High Specification Offshore Blades: Work Package: 1B: Blades Design

This report outlines the current state of the art in offshore wind turbine blade aerodynamic design, along with the key technical limitations and possible technologies which may improve the aerodynamic design of blades and turbine rotors in the future. It is suggested that there are three principal areas in which aerodynamic improvements can be made to the design of offshore wind turbine systems: improved rotor system and blade tip design for operation at higher tip speeds, optimisation of wind farm design to alleviate aerodynamic interactions between individual turbines, and the aerodynamic feasibility of using structural mode coupling to achieve pitch and/or stall control of the loads on blades

Statistical Analysis of User-Event Data in a Digital Forensics Context

Posted with permission of CSAFE.</p

Quantifying the association between discrete event time series with applications to digital forensics

We consider the problem of quantifying the degree of association between pairs of discrete event time series, with potential applications in forensic and cybersecurity settings. We focus in particular on the case where two associated event series exhibit temporal clustering such that the occurrence of one type of event at a particular time increases the likelihood that an event of the other type will also occur nearby in time. We pursue a non‐parametric approach to the problem and investigate various score functions to quantify association, including characteristics of marked point processes and summary statistics of interevent times. Two techniques are proposed for assessing the significance of the measured degree of association: a population‐based approach to calculating score‐based likelihood ratios when a sample from a relevant population is available, and a resampling approach to computing coincidental match probabilities when only a single pair of event series is available. The methods are applied to simulated data and to two real world data sets consisting of logs of computer activity and achieve accurate results across all data sets

Cochlea-Inspired Channelizing Filters for Wideband Radio Systems.

RF and microwave multiplexers with a large number of output ports--called channelizers--have always posed a challenging design problem. Typical multiplexer designs use a set of channel filters connected at either a common port or through a manifold consisting of transmission lines (or waveguide) and tuning elements at the junction of, or between, separate channel filters. Nearly all modern multiplexer design methods rely on optimization of the individual channel filters and/or compensation networks used to reduce channel-to-channel interactions. Even with computer optimization, solutions for certain multiplexer topologies with more than about ten channels are often not possible, especially for units covering a wide bandwidth. The work presented here approaches the problem of designing wide bandwidth, contiguous-channel, multiplexing filters by implementing a model of the mammalian cochlea. The cochlea is an amazing channelizing filter, covering three decades of bandwidth with over 3,000 channels in a very small physical space. Using a simplified mechanical cochlear model and its electrical analogue, a design method is demonstrated for RF and microwave channelizers that retain the desirable features of the cochlea including multiple-octave frequency coverage, a large number of output channels, and an enhanced, high-order upper stop-band response. In addition, improved cochlea-like channelizing filters are demonstrated that use conventional, higher-order bandpass filters with prescribed input impedance characteristics. Versions are presented that cover 20-90 MHz, with both constant fractional bandwidth and constant absolute bandwidth channels, planar microwave channelizers covering 2-7 GHz, and higher-order cochlea-like channelizers covering 200 MHz to 1 GHz. Applications of these channelizing filters include wideband, contiguous-channel receivers for signal intelligence or spectral analysis as well as transmit multiplexing.Ph.D.Electrical EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/58385/1/cgalbrai_1.pd

Spatial DNA: Measuring similarity of geolocation datasets with applications to forensics

Posted with permission of CSAFE.</p

Analyzing user-event data using score-based likelihood ratios with marked point processes

In this paper we investigate the application of score-based likelihood ratio techniques to the problem of detecting whether two time-stamped event streams were generated by the same source or by two different sources. We develop score functions for event data streams by building on ideas from the statistical modeling of marked point processes, focusing in particular on the coefficient of segregation and mingling index. The methodology is applied to a data set consisting of logs of computer activity over a 7-day period from 28 different individuals. Experimental results on known same-source and known different-source data sets indicate that the proposed scores have significant discriminative power in this context. The paper concludes with a discussion of the potential benefits and challenges that may arise from the application of statistical analysis to user-event data in digital forensics

Additional Records of Deep-Sea Fishes from Off Greater New England

Recent review of deep-sea fishes captured deeper than 200m off greater New England, from the Scotian Shelf at 44°N to the southern New England Shelf at about 38°N, documented 591 species. Subsequent trawling activity and reviews of deep-sea taxa occurring in the area have revealed that an additional 40 species in habit the deep sea off New England. Thirty-two of these new records were captured in the course of 44 bottom trawls and 94 mid-water trawls over or in the proximity of Bear Seamount (39°55\u27N, 67°30\u27W). Five of the 40 species have been described as new to science, at least in part from material taken in the study area. In addition to describing such information as specimen size and position, depth, and date of capture, errors made in the previous study of deep-sea fishes in the area are identified and corrected

Feasible future global scenarios for human life evaluations

Digital object identifier for the 'European Research Council' (http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000781) Digital object identifier for 'Horizon 2020' (http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100007601).Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552Subjective well-being surveys show large and consistent variation among countries, much of which can be predicted from a small number of social and economic proxy variables. But the degree to which these life evaluations might feasibly change over coming decades, at the global scale, has not previously been estimated. Here, we use observed historical trends in the proxy variables to constrain feasible future projections of self-reported life evaluations to the year 2050. We find that projected effects of macroeconomic variables tend to lead to modest improvements of global average life evaluations. In contrast, scenarios based on non-material variables project future global average life evaluations covering a much wider range, lying anywhere from the top 15% to the bottom 25% of present-day countries. These results highlight the critical role of non-material factors such as social supports, freedoms, and fairness in determining the future of human well-being