(Table 1) Contents of chlorophyll a over the Northern Sea Route according to data of field measurements and estimated from MODIS data on measurement days

New maps of mean monthly distribution of chlorophyll and primary production in the Kara Sea were compiled using joint processing of CZCS (1978-1986), SeaWiFS (1998-2005), and MODIS (2002-2006) satellite data and field measurements. The annual primary production of phytoplankton is estimated at 22.3 x 10**6 t C per year or 70 mg C/m**2 per day. Results of calculations of the organic carbon budget in the Kara Sea are presented.

(Table 3) Details of field-based ice and snow profile measurements from the SIMBA 2007 experiment

Although sea-ice extent in the Bellingshausen-Amundsen (BA) seas sector of the Antarctic has shown significant decline over several decades, there is not enough data to draw any conclusion on sea-ice thickness and its change for the BA sector, or for the entire Southern Ocean. This paper presents our results of snow and ice thickness distributions from the SIMBA 2007 experiment in the Bellingshausen Sea, using four different methods (ASPeCt ship observations, downward-looking camera imaging, ship-based electromagnetic induction (EM) sounding, and in situ measurements using ice drills). A snow freeboard and ice thickness model generated from in situ measurements was then applied to contemporaneous ICESat (satellite laser altimetry) measured freeboard to derive ice thickness at the ICESat footprint scale. Errors from in situ measurements and from ICESat freeboard estimations were incorporated into the model, so a thorough evaluation of the model and uncertainty of the ice thickness estimation from ICESat are possible. Our results indicate that ICESat derived snow freeboard and ice thickness distributions (asymmetrical unimodal tailing to right) for first-year ice (0.29 ± 0.14 m for mean snow freeboard and 1.06 ± 0.40 m for mean ice thickness), multi-year ice (0.48 ± 0.26 and 1.59 ± 0.75 m, respectively), and all ice together (0.42 ± 0.24 and 1.38 ± 0.70 m, respectively) for the study area seem reasonable compared with those values from the in situ measurements, ASPeCt observations, and EM measurements. The EM measurements can act as an appropriate supplement for ASPeCt observations taken hourly from the ship's bridge and provide reasonable ice and snow distributions under homogeneous ice conditions. Our proposed approaches: (1) of using empirical equations relating snow freeboard to ice thickness based on in situ measurements and (2) of using isostatic equations that replace snow depth with snow freeboard (or empirical equations that convert freeboard to snow depth), are efficient and important ways to derive ice thickness from ICESat altimetry at the footprint scale for Antarctic sea ice. Spatial and temporal snow and ice thickness from satellite altimetry for the BA sector and for the entire Southern Ocean is therefore possible.

Extensive management of field margins enhances their potential to mitigate soil erosion

Soil erosion is a widespread problem in agricultural landscapes, particularly in regions with strong rainfall events. Vegetated field margins can mitigate negative impacts of soil erosion by trapping eroded material. In this data set, we present data of sediment trapped by 12 field margins during the monsoon season of 2013 in an agricultural landscape in the Haean-myun catchment in South Korea. Prior to the beginning of monsoon season, we equipped a total of 12 sites representing three replicates for each of four different types of field margins ("managed flat", "managed steep", "natural flat" and "natural steep") with Astroturf mats with a size of 34 cm x 25 cm (850 cm**2). The mats (n = 15 / site) were installed at three levels: upslope, immediately before the field margin to quantify the sediments that reach it, in the middle of the field margin to quantify the locally trapped sediments, and after the field margin at the downslope edge to quantify the sediments that leave the field margin to the next field or to the stream. Sediment was collected after each rain event until the end of the monsoon season.

The effects of elevated CO2 on the growth and toxicity of field populations and cultures of the saxitoxin-producing dinoflagellate, Alexandrium fundyense

The effects of coastal acidification on the growth and toxicity of the saxitoxin-producing dinoflagellate Alexandrium fundyense were examined in culture and ecosystem studies. In culture experiments, Alexandrium strains isolated from Northport Bay, New York, and the Bay of Fundy, Canada, grew significantly faster (16-190%; p < 0.05) when exposed to elevated levels of PCO2 ( 90-190 Pa=900-1900 µatm) compared to lower levels ( 40 Pa=400 µatm). Exposure to higher levels of PCO2 also resulted in significant increases (71-81%) in total cellular toxicity (fg saxitoxin equivalents/cell) in the Northport Bay strain, while no changes in toxicity were detected in the Bay of Fundy strain. The positive relationship between PCO2 enrichment and elevated growth was reproducible in natural populations from New York waters. Alexandrium densities were significantly and consistently enhanced when natural populations were incubated at 150 Pa PCO2 compared to 39 Pa. During natural Alexandrium blooms in Northport Bay, PCO2 concentrations increased over the course of a bloom to more than 170 Pa and were highest in regions with the greatest Alexandrium abundances, suggesting Alexandrium may further exacerbate acidification and/or be especially adapted to these acidi-fied conditions. The co-occurrence of Alexandrium blooms and elevated PCO2 represents a previously unrecognized, compounding environmental threat to coastal ecosystems. The ability of elevated PCO2 to enhance the growth and toxicity of Alexandrium indicates that acidification promoted by eutrophication or climate change can intensify these, and perhaps other, harmful algal blooms.

In-loop Feature Tracking for Structure and Motion with Out-of-core Optimization

In this paper, a novel and approach for obtaining 3D models from video sequences captured with hand-held cameras is addressed. We define a pipeline that robustly deals with different types of sequences and acquiring devices. Our system follows a divide and conquer approach: after a frame decimation that pre-conditions the input sequence, the video is split into short-length clips. This allows to parallelize the reconstruction step which translates into a reduction in the amount of computational resources required. The short length of the clips allows an intensive search for the best solution at each step of reconstruction which robustifies the system. The process of feature tracking is embedded within the reconstruction loop for each clip as opposed to other approaches. A final registration step, merges all the processed clips to the same coordinate frame

Potential to attract drivers out of their cars in dense urban areas.

Purpose Sustainable mobility urban policies intend reducing car use and increasing walking, cycling and public transport. However, this transfer from private car to these more sustainable modes is only a real alternative where distances are small and the public transport supply competitive enough. This paper proposes a methodology to calculate the number of trips that can be transferred from private car to other modes in city centres. Method The method starts analyzing which kind of trips cannot change its mode (purposes, conditions, safety , etc.), and then setting a process to determine under which conditions trips made by car between given O-D pairs can be transferable. Then, the application of demand models allow to determine which trips fulfil the transferability conditions. The process test the possibility of transfer in a sequential way: firs to walking, then cycling and finally to public transport. Results The methodology is tested through its application to the city of Madrid (Spain), with the result of only some 18% of the trips currently made by car could be made by other modes, under the same conditions of trip time, and without affecting their characteristics. Out of these trips, 75% could be made by public transport, 15% cycling and 10% on foot. The possible mode to be transferred depends on the location: city centre areas are more favourable for walking and cycling while city skirts could attract more PT trips. Conclusions The proposed method has demonstrated its validity to determine the potential of transferring trips out of cars to more sustainable modes. Al the same time it is clear that, even in areas with favourable conditions for walking, cycling and PT trips, the potential of transfer is limited because cars fulfil more properly special requirements of some trips and tours.

OSIA: Out-of-order scheduling for in-order arriving in concurrent multi-path transfer.

One major problem of concurrent multi-path transfer (CMT) scheme in multi-homed mobile networks is that the utilization of different paths with diverse delays may cause packet reordering among packets of the same ?ow. In the case of TCP-like, the reordering exacerbates the problem by bringing more timeouts and unnecessary retransmissions, which eventually degrades the throughput of connections considerably. To address this issue, we ?rst propose an Out-of-order Scheduling for In-order Arriving (OSIA), which exploits the sending time discrepancy to preserve the in-order packet arrival. Then, we formulate the optimal traf?c scheduling as a constrained optimization problem and derive its closedform solution by our proposed progressive water-?lling solution. We also present an implementation to enforce the optimal scheduling scheme using cascaded leaky buckets with multiple faucets, which provides simple guidelines on maximizing the utilization of aggregate bandwidth while decreasing the probability of triggering 3 dupACKs. Compared with previous work, the proposed scheme has lower computation complexity and can also provide the possibility for dynamic network adaptability and ?ner-grain load balancing. Simulation results show that our scheme signi?cantly alleviates reordering and enhances transmission performance.

Riding out of the storm: How to deal with the complexity of grid and cloud management

Over the last decade, Grid computing paved the way for a new level of large scale distributed systems. This infrastructure made it possible to securely and reliably take advantage of widely separated computational resources that are part of several different organizations. Resources can be incorporated to the Grid, building a theoretical virtual supercomputer. In time, cloud computing emerged as a new type of large scale distributed system, inheriting and expanding the expertise and knowledge that have been obtained so far. Some of the main characteristics of Grids naturally evolved into clouds, others were modified and adapted and others were simply discarded or postponed. Regardless of these technical specifics, both Grids and clouds together can be considered as one of the most important advances in large scale distributed computing of the past ten years; however, this step in distributed computing has came along with a completely new level of complexity. Grid and cloud management mechanisms play a key role, and correct analysis and understanding of the system behavior are needed. Large scale distributed systems must be able to self-manage, incorporating autonomic features capable of controlling and optimizing all resources and services. Traditional distributed computing management mechanisms analyze each resource separately and adjust specific parameters of each one of them. When trying to adapt the same procedures to Grid and cloud computing, the vast complexity of these systems can make this task extremely complicated. But large scale distributed systems complexity could only be a matter of perspective. It could be possible to understand the Grid or cloud behavior as a single entity, instead of a set of resources. This abstraction could provide a different understanding of the system, describing large scale behavior and global events that probably would not be detected analyzing each resource separately. In this work we define a theoretical framework that combines both ideas, multiple resources and single entity, to develop large scale distributed systems management techniques aimed at system performance optimization, increased dependability and Quality of Service (QoS). The resulting synergy could be the key 350 J. Montes et al. to address the most important difficulties of Grid and cloud management.

Analog mitigation of out of band strong interferers in wide band acquisition for multiband HF transmissions

It is clear that in the near future much broader transmissions in the HF band will replace part of the current narrow band links. Our personal view is that a real wide band signal is infeasible in this environment because the usage is typically very intensive and may suffer interferences from all over the world. Therefore, we envision that dynamic multiband transmissions may provide better satisfactory performance. From the very beginning, we observed that real links with our broadband transceiver suffered interferences out of our multiband but within the acquisition bandwidth that degrade the expected performance. Therefore, we concluded that a mitigation structure is required that operates on severely saturated signals as the interference may be of much higher power. In this paper we address a procedure based on Higher Order Crossings (HOC) statistics that are able to extract most of the signal structure in the case where the amplitude is severely distorted and allows the estimation of the interference carrier frequency to command a variable notch filter that mitigates its effect in the analog domain.

Spatial domain mitigation of out of band strong interferers in HF wide band acquisition using analog beamforming principles

We envision that dynamic multiband transmissions taking advantage of the receiver diversity (even for collocated antennas with different polarization or radiation pattern) will create a new paradigm for these links guaranteeing high quality and reliability. However, there are many challenges to face regarding the use of broadband reception where several out of band (with respect to multiband transmission) strong interferers, but still within the acquisition band, may limit dramatically the expected performance. In this paper we address this problem introducing a specific capability of the communication system that is able to mitigate these interferences using analog beamforming principles. Indeed, Higher Order Crossing (HOCs) joint statistics of the Single Input ? Multiple Output (SIMO) system are shown to effectively determine the angle on arrival of the wavefront even operating over highly distorted signals.

Teaching Planning of Forestry Engineering in Spain : origins and evolution

This paper addresses the historical evolution of, from its inception, to the present day, within the changing context of EHEA and linked to professional competences. The research methodology, although it is mainly a historical document review, expert opinions on university educational planning of university education of forestry engineering in Spain are also included. The results show the evolution of centralized planning, based on technical knowledge transmission to an approach based on competences (technical, contextual and behavioral) focusing on learning for improving employability.

Effect of field damping layer on two step absorption of quantum dots solar cells

Multi-stacked InAs/AlGaAs quantum dot solar cells (QDSCs) introduced with field damping layers (FDL) which sustain the junction built-in potential have been studied. Without an external bias condition, the external quantum efficiency (EQE) of QD layers are reduced by introducing the thick FDL, because the carrier escape due to built-in electric field was suppressed. On the other hand, the photocurrent production due to two-step absorption is increased by the formation of flat-band QD structure for QDSC with thick FDL.