Near real time surface ocean velocity in the Bay of Biscay - Basque Country from Mai to September 2016

The data set consists of maps of total velocity of the surface current in the Southeastern Bay of Biscay averaged over a time interval of 1 hour around the cardinal hour. Surface ocean velocities estimated by this HF Radar(4.65 MHz) are representative of the upper 2-3 meters of the ocean. The main objective of near real time processing is to produce the best product from available data at the time of processing. Total velocities are derived using least square fit that maps radial velocities measured from individual sites onto a cartesian grid. The final product is a map of the horizontal components of the ocean currents on a regular grid in the area of overlap of two or more radar stations.

Winter sea surface temperature reconstruction from planktic foraminiferal transfer functions in the northeastern Arabian Sea over the last two millennia

The Indian monsoon system is an important climate feature of the northern Indian Ocean. Small variations of the wind and precipitation patterns have fundamental influence on the societal, agricultural, and economic development of India and its neighboring countries. To understand current trends, sensitivity to forcing, or natural variation, records beyond the instrumental period are needed. However, high-resolution archives of past winter monsoon variability are scarce. One potential archive of such records are marine sediments deposited on the continental slope in the NE Arabian Sea, an area where present-day conditions are dominated by the winter monsoon. In this region, winter monsoon conditions lead to distinctive changes in surface water properties, affecting marine plankton communities that are deposited in the sediment. Using planktic foraminifera as a sensitive and well-preserved plankton group, we first characterize the response of their species distribution on environmental gradients from a dataset of surface sediment samples in the tropical and sub-tropical Indian Ocean. Transfer functions for quantitative paleoenvironmental reconstructions were applied to a decadal-scale record of assemblage counts from the Pakistan Margin spanning the last 2000?years. The reconstructed temperature record reveals an intensification of winter monsoon intensity near the year 100 CE. Prior to this transition, winter temperatures were >1.5°C warmer than today. Conditions similar to the present seem to have established after 450 CE, interrupted by a singular event near 950 CE with warmer temperatures and accordingly weak winter monsoon. Frequency analysis revealed significant 75-, 40-, and 37-year cycles, which are known from decadal- to centennial-scale resolution records of Indian summer monsoon variability and interpreted as solar irradiance forcing. Our first independent record of Indian winter monsoon activity confirms that winter and summer monsoons were modulated on the same frequency bands and thus indicates that both monsoon systems are likely controlled by the same driving force.

Abundance, biomass and secondary production of benthic megafauna on the Barents Sea shelf in 2008 and 2009

Megabenthos plays a major role in the overall energy flow on Arctic shelves, but information on megabenthic secondary production on large spatial scales is scarce. Here, we estimated for the first time megabenthic secondary production for the entire Barents Sea shelf by applying a species-based empirical model to an extensive dataset from the joint Norwegian? Russian ecosystem survey. Spatial patterns and relationships were analyzed within a GIS. The environmental drivers behind the observed production pattern were identified by applying an ordinary least squares regression model. Geographically weighted regression (GWR) was used to examine the varying relationship of secondary production and the environment on a shelfwide scale. Significantly higher megabenthic secondary production was found in the northeastern, seasonally ice-covered regions of the Barents Sea than in the permanently ice-free southwest. The environmental parameters that significantly relate to the observed pattern are bottom temperature and salinity, sea ice cover, new primary production, trawling pressure, and bottom current speed. The GWR proved to be a versatile tool for analyzing the regionally varying relationships of benthic secondary production and its environmental drivers (R² = 0.73). The observed pattern indicates tight pelagic? benthic coupling in the realm of the productive marginal ice zone. Ongoing decrease of winter sea ice extent and the associated poleward movement of the seasonal ice edge point towards a distinct decline of benthic secondary production in the northeastern Barents Sea in the future.

Model reduction for nonlinear aerodynamics and aeroelasticity using a Discrete Empirical Interpolation Method

A novel surrogate model is proposed in lieu of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) solvers, for fast nonlinear aerodynamic and aeroelastic modeling. A nonlinear function is identified on selected interpolation points by
a discrete empirical interpolation method (DEIM). The flow field is then reconstructed using a least square approximation of the flow modes extracted
by proper orthogonal decomposition (POD). The aeroelastic reduce order
model (ROM) is completed by introducing a nonlinear mapping function
between displacements and the DEIM points. The proposed model is investigated to predict the aerodynamic forces due to forced motions using
a N ACA 0012 airfoil undergoing a prescribed pitching oscillation. To investigate aeroelastic problems at transonic conditions, a pitch/plunge airfoil
and a cropped delta wing aeroelastic models are built using linear structural models. The presence of shock-waves triggers the appearance of limit
cycle oscillations (LCO), which the model is able to predict. For all cases
tested, the new ROM shows the ability to replicate the nonlinear aerodynamic forces, structural displacements and reconstruct the complete flow
field with sufficient accuracy at a fraction of the cost of full order CFD
model.

Improved Real-time State-of-Charge Estimation of LiFePO4 Battery Based on a Novel Thermoelectric Model

Li-ion batteries have been widely used in electric vehicles, and battery internal state estimation plays an important role in the battery management system. However, it is technically challenging, in particular, for the estimation of the battery internal temperature and state-ofcharge (SOC), which are two key state variables affecting the battery performance. In this paper, a novel method is proposed for realtime simultaneous estimation of these two internal states, thus leading to a significantly improved battery model for realtime SOC estimation. To achieve this, a simplified battery thermoelectric model is firstly built, which couples a thermal submodel and an electrical submodel. The interactions between the battery thermal and electrical behaviours are captured, thus offering a comprehensive description of the battery thermal and electrical behaviour. To achieve more accurate internal state estimations, the model is trained by the simulation error minimization method, and model parameters are optimized by a hybrid optimization method combining a meta-heuristic algorithm and the least square approach. Further, timevarying model parameters under different heat dissipation conditions are considered, and a joint extended Kalman filter is used to simultaneously estimate both the battery internal states and time-varying model parameters in realtime. Experimental results based on the testing data of LiFePO4 batteries confirm the efficacy of the proposed method.

Model reduction for nonlinear aeroelasticity using the Discrete Empirical Interpolation Method

A novel surrogate model is proposed in lieu of computational fluid dynamic (CFD) code for fast nonlinear aerodynamic modeling. First, a nonlinear function is identified on selected interpolation points defined by discrete empirical interpolation method (DEIM). The flow field is then reconstructed by a least square approximation of flow modes extracted by proper orthogonal decomposition (POD). The proposed model is applied in the prediction of limit cycle oscillation for a plunge/pitch airfoil and a delta wing with linear structural model, results are validate against a time accurate CFD-FEM code. The results show the model is able to replicate the aerodynamic forces and flow fields with sufficient accuracy while requiring a fraction of CFD cost.

Atratividade em Clusters Comerciais: Um Estudo Comparativo de Dois Clusters da Cidade de São Paulo

O presente trabalho teve como objetivo a identificação de atributos relacionados à atratividade de clientes em clusters comerciais, na percepção de consumidores. Partindo-se da atratividade de clientes para lojas, desenvolveu-se um construto de avaliação de atratividade de clientes para clusters comerciais. Por meio de estudo descritivo-quantitativo junto a 240 consumidores, em dois reconhecidos clusters comerciais, utilizando-se a técnica de PLS-PM (Partial Least Squares Path Modeling), avaliou-se a relação entre a atratividade de clientes (variável reflexiva) e as dimensões do mix varejista de clusters comerciais (variáveis latentes), a partir do tratamento de indicadores de efeitos observáveis. Como principais resultados, observou-se que: (1) atratividade está associada significativamente às variáveis latentes, sugerindo robustez do modelo; (2) condições de compra e preços são dimensões com maior associação à atratividade de clientes, embora lojas, produtos e atendimento apresentem relevância; e (3) localização apresentou-se como dimensão menos correlacionada à atratividade de clientes para ambos os clusters.

Analysis of the Market Potential of Syrian Organic Fruit and Vegetables for Exports to Germany

Syria has been a major producer and exporter of fresh fruit and vegetables (FFV) in the Arabic region. Prior to 2011, Syrian FFV were mainly exported to the neighbouring countries, the Gulf States and Northern Africa as well as to Eastern European countries. Although the EU is potentially one of the most profitable markets of high quality FFV (such as organic ones) in the world, Syrian exports of FFV to Western European countries like Germany have been small. It could be a lucrative opportunity for Syrian growers and exporters of FFV to export organic products to markets such as Germany, where national production is limited to a few months due to climatic conditions. Yet, the organic sector in Syria is comparatively young and only a very small area of FFV is certified according to EU organic regulations. Up to the author’s knowledge, little was known about Syrian farmers’ attitudes towards organic FFV production. There was also no study so far that explored and analysed the determining factors for organic FFV adoption among Syrian farmers as well as the exports of these products to the EU markets. The overarching aim of the present dissertation focused on exploring and identifying the market potential of Syrian exports of organic FFV to Germany. The dissertation was therefore concerned with three main objectives: (i) to explore if German importers and wholesalers of organic FFV see market opportunities for Syrian organic products and what requirements in terms of quality and quantity they have, (ii) to determine the obstacles Syrian producers and exporters face when exporting agricultural products to Germany, and (iii) to investigate whether Syrian farmers of FFV can imagine converting their farms to organic production as well as the underlying reasons why they do so or not. A twofold methodological approach with expert interviews and a farmer survey were used in this dissertation to address the abovementioned objectives. While expert interviews were conducted with German and Syrian wholesalers of (organic) FFV in 2011 (9 interviews each), the farmer survey was administrated with 266 Syrian farmers of FFV in the main region for the production of FFV (i.e. the coastal region) from November 2012 till May 2013. For modelling farmers’ decisions to adopt organic farming, the Theory of Planned Behaviour as theoretical framework and Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling as the main method for data analysis were used in this study. The findings of this dissertation yield implications for the different stakeholders (governmental institutions and NGOs, farmers, exporters, wholesalers, etc.) who are interested in prompting the Syrian export of organic products. Based on the empirical results and a literature review, an action plan to promote Syrian production and export of organic products was developed which can help in the post-war period in Syria at improving the organic sector.

Job-demand for Learning and Job-related Learning: the Mediating Effect of Job Performance Improvement Initiatives

This study examined whether job-performance-improvementinitiatives mediate the relationship between individuals’ job-demand for learning and job-related learning. Data were obtained from 115 full-time employees in a diverse range of occupations. A partial least squares analysis revealed that job-performance-improvement-initiatives mediate partially the effects of job-demand for learning on job-related learning. Several implications for future research and policy are drawn from the findings.

The effect of maternal employment on adolescents' transition to young adulthood

The purpose of this study was to examine relationships between multiple characteristics of maternal employment, parenting practices, and adolescents’ transition outcomes to young adulthood. The research addressed four main research questions. First, are the characteristics of maternal work (i.e., hours worked, multiple jobs held, work schedules, earnings, and occupation) related to adolescents’ enrollment in post-secondary education, employment, or involvement in neither of these types of activities as young adults? Second, are the work characteristics related to parental involvement and monitoring, and are the parenting practices related to adolescents’ transition outcomes? Third, do parental involvement and monitoring mediate any relationships between the characteristics of maternal employment and adolescents’ transition outcomes? Finally, do any associations between characteristics of maternal employment and parenting practices and adolescents’ transition outcomes vary by poverty status, race/ethnicity, or gender? To address these research questions, secondary data analysis was conducted, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) from 1998 through 2004. The study sample consisted of 849 youths who were 15 through 17 years of age in either 1998 or 2000, and were 19 through 21 years of age when their transition outcomes in young adulthood were measured four years later. Multinomial logistic and ordinary least squares regression models were estimated to answer the research questions. Study findings indicated that of the maternal work characteristics, mothers’ multiple jobs held, occupation, and work schedule were significantly related to the youths’ transition outcomes. When mothers held multiple jobs for 1 to 25 weeks per year, and when mothers held jobs involving lower levels of occupational complexity, their youths were more likely to experience employment rather than post-secondary education. Adolescents whose mothers worked a standard work schedule were less likely to experience other types of transitions than post-secondary education. With regard to the effects of maternal employment on parenting practices, none of the maternal work variables were related to parental involvement, and only one variable, mothers working less than 40 hours per week, was negatively related to parental monitoring. In addition, when parents were more involved with their youths’ education, the youths were less likely to transition into employment and other types of transitions rather than post-secondary education. The parenting practices did not mediate the relation between the significant work variables (holding multiple jobs, work schedule, and occupation) and youths’ transition outcomes. Finally, none of the interactions between maternal work characteristics and poverty status, race/ethnicity, and gender met the criteria for determining significance; but in a series of sub-group analyses, some differences according to poverty status and gender were found. Despite the lack of mediation and moderation, the findings of this study have important implications for social policy and social work intervention. Based on the findings, suggestions are made in these areas to improve working mothers’ lives and their adolescents’ development and successful transition to adulthood. Finally, directions for future research are discussed.

Spectral Frame Analysis and Learning through Graph Structure

This dissertation investigates the connection between spectral analysis and frame theory. When considering the spectral properties of a frame, we present a few novel results relating to the spectral decomposition. We first show that scalable frames have the property that the inner product of the scaling coefficients and the eigenvectors must equal the inverse eigenvalues. From this, we prove a similar result when an approximate scaling is obtained. We then focus on the optimization problems inherent to the scalable frames by first showing that there is an equivalence between scaling a frame and optimization problems with a non-restrictive objective function. Various objective functions are considered, and an analysis of the solution type is presented. For linear objectives, we can encourage sparse scalings, and with barrier objective functions, we force dense solutions. We further consider frames in high dimensions, and derive various solution techniques. From here, we restrict ourselves to various frame classes, to add more specificity to the results. Using frames generated from distributions allows for the placement of probabilistic bounds on scalability. For discrete distributions (Bernoulli and Rademacher), we bound the probability of encountering an ONB, and for continuous symmetric distributions (Uniform and Gaussian), we show that symmetry is retained in the transformed domain. We also prove several hyperplane-separation results. With the theory developed, we discuss graph applications of the scalability framework. We make a connection with graph conditioning, and show the in-feasibility of the problem in the general case. After a modification, we show that any complete graph can be conditioned. We then present a modification of standard PCA (robust PCA) developed by Cand\`es, and give some background into Electron Energy-Loss Spectroscopy (EELS). We design a novel scheme for the processing of EELS through robust PCA and least-squares regression, and test this scheme on biological samples. Finally, we take the idea of robust PCA and apply the technique of kernel PCA to perform robust manifold learning. We derive the problem and present an algorithm for its solution. There is also discussion of the differences with RPCA that make theoretical guarantees difficult.

Factores de correcção para os efeitos ambientais na quantidade e qualidade do leite em bovinos da raça frísia

A produção e qualidade do leite são influenciadas por factores ambientais como a nutrição, factores genéticos como a raça, e factores fisiológicos como a idade a idade ao parto ou o número de ordenhas diárias. Este trabalho teve por objectivo estimar factores de correcção para os efeitos ambientais que influenciam a quantidade e qualidade do leite com vista ao melhoramento genético dos animais. Para isso, foram utilizados os registos de 23897 contrastes leiteiros de vacas de raça Frísia, no período de 6 anos, recolhidos a partir dos dados da ANABLE. De acordo com os resultados, obtidos através do método dos quadrados mínimos, observa-se que para a produção de leite, gordura e proteína, todos os efeitos fixos de variação são significativos nas três características produtivas estudadas, pelo que se conclui que há interacção entre a idade da vaca ao parto e a produção e qualidade do leite, assim como, a época do ano em que ocorre o parto e o número de ordenhas diárias a que o animal está sujeito. ABSTRACT; Cow production and milk quality are influenced by environmental factors such as nutrition, by genetic factors as breed and physiological factors as age at calving or milking frequency. This study aimed to estimate correction parameters for environmental factors with influence on milk production and quality embodying genetic improvement. For this propose, a data base was used with information related to 23987 milk tests collected from official milk recording program. According to the results, where the at least square procedure was adopted, it shows that all the fixed effects of variation significantly affect the productive performances, so it can be concluded that there is a significant interaction between milking frequency, age at calving and season when it occurs, and milk production and quality.

Parcellation of fMRI datasets with ICA and PLS: a data driven approach

Inter-subject parcellation of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) data based on a standard General Linear Model (GLM) and spectral clustering was recently proposed as a means to alleviate the issues associated with spatial normalization in fMRI. However, for all its appeal, a GLM-based parcellation approach introduces its own biases, in the form of a priori knowledge about the shape of Hemodynamic Response Function (HRF) and task-related signal changes, or about the subject behaviour during the task. In this paper, we introduce a data-driven version of the spectral clustering parcellation, based on Independent Component Analysis (ICA) and Partial Least Squares (PLS) instead of the GLM. First, a number of independent components are automatically selected. Seed voxels are then obtained from the associated ICA maps and we compute the PLS latent variables between the fMRI signal of the seed voxels (which covers regional variations of the HRF) and the principal components of the signal across all voxels. Finally, we parcellate all subjects data with a spectral clustering of the PLS latent variables. We present results of the application of the proposed method on both single-subject and multi-subject fMRI datasets. Preliminary experimental results, evaluated with intra-parcel variance of GLM t-values and PLS derived t-values, indicate that this data-driven approach offers improvement in terms of parcellation accuracy over GLM based techniques.

Desenvolvimento de método para discriminação entre marcas de uísque e identificação de adulteração por espectroscopia UV-Vis e PLS-DA

Dissertação (mestrado)—Universidade de Brasília, Instituto de Química, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Química, 2015.

O papel da partilha de conhecimento na relação entre confiança e compromisso organizacional

Mestrado em Ciências Empresariais