Publications
NIBIOs employees contribute to several hundred scientific articles and research reports every year. You can browse or search in our collection which contains references and links to these publications as well as other research and dissemination activities. The collection is continously updated with new and historical material.
2019
Authors
Andreas Treu Katrin Zimmer Christian Brischke Erik Larnøy Lone Ross Foued Aloui Simon M. Cragg Per-Otto Flæte Miha Humar Mats Westin Luisa Borges John WilliamsAbstract
Timber structures in marine applications are often exposed to severe degradation conditions caused by mechanical loads and wood-degrading organisms. This paper presents the use of timber in marine environments in Europe from a wood protection perspective. It discusses the use of wood in coastline protection and archeological marine wood, reviews the marine borer taxa in European waters, and gives an overview of potential solutions for protection of timber in marine environments. Information was compiled from the most relevant literature sources with an emphasis on new wood protection methods; the need for research and potential solutions are discussed. Traditionally, timber has been extensively utilized in a variety of marine applications. Although there is a strong need for developing new protection systems for timber in marine applications, the research in this field has been scarce for many years. New attempts to protect timber used in marine environments in Europe have mainly focused on wood modification and the use of mechanical barriers to prevent colonization of marine wood borers. The importance of understanding the mechanisms of settlement, migration, boring, and digestion of the degrading organisms is key for developing effective systems for protecting timber in marine environments.
Authors
Kirsten TørresenAbstract
No abstract has been registered
Authors
Gudbrand Lien Ming Su LavikAbstract
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Authors
Ingunn M. VågenAbstract
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EDU-ARCTIC is an open-schooling project, funded by the EU for the years 2016-2019. The main aim is to attract young people (13-20 years old) to the natural sciences. The project is using Arctic to illustrate how research are carried out and put together in order to reveal what is happening in Arctic and how Europe ins influencing Arctic and how Arctic is influencing Europe. To achieve these goals, EDU-ARCTIC uses innovative online tools like webinars provided by scientists, Polarpedia (an online encyclopaedia) of scientific terms used in the EDU ARCTIC, as well as the monitoring system that is an open-access database including app for motivation on field registration. In addition, the EDU-ARCTIC offers Arctic Competitions, where pupils submit their idea for a science project as an essay, a poster or a video. During a three-step evaluation, a few lucky winners get the possibility to join scientists on expeditions to polar research stations during the summer. For school curricula and motivation of pupils, practical hands-on activities performed by school pupils themselves by using own senses stimulate to faster learning and cognition. The learning and practicing of observation increase the understanding of complex conditions occurring in nature, related to biology, ecology, ecosystems functioning, physics, atmospheric chemistry etc. For this, the EDU-ARCTIC project developed the monitoring system. All schools in Europe are invited to participate in a meteorological and phenological observation system in the schools’ surroundings, to report these observations on the web-portal and to have access to interesting accumulated data. The schools and pupils become a part of a larger effort to gain a holistic understanding of global environmental issues. The students may learn to act as scientific eyes and ears in the field. No special equipment is needed. Reporting of observations should be made once a week in the monitoring system at the EDU–ARCTIC web-portal. A manual and a field guide on how to conduct observations and report are available through the web. Teachers may download reports containing gathered information and use them for a wide variety of subjects, including biology, chemistry, physics and mathematics. Meteorological parameters are requested reported as actual values: air temperature, cloud cover, precipitation, visibility reduction and wind force, in all 19 parameters. It is also asking for reports on meteorological and hydrological phenomena, which occurred within the previous week: like lightning, extreme and other atmospheric phenomena, ice on lakes and rivers and snow cover, in all 23 parameters. The monitoring system is also include biological field observations, including plants, like Birch, Lilac, Bilberry in all 26 parameters. Then occurrence of first individual of five species of insects like Bumble bee, Mosquito, Ant and butterfly, and then registration of first appearance of the bird species Arctic tern, Common Cuckoo, White wagtail and Crane. An app for the monitoring system has been developed in order to engage pupils more by making it more comprehensive to register the meteorology and the phenophases. Further, special webinars and polarpedia entries are developed to strengthen the monitoring system. The web-portal is open source but password access is needed in order to enter registrations. keywords: observation system, natural science, interdisciplinary, stem.
Abstract
No abstract has been registered
Authors
Åshild Taksdal Randby Elisabet Nadeau Linda Karlsson Astrid JohansenAbstract
The study aimed to explore whether digestibility by cows of whole crop wheat silage harvested at two different dough stages of maturity was impaired due to its content of whole kernels. Wheat was harvested at early (ED) and soft-to-hard (SHD) dough and preserved as roundbale silage. After five months of storage, half of silage from each maturity stage was processed using a roller mill. Early dough silages contained 334 g dry matter (DM)/kg and 110 g starch/kg DM whereas SHD silages contained 423 g DM/kg and 254 g starch/kg DM. Total tract apparent digestibility and milk production by dairy cows was studied in a 2 × 2 factorial arrangement of silages harvested at the two maturity stages, either unprocessed or processed before feeding. Eight dairy cows were assigned to two Latin squares with four 3-week periods. Diets consisted of wheat silages offered ad libitum as the sole forage supplemented with 7.5 kg concentrates. Cows consumed on average 14.1 kg DM of wheat silage, 0.6 kg DM more of SHD than of ED silage (P < 0.001), and 0.4 kg DM more of processed than of unprocessed silage (P < 0.001). Apparent organic matter digestibility of wheat silage, calculated by difference, was 0.62 and 0.60 (P = 0.02) for ED and SHD respectively, and the respective starch digestibility was 0.98 and 0.99 (P = 0.02). There was no main effect (P > 0.20) of processing on total tract digestibility for any nutrient, but a weak interaction (P = 0.08) suggesting that starch digestibility was slightly higher in unprocessed than in processed wheat silage from SHD with an opposite tendency for ED. Daily yields of protein and lactose were higher, and milk yield tended to be higher (P = 0.07), with processed than with unprocessed silage from ED, as expected due to higher forage intake, whereas no effect of processing was found in SHD silage, in spite of higher intake. Soft-to-hard dough diets contained a high load of starch plus sugar compared with fibre. This might have influenced the rate and extent of ruminal neutral detergent fibre digestion. It is concluded that starch in wheat kernels harvested at the soft-to-hard dough stage or earlier, at a DM concentration in wheat silage up to 430 g/kg, is completely digested in dairy cows without processing.
Authors
Magdalena Broda Simon F. Curling Morwenna J. Spear Callum Aidan Stephen HillAbstract
This paper presents the water vapour sorption behaviour of degraded archaeological oak (Quercus robur L.) and the influence of methyltrimethoxysilane treatment on hygroscopicity. Wood samples (archaeological and undegraded recent oak) were treated with methyltrimethoxysilane using an oscillating pressure method. Moisture properties of the samples were determined using a dynamic vapour sorption system, and the surface area and porosity of treated and untreated waterlogged wood, previously dried using different methods, were characterised using a nitrogen sorption method. It was found that the silane modification resulted in a decrease in the equilibrium moisture content of archaeological oak samples from 23.7 to 19.4% for heartwood and from 23.3 to 10.0% for sapwood, respectively. After correction for silane content, however, the maximum equilibrium moisture content of the treated samples was 23.6% for heartwood and 21% for sapwood, which points rather at a bulking mechanism than chemical modification by silane. The results of the surface area and porosity measurements indicate that methyltrimethoxysilane is deposited in the cell wall and thus helps to preserve the microstructure of archaeological waterlogged wood.