Hydrological Models as Web Services: An Implementation using OGC Standards

<p>Presentation for the HIC 2012 - 10th International Conference on Hydroinformatics. "Understanding Changing Climate and Environment and Finding Solutions" Hamburg, Germany July 14-18, 2012</p> <p> </p

Depoxo process: technical and environmental study of hide oxidative unhairing

As an alternative to the traditional process based on the use of sulfides, an unhairing process in drum by hydrogen peroxide, named DEPOXO, was developed for the production of high-quality bovine upper leather. A preliminary investigation at laboratory scale has allowed to set out the optimal process conditions, in terms of H2O2 dosage (9 %) and pH (12.5), in order to achieve an effective unhairing and a compatible swelling of hides. The following pilot-scaled runs have assessed the industrial feasibility of the process that allows the production of a versatile base for different final applications of the leather (either chrome or vegetable tanned), and appear practical to implement. The crust leather obtained by the oxidative unhairing process showed good physical-mechanical and technical properties comparable with those obtained by the traditional one, and the leather was technically assessed as satisfactory and suitable according to the market request. The actual reduction of the environmental impact of the novel process, in relation with the traditional one, was evaluated performing a Life Cycle Assesment (LCA) using SimaPro 7.3, one of the most used software for LCA analysis. The results of the life cycle impact assessment underline that damages on main impact categories are greatly reduced through the adoption or the oxidative unhairing. Therefore, the DEPOXO process appears a feasible process, either from the environmental or from the technical point of view, to produce high quality bovine upper leather

Tetrad gravity, electroweak geometry and conformal symmetry

A partly original description of gauge fields and electroweak geometry is proposed. A discussion of the breaking of conformal symmetry and the nature of the dilaton in the proposed setting indicates that such questions cannot be definitely answered in the context of electroweak geometry.Comment: 21 pages - accepted by International Journal of Geometric Methods in Modern Physics - v2: some minor changes, mostly corrections of misprint

Quantized ID-CNN for a Low-power PDM-to-PCM Conversion in TinyML KWS Applications

This paper proposes a novel low-power HW accelerator for audio PDM-to-PCM conversion based on artificial neural network. The system processes samples from a digital MEMS microphone and converts them in PCM format by using a 1-Dimensional Convolutional Neural Network (1D-CNN). The model has been quantized to reduce the computational complexity while preserving its Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) and the HW accelerator has been designed to minimize the physical resources. The SNR achieved is 41.56 dB while the prototyping of the design on a Xilinx Artix-7 FPGA shows a dynamic power consumption of 1 mW and a utilization of 606 LUTs and 410 FFs. These results enable the proposed system to be the first step of a tiny low-power end-to-end neural network-based Keyword Spotting (KWS) system

Metabolic and Hormonal Determinants of Glomerular Filtration Rate and Renal Hemodynamics in Severely Obese Individuals.

OBJECTIVE: Renal function is often compromised in severe obesity. A true measurement of glomerular filtration rate (GFR) is unusual, and how estimation formulae (EstForm) perform in such individuals is unclear. We characterized renal function and hemodynamics in severely obese individuals, assessing the reliability of EstForm. METHODS: We measured GFR (mGFR) by iohexol plasma clearance, renal plasma flow (RPF) by 123I-ortho-iodo-hippurate, basal and stimulated vascular renal indices, endothelium-dependent and -independent vasodilation using flow-mediated dilation (FMD) as well as metabolic and hormonal profile in morbid, otherwise healthy, obese subjects. RESULTS: Compared with mGFR, the better performing EstForm was CKD-EPI (5.3 ml/min/1.73 m2 bias by Bland-Altman analysis). mGFR was directly related with RPF, total and incremental glucose AUC, and inversely with PTH and h8 cortisol. Patients with mGFR below the median shown significantly higher PTH and lower vitamin D3. Basal or dynamic renal resistive index, FMD, pulse wave velocity were not related with mGFR. In an adjusted regression model, renal diameter and plasma flow remained related with mGFR (R2 = 0.67), accounting for 15% and 21% of mGFR variance, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: CKD-EPI formula should be preferred in morbid obesity; glucose increments during oral glucose tolerance test correlate with hyperfiltration; RPF and diameter are independent determinants of mGFR; slightly high PTH values, frequent in obesity, might influence mGFR

Hermitian vector fields and special phase functions

We start by analysing the Lie algebra of Hermitian vector fields of a Hermitian line bundle. Then, we specify the base space of the above bundle by considering a Galilei, or an Einstein spacetime. Namely, in the first case, we consider, a fibred manifold over absolute time equipped with a spacelike Riemannian metric, a spacetime connection (preserving the time fibring and the spacelike metric) and an electromagnetic field. In the second case, we consider a spacetime equipped with a Lorentzian metric and an electromagnetic field. In both cases, we exhibit a natural Lie algebra of special phase functions and show that the Lie algebra of Hermitian vector fields turns out to be naturally isomorphic to the Lie algebra of special phase functions. Eventually, we compare the Galilei and Einstein cases

Blow-up solutions for fully nonlinear equations: Existence, asymptotic estimates and uniqueness

Abstract The primary objective of the paper is to study the existence, asymptotic boundary estimates and uniqueness of large solutions to fully nonlinear equations {H(x,u,Du,D^{2}u)=f(u)+h(x)} in bounded {C^{2}} domains {\Omega\subseteq\mathbb{R}^{n}} . Here H is a fully nonlinear uniformly elliptic differential operator, f is a non-decreasing function that satisfies appropriate growth conditions at infinity, and h is a continuous function on Ω that could be unbounded either from above or from below. The results contained herein provide substantial generalizations and improvements of results known in the literature