The Appreciative Heart: The Psychophysiology of Positive Emotions and Optimal Functioning

This monograph is an overview of Institute of HeartMath's research on the physiological correlates of positive emotions and the science underlying two core HeartMath techniques which supports Heart-Based Living. The heart's connection with love and other positive emotions has survived throughout millennia and across many diverse cultures. New empirical research is providing scientific validation for this age-old association. This 21-page monograph offers a comprehensive understanding of the Institute of HeartMath's cutting-edge research exploring the heart's central role in emotional experience. Described in detail is physiological coherence, a distinct mode of physiological functioning, which is generated during sustained positive emotions and linked with beneficial health and performance-related outcomes. The monograph also provides steps and applications of two HeartMath techniques, Freeze-Frame(R) and Heart Lock-In(R), which engage the heart to help transform stress and produce sustained states of coherence. Data from outcome studies are presented, which suggest that these techniques facilitate a beneficial repatterning process at the mental, emotional and physiological levels

Explicit Mapping of Acoustic Regimes For Wind Instruments

This paper proposes a methodology to map the various acoustic regimes of wind instruments. The maps can be generated in a multi-dimensional space consisting of design, control parameters, and initial conditions. The bound- aries of the maps are obtained explicitly in terms of the parameters using a support vector machine (SVM) classifier as well as a dedicated adaptive sam- pling scheme. The approach is demonstrated on a simplified clarinet model for which several maps are generated based on different criteria. Examples of computation of the probability of occurrence of a specific acoustic regime are also provided. In addition, the approach is demonstrated on a design optimization example for optimal intonation

Urban warfare ecology: A study of water supply in Basrah

This article assesses the impact of armed conflict on the drinking water service of Basrah from 1978 to 2013 through an ‘urban warfare ecology’ lens in order to draw out the implications for relief programming and relevance to urban studies. It interprets an extensive range of unpublished literature through a frame that incorporates the accumulation of direct and indirect impacts upon the hardware, consumables and people upon which urban services rely. The analysis attributes a step-wise decline in service quality to the lack of water treatment chemicals, lack of spare parts, and, primarily, an extended ‘brain-drain’ of qualified water service staff. The service is found to have been vulnerable to dependence upon foreign parts and people, ‘vicious cycles’ of impact, and the politics of aid and of reconstruction. It follows that practitioners and donors eschew ideas of relief–rehabilitation–development (RRD) for an appreciation of the needs particular to complex urban warfare biospheres, where armed conflict and sanctions permeate all aspects of service provision through altered biological and social processes. The urban warfare ecology lens is found to be a useful complement to ‘infrastructural warfare’ research, suggesting the study of protracted armed conflict upon all aspects of urban life be both deepened technically and broadened to other cases

Oscillation regimes produced by an alto saxophone: Influence of the control parameters and the bore inharmonicity

International audienceThe aim of this work is to highlight experimentally how inharmonicity of the bore resonance frequencies of an alto saxophone influence the nature of the oscillation regimes. A variable volume branching from the neck of an alto sax at an appropriate position allows to change the frequency of the first resonance independently from the second. A blowing machine with artificial lips is used to make the saxophone play while controlling independently the control parameters : the blowing pressure and an embouchure parameter. Values of these parameters are estimated experimentally through the measurement of the nonlinear characteristics linking the mean air flow blown into the instrument to the static pressure difference across the reed. Experiments with different values of the control parameters as well as of the inharmonicity produce different kinds of oscillation regimes. These regimes are categorized through the analysis of the pressure signal inside the mouthpiece. The resulting maps demonstrate that the emergence of quasi-periodic regimes, and their extent, depend on the level of inharmonicity, but also on the values of the control parameters. Periodic regimes playable by choosing appropriate values of the control parameters also differ according to the level of inharmonicity, a higher inharmonicity facilitating the emergence of the third register

Dynamic trade-offs in water use between irrigation and reservoir aquaculture in Vietnam

Conflicts of interest between irrigation and aquaculture in water use from reservoirs in Vietnam can be resolved when trade-offs in the economic value of water can be quantified over time. Determining these trade-offs can be used as a benchmark for making decisions about managing reservoirs tending to develop rural areas in Vietnam. To solve this problem, a stochastic dynamic programming model was constructed. This model maximizes the expected net present values generated by both agriculture and aquaculture by finding the optimal release paths throughout a year, under conditions of uncertain rainfall. The model was constructed using two main components. First, a dated water production function is used to evaluate responses of crop yields for different levels of applied irrigation. Second, a bio-economic model for reservoir fisheries is employed to estimate fish yields at different levels of water during a harvest season. Using this model, we present a case study of reservoir water management in Vietnam.irrigation, reservoir aquaculture, stochastic dynamic programming, and dynamic trade-offs, Community/Rural/Urban Development,

SVM CLASSIFICATION OF QUASI-PERIODIC REGIMES OF SINGLE REED INSTRUMENTS

International audienceSingle-reed instruments can produce multiphonic sounds when they generate quasi-periodic oscillation regimes. An approach to map the periodic and quasi-periodic regimes of a wind instrument is presented. The mapping is performed using an SVM classifier trained using the output of a simplified single-reed instrument model. The SVM classifier is iteratively refined using an adaptive sampling scheme referred to as Explicit Design Space Decomposition. This method provides the explicit boundaries separating quasi-periodic and periodic regimes and highlights the influence of key parameters involved in the production of multiphonic sounds

Refurbishing Voyager 1 & 2 Planetary Radio Astronomy (PRA) Data

Voyager/PRA (Planetary Radio Astronomy) data from digitized tapes archived at CNES have been reprocessed and recalibrated. The data cover the Jupiter and Saturn flybys of both Voyager probes. We have also reconstructed goniopolarimetric datasets (flux and polarization) at full resolution. These datasets are currently not available to the scientific community, but they are of primary interest for the analysis of the Cassini data at Saturn, and the Juno data at Jupiter, as well as for the preparation of the JUICE mission. We present the first results derived from the re-analysis of this dataset.Comment: Accepted manuscript for PRE8 (Planetary Radio Emission VIII conference) proceeding