Casimir effect in a weak gravitational field and the spacetime index of refraction

In a recent paper [arXiv:0904.2904] using a conjecture it is shown how one can calculate the effect of a weak stationary gravitational field on vacuum energy in the context of Casimir effect in an external gravitational field treated in 1+3 formulation of spacetime decomposition.. In this article, employing quntum field theory in curved spacetime, we explicitly calculate the effect of a weak static gravitational field on virtual massless scalar particles in a Casimir apparatus. It is shown that, as expected from the proposed conjecture, both the frequency and renormalized energy of the virtual scalar field are affected by the gravitational field through its index of refraction. This could be taken as a strong evidence in favour of the proposed conjecture. Generalizations to weak {\it stationary} spacetimes and virtual photons are also discussed.Comment: 11 pages, RevTex, typos corrected (combined with arXiv:0904.2904 published in PRD

Agro-economic and socio-environmental assessments of food and virtual water trades of Iran

Ending hunger and ensuring food security are among targets of 2030 s SDGs. While food trade and the embedded (virtual) water (VW) may improve food availability and accessibility for more people all year round, the sustainability and efficiency of food and VW trade needs to be revisited. In this research, we assess the sustainability and efficiency of food and VW trades under two food security scenarios for Iran, a country suffering from an escalating water crisis. These scenarios are (1) Individual Crop Food Security (ICFS), which restricts calorie fulfillment from individual crops and (2) Crop Category Food Security (CCFS), which promotes eating local by suggesting food substitution within the crop category. To this end, we simulate the water footprint and VW trades of 27 major crops, within 8 crop categories, in 30 provinces of Iran (2005 2015). We investigate the impacts of these two scenarios on (a) provincial food security (FSp) and exports; (b) sustainable and efficient blue water consumption, and (c) blue VW export. We then test the correlation between agro-economic and socio-environmental indicators and provincial food security. Our results show that most provinces were threatened by unsustainable and inefficient blue water consumption for crop production, particularly in the summertime. This water mismanagement results in 14.41 and 8.45 billion m3 y-1 unsustainable and inefficient blue VW exports under ICFS. Eating local improves the FSp value by up to 210% which lessens the unsustainable and inefficient blue VW export from hotspots. As illustrated in the graphical abstract, the FSp value strongly correlates with different agro-economic and socio-environmental indicators, but in different ways. Our findings promote eating local besides improving agro-economic and socio-environmental conditions to take transformative steps toward eradicating food insecurity not only in Iran but also in other countries facing water limitations. © 2021, The Author(s).We would like to thank the reviewers of the manuscript for their constructive comments. Thanks to Ms. Manuela Rosso—Brugnach for proofreading the article. This Project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Earth@lternatives Project, Grant agreement No 834716). Brugnach is supported by the Spanish Government through María de Maeztu excellence accreditation 2018–2022 (Ref. MDM-2017-0714) of BC3

Comparison of ATP simulation and micro‐processor based fault location using DFT

This paper evaluates the results of a microprocessor based fault locator employed on a laboratory power system model with those obtained within EMTP/ATP simulations. The Discrete Fourier Transform concept is used to extract the fundamental frequency components of the voltage and current waveforms under fault and the reactance based method to locate the fault. The results suggest a close correlation between the experimental and simulation studies for all fault types

Serum hyaluronate as a non-invasive marker of hepatic fibrosis and inflammation in HBeAg-negative chronic hepatitis B

Background: HBV infection is a serious global heath problem. It is crucial to monitor this disease more closely with a non-invasive marker in clinical trials. We aimed to evaluate the predictive value of serum hyaluronate for the presence of extensive liver fibrosis and inflammation. Methods: 28 healthy volunteers and 65 patients with HBeAg negative chronic hepatitis B were enrolled. Liver biopsies scored according to Ishak system. Association of serum hyaloronate with liver fibrosis and inflammation were assessed, and cut off points for serum hyaluronate levels were identified by receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curves and their values for prediction of fibrosis and inflammation were assessed. Results: In patients with CHB serum hyaluronate had the most significant correlation and predictive values for the liver fibrosis and inflammation comparing to the other variables. At the cut off point of 126.4 ngm/ml it could discriminate extensive fibrosis from milder ones with sensitivity of 90.9% and specificity of 98.1%. With the same value it could discriminate extensive inflammation from their milder counterparts with sensitivity of 63.6% and specificity of 92.6%. Conclusion: Serum hyaluronate was the best predictor of extensive liver fibrosis and inflammation and it could discriminate subgroups of patients with chronic hepatitis B. It could be used as a non-invasive test to monitor these patients more closely with developing anti viral agents in clinical trials

Agricultural Adaptation to Reconcile Food Security and Water Sustainability Under Climate Change:The Case of Cereals in Iran

In this study, we simulate the crop yield and water footprint (WF) of major food crops of Iran on irrigated and rainfed croplands for the historical and the future climate. We assesse the effects of three agricultural adaptation strategies to climate change in terms of potential blue water savings. We then evaluate to what extent these savings can reduce unsustainable blue WF. We find that cereal production increases under climate change in both irrigated and rainfed croplands (by 2.6-3.1 and 1.4-2.3 million t y-1, respectively) due to increased yields (6.6%-78.7%). Simultaneously, the unit WF (m3 t-1) tends to decrease in most scenarios. However, the annual consumptive water use increases in both irrigated and rainfed croplands (by 0.3-1.8 and 0.5-1.7 billion m3 y-1, respectively). This is most noticeable in the arid regions, where consumptive water use increases by roughly 70% under climate change. Off-season cultivation is the most effective adaptation strategy to alleviate additional pressure on blue water resources, with blue water savings of 14-15 billion m3 y-1. The second most effective is WF benchmarking, which results in blue water savings of 1.1-3.5 billion m3 y-1. The early planting strategy is less effective, but still leads to blue water savings of 1.7-1.9 billion m3 y-1. In the same order of effectiveness, these three strategies can reduce blue water scarcity and unsustainable blue water use in Iran under current conditions. However, we find that these strategies do not mitigate water scarcity in all provinces per se, nor all months of the year

Investigation of prediction methods for the loads and stresses of Apollo type spacecraft parachutes. Volume 1: Loads

An analysis was conducted with the objective of upgrading and improving the loads, stress, and performance prediction methods for Apollo spacecraft parachutes. The subjects considered were: (1) methods for a new theoretical approach to the parachute opening process, (2) new experimental-analytical techniques to improve the measurement of pressures, stresses, and strains in inflight parachutes, and (3) a numerical method for analyzing the dynamical behavior of rapidly loaded pilot chute risers

Tetradactyl footprints of an unknown affinity theropod dinosaur from the upper jurassic of Morocco

Background: New tetradactyl theropod footprints from Upper Jurassic (Oxfordian-Kimmeridgian) have been found in the Iouaridène syncline (Morocco). The tracksites are at several layers in the intermediate lacustrine unit of Iouaridène Formation. The footprints were named informally in previous works "Eutynichnium atlasipodus". We consider as nomen nudum. Methodology/Principal Findings: Boutakioutichnium atlasicus ichnogen. et ichnosp. nov. is mainly characterized by the hallux impression. It is long, strong, directed medially or forward, with two digital pads and with the proximal part of the first pad in lateral position. More than 100 footprints in 15 trackways have been studied with these features. The footprints are large, 38-48 cm in length, and 26-31 cm in width. Conclusions/Significance: Boutakioutichnium mainly differs from other ichnotaxa with hallux impression in lacking metatarsal marks and in not being a very deep footprint. The distinct morphology of the hallux of the Boutakioutichnium trackmaker -i.e. size and hallux position- are unique in the dinosaur autopodial record to date. © 2011 Nouri et al

Investigating the Effect of Zinc Chloride to Control External Bleeding in Rats

Background: Despite all progresses in surgical science, bleeding caused by traffic accidents is still a challenge for surgeons to save patients’ lives. Therefore, introducing an effective method to control external bleeding is an important research priority. Objectives: This study aimed to compare haemostatic effect of zinc chloride and simple suturing to control external bleeding. Materials and Methods: In this animal model study, 60 male Wistar rats were used. An incision (two cm in length and half a cm in depth) was made on shaved back of rats. The hemostasis time was measured once using zinc chloride with different concentrations (5%, 10%, 15%, 25%, and 50%) and then using simple suturing. Skin tissue was assessed for pathological changes. Due to abnormal distribution of variables in Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, the data was analyzed using Kruskal-Wallis test Mann-Whitney U tests. Results: In all the groups, complete hemostasis occurred. Hemostasis times of different concentrations of zinc chloride were significantly less than that of the control group (P < 0.001). Conclusions: Zinc chloride was effective to control external bleeding in rats

A comparative study of maximum power point tracking techniques for a photovoltaic grid-connected system

Purpose. In recent years, the photovoltaic systems (PV) become popular due to several advantages among the renewable energy. Tracking maximum power point in PV systems is an important task and represents a challenging issue to increase their efficiency. Many different maximum power point tracking (MPPT) control methods have been proposed to adjust the peak power output and improve the generating efficiency of the PV system connected to the grid. Methods. This paper presents a Beta technique based MPPT controller to effectively track maximum power under all weather conditions. The effectiveness of this algorithm based MPPT is supplemented by a comparative study with incremental conductance (INC), particle swarm optimization (PSO), and fuzzy logic control (FLC). Results Faster MPPT, lower computational burden, and higher efficiency are the key contributions of the Beta based MPPT technique than the other three techniques.Мета. В останні роки фотоелектричні системи набули популярності завдяки низці переваг серед відновлюваних джерел енергії. Відстеження точки максимальної потужності у фотоелектричних системах є важливим завданням і складною проблемою для підвищення їх ефективності. Було запропоновано безліч різних методів керування відстеженням точки максимальної потужності (ВТМП) для регулювання пікової вихідної потужності та підвищення ефективності генерації фотоелектричної системи, підключеної до мережі. Методи. У цій статті представлений контролер ВТМП, заснований на бета-методі, для ефективного відстеження максимальної потужності за будь-яких погодних умов. Ефективність ВТМП на основі цього алгоритму доповнюється порівняльним дослідженням з інкрементною провідністю, оптимізацією рою частинок та нечітким логічним управлінням. Результати. Швидше ВТМП, менші витрати на обчислення та більша ефективність є ключовими перевагами методу ВТМП на основі бета-методу порівняно з трьома іншими методами

HYEI: A New Hybrid Evolutionary Imperialist Competitive Algorithm for Fuzzy Knowledge Discovery

In recent years, imperialist competitive algorithm (ICA), genetic algorithm (GA), and hybrid fuzzy classification systems have been successfully and effectively employed for classification tasks of data mining. Due to overcoming the gaps related to ineffectiveness of current algorithms for analysing high-dimension independent datasets, a new hybrid approach, named HYEI, is presented to discover generic rule-based systems in this paper. This proposed approach consists of three stages and combines an evolutionary-based fuzzy system with two ICA procedures to generate high-quality fuzzy-classification rules. Initially, the best feature subset is selected by using the embedded ICA feature selection, and then these features are used to generate basic fuzzy-classification rules. Finally, all rules are optimized by using an ICA algorithm to reduce their length or to eliminate some of them. The performance of HYEI has been evaluated by using several benchmark datasets from the UCI machine learning repository. The classification accuracy attained by the proposed algorithm has the highest classification accuracy in 6 out of the 7 dataset problems and is comparative to the classification accuracy of the 5 other test problems, as compared to the best results previously published