Methodologies for transforming data to information and advancing the understanding of water resources systems towards integrated water resources management

2017 Summer.Includes bibliographical references.The majority of river basins in the world, have undergone a great deal of transformations in terms of infrastructure and water management practices in order to meet increasing water needs due to population growth and socio-economic development. Surface water and groundwater systems are interwoven with environmental and socio-economic ones. The systems' dynamic nature, their complex interlinkages and interdependencies are inducing challenges for integrated water resources management. Informed decision-making process in water resources is deriving from a systematic analysis of the available data with the utilization of tools and models, by examining viable alternatives and their associated tradeoffs under the prism of a set of prudent priorities and expert knowledge. In an era of increasing volume and variety of data about natural and anthropogenic systems, opportunities arise for further enhancing data integration in problem-solving approaches and thus support decision-making for water resources planning and management. Although there is a plethora of variables monitored in various spatial and temporal scales, particularly in the United States, in real life, for water resources applications there are rarely, if ever, perfect data. Developing more systematic procedures to integrate the available data and harness their full potential of generating information, will improve the understanding of water resources systems and assist at the same time integrated water resources management efforts. The overarching objective of this study is to develop tools and approaches to overcome data obstacles in water resources management. This required the development of methodologies that utilize a wide range of water and environmental datasets in order to transform them into reliable and valuable information, which would address unanswered questions about water systems and water management practices, contributing to implementable efforts of integrated water resources management. More specifically, the objectives of this research are targeted in three complementary topics: drought, water demand, and groundwater supply. In this regard, their unified thread is the common quest for integrated river basin management (IRBM) under changing water resources conditions. All proposed methodologies have a common area of application namely the South Platte basin, located within Colorado. The area is characterized by limited water resources with frequent drought intervals. A system's vulnerability to drought due to the different manifestations of the phenomenon (meteorological, agricultural, hydrological, socio-economic and ecological) and the plethora of factors affecting it (precipitation patterns, the supply and demand trends, the socioeconomic background etc.) necessitates an integrated approach for delineating its magnitude and spatiotemporal extent and impacts. Thus, the first objective was to develop an implementable drought management policy tool based on the standardized drought vulnerability index framework and expanding it in order to capture more of drought's multifaceted effects. This study illustrated the advantages of a more transparent data rigorous methodology, which minimizes the need for qualitative information replacing it with a more quantitative one. It is believed that such approach may convey drought information to decision makers in a holistic manner and at the same time avoid the existing practices of broken linkages and fragmentation of reported drought impacts. Secondly, a multi-scale (well, HUC-12, and county level) comparative analysis framework was developed to identify the characteristics of the emergent water demand for unconventional oil and gas development. This effort revealed the importance of local conditions in well development patterns that influence water demand, the magnitude of water consumption in local scales in comparison to other water uses, the strategies of handling flowback water, and the need for additional data, and improved data collection methods for a detailed water life-cycle analysis including the associated tradeoffs. Finally, a novel, easy to implement, and computationally low cost methodology was developed for filling gaps in groundwater level time series. The proposed framework consists of four main components, namely: groundwater level time series; data (groundwater level, recharge and pumping) from a regional physically-based groundwater flow model; autoregressive integrated moving average with external inputs modeling; and the Ensemble Smoother (ES) technique. The methodology's efficacy to predict accurately groundwater levels was tested by conducting three numerical experiments at eighteen alluvial wells. The results suggest that the framework could serve as a valuable tool in gaining further insight of alluvium aquifer dynamics by filling missing groundwater level data in an intermittent or continuous (with relative short span) fashion. Overall, it is believed that this research has important implications in water resources decision making by developing implementable frameworks which advance further the understanding of water systems and may aid in integrated river basin management efforts

Προσδιορισμός πρόσληψης ασβεστίου σε αθλητές δρόμου μεσαίων και μεγάλων αποστάσεων

Σκοπός: Οι διατροφικές επιλογές των αθλητών πολλές φορές δεν είναι κατάλληλες για να εξασφαλίσουν τη συνιστώμενη ημερήσια πρόσληψη όλων των θρεπτικών συστατικών. Ένα χαρακτηριστικό παράδειγμα ανεπαρκούς πρόσληψης μικροθρεπτικών συστατικών είναι η πρόσληψη του ασβεστίου. Οι αθλητές έχουν αυξημένες ανάγκες σε ασβέστιο λόγω την υψηλών απαιτήσεων που προκύπτουν από τις έντονες προπονήσεις, τις αγωνιστικές τους υποχρεώσεις αλλά και τις ανάγκες των νεαρών αθλητών για φυσιολογική ανάπτυξη. Ταυτόχρονα, στην ίδια ομάδα του πληθυσμού συνυπάρχουν πολλοί λόγοι που συντελούν στην ανεπαρκή πρόσληψη ασβεστίου. Σκοπός της παρούσας έρευνας ήταν η μελέτη της πρόσληψης ασβεστίου σε δρομείς στίβου μεσαίων και μεγάλων αποστάσεων. Μεθοδολογία: Στη μελέτη έλαβαν μέρος συνολικά 35 αθλητές (n=20 άνδρες,n=15 γυναίκες), ηλικίας 18-38 ετών, συμμετέχοντες σε αγωνίσματα από δρόμο 800μ. μέχρι και μαραθώνιο. Προσδιορίστηκε τόσο η προσλαμβανόμενη ποσότητα ασβεστίου όσο και οι διατροφικές του πηγές, ενώ παράλληλα καταγράφηκαν ανθρωπομετρικά, προπονητικά χαρακτηριστικά των εθελοντών και πληροφορίες για τους τραυματισμούς που έχουν βιώσει και σχετίζονται με την οστική τους υγεία (οστικά οιδήματα, κατάγματα κάθε αιτιολογίας, κατάγματα κόπωσης) για τη μελέτη της σχέση μεταξύ προπονητικών χαρακτηριστικών, οστικών τραυματισμών και ανεπαρκούς διαιτητικής πρόσληψης ασβεστίου. Αποτελέσματα: Τόσο η μέση πρόσληψη του συνολικού δείγματος (1243 mg/ημέρα), όσο και η μέση ημερήσια πρόσληψη σε άνδρες (1364 mg/ημέρα) και γυναίκες (1081 mg/ημέρα) κάλυπταν την ΣΗΠ. Αν και οι μέσες προσλήψεις ασβεστίου τόσο σε άνδρες όσο και γυναίκες ήταν υψηλότερες από τα 1000mg/d, το 35% των ανδρών και το 53% των γυναικών δεν κάλυπταν τις ημερήσιες ανάγκες τους σε ασβέστιο. Η ομάδα τροφίμων που έχει τη μεγαλύτερη συνεισφορά στην πρόσληψη ασβεστίου είναι η ομάδα των γαλακτοκομικών. Τρόφιμα με μικρή περιεκτικότητα σε ασβέστιο μπορούν να συνεισφέρουν σημαντικά στην ημερήσια πρόσληψη όταν καταναλώνονται σε μεγάλες ποσότητες. Όσο αναφορά τους τραυματισμούς που σχετίζονται με τη σκελετική υγεία, οι άνδρες βιώνουν στατιστικά σημαντικά περισσότερους οστικούς τραυματισμούς (p<0.05). Δεν παρατηρήθηκε κάποια συσχέτιση μεταξύ οστικών τραυματισμών με τις ώρες προπονήσεων (όγκο προπόνησης), ενώ παρατηρήθηκε μια μικρή αρνητική συσχέτιση μεταξύ καταγμάτων κόπωσης με τη συνολική ημερήσια πρόσληψη ασβεστίου (p>0.05). Συμπεράσματα: Αν και ο αριθμός των συμμετεχόντων ήταν μικρός για την ασφαλή εξαγωγή συμπερασμάτων, υπάρχουν ενδείξεις οτι μεγάλο μέρος του αθλητικού αυτού πληθυσμού δεν καλύπτουν τις ημερήσιες ανάγκες τους σε ασβέστιο. Στρατηγικές πρέπει να στοχεύσουν στην αντιμετώπιση του προβλήματος και στην αύξηση της γνώσης όσο αναφορά τις πηγές και τη σημασία του ασβεστίου για την οστική υγεία των αθλητών τόσο βραχυπρόθεσμα όσο και μακροπρόθεσμα.n

Intervalling-Effect Bias and Competition Policy

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it aims to investigate whether the security's systematic risk beta estimates change as the infrequent trading phenomenon appears. Second, it attempts to provide useful insight on the impact of mergers and acquisitions on competition policy. For this reason, we employ the models of Scholes and Williams (1977), Dimson (1979), Cohen et al. (1983a) and Maynes and Rumsey (1993) on a small stock exchange with thickly infrequent trading stocks. The empirical results reveal that for some securities the models employed by Scholes and Williams (1977) and Cohen et al. (1983a) improve the biasness of the Ordinary Least Squares Market Model (Maynes and Rumsey, 1993). We argue that competitors gain while merged entities loose or at least do not gain from the clearness of the investigated mergers

Mounier-Kuhn Syndrome in an Elderly Female with Pulmonary Fibrosis

Mounier-Kuhn syndrome (MKS), or tracheobronchomegaly, is a rare clinical and radiologic condition characterized by pronounced tracheobronchial dilation and recurrent lower respiratory tract infections. Tracheobronchomegaly presents when the defect extends to the central bronchi. MKS can be diagnosed in adult women when the transverse and sagittal diameters of the trachea, right mainstem bronchus, and left mainstem bronchus exceed 21, 23, 19.8, and 17.4 mm, respectively. Its diagnosis is based on chest radiograph and chest computed tomography (CT). Patients, usually middle-aged men, may be asymptomatic or present with clinical manifestations ranging from minimal symptoms with preserved lung function to severe respiratory failure. Pulmonary function tests (PFTs) typically reveal a restrictive pattern. This report presents an elderly woman with previously diagnosed pulmonary fibrosis with symptoms of increased sputum production and haemoptysis. High-resolution chest CT showed tracheal and main stem bronchi dilatation along with bronchial diverticulosis. PFTs indicated a restrictive pattern characteristic of the underlying pulmonary fibrosis. The patient is the oldest, referred to the female gender, at presentation of MKS hitherto reported. This case highlights the need to include MKS in the differential diagnosis of recurrent lower respiratory tract infections, even in older subjects

On the use of intelligent models towards meeting the challenges of the edge mesh

Nowadays, we are witnessing the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT) with numerous devices performing interactions between them or with their environment. The huge number of devices leads to huge volumes of data that demand the appropriate processing. The “legacy” approach is to rely on Cloud where increased computational resources can realize any desired processing. However, the need for supporting real-time applications requires a reduced latency in the provision of outcomes. Edge Computing (EC) comes as the “solver” of the latency problem. Various processing activities can be performed at EC nodes having direct connection with IoT devices. A number of challenges should be met before we conclude a fully automated ecosystem where nodes can cooperate or understand their status to efficiently serve applications. In this article, we perform a survey of the relevant research activities towards the vision of Edge Mesh (EM), i.e., a “cover” of intelligence upon the EC. We present the necessary hardware and discuss research outcomes in every aspect of EC/EM nodes functioning. We present technologies and theories adopted for data, tasks, and resource management while discussing how machine learning and optimization can be adopted in the domain

A Probabilistic Batch Oriented Proactive Workflow Management

Workflow management is a widely studied research subject due to its criticality for the efficient execution of various processing activities towards concluding innovative applications. The ultimate goal is to eliminate the required time for delivering the final outcome considering the dependencies between workflow’s tasks. In this paper, we enhance the decision making of a scheduler with a batch oriented approach to deal with multiple workflows. A probabilistic data oriented approach combined with an infrastructure oriented scheme is provided to pay attention on dynamic environments where the underlying data are continuously updated trying to minimize the network overhead for migrating data. Workflows are mapped to the available datasets according to their data requirements, then, we combine the outcome with an optimization model upon the time and cost requirements of every placement. The performance of our model is revealed by a high number of experiments depicting the advantages in the network overhead

A variant of the double gallbladder. A possible cause of cholelithiasis?

Congenital duplication of the gallbladder is a rare anatomical malformation, which is usually discovered as an incidental finding during cholecystectomy. We report a case of a double gallbladder in a 45-year-old woman, which was discovered during laparoscopic cholecystectomy for symptomatic cholelithiasis. As it was not possible to identify the anatomical structures safely, the procedure was converted to open cholecystectomy. Inspection of the resected gallbladder showed that it consisted of 2 chambers with separate cystic ducts, which communicated through an ostium. Both chambers contained multiple gallstones. The inadequate drainage of the second chamber could be considered as a predisposing factor for the development of cholelithiasis in this case