Impact of ASAR soil moisture data on the MM5 precipitation forecast for the Tanaro flood event of April 2009

Abstract. The representation of land-atmosphere interactions in weather forecast models has a strong impact on the Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL) and, in turn, on the forecast. Soil moisture is one of the key variables in land surface modelling, and an inadequate initial soil moisture field can introduce major biases in the surface heat and moisture fluxes and have a long-lasting effect on the model behaviour. Detecting the variability of soil characteristics at small scales is particularly important in mesoscale models because of the continued increase of their spatial resolution. In this paper, the high resolution soil moisture field derived from ENVISAT/ASAR observations is used to derive the soil moisture initial condition for the MM5 simulation of the Tanaro flood event of April 2009. The ASAR-derived soil moisture field shows significantly drier conditions compared to the ECMWF analysis. The impact of soil moisture on the forecast has been evaluated in terms of predicted precipitation and rain gauge data available for this event have been used as ground truth. The use of the drier, highly resolved soil moisture content (SMC) shows a significant impact on the precipitation forecast, particularly evident during the early phase of the event. The timing of the onset of the precipitation, as well as the intensity of rainfall and the location of rain/no rain areas, are better predicted. The overall accuracy of the forecast using ASAR SMC data is significantly increased during the first 30 h of simulation. The impact of initial SMC on the precipitation has been related to the change in the water vapour field in the PBL prior to the onset of the precipitation, due to surface evaporation. This study represents a first attempt to establish whether high resolution SAR-based SMC data might be useful for operational use, in anticipation of the launch of the Sentinel-1 satellite

Enhancement of piezomagnetic response of highly magnetostrictive rare earth‐iron alloys at kHz frequencies

The effects of Al and Si additions on the frequency response of highly magnetostrictive Tb–Dy–Fe alloys have been studied. These elements reduced the electrical conductivity of the material, thereby increasing the depth of penetration of acmagnetic fields and extending the operational frequency range. Complex permeability measurements were made on doped and undoped polycrystalline samples with the objective of studying the improvement in energy conversion efficiency at kilohertz frequencies as a result of the alloying additions. The resulting complex permeability was compared with the values for single crystal specimens of Tb0.3Dy0.7Fe1.92 at a range of frequencies from 10 Hz to 50 kHz

Sentinel-1 InSAR coherence to detect floodwater in urban areas: Houston and hurricane harvey as a test case

This paper presents an automatic algorithm for mapping floods. Its main characteristic is that it can detect not only inundated bare soils, but also floodwater in urban areas. The synthetic aperture radar (SAR) observations of the flood that hit the city of Houston (Texas) following the landfall of Hurricane Harvey in 2017 are used to apply and validate the algorithm. The latter consists of a two-step approach that first uses the SAR data to identify buildings and then takes advantage of the Interferometric SAR coherence feature to detect the presence of floodwater in urbanized areas. The preliminary detection of buildings is a pre-requisite for focusing the analysis on the most risk-prone areas. Data provided by the Sentinel-1 mission acquired in both Strip Map and Interferometric Wide Swath modes were used, with a geometric resolution of 5 m and 20 m, respectively. Furthermore, the coherence-based algorithm takes full advantage of the Sentinel-1 mission's six-day repeat cycle, thereby providing an unprecedented possibility to develop an automatic, high-frequency algorithm for detecting floodwater in urban areas. The results for the Houston case study have been qualitatively evaluated through very-high-resolution optical images acquired almost simultaneously with SAR, crowdsourcing points derived by photointerpretation from Digital Globe and Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) inundation model over the area. For the first time the comparison with independent data shows that the proposed approach can map flooded urban areas with high accuracy using SAR data from the Sentinel-1 satellite mission

Cluster expansion in the canonical ensemble

We consider a system of particles confined in a box \La\subset\R^d interacting via a tempered and stable pair potential. We prove the validity of the cluster expansion for the canonical partition function in the high temperature - low density regime. The convergence is uniform in the volume and in the thermodynamic limit it reproduces Mayer's virial expansion providing an alternative and more direct derivation which avoids the deep combinatorial issues present in the original proof

Prosecuting Trafficking Crimes for Sexual Exploitation in Times of Conflict: Challenges and Perspective

This article explores the nexus between conflict-related sexual violence and trafficking for sexual exploitation in times of conflict from a prosecutorial perspective. More specifically, it analyses whether those responsible for conflict-related sexual violence can be prosecuted under domestic and international provisions for human trafficking for sexual exploitation in times of conflict. While this practice is broadly condemned, a lot must still be done to combat the culture of impunity. Focusing on the 13 countries identified by the Secretary-General as currently affected by conflicts, the first part of the article analyses the existent domestic legal framework on human trafficking and gender-related violence. This perusal reveals that national legislation is generally inadequate to comprehensively address these issues. With few exceptions, the domestic frameworks fail to comply with international recognised standards and enforcement challenges in time of conflict complicate further the application and implementation of these provisions for an effective prosecution. Concluding that no prospect of successful convictions exists under national law, the second part of this paper discusses the possibility of international prosecution. Even if the International Criminal Court (ICC) might have jurisdiction on the alleged crimes, this paper highlights that the crime of trafficking is not explicitly criminalised in the Rome Statute as such and its qualification as ‘sexual slavery’ or ‘enslavement’ is ambiguous. Nevertheless, the ICC could expand the definition of these two crimes to include the crime of trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation. However, the ICC has not yet prosecuted anybody for trafficking despite the existence of evidence on this crime in some of the states under investigation. In light of this analysis, this article concludes that there are little prospects of successful prosecution for those responsible for human trafficking because both the domestic and international framework have significant limitations, both internal and external and not sufficient deterrent force. Therefore, it suggests that the international community should keep pushing these 13 countries to improve their domestic legislation up to recognised international standards and the ICC to address the interpretative challenges posed by the crime of trafficking

Appropriate lung management in patients with primary antibody deficiencies

Introduction: Human primary immunodeficiency diseases (PIDs) include a broad spectrum of more than 350 disorders, involving different branches of the immune system and classified as 'rare diseases.' Predominantly antibody deficiencies (PADs) represent more than half of the PIDs diagnosed in Europe and are often diagnosed in the adulthood. Areas covered: Although PAD could first present with autoimmune or neoplastic features, respiratory infections are frequent and respiratory disease represents a relevant cause of morbidity and mortality. Pulmonary complications may be classified as infection-related (acute and chronic), immune-mediated, and neoplastic. Expert opinion: At present, no consensus guidelines are available on how to monitor and manage lung complications in PAD patients. In this review, we will discuss the available diagnostic, prognostic and therapeutic instruments and we will suggest an appropriate and evidence-based approach to lung diseases in primary antibody deficiencies. We will also highlight the possible role of promising new tools and strategies in the management of pulmonary complications. However, future studies are needed to reduce of diagnostic delay of PAD and to better understand lung diseases mechanisms, with the final aim to ameliorate therapeutic options that will have a strong impact on Quality of Life and long-term prognosis of PAD patients

Tools and collaborative environments for bioinformatics research

Advanced research requires intensive interaction among a multitude of actors, often possessing different expertise and usually working at a distance from each other. The field of collaborative research aims to establish suitable models and technologies to properly support these interactions. In this article, we first present the reasons for an interest of Bioinformatics in this context by also suggesting some research domains that could benefit from collaborative research. We then review the principles and some of the most relevant applications of social networking, with a special attention to networks supporting scientific collaboration, by also highlighting some critical issues, such as identification of users and standardization of formats. We then introduce some systems for collaborative document creation, including wiki systems and tools for ontology development, and review some of the most interesting biological wikis. We also review the principles of Collaborative Development Environments for software and show some examples in Bioinformatics. Finally, we present the principles and some examples of Learning Management Systems. In conclusion, we try to devise some of the goals to be achieved in the short term for the exploitation of these technologies

KAOS: A new automated computational method for the identification of overexpressed genes

Background: Kinase over-expression and activation as a consequence of gene amplification or gene fusion events is a well-known mechanism of tumorigenesis. The search for novel rearrangements of kinases or other druggable genes may contribute to understanding the biology of cancerogenesis, as well as lead to the identification of new candidate targets for drug discovery. However this requires the ability to query large datasets to identify rare events occurring in very small fractions (1-3 %) of different tumor subtypes. This task is different from what is normally done by conventional tools that are able to find genes differentially expressed between two experimental conditions. Results: We propose a computational method aimed at the automatic identification of genes which are selectively over-expressed in a very small fraction of samples within a specific tissue. The method does not require a healthy counterpart or a reference sample for the analysis and can be therefore applied also to transcriptional data generated from cell lines. In our implementation the tool can use gene-expression data from microarray experiments, as well as data generated by RNASeq technologies. Conclusions: The method was implemented as a publicly available, user-friendly tool called KAOS (Kinase Automatic Outliers Search). The tool enables the automatic execution of iterative searches for the identification of extreme outliers and for the graphical visualization of the results. Filters can be applied to select the most significant outliers. The performance of the tool was evaluated using a synthetic dataset and compared to state-of-the-art tools. KAOS performs particularly well in detecting genes that are overexpressed in few samples or when an extreme outlier stands out on a high variable expression background. To validate the method on real case studies, we used publicly available tumor cell line microarray data, and we were able to identify genes which are known to be overexpressed in specific samples, as well as novel ones

The nonlinear diffusion limit for generalized Carleman models: the initial-boundary value problem

Consider the initial-boundary value problem for the 2-speed Carleman model of the Boltzmann equation of the kinetic theory of gases set in some bounded interval with boundary conditions prescribing the density of particles entering the interval. Under the usual parabolic scaling, a nonlinear diffusion limit is established for this problem. In fact, the techniques presented here allow treating generalizations of the Carleman system where the collision frequency is proportional to some power of the macroscopic density, with exponent in [-1,1]