Persistence and Life Time Distribution in Coarsening Phenomen

We investigate the life time distribution in one and two dimensional coarsening processes modelled by Ising - Glauber dynamics at zero temperature. We find that the life time distribution obeys a scaling ansatz, asymptotically. An independent life time model where the life times are sampled from a distribution with power law tail is presented, which predicts analytically the qualitative features of the scaling function.Comment: 12 pages; 6 figure

Highlights from the 2019 International Myopia Summit on 'controversies in myopia'.

Myopia is an emerging public health issue with potentially significant economic and social impact, especially in East Asia. However, many uncertainties about myopia and its clinical management remain. The International Myopia Summit workgroup was convened by the Singapore Eye Research Institute, the WHO Regional Office for the Western Pacific and the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness in 2019. The aim of this workgroup was to summarise available evidence, identify gaps or unmet needs and provide consensus on future directions for clinical research in myopia. In this review, among the many 'controversies in myopia' discussed, we highlight three main areas of consensus. First, development of interventions for the prevention of axial elongation and pathologic myopia is needed, which may require a multifaceted approach targeting the Bruch's membrane, choroid and/or sclera. Second, clinical myopia management requires co-operation between optometrists and ophthalmologists to provide patients with holistic care and a tailored approach that balances risks and benefits of treatment by using optical and pharmacological interventions. Third, current diagnostic technologies to detect myopic complications may be improved through collaboration between clinicians, researchers and industry. There is an unmet need to develop new imaging modalities for both structural and functional analyses and to establish normative databases for myopic eyes. In conclusion, the workgroup's call to action advocated for a paradigm shift towards a collaborative approach in the holistic clinical management of myopia

Real-time plasma state monitoring and supervisory control on TCV

In ITER and DEMO, various control objectives related to plasma control must be simultaneously achieved by the plasma control system (PCS), in both normal operation as well as off-normal conditions. The PCS must act on off-normal events and deviations from the target scenario, since certain sequences (chains) of events can precede disruptions. It is important that these decisions are made while maintaining a coherent prioritization between the real-time control tasks to ensure high-performance operation. In this paper, a generic architecture for task-based integrated plasma control is proposed. The architecture is characterized by the separation of state estimation, event detection, decisions and task execution among different algorithms, with standardized signal interfaces. Central to the architecture are a plasma state monitor and supervisory controller. In the plasma state monitor, discrete events in the continuous-valued plasma state are modeled using finite state machines. This provides a high-level representation of the plasma state. The supervisory controller coordinates the execution of multiple plasma control tasks by assigning task priorities, based on the finite states of the plasma and the pulse schedule. These algorithms were implemented on the TCV digital control system and integrated with actuator resource management and existing state estimation algorithms and controllers. The plasma state monitor on TCV can track a multitude of plasma events, related to plasma current, rotating and locked neoclassical tearing modes, and position displacements. In TCV experiments on simultaneous control of plasma pressure, safety factor profile and NTMs using electron cyclotron heating (ECH) and current drive (ECCD), the supervisory controller assigns priorities to the relevant control tasks. The tasks are then executed by feedback controllers and actuator allocation management. This work forms a significant step forward in the ongoing integration of control capabilities in experiments on TCV, in support of tokamak reactor operation

Generalized from of Telegrapher’s Equations for the Electromagnetic Field Coupling to Buried Wires of Finite Length

In this paper, a generalized form of telegrapher's equations for electromagnetic field coupling to buried wires is derived. The presented approach is based on thin-wire antenna theory. The effect of a dissipative half-space is taken into account via the reflection/transmission coefficient approximation. The conductor losses can be taken into account via the surface impedance per unit length. The derived equations are treated numerically via the Galerkin-Bubnov indirect boundary element method. Numerical results are presented for induced current along the wire, and compared with transmission-line (TL) and modified TL (MTL) approximations, respectively, for the case of perfectly conducting electrode buried in a lossy medium. It is shown that the TL and MTL approximations can result in an inaccurate induced current distribution along the conductor at HFs and for shorter electrode lengths, respectively

Near-field coupling of wireless devices and long communications cables

A comprehensive investigation of the coupling between mobile devices and communication/control cables in several environments is described here. Both experimental and numerical results are shown and compared using a number of different methods in different laboratories. Results indicate a good level of agreement between the different approaches thus giving confidence that predictive studies based on simulation can give a good quantitative assessment of coupling. Moreover, the studies show that varying the configuration of the coupled systems does not significantly affects the maximum coupling thus making it possible to obtain a reasonable worst case estimate of coupling from a small number of generic studies.Electromagnetic compatibility in diffused communications system

Water Footprint of Food Quality Schemes

Water Footprint (WF, henceforth) is an indicator of water consumption and has taken ground to assess the impact of agricultural production processes over freshwater. The focus of this study was contrasting non-conventional, certified products with identical products obtained through conventional production schemes (REF, henceforth) using WF as a measure of their pressure on water resources. The aim was to the show whether products that are certified as Food Quality Schemes (FQS, henceforth) could also incorporate the lower impact on water among their quality features. To perform this comparison, we analysed 23 products selected among Organic, PDO and PGI as FQS, and their conventional counterparts. By restricting the domain of analysis to the on-farm phase of the production chain, we obtained that that no significant differences emerged between the FQS and REF products. However, if the impact is measured per unit area rather than per unit product, FQS showed a significant reduction in water demand