargoAcademic Major: Computer Science and Engineerin
The Arbitration Debate: A Tale of Two Contract Cities
Get PDFPublished in cooperation with the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolutio
Table of Contents (Volume 39, Number 4, 2024)
No full textPublished in cooperation with the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolutio
Congress and the Operational Disciplining of the Use of Armed Force, Part II: Rules of Engagement and a "Military-Agency Test" for the Separation of War Powers
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Design, Prototyping, and Evaluation of Two Dexterous Multi-Segment Pneumatic Soft Robot Grippers
No full textSoft robot grippers have become a popular research topic in recent years. Unlike traditional mechanical grippers, soft robot grippers utilize the deformable properties of their soft materials to envelop target objects through deformation, thus achieving grasping suitable for various shapes. Moreover, robots made of soft materials can enhance the safety of interactions with humans. This paper will introduce two prototypes of pneumatic soft robotic gripper designs. The first prototype features a gripper with two air chambers, while the second prototype has three air chambers. The paper aims to detail the design and fabrication process of two multi-segmented fingers and focuses on evaluating the performance of the two-segment gripper. The evaluation includes conducting flexibility tests in three distinct ways: testing the curvature of the grippers under different input pressures, assessing stiffness variations, and controlling the pressure difference in each air chamber to conduct a grasping adaptability test. The results showed that this two-segment soft finger prototype exhibited strong adaptability in grasping items of varying shapes and sizes and demonstrated a high degree of flexibility when continuously rotating objects. Each segment was able to withstand a maximum pressure of 25 psi and execute bending commands in less than 1 second. In summary, this study explores the complementary balance between the fabrication of multi-air chamber soft robotic fingers and their flexibility and grasping strength. The study further illustrates that through optimized design, soft robotic fingers can perform complex operating tasks without the need for sensors and complex control systems. This further illustrates the ease of operation of soft robotic fingers in daily life and is a step closer to widespread application in the future.No embargoAcademic Major: Mechanical Engineerin