Great Lakes Water Levels Trends

This paper began as a literature review paper for Great Lakes Issues class and was adapted for an Environmental law paper. The paper explores the past, present and future trends of the Great lakes fluctuating water levels. Special emphasis is given to how trends are determined and how those trends can be extrapolated to predict future water levels. Additionally, the paper touches upon anthropogenic interactions with water levels, both causation and the effects of water level fluctuations on human activity. Lastly the paper discusses the goals, outlook, and public perception of the newly adopted plan 2014 for Lake Ontario

Role of heat and mechanical treatments in the fabrication of superconducting Ba0.6K0.4Fe2As2 ex-situ Powder-In-Tube tapes

Among the recently discovered Fe-based superconducting compounds, the (K,Ba)Fe2As2 phase is attracting large interest within the scientific community interested in conductor developments. In fact, after some years of development, critical current densities Jc of about 105 A/cm2 at fields up to more than 10 T have been obtained in powder in tube (PIT) processed wires and tapes. Here we explore the crucial points in the wire/tape fabrication by means of the ex-situ PIT method. We focus on scaling up processes which are crucial for the industrial fabrication. We analyzed the effects on the microstructure of the different heat and mechanical treatments. By an extensive microstructural analysis correlated with the transport properties we addressed the issues concerning the phase purity, the internal porosity and crack formation in the superconducting core region. Our best conductors with a filling factor of about 30 heat treated at 800 C exhibited Tc = 38 K the highest value measured in such kind of superconducting tape. The microstructure analysis shows clean and well connected grain boundaries but rather poor density: The measured Jc of about 3 x 10^4 A/cm2 in self-field is suppressed by less than a factor 7 at 7 T. Such not yet optimized Jc values can be accounted for by the reduced density while the moderate in-field suppression and a rather high n-factor confirm the high homogeneity and uniformity of these tapes

Stable Perfectly Matched Layers with Lorentz transformation for the convected Helmholtz equation

International audiencePerfectly Matched Layers (PMLs) appear as a popular alternative to non-reflecting boundary conditions for wave-type problems. The core idea is to extend the computational domain by a fictitious layer with specific absorption properties such that the wave amplitude decays significantly and does not produce back reflections. In the context of convected acoustics, it is well-known that PMLs are exposed to stability issues in the frequency and time domain. It is caused by a mismatch between the phase velocity on which the PML acts, and the group velocity which carries the energy of the wave. The objective of this study is to take advantage of the Lorentz transformation in order to design stable perfectly matched layers for generally shaped convex domains in a uniform mean flow of arbitrary orientation. We aim at presenting a pedagogical approach to tackle the stability issue. The robustness of the approach is also demonstrated through several two-dimensional high-order finite element simulations of increasing complexity

A Non-Overlapping Schwarz Domain Decomposition Method with High-Order Finite Elements for Flow Acoustics

International audienceA non-overlapping domain decomposition method is proposed to solve large-scale finite element models for the propagation of sound with a background mean flow. An additive Schwarz algorithm is used to split the computational domain into a collection of sub-domains, and an iterative solution procedure is formulated in terms of unknowns defined on the interfaces between sub-domains. This approach allows to solve large-scale problems in parallel with only a fraction of the memory requirements compared to the standard approach which is to use a direct solver for the complete problem. While domain decomposition techniques have been used extensively for Helmholtz problems, this is the first application to aero-acoustics. The optimized Schwarz formulation is extended to the linearized potential theory for sound waves propagating in a potential base flow. A high-order finite element method is used to solve the governing equations in each sub-domain, and well-designed interface conditions based on local approximations of the Dirichlet-to-Neumann map are used to accelerate the convergence of the iterative procedure. The method is assessed on an academic test case and its benefit demonstrated on a realistic turbofan engine intake configuration

Amphetamine modulates brain signal variability and working memory in younger and older adults

Better-performing younger adults typically express greater brain signal variability relative to older, poorer performers. Mechanisms for age and performance-graded differences in brain dynamics have, however, not yet been uncovered. Given the age-related decline of the dopamine (DA) system in normal cognitive aging, DA neuromodulation is one plausible mechanism. Hence, agents that boost systemic DA [such as d-amphetamine (AMPH)] may help to restore deficient signal variability levels. Furthermore, despite the standard practice of counterbalancing drug session order (AMPH first vs. placebo first), it remains understudied how AMPH may interact with practice effects, possibly influencing whether DA up-regulation is functional. We examined the effects of AMPH on functional-MRI–based blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signal variability (SDBOLD) in younger and older adults during a working memory task (letter n-back). Older adults expressed lower brain signal variability at placebo, but met or exceeded young adult SDBOLD levels in the presence of AMPH. Drug session order greatly moderated change–change relations between AMPH-driven SDBOLD and reaction time means (RTmean) and SDs (RTSD). Older adults who received AMPH in the first session tended to improve in RTmean and RTSD when SDBOLD was boosted on AMPH, whereas younger and older adults who received AMPH in the second session showed either a performance improvement when SDBOLD decreased (for RTmean) or no effect at all (for RTSD). The present findings support the hypothesis that age differences in brain signal variability reflect aging-induced changes in dopaminergic neuromodulation. The observed interactions among AMPH, age, and session order highlight the state- and practice-dependent neurochemical basis of human brain dynamics

A novel method for the analysis of clinical biomarkers to investigate the effect of diet on health in a rat model

Experiments into the relationship between diet and health have been an area of high interest for a long time. In this study, we investigate the application of multivariate data analysis to differentiate between rat populations fed on two different diets: normal rat diet (control) and Western affluent diet (WAD). Two sets of data were acquired and analysed: one from a biochemical clinical analyser, taking measurements of blood-based biochemical markers; the other from the analysis of the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted from faecal samples from the same animals using selected ion flow tube mass spectrometry (SIFT-MS). Five classes were considered: weanlings, 12 month controls, 12 month WADs, 18 month controls, and 18 month WADs. Data from the biochemical analyser, weanlings and 18 month WAD fed rats showed significant differences from the other measurement classes. This was shown in both the exploratory analysis and through multivariate classification. Classification of control diet versus WAD diets suggested there are differences between classes with 92% accuracy for the 12 month classes and 91% for the 18 month classes. Cholesterol markers, especially as low density lipoprotein-cholesterol (LDL), were the main factor in influencing WAD samples. The data from the SIFT-MS analysis also produced very good classification accuracies. Classification of control diet versus WAD diets using the H3O+ precursor ion data suggested there are differences between classes with 71% accuracy for the 12 month classes and 100% for the 18 month classes. These findings confirm that total cholesterol and LDL-cholesterol are elevated in the 18 month WAD-fed rats. We therefore suggest that the analysis of VOCs from faecal samples in conjunction with multivariate data analysis may be a useful alternative to blood analysis for the detection of parameters of health

Conditions aux limites non-réfléchissantes et méthodes de décomposition de domaine pour l'acoustique industrielle en présence d'écoulement

Ce travail de thèse est consacré aux méthodes de décomposition de domaine de Schwarz sans recouvrement pour la résolution de problèmes industriels hautes fréquences d'acoustique en écoulement. Les méthodes de résolution en régime harmonique sont difficiles à paralléliser en raison de leur caractère oscillatoire, si bien que les méthodes actuelles sont limitées par une fréquence maximale, imposée par la mémoire disponible de l'ordinateur. Les méthodes de Schwarz sans recouvrement divisent le domaine en sous-domaines d'un point de vue continu et fournissent un cadre approprié en vue d'une parallélisation à mémoire distribuée. Le problème est résolu de manière itérative sur les inconnues d'interface, où la convergence rapide repose sur des conditions de transmission appropriées. La première partie de cette thèse est consacrée à la conception d'opérateurs de transmission adaptés à la propagation d'ondes harmoniques en milieu convecté et hétérogène. Dans ce cadre nous étudions deux catégories de conditions aux limites non-réfléchissantes qui fournissent des approximations locales de l'opérateur Dirichlet-to-Neumann. Dans un premier temps, des conditions aux limites absorbantes sont conçues basées sur l'analyse microlocale et le calcul pseudodifférentiel. Dans un second temps, la problématique de la stabilité acoustique en écoulement des couches parfaitement adaptées est abordée pour des domaines convexes par la transformation de Lorentz. La deuxième partie de cette thèse étend une méthode générique de décomposition de domaine à des problèmes d'acoustique en écoulement, et applique les conditions de transmission préalablement étudiées à des problèmes académiques simples. Nous expliquons le lien entre la méthode de Schwarz sans recouvrement et une factorisation algébrique LU par blocs du problème. Enfin, nous proposons une mise en œuvre parallèle et montrons l'intérêt de l'approche au rayonnement acoustique tridimensionnel de l'avant d'un turboréacteur d'avion.This PhD project is devoted to non-overlapping Schwarz domain decomposition methods for the resolution of high frequency flow acoustics problems of industrial relevance. Time-harmonic solvers are difficult to parallelize due to their high-oscillatory behaviour, and current solvers quickly reach an upper frequency limit dictated by the available computer memory. Non-overlapping Schwarz methods split the domain into subdomains at the continuous level and provide a suitable setting for distributed memory parallelization. The problem is solved iteratively on the interface unknowns, where the keystone for quick convergence relies on appropriate transmission conditions. The first part of this thesis is devoted to the design of transmission operators tailored to convected and heterogeneous time-harmonic wave propagation. To this end we study two non-reflecting boundary techniques that provide local approximations to the Dirichlet-to-Neumann operator. On the one hand, Absorbing Boundary Conditions are designed based on microlocal analysis and pseudodifferential calculus. On the other hand, the convected acoustic stability issue is addressed for Perfectly Matched Layers in convex domains with Lorentz transformation. The second part of this thesis describes how to adapt a generic domain decomposition framework to flow acoustics, and applies the newly designed transmission conditions to simple academic problems. We explain the relation between the non-overlapping Schwarz formulation and an algebraic block LU factorization of the problem. Finally we propose a parallel implementation of the method and show the benefit of the approach for the three-dimensional noise radiation of a high by-pass ratio turbofan engine intake