This contribution is based on the personal experiences of the author as a typical crop farmer in Holland in 1925-1991, as a researcher at the Dutch Institute of Agricultural Engineering (19541964), and as the Director of that Institute in the period 1964-1983. In essence, the 20th century developments in mechanized agriculture are considered from a historical perspective. The future of farm mec...

The offshore wind industry, which aims to reduce the operational costs, usually achieved through learning curves and supply chain improvements, has seen drastic cost increase over the last five years. In order to sustain the competitiveness of the offshore wind industry against other renewable energy sources, the cost of offshore wind needs to come down to today’s onshore cost. This cost reduct...

This paper presents a project undertaken for the European Space Agency (ESA). The project is developing a knowledge-based software system for planning and scheduling of activities for spacecraft assembly, integration, and verification (AIV). The system extends into the monitoring of plan execution and the plan repair phases. The objectives of the contract are to develop an operational kernel of...

AbstructFor indoor wireless communication systems, radio frequency (RF) transceivers need to be placed strategically to achieve optimum communication coverage at the lowest cost. Unfortunately, the coverage region for a transceiver depends heavily on the type of building and on the placement of walls within the building. Traditionally, therefore, transceiver locations have been selected by huma...

A higher harmonic cavity system is under construction in the ALS to extend beam lifetime. The implementation will be carried out in stages. The plan is to operate the system in the passive mode as a start and, depending on various factors, the plan may evolve into an active system eventually to attain the optimum beam lifetime at all beam current levels. The RF system must be designed according...

-Compaction is one of the efficient ways to improve the strength and stiffness properties of soils, such as elasticity modulus and shear modulus. Moreover, compaction decreases soil settlement, improves bearing capacity and the stability of sloped embankments. An optimum water content is required to provide the best path to enter energy into soil and compact it. A constant value of energy appli...

The practice of refrigerating raw milk at the farm has provided a selective advantage for psychrotrophic bacteria that produce heat-stable proteases and lipases causing severe quality problems to the dairy industry. In this work, a protease (AprX) and a lipase (LipM) produced by Pseudomonas fluorescens 041, a highly proteolytic and lipolytic strain isolated from raw milk obtained from a Brazili...