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  • American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
  • MDPI Publishing
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  • 1
    Journal cover
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    MDPI Publishing
    Online: 1.2010 –
    Publisher: MDPI Publishing
    Electronic ISSN: 2073-4433
    Topics: Geosciences
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  • 2
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    MDPI Publishing
    Online: 1(1).2012 –
    Publisher: MDPI Publishing
    Electronic ISSN: 2079-6382
    Topics: Chemistry and Pharmacology , Medicine
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  • 3
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    American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
    Online: 2013 –
    Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
    Topics: Natural Sciences in General
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  • 4
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    MDPI Publishing
    Online: 1(1).2012 –
    Publisher: MDPI Publishing
    Electronic ISSN: 2076-0825
    Topics: Electrical Engineering, Measurement and Control Technology , Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science, Production Engineering, Mining and Metallurgy, Traffic Engineering, Precision Mechanics
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  • 5
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    MDPI Publishing
    Online: 1(1).2013 –
    Publisher: MDPI Publishing
    Electronic ISSN: 2075-4434
    Topics: Physics
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  • 6
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    American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) | JSTOR
    Online: 1(1).1915 – (older than 96 years)
    Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) , JSTOR
    Print ISSN: 0096-3771
    Electronic ISSN: 2327-7513
    Topics: Natural Sciences in General
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  • 7
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    American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) | HighWire Press
    Online: 1.1880 –
    Print: 159.1968 - 206.1979, 213.1981 - 220.1983, 259.1993 – 338.2012 (Location: A17, Kompaktmagazin, 63/2 - 64/5)
    Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) , HighWire Press
    Corporation: American Association for the Advancement of Science, AAAS
    Print ISSN: 0036-8075
    Electronic ISSN: 1095-9203
    Topics: Biology , Chemistry and Pharmacology , Computer Science , Medicine , Natural Sciences in General , Physics
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  • 8
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    American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) | JSTOR
    Online: 1(1).1880 – 56(1461).1922
    Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) , JSTOR
    Print ISSN: 0036-8075
    Electronic ISSN: 1095-9203
    Topics: Biology , Chemistry and Pharmacology , Medicine , Natural Sciences in General
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  • 9
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    American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
    Online: 2015 –
    Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
    Electronic ISSN: 2375-2548
    Topics: Natural Sciences in General
    Keywords: Allgemeine Naturwissenschaften
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  • 10
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    American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
    Online: 2001 –
    Formerly as: Science Express  (2001–2015)
    Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
    Print ISSN: 0036-8075
    Electronic ISSN: 1095-9203
    Topics: Natural Sciences in General
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  • 11
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    MDPI Publishing
    Online: 1(1).2015 –
    Publisher: MDPI Publishing
    Electronic ISSN: 2313-576X
    Topics: Technology
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  • 12
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    MDPI Publishing
    Online: 1.2011 –
    Publisher: MDPI Publishing
    Electronic ISSN: 2077-0472
    Topics: Agriculture, Forestry, Horticulture, Fishery, Domestic Science, Nutrition
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  • 13
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    American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
    Online: 2021 –
    Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
    Electronic ISSN: 2694-1589
    Topics: Geography
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  • 14
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    MDPI Publishing
    Online: 1.2011 –
    Publisher: MDPI Publishing
    Electronic ISSN: 2076-3263
    Topics: Geosciences
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  • 15
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    MDPI Publishing
    Online: 1.2011 –
    Publisher: MDPI Publishing
    Electronic ISSN: 2075-163X
    Topics: Geosciences
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  • 16
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    MDPI Publishing
    Online: 1(1).2015 –
    Publisher: MDPI Publishing
    Electronic ISSN: 2312-7481
    Topics: Chemistry and Pharmacology
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  • 17
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    MDPI Publishing
    Online: 1(1).2012 –
    Publisher: MDPI Publishing
    Electronic ISSN: 2073-445X
    Topics: Agriculture, Forestry, Horticulture, Fishery, Domestic Science, Nutrition
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  • 18
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    MDPI Publishing | International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS)
    Online: 1.2012 –
    Publisher: MDPI Publishing , International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS)
    Electronic ISSN: 2220-9964
    Topics: Architecture, Civil Engineering, Surveying , Geosciences
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  • 19
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    MDPI Publishing
    Online: 1(1).2012 –
    Publisher: MDPI Publishing
    Electronic ISSN: 2079-9276
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
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  • 20
    Publication Date: 2021-02-25
    Description: Large stocks of soil organic carbon (SOC) have accumulated in the northern hemisphere permafrost region, but their current mounts and future fate remain uncertain. By analyzing an unprecedented dataset combining 〉2,700 soil profiles with environmental variables in a geospatial framework, we generated spatially explicit estimates of permafrost-region SOC stocks, quantified spatial heterogeneity, and identified key environmental predictors. We estimated 1014−175+194 Pg C are stored in the top 3 m of permafrost region soils. The greatest uncertainties occurred in circumpolar toe-slope positions and in flat areas of the Tibetan region. We found that soil wetness index and elevation are the dominant topographic controllers and surface air temperature (circumpolar region) and precipitation (Tibetan region) are significant climatic controllers of SOC stocks. Our results provide the first high-resolution geospatial assessment of permafrost region SOC stocks and their relationships with environmental factors, which are crucial for modeling the response of permafrost affected soils to changing climate.
    Repository Name: EPIC Alfred Wegener Institut
    Type: Article , isiRev , info:eu-repo/semantics/article
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  • 21
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    American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
    In:  EPIC3Science, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 310(5752), pp. 1299-1299, ISSN: 0036-8075
    Publication Date: 2023-06-13
    Description: 〈jats:p〉Sustained harmonic tremor signals were recorded by the seismographs of the German Neumayer Base seismological network in western Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica. These tremor episodes, lasting up to 16 hours, were recorded up to 820 kilometers from the source. Their spectra show narrow peaks with fundamental frequencies ranging from 0.5 to 6 hertz, more than 30 integer harmonic overtones, and frequency gliding, resembling volcanic tremor. Frequency‐wave number analysis suggested a moving source, which was recognized as iceberg B-09A traveling along the coast of eastern Antarctica. The most probable tremor sources are fluid-flow‐induced vibrations inside the iceberg's tunnel/crevasse systems.〈/jats:p〉
    Repository Name: EPIC Alfred Wegener Institut
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  • 22
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    American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
    In:  EPIC3Science Advances, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 9(50), ISSN: 2375-2548
    Publication Date: 2023-12-18
    Description: Antarctic krill, crucial to the Southern Ocean ecosystem and a vital fisheries resource, is endangered by climate change. Identifying drivers of krill biomass is therefore essential for determining catch limits and designating protection zones. We present a modeling approach to pinpointing effects of sea surface temperature, ice cover, chlorophyll levels, climate indices, and intraspecific competition. Our study reveals that larval recruitment is driven by both competition among age classes and chlorophyll levels. In addition, while milder ice and temperature in spring and summer favor reproduction and early larval survival, both larvae and juveniles strongly benefit from heavier ice and colder temperatures in winter. We conclude that omitting top-down control of resources by krill is only acceptable for retrospective or single-year prognostic models that use field chlorophyll data but that incorporating intraspecific competition is essential for longer-term forecasts. Our findings can guide future krill modeling strategies, reinforcing the sustainability of this keystone species.
    Repository Name: EPIC Alfred Wegener Institut
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  • 23
    Publication Date: 2023-08-08
    Description: 〈jats:p〉Arctic Ocean gateway fluxes play a crucial role in linking the Arctic with the global ocean and affecting climate and marine ecosystems. We reviewed past studies on Arctic–Subarctic ocean linkages and examined their changes and driving mechanisms. Our review highlights that radical changes occurred in the inflows and outflows of the Arctic Ocean during the 2010s. Specifically, the Pacific inflow temperature in the Bering Strait and Atlantic inflow temperature in the Fram Strait hit record highs, while the Pacific inflow salinity in the Bering Strait and Arctic outflow salinity in the Davis and Fram straits hit record lows. Both the ocean heat convergence from lower latitudes to the Arctic and the hydrological cycle connecting the Arctic with Subarctic seas were stronger in 2000–2020 than in 1980–2000. CMIP6 models project a continuing increase in poleward ocean heat convergence in the 21st century, mainly due to warming of inflow waters. They also predict an increase in freshwater input to the Arctic Ocean, with the largest increase in freshwater export expected to occur in the Fram Strait due to both increased ocean volume export and decreased salinity. Fram Strait sea ice volume export hit a record low in the 2010s and is projected to continue to decrease along with Arctic sea ice decline. We quantitatively attribute the variability of the volume, heat, and freshwater transports in the Arctic gateways to forcing within and outside the Arctic based on dedicated numerical simulations and emphasize the importance of both origins in driving the variability.〈/jats:p〉
    Repository Name: EPIC Alfred Wegener Institut
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  • 24
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    American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
    In:  EPIC3Science, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 378(6617), pp. 230-230, ISSN: 0036-8075
    Publication Date: 2023-05-10
    Description: 〈jats:p〉 Next week, the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) convenes in Hobart, Tasmania, to examine the state of marine life in the Southern Ocean. As part of the Antarctic Treaty System, this convention entered into force in 1982, and its focus on the region’s environmental integrity has never been more important, given the increasing effects of climate change and commercial fishing. An important focus over the past 40 years has been Antarctic krill, 〈jats:italic〉Euphausia superba〈/jats:italic〉 (hereafter krill), a keystone species that helps to hold this marine ecosystem together. Climate and fishing stresses should prompt the CCAMLR to address whether management of krill fishing is at a level that protects the Southern Ocean from losing its overall balance of marine life and the oceanic processes that regulate global climate. 〈/jats:p〉
    Repository Name: EPIC Alfred Wegener Institut
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  • 25
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    American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
    In:  EPIC3Science Advances, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 9(26), pp. eadf9696-eadf9696, ISSN: 2375-2548
    Publication Date: 2024-03-01
    Description: Dissolved iron (dFe) availability limits the uptake of atmospheric CO2 by the Southern Ocean (SO) biological pump. Hence, any change in bioavailable dFe in this region can directly influence climate. On the basis of Fe uptake experiments with Phaeocystis antarctica, we show that the range of dFe bioavailability in natural samples is wider (〈1 to ~200% compared to free inorganic Fe′) than previously thought, with higher bioavailability found near glacial sources. The degree of bioavailability varied regardless of in situ dFe concentration and depth, challenging the consensus that sole dFe concentrations can be used to predict Fe uptake in modeling studies. Further, our data suggest a disproportionately major role of biologically mediated ligands and encourage revisiting the role of humic substances in influencing marine Fe biogeochemical cycling in the SO. Last, we describe a linkage between in situ dFe bioavailability and isotopic signatures that, we anticipate, will stimulate future research.
    Repository Name: EPIC Alfred Wegener Institut
    Type: Article , peerRev
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  • 26
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    American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
    In:  EPIC3Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Research, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 2, ISSN: 2771-0378
    Publication Date: 2024-02-13
    Description: 〈jats:p〉Rapidly shrinking Arctic sea ice has had substantial impacts on the Earth system. Therefore, reliably estimating the Arctic sea-ice thickness (SIT) using a combination of available observations and numerical modeling is urgently needed. Here, for the first time, we assimilate the latest CryoSat-2 summer SIT data into a coupled ice-ocean model. In particular, an incremental analysis update scheme is implemented to overcome the discontinuity resulting from the combined assimilation of biweekly SIT and daily sea-ice concentration (SIC) data. Along with improved estimates of sea-ice volume, our SIT estimates corrected the overestimation of SIT produced by the reanalysis that assimilates only SIC in summer in areas where the sea ice is roughest and experiences strong deformation, e.g., around the Fram Strait and Greenland. This study suggests that the newly developed CryoSat-2 SIT product, when assimilated properly using our approach, has great potential for Arctic sea-ice simulation and prediction.〈/jats:p〉
    Repository Name: EPIC Alfred Wegener Institut
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  • 27
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    American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
    In:  EPIC3Science, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 382(6677), pp. 1384-1389, ISSN: 0036-8075
    Publication Date: 2024-02-22
    Description: The marine-based West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is considered vulnerable to irreversible collapse under future climate trajectories, and its tipping point may lie within the mitigated warming scenarios of 1.5° to 2°C of the United Nations Paris Agreement. Knowledge of ice loss during similarly warm past climates could resolve this uncertainty, including the Last Interglacial when global sea levels were 5 to 10 meters higher than today and global average temperatures were 0.5° to 1.5°C warmer than preindustrial levels. Using a panel of genome-wide, single-nucleotide polymorphisms of a circum-Antarctic octopus, we show persistent, historic signals of gene flow only possible with complete WAIS collapse. Our results provide the first empirical evidence that the tipping point of WAIS loss could be reached even under stringent climate mitigation scenarios.
    Repository Name: EPIC Alfred Wegener Institut
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  • 28
    Publication Date: 2024-01-20
    Repository Name: EPIC Alfred Wegener Institut
    Type: Article , peerRev
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  • 29
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    American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
    In:  EPIC3Science, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 383(6685), pp. 884-890, ISSN: 0036-8075
    Publication Date: 2024-03-21
    Description: Much of our understanding of Cenozoic climate is based on the record of δ18O measured in benthic foraminifera. However, this measurement reflects a combined signal of global temperature and sea level, thus preventing a clear understanding of the interactions and feedbacks of the climate system in causing global temperature change. Our new reconstruction of temperature change over the past 4.5 million years includes two phases of long-term cooling, with the second phase of accelerated cooling during the Middle Pleistocene Transition (1.5 to 0.9 million years ago) being accompanied by a transition from dominant 41,000-year low-amplitude periodicity to dominant 100,000-year high-amplitude periodicity. Changes in the rates of long-term cooling and variability are consistent with changes in the carbon cycle driven initially by geologic processes, followed by additional changes in the Southern Ocean carbon cycle. 〈/jats:p〉
    Repository Name: EPIC Alfred Wegener Institut
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  • 30
    Publication Date: 2015-08-11
    Description: A deformed exponential family is a generalization of exponential families. Since the useful classes of power law tailed distributions are described by the deformed exponential families, they are important objects in the theory of complex systems. Though the deformed exponential families are defined by deformed exponential functions, these functions do not satisfy the law of exponents in general. The deformed algebras have been introduced based on the deformed exponential functions. In this paper, after summarizing such deformed algebraic structures, it is clarified how deformed algebras work on deformed exponential families. In fact, deformed algebras cause generalization of expectations. The three kinds of expectations for random variables are introduced in this paper, and it is discussed why these generalized expectations are natural from the viewpoint of information geometry. In addition, deformed algebras cause generalization of independences. Whereas it is difficult to check the well-definedness of deformed independence in general, the κ-independence is always well-defined on κ-exponential families. This is one of advantages of κ-exponential families in complex systems. Consequently, we can well generalize the maximum likelihood method for the κ-exponential family from the viewpoint of information geometry.
    Electronic ISSN: 1099-4300
    Topics: Chemistry and Pharmacology , Physics
    Published by MDPI Publishing
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  • 31
    Publication Date: 2015-08-11
    Description: We consider the problem of learning a Bayesian network structure given n examples and the prior probability based on maximizing the posterior probability. We propose an algorithm that runs in O(n log n) time and that addresses continuous variables and discrete variables without assuming any class of distribution. We prove that the decision is strongly consistent, i.e., correct with probability one as n ! 1. To date, consistency has only been obtained for discrete variables for this class of problem, and many authors have attempted to prove consistency when continuous variables are present. Furthermore, we prove that the “log n” term that appears in the penalty term of the description length can be replaced by 2(1+ε) log log n to obtain strong consistency, where ε > 0 is arbitrary, which implies that the Hannan–Quinn proposition holds.
    Electronic ISSN: 1099-4300
    Topics: Chemistry and Pharmacology , Physics
    Published by MDPI Publishing
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  • 32
    Publication Date: 2015-08-11
    Description: Background: In 2012, a pilot health policy of contractual service relations between general practitioners and patients was implemented in China. Due to the decline in body and cognitive function, as well as the lack of family care and narrow social support networks, the demand of health services among the elderly is much higher than that among the general population. This study aims to probe into the empty nesters’ willingness-to-pay for general practitioners using a contractual service policy, investigating empty nesters’ payment levels for the service, and analyze the main factors affecting the willingness of empty-nesters’ general practitioners using contractual service supply cost. Methods: This cross-sectional study adopted a multistage stratified sampling method to survey 865, city empty nesters (six communities in three districts of one city) aged 60–85 years. A condition value method was used to infer the distribution of the willingness-to-pay; Cox’s proportional hazards regression model was used to analyze the influencing factors of willingness-to-pay. Results: More than seventy percent (76.6%) of the empty nesters in this city were willing to pay general practitioners using contract service in Chongqing. The level of willingness-to-pay for the surveyed empty nesters was 34.1 yuan per year. The median value was 22.1 yuan per year, which was below the Chongqing urban and rural cooperative medical insurance individual funding level (60 yuan per year) in 2013. Cox’s proportional hazards regression model analysis showed that the higher the education level was, the worse the self-reported health status would be, accompanied by higher family per capita income, higher satisfaction of community health service, and higher willingness-to-pay empty nesters using a contract service. Women had a higher willingness-to-pay than men. Conclusions: The willingness-to-pay for general practitioners by contractual service is high among city empty nesters in Chongqing, thus, individual financing is feasible. However, people are willing to pay less than half of the current personal financing of cooperative medical insurance of urban and rural residents. Education level, family per capita income, and self-reported health status are the main factors affecting the cost sharing intention for general practitioners using contract service supply. According to the existing situation of different empty nesters, it is important to perfect the design of general practitioners using a contractual service policy system, according to differentiated personal financing levels.
    Print ISSN: 1661-7827
    Electronic ISSN: 1660-4601
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering , Medicine
    Published by MDPI Publishing
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  • 33
    Publication Date: 2015-08-11
    Description: Lightweighting in the transportation industry is today recognized as one of the most important strategies to improve fuel efficiency and reduce anthropogenic climate-changing, environment-damaging, and human death-causing emissions. However, the structural applications of lightweight alloys are often limited by some inherent deficiencies such as low stiffness, high wear rate and inferior strength. These properties could be effectively enhanced by the addition of stronger and stiffer reinforcements, especially nano-sized particles, into metal matrix to form composites. In most cases three common strengthening mechanisms (load-bearing effect, mismatch of coefficients of thermal expansion, and Orowan strengthening) have been considered to predict the yield strength of metal matrix nanocomposites (MMNCs). This study was aimed at developing a unified model by taking into account the matrix grain size and porosity (which is unavoidable in the materials processing such as casting and powder metallurgy) in the prediction of the yield strength of MMNCs. The Zener pinning effect of grain boundaries by the nano-sized particles has also been integrated. The model was validated using the experimental data of magnesium- and titanium-based nanocomposites containing different types of nano-sized particles (namely, Al2O3, Y2O3, and carbon nanotubes). The predicted results were observed to be in good agreement with the experimental data reported in the literature.
    Electronic ISSN: 1996-1944
    Topics: Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science, Production Engineering, Mining and Metallurgy, Traffic Engineering, Precision Mechanics
    Published by MDPI Publishing
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  • 34
    Publication Date: 2015-08-11
    Description: In order to achieve process intensification for adsorption chillers and heat pumps, a new composite material was developed based on sintered aluminum fibers from a melt-extraction process and a dense layer of silico-aluminophosphate (SAPO-34) on the fiber surfaces. The SAPO-34 layer was obtained through a partial support transformation (PST) process. Preparation of a composite sample is described and its characteristic pore size distribution and heat conductivity are presented. Water adsorption data obtained under conditions of a large pressure jump are given. In the next step, preparation of the composite was scaled up to larger samples which were fixed on a small adsorption heat exchanger. Adsorption measurements on this heat exchanger element that confirm the achieved process intensification are presented. The specific cooling power for the adsorption step per volume of composite is found to exceed 500 kW/m3 under specified conditions.
    Electronic ISSN: 1996-1073
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
    Published by MDPI Publishing
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  • 35
    Publication Date: 2015-08-08
    Description: An ultrasonic technique, invariant to temperature changes, for a density measurement of different liquids under in situ extreme conditions is presented. The influence of geometry and material parameters of the measurement system (transducer, waveguide, matching layer) on measurement accuracy and reliability is analyzed theoretically along with experimental results. The proposed method is based on measurement of the amplitude of the ultrasonic wave, reflected from the interface of the solid/liquid medium under investigation. In order to enhance sensitivity, the use of a quarter wavelength acoustic matching layer is proposed. Therefore, the sensitivity of the measurement system increases significantly. Density measurements quite often must be performed in extreme conditions at high temperature (up to 220 °C) and high pressure. In this case, metal waveguides between piezoelectric transducer and the measured liquid are used in order to protect the conventional transducer from the influence of high temperature and to avoid depolarization. The presented ultrasonic density measurement technique is suitable for density measurement in different materials, including liquids and polymer melts in extreme conditions. A new calibration algorithm was proposed. The metrological evaluation of the measurement method was performed. The expanded measurement uncertainty Uρ = 7.4 × 10−3 g/cm3 (1%).
    Electronic ISSN: 1424-8220
    Topics: Chemistry and Pharmacology , Electrical Engineering, Measurement and Control Technology
    Published by MDPI Publishing
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  • 36
    Publication Date: 2015-08-08
    Description: The relationship between soil fauna and different fertilizer management practices is of growing concern. The aim of this research was to investigate the response of soil fauna to fertilization regimes, to explore the relationships among the community of soil animals, soil moisture and crop yields. The application of organic fertilizers (i.e., sheep manure or crop residues) increased crop yields and promoted the number of individuals and species of soil fauna owing to the exogenous organic matter that fertilizers provided for the survival and development of soil fauna. Furthermore, the treatments that applied sheep manure (i.e., sheep manure only or nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and sheep manure plus) were significantly beneficial for increasing crop yields and diversity of soil fauna compared to treatments with crop residues returned (i.e., crop residues returned only or nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and crop residues returned to the field) (p 〈 0.05) due to the response of soil fauna to diverse exogenous nutrients and the effect of soil fertility. Therefore, the finding that soil fauna abundance is significantly positively correlated with soil moisture and crop yield may mean the effects of fertilizer applications on soil animals were partly masked by the soil moisture and crop yield.
    Electronic ISSN: 2071-1050
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
    Published by MDPI Publishing
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  • 37
    Publication Date: 2015-08-11
    Description: Urban areas are one of the most important components of human society. Their extents have been continuously growing during the last few decades. Accurate and timely measurements of the extents of urban areas can help in analyzing population densities and urban sprawls and in studying environmental issues related to urbanization. Urban extents detected from remotely sensed data are usually a by-product of land use classification results, and their interpretation requires a full understanding of land cover types. In this study, for the first time, we mapped urban extents in the continental United States using a novel one-class classification method, i.e., positive and unlabeled learning (PUL), with multi-temporal Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data for the year 2010. The Defense Meteorological Satellite Program Operational Linescan System (DMSP-OLS) night stable light data were used to calibrate the urban extents obtained from the one-class classification scheme. Our results demonstrated the effectiveness of the use of the PUL algorithm in mapping large-scale urban areas from coarse remote-sensing images, for the first time. The total accuracy of mapped urban areas was 92.9% and the kappa coefficient was 0.85. The use of DMSP-OLS night stable light data can significantly reduce false detection rates from bare land and cropland far from cities. Compared with traditional supervised classification methods, the one-class classification scheme can greatly reduce the effort involved in collecting training datasets, without losing predictive accuracy.
    Electronic ISSN: 2072-4292
    Topics: Architecture, Civil Engineering, Surveying , Geography
    Published by MDPI Publishing
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  • 38
    Publication Date: 2015-08-11
    Description: The knowledge about impacts of changes in precipitation regimes on terrestrial ecosystems is fundamental to improve our understanding of global environment change, particularly in the context that heavy precipitation is expected to increase according to the 5th Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment. Based on observed climate data and the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) Global Inventory Modeling and Mapping Studies (GIMMS) satellite-derived normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), here we analyzed the spatio-temporal changes in grassland NDVI, covering 1.64 × 106 km2, in northern China and their linkages to changes in precipitation and temperature during the period 1982–2011. We found that mean growing season (April–October) grass NDVI is more sensitive to heavy precipitation than to moderate or light precipitation in both relatively arid areas (RAA) and relatively humid areas (RHA), whereas the sensitivities of grass NDVI to temperature are comparable to total precipitation in RHA. Heavy precipitation showed the strongest impacts in more than half of northern China (56%), whereas impacts of light precipitation on grass NDVI were stronger in some areas (21%), mainly distributed in northwestern China, a typical arid and semi-arid area. Our findings suggest that responses of grasslands are divergent with respect to changes in precipitation intensities.
    Electronic ISSN: 2072-4292
    Topics: Architecture, Civil Engineering, Surveying , Geography
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  • 39
    Publication Date: 2015-08-11
    Description: The worldwide Sensor Web comprises observation data from diverse sources. Each data provider may process and assess datasets differently before making them available online. This information is often invisible to end users. Therefore, publishing observation data with quality descriptions is vital as it helps users to assess the suitability of data for their applications. It is also important to capture contextual information concerning data quality such as provenance to trace back incorrect data to its origins. In the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)’s Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) framework, there is no sufficiently and practically applicable approach how these aspects can be systematically represented and made accessible. This paper presents Q-SOS—an extension of the OGC’s Sensor Observation Service (SOS) that supports retrieval of observation data together with quality descriptions. These descriptions are represented in an observation data model covering various aspects of data quality assessment. The service and the data model have been developed based on open standards and open source tools, and are productively being used to share observation data from the TERENO observatory infrastructure. We discuss the advantages of deploying the presented solutions from data provider and consumer viewpoints. Enhancements applied to the related open-source developments are also introduced.
    Electronic ISSN: 2220-9964
    Topics: Architecture, Civil Engineering, Surveying , Geosciences
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  • 40
    Publication Date: 2015-08-11
    Description: In recent years, IoT (Internet of Things) technologies have seen great advances, particularly, the IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low-power and Lossy Networks (RPL), which provides a powerful and flexible routing framework that can be applied in a variety of application scenarios. In this context, as an important role of IoT, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) can utilize RPL to design efficient routing protocols for a specific application to increase the ubiquity of networks with resource-constrained WSN nodes that are low-cost and easy to deploy. In this article, our work starts with the description of Agricultural Low-power and Lossy Networks (A-LLNs) complying with the LLN framework, and to clarify the requirements of this application-oriented routing solution. After a brief review of existing optimization techniques for RPL, our contribution is dedicated to a Scalable Context-Aware Objective Function (SCAOF) that can adapt RPL to the environmental monitoring of A-LLNs, through combining energy-aware, reliability-aware, robustness-aware and resource-aware contexts according to the composite routing metrics approach. The correct behavior of this enhanced RPL version (RPAL) was verified by performance evaluations on both simulation and field tests. The obtained experimental results confirm that SCAOF can deliver the desired advantages on network lifetime extension, and high reliability and efficiency in different simulation scenarios and hardware testbeds.
    Electronic ISSN: 1424-8220
    Topics: Chemistry and Pharmacology , Electrical Engineering, Measurement and Control Technology
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  • 41
    Publication Date: 2015-08-11
    Description: The aim of this randomized clinical trial was to evaluate whether a recently described multi-sensor approach called BIONOTE® is accurate enough to verify the efficacy of treatment of patients with halitosis. A treatment with Lactobacillus brevis (CD2)–containing lozenges, compared with placebo was tested. The BIONOTE® was compared with traditional techniques used to detect halitosis: OralChroma™ and two calibrated odor judges enrolled for the organoleptic assessments. Twenty patients (10 treated and 10 placebo), suffering from active phase halitosis were included in the study. Treatment consisted of Lactobacillus brevis (CD2)—containing lozenges or placebo, 4 tablets/day for 14 days. t0 was before the beginning of the study; t1 was day 7 and t2 was day 14. The effectiveness of treatment was assessed through: (1) Rosenberg score; (2) Winkel tongue coating index (WTCI) anterior and posterior; (2) OralChroma™; (3) the new developed multi-sensor approach, called BIONOTE® (test technique). Only the WTCI anterior revealed statistically significant changes between t0 and t2 data (p = 0.014) in the treated group. Except for the WTCI anterior, all diagnostic methods revealed the lack of effectiveness for halitosis of a 14-days treatment with Lactobacillus brevis (CD2)–containing lozenges. The BIONOTE® multisensor system seems accurate in addition to OralChroma™ to assess the initial condition of halitosis and its mitigation during treatment.
    Electronic ISSN: 1424-8220
    Topics: Chemistry and Pharmacology , Electrical Engineering, Measurement and Control Technology
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  • 42
    Publication Date: 2015-08-12
    Description: We examine a distributed detection problem in a wireless sensor network, where sensor nodes collaborate to detect a Gaussian signal with an unknown change of power, i.e., a scale parameter. Due to power/bandwidth constraints, we consider the case where each sensor quantizes its observation into a binary digit. The binary data are then transmitted through error-prone wireless links to a fusion center, where a generalized likelihood ratio test (GLRT) detector is employed to perform a global decision. We study the design of a binary quantizer based on an asymptotic analysis of the GLRT. Interestingly, the quantization threshold of the quantizer is independent of the unknown scale parameter. Numerical results are included to illustrate the performance of the proposed quantizer and GLRT in binary symmetric channels (BSCs).
    Electronic ISSN: 1999-4893
    Topics: Computer Science
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  • 43
    Publication Date: 2015-08-11
    Description: This paper presents a multipurpose and low cost sensor for the simultaneous monitoring of temperature and ullage of wine in barrels in two of the most important stages of winemaking, that being fermentation and maturation. The distributed sensor subsystem is imbedded within the bung of the barrel and runs on battery for a period of at least 12 months and costs around $27 AUD for all parts. In addition, software was designed which allows for the remote transmission and easy visual interpretation of the data for the winemaker. Early warning signals can be sent when the temperature or ullage deviates from a winemakers expectations so remedial action can be taken, such as when topping is required or the movement of the barrels to a cooler cellar location. Such knowledge of a wine’s properties or storage conditions allows for a more precise control of the final wine quality.
    Electronic ISSN: 1424-8220
    Topics: Chemistry and Pharmacology , Electrical Engineering, Measurement and Control Technology
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  • 44
    Publication Date: 2015-08-12
    Description: A fast and effective wound healing process would substantially decrease medical costs, wound care supplies, and hospitalization significantly improving the patients’ quality of life. The search for effective therapeutic approaches seems to be imperative in order to avoid the aggravation of chronic wounds. In spite of all the efforts that have been made during the recent years towards the development of artificial wound dressings, none of the currently available options combine all the requirements necessary for quick and optimal cutaneous regeneration. Therefore, technological advances in the area of temporary and permanent smart dressings for wound care are required. The development of nanoscience and nanotechnology can improve the materials and designs used in topical wound care in order to efficiently release antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory and regenerative compounds speeding up the endogenous healing process. Nanostructured dressings can overcome the limitations of the current coverings and, separately, natural origin components can also overcome the drawbacks of current antibiotics and antiseptics (mainly cytotoxicity, antibiotic resistance, and allergies). The combination of natural origin components with demonstrated antibiotic, regenerative, or anti-inflammatory properties together with nanostructured materials is a promising approach to fulfil all the requirements needed for the next generation of bioactive wound dressings. Microbially compromised wounds have been treated with different essential oils, honey, cationic peptides, aloe vera, plant extracts, and other natural origin occurring antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, and regenerative components but the available evidence is limited and insufficient to be able to draw reliable conclusions and to extrapolate those findings to the clinical practice. The evidence and some promising preliminary results indicate that future comparative studies are justified but instead of talking about the beneficial or inert effects of those natural origin occurring materials, the scientific community leads towards the identification of the main active components involved and their mechanism of action during the corresponding healing, antimicrobial, or regenerative processes and in carrying out systematic and comparative controlled tests. Once those natural origin components have been identified and their efficacy validated through solid clinical trials, their combination within nanostructured dressings can open up new avenues in the fabrication of bioactive dressings with outstanding characteristics for wound care. The motivation of this work is to analyze the state of the art in the use of different essential oils, honey, cationic peptides, aloe vera, plant extracts, and other natural origin occurring materials as antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory and regenerative components with the aim of clarifying their potential clinical use in bioactive dressings. We conclude that, for those natural occurring materials, more clinical trials are needed to reach a sufficient level of evidence as therapeutic agents for wound healing management.
    Electronic ISSN: 1996-1944
    Topics: Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science, Production Engineering, Mining and Metallurgy, Traffic Engineering, Precision Mechanics
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  • 45
    Publication Date: 2015-08-09
    Description: Environmental risk assessment of chemicals is essential but often relies on ethically controversial and expensive methods. We show that tests using cell cultures, combined with modeling of toxicological effects, can replace tests with juvenile fish. Hundreds of thousands of fish at this developmental stage are annually used to assess the influence of chemicals on growth. Juveniles are more sensitive than adult fish, and their growth can affect their chances to survive and reproduce. Thus, to reduce the number of fish used for such tests, we propose a method that can quantitatively predict chemical impact on fish growth based on in vitro data. Our model predicts reduced fish growth in two fish species in excellent agreement with measured in vivo data of two pesticides. This promising step toward alternatives to fish toxicity testing is simple, inexpensive, and fast and only requires in vitro data for model calibration.
    Electronic ISSN: 2375-2548
    Topics: Natural Sciences in General
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  • 46
    Publication Date: 2015-08-12
    Description: Multiple stable states are established in coastal tidal wetlands (marshes, mangroves, deltas, seagrasses) by ecological, hydrological, and geomorphological feedbacks. Catastrophic shifts between states can be induced by gradual environmental change or by disturbance events. These feedbacks and outcomes are key to the sustainability and resilience of vegetated coastlines, especially as modulated by human activity, sea level rise, and climate change. Whereas multiple stable state theory has been invoked to model salt marsh responses to sediment supply and sea level change, there has been comparatively little empirical verification of the theory for salt marshes or other coastal wetlands. Especially lacking is long-term evidence documenting if or how stable states are established and maintained at ecosystem scales. Laboratory and field-plot studies are informative, but of necessarily limited spatial and temporal scope. For the purposes of long-term, coastal-scale monitoring, remote sensing is the best viable option. This review summarizes the above topics and highlights the emerging promise and challenges of using remote sensing-based analyses to validate coastal wetland dynamic state theories. This significant opportunity is further framed by a proposed list of scientific advances needed to more thoroughly develop the field.
    Electronic ISSN: 2072-4292
    Topics: Architecture, Civil Engineering, Surveying , Geography
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  • 47
    Publication Date: 2015-08-12
    Description: As internet technologies make their way into developing areas, so too does the possibility of education and training being delivered to the people living in those previously unserved areas. The growing catalogue of free, high quality courseware, when combined with the newly acquired means of delivery, creates the potential for millions of people in the developing world to acquire a good education. Yet a good education obviously requires more than simply delivering information; students must also receive high quality feedback on their assessments. They must be told how their performance compares with the ideal, and be shown how to close the gap between the two. However, delivering high quality feedback is labor-intensive, and therefore expensive, and has long been recognized as a problematic issue by educators. This paper outlines a case study that uses a Learning Management System (LMS) to efficiently deliver detailed feedback that is informed by the principles of best practice. We make the case that the efficiencies of this method allow for large-scale courses with thousands of enrolments that are accessible to developing and developed areas alike. We explore the question; is computer-mediated feedback delivery efficient and effective and might it be applied to large-scale courses at low-cost?
    Electronic ISSN: 1999-5903
    Topics: Computer Science
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  • 48
    Publication Date: 2015-08-12
    Description: This paper provides an overview of the main manufacturing technologies of displays, focusing on those with low and ultra-low levels of power consumption, which make them suitable for current societal needs. Considering the typified value obtained from the manufacturer’s specifications, four technologies—Liquid Crystal Displays, electronic paper, Organic Light-Emitting Display and Electroluminescent Displays—were selected in a first iteration. For each of them, several features, including size and brightness, were assessed in order to ascertain possible proportional relationships with the rate of consumption. To normalize the comparison between different display types, relative units such as the surface power density and the display frontal intensity efficiency were proposed. Organic light-emitting display had the best results in terms of power density for small display sizes. For larger sizes, it performs less satisfactorily than Liquid Crystal Displays in terms of energy efficiency.
    Electronic ISSN: 2071-1050
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
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  • 49
    Publication Date: 2015-08-12
    Description: Model selection is an integral, yet contentious, component of epidemiologic research. Unfortunately, there remains no consensus on how to identify a single, best model among multiple candidate models. Researchers may be prone to selecting the model that best supports their a priori, preferred result; a phenomenon referred to as “wish bias”. Directed acyclic graphs (DAGs), based on background causal and substantive knowledge, are a useful tool for specifying a subset of adjustment variables to obtain a causal effect estimate. In many cases, however, a DAG will support multiple, sufficient or minimally-sufficient adjustment sets. Even though all of these may theoretically produce unbiased effect estimates they may, in practice, yield somewhat distinct values, and the need to select between these models once again makes the research enterprise vulnerable to wish bias. In this work, we suggest combining adjustment sets with model averaging techniques to obtain causal estimates based on multiple, theoretically-unbiased models. We use three techniques for averaging the results among multiple candidate models: information criteria weighting, inverse variance weighting, and bootstrapping. We illustrate these approaches with an example from the Pregnancy, Infection, and Nutrition (PIN) study. We show that each averaging technique returns similar, model averaged causal estimates. An a priori strategy of model averaging provides a means of integrating uncertainty in selection among candidate, causal models, while also avoiding the temptation to report the most attractive estimate from a suite of equally valid alternatives.
    Print ISSN: 1661-7827
    Electronic ISSN: 1660-4601
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering , Medicine
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  • 50
    Publication Date: 2015-08-12
    Description: The widespread, intentional and increasingly frequent chemical emplacement in the troposphere has gone unidentified and unremarked in the scientific literature for years. The author presents evidence that toxic coal combustion fly ash is the most likely aerosolized particulate sprayed by tanker-jets for geoengineering, weather-modification and climate-modification purposes and describes some of the multifold consequences on public health. Two methods are employed: (1) Comparison of 8 elements analyzed in rainwater, leached from aerosolized particulates, with corresponding elements leached into water from coal fly ash in published laboratory experiments, and (2) Comparison of 14 elements analyzed in dust collected outdoors on a high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter with corresponding elements analyzed in un-leached coal fly ash material. The results show: (1) the assemblage of elements in rainwater and in the corresponding experimental leachate are essentially identical. At a 99% confidence interval, they have identical means (T-test) and identical variances (F-test); and (2) the assemblage of elements in the HEPA dust and in the corresponding average un-leached coal fly ash are likewise essentially identical. The consequences on public health are profound, including exposure to a variety of toxic heavy metals, radioactive elements, and neurologically-implicated chemically mobile aluminum released by body moisture in situ after inhalation or through transdermal induction.
    Print ISSN: 1661-7827
    Electronic ISSN: 1660-4601
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering , Medicine
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  • 51
    Publication Date: 2015-08-12
    Description: The impacts of climate change on human health have been documented globally and in the United States. Numerous studies project greater morbidity and mortality as a result of extreme weather events and other climate-sensitive hazards. Public health impacts on the U.S. Gulf Coast may be severe as the region is expected to experience increases in extreme temperatures, sea level rise, and possibly fewer but more intense hurricanes. Through myriad pathways, climate change is likely to make the Gulf Coast less hospitable and more dangerous for its residents, and may prompt substantial migration from and into the region. Public health impacts may be further exacerbated by the concentration of people and infrastructure, as well as the region’s coastal geography. Vulnerable populations, including the very young, elderly, and socioeconomically disadvantaged may face particularly high threats to their health and well-being. This paper provides an overview of potential public health impacts of climate variability and change on the Gulf Coast, with a focus on the region’s unique vulnerabilities, and outlines recommendations for improving the region’s ability to minimize the impacts of climate-sensitive hazards. Public health adaptation aimed at improving individual, public health system, and infrastructure resilience is urgently needed to meet the challenges climate change may pose to the Gulf Coast in the coming decades.
    Print ISSN: 1661-7827
    Electronic ISSN: 1660-4601
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering , Medicine
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  • 52
    Publication Date: 2015-08-12
    Description: This study forecasts the liquidity gap in China’s pension scheme for urban workers in the context of an ageing population and the possible effects of recent governmental policies by constructing a basic pension model, including “old people”, “middle people” and “new people” and a simulation method. We find, firstly, that China’s liquidity gap of pension will reach its peak of approximately 13.11 trillion yuan in 2038. Subsequently, this gap will gradually decrease with growth in the mortality rate. Secondly, reasonable intervals for the replacement and contribution rates should be set at [0.417, 0.604] and [0.189, 0.262], respectively, to sustain China’s pension system. Thirdly, compared to increasing fiscal subsidies, an income doubling plan, raising the contribution rate, lowering the replacement rate and delaying the retirement age can significantly reduce the liquidity gap, although the policy costs are relatively high. A policy permitting families to have two children will increase the rate of reduction of the liquidity gap, but it cannot effectively narrow the gap at the peak moment.
    Electronic ISSN: 2071-1050
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
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  • 53
    Publication Date: 2015-08-13
    Description: More and more hybrid electric vehicles are driven since they offer such advantages as energy savings and better active safety performance. Hybrid vehicles have two or more power driving systems and frequently switch working condition, so controlling stability is very important. In this work, a two-stage Kalman algorithm method is used to fuse data in hybrid vehicle stability testing. First, the RT3102 navigation system and Dewetron system are introduced. Second, a modeling of data fusion is proposed based on the Kalman filter. Then, this modeling is simulated and tested on a sample vehicle, using Carsim and Simulink software to test the results. The results showed the merits of this modeling.
    Electronic ISSN: 1999-4893
    Topics: Computer Science
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  • 54
    Publication Date: 2015-08-13
    Description: The aim of this study was to investigate how atmospheric air pollutants and meteorological conditions affected atmospheric visibility in the largest Polish agglomeration. The correlation analysis, principal component analysis (PCA) and generalized regression models (GRMs) were used to accomplish this objective. The meteorological parameters (temperature, relative humidity, precipitation, wind speed and insolation) and concentrations of the air pollutants (PM10, SO2, NO2, CO and O3) were recorded in 2004–2013. The data came from the Ursynów-SGGW, MzWarszUrsynów and Okęcie monitoring stations, located in the south of Warsaw (Poland). It was shown that the PM10 concentration was the most important parameter affecting the visibility in Warsaw. The concentration, and indirectly the visibility, was mainly affected by the pollutant emission from the flat/building heating (combustion of various fuels). It changed intensively during the research period. There were also periods in which this emission type did not have a great influence on the pollutant concentrations (mainly PM10) and visibility. In such seasons, the research revealed the influence of the traffic emission and secondary aerosol formation processes on the visibility.
    Electronic ISSN: 2073-4433
    Topics: Geosciences
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  • 55
    Publication Date: 2015-08-13
    Description: Aquatic vegetation serves many important ecological and socioeconomic functions in lake ecosystems. The presence of floating algae poses difficulties for accurately estimating the distribution of aquatic vegetation in eutrophic lakes. We present an approach to map the distribution of aquatic vegetation in Lake Taihu (a large, shallow eutrophic lake in China) and reduce the influence of floating algae on aquatic vegetation mapping. Our approach involved a frequency analysis over a 2003–2013 time series of the floating algal index (FAI) based on moderate-resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) data. Three phenological periods were defined based on the vegetation presence frequency (VPF) and the growth of algae and aquatic vegetation: December and January composed the period of wintering aquatic vegetation; February and March composed the period of prolonged coexistence of algal blooms and wintering aquatic vegetation; and June to October was the peak period of the coexistence of algal blooms and aquatic vegetation. By comparing and analyzing the satellite-derived aquatic vegetation distribution and 244 in situ measurements made in 2013, we established a FAI threshold of −0.025 and VPF thresholds of 0.55, 0.45 and 0.85 for the three phenological periods. We validated the accuracy of our approach by comparing the results between the satellite-derived maps and the in situ results obtained from 2008–2012. The overall classification accuracy was 87%, 81%, 77%, 88% and 73% in the five years from 2008–2012, respectively. We then applied the approach to the MODIS images from 2003–2013 and obtained the total area of the aquatic vegetation, which varied from 265.94 km2 in 2007 to 503.38 km2 in 2008, with an average area of 359.62 ± 69.20 km2 over the 11 years. Our findings suggest that (1) the proposed approach can be used to map the distribution of aquatic vegetation in eutrophic algae-rich waters and (2) dramatic changes occurred in the distribution of aquatic vegetation in Lake Taihu during the 11-year study.
    Electronic ISSN: 2072-4292
    Topics: Architecture, Civil Engineering, Surveying , Geography
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  • 56
    Publication Date: 2015-08-13
    Description: Diffuse Correlation Spectroscopy (DCS) is a well-established optical technique that has been used for non-invasive measurement of blood flow in tissues. Instrumentation for DCS includes a correlation device that computes the temporal intensity autocorrelation of a coherent laser source after it has undergone diffuse scattering through a turbid medium. Typically, the signal acquisition and its autocorrelation are performed by a correlation board. These boards have dedicated hardware to acquire and compute intensity autocorrelations of rapidly varying input signal and usually are quite expensive. Here we show that a Raspberry Pi minicomputer can acquire and store a rapidly varying time-signal with high fidelity. We show that this signal collected by a Raspberry Pi device can be processed numerically to yield intensity autocorrelations well suited for DCS applications. DCS measurements made using the Raspberry Pi device were compared to those acquired using a commercial hardware autocorrelation board to investigate the stability, performance, and accuracy of the data acquired in controlled experiments. This paper represents a first step toward lowering the instrumentation cost of a DCS system and may offer the potential to make DCS become more widely used in biomedical applications.
    Electronic ISSN: 1424-8220
    Topics: Chemistry and Pharmacology , Electrical Engineering, Measurement and Control Technology
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  • 57
    Publication Date: 2015-08-13
    Description: Wind tunnels are a key experimental tool for the analysis of airflow parameters in many fields of application. Despite their great potential impact on agricultural research, few contributions have dealt with the development of automatic control systems for wind tunnels in the field of greenhouse technology. The objective of this paper is to present an automatic control system that provides precision and speed of measurement, as well as efficient data processing in low-speed wind tunnel experiments for greenhouse engineering applications. The system is based on an algorithm that identifies the system model and calculates the optimum PI controller. The validation of the system was performed on a cellulose evaporative cooling pad and on insect-proof screens to assess its response to perturbations. The control system provided an accuracy of 〈0.06 m·s‾1 for airflow speed and 〈0.50 Pa for pressure drop, thus permitting the reproducibility and standardization of the tests. The proposed control system also incorporates a fully-integrated software unit that manages the tests in terms of airflow speed and pressure drop set points.
    Electronic ISSN: 1424-8220
    Topics: Chemistry and Pharmacology , Electrical Engineering, Measurement and Control Technology
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  • 58
    Publication Date: 2015-08-13
    Description: A new application of utilizing ultra-wideband (UWB) technology to sense wind turbine blade deflections is introduced in this paper for wind energy cost reduction. The lower UWB band of 3.1–5.3 GHz is applied. On each blade, there will be one UWB blade deflection sensing system, which consists of two UWB antennas at the blade root and one UWB antenna at the blade tip. The detailed topology and challenges of this deflection sensing system are addressed. Due to the complexity of the problem, this paper will first realize the on-blade UWB radio link in the simplest case, where the tip antenna is situated outside (and on the surface of) a blade tip. To investigate this case, full-blade time-domain measurements are designed and conducted under different deflections. The detailed measurement setups and results are provided. If the root and tip antenna locations are properly selected, the first pulse is always of sufficient quality for accurate estimations under different deflections. The measured results reveal that the blade tip-root distance and blade deflection can be accurately estimated in the complicated and lossy wireless channels around a wind turbine blade. Some future research topics on this application are listed finally.
    Electronic ISSN: 1424-8220
    Topics: Chemistry and Pharmacology , Electrical Engineering, Measurement and Control Technology
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  • 59
    Publication Date: 2015-08-13
    Description: A method for measuring shaft diameters is presented using structured light vision measurement. After calibrating a model of the structured light measurement, a virtual plane is established perpendicular to the measured shaft axis and the image of the light stripe on the shaft is projected to the virtual plane. On the virtual plane, the center of the measured shaft is determined by fitting the projected image under the geometrical constraints of the light stripe, and the shaft diameter is measured by the determined center and the projected image. Experiments evaluated the measuring accuracy of the method and the effects of some factors on the measurement are analyzed.
    Electronic ISSN: 1424-8220
    Topics: Chemistry and Pharmacology , Electrical Engineering, Measurement and Control Technology
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  • 60
    Publication Date: 2015-08-13
    Description: Understanding the relationship between land use and surface water quality is necessary for effective water management. We estimated the impacts of catchment-wide land use on water quality during the dry and rainy seasons in the Dongjiang River basin, using remote sensing, geographic information systems and multivariate statistical techniques. The results showed that the 83 sites can be divided into three groups representing different land use types: forest, agriculture and urban. Water quality parameters exhibited significant variations between the urban-dominated and forest-dominated sites. The proportion of forested land was positively associated with dissolved oxygen concentration but negatively associated with water temperature, electrical conductivity, permanganate index, total phosphorus, total nitrogen, ammonia nitrogen, nitrate nitrogen and chlorophyll-a. The proportion of urban land was strongly positively associated with total nitrogen and ammonia nitrogen concentrations. Forested and urban land use had stronger impacts on water quality in the dry season than in the rainy season. However, agricultural land use did not have a significant impact on water quality. Our study indicates that urban land use was the key factor affecting water quality change, and limiting point-source waste discharge in urban areas during the dry season would be critical for improving water quality in the study area.
    Electronic ISSN: 2073-4441
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
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  • 61
    Publication Date: 2015-08-13
    Description: The morphological properties of kaolin flocs were investigated in a Couette-flow experiment at the steady state under seven shear flow conditions (shear rates of 5.36, 9.17, 14, 24, 31, 41 and 53 s−1). These properties include a one-dimensional (1-D) fractal dimension (D1), a two-dimensional (2-D) fractal dimension (D2), a perimeter-based fractal dimension (Dpf) and an aspect ratio (AR). They were calculated based on the projected area (A), equivalent size, perimeter (P) and length (L) of the major axis of the floc determined through sample observation and an image analysis system. The parameter D2, which characterizes the relationship between the projected area and the length of the major axis using a power function, , increased from 1.73 ± 0.03, 1.72 ± 0.03, and 1.75 ± 0.04 in the low shear rate group (G = 5.36, 9.17, and 14 s−1) to 1.92 ± 0.03, 1.82 ± 0.02, 1.85 ± 0.02, and 1.81 ± 0.02 in the high shear rate group (24, 31, 41 and 53 s−1), respectively. The parameter D1 characterizes the relationship between the perimeter and length of the major axis by the function  and decreased from 1.52 ± 0.02, 1.48 ± 0.02, 1.55 ± 0.02, and 1.63 ± 0.02 in the low shear group (5.36, 9.17, 14 and 24 s−1) to 1.45 ± 0.02, 1.39 ± 0.02, and 1.39 ± 0.02 in the high shear group (31, 41 and 53 s−1), respectively. The results indicate that with increasing shear rates, the flocs become less elongated and that their boundary lines become tighter and more regular, caused by more breakages and possible restructurings of the flocs. The parameter Dpf, which is related to the perimeter and the projected area through the function , decreased as the shear rate increased almost linearly. The parameter AR, which is the ratio of the length of the major axis and equivalent diameter, decreased from 1.56, 1.59, 1.53 and 1.51 in the low shear rate group to 1.43, 1.47 and 1.48 in the high shear rate group. These changes in Dpf and AR show that the flocs become less convoluted and more symmetrical and that their boundaries become smoother and more regular in the high shear rate group than in the low shear rate group due to breakage and possible restructuring processes. To assess the effects of electrolyte and sediment concentration, 0.1 mol/L calcium chloride (CaCl2) and initial sediment concentration from 7.87 × 10−5 to 1.57 × 10−5 were used in this preliminary study. The addition of electrolyte and increasing sediment concentration could produce more symmetrical flocs with less convoluted and simpler boundaries. In addition, some new information on the temporal variation of the median size of the flocs during the flocculation process is presented.
    Electronic ISSN: 2073-4441
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
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  • 62
    Publication Date: 2015-08-13
    Description: Accurate state of charge (SoC) estimation of batteries plays an important role in promoting the commercialization of electric vehicles. The main work to be done in accurately determining battery SoC can be summarized in three parts. (1) In view of the model-based SoC estimation flow diagram, the n-order resistance-capacitance (RC) battery model is proposed and expected to accurately simulate the battery’s major time-variable, nonlinear characteristics. Then, the mathematical equations for model parameter identification and SoC estimation of this model are constructed. (2) The Akaike information criterion is used to determine an optimal tradeoff between battery model complexity and prediction precision for the n-order RC battery model. Results from a comparative analysis show that the first-order RC battery model is thought to be the best based on the Akaike information criterion (AIC) values. (3) The real-time joint estimator for the model parameter and SoC is constructed, and the application based on two battery types indicates that the proposed SoC estimator is a closed-loop identification system where the model parameter identification and SoC estimation are corrected mutually, adaptively and simultaneously according to the observer values. The maximum SoC estimation error is less than 1% for both battery types, even against the inaccurate initial SoC.
    Electronic ISSN: 1996-1073
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
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  • 63
    Publication Date: 2015-08-13
    Description: This is the second part of a study conducted to model the aerothermodynamic impact of suction parameters and gas properties on a multi-stage centrifugal compressor’s performance. A new iterative method has been developed in the first part to derive the equivalent performance at various operating conditions. This approach has been validated to predict the compressor map at different suction pressures and temperatures using the design characteristics as reference values. A further case is included in this paper in order to emphasize the validity of the developed approach to obtain the performance characteristics at various gas compositions. The provided example shows that the performance parameters at different gas mixtures can be predicted to within ±1.34%. Furthermore, the conducted optimization in this paper reveals that the proposed method can be applied for the compressor design evaluation corresponding to the expected variation in suction conditions. Moreover, the examined case study demonstrates the effect of gas properties’ variation on the operating point and aerodynamic stability of the entire compression system. In order to achieve that, a simple approach has been established to assess the contribution of gas properties’ variation to the inefficient and unstable compressor performance based on the available operational data.
    Electronic ISSN: 1996-1073
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
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  • 64
    Publication Date: 2015-08-13
    Description: The in-wheel electric vehicle is expected to be a popular next-generation vehicle because an in-wheel system can simplify the powertrain and improve driving performance. In addition, it also has an advantage in that it maximizes driving efficiency through independent torque control considering the motor efficiency. However, there is an instability problem if only the driving torque is controlled in consideration of only the motor efficiency. In this paper, integrated torque distribution strategies are proposed to overcome these problems. The control algorithm consists of various strategies for optimizing driving efficiency, satisfying driver demands, and considering tire slip and vehicle cornering. Fuzzy logic is used to determine the appropriate timing of intervention for each distribution strategy. A performance simulator for in-wheel electric vehicles was developed by using MATLAB/Simulink and CarSim to validate the control strategies. From simulation results under complex driving conditions, the proposed algorithm was verified to improve both the driving stability and fuel economy of the in-wheel vehicle.
    Electronic ISSN: 1996-1073
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
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  • 65
    Publication Date: 2015-08-13
    Description: The knowledge of unsteady forces is necessary when designing vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs). Measurement data for turbines operating at an open site are still very limited. The data obtained from wind tunnels or towing tanks can be used, but have limited applicability when designing large-scale VAWTs. This study presents experimental data on the normal forces of a 12-kW straight-bladed VAWT operated at an open site north of Uppsala, Sweden. The normal forces are measured with four single-axis load cells. The data are obtained for a wide range of tip speed ratios: from 1.7 to 4.6. The behavior of the normal forces is analyzed. The presented data can be used in validations of aerodynamic models and the mechanical design for VAWTs.
    Electronic ISSN: 1996-1073
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
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  • 66
    Publication Date: 2015-08-13
    Description: This paper introduces a new iterative method to predict the equivalent centrifugal compressor performance at various operating conditions. The presented theoretical analysis and empirical correlations provide a novel approach to derive the entire compressor map corresponding to various suction conditions without a prior knowledge of the detailed geometry. The efficiency model was derived to reflect the impact of physical gas properties, Mach number, and flow and work coefficients. One of the main features of the developed technique is the fact that it considers the variation in the gas properties and stage efficiency which makes it appropriate with hydrocarbons. This method has been tested to predict the performance of two multistage centrifugal compressors and the estimated characteristics are compared with the measured data. The carried comparison revealed a good matching with the actual values, including the stable operation region limits. Furthermore, an optimization study was conducted to investigate the influences of suction conditions on the stage efficiency and surge margin. Moreover, a new sort of presentation has been generated to obtain the equivalent performance characteristics for a constant discharge pressure operation at variable suction pressure and temperature working conditions. A further validation is included in part two of this study in order to evaluate the prediction capability of the derived model at various gas compositions.
    Electronic ISSN: 1996-1073
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
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  • 67
    Publication Date: 2015-08-13
    Description: This paper presents an investigation of sewage sludge gasification in a fixed bed gasifier. Experiments were conducted on a laboratory scale fixed bed gasifier. In the experiments, two types of dried sewage sludge were tested and their properties were analysed. Parameters such as air ratio λ = 0.12 to 0.27, gasification agent temperature t = 50 to 250 °C and gasification agent composition ( = 0.21 and  > 0.21) were found to influence on temperature distribution, syngas Lower Heating Value (LHV) and syngas composition. The results indicate that the syngas LHV was found to decrease with increased air ratio for all analyzed cases: cold and preheated air and cold enriched air. The increase in the percentage of the main combustible components was accompanied by a decrease in the concentration of carbon dioxide. Increasing oxygen concentration increased the temperature, which tended to favor the formation of smaller molecules in the gas mixture. Thus, the enriched air medium produced a gas with a higher LHV. In contrast to conventional gasification, gasification process with gasification agent preheating causes that the flux of heat necessary to support endothermic gasification reactions is producing more effective. Air preheating causes increases hydrogen and carbon monoxide production.
    Electronic ISSN: 1996-1073
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
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  • 68
    Publication Date: 2015-08-13
    Description: Aiming at the combined power quality +disturbance recognition, an automated recognition method based on wavelet packet entropy (WPE) and modified incomplete S-transform (MIST) is proposed in this paper. By combining wavelet packet Tsallis singular entropy, energy entropy and MIST, a 13-dimension vector of different power quality (PQ) disturbances including single disturbances and combined disturbances is extracted. Then, a ruled decision tree is designed to recognize the combined disturbances. The proposed method is tested and evaluated using a large number of simulated PQ disturbances and some real-life signals, which include voltage sag, swell, interruption, oscillation transient, impulsive transient, harmonics, voltage fluctuation and their combinations. In addition, the comparison of the proposed recognition approach with some existing techniques is made. The experimental results show that the proposed method can effectively recognize the single and combined PQ disturbances.
    Electronic ISSN: 1099-4300
    Topics: Chemistry and Pharmacology , Physics
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  • 69
    Publication Date: 2015-08-13
    Description: For general metric theories of gravity, we compare the approach that describes/derives the field equations of gravity as a thermodynamic identity with the one which looks at them from entropy bounds. The comparison is made through the consideration of the matter entropy flux across (Rindler) horizons, studied by making use of the notion of a limiting thermodynamic scale l* of matter, previously introduced in the context of entropy bounds. In doing this: (i) a bound for the entropy of any lump of matter with a given energy-momentum tensor Tab is considered, in terms of a quantity, which is independent of the theory of gravity that we use; this quantity is the variation of the Clausius entropy of a suitable horizon when the element of matter crosses it; (ii) by making use of the equations of motion of the theory, the same quantity is then expressed as the variation of Wald’s entropy of that horizon (and this leads to a generalized form of the generalized covariant entropy bound, applicable to general diffeomorphism-invariant theories of gravity); and (iii) a notion of l* for horizons, as well as an expression for it, is given.
    Electronic ISSN: 1099-4300
    Topics: Chemistry and Pharmacology , Physics
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  • 70
    Publication Date: 2015-08-14
    Description: Controlling competing vegetation during early growth is one of the most important practices for the successful establishment of poplar plantations. Today, most poplar plantations in temperate regions are established on abandoned marginal agricultural land where competing vegetation is usually present during the first years after planting. Thus, the objective of this study was to examine how the growth of two kinds of poplar planting materials, un-rooted cuttings and bare-rooted seedlings was influenced by different vegetation control and soil preparation practices. Across treatments, un-rooted cuttings grew more rapidly than the bare-rooted seedlings. Our results also show that mulching with a degradable carpet or permanent polyethylene plastic increased seedling growth to a similar extent and more strongly in the cases of no treatment (in control plots). In addition, the results suggest that soil preparation in the mulched area favored seedling growth, but this effect was restricted to the first year after planting. These findings indicate that optimal practices for establishing poplar plantations on former agricultural land include planting un-rooted cuttings in prepared soil and mulching.
    Electronic ISSN: 1999-4907
    Topics: Agriculture, Forestry, Horticulture, Fishery, Domestic Science, Nutrition
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  • 71
    Publication Date: 2015-08-14
    Description: Recent disasters, such as the 2010 Haiti earthquake, have drawn attention to the potential role of citizens as active information producers. By using location-aware devices such as smartphones to collect geographic information in the form of geo-tagged text, photos, or videos, and sharing this information through online social media, such as Twitter, citizens create Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI). To effectively use this information for disaster management, we developed a VGI framework for the discovery of VGI. This framework consists of four components: (i) a VGI brokering module to provide a standard service interface to retrieve VGI from multiple resources based on spatial, temporal, and semantic parameters; (ii) a VGI quality control component, which employs semantic filtering and cross-referencing techniques to evaluate VGI; (iii) a VGI publisher module, which uses a service-based delivery mechanism to disseminate VGI, and (iv) a VGI discovery component to locate, browse, and query metadata about available VGI datasets. In a case study we employed a FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) strategy, open standards/specifications, and free/open data to show the utility of the framework. We demonstrate that the framework can facilitate data discovery for disaster management. The addition of quality metrics and a single aggregated source of relevant crisis VGI will allow users to make informed policy choices that could save lives, meet basic humanitarian needs earlier, and perhaps limit environmental and economic damage.
    Electronic ISSN: 2220-9964
    Topics: Architecture, Civil Engineering, Surveying , Geosciences
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  • 72
    Publication Date: 2015-08-14
    Description: Background and Purpose: The aim of the present study was to assess a relationship between readiness to quit and post-stroke smoking behavior. Methods: Eighty-six active smokers with first-ever ischemic stroke were recruited in a tertiary-care stroke unit. The question “Are you ready to quit smoking within the next month?” with yes/no responses and the 10-cm readiness visual analog scale (VAS) was administered during the anti-smoking intervention. Smoking status was verified at the 3- and 12-month follow-up. Results: The readiness VAS score at hospitalization was significantly lower in patients classified as smokers as compared to patients classified as non-smokers. The readiness score 〈5 cm was a significant predictor of smoking at the 3-month (OR, 7.3) and 12-month follow-up (OR, 4.9). Conclusions: The present results suggest that the readiness VAS can be used as a simple and inexpensive instrument for early identification of patients who continue to smoke after stroke.
    Print ISSN: 1661-7827
    Electronic ISSN: 1660-4601
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering , Medicine
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  • 73
    Publication Date: 2015-08-14
    Description: In this work, the plastic deformation mechanisms responsible for mechanical properties and fracture toughness in  nanotwinned (NT) magnesium is studied by molecular dynamics (MD) simulation. The influence of twin boundary (TBs) spacing and crack position on deformation behaviors are investigated. The microstructure evolution at the crack tip are not exactly the same for the left edge crack (LEC) and the right edge crack (REC) models according to calculations of the energy release rate for dislocation nucleation at the crack tip. The LEC growth initiates in a ductile pattern and then turns into a brittle cleavage. In the REC model, the atomic decohesion occurs at the crack tip to create a new free surface which directly induces a brittle cleavage. A ductile to brittle transition is observed which mainly depends on the competition between dislocation motion and crack growth. This competition mechanism is found to be correlated with the TB spacing. The critical values are 10 nm and 13.5 nm for this transition in LEC and REC models, respectively. Essentially, the dislocation densities affected by the TB spacing play a crucial role in the ductile to brittle transition.
    Electronic ISSN: 1996-1944
    Topics: Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science, Production Engineering, Mining and Metallurgy, Traffic Engineering, Precision Mechanics
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  • 74
    Publication Date: 2015-08-14
    Description: Plant factories have attracted increasing attention because they can produce fresh fruits and vegetables free from pesticides in all weather. However, the emission spectra from current light sources significantly mismatch the spectra absorbed by plants. We demonstrate a concept of using multiple broad-band as well as narrow-band solid-state lighting technologies to design plant-growth light sources. Take an organic light-emitting diode (OLED), for example; the resulting light source shows an 84% resemblance with the photosynthetic action spectrum as a twin-peak blue dye and a diffused mono-peak red dye are employed. This OLED can also show a greater than 90% resemblance as an additional deeper red emitter is added. For a typical LED, the resemblance can be improved to 91% if two additional blue and red LEDs are incorporated. The approach may facilitate either an ideal use of the energy applied for plant growth and/or the design of better light sources for growing different plants.
    Electronic ISSN: 1996-1944
    Topics: Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science, Production Engineering, Mining and Metallurgy, Traffic Engineering, Precision Mechanics
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  • 75
    Publication Date: 2015-08-14
    Description: Reliable data transmission over lossy communication link is expensive due to overheads for error protection. For signals that have inherent sparse structures, compressive sensing (CS) is applied to facilitate efficient sparse signal transmissions over lossy communication links without data compression or error protection. The natural packet loss in the lossy link is modeled as a random sampling process of the transmitted data, and the original signal will be reconstructed from the lossy transmission results using the CS-based reconstruction method at the receiving end. The impacts of packet lengths on transmission efficiency under different channel conditions have been discussed, and interleaving is incorporated to mitigate the impact of burst data loss. Extensive simulations and experiments have been conducted and compared to the traditional automatic repeat request (ARQ) interpolation technique, and very favorable results have been observed in terms of both accuracy of the reconstructed signals and the transmission energy consumption. Furthermore, the packet length effect provides useful insights for using compressed sensing for efficient sparse signal transmission via lossy links.
    Electronic ISSN: 1424-8220
    Topics: Chemistry and Pharmacology , Electrical Engineering, Measurement and Control Technology
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  • 76
    Publication Date: 2015-08-14
    Description: A model for simulating vertical water level fluctuations with coupled liquid and gas phases is presented. The Preissmann implicit scheme is used to linearize the governing equations for one-dimensional transient flow for both liquid and gas phases, and the linear system is solved using the chasing method. Some classical cases for single liquid and gas phase transients in pipelines and networks are studied to verify that the proposed methods are accurate and reliable. The implicit scheme is extended using a dynamic mesh to simulate the water level fluctuations in a U-tube and an open surge tank without consideration of the gas phase. Methods of coupling liquid and gas phases are presented and used for studying the transient process and interaction between the phases, for gas phase limited in a chamber and gas phase transported in a pipeline. In particular, two other simplified models, one neglecting the effect of the gas phase on the liquid phase and the other one coupling the liquid and gas phases asynchronously, are proposed. The numerical results indicate that the asynchronous model performs better, and are finally applied to a hydropower station with surge tanks and air shafts to simulate the water level fluctuations and air speed.
    Electronic ISSN: 2073-4441
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
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  • 77
    Publication Date: 2015-08-15
    Description: Patients with a polyherbal prescription are more likely to receive duplicate medications and thus suffer from adverse drug reactions. We conducted a population-based retrospective study to examine the items of Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) per prescription in the ambulatory care of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in Taiwan. We retrieved complete TCM ambulatory visit datasets for 2010 from the National Health Insurance database in Taiwan. A total of 59,790 patients who received 313,482 CHM prescriptions were analyzed. Drug prescriptions containing more than five drugs were classified as polyherbal prescriptions; 41.6% of patients were given a polyherbal prescription. There were on average 5.2 ± 2.5 CHMs: 2.3 ± 1.1 compound herbal formula items, and 3.0 ± 2.5 single Chinese herb items in a single prescription. Approximately 4.6% of patients were prescribed 10 CHMs or more. Men had a lower odds ratio (OR) among polyherbal prescriptions (OR = 0.96, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.92–0.99), and middle-aged patients (35–49 years) had the highest frequency of polyherbal prescription (OR = 1.19, 95% CI = 1.13–1.26). Patients with neoplasm, skin and subcutaneous tissue disease, or genitourinary system disease were more likely to have a polyherbal prescription; OR = 2.20 (1.81–2.67), 1.65 (1.50–1.80), and 1.52 (1.40–1.64), respectively. Polyherbal prescription is widespread in TCM in Taiwan. Potential herb interactions and iatrogenic risks associated with polyherbal prescriptions should be monitored.
    Print ISSN: 1661-7827
    Electronic ISSN: 1660-4601
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering , Medicine
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  • 78
    Publication Date: 2015-08-15
    Description: Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2), a major cause of global warming, have been rising due to industrial development. Carbon capture and storage (CCS), which is regarded as the most effective way to reduce such atmospheric CO2 concentrations, has several environmental and technical disadvantages. Carbon capture and utilization (CCU), which has been introduced to cover such disadvantages, makes it possible to capture CO2, recycling byproducts as resources. However, CCU also requires large amounts of energy in order to induce reactions. Among existing CCU technologies, the process for converting CO2 into CaCO3 requires high temperature and high pressure as reaction conditions. This study proposes a method to fixate CaCO3 stably by using relatively less energy than existing methods. After forming NaOH absorbent solution through electrolysis of NaCl in seawater, CaCO3 was precipitated at room temperature and pressure. Following the experiment, the resulting product CaCO3 was analyzed with Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR); field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) image and X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns were also analyzed. The results showed that the CaCO3 crystal product was high-purity calcite. The study shows a successful method for fixating CO2 by reducing carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere while forming high-purity CaCO3.
    Electronic ISSN: 1996-1073
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
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  • 79
    Publication Date: 2015-08-16
    Description: Helicobacter pylori is a leading cause of peptic ulceration and gastric cancer worldwide. To achieve colonization of the stomach, this Gram-negative bacterium adheres to Lewis b (Le b ) antigens in the gastric mucosa using its outer membrane protein BabA. Structural information for BabA has been elusive, and thus, its molecular mechanism for recognizing Le b antigens remains unknown. We present the crystal structure of the extracellular domain of BabA, from H. pylori strain J99, in the absence and presence of Le b at 2.0- and 2.1-Å resolutions, respectively. BabA is a predominantly α-helical molecule with a markedly kinked tertiary structure containing a single, shallow Le b binding site at its tip within a β-strand motif. No conformational change occurs in BabA upon binding of Le b , which is characterized by low affinity under acidic [ K D (dissociation constant) of ~227 μM] and neutral ( K D of ~252 μM) conditions. Binding is mediated by a network of hydrogen bonds between Le b Fuc1, GlcNAc3, Fuc4, and Gal5 residues and a total of eight BabA amino acids (C189, G191, N194, N206, D233, S234, S244, and T246) through both carbonyl backbone and side-chain interactions. The structural model was validated through the generation of two BabA variants containing N206A and combined D233A/S244A substitutions, which result in a reduction and complete loss of binding affinity to Le b , respectively. Knowledge of the molecular basis of Le b recognition by BabA provides a platform for the development of therapeutics targeted at inhibiting H. pylori adherence to the gastric mucosa.
    Electronic ISSN: 2375-2548
    Topics: Natural Sciences in General
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  • 80
    Publication Date: 2015-08-04
    Description: Bone substitute materials have witnessed tremendous development over the past decades and autogenous bone may still be considered the gold standard for many clinicians and clinical approaches in order to rebuild and restore bone defects. However, a plethora of novel xenogenic and synthetic bone substitute materials have been introduced in recent years in the field of bone regeneration. As the development of bone is actually a calcification process within a collagen fiber arrangement, the use of scaffolds in the formation of fibers may offer some advantages, along with additional handling characteristics. This review focuses on material characteristics and degradation behavior of electrospun biodegradable polyester scaffolds. Furthermore, we concentrated on the preclinical in vivo performance with regard to bone regeneration in preclinical studies. The major findings are as follows: Scaffold composition and architecture determine its biological behavior and degradation characteristics; The incorporation of inorganic substances and/or organic substances within composite scaffolds enhances new bone formation; L-poly(lactic acid) and poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) composite scaffolds, especially when combined with basic substances like hydroxyapatite, tricalcium phosphate or demineralized bone powder, seem not to induce inflammatory tissue reactions in vivo.
    Electronic ISSN: 1996-1944
    Topics: Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science, Production Engineering, Mining and Metallurgy, Traffic Engineering, Precision Mechanics
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  • 81
    Publication Date: 2015-08-04
    Description: Semi-conducting poly(n-methylaniline) (PNMA)-coated poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) composite nanoparticles were synthesized using cross-linked and grafted PMMA particles as a core, and then, the PNMA shell was coated via chemical oxidative polymerization on the surface of modified PMMA nanoparticles. Their electroresponsive electrorheological characteristics when dispersed in silicone were confirmed under applied electric fields using a rotational rheometer, focusing on their viscoelastic response. Using a frequency sweep test, the frequency dependence of both the storage and loss moduli was confirmed to increase upon increasing the electric field, with a stable plateau regime over the entire angular frequency range.
    Electronic ISSN: 1996-1944
    Topics: Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science, Production Engineering, Mining and Metallurgy, Traffic Engineering, Precision Mechanics
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  • 82
    Publication Date: 2015-08-04
    Description: The effect of fuel composition on gasification process performance was investigated by performing mass and energy balances on a pre-pilot scale bubbling fluidized bed reactor fed with mixtures of plastic waste, wood, and coal. The fuels containing plastic waste produced less H2, CO, and CO2 and more light hydrocarbons than the fuels including biomass. The lower heating value (LHV) progressively increased from 5.1 to 7.9 MJ/Nm3 when the plastic waste fraction was moved from 0% to 100%. Higher carbonaceous fines production was associated with the fuel containing a large fraction of coal (60%), producing 87.5 g/kgFuel compared to only 1.0 g/kgFuel obtained during the gasification test with just plastic waste. Conversely, plastic waste gasification produced the highest tar yield, 161.9 g/kgFuel, while woody biomass generated only 13.4 g/kgFuel. Wood gasification showed a carbon conversion efficiency (CCE) of 0.93, while the tests with two fuels containing coal showed lowest CCE values (0.78 and 0.70, respectively). Plastic waste and wood gasification presented similar cold gas efficiency (CGE) values (0.75 and 0.76, respectively), while that obtained during the co-gasification tests varied from 0.53 to 0.73.
    Electronic ISSN: 1996-1073
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
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  • 83
    Publication Date: 2015-08-04
    Description: This paper introduces a new simple system with a butterfly chaotic attractor. This system has rich and complex dynamics. With some typical parameters, its Lyapunov dimension is greater than other known three dimensional chaotic systems. It exhibits chaotic behavior over a large range of parameters, and the divergence of flow of this system is not a constant. The dynamics of this new system are analyzed via Lyapunov exponent spectrum, bifurcation diagrams, phase portraits and the Poincaré map. The compound structures of this new system are also analyzed. By means of topological horseshoe theory and numerical computation, the Poincaré map defined for the system is proved to be semi-conjugate to 3-shift map, and thus the system has positive topological entropy.
    Electronic ISSN: 1099-4300
    Topics: Chemistry and Pharmacology , Physics
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  • 84
    Publication Date: 2015-08-04
    Description: In this paper, the problem of robust control of nonlinear fractional-order systems in the presence of uncertainties and external disturbance is investigated. Fuzzy logic systems are used for estimating the unknown nonlinear functions. Based on the fractional Lyapunov direct method and some proposed Lemmas, an adaptive fuzzy controller is designed. The proposed method can guarantee all the signals in the closed-loop systems remain bounded and the tracking errors converge to an arbitrary small region of the origin. Lastly, an illustrative example is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed results.
    Electronic ISSN: 1099-4300
    Topics: Chemistry and Pharmacology , Physics
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  • 85
    Publication Date: 2015-08-04
    Description: This paper proposes a resonant electric cradle design with infant cries recognition, employing an Arduino UNO as the core processor. For most commercially available electric cradles, the drive motor is closely combined with the bearing on the top, resulting in a lot of energy consumption. In this proposal, a ball bearing design was adopted and the driving force is under the cradle to increase the distance from the object to fulcrum and torque. The sensors are designed to detect the oscillation state, and then the force is driven at the critical time to achieve the maximum output response while saving energy according to the principle of resonance. As for the driving forces, the winding power and motors are carefully placed under the cradle. The sensors, including the three-axis accelerometer and infrared sensor, are tested and applied under swinging amplitude control. In addition, infant cry recognition technology was incorporated in the design to further develop its functionality, which is a rare feature in this kind of hardware. The proposed nonlinear operator of fundamental frequency ( ) analysis is able to identify different types of infant cries. In conclusion, this paper proposes an energy-saving electric cradle with infant cries recognition and the experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach.
    Electronic ISSN: 1424-8220
    Topics: Chemistry and Pharmacology , Electrical Engineering, Measurement and Control Technology
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  • 86
    Publication Date: 2015-08-04
    Description: Many people find that their sleep is restricted or disturbed by social obligations, including work. Sleep phase delays can affect an individual’s circadian rhythms on the following day and cause daytime sleepiness and/or poor performance. In this study, to examine weekly variations in sleep patterns, we analyzed sleep data for seven-day periods (from Sunday to Saturday) that had been collected from 2914 subjects (aged 20–79 years) over a total of 24,899 subject-weeks using contactless biomotion sensors. On the weekend, the subjects’ mean sleep midpoint, bedtime, and wake-up time were delayed by 40, 26 and 53 min, respectively, compared with those seen on weekdays. In addition, on weekdays, the mean difference between the maximum and median sleep midpoint ranged from 35 to 47 min among the subjects in their 20 s–70 s. The weekend delay and weekday variation in the subjects’ sleep patterns tended to decrease with age. This study detected sleep pattern disturbances on both weekdays and weekends. The serial changes in weekday bedtimes detected in this study suggest that sleep habits are influenced by changes in the temporal patterns of social activities/duties. We need further study the advantages of getting extra sleep and the disadvantages of sleep pattern disturbances in daily lifestyle.
    Electronic ISSN: 1424-8220
    Topics: Chemistry and Pharmacology , Electrical Engineering, Measurement and Control Technology
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  • 87
    Publication Date: 2015-08-04
    Description: Free acidity of aqueous solutions was initially defined in 1909 by Søren Peter Lauritz Sørensen as pH = −lgcH+ (c/mol·dm−3 or m/mol·kg−1 of the free hydrogen ions in solution, H+) soon (1910) was changed to pH = paH+ = −lgaH+, integrating the new concepts of activity, ai and activity coefficient γi, for the ionic species i under concern, H+ in this case; it is ai = −lg(miγi). Since individual ions do not exist alone in solution, primary pH values cannot be assigned solely by experimental measurements, requiring extra thermodynamic model assumptions for the activity coefficient, γH+, which has put pH in a unique situation of not being fully traceable to the International System of Units (SI). Also the concept of activity is often not felt to be as perceptible as that of concentration which may present difficulties, namely with the interpretation of data. pH measurements on unknown samples rely on calibration of the measuring setup with adequate reference pH buffers. In this work, the assignment of pH values to buffers closely matching the samples, e.g., seawater, is revisited. An approach is presented to assess the quantity pmH+ = −lgmH+ profiting from the fact that, contrary to single ion activity coefficients, mean activity coefficients,   can be assessed based on experimentally assessed quantities alone, γExp ±, thus ensuring traceability to the mole, the SI base unit for amount of substance. Compatibility between γExp ± and mean activity coefficient calculated by means of Pitzer model equations, γPtz ±, validates the model for its intended use.
    Electronic ISSN: 2073-4441
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
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  • 88
    Publication Date: 2015-08-05
    Description: Currently deep learning has made great breakthroughs in visual and speech processing, mainly because it draws lessons from the hierarchical mode that brain deals with images and speech. In the field of NLP, a topic model is one of the important ways for modeling documents. Topic models are built on a generative model that clearly does not match the way humans write. In this paper, we propose Event Model, which is unsupervised and based on the language processing mechanism of neurolinguistics, to model documents. In Event Model, documents are descriptions of concrete or abstract events seen, heard, or sensed by people and words are objects in the events. Event Model has two stages: word learning and dimensionality reduction. Word learning is to learn semantics of words based on deep learning. Dimensionality reduction is the process that representing a document as a low dimensional vector by a linear mode that is completely different from topic models. Event Model achieves state-of-the-art results on document retrieval tasks.
    Electronic ISSN: 1999-4893
    Topics: Computer Science
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  • 89
    Publication Date: 2015-08-05
    Description: The multi-parameter character of supersymmetric dark-matter models implies the combination of their experimental studies with astrophysical and cosmological probes. The physics of the early Universe provides nontrivial effects of non-equilibrium particles and primordial cosmological structures. Primordial black holes (PBHs) are a profound signature of such structures that may arise as a cosmological consequence of supersymmetric (SUSY) models. SUSY-based mechanisms of baryosynthesis can lead to the possibility of antimatter domains in a baryon asymmetric Universe. In the context of cosmoparticle physics, which studies the fundamental relationship of the micro- and macro-worlds, the development of SUSY illustrates the main principles of this approach, as the physical basis of the modern cosmology provides cross-disciplinary tests in physical and astronomical studies.
    Electronic ISSN: 2073-8994
    Topics: Mathematics , Physics
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  • 90
    Publication Date: 2015-08-05
    Description: In this paper, we study a generalized Zakharov–Kuznetsov equation in three variables, which has applications in the nonlinear development of ion-acoustic waves in a magnetized plasma. Conservation laws for this equation are constructed for the first time by using the new conservation theorem of Ibragimov. Furthermore, new exact solutions are obtained by employing the Lie symmetry method along with the simplest equation method.
    Electronic ISSN: 2073-8994
    Topics: Mathematics , Physics
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  • 91
    Publication Date: 2015-08-05
    Description: At the center of core technologies for a future cyber world, such as Internet of Things (IoT) or big data, is a context-rich system that offers services by using situational information. The field where context-rich systems were first introduced is near-field communication (NFC)-based electronic payments. Near-field Communication (NFC) integrated payment services collect the payment information of the credit card and the location information to generate patterns in the user’s consumption or movement through big data technology. Based on such pattern information, tailored services, such as advertisement, are offered to users. However, there is difficulty in controlling access to personal information, as there is a collaborative relationship focused on the trusted service manager (TSM) that is close knit to shared personal information. Moreover, in the case of Hadoop, among the many big data analytical technologies, it offers access control functions, but not a way to authorize the processing of personal information, making it impossible to grant authority between service providers to process information. As such, this paper proposes a key generation and distribution method, as well as a secure communication protocol. The analysis has shown that the efficiency was greater for security and performance compared to relation works.
    Electronic ISSN: 2073-8994
    Topics: Mathematics , Physics
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  • 92
    Publication Date: 2015-08-05
    Description: We introduced an analysis to identify structural characterization of two-dimensional regular and amorphous networks. The analysis was shown to be reliable to determine the global network rigidity and can also identify local floppy regions in the mixture of rigid and floppy regions. The eigenmode analysis explores the structural properties of various networks determined by eigenvalue spectra. It is useful to determine the general structural stability of networks that the traditional Maxwell counting scheme based on the statistics of nodes (degrees of freedom) and bonds (constraints) does not provide. A visual characterization scheme was introduced to examine the local structure characterization of the networks. The eigenmode analysis is under development for various practical applications on more general network structures characterized by coordination numbers and nodal connectivity such as graphenes and proteins.
    Electronic ISSN: 2073-8994
    Topics: Mathematics , Physics
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  • 93
    Publication Date: 2015-07-29
    Description: Atomic force microscope with applicable types of operation in a liquid environment is widely used to scan the contours of biological specimens. The contact mode of operation allows a tip to touch a specimen directly but sometimes it damages the specimen; thus, a tapping mode of operation may replace the contact mode. The tapping mode triggers the cantilever of the microscope approximately at resonance frequencies, and so the tip periodically knocks the specimen. It is well known that the cantilever induces extra liquid pressure that leads to drift in the resonance frequency. Studies have noted that the heights of protein surfaces measured via the tapping mode of an atomic force microscope are ~25% smaller than those measured by other methods. This discrepancy may be attributable to the induced superficial hydrodynamic pressure, which is worth investigating. In this paper, we introduce a semi-analytical method to analyze the pressure distribution of various tip geometries. According to our analysis, the maximum hydrodynamic pressure on the specimen caused by a cone-shaped tip is ~0.5 Pa, which can, for example, pre-deform a cell by several nanometers in compression before the tip taps it. Moreover, the pressure calculated on the surface of the specimen is 20 times larger than the pressure without considering the tip effect; these results have not been motioned in other papers. Dominating factors, such as surface heights of protein surface, mechanical stiffness of protein increasing with loading velocity, and radius of tip affecting the local pressure of specimen, are also addressed in this study.
    Electronic ISSN: 1424-8220
    Topics: Chemistry and Pharmacology , Electrical Engineering, Measurement and Control Technology
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  • 94
    Publication Date: 2015-07-29
    Description: This study explores the potential of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) to aid Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) navigation when Inertial Navigation System (INS) measurements are not accurate enough to eliminate drifts from a planned trajectory. This problem can affect medium-altitude long-endurance (MALE) UAV class, which permits heavy and wide payloads (as required by SAR) and flights for thousands of kilometres accumulating large drifts. The basic idea is to infer position and attitude of an aerial platform by inspecting both amplitude and phase of SAR images acquired onboard. For the amplitude-based approach, the system navigation corrections are obtained by matching the actual coordinates of ground landmarks with those automatically extracted from the SAR image. When the use of SAR amplitude is unfeasible, the phase content can be exploited through SAR interferometry by using a reference Digital Terrain Model (DTM). A feasibility analysis was carried out to derive system requirements by exploring both radiometric and geometric parameters of the acquisition setting. We showed that MALE UAV, specific commercial navigation sensors and SAR systems, typical landmark position accuracy and classes, and available DTMs lead to estimated UAV coordinates with errors bounded within ±12 m, thus making feasible the proposed SAR-based backup system.
    Electronic ISSN: 1424-8220
    Topics: Chemistry and Pharmacology , Electrical Engineering, Measurement and Control Technology
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  • 95
    Publication Date: 2015-07-29
    Description: This paper demonstrates an automated computer vision system for outdoor tree crop enumeration in a seedling nursery. The complete system incorporates both hardware components (including an embedded microcontroller, an odometry encoder, and an uncalibrated digital color camera) and software algorithms (including microcontroller algorithms and the proposed algorithm for tree crop enumeration) required to obtain robust performance in a natural outdoor environment. The enumeration system uses a three-step image analysis process based upon: (1) an orthographic plant projection method integrating a perspective transform with automatic parameter estimation; (2) a plant counting method based on projection histograms; and (3) a double-counting avoidance method based on a homography transform. Experimental results demonstrate the ability to count large numbers of plants automatically with no human effort. Results show that, for tree seedlings having a height up to 40 cm and a within-row tree spacing of approximately 10 cm, the algorithms successfully estimated the number of plants with an average accuracy of 95.2% for trees within a single image and 98% for counting of the whole plant population in a large sequence of images.
    Electronic ISSN: 1424-8220
    Topics: Chemistry and Pharmacology , Electrical Engineering, Measurement and Control Technology
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  • 96
    Publication Date: 2015-07-29
    Description: Drainage networks are essential compartments in an urban infrastructure system for the efficient collection and prompt drainage of flood water. In addition to the advances in numerical techniques on urban flood simulation, the topological characteristics of urban drainage networks and their impacts on flooding have not been investigated thoroughly despite their importance. This study evaluated the urban drainage networks in Seoul, South Korea, in terms of the network configuration and its implication for peak flows and flood mitigation. Gibbs’ model was used to analyze the network configuration of 31 urban catchments with various slope ranges. The results showed that urban drainage networks can be less efficient than river in nature in terms of the drainage time, which is counter-intuitive. On the other hand, the analysis showed that efficient networks have risks of flood concentration and, hence, increase potential flood risks. This study showed that efficient networks tend to have higher peak flows at the outlet and vice versa. Therefore, an alternative drainage network layout, which is less efficient and more sinuous, was introduced and it resulted in reduced peak flows and flooding. This result shows managing a proper drainage network layout can contribute to flood mitigation in urban catchments.
    Electronic ISSN: 2073-4441
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
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  • 97
    Publication Date: 2015-08-05
    Description: Yield and quality estimations provide vital information to fruit growers, yet require accurate monitoring throughout the growing season. To this end, the temporal dependency of fruit yield and quality estimations through spectral vegetation indices was investigated in irrigated and rainfed pear orchards. Both orchards were monitored throughout three consecutive growing seasons, including spectral measurements (i.e., hyperspectral canopy reflectance measurements) as well as yield determination (i.e., total yield and number of fruits per tree) and quality assessment (i.e., fruit firmness, total soluble solids and fruit color). The results illustrated a clear association between spectral vegetation indices and both fruit yield and fruit quality (|r| > 0.75; p 〈 0.001). However, the correlations between vegetation indices and production variables varied throughout the growing season, depending on the phenological stage of fruit development. In the irrigated orchard, index values showed a strong association with production variables near time of harvest (|r| > 0.6; p 〈 0.001), while in the rainfed orchard, index values acquired during vegetative growth periods presented stronger correlations with fruit parameters (|r| > 0.6; p 〈 0.001). The improved planning of remote sensing missions during (rainfed orchards) and after (irrigated orchards) vegetative growth periods could enable growers to more accurately predict production outcomes and improve the production process.
    Electronic ISSN: 2072-4292
    Topics: Architecture, Civil Engineering, Surveying , Geography
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  • 98
    Publication Date: 2015-08-05
    Description: The combination of optical trapping with Raman spectroscopy provides a powerful method for the study, characterization, and identification of biological micro-particles. In essence, optical trapping helps to overcome the limitation imposed by the relative inefficiency of the Raman scattering process. This allows Raman spectroscopy to be applied to individual biological particles in air and in liquid, providing the potential for particle identification with high specificity, longitudinal studies of changes in particle composition, and characterization of the heterogeneity of individual particles in a population. In this review, we introduce the techniques used to integrate Raman spectroscopy with optical trapping in order to study individual biological particles in liquid and air. We then provide an overview of some of the most promising applications of this technique, highlighting the unique types of measurements enabled by the combination of Raman spectroscopy with optical trapping. Finally, we present a brief discussion of future research directions in the field.
    Electronic ISSN: 1424-8220
    Topics: Chemistry and Pharmacology , Electrical Engineering, Measurement and Control Technology
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  • 99
    Publication Date: 2015-08-05
    Description: In this paper, we propose a novel extrinsic calibration method for camera networks using a sphere as the calibration object. First of all, we propose an easy and accurate method to estimate the 3D positions of the sphere center w.r.t. the local camera coordinate system. Then, we propose to use orthogonal procrustes analysis to pairwise estimate the initial camera relative extrinsic parameters based on the aforementioned estimation of 3D positions. Finally, an optimization routine is applied to jointly refine the extrinsic parameters for all cameras. Compared to existing sphere-based 3D position estimators which need to trace and analyse the outline of the sphere projection in the image, the proposed method requires only very simple image processing: estimating the area and the center of mass of the sphere projection. Our results demonstrate that we can get a more accurate estimate of the extrinsic parameters compared to other sphere-based methods. While existing state-of-the-art calibration methods use point like features and epipolar geometry, the proposed method uses the sphere-based 3D position estimate. This results in simpler computations and a more flexible and accurate calibration method. Experimental results show that the proposed approach is accurate, robust, flexible and easy to use.
    Electronic ISSN: 1424-8220
    Topics: Chemistry and Pharmacology , Electrical Engineering, Measurement and Control Technology
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  • 100
    Publication Date: 2015-08-05
    Description: We study the Bäcklund transformations of integrable geometric curve flows in certain geometries. These curve flows include the KdV and Camassa-Holm flows in the two-dimensional centro-equiaffine geometry, the mKdV and modified Camassa-Holm flows in the two-dimensional Euclidean geometry, the Schrödinger and extended Harry-Dym flows in the three-dimensional Euclidean geometry and the Sawada-Kotera flow in the affine geometry, etc. Using the fact that two different curves in a given geometry are governed by the same integrable equation, we obtain Bäcklund transformations relating to these two integrable geometric flows. Some special solutions of the integrable systems are used to obtain the explicit Bäcklund transformations.
    Electronic ISSN: 2073-8994
    Topics: Mathematics , Physics
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