925 research outputs found
Seasonal hydrological and suspended sediment transport dynamics in proglacial streams, James Ross Island, Antarctica
Rapid warming of the Antarctic Peninsula is producing accelerated glacier mass loss and can be expected to have significant impacts on meltwater runoff regimes and proglacial fluvial activity. This study presents analysis of the hydrology and suspended sediment dynamics of two proglacial streams on James Ross Island, Antarctic Peninsula. Mean water discharge during 8 January 2015 to 18 February 2015 reached 0.19â
m3 sâ1 and 0.06â
m3 sâ1 for Bohemian Stream and Algal Stream, respectively, equivalent to specific runoff of 76 and 60â
mm monthâ1. The daily discharge regime strongly correlated with air and ground temperatures. The effect of global radiation on proglacial water discharge was found low to negligible. Suspended sediment concentrations of Bohemian Stream were very high (up to 2927â
mg Lâ1) due to aeolian supply and due to the high erodibility of local rocks. Total sediment yield (186â
tâ
kmâ2â
yrâ1) was high for (nearly) deglaciated catchments, but relatively low in comparison with streams draining more glaciated alpine and arctic catchments. The sediment provenance was mostly local Cretaceous marine and aeolian sediments; volcanic rocks are not an important source for suspended load. High Rb/Sr ratios for some samples suggested chemical weathering. Overall, this monitoring of proglacial hydrological and suspended sediment dynamics contributes to the dearth of such data from Antarctic environments and offers an insight to the nature of the proglacial fluvial activity, which is likely to be in a transient state with ongoing climate change
Determination of Odor Detection Threshold in the GĂśttingen Minipig
The aim of the study was to examine the ability of GĂśttingen minipigs to acquire an olfaction-based operant conditioning task and to determine the detection threshold for ethyl acetate and ethanol. We used an automated olfactometer developed for rodents to train and test 14 pigs. Odor sampling and reliable responding were obtained after three to fifteen 160-trial sessions. Successful transfer of the task from ethyl acetate to ethanol was achieved in 1â4 sessions. Detection threshold for ethyl acetate varied between 10â2% and 10â6% v/v and for ethanol between 0.1% and 5 Ă 10â6% v/v. The results provide evidence that minipigs can successfully acquire 2-odorant discrimination using a food-rewarded instrumental conditioning paradigm for testing olfactory function. This olfactory discrimination paradigm provides reliable measures of olfactory sensitivity and thereby enables detection of changes in olfaction in a porcine model of Alzheimer's disease currently being developed
Quantization and Compressive Sensing
Quantization is an essential step in digitizing signals, and, therefore, an
indispensable component of any modern acquisition system. This book chapter
explores the interaction of quantization and compressive sensing and examines
practical quantization strategies for compressive acquisition systems.
Specifically, we first provide a brief overview of quantization and examine
fundamental performance bounds applicable to any quantization approach. Next,
we consider several forms of scalar quantizers, namely uniform, non-uniform,
and 1-bit. We provide performance bounds and fundamental analysis, as well as
practical quantizer designs and reconstruction algorithms that account for
quantization. Furthermore, we provide an overview of Sigma-Delta
() quantization in the compressed sensing context, and also
discuss implementation issues, recovery algorithms and performance bounds. As
we demonstrate, proper accounting for quantization and careful quantizer design
has significant impact in the performance of a compressive acquisition system.Comment: 35 pages, 20 figures, to appear in Springer book "Compressed Sensing
and Its Applications", 201
Individual phenotypic variation reduces interaction strengths in a consumerâresource system
Natural populations often show variation in traits that can affect the strength of interspecific interactions. Interaction strengths in turn influence the fate of pairwise interacting populations and the stability of food webs. Understanding the mechanisms relating individual phenotypic variation to interaction strengths is thus central to assess how trait variation affects population and community dynamics. We incorporated nonheritable variation in attack rates and handling times into a classical consumerâresource model to investigate how variation may alter interaction strengths, population dynamics, species persistence, and invasiveness. We found that individual variation influences species persistence through its effect on interaction strengths. In many scenarios, interaction strengths decrease with variation, which in turn affects species coexistence and stability. Because environmental change alters the direction and strength of selection acting upon phenotypic traits, our results have implications for species coexistence in a context of habitat fragmentation, climate change, and the arrival of exotic species to native ecosystems
Self-focusing effect in Au-target induced by high power pulsed laser at PALS
AbstractSelf-focusing effects, induced by ASTERIX pulsed laser at PALS Laboratory of Prague, have been investigated. Laser was employed at the third harmonics (438 nm) and intensities of the order of 1016 W/cm2. Pure Au was used as thin target and irradiated with 30° incidence angle. An ion energy analyzer was employed to detect the energy-to-mass ratio of emitted ions from plasma. Measurements were performed by changing the focal point position with a high spatial resolution step-motor. Results demonstrated that non linear processes, due to self-focusing effects, occurs when the laser beam is focused at about 200 ¾m in front of the target surface. In such conditions, a new ion group, having high charge state and kinetic energy, is produced because of the increment in temperature of the laser-generated plasma
Sparsity and Incoherence in Compressive Sampling
We consider the problem of reconstructing a sparse signal from a
limited number of linear measurements. Given randomly selected samples of
, where is an orthonormal matrix, we show that minimization
recovers exactly when the number of measurements exceeds where is the number of
nonzero components in , and is the largest entry in properly
normalized: . The smaller ,
the fewer samples needed.
The result holds for ``most'' sparse signals supported on a fixed (but
arbitrary) set . Given , if the sign of for each nonzero entry on
and the observed values of are drawn at random, the signal is
recovered with overwhelming probability. Moreover, there is a sense in which
this is nearly optimal since any method succeeding with the same probability
would require just about this many samples
Weight-Gain Reduction Among 2-Year College Students: The CHOICES RCT
The young adult years have been recognized as an influential period for excess weight gain. Non-traditional students and those attending 2-year community colleges are at particularly high risk for a range of adverse weight-related outcomes
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