30,561 research outputs found
European White Book on Real-Time Power Hardware in the Loop Testing : DERlab Report No. R- 005.0
The European White Book on Real-Time-Powerhardware-in-the-Loop testing is intended to serve as a reference document on the future of testing of electrical power equipment, with specifi c focus on the emerging hardware-in-the-loop activities and application thereof within testing facilities and procedures. It will provide an outlook of how this powerful tool can be utilised to support the development, testing and validation of specifi cally DER equipment. It aims to report on international experience gained thus far and provides case studies on developments and specifi c technical issues, such as the hardware/software interface. This white book compliments the already existing series of DERlab European white books, covering topics such as grid-inverters and grid-connected storag
The Economic Value of Remote Sensing of Earth Resources from Space: An ERTS Overview and the Value of Continuity of Service. Volume 1: Summary
An overview of the ERTS program is given to determine the magnitude of the benefits that can be reasonably expected to flow from an Earth Resources Survey (ERS) Program, and to assess the benefits foregone in the event of a one or two-year gap in ERS services. An independent evaluation of the benefits attributable to ERS-derived information in key application areas is presented. These include two case studies in agriculture-distribution, production and import/export, and one study in water management. The cost-effectiveness of satellites in an ERS system is studied by means of a land cover case study. The annual benefits achieveable from an ERS system are measured by the in-depth case studies to be in the range of 746 million. Benefits foregone in the event of a one-year gap in ERS service are estimated to be 220 million and 420 million for a two-year gap in ERS service
A Detail Based Method for Linear Full Reference Image Quality Prediction
In this paper, a novel Full Reference method is proposed for image quality
assessment, using the combination of two separate metrics to measure the
perceptually distinct impact of detail losses and of spurious details. To this
purpose, the gradient of the impaired image is locally decomposed as a
predicted version of the original gradient, plus a gradient residual. It is
assumed that the detail attenuation identifies the detail loss, whereas the
gradient residuals describe the spurious details. It turns out that the
perceptual impact of detail losses is roughly linear with the loss of the
positional Fisher information, while the perceptual impact of the spurious
details is roughly proportional to a logarithmic measure of the signal to
residual ratio. The affine combination of these two metrics forms a new index
strongly correlated with the empirical Differential Mean Opinion Score (DMOS)
for a significant class of image impairments, as verified for three independent
popular databases. The method allowed alignment and merging of DMOS data coming
from these different databases to a common DMOS scale by affine
transformations. Unexpectedly, the DMOS scale setting is possible by the
analysis of a single image affected by additive noise.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures. Copyright notice: The paper has been accepted
for publication on the IEEE Trans. on Image Processing on 19/09/2017 and the
copyright has been transferred to the IEE
Methods and Tools for Objective Assessment of Psychomotor Skills in Laparoscopic Surgery
Training and assessment paradigms for laparoscopic surgical skills are evolving from traditional mentor–trainee tutorship towards structured, more objective and safer programs. Accreditation of surgeons requires reaching a consensus on metrics and tasks used to assess surgeons’ psychomotor skills. Ongoing development of tracking systems and software solutions has allowed for the expansion of novel training and assessment means in laparoscopy. The current challenge is to adapt and include these systems within training programs, and to exploit their possibilities for evaluation purposes. This paper describes the state of the art in research on measuring and assessing psychomotor laparoscopic skills. It gives an overview on tracking systems as well as on metrics and advanced statistical and machine learning techniques employed for evaluation purposes. The later ones have a potential to be used as an aid in deciding on the surgical competence level, which is an important aspect when accreditation of the surgeons in particular, and patient safety in general, are considered. The prospective of these methods and tools make them complementary means for surgical assessment of motor skills, especially in the early stages of training. Successful examples such as the Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery should help drive a paradigm change to structured curricula based on objective parameters. These may improve the accreditation of new surgeons, as well as optimize their already overloaded training schedules
Aircraft System Noise Prediction Uncertainty Quantification for a Hybrid Wing Body Subsonic Transport Concept
Aircraft system level noise prediction for advanced, unconventional concepts has undergone significant improvement over the past two decades. The prediction modeling uncertainty must be quantified so that potential benefits of unconventional configurations, which are outside of the range of empirical models, can be reliably assessed. This paper builds on previous work in an effort to improve estimates of element prediction uncertainties where the prediction methodology has been improved, or new experimental validation data are available, to provide an estimate of the system level uncertainty in the prediction process. In general, the uncertainty of the prediction will be strongly dependent on the aircraft configuration as well as which technologies are integrated. While the quantitative uncertainty values contained here are specific to the hybrid wing body design presented, the underlying process is the same regardless of configuration. A refined process for determining the uncertainty for each element of the noise prediction is detailed in this paper. The system level uncertainty in the prediction of the aircraft noise is determined at the three certification points, using a Monte Carlo method. Comparisons with previous work show a reduction of 1 EPNdB in the 95%coverage interval of the cumulative noise level. The largest impediment for continued reduction in uncertainty for the hybrid wing body concept is the need for improved modeling and validation experiments for fan noise, propulsion airframe aeroacoustic effects, and the Krueger flap, which comprise the bulk of the uncertainty in the cumulative certification noise level
The incidence of binaries in Globular Cluster stellar populations
Binary fraction and orbital characteristics provide indications on the
conditions of star formation, as they shed light on the environment they were
born in. Multiple systems are more common in low density environments rather
than in higher density ones. In the current debate about the formation of
Globular Clusters and their multiple populations, studying the binary incidence
in the populations they host offers a crucial piece of information on the
environment of their birth and their subsequent dynamical evolution.
Through a multi-year observational campaign using FLAMES at VLT, we monitored
the radial velocity of 968 Red-Giant Branch stars located around the half-light
radii in a sample of 10 Galactic Globular Clusters. We found a total of 21
radial velocity variables identified as {\it bona fide} binary stars, for a
binary fraction of 2.2%0.5%. When separating the sample into first
generation and second generation stars, we find a binary fraction of
4.9%1.3% and 1.2%0.4% respectively. Through simulations that take
into account possible sources of bias in detecting radial velocity variations
in the two populations, we show that the difference is significant and only
marginally affected by such effects.
Such a different binary fraction strongly suggests different conditions in
the environment of formation and evolution of first and second generations
stars, with the latter being born in a much denser environment. Our result
hence strongly supports the idea that the second generation forms in a dense
subsystem at the center of the loosely distributed first generation, where
(loose) binaries are efficiently destroyed.Comment: A&A, Accepte
Prospects for Measuring Cosmic Microwave Background Spectral Distortions in the Presence of Foregrounds
Measurements of cosmic microwave background spectral distortions have
profound implications for our understanding of physical processes taking place
over a vast window in cosmological history. Foreground contamination is
unavoidable in such measurements and detailed signal-foreground separation will
be necessary to extract cosmological science. We present MCMC-based spectral
distortion detection forecasts in the presence of Galactic and extragalactic
foregrounds for a range of possible experimental configurations, focusing on
the Primordial Inflation Explorer (PIXIE) as a fiducial concept. We consider
modifications to the baseline PIXIE mission (operating 12 months in distortion
mode), searching for optimal configurations using a Fisher approach. Using only
spectral information, we forecast an extended PIXIE mission to detect the
expected average non-relativistic and relativistic thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich
distortions at high significance (194 and 11, respectively),
even in the presence of foregrounds. The CDM Silk damping -type
distortion is not detected without additional modifications of the instrument
or external data. Galactic synchrotron radiation is the most problematic source
of contamination in this respect, an issue that could be mitigated by combining
PIXIE data with future ground-based observations at low frequencies (GHz). Assuming moderate external information on the synchrotron spectrum,
we project an upper limit of (95\% c.l.), slightly
more than one order of magnitude above the fiducial CDM signal from
the damping of small-scale primordial fluctuations, but a factor of improvement over the current upper limit from COBE/FIRAS. This limit could
be further reduced to (95\% c.l.) with more
optimistic assumptions about low-frequency information. (Abridged)Comment: (16 pages, 11 figures, submitted to MNRAS. Fisher code available at
https://github.com/mabitbol/sd_foregrounds. Updated with published version.
Residual acceleration data on IML-1: Development of a data reduction and dissemination plan
The research performed consisted of three stages: (1) identification of sensitive IML-1 experiments and sensitivity ranges by order of magnitude estimates, numerical modeling, and investigator input; (2) research and development towards reduction, supplementation, and dissemination of residual acceleration data; and (3) implementation of the plan on existing acceleration databases
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