Automatic detection system of aircraft noise events during acoustic climate long-term monitoring near airport

The paper presents a method and software application of automatic identification of aircraft noise sources in the long-term environment acoustic monitoring systems. The said method relies on automatic “meaning” of sounds recorded by the one measuring microphone (part of a monitoring station) and refer to the advanced pattern recognition technique based on the human auditory perceptions by using mel frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC) of signals. The algorithm was developed in MATLAB language and implemented in National Instrument LabVIEW Environment as Aircraft Noise Events Detector (ANED) application

Recent advances on geomorphology of the Gorce Mountains, the Outer Western Carpathians – state-of-the-art and future perspectives

The increase of geomorphological research during the last decades in the Gorce Mts. caused the need for state-of-art review papers. The Gorce Mountains were formed as an isolated massif with Mt Turbacz (1310 m a.s.l.) as the highest summit. River channels are remodeled by sudden and high-level floods with the critical impact of log jams. The main processes influencing hillslope relief were landsliding, run-off, and tree uprooting. The review suggests the following issues await for studies: a long-term landscape evolution, monitoring of morphogenetic processes, and origin of landslides with their contribution to denudation rates. Also, current biomorphodynamics (uprooting process) has not been sufficiently studied

MULTICHANNEL DATA ACQUISITION SYSTEM FOR VIBROACOUSTIC SIGNALS

The authors have made an attempt to construct a multi-channel data acquisition system for vibroacoustic signals, col­lected for analysis of acoustic field distributions in enclosed rooms and determination of surface acoustic impedance values at the wall surfaces. The scope of the study required a synchronic registration of acoustic pressure by 24 mea­surement microphones, determination of the phase-shift angles between the measured signals and determination of the vibration velocity for the loudspeaker diaphragm. The paper presents the first stage of the research, directly related to the multi-channel system for registration and analysis of vibroacoustic signals. The constructed research tools, due to their modular structure, can be adapted to new tasks, extended by adding new elements (further measurement cards, microphones, accelerometers etc.), what ensures greatflexibility and suitability of the system for realization of advanced acoustical measurements. Open source code and users request for specialized acoustic analyses make the developed software packages a highly prospective research tool both for today and tomorrow

Quelles améliorations sont nécessaires pour garantir la qualité des eaux de nos rivières? : nouveau regard sur l'utilisation d'indices biot iques dans l'évaluation de la santé des cours d'eau

Benthic invertebrate-based indexes are commonly used as proxies for river health, especially river water quality. Scores of BMWP-PL index (a Polish equivalent of the British Biological Monitoring Working Party score system) were determined for 20 unmanaged and channelized cross-sections of the Biała River and compared with water quality and physical habitat parameters in the cross-sections. The two types of cross-sections clearly differed in the physical habitat conditions, whereas physico-chemical parameters of the river water mostly varied in the downstream direction. The number of recorded taxa ranged from 3 to 26 and the respective scores of the BMWP-PL index indicated the water to vary between high and poor quality. Since the analysed water quality was consistently high, the BMWP-PL scores were not related to physico-chemical parameters of the water but to physical habitat parameters, with the number of low-flow channels explaining the largest proportion of the variance in the index values. The lacking dependence on physico-chemical water parameters renders the BMWP-PL as indicator of the ecological integrity of rivers, related to their hydromorphological and physico-chemical characteristics, rather than of water quality

Using Unused: Non-Invasive Dynamic FaaS Infrastructure with HPC-Whisk

Modern HPC workload managers and their careful tuning contribute to the high utilization of HPC clusters. However, due to inevitable uncertainty it is impossible to completely avoid node idleness. Although such idle slots are usually too short for any HPC job, they are too long to ignore them. Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) paradigm promisingly fills this gap, and can be a good match, as typical FaaS functions last seconds, not hours. Here we show how to build a FaaS infrastructure on idle nodes in an HPC cluster in such a way that it does not affect the performance of the HPC jobs significantly. We dynamically adapt to a changing set of idle physical machines, by integrating open-source software Slurm and OpenWhisk. We designed and implemented a prototype solution that allowed us to cover up to 90\% of the idle time slots on a 50k-core cluster that runs production workloads

Methylotrophic extremophilic yeast Trichosporon sp. : a soil-derived isolate with potential applications in environmental biotechnology

A yeast isolate revealing unique enzymatic activities and substrate-dependent polymorphism was obtained from autochthonous microflora of soil heavily polluted with oily slurries. By means of standard yeast identification procedures the strain was identified as Trichosporon cutaneum. Further molecular PCR product analyses of ribosomal DNA confirmed the identity of the isolate with the genus Trichosporon. As it grew on methanol as a sole carbon source, the strain appeared to be methylotrophic. Furthermore, it was also able to utilize formaldehyde. A multi-substrate growth potential was shown with several other carbon sources: glucose, glycerol, ethanol as well as petroleum derivatives and phenol. Optimum growth temperature was determined at 25°C, and strong inhibition of growth at 37°C together with the original soil habitat indicated lack of pathogenicity in warm-blooded animals and humans. The unusually high tolerance to xenobiotics such as diesel oil (>30 g/l), methanol (50 g/l), phenol (2 g/l) and formaldehyde (7.5 g/l) proved that the isolate was an extremophilic organism. With high-density cultures, formaldehyde was totally removed at initial concentrations up to 7.5 g/l within 24 h, which is the highest biodegradation capability ever reported. Partial biodegradation of methanol (13 g/l) and diesel fuel (20 g/l) was also observed. Enzymatic studies revealed atypical methylotrophic pathway reactions, lacking alcohol oxidase, as compared with the conventional methylotroph Hansenula polymorpha. However, the activities of glutathione-dependent formaldehyde dehydrogenase, formaldehyde reductase, formate dehydrogenase and unspecific aldehyde dehydrogenase(s) were present. An additional glutathione-dependent aldehyde dehydrogenase activity was also detected. Metabolic and biochemical characteristics of the isolated yeast open up new possibilities for environmental biotechnology. Some potential applications in soil bioremediation and wastewater decontamination are discussed

Cough-induced lung intercostal hernia

A 73-year-old male with marked emphysema was admitted to the 2nd Department of Internal Medicine, University Hospital in Krakow because of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) exacerbation. His medical history was significant for total laryngectomy due to laryngeal cancer in 2010.A 73-year-old male with marked emphysema was admitted to the 2nd Department of Internal Medicine, University Hospital in Krakow because of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) exacerbation. His medical history was significant for total laryngectomy due to laryngeal cancer in 2010