Plethodon ouachitae

Number of Pages: 2Integrative BiologyGeological Science

Socio-hydrological modelling: a review asking “why, what and how?”

Interactions between humans and the environment are occurring on a scale that has never previously been seen; the scale of human interaction with the water cycle, along with the coupling present between social and hydrological systems, means that decisions that impact water also impact people. Models are often used to assist in decision-making regarding hydrological systems, and so in order for effective decisions to be made regarding water resource management, these interactions and feedbacks should be accounted for in models used to analyse systems in which water and humans interact. This paper reviews literature surrounding aspects of socio-hydrological modelling. It begins with background information regarding the current state of socio-hydrology as a discipline, before covering reasons for modelling and potential applications. Some important concepts that underlie socio-hydrological modelling efforts are then discussed, including ways of viewing socio-hydrological systems, space and time in modelling, complexity, data and model conceptualisation. Several modelling approaches are described, the stages in their development detailed and their applicability to socio-hydrological cases discussed. Gaps in research are then highlighted to guide directions for future research. The review of literature suggests that the nature of socio-hydrological study, being interdisciplinary, focusing on complex interactions between human and natural systems, and dealing with long horizons, is such that modelling will always present a challenge; it is, however, the task of the modeller to use the wide range of tools afforded to them to overcome these challenges as much as possible. The focus in socio-hydrology is on understanding the human–water system in a holistic sense, which differs from the problem solving focus of other water management fields, and as such models in socio-hydrology should be developed with a view to gaining new insight into these dynamics. There is an essential choice that socio-hydrological modellers face in deciding between representing individual system processes or viewing the system from a more abstracted level and modelling it as such; using these different approaches has implications for model development, applicability and the insight that they are capable of giving, and so the decision regarding how to model the system requires thorough consideration of, among other things, the nature of understanding that is sought

OpenPING: A Reflective Middleware for the Construction of Adaptive Networked Game Applications

The emergence of distributed Virtual Reality (VR) applications that run over the Internet has presented networked game application designers with new challenges. In an environment where the public internet streams multimedia data and is constantly under pressure to deliver over widely heterogeneous user-platforms, there has been a growing need that distributed VR applications be aware of and adapt to frequent variations in their context of execution. In this paper, we argue that in contrast to research efforts targeted at improvement of scalability, persistence and responsiveness capabilities, much less attempts have been aimed at addressing the flexibility, maintainability and extensibility requirements in contemporary distributed VR platforms. We propose the use of structural reflection as an approach that not only addresses these requirements but also offers added value in the form of providing a framework for scalability, persistence and responsiveness that is itself flexible, maintainable and extensible. We also present an adaptive middleware platform implementation called OpenPING1 that supports our proposal in addressing these requirements

The Role of Structural Reflection in Distributed Virtual Reality

The emergence of collaborative virtual world applications that run over the Internet has presented Virtual Reality (VR) application designers with new challenges. In an environment where the public internet streams multimedia data and is constantly under pressure to deliver over widely heterogeneous user-platforms, there has been a growing need that distributed virtual world applications be aware of and adapt to frequent variations in their context of execution. In this paper, we argue that in contrast to research efforts targeted at improvement of scalability, persistence and responsiveness capabilities, much less attempts have been aimed at addressing the flexibility, maintainability and extensibility requirements in contemporary Distributed VR applications. We propose the use of structural reflection as an approach that not only addresses these requirements but also offers added value in the form of providing a framework for scalability, persistence and responsiveness that is itself flexible, maintainable and extensible

FUSE Observations of the Cygnus Loop: OVI Emission from a Nonradiative Shock

We present Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) observations of a Balmer filament in the northeast region of the Cygnus Loop supernova remnant. The data consist of one spectrum obtained through the 30"x30" (LWRS) aperture and three spectra at adjacent positions obtained through the 4"x20" (MDRS) aperture. The nonradiative shocks in the region giving rise to these faint optical filaments produce strong OVI 1032,1038 emission, which is detected in all the spectra. The OVI emission is resolved by FUSE into a strong component centered at 0 km/s, and weaker components centered at +/- 140 km/s. The MDRS spectra allow us to study the variation of OVI emission in the post-shock structure. We find that the zero velocity emission is associated directly with the Balmer filament shock, while the high velocity emission comes from a more uniformly distributed component elsewhere along the line of sight. We also find that the shocks producing the emission at +/- 140 km/s have velocities between 180 km/s and 220 km/s, if we assume that the ram pressure driving them is the same as for the zero velocity component shock. In the context of the cavity model for the Cygnus Loop, the interaction of the blast wave with the spherical shell that forms most of the cavity wall can naturally give rise to the similar red and blue-shifted components that are observed.Comment: LaTeX uses aaspp4.sty, 18 pages + 5 PostScript figures. Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa

Interoperating with heterogeneous Mobile Services

Mobile applications are now developed upon a wide range of service development platforms, commonly referred to as middleware. However, the diversity of those available presents a problem for mobile client development. How can a single client implementation interoperate with heterogeneous service implementations

The Projected Gross-Pitaevskii Equation for harmonically confined Bose gases

We extend the Projected Gross Pitaevskii equation formalism of Davis et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. \bf{87}, 160402 (2001)] to the experimentally relevant case of harmonic potentials. We outline a robust and accurate numerical scheme that can efficiently simulate this system. We apply this method to investigate the equilibrium properties of a harmonically trapped three-dimensional Bose gas at finite temperature, and consider the dependence of condensate fraction, position and momentum distributions, and density fluctuations on temperature. We apply the scheme to simulate an evaporative cooling process in which the preferential removal of high energy particles leads to the growth of a Bose-Einstein condensate. We show that a condensate fraction can be inferred during the dynamics even in this non-equilibrium situation.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figure