A chaotic approach to rainfall disaggregation

The importance of high-resolution rainfall data to understanding the intricacies of the dynamics of hydrological processes and describing them in a sophisticated and accurate way has been increasingly realized. The last decade has witnessed a number of studies and numerous approaches to the possibility of transformation of rainfall data from one scale to another, nearly unanimously pointing to such a possibility. However, an important limitation of such approaches is that they treat the rainfall process as a realization of a stochastic process, and therefore there seems to be a lack of connection between the structure of the models and the underlying physics of the rainfall process. The present study introduces a new framework based on the notion of deterministic chaos to investigate the behavior of the dynamics of rainfall transformation between different temporal scales aimed toward establishing this connection. Rainfall data of successively doubled resolutions (i.e., 6, 12, 24, 48, 96, and 192 hours) observed at Leaf River basin, in the state of Mississippi, United States of America, are studied. The correlation dimension method is employed to investigate the presence of chaos in the rainfall transformation. The finite and low correlation dimensions obtained for the distributions of weights between rainfall data of different scales indicate the existence of chaos in the rainfall transformation, suggesting the applicability of a chaotic model. The formulation of a simple chaotic disaggregation model and its application to the Leaf River rainfall data provides encouraging results with practical potential. The disaggregation model results themselves indicate the presence of chaos in the dynamics of rainfall transformation, providing support for the results obtained using the correlation dimension method

Historical context of profesional ideology and tension and strain in the accounting profession

A growing literature points to a crisis of confidence in the accounting profession and a lack of commitment by its members to the professional ideology. In this paper the approach developed by MacIntyre is used to place professional ideology in an historical context. The paper argues that the tension and strain in the profession can be related to the changing character of both the contemporary society and professional ideology itself. It concludes by highlighting the need for the profession to develop an ideology to which its members as well as society can relate

Solute transport in a heterogeneous aquifer: a search for nonlinear deterministic dynamics

International audienceThe potential use of a nonlinear deterministic framework for understanding the dynamic nature of solute transport processes in subsurface formations is investigated. Time series of solute particle transport in a heterogeneous aquifer medium, simulated using an integrated probability/Markov chain (TP/MC) model, groundwater flow model, and particle transport model, are studied. The correlation dimension method, a popular nonlinear time series analysis technique, is used to identify nonlinear determinism. Sensitivity of the solute transport dynamics to the four hydrostratigraphic parameters involved in the TP/MC model: (1) number of facies; (2) volume proportions of facies; (3) mean lengths (and thereby anisotropy ratio of mean length) of facies; and (4) juxtapositional tendencies (i.e. degree of entropy) among the facies is also studied. The western San Joaquin Valley aquifer system in California is considered as a reference system. The results indicate, in general, the nonlinear deterministic nature of solute transport dynamics (dominantly governed by only a very few variables, on the order of 3), even though more complex behavior is possible under certain (extreme) hydrostratigraphic conditions. The sensitivity analysis reveals: (1) the importance of the hydrostratigraphic parameters (in particular, volume proportions of facies and mean lengths) in representing aquifer heterogeneity; and (2) the ability of the correlation dimension method in capturing the (extent of) complexity of the underlying dynamics. Verification and confirmation of the present results through use of other nonlinear deterministic techniques and assessment of their reliability for a wide range of solute transport scenarios are recommended

Lidar observations of middle atmospheric gravity wave activity over a low-latitude site (Gadanki, 13.5° N, 79.2° E)

The low-latitude middle atmospheric gravity wave characteristics are presented using 310 nights of Rayleigh lidar observations made at Gadanki (13.5° N, 79.2° E) over the period from March 1998 to December 2002. The gravity wave characteristics are presented in terms of vertical wave number and frequency spectra, along with the estimated potential energy for the four seasons, namely, spring, summer, autumn and winter. The computed wave number spectra for both the stratosphere and the mesosphere are found to differ significantly from a saturated model predicted spectrum. The spectra were found to be shallower at lower wave numbers and steeper at higher wave numbers with transition at ~8.85×10-4 cy/m. The computed frequency spectra seem to follow the model plot with a power law index of -5/3 above a frequency of ~2×10-4 Hz. The estimated potential energy per unit mass increases gradually up to ~60 km and then rather rapidly above this height to reach values of the order of 200 J/kg at ~70 km

Building occupancy modelling at the district level: A combined copula-nested hazard-based approach

Planning and managing an energy system in a district require a comprehensive understanding and accurate modelling of people's occupancy and circulation among multiple buildings. Due to the lack of occupancy modelling tools for district scale analysis, energy models still use simplified occupancy patterns provided in building codes and standards. However, the simplified information restricts the reflection of complex occupancy patterns driven by urban heterogeneity. This paper fills this research gap and presents a hazard-based model combined with nested copula dependence to describe the complex occupants' interactions between buildings in a district, enabling the characterisation of irregular occupancy patterns in special cases. The proposed model is calibrated using Wi-Fi authentication data from the Imperial College London (UK) South Kensington campus and is validated using the following days of the same data by evaluating the performance of predicted occupancy patterns both on average and day by day. The validation results demonstrate that the model can accurately capture the effects of the urban environment on occupancy duration and choice of transition within a district. Mean Absolute Percentage Errors (MAPEs) of average-pattern predictions are between 7% and 16% for most buildings, though a bit lower in accuracy for the Library and Food Hall predictions with MAPEs of 32%–36%. We also discuss the contributions of the proposed occupancy model to potential future applications, including efficient building space use, local energy planning and management

On the equivalence between topologically and non-topologically massive abelian gauge theories

We analyse the equivalence between topologically massive gauge theory (TMGT) and different formulations of non-topologically massive gauge theories (NTMGTs) in the canonical approach. The different NTMGTs studied are St\"uckelberg formulation of (A) a first order formulation involving one and two form fields, (B) Proca theory, and (C) massive Kalb-Ramond theory. We first quantise these reducible gauge systems by using the phase space extension procedure and using it, identify the phase space variables of NTMGTs which are equivalent to the canonical variables of TMGT and show that under this the Hamiltonian also get mapped. Interestingly it is found that the different NTMGTs are equivalent to different formulations of TMGTs which differ only by a total divergence term. We also provide covariant mappings between the fields in TMGT to NTMGTs at the level of correlation function.Comment: One reference added and a typos corrected. 15 pages, To appear in Mod. Phys. Lett.

Extracting gravity wave parameters during the September 2002 Southern Hemisphere major sudden stratospheric warming using a SANAE imaging riometer

Using absorption data measured by imaging riometer for ionospheric studies (IRIS) located at the South Africa National Antarctic Expedition (SANAE), Antarctica (72° S, 3° W), we extracted the parameters of gravity waves (GW) of periods between 40 and 50 min during late winter/spring of the year 2002, a period of the unprecedented major sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) in the Southern Hemisphere middle atmosphere. During this period, an unprecedented substantial increase of temperature by about 25–30 K throughout the stratosphere was observed. During the period of the occurrence of the major stratospheric warming, there was a reduction of both the GW horizontal phase speeds and the horizontal wavelengths at 90 km. The GW phase speeds and horizontal wavelengths were observed to reach minimum values of about 7 m s⁻¹ and 19 km, respectively, while during the quiet period the average value of the phase speed and horizontal wavelength was approximately 23 m s⁻¹ and 62 km, respectively. The observed event is discussed in terms of momentum flux and also a potential interaction of gravity waves, planetary waves and mean circulation

An approach for building occupancy modelling considering the urban context

Building occupancy, which reflects occupant presence, movements and activities within the building space, is a key factor to consider in building energy modelling and simulation. Characterising complex occupant behaviours and their determinants poses challenges from the sensing, modelling, interpretation and prediction perspectives. Past studies typically applied time-dependent models to predict regular occupancy patterns for commercial buildings. However, this prevalent reliance on purely time-of-day effects is typically not sufficient to accurately characterise the complex occupancy patterns as they may vary with building’s surrounding conditions, i.e. the urban environment. Therefore, this research proposes a conceptual framework to incorporate the interactions between urban systems and building occupancy. Under the framework, we propose a novel modelling methodology relying on competing risk hazard formulation to analyse the occupancy of a case study building in London, UK. The occupancy profiles were inferred from the Wi-Fi connection logs extracted from the existing Wi-Fi infrastructure. When compared with the conventional discrete-time Markov Chain Model (MCM), the hazard-based modelling approach was able to better capture the duration dependent nature of the transition probabilities as well as incorporate and quantify the influence of the local environment on occupancy transitions. The work has demonstrated that this approach enables a convenient and flexible incorporation of urban dependencies leading to accurate occupancy predictions whilst providing the ability to interpret the impacts of urban systems on building occupancy. Keywords: Urban system; Competing risk hazard model; Building occupancy simulation; Wi4 Fi connection dat

OPTIMIZATION AND IN VIVO EVALUATION OF MESALAMINE pH DEPENDENT COATED PELLETS FOR PROMISING ILEOCECAL TARGETING

The present research is a challenge to design, optimized and evaluates mesalamine loaded burst release pH dependent coated pellets for possible ileo-cecal targeting to treat effectively Crohn’s disease. The novelty of this formulation is to release drug specifically and instantly in ileo-cecal region where the chances of Crohn’s disease is more frequent, without being released in upper gastrointestinal tract. Preliminary experimental batches are studied for micromeritic properties and in-vitro drug release. Formulation  showed desirable lag time of 5h and dissolution profile were further optimized by applying 32 full factorial design to study the effect of extent of coating (% w/w) Eudragit S100 and croscarmellose sodium over drug layered pellets. The regression equation generated for Q300 (lag time of 5h) = +5.72-31.97*A+0.82*B-0.49*A*B+26.36*A2-0.15*B2 and for Q390 (90% of drug release at pH7.2 within 90 minutes after lag time) = +84.63- 40.09*A+4.62*B. The drug release data of optimized formulation were close to that predicted by the model. Various kinetic models were applied to the all optimized batches. In vivo evaluation of optimized formulations was performed to assess macroscopic, microscopic and biochemical parameters in rats and performed. The present study demonstrates that the mesalamine enteric coated pellets successfully targeted at ileo-cecal region.Key words: Mesalamine, pulsatile, ileo-cecal targeting, celpheres, Croscarmellose sodium, eudragit S10