NOSS altimeter algorithm specifications

A description of all algorithms required for altimeter processing is given. Each description includes title, description, inputs/outputs, general algebraic sequences and data volume. All required input/output data files are described and the computer resources required for the entire altimeter processing system were estimated. The majority of the data processing requirements for any radar altimeter of the Seasat-1 type are scoped. Additions and deletions could be made for the specific altimeter products required by other projects

A comparative study of floor construction on sloping sites: An analysis of cumulative energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions

© 2016 Grace Ding and Perry Forsythe. In order to make environmentally aware decisions, there is growing interest in the comparative energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) performance of competing construction methods. Little research has been done concerning competing ground floor construction methods, especially given different site variables, such as slope and soil type. A life cycle assessment approach was adopted to analyse environmental impacts, including cumulative energy demand and GHG emissions for detached housing construction in Australia. Data was drawn from 24 case study housing projects, including 12 reinforced concrete and 12 suspended timber floor projects. The data presented in the paper compares cumulative energy demand, GHG and the constituent parts of competing construction methods. The findings indicate that the timber floors use/create significantly less cumulative energy demand and GHG emissions than concrete floors—approximately 2.1 to 2.7 times less energy and 2.3 to 2.9 times less GHG. These findings are limited to the site slope and foundation soil types identified in the paper. The main application of the work is in guidance concerning the lowest environmental impact options for detached housing construction

Desiccation survival of Acinetobacter spp. in infant formula

Acinetobacter spp. are included under category B in the FAO-WHO list of organisms of concern for neonatal health following the consumption of powdered infant formula. However, the ability of Acinetobacter spp. to maintain their viability in desiccated infant formula over a storage period consistent with the shelf-life of commercially available powdered infant formula (2 years) has not been demonstrated. In this study, 9 clinical and food isolates of A. baumannii, A. calcoaceticus, and Acinetobacter genomosp. 3 were desiccated in infant formula and then reconstituted at designated time points. Bacterial viability was followed for a maximum period of 24 months or until the strain became undetectable (<5 x 102 cfu/ml). For comparative purposes, one Enterobacter hormaechei and two Enterobacter cloacae strains were also monitored for their desiccation survival. The seven clinical and food strains remained cultivable for the whole duration of the study and showed biphasic survival curves. The initial drop in viable count was up to 3.5 log10 cfu/ml within 18 h of desiccation exposure. By the end of the study, the reduction in viability was between 3.6 and 4.8 log10 cfu/ml. In contrast the A. baumanii and A. calcoaceticus species type strains only persisted for 6 and 9 months, respectively, possibly due to laboratory adaptation. The E. cloacae and E. hormaecehei strains were undetectable after 12 and 17 months, respectively. The persistence of Acinetobacter spp. strains in desiccated powdered infant formula, supports the FAO-WHO designation of this organism as a risk to neonatal health

Gender in agricultural mechanization: Key guiding questions

This tool describes case studies of gender implications in mechanization in RTB crops, illustrating both positive and negative outcomes. GENNOVATE research has shown that the beneficiaries of mechanization tend to be the wealthier rather than the poorer farmers and more often men than women. However, results also reveal that women have strong interest in mechanization as a way to improve their own circumstances

Prebiotic Peptide (Amide) Bond Synthesis Accelerated by Glycerol and Bicarbonate Under Neutral to Alkaline Dry-Down Conditions

Past studies of prebiotic peptide bond synthesis have generally been carried out in the acidic to neutral pH range [1, 2]. Here we report a new process for peptide bond (amide) synthesis in the neutral to alkaline pH range that involves simple dry-down heating of amino acids in the presence of glycerol and bicarbonate. Glycerol was included in the reaction mixture as a solvent and to provide hydroxyl groups for possible formation of ester intermediates previously implicated in peptide bond synthesis under acidic to neutral conditions [1]. Bicarbonate was added to raise the reaction pH to 8-9

A quantitative probabilistic investigation into the accumulation of rounding errors in numerical ODE solution.

We examine numerical rounding errors of some deterministic solvers for systems of ordinary differential equations (ODEs) from a probabilistic viewpoint. We show that the accumulation of rounding errors results in a solution which is inherently random and we obtain the theoretical distribution of the trajectory as a function of time, the step size and the numerical precision of the computer. We consider, in particular, systems which amplify the effect of the rounding errors so that over long time periods the solutions exhibit divergent behaviour. By performing multiple repetitions with different values of the time step size, we observe numerically the random distributions predicted theoretically. We mainly focus on the explicit Euler and fourth order Runge–Kutta methods but also briefly consider more complex algorithms such as the implicit solvers VODE and RADAU5 in order to demonstrate that the observed effects are not specific to a particular method

Detection of positron-atom bound states through resonant annihilation

A method is proposed for detecting positron-atom bound states by observing enhanced positron annihilation due to electronic Feshbach resonances at electron-volt energies. The method is applicable to a range of open-shell transition metal atoms which are likely to bind the positron: Fe, Co, Ni, Tc, Ru, Rh, Sn, Sb, Ta, W, Os, Ir, and Pt. Estimates of their binding energies are provided.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure; estimates of binding energies have been adde

Implementing Planning Procedures for the Provision of Discrete Public Goods

The purpose of this paper is to investigate several alternative procedures for making collective decisions regarding the provision of discrete public goods. Although much attention has recently been focused on the design of procedures which elicit the true preferences of a population in order to make efficient decisions, we will show that each of those proposed possess undesirable properties given the nature of our problem

Multilocus sequence typing of Cronobacter sakazakii and Cronobacter malonaticus reveals stable clonal structures with clinical significance which do not correlate with biotypes

Background: The Cronobacter genus (Enterobacter sakazakii) has come to prominence due to its association with infant infections, and the ingestion of contaminated reconstituted infant formula. C. sakazakii and C. malonaticus are closely related, and are defined according their biotype. Due to the ubiquitous nature of the organism, and the high severity of infection for the immunocompromised, a multilocus sequence typing (MLST) scheme has been developed for the fast and reliable identification and discrimination of C. sakazakii and C. malonaticus strains. It was applied to 60 strains of C. sakazakii and 16 strains of C. malonaticus, including the index strains used to define the biotypes. The strains were from clinical and non-clinical sources between 1951 and 2008 in USA, Canada, Europe, New Zealand and the Far East. Results: This scheme uses 7 loci; atpD, fusA, glnS, gltB, gyrB, infB, and pps. There were 12 sequence types (ST) identified in C. sakazakii, and 3 in C. malonaticus. A third (22/60) of C. sakazakii strains were in ST4, which had almost equal numbers of clinical and infant formula isolates from 1951 to 2008. ST8 may represent a particularly virulent grouping of C. sakazakii as 7/8 strains were clinical in origin which had been isolated between 1977 - 2006, from four countries. C. malonaticus divided into three STs. The previous Cronobacter biotyping scheme did not clearly correspond with STs nor with species. Conclusion: In conclusion, MLST is a more robust means of identifying and discriminating between C. sakazakii and C. malonaticus than biotyping. The MLST database for these organisms is available online at http://pubmlst.org/cronobacter