Heavy Rainfall Warning Assessment Tool User Guide. Version 1.2

This report is a User Guide to a PC tool for assessing Heavy Rainfall Warnings. Development of the PC tool formed an important operational output of the Environment Agency and Met Office funded project: "Development of Rainfall Forecast Performance Monitoring Criteria. Phase 1: Development of Methodology and Algorithms" (Jones et al., 2003). The Heavy Rainfall Warning (HRW) Assessment Tool is a toolkit for Microsoft Excel. The tool allows the user to configure an assessment framework for a particular format of Heavy Rainfall Warning, enter and save data for forecasts and ground-truths, and generate a range of performance measures and other statistics for new and previously saved data. Summary tables are presented using Excel's PivotTable feature, from which charts can also be generated. Performance measures are provided to assess forecasts of heavy rainfall in continuous variable, categorical and probability form: these include bias, rmse, R-squared Efficiency, skill scores and the Continuous Brier Score

Electrometer system measures nanoamps at high voltage

Floating electrometer eliminates major source of error since any leakage from electrometer case, which is at high voltage, appears only as load on high voltage supply and not as part of current being measured. Commands to and data from floating electrometer are transferred across high voltage interface by means of optical channels

Changes with Time in the Availability of Soil Applied Zinc to Navy Beans and in the Chemical Extraction of Zinc from Soils

The effect of the incubation of zinc (Zn) applied to the soil on Zn uptake and the Zn concentrations in chemical extractants was studied. In a glasshouse experiment using a Zn-deficient gravelly sandy loam, the effect of recently applied Zn was compared with that of Zn incubated with the soil for 15 days at 40°C on growth and Zn uptake by navy beans (Phaseolus vulgaris cv. Gallaroy). At the second harvest (33 days after sowing), the dry weight of shoots of recently applied Zn was consistently higher than that of incubated Zn, except at the highest rate of 1 µg Zn g-1 soil, where yields were similar. Comparisons of the slope of the linear regressions of Zn uptake as a function of rate of application showed that incubated Zn was approximately 80% as effective as recently applied Zn. A laboratory experiment measured the decrease in Zn concentration in HCl, EDTA, DTPA, and dilute CaCl2 with incubation for up to 8 days at 40°C in four contrasting soils from Western Australia and Queensland. An addition of 2.5 µg Zn g-1 soil increased the concentration of Zn in all extractants at all times of incubation compared with the untreated soil. The recovery of the added Zn was generally highest with HCl and lowest with 0.002 M CaCl2 and decreased exponentially in all extractants with increasing time of incubation in all soils. The order of the rate of decrease in Zn concentration for all extractants was krasnozem \u3e gravelly sandy loam \u3e sand \u3e sandy clay loam. The model, Y = CtB, where C and B are constants, was used to describe the relationship between the recovery of added Zn and time of incubation

A new tissue test for accurate diagnosis of copper deficiency in cereals

Copper deficiency in ceereals can now be accurately diagnosed using tissue analysis

Developing a quality assurance metric: a panoptic view

This article is a post-print of the published article that may be accessed at the link below. Copyright @ 2006 Sage Publications.There are a variety of techniques that lecturers can use to get feedback on their teaching - for example, module feedback and coursework results. However, a question arises about how reliable and valid are the content that goes into these quality assurance metrics. The aim of this article is to present a new approach for collecting and analysing qualitative feedback from students that could be used as the first stage in developing more reliable quality assurance metrics. The approach, known as the multi-dimensional crystal view, is based on the belief that individuals have different views on the benefits that the embedded process in a system can have on the behaviour of the system. The results of this study indicate that in the context of evaluation and feedback methods, the multi-dimensional approach appears to provide the opportunity for developing more effective student feedback mechanisms

Quantum Monte Carlo calculations of six-quark states

The variational Monte Carlo method is used to find the ground state of six quarks confined to a cavity of diameter R_c, interacting via an assumed non-relativistic constituent quark model (CQM) Hamiltonian. We use a flux-tube model augmented with one-gluon and one-pion exchange interactions, which has been successful in describing single hadron spectra. The variational wave function is written as a product of three-quark nucleon states with correlations between quarks in different nucleons. We study the role of quark exchange effects by allowing flux-tube configuration mixing. An accurate six-body variational wave function is obtained. It has only ~13% rms fluctuation in the total energy and yields a standard deviation of ~<.1%; small enough to be useful in discerning nuclear interaction effects from the large rest mass of the two nucleons. Results are presented for three values of the cavity diameter, R_c=2, 4, and 6 fm. They indicate that the flux-tube model Hamiltonian with gluon and pion exchange requires revisions in order to obtain agreement with the energies estimated from realistic two-nucleon interactions. We calculate the two-quark probability distribution functions and show how they may be used to study and adjust the model Hamiltonian.Comment: 49 pages, 13 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.