Kinematic landslide monitoring with Kalman filtering

International audienceLandslides are serious geologic disasters that threat human life and property in every country. In addition, landslides are one of the most important natural phenomena, which directly or indirectly affect countries' economy. Turkey is also the country that is under the threat of landslides. Landslides frequently occur in all of the Black Sea region as well as in many parts of Marmara, East Anatolia, and Mediterranean regions. Since these landslides resulted in destruction, they are ranked as the second important natural phenomenon that comes after earthquake in Turkey. In recent years several landslides happened after heavy rains and the resulting floods. This makes the landslide monitoring and mitigation techniques an important study subject for the related professional disciplines in Turkey. The investigations on surface deformations are conducted to define the boundaries of the landslide, size, level of activity and direction(s) of the movement, and to determine individual moving blocks of the main slide. This study focuses on the use of a kinematic deformation analysis based on Kalman Filtering at a landslide area near Istanbul. Kinematic deformation analysis has been applied in a landslide area, which is located to the north of Istanbul city. Positional data were collected using GPS technique. As part of the study, conventional static deformation analysis methodology has also been applied on the same data. The results and comparisons are discussed in this paper

Roll-Yaw control at high angle of attack by forebody tangential blowing

The feasibility of using forebody tangential blowing to control the roll-yaw motion of a wind tunnel model is experimentally demonstrated. An unsteady model of the aerodynamics is developed based on the fundamental physics of the flow. Data from dynamic experiments is used to validate the aerodynamic model. A unique apparatus is designed and built that allows the wind tunnel model two degrees of freedom, roll and yaw. Dynamic experiments conducted at 45 degrees angle of attack reveal the system to be unstable. The natural motion is divergent. The aerodynamic model is incorporated into the equations of motion of the system and used for the design of closed loop control laws that make the system stable. These laws are proven through dynamic experiments in the wind tunnel using blowing as the only actuator. It is shown that asymmetric blowing is a highly non-linear effector that can be linearized by superimposing symmetric blowing. The effects of forebody tangential blowing and roll and yaw angles on the flow structure are determined through flow visualization experiments. The transient response of roll and yaw moments to a step input blowing are determined. Differences on the roll and yaw moment dependence on blowing are explained based on the physics of the phenomena

Prevalence of oral mucosal lesions from birth to two years

Objective: The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of lesions of the oral mucosa from birth to two years in Turkish pediatric patients .Materials and Methods: A total of 299 infants from newborn to two years of  age were evaluated from the Outpatient Clinics of the Pediatric Department, in the Fatih University Hospital, Ankara, Turkey. The mucosal lesions were documented. The data were presented as percentages and for categorical comparisons Chi-square or Fisher’s Exact test were used. A P-value less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant.Results: Of the 299 infants, mucosal lesions were seen in only 65 (21.27%). In the study, the most common lesions were candidiasis (10.70%), Ebstein’s pearls (2.68%), and geographic tongue (2.68%). The frequency of children with mucosal alterations was higher in the group of children from two to twelve months.Conclusions: Although the lesions that were found the most in our study were benign lesions, unrelated to systemic diseases, we still believe that oral mucosal lesions can be a sign of a systemic or dermatological disease in infants, which affects the oral feeding of the infants. Routine examination of the oral mucosa should be a part of the pediatric examination

Time-to-birth prediction models and the influence of expert opinions

Preterm birth is the leading cause of death among children under five years old. The pathophysiology and etiology of preterm labor are not yet fully understood. This causes a large number of unnecessary hospitalizations due to high--sensitivity clinical policies, which has a significant psychological and economic impact. In this study, we present a predictive model, based on a new dataset containing information of 1,243 admissions, that predicts whether a patient will give birth within a given time after admission. Such a model could provide support in the clinical decision-making process. Predictions for birth within 48 h or 7 days after admission yield an Area Under the Curve of the Receiver Operating Characteristic (AUC) of 0.72 for both tasks. Furthermore, we show that by incorporating predictions made by experts at admission, which introduces a potential bias, the prediction effectiveness increases to an AUC score of 0.83 and 0.81 for these respective tasks

Z3_3-graded differential geometry of quantum plane

In this work, the Z$_3$-graded differential geometry of the quantum plane is constructed. The corresponding quantum Lie algebra and its Hopf algebra structure are obtained. The dual algebra, i.e. universal enveloping algebra of the quantum plane is explicitly constructed and an isomorphism between the quantum Lie algebra and the dual algebra is given.Comment: 17 page

Percolation approach to quark gluon plasma in high energy pp collisions

We apply continuum percolation to proton-proton collisions and look for the possible threshold to phase transition from confined nuclear matter to quark gluon plasma. Making the assumption that J/Psi suppression is a good signal to the transition, we discuss this phenomenon for pp collisions, in the framework of a dual model with strings.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure

The static and dynamic screening of power loss of a two-dimensional electron gas

Experimental results concerning the well-width dependence of the acoustic-phonon-assisted energy relaxation of a two-dimensional electron gas in GaAs/Ga1-xAlxAs quantum-well structures are compared with theoretical models that involve piezoelectric and deformation-potential scattering and the effects of static and dynamic screening of the electron-acoustic phonon interaction. It is shown that screening only slightly modifies the predictions of the approximate calculations. © 1998 Academic Press

The deconfinement transition of finite density QCD with heavy quarks from strong coupling series

Starting from Wilson's action, we calculate strong coupling series for the Polyakov loop susceptibility in lattice gauge theories for various small N_\tau in the thermodynamic limit. Analysing the series with Pad\'e approximants, we estimate critical couplings and exponents for the deconfinement phase transition. For SU(2) pure gauge theory our results agree with those from Monte-Carlo simulations within errors, which for the coarser N_\tau=1,2 lattices are at the percent level. For QCD we include dynamical fermions via a hopping parameter expansion. On a N_\tau=1 lattice with N_f=1,2,3, we locate the second order critical point where the deconfinement transition turns into a crossover. We furthermore determine the behaviour of the critical parameters with finite chemical potential and find the first order region to shrink with growing \mu. Our series moreover correctly reflects the known Z(N) transition at imaginary chemical potential.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figures, typos corrected, version published in JHE

Single waveguide silicon-organic hybrid modulator

We present a novel silicon-organic hybrid modulator based on an integrated dual-mode interferometer. The modulator offers a compact, simplified design and enhanced robustness to on-chip fluctuations of temperature compared to conventional Mach-Zehnder based systems. A prototype modulator showing a voltage dependent transmission spectrum is obtained by cladding a dual-mode waveguide in a 250 nm silicon-on-insulator technology with a customized organic electro-optic layer. Estimated phase shifts and corresponding figures of merit are discussed in this contribution. The used organic layer is based on the guest-host approach with customized donor-acceptor chromophore embedded and poled in a poly(methylmethacrylate) matrix. The presented prototype is to the best of the authors'' knowledge the first integrated single waveguide silicon-organic hybrid modulator