Estimating woody debris recruitment in a stream caused by a typhoon-induced landslide: a case study of Typhoon Lionrock in Iwaizumi, Iwate prefecture, Japan

A landslide can generate large amounts of debris in the form of boulders, cobbles, soil, and wood. The woody debris produced by a landslide flows into a downstream river or village; it can form obstructions in the stream and destroy houses. In this study, we aimed to develop a procedure for estimating woody debris recruitment into streams following a landslide. Understanding the volume of woody debris can help predict and prevent hazards from this debris. The proposed procedure combines a shallow landslide model, tree density data, and observational data following landslide occurrence. The study site is a sub-watershed of the Omoto River watershed in the town of Iwaizumi in Iwate prefecture in Japan; this town was affected by Typhoon Lionrock in 2016. Typhoon Lionrock delivered over 200 mm of rainfall in 24 h and induced many landslides. Based on field surveys, we found that approximately 524 m3 of woody debris jammed the narrow section under a railway bridge (including voids) and approximately 178 m3 of woody debris to formed a dam in the stream channel of the target watershed (including voids). Using the proposed protocol, we estimate that woody debris recruitment to the stream was approximately 638 m3

Waveform Selectivity at the Same Frequency

Electromagnetic properties depend on the composition of materials, i.e. either angstrom scales of molecules or, for metamaterials, subwavelength periodic structures. Each material behaves differently in accordance with the frequency of an incoming electromagnetic wave due to the frequency dispersion or the resonance of the periodic structures. This indicates that if the frequency is fixed, the material always responds in the same manner unless it has nonlinearity. However, such nonlinearity is controlled by the magnitude of the incoming wave or other bias. Therefore, it is difficult to distinguish different incoming waves at the same frequency. Here we present a new concept of circuit-based metasurfaces to selectively absorb or transmit specific types of waveforms even at the same frequency. The metasurfaces, integrated with schottky diodes as well as either capacitors or inductors, selectively absorb short or long pulses, respectively. The two types of the circuit elements are then combined to absorb or transmit specific waveforms in between. This waveform selectivity gives us another freedom to control electromagnetic waves in various fields including wireless communications, as our simulation reveals that the metasurfaces are capable of varying bit error rates in response to waveforms

Common-Mode Noise Reduction in Noncontact Biopotential Acquisition Circuit Based on Imbalance Cancellation of Electrode-Body Impedance

Biopotential sensing technology with electrodes has a great future in medical treatment and human—machine interface, whereas comfort and longevity are two significant problems during usage. Noncontact electrode is a promising alternative to achieve more comfortable and long term biopotential signal recordings than contact electrode. However, it could pick up a significantly higher level of common-mode (CM) noise, which is hardly solved with passive filtering. The impedance imbalance at the electrode-body interface is a limiting factor of this problem, which reduces the common mode rejection ratio (CMRR) of the amplifier. In this work, we firstly present two novel CM noise reduction circuit designs. The circuit designs are based on electrode-body impedance imbalance cancellation. We perform circuit analysis and circuit simulations to explain the principles of the two circuits, both of which showed effectiveness in CM noise rejection. Secondly, we proposed a practical approach to detect and monitor the electrode-body impedance imbalance change. Compared with the conventional approach, it has certain advantages in interference immunity, and good linearity for capacitance. Lastly, we show experimental evaluation results on one of the designs we proposed. The results indicated the validity and feasibility of the approach

Ambient Environmental Parameter Estimation for Reliable Diffusive Molecular Communications

Molecular communication is a promising communication technology that uses biomolecules such as proteins and ions to establish a communication link between nanoscale devices. In diffusive molecular communication, which uses diffusion characteristics of transfer molecules, the diffusion mechanism is mathematically derived as a Channel Impulse Response (CIR) to design an optimal detector structure. However, an ideal environment is assumed for deriving a CIR. Hence there is a concern that developed systems based on the derived CIR may not operate well in a realistic environment. In this study, based on the finite element method (FEM), we constructed a model of the environment with heterogeneous temperature distribution and actual volume of transmitting molecules to not only demodulate the bit information via maximum likelihood sequence estimation (MLSE) but also to estimate the temperature and volume of the transmitting molecules. Furthermore, in this study, we evaluated the performance of the MLSE method and investigated the effects of ambient environmental temperature distribution and volume of the transmitted molecules on diffusive molecular communication. The evaluation results demonstrated that the proposed method can improve the communication performance by approximately 9 dB by estimating the temperature and transmit molecule volume

Electron excitation of the Schumann–Runge continuum, longest band, and second band electronic states in O2

We report measurements of differential and integral cross sections for electron excitation of the Schumann–Runge continuum, longest band, and second band electronic states in molecular oxygen. The energy range of the present study is 15–200 eV, with the angular range of the differential cross section (DCS) measurements from 2 to 130°. A generalized oscillator strength analysis is then employed in order to derive integral cross sections (ICSs) from the corresponding DCSs, and these ICSs are compared with relevant energy and oscillator strength scaled Born cross section results determined as a part of this investigation. Interestingly, while the present Schumann–Runge continuum and second band ICSs were in reasonable agreement with the respective BEf-scaling results, agreement for the longest band was poor below 100 eV with a possible reason for this apparently anomalous behavior being canvassed here. Finally, where possible all present data are compared with the results from earlier measurements and calculations with the level of agreement found being very good in some cases and marginal in others

Inkjet printed intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) for indoor applications

A passive, low-cost, paper-based intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is designed to reflect a signal in a desired direction to overcome non-line-of-sight scenarios in indoor environments. The IRS is fabricated using conductive silver ink printed on a paper with a specific nanoparticle arrangement, yielding a cost effective paper-based IRS that can easily be mass-produced. Full-wave numerical simulation results were consistent with measurements results, demonstrating the IRS's ability to reflect incident wave into a desired nonspecular direction based on the inkjet-printed design and materials

Systematic Performance Evaluation of a Novel Optimized Differential Localization Method for Capsule Endoscopes

Capsule endoscopy is a well-established diagnostic tool for the gastrointestinal tract. However, the reliable tracking of capsule endoscopes needs further investigation. Recently, the static magnetic differential method for the localization of capsule endoscopes has shown promising results. This method was experimentally validated by investigating the difference in the measured values of the geomagnetic flux density of a representative sensor pair. In the measurements, it was revealed that misalignment of the sensors and ferromagnetic material near the sensor pair had the most significant impact on the differential approach. Besides, a systematical simulation-based study was conducted. Herein, the position and alignment of all sensors of the localization system were randomly varied. Furthermore, root-mean-squared noise was added to the sensor measurements, and the influence of nearby ferromagnetic material was evaluated. Subsequently, non-idealities were applied simultaneously on the proposed localization system, and the entire system was rotated. The proposed method was significantly better than state-of-the-art geomagnetic compensation methods for the localization of capsule endoscopes with mean position and orientation errors of approximately 2 mm and 1°, respectively

Direct measurement of spectral shape of Cherenkov light using cosmic muons

The spectral pulse shape of Cherenkov lights was directly measured by using cosmic muons. The observed decay times for early and late timing were 5.0 and 5.2ns, respectively. They were actually shorter than the time of scintillation lights which were also measured as 9.3ns and 9.2ns, respectively. However we could not see the difference of the rise time between scintillation and Cherenkov lights. This was due to the slow response of our DAQ equipment, photomultiplier and FADC digitize