The Future of Water in North Carolina and the South: Lessons Learned and Not Learned in the 2007-2008 Drought

During this presentation we will discuss local and state government response to the 2007- 2008. What are the gaps in water management? What are the opportunities to incentivize planning to address future droughts? Are municipalities and states addressing drought management in conjunction with growth? Are municipalities implementing long term strategies for water conservation

Region Adjacency Graph Approach for Acral Melanocytic Lesion Segmentation

Malignant melanoma is among the fastest increasing malignancies in many countries. Due to its propensity to metastasize and lack of effective therapies for most patients with advanced disease, early detection of melanoma is a clinical imperative. In non-Caucasian populations, melanomas are frequently located in acral volar areas and their dermoscopic appearance differs from the non-acral ones. Although lesion segmentation is a natural preliminary step towards its further analysis, so far virtually no acral skin lesion segmentation method has been proposed. Our goal was to develop an effective segmentation algorithm dedicated for acral lesions

How to make it faster and at lower cost? B2B integration with semantic web services

Web services and service oriented architectures present a new approach to application integration. While it is reasonable inside an enterprise, it has certain deficiencies when applied in a B2B environment. This deficiencies apply to the discovery, invocation and composition phases, which require considerable manual effort. In the paper, we show on example of a mortgage simulator how these deficiencies can be overcome by applying-semantic web services. The application is compatible with the Web Services Modelling Ontology and makes use of an execution environment automating the processes of discovery, composition and invocation of semantic web services, enabling faster and cheaper B2B application integration

Large amplitude oscillatory motion along a solar filament

Large amplitude oscillations of solar filaments is a phenomenon known for more than half a century. Recently, a new mode of oscillations, characterized by periodical plasma motions along the filament axis, was discovered. We analyze such an event, recorded on 23 January 2002 in Big Bear Solar Observatory H$\alpha$ filtergrams, in order to infer the triggering mechanism and the nature of the restoring force. Motion along the filament axis of a distinct buldge-like feature was traced, to quantify the kinematics of the oscillatory motion. The data were fitted by a damped sine function, to estimate the basic parameters of the oscillations. In order to identify the triggering mechanism, morphological changes in the vicinity of the filament were analyzed. The observed oscillations of the plasma along the filament was characterized by an initial displacement of 24 Mm, initial velocity amplitude of 51 km/s, period of 50 min, and damping time of 115 min. We interpret the trigger in terms of poloidal magnetic flux injection by magnetic reconnection at one of the filament legs. The restoring force is caused by the magnetic pressure gradient along the filament axis. The period of oscillations, derived from the linearized equation of motion (harmonic oscillator) can be expressed as $P=\pi\sqrt{2}L/v_{A\phi}\approx4.4L/v_{A\phi}$, where $v_{A\phi} =B_{\phi0}/\sqrt{\mu_0\rho}$ represents the Alfv\'en speed based on the equilibrium poloidal field $B_{\phi0}$. Combination of our measurements with some previous observations of the same kind of oscillations shows a good agreement with the proposed interpretation.Comment: Astron. Astrophys., 2007, in pres

Characterization of Seamless CdTe Photon Counting X-Ray Detector

Spectrally selective X-ray imaging provides improved material and tissue discrimination in comparison with the state-of-the-art dual energy technologies that are commonly used in medical, industrial, and security applications. Cadmium telluride (CdTe)- and cadmium zinc telluride (CdZnTe)-based line scanners and small size two-dimensional X-ray sensors are emerging to the market, but the need for large-scale panels is axiomatic. In this study, a seamless CdTe tile was developed that enables the implementation of large-sized, energy selective X-ray detector panels. The developed tile consists of a 64 x 64 pixel array (with 150 mu m pitch) with a necessary substrate, ASIC, and CdTe crystal. The performance of the constructed seamless tile was characterized by focusing on spectral resolution and stability. In addition, a simple pixel trimming method that automates the equalization of each energy selective pixel was developed and analyzed. The obtained results suggest that the proposed concept of seamless (tileable) detector structures is a feasible approach to scale up panel sizes. The seamless tile shows comparable spectral resolution and stability performance with commercial CdTe sensors. The effect of tile to tile variation, the realization of a large-scale panel, as well as the charge sharing performance were left out of the scope and are to be studied in the next phase.Peer reviewe

Damping of prominence longitudinal oscillations due to mass accretion

We study the damping of longitudinal oscillations of a prominence thread caused by the mass accretion. We suggested a simple model describing this phenomenon. In this model we considered a thin curved magnetic tube filled with the plasma. The prominence thread is in the central part of the tube and it consists of dense cold plasma. The parts of the tube at the two sides of the thread are filled with hot rarefied plasma. We assume that there are flows of rarefied plasma toward the thread caused by the plasma evaporation at the magnetic tube footpoints. Our main assumption is that the hot plasma is instantaneously accommodated by the thread when it arrives at the thread, and its temperature and density become equal to those of the thread. Then we derive the system of ordinary differential equations describing the thread dynamics. We solve this system of ordinary differential equations in two particular cases. In the first case we assume that the magnetic tube is composed of an arc of a circle with two straight lines attached to its ends such that the whole curve is smooth. A very important property of this model is that the equations describing the thread oscillations are linear for any oscillation amplitude. We obtain the analytical solution of the governing equations. Then we obtain the analytical expressions for the oscillation damping time and periods. We find that the damping time is inversely proportional to the accretion rate. The oscillation periods increase with time. We conclude that the oscillations can damp in a few periods if the inclination angle is sufficiently small, not larger that 10°, and the flow speed is sufficiently large, not less that 30 km s-1. In the second model we consider the tube with the shape of an arc of a circle. The thread oscillates with the pendulum frequency dependent exclusively on the radius of curvature of the arc. The damping depends on the mass accretion rate and the initial mass of the threads, that is the mass of the thread at the moment when it is perturbed. First we consider small amplitude oscillations and use the linear description. Then we consider nonlinear oscillations and assume that the damping is slow, meaning that the damping time is much larger that the characteristic oscillation time. The thread oscillations are described by the solution of the nonlinear pendulum problem with slowly varying amplitude. The nonlinearity reduces the damping time, however this reduction is small. Again the damping time is inversely proportional to the accretion rate. We also obtain that the oscillation periods decrease with time. However even for the largest initial oscillation amplitude considered in our article the period reduction does not exceed 20%. We conclude that the mass accretion can damp the motion of the threads rapidly. Thus, this mechanism can explain the observed strong damping of large-amplitude longitudinal oscillations. In addition, the damping time can be used to determine the mass accretion rate and indirectly the coronal heating