COMPORTAMENTO DO MODELO DE HARGREAVES E SAMANI EM DIFERENTES CONDIÇÕES METEOROLÓGICAS

O uso da água de forma racional tem se tornado cada vez mais importante nos últimos anos, devido à má distribuição das chuvas e ao aumento da demanda por água, como na produção agrícola e florestal. A evapotranspiração é uma importante variável do ciclo hidrológico e uma das principais componentes do balanço hídrico no solo. O uso de equações simplificadas é uma alternativa potencial para estimar a evapotranspiração de referência quando os dados meteorológicos são limitados. O objetivo deste trabalho foi aplicar e testar diferentes métodos para estimar a evapotranspiração de referência (ET0) para o estado do Espírito Santo, com limitação de dados meteorológicos, utilizando o método de Hargreaves e Samani em diferentes condições meteorológicas, adotando o método de Penman-Monteith FAO-56 como referência. Calibrou-se a ET0 pela equação de Hargreaves e Samani utilizando regressão linear, e ajustou-se o coeficiente de Hargreaves e Samani (CH) através dos métodos de Vanderlinden et al. (2004) e de Martí et al. (2015). Foram realizados diferentes ajustes por regressão linear, considerando-se todas as estações meteorológicas utilizadas neste estudo (ajuste geral), diferentes tipos de clima (ajuste por clima), os períodos seco e chuvoso do ano (ajuste período seco e ajuste período chuvoso), classes de amplitude térmica (ajuste por classes), e o tipo de clima combinado com classes de amplitude térmica (ajuste por clima e classes). Estimou-se, também, para fins de comparação, a ET0 pelos métodos de Hargreaves e Samani original (HS) e Penman-Monteith com limitação de dados climáticos (PML). Em geral, o erro absoluto médio (MAE) dos métodos de HS, PML, Vanderlinden et al. (2004), Martí et al. (2015), ajuste geral, ajuste por classes, ajuste por clima, ajuste por período e ajuste por clima e classes, foram de 0,68, 1,46, 0,81, 0,77, 0,53, 0,51, 0,51, 0,51 e 0,49 mm dia-1, respectivamente. Nos períodos seco e chuvoso separadamente, os erros (MAE) foram de 0,41 e 0,61 mm dia-1, respectivamente. O ajuste por classes de amplitude térmica proporcionou melhores estimativas da ET0 em dias mais secos, nos quais necessitam-se de melhores estimativas para o manejo de irrigação na agricultura. O método de PML obteve o pior desempenho entre os métodos testados, não sendo recomendado para estimar a evapotranspiração no estado. Os ajustes por regressão linear obtiveram desempenho superior aos ajustes do CH, no qual melhoraram as estimativas da ET0 em até 30%. Com limitação de dados meteorológicos, o método do ajuste geral é considerado como o mais recomendado dentre os métodos testados, devido a sua simplicidade de aplicação. Para estimar a ET0 entre os meses de abril e setembro no estado, recomenda-se utilizar o ajuste do período seco

Performance analysis of multi-hop framed ALOHA systems with virtual antenna arrays

We consider a multi-hop virtual multiple-input-multiple-output system, which uses the framed ALOHA technique to select the radio resource at each hop. In this scenario, the source, destination and relaying nodes cooperate with neighboring devices to exploit spatial diversity by means of the concept of virtual antenna array. We investigate both the optimum number of slots per frame in the slotted structure and once the source-destination distance is fixed, the impact of the number of hops on the system performance. A comparison with deterministic, centralized re-use strategies is also presented. Outage probability, average throughput, and energy efficiency are the metrics used to evaluate the performance. Two approximated mathematical expressions are given for the outage probability, which represent lower bounds for the exact metric derived in the paper

Fluoxetine Exerts Age-Dependent Effects on Behavior and Amygdala Neuroplasticity in the Rat

The selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) Prozac® (fluoxetine) is the only registered antidepressant to treat depression in children and adolescents. Yet, while the safety of SSRIs has been well established in adults, serotonin exerts neurotrophic actions in the developing brain and thereby may have harmful effects in adolescents. Here we treated adolescent and adult rats chronically with fluoxetine (12 mg/kg) at postnatal day (PND) 25 to 46 and from PND 67 to 88, respectively, and tested the animals 7–14 days after the last injection when (nor)fluoxetine in blood plasma had been washed out, as determined by HPLC. Plasma (nor)fluoxetine levels were also measured 5 hrs after the last fluoxetine injection, and matched clinical levels. Adolescent rats displayed increased behavioral despair in the forced swim test, which was not seen in adult fluoxetine treated rats. In addition, beneficial effects of fluoxetine on wakefulness as measured by electroencephalography in adults was not seen in adolescent rats, and age-dependent effects on the acoustic startle response and prepulse inhibition were observed. On the other hand, adolescent rats showed resilience to the anorexic effects of fluoxetine. Exploratory behavior in the open field test was not affected by fluoxetine treatment, but anxiety levels in the elevated plus maze test were increased in both adolescent and adult fluoxetine treated rats. Finally, in the amygdala, but not the dorsal raphe nucleus and medial prefrontal cortex, the number of PSA-NCAM (marker for synaptic remodeling) immunoreactive neurons was increased in adolescent rats, and decreased in adult rats, as a consequence of chronic fluoxetine treatment. No fluoxetine-induced changes in 5-HT1A receptor immunoreactivity were observed. In conclusion, we show that fluoxetine exerts both harmful and beneficial age-dependent effects on depressive behavior, body weight and wakefulness, which may relate, in part, to differential fluoxetine-induced neuroplasticity in the amygdala

Receiver design for the uplink of base station cooperation systems employing SC-FDE modulations

The presented paper considers the uplink transmission in base station (BS) cooperation schemes where mobile terminals (MTs) in adjacent cells share the same physical channel. We consider single-carrier with frequency-domain equalization (SC-FDE) combined with iterative frequency-domain receivers based on the iterative block decision feedback equalization (IB-DFE). We study the quantization requirements when sending the received signals, from different MTs, at different BSs to a central unit that performs the separation of different MTs using iterative frequency-domain receivers. Our performance results show that a relatively coarse quantization, with only 4 bits in the in-phase and quadrature components of the complex envelope already allows close-to-optimum macro-diversity gains, as well as an efficient separation of the transmitted signals associated with each MT