Assessment of mass-produced animal-housing equipment can serve as a basis for improving animal welfare. A number of European countries have adopted various legal approaches to such assessment. In Germany, welfare assessment of housing equipment is voluntary, but minimum standards can be set by regulation for the assessment procedure and for the qualifications of the persons involved. From a scientific perspective, the time and resource constraints pose some problems, particularly as they apply to a voluntary procedure. For reasons of practicability, certain compromises will be required. Nevertheless, it is important to ensure that each assessment procedure is based upon scientific principles and considers animal welfare aspects to a sufficient extent. A proposal for the minimum standards of an assessment procedure has been elaborated by the Animal Welfare Committee of the German Agricultural Society (Deutsche Landwirtschafts-Gesellschaft, DLG), a shortened version of which is presented here. The animal welfare impact of such a regulated but voluntary procedure will be less than that of an obligatory assessment; however, the relatively flexible approach may still significantly contribute to the improvement of welfare aspects of livestock housing.

Field experiments were conducted in 2008 and 2010 to determine crop tolerance and weed control efficacy of the POST herbicides bentazon, flumioxazin, and oxyfluorfen applied to direct-seeded dry bulb onions on organic soil. Postemergence application of oxyfluorfen at 0.071 kg ai ha−1 resulted in less than 20% onion injury when applied at the 2 and 4 onion leaf stages and provided good control of ladysthumb and common lambsquarters. Oxyfluorfen EC caused slightly higher visual injury than oxyfluorfen SC, but there was no difference in onion yield among the treatments. Application of flumioxazin at 0.036 of 0.072 kg ai ha−1 alone or in combination with pendimethalin ACS resulted in minimal onion injury and no yield reduction. Combining flumioxazin in a tank mix with pendimethalin EC, dimethenamid-P EC, or S-metolachlor EC resulted in significant onion injury and yield reduction. Flumioxazin plus S-metolachlor, dimethenamid-P, or pendimethalin improved ladysthumb control in one of two years. Bentazon applied at 0.56 kg ai ha−1 produced moderate onion injury and did not control yellow nutsedge adequately. Bentazon applied at 1.12 kg ai ha−1 provided good control of yellow nutsedge but caused serious onion injury and yield loss.

The coast of Ceará State in NE Brazil is covered by vast fields of active and stabilized coastal sand dunes. Its tropical climate is characterized by two seasons, wet and dry, with wind intensity determined by the meridional shift of the Intertropical Convergence Zone. The wind power is negatively correlated with precipitation, and precipitation is negatively correlated with the difference between sea surface temperatures of the tropical Atlantic north and south of the equator. We present a model suggesting that during the Late Pleistocene wind power determined the mobility and stability of the dunes. Sand dunes accumulated during periods of high wind power (as it is today) and stabilized when wind power was low. Once the dunes were stabilized by vegetation they could not be activated even by increased wind power. Samples that were taken for luminescence dating from 25 stabilized dunes along the coasts of Ceará gave ages ranging from135 ka to < 100 yr. We postulate that these luminescence ages fall at the beginning of wet periods in NE Brazil characterized by low wind power. These paleoclimatic wet periods correlate well with the cold periods of stades in Greenland ice-core records.

Extended abstract of a paper presented at Microscopy and Microanalysis 2013 in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA, August 4 – August 8, 2013.

Extended abstract of a paper presented at Microscopy and Microanalysis 2012 in Phoenix, Arizona, USA, July 29 – August 2, 2012.

Extended abstract of a paper presented at Microscopy and Microanalysis 2011 in Nashville, Tennessee, USA, August 7–August 11, 2011.

Extended abstract of a paper presented at Microscopy and Microanalysis 2011 in Nashville, Tennessee, USA, August 7–August 11, 2011.

Extended abstract of a paper presented at Microscopy and Microanalysis 2011 in Nashville, Tennessee, USA, August 7–August 11, 2011.

Extended abstract of a paper presented at Microscopy and Microanalysis 2007 in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA, August 5 – August 9, 2007

Asymptotic expressions for the onset of convection in a horizontal fluid layer of finite extent heated from below and rotating about a vertical axis are derived in the limit of large rotation rates in the case of stress-free upper and lower boundaries. In the presence of vertical sidewalls, the critical Rayleigh number Rc is much lower than the classical value for an infinitely extended layer. In particular, we find that Rc grows in proportion to τ when the sidewall is insulating, where τ is the dimensionless rotation rate. When the sidewall is infinitely conducting, Rc grows in proportion to $\tau^{\frac{4}{3}}$ as in the case of an infinitely extended layer but with a lower coefficient of proportionality. Numerical results obtained at finite values of τ show good agreement with the asymptotic formulae.

Extended abstract of a paper presented at Microscopy and Microanalysis 2005 in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, July 31--August 4, 2005

Linear stability theory and bifurcation analysis are used to investigate the role of gravity in shear-band formation in granular Couette flow, considering a kinetic-theory rheological model. We show that the only possible state, at low shear rates, corresponds to a ‘plug’ near the bottom wall, in which the particles are densely packed and the shear rate is close to zero, and a uniformly sheared dilute region above it. The origin of such plugged states is shown to be tied to the spontaneous symmetry-breaking instabilities of the gravity-free uniform shear flow, leading to the formation of ordered bands of alternating dilute and dense regions in the transverse direction, via an infinite hierarchy of pitchfork bifurcations. Gravity plays the role of an ‘imperfection’, thus destroying the ‘perfect’ bifurcation structure of uniform shear. The present bifurcation problem admits universal unfolding of pitchfork bifurcations which subsequently leads to the formation of a sequence of a countably infinite number of ‘isolas’, with the solution structures being a modulated version of their gravity-free counterpart. While the solution with a plug near the bottom wall looks remarkably similar to the shear-banding phenomenon in dense slow granular Couette flows, a ‘floating’ plug near the top wall is also a solution of these equations at high shear rates. A two-dimensional linear stability analysis suggests that these floating plugged states are unstable to long-wave travelling disturbances.The unique solution having a bottom plug can also be unstable to long waves, but remains stable at sufficiently low shear rates. The implications and realizability of the present results are discussed in the light of shear-cell experiments under ‘microgravity’ conditions.

The dynamics of dry granular flows down a vertical glass pipe of small diameter have been studied experimentally. Simultaneous measurements of pressure profiles, air and grain flow rates and volume fractions of particles have been realized together with spatio-temporal diagrams of the grain distribution down the tube. At large grain flow rates, one observes a stationary flow characterized by high particle velocities, low particle fractions and a downflow of air resulting in an underpressure in the upper part of the pipe. A simple model assuming a free fall of the particles slowed down by air friction and taking into account finite particle fraction effects through Richardson–Zaki's law has been developed: it reproduces pressure and particle fraction variations with distance and estimates friction forces with the wall. At lower flow rates, sequences of high-density plugs separated by low-density bubbles moving down at a constant velocity are observed. The pressure is larger than outside the tube and its gradient reflects closely the weight of the grains. Writing mass and momentum conservation equations for the air and for the grains allows one to estimate the wall friction, which is less than 10% of the weight for grains with a clean smooth surface but up to 30% for grains with a rougher surface. At lower flow rates, oscillating-wave regimes resulting in large pressure fluctuations are observed and their frequency is predicted.