Nonlinear Aspects of Heat Pump Utilization

This work attempts to answer the question: How much can we believe that the coefficient of performance provided by the manufacturer is correct, when a heat pump is required to face the real load coming from changes of temperature? The paper summarizes some basics of heat pump theory and describes the results of numerical models

On the equivalence between hierarchical segmentations and ultrametric watersheds

We study hierarchical segmentation in the framework of edge-weighted graphs. We define ultrametric watersheds as topological watersheds null on the minima. We prove that there exists a bijection between the set of ultrametric watersheds and the set of hierarchical segmentations. We end this paper by showing how to use the proposed framework in practice in the example of constrained connectivity; in particular it allows to compute such a hierarchy following a classical watershed-based morphological scheme, which provides an efficient algorithm to compute the whole hierarchy.Comment: 19 pages, double-colum

Early overweight and pubertal maturation—pathways of association with young adults' overweight: A longitudinal study

Objective: Objectives of this study were to examine the prospective association of childhood body mass index (BMI) and overweight and pubertal stages with BMI and overweight in early adulthood independent of each other

Impulsive noise removal from color images with morphological filtering

This paper deals with impulse noise removal from color images. The proposed noise removal algorithm employs a novel approach with morphological filtering for color image denoising; that is, detection of corrupted pixels and removal of the detected noise by means of morphological filtering. With the help of computer simulation we show that the proposed algorithm can effectively remove impulse noise. The performance of the proposed algorithm is compared in terms of image restoration metrics and processing speed with that of common successful algorithms.Comment: The 6th international conference on analysis of images, social networks, and texts (AIST 2017), 27-29 July, 2017, Moscow, Russi

Gender Differences in the Relationships between Alcohol, Tobacco and Mental Health in Patients attending an Emergency Department

Aims: There is evidence of a non-linear relationship between alcohol consumption and mental health status, and of an association between tobacco use and poor mental health. This paper examines the nature of the association between usual alcohol consumption, tobacco use and symptoms of anxiety and depression in Emergency Department patients in Queensland, Australia. Methods: A cross sectional survey of patients aged 16-84 presenting for treatment over a 14 day period to Gold Coast Hospital Emergency Department using socio-demographic items, the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) to measure moderate, hazardous and harmful alcohol consumption, and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) to measure state anxiety and depression. Results: 812 patients were interviewed. Gender differences in results were evident. For men, there was a U-shaped relationship between alcohol consumption and anxiety/depression, and a linear association between smoking and anxiety. For women, alcohol consumption and anxiety/depression showed a more linear relationship, but there was no significant relationship between tobacco use and anxiety/depression. Conclusions: There may be important gender differences in the relationships between alcohol consumption, tobacco use and mental health status. This study supports previous evidence that mental health status of non-drinkers is worse than that of moderate drinkers, but only among males (First published on August 2, 2004, doi:10.1093/alcalc/agh080

Cohort Profile: The Mater-University of Queensland Study of Pregnancy (MUSP)

How did the study come about? At the initiative of three hospital-based obstetricians one of the authors (JMN) and another sociologist attended a 1978 meeting to explore the potential for collaborative research. No specific project was proposed by the obstetricians. Two of the obstetricians had been trained in Scotland; one in Aberdeen where he had had some familiarity with the work of obstetrician Dugald Baird and sociologist Raymond Illsely. The obstetricians argued for an agenda which was clinically oriented. The two sociologists were more focussed on understanding how some social constructs (e.g. social class) might be relevant to explaining health outcomes. The initial year of the study was characterised by frequent (at least weekly) meetings at which the aims and substance of the proposed study were debated vigorously. As an initial decision the team focused on factors associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes. The first major project was to be a 3-5 year longitudinal study of pregnant women which would include a 6-month child post-natal follow-up as the main outcome of interest

The Brahmaputra tale of tectonics and erosion:early Miocene river capture in the Eastern Himalaya

The Himalayan orogen provides a type example on which a number of models of the causes and consequences of crustal deformation are based and it has been suggested that it is the site of a variety of feedbacks between tectonics and erosion. Within the broader orogen, fluvial drainages partly reflect surface uplift, different climatic zones and a response to crustal deformation. In the eastern Himalaya, the unusual drainage configuration of the Yarlung Tsangpo–Brahmaputra River has been interpreted either as antecedent drainage distorted by the India–Asia collision (and as such applied as a passive strain marker of lateral extrusion), latest Neogene tectonically-induced river capture, or glacial damming-induced river diversion events. Here we apply a multi-technique approach to the Neogene paleo-Brahmaputra deposits of the Surma Basin (Bengal Basin, Bangladesh) to test the long-debated occurrence and timing of river capture of the Yarlung Tsangpo by the Brahmaputra River. We provide U–Pb detrital zircon and rutile, isotopic (Sr–Nd and Hf) and petrographic evidence consistent with river capture of the Yarlung Tsangpo by the Brahmaputra River in the Early Miocene. We document influx of Cretaceous–Paleogene zircons in Early Miocene sediments of the paleo-Brahmaputra River that we interpret as first influx of material from the Asian plate (Transhimalayan arc) indicative of Yarlung Tsangpo contribution. Prior to capture, the predominantly Precambrian–Paleozoic zircons indicate that only the Indian plate was drained. Contemporaneous with Transhimalayan influx reflecting the river capture, we record arrival of detrital material affected by Cenozoic metamorphism, as indicated by rutiles and zircons with Cenozoic U–Pb ages and an increase in metamorphic grade of detritus as recorded by petrography. We interpret this as due to a progressively increasing contribution from the erosion of the metamorphosed core of the orogen. Whole rock Sr–Nd isotopic data from the same samples provide further support to this interpretation. River capture may have been caused by a change in relative base level due to uplift of the Tibetan plateau. Assuming such river capture occurred via the Siang River in the Early Miocene, we refute the “tectonic aneurysm” model of tectonic–erosion coupling between river capture and rapid exhumation of the eastern syntaxis, since a time interval of at least 10 Ma between these two events is now demonstrated. This work is also the first to highlight U–Pb dating on detrital rutile as a powerful approach in provenance studies in the Himalaya in combination with zircon U–Pb chronology

Dating of the oldest continental sediments from the Himalayan foreland basin

A detailed knowledge of Himalayan development is important for our wider understanding of several global processes, ranging from models of plateau uplift to changes in oceanic chemistry and climate(1-4). Continental sediments 55 Myr old found in a foreland basin in Pakistan(5) are, by more than 20 Myr, the oldest deposits thought to have been eroded from the Himalayan metamorphic mountain belt. This constraint on when erosion began has influenced models of the timing and diachrony of the India-Eurasia collision(6-8), timing and mechanisms of exhumation(9,10) and uplift(11), as well as our general understanding of foreland basin dynamics(12). But the depositional age of these basin sediments was based on biostratigraphy from four intercalated marl units(5). Here we present dates of 257 detrital grains of white mica from this succession, using the Ar-40-(39) Ar method, and find that the largest concentration of ages are at 36-40 Myr. These dates are incompatible with the biostratigraphy unless the mineral ages have been reset, a possibility that we reject on the basis of a number of lines of evidence. A more detailed mapping of this formation suggests that the marl units are structurally intercalated with the continental sediments and accordingly that biostratigraphy cannot be used to date the clastic succession. The oldest continental foreland basin sediments containing metamorphic detritus eroded from the Himalaya orogeny therefore seem to be at least 15-20 Myr younger than previously believed, and models based on the older age must be re-evaluated

On morphological hierarchical representations for image processing and spatial data clustering

Hierarchical data representations in the context of classi cation and data clustering were put forward during the fties. Recently, hierarchical image representations have gained renewed interest for segmentation purposes. In this paper, we briefly survey fundamental results on hierarchical clustering and then detail recent paradigms developed for the hierarchical representation of images in the framework of mathematical morphology: constrained connectivity and ultrametric watersheds. Constrained connectivity can be viewed as a way to constrain an initial hierarchy in such a way that a set of desired constraints are satis ed. The framework of ultrametric watersheds provides a generic scheme for computing any hierarchical connected clustering, in particular when such a hierarchy is constrained. The suitability of this framework for solving practical problems is illustrated with applications in remote sensing