A Zona do Euro e a Teoria de Áreas Monetárias Ótimas: uma análise utilizando um Vetor Autorregressivo Aumentado por Fatores Dinâmicos (FAVAR)

Este trabalho tem como objetivos analisar as semelhanças das respostas dos países da Zona do Euro aos choques na política monetária e no câmbio (identificados através de restrições de sinais nas funções impulso-resposta) e investigar a simetria das flutuações na taxa de crescimento do nível de atividade na região através da análise da importância relativa da resposta do crescimento do PIB destes países aos choques comum e específico identificados pelo modelo FAVAR utilizado, que foi estimado através de um método Bayesiano desenvolvido para incorporar prioris de Litterman (1986). A importância do choque comum (relativamente ao específico) nos diversos países, fornece uma medida do grau de integração dos diversos membros da Zona do Euro. O trabalho contribui para a análise do grau de integração dos países da Zona do Euro ao utilizar uma metodologia que permite o uso de um amplo conjunto de variáveis e ao identificar o grau de simetria das flutuações na taxa de crescimento do nível de atividade dos membros da região através da identificação dos choques comuns e específicos. Foram utilizados dados trimestrais de 1999.I a 2013.I para os 17 países da região. Os resultados encontrados apontam para a existência de uma maior integração entre as grandes economias da Zona do Euro ( com exceção da França) e uma integração menor para as menores economias (com exceção da Finlândia).

Prioritizing county-level well-being: Moving toward assessment of Gulf Coast counties impacted by the Deepwater Horizon Industrial Disaster

To develop a portfolio of indicators and measures that could best measure changes in the social, economic, environmental and health dimensions of well-being in coastal counties we convened a group of experts March 8-9, 2011 in Charleston, SC, U.S.A. The region of interest was of the northern Gulf of Mexico, specifically, those coastal counties most impacted during the explosion and subsequent oil spill from the Macondo Prospect wellhead during the summer of 2010. Over the course of the two-day workshop participants moved through presentations and facilitated sessions to identify and prioritize potential indicators and measures deemed most valuable for capturing changes in well-being related to changes in or disruption of ecosystem services. The experts reached consensus on a list of indicators that are now being operationalized by NOAA researchers. The ultimate goal of this research project is to determine whether a meaningful set of social and economic indicators can be developed to document changes in well-being that occur as a result of changes in ecosystem services. The outcomes and outputs from the workshop that is the subject of this report helped us to identify high-quality indicators useful for measuring well-being.

Circulation pattern of the Egyptian Mediterranean waters during winter and summer seasons

The water circulation of the Egyptian Mediterranean waters was computed during winter and summer seasons using the dynamic method. The reference level was set at the 1000db surface. The results showed that the surface circulation is dominated by the Atlantic water inflow along the North African coast and by two major gyres, the Mersa Matruth anticyclonic gyre and El-Arish cyclonic gyre. The results showed a seasonal reversal of El-Arish gyre, being cyclonic in winter and anticyclonic in summer. El-Arish gyre had not been previously measured. The geostrophic current velocity at the edges of the Mersa Matruth gyre varied between 12.5 and 29.1cm/sec in winter and between 6.5 and 13.1cm/sec in summer. The current velocity reached its maximum values (>40cm/sec) at El-Arish gyre. The current velocity at the two gyres decreased with increasing depth. The North African Current affects the surface waters down to a depth of 100m, and that its mean velocity varies between 6 and 38cm/sec.

Effect of salt on the level of histamine in preserved fish (Herring, Clupea harengus)

Histamine levels in batches of heavily salted (fish:salt ratio 4:1) herring (Clupea harengus) were monitored during ripening at 4°C and 25°C. The batches studied were prepared from both pre-spawning and post-spawning (spent) fish using new and used salt. Salt levels in the flesh, which reached 11 to 14% (wet weight basis) during the ripening period, were found to retard histamine formation. During normal spoilage of ice chilled fish, histamine levels had been reported to exceed 50mg/100g flesh as it approached the limit of edibility whilst, in the heavily salted fish, levels remained below 20mg/100g flesh throughout the ripening periods of 18 months for the 4°C batches and 3 months for the 25°C batches. This was the case when the samples were set up and the salt allowed penetrating the flesh at 4°C. When, however, the samples were set up and initially stored at ambient (10-15°C) temperature the histamine levels in the flesh rose above 20mg/100g before enough salt had penetrated to inhibit its generation. The gradual rise in levels which, nevertheless, occurred over the ripening periods followed significantly (5% level of significance) different trends, being greater in the batches prepared from pre-spawning than those from spent fish.

A new Lagrangian-Eulerian shell-fluid coupling algorithm based on level sets

We propose a computational method for the coupled simulation of a compressible flow interacting with a thin-shell structure undergoing large deformations. An Eulerian finite volume formulation is adopted for the fluid and a Lagrangian formulation based on subdivision finite elements is adopted for the shell response. The coupling between the fluid and the solid response is achieved via a novel approach based on level sets. The basic approach furnishes a general algorithm for coupling Lagrangian shell solvers with Cartesian grid based Eulerian fluid solvers. The efficiency and robustness of the proposed approach is demonstrated with a airbag deployment simulation. It bears emphasis that in the proposed approach the solid and the fluid components as well as their coupled interaction are considered in full detail and modeled with an equivalent level of fidelity without any oversimplifying assumptions or bias towards a particular physical aspect of the problem.

On the measurement of concentration of blanching brine by electrical conductivity method

Blanching is an important operation in the shrimp canning process, in order to bring down the moisture content of the product to the required level, to allow the proteins to coagulate and to give proper texture, shape and characteristic pink colour to the meat. It has been observed that among other factors responsible for fluctuations in the drained weight in the canned prawns, concentration of brine used for blanching and the duration of blanching are important (Varma, Chaudhury and Pillai 1961). The papers gives details of experiments

The survey on growth and survival rate parameters with slurry and comparison by common method

This project was on “Study of Slurry, as an enrichment compound, on growth and survival parameters of Rutilus firisii kutum Kamensky 1901 larva and compare with routine condition according to hypothesis that use of Slurry, fertile organic compound, to increase the efficiency of survivorship and growth of Rutilus firisii and in other hand adaptation of natural food was performance.” The object of this project is to compare growth of Rutilus firisii and in usual condition and the condition of use Slurry The experiences performed in culture and propagation center Dr. Yousefpour decent (Associan of Dr. Beheshti culture and propagation) in Siahkal village, 32 Km far from southeast, in North of Iran. In this plan, three different treatments and related these nine pools , in 1.7 hec area (in same condition) were determined so that the density of storage was 1.7 million/hec larva. In this research at first treatment m we use slurry as enrichment compound during larval within a period of 13 days, and it used all the days of during larval in second treatment. Then the result of this study compared to control treatment. The results have shown the level of this study compared to control treatment. The results have shown the level of survivorship in pools were nutrition by slurry was 1.7 million times or twice than pools were nutrition with usual concentrate. In addition, growth coefficient such as daily weight growing (DWG) index, daily length growth (DLG), specific growth ratio (SGR) were measured in this case. All of these parameters in slurry treatment were shown noticeable enhancement in first treatment Thereof in the first week there was significant difference (P<0.001) between the average of length and weight in first week , and in the second week there was a significant difference (P<0.05) between them.

Efficient registration of nonrigid 3-D bodies

We present a novel method to perform an accurate registration of 3-D nonrigid bodies by using phase-shift properties of the dual-tree complex wavelet transform (DT-CWT). Since the phases of DT-\BBCWT coefficients change approximately linearly with the amount of feature displacement in the spatial domain, motion can be estimated using the phase information from these coefficients. The motion estimation is performed iteratively: first by using coarser level complex coefficients to determine large motion components and then by employing finer level coefficients to refine the motion field. We use a parametric affine model to describe the motion, where the affine parameters are found locally by substituting into an optical flow model and by solving the resulting overdetermined set of equations. From the estimated affine parameters, the motion field between the sensed and the reference data sets can be generated, and the sensed data set then can be shifted and interpolated spatially to align with the reference data set. © 2011 IEEE.

Application of level II reliability theory

Level II reliability theory provides an approximate method whereby the reliability of a complex engineering structure which has multiple strength and loading variables may be estimated. This technique has been applied previously to both civil and offshore structures with considerable success. The aim of the present work is to assess the applicability of the method for aircraft structures, and to this end landing gear design is considered in detail. It is found that the technique yields useful information regarding the structural reliability, and further it enables the critical design parameters to be identified.

Polymer-based board-level optical interconnects

This paper provides an overview of the rationale behind the significant interest in polymer-based on-board optical links together with a brief review of recently reported work addressing certain challenges in this field. Polymer-based optical links have garnered considerable research attention due to their important functional attributes and compelling cost-benefit advantages in on-board optoelectronic systems as they can be cost-effectively integrated on conventional printed circuit boards. To date, significant work on the polymer materials, their fabrication process and their integration on standard board substrates have enabled the demonstration of numerous high-speed on-board optical links. However, to be deployed in real-world systems, these optoelectronic printed circuit boards (OE PCBs) must also be cost-effective. Here, recent advances in the integration process focusing on simple direct end-fire coupling schemes and the use of low-cost FR4 PCB substrates are presented. Performance of two proof-of-principle 10 Gb/s systems based on this integration method are summarised while work in realising more complex yet compact planar optical components is outlined. © 2011 IEEE.

Experimentally validated three dimensional GCT wafer level simulations

In this paper we present a wafer level three-dimensional simulation model of the Gate Commutated Thyristor (GCT) under inductive switching conditions. The simulations are validated by extensive experimental measurements. To the authors' knowledge such a complex simulation domain has not been used so far. This method allows the in depth study of large area devices such as GCTs, Gate Turn Off Thyristors (GTOs) and Phase Control Thyristors (PCTs). The model captures complex phenomena, such as current filamentation including subsequent failure, which allow us to predict the Maximum Controllable turn-off Current (MCC) and the Safe Operating Area (SOA) previously impossible using 2D distributed models. © 2012 IEEE.

A subdivision-based implementation of the hierarchical b-spline finite element method

A novel technique is presented to facilitate the implementation of hierarchical b-splines and their interfacing with conventional finite element implementations. The discrete interpretation of the two-scale relation, as common in subdivision schemes, is used to establish algebraic relations between the basis functions and their coefficients on different levels of the hierarchical b-spline basis. The subdivision projection technique introduced allows us first to compute all element matrices and vectors using a fixed number of same-level basis functions. Their subsequent multiplication with subdivision matrices projects them, during the assembly stage, to the correct levels of the hierarchical b-spline basis. The proposed technique is applied to convergence studies of linear and geometrically nonlinear problems in one, two and three space dimensions. © 2012 Elsevier B.V.

The most persistent soft-clique in a set of sampled graphs

When searching for characteristic subpatterns in potentially noisy graph data, it appears self-evident that having multiple observations would be better than having just one. However, it turns out that the inconsistencies introduced when different graph instances have different edge sets pose a serious challenge. In this work we address this challenge for the problem of finding maximum weighted cliques. We introduce the concept of most persistent soft-clique. This is subset of vertices, that 1) is almost fully or at least densely connected, 2) occurs in all or almost all graph instances, and 3) has the maximum weight. We present a measure of clique-ness, that essentially counts the number of edge missing to make a subset of vertices into a clique. With this measure, we show that the problem of finding the most persistent soft-clique problem can be cast either as: a) a max-min two person game optimization problem, or b) a min-min soft margin optimization problem. Both formulations lead to the same solution when using a partial Lagrangian method to solve the optimization problems. By experiments on synthetic data and on real social network data we show that the proposed method is able to reliably find soft cliques in graph data, even if that is distorted by random noise or unreliable observations. Copyright 2012 by the author(s)/owner(s).

A Videogrammetric As-Built Data Collection Method for Digital Fabrication of Sheet Metal Roof Panels

A roofing contractor typically needs to acquire as-built dimensions of a roof structure several times over the course of its build to be able to digitally fabricate sheet metal roof panels. Obtaining these measurements using the exiting roof surveying methods could be costly in terms of equipment, labor, and/or worker exposure to safety hazards. This paper presents a video-based surveying technology as an alternative method which is simple to use, automated, less expensive, and safe. When using this method, the contractor collects video streams with a calibrated stereo camera set. Unique visual characteristics of scenes from a roof structure are then used in the processing step to automatically extract as-built dimensions of roof planes. These dimensions are finally represented in a XML format to be loaded into sheet metal folding and cutting machines. The proposed method has been tested for a roofing project and the preliminary results indicate its capabilities.

Gaussian Approximation Potential: an interatomic potential derived from first principles Quantum Mechanics

Simulation of materials at the atomistic level is an important tool in studying microscopic structure and processes. The atomic interactions necessary for the simulation are correctly described by Quantum Mechanics. However, the computational resources required to solve the quantum mechanical equations limits the use of Quantum Mechanics at most to a few hundreds of atoms and only to a small fraction of the available configurational space. This thesis presents the results of my research on the development of a new interatomic potential generation scheme, which we refer to as Gaussian Approximation Potentials. In our framework, the quantum mechanical potential energy surface is interpolated between a set of predetermined values at different points in atomic configurational space by a non-linear, non-parametric regression method, the Gaussian Process. To perform the fitting, we represent the atomic environments by the bispectrum, which is invariant to permutations of the atoms in the neighbourhood and to global rotations. The result is a general scheme, that allows one to generate interatomic potentials based on arbitrary quantum mechanical data. We built a series of Gaussian Approximation Potentials using data obtained from Density Functional Theory and tested the capabilities of the method. We showed that our models reproduce the quantum mechanical potential energy surface remarkably well for the group IV semiconductors, iron and gallium nitride. Our potentials, while maintaining quantum mechanical accuracy, are several orders of magnitude faster than Quantum Mechanical methods.