Iowa Aviation Plan, 2004-2024

The Iowa Department of Transportation (DOT), working closely with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), strives to ensure that Iowa’s system of public airports is positioned to meet the needs of businesses, residents, and visitors to our state. Airports must be accessible and positioned to safely meet different levels of aviation activity. In partnership with the FAA and various cities, counties, and airport authorities, the Iowa DOT helps to direct the systematic development of public airports. This report is a summary of a more comprehensive technical report that outlines a strategic plan for improving the performance of airports in Iowa over the next 20 years. More information on the technical report and on individual reports prepared for each of the public airports can be obtained from the Iowa DOT, Office of Aviation website at www.iawings.com. The Iowa Aviation System Plan provides the Iowa DOT with an important tool to monitor the ability of airports to meet customer needs. The plan also provides a means to measure the effects of investment on the performance of the Iowa Aviation System. Over the next 20 years, federal, state, local, and private funding will be needed to ensure that the aviation system meets goals established in this study. It is estimated that at least $821 million will be needed over the next 20 years if airports in Iowa are to respond to objectives set by the system plan. In future years, the plan will enable the Iowa DOT to measure system performance. By tracking key indicators for the airport system, it will be possible for the Iowa DOT and the FAA to formulate strategies for responding to Iowa’s air transportation needs. The Iowa Aviation System Plan provides a guide for the state and its communities to ensure that the vision established for the Iowa Aviation System can be achieved.

Iowa Aviation Plan, 2004-2024

The Iowa Department of Transportation (DOT), working closely with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), strives to ensure that Iowa’s system of public airports is positioned to meet the needs of businesses, residents, and visitors to our state. Airports must be accessible and positioned to safely meet different levels of aviation activity. In partnership with the FAA and various cities, counties, and airport authorities, the Iowa DOT helps to direct the systematic development of public airports. This report is a summary of a more comprehensive technical report that outlines a strategic plan for improving the performance of airports in Iowa over the next 20 years. More information on the technical report and on individual reports prepared for each of the public airports can be obtained from the Iowa DOT, Office of Aviation website at www.iawings.com. The Iowa Aviation System Plan provides the Iowa DOT with an important tool to monitor the ability of airports to meet customer needs. The plan also provides a means to measure the effects of investment on the performance of the Iowa Aviation System. Over the next 20 years, federal, state, local, and private funding will be needed to ensure that the aviation system meets goals established in this study. It is estimated that at least $821 million will be needed over the next 20 years if airports in Iowa are to respond to objectives set by the system plan. In future years, the plan will enable the Iowa DOT to measure system performance. By tracking key indicators for the airport system, it will be possible for the Iowa DOT and the FAA to formulate strategies for responding to Iowa’s air transportation needs. The Iowa Aviation System Plan provides a guide for the state and its communities to ensure that the vision established for the Iowa Aviation System can be achieved.

Hydrologic Simulations of the Maquoketa River Watershed Using SWAT Working Paper 09-WP 49,June 2009

This paper describes the application of the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model to the Maquoketa River watershed, located in northeast Iowa. The inputs to the model were obtained from the Environmental Protection Agency’s geographic information/database system called Better Assessment Science Integrating Point and Nonpoint Sources (BASINS). Climatic data from six weather stations located in and around the watershed, and measured streamflow data from a U.S. Geological Survey gage station at the watershed outlet were used in the sensitivity analysis of SWAT model parameters as well as its calibration and validation for watershed hydrology and streamflow. A sensitivity analysis was performed using an influence coefficient method to evaluate surface runoff and base flow variations in response to changes in model input hydrologic parameters. The curve number, evaporation compensation factor, and soil available water capacity were found to be the most sensitive parameters among eight selected parameters when applying SWAT to the Maquoketa River watershed. Model calibration, facilitated by the sensitivity analysis, was performed for the period 1988 through 1993, and validation was performed for 1982 through 1987. The model performance was evaluated by well-established statistical methods and was found to explain at least 86% and 69% of the variability in the measured stream flow data for the calibration and validation periods, respectively. This initial hydrologic modeling analysis will facilitate future applications of SWAT to the Maquoketa River watershed for various watershed analysis, including water quality.

Social and temporal organization in an ant colony

Ant colonies are known for their complex and efficient social organization that com-pletely lacks hierarchical structure. However, due to methodological difficulties in follow¬ing all ants of a colony, it was until now impossible to investigate the social and temporal organization of colonies. We developed a tracking system that allows tracking the posi¬tions and orientations of several hundred individually labeled ants continuously, providing for the first time quantitative long term data on all individuals of a colony. These data permit reconstructing trajectories, activity patterns and social networks of all ants in a colony and enable us to investigate ant behavior quantitatively in previously unpreceded ways. By analyzing the spatial positions and social interactions of all ants in six colonies for 41 days we show that ant colonies are organized in groups of nurses, nest patrollers and foragers. Workers of each group were highly interconnected and occupied similar spa¬tial locations in the nest. Groups strongly segregated spatially, and were characterized by unique behavioral signatures. Nurses spent most of their time on the brood. Nest patrollers frequently visited the rubbish pile, and foragers frequently visited the forag¬ing arena. In addition nurses were on average younger than nest patrollers who were, in turn, younger than foragers. We further show that workers had a preferred behav¬ioral trajectory and moved from nursing to nest patrolling, and from nest patrolling to foraging. By analyzing the activity patterns of all ants we show that only a third of all workers in a colony exhibit circadian rhythms and that these rhythms shortened by on av¬erage 42 minutes in constant darkness, thereby demonstrating the presence of a functional endogenous clock. Most rhythmic workers were foragers suggesting that rhythmicity is tightly associated with task. Nurses and nest patrollers were arrhythmic which most likely reflects plasticity of the circadian clock, as isolated workers in many species exhibit circadian rhythmicity. Altogether our results emphasize that ant colonies, despite their chaotic appearance, repose on a strong underlying social and temporal organization. - Les colonies de fourmis sont connues pour leur organisation sociale complexe et effi-cace, charactérisée par un manque absolu de structure hiérarchique. Cependant, puisqu'il est techniquement très difficile de suivre toutes les fourmis d'une colonie, il a été jusqu'à maintenant impossible d'étudier l'organisation sociale et temporelle des colonies de four-mis. Nous avons développé un système qui permet d'extraire en temps réel à partir d'images vidéo les positions et orientations de plusieurs centaines de fourmis marquées individuellement. Nous avons pu ainsi générer pour la première fois des données quanti-tatives et longitudinales relatives à des fourmis appartenant à une colonie. Ces données nous ont permis de reconstruire la trajectoire et l'activité de chaque fourmi ainsi que ses réseaux sociaux. Ceci nous a permis d'étudier de manière exhaustive et objective le com-portement de tous les individus d'une colonie. En analysant les données spatiales et les interactions sociales de toutes les fourmis de six colonies qui ont été filmées pendant 41 jours, nous montrons que les fourmis d'une même colonie se répartissent en trois groupes: nourrices, patrouilleuses et approvisionneuses. Les fourmis d'un même groupe interagis-sent fréquemment et occupent le même espace à l'intérieur du nid. L'espace propre à un groupe se recoupe très peu avec celui des autres. Chaque groupe est caractérisé par un comportement typique. Les nourrices s'affairent surtout autour du couvain. Les pa-trouilleuses font de fréquents déplacements vers le tas d'ordures, et les approvisionneuses sortent souvent du nid. Les nourrices sont en moyenne plus jeunes que les patrouilleuses qui, à leur tour, sont plus jeunes que les approvisionneuses. De plus, nous montrons que les ouvrières changent de tâche au cours de leur vie, passant de nourrice à patrouilleuse puis à approvisionneuse. En analysant l'activité de chaque fourmi, nous montrons que seulement un tiers des ouvrières d'une colonie présente des rythmes circadiens et que ces rythmes diminuent en moyenne de 42 minutes lorsqu'il y a obscurité constante, ce qui démontre ainsi la présence d'une horloge endogène. De plus, la plupart des approvi¬sionneuses ont une activité rythmique alors que les nourrices et patrouilleuses présentent une activité arythmique, ce qui suggère que la rythmicité est étroitement associée à la tâche. L'arythmie des nourrices et patrouilleuses repose probablement sur une plasticité de l'horloge endogène car des ouvrières de nombreuses espèces font preuve d'une ryth¬micité circadienne lorsqu'elles sont isolées de la colonie. Dans l'ensemble nos résultats révèlent qu'une colonie de fourmis se fonde sur une solide organisation sociale et tem¬porelle malgré son apparence chaotique.

Effects of antiresorptive agents on bone micro-architecture assessed by Trabecular Bone Score in women age 50 and older. The Manitoba Prospective Study

Antiresorptive agents such as bisphosphonates induce a rapid increase of BMD during the 1st year of treatment and a partial maintenance of bone architecture. Trabecular Bone Score (TBS), a new grey-level texture measurement that can be extracted from the DXA image, correlates with 3D parameters of bone micro-architecture. Aim: To evaluate the longitudinal effect of antiresorptive agents on spine BMD and on site-matched spine microarchitecture as assessed by TBS. Methods: From the BMD database for Province of Manitoba, Canada, we selected women age >50 with paired baseline and follow up spine DXA examinations who had not received any prior HRT or other antiresorptive drug.Women were divided in two subgroups: (1) those not receiving any HRT or antiresorptive drug during follow up (=non-users) and (2) those receiving non-HRT antiresorptive drug during follow up (=users) with high adherence (medication possession ratio >75%) from a provincial pharmacy database system. Lumbar spine TBS was derived by the Bone Disease Unit, University of Lausanne, for each spine DXA examination using anonymized files (blinded from clinical parameters and outcomes). Effects of antiresorptive treatment for users and non-users on TBS and BMD at baseline and during mean 3.7 years follow-up were compared. Results were expressed % change per year. Results: 1150 non-users and 534 users met the inclusion criteria. At baseline, users and non-users had a mean age and BMI of [62.2±7.9 vs 66.1±8.0 years] and [26.3±4.7 vs 24.7±4.0 kg/m²] respectively. Antiresorptive drugs received by users were bisphosphonates (86%), raloxifene (10%) and calcitonin (4%). Significant differences in BMD change and TBS change were seen between users and nonusers during follow-up (p<0.0001). Significant decreases in mean BMD and TBS (−0.36± 0.05% per year; −0.31±0.06% per year) were seen for non-users compared with baseline (p<0.001). A significant increase in mean BMD was seen for users compared with baseline (+1.86±0.0% per year, p<0.0018). TBS of users also increased compared with baseline (+0.20±0.08% per year, p<0.001), but more slowly than BMD. Conclusion: We observed a significant increase in spine BMD and a positive maintenance of bone micro-architecture from TBS with antiresorptive treatment, whereas the treatment naïve group lost both density and micro-architecture. TBS seems to be responsive to treatment and could be suitable for monitoring micro-architecture. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled ECTS 2011. Disclosure of interest: M.-A. Krieg: None declared, A. Goertzen: None declared, W. Leslie: None declared, D. Hans Consulting fees from Medimaps.

Mielipidekyselyjärjestelmän suunnittelu ja toteutus

Tämän työn tavoitteena on suunnitella yksinkertainen Internet-pohjainen mielipidekyselyjärjestelmä sekä esitellä yksityiskohtaisesti järjestelmän toteutus ja siihen liittyvät menetelmät. Menetelmistäesitellään ainoastaan ennalta valitut menetelmät järjestelmän toteutukseen, tietojen esittämiseen, esitystavan muotoiluun sekä tietojen varastointiin. Järjestelmä toteutetaan HTML- ja PHP-kielillä sekä käyttämällä CSS-menetelmän tyylimuotoiluja ja XML-kielen muotoiluun perustuvia tiedostoja tietovarastoina. Järjestelmän suunnitteluun liittyen työssä pyritään kuvaamaan järjestelmään toteutettavat kaksi erillistä käyttöliittymää, pääkäyttäjän käyttöliittymä ja normaalin käyttäjän käyttöliittymä, sekä näihin toteutettavat toiminnot. Pääkäyttäjän tärkeimmät toiminnot ovat mielipidekyselyiden luominen, käyttäjien lisääminen kyselyihin sekä kyselyiden tulosten seuranta. Normaalin käyttäjän toiminnot taas rajoittuvat kirjautumiseen ja kyselyyn vastaamiseen. Järjestelmän toteutuksen kuvauksessa kuvataan tarkasti edellä mainittujen kahden käyttöliittymän toiminnot sekä näiden toimintojen toteutustavat. Lisäksi toteutuksen kuvauksen yhteydessä määritellään tarkasti järjestelmän tietovarastoina toimivien tiedostojen sisällön muoto. Työn lopputuloksena syntyi valituilla toteutustavoilla toteutettu toimiva mielipidekyselyjärjestelmä sekä tämä järjestelmän suunnitteluun ja toteutuksen selvittämiseen keskittynyt dokumentti. Toteutetusta järjestelmästä ei tullut täydellinen vaan jatkokehityksessä voidaan harkita esimerkiksi tietokannan käyttämistä järjestelmän tietovarastoina sekä joidenkin lisäominaisuuksien toteuttamista. Tavoitteeseen päästiin kuitenkin, sillä toteutettu järjestelmä on toimiva ja käyttötarkoitukseensa sopiva.

Hiontarobotti-solun tietojärjestelmä

Hiontarobotteja käytetään nopeuttamaan hiontaprosessia ja vähentämään henkilöiden tarvetta tehdä kuluttavaa ja raskasta työtä. Yleensä hiottavat kappaleet ovat suuria, jolloin hionta robotillakin kestää kauan. Kun hiottavat kappaleet ovat pieniä, robotti hioo kappaleen nopeasti. Tällöin tarvitaan automaattinen varastointi, jotta hiontarobotti pystyy jatkamaan nopeasti seuraavan kappaleen hiontaa. Automaattinen varastointi tarvitsee tiedonhallintajärjestelmän, jolla hallitaan varastossa olevien kappaleiden tietoja. Hiottava kappale täytyy esimerkiksi pystyä tunnistamaan ennen hionnan aloittamista. Yhtenä tunnistusmenetelmänä voidaan käyttää radiotaajuudella toimivia RFID-tunnisteita. Kun kappale tunnistetaan ennen hiontaa niin voidaan varmistua, että robotti suorittaa oikean hiontaohjelman kappaleelle. Diplomityö liittyy Master Automation Groupin ensimmäiseen automaattista varastoa hyödyntävään FlexMill™-hiontarobotti-soluun. Työssä on suunniteltu ja toteutettu tietokanta ja siihen liittyvä tietojärjestelmä. Kehitettävä ohjelma toimii solun toiminnasta vastaavan soluohjaimen tiedonhallintaosana. Ohjelma hyödyntää RFID-laitteita kappaleiden tunnistuksessa.

PET Imaging of Osteomyelitis. Feasibility of 18F-FDG, 68Ga-Chloride and 68Ga-DOTAVAP-P1 Tracers in Staphylococcal Bone Infections

Due to technical restrictions of the database system the title of the thesis does not show corretly on this page. Numbers in the title are in superscript. Please see the PDF-file for correct title. ---- Osteomyelitis is a progressive inflammatory disease of bone and bone marrow that results in bone destruction due to an infective microorganism, most frequently Staphylococcus aureus. Orthopaedic concern relates to the need for reconstructive and trauma-related surgical procedures in the fast grow¬ing population of fragile, aged patients, who have an increased susceptibility to surgical site infections. Depending on the type of osteomyelitis, infection may be acute or a slowly progressing, low-grade infection. Peri-implant infections lead to implant loosening. The emerging antibiotic resistance of com¬mon pathogens further complicates the situation. With current imaging methods, significant limitations exist in the diagnosing of osteomyelitis and implant-related infections. Positron emission tomography (PET) with a glucose analogue, 18F-fluoro¬deoxyglucose (18F-FDG), seems to facilitate a more accurate diagnosis of chronic osteomyelitis. The method is based on the increased glucose consumption of activated inflammatory cells. Unfortunately, 18F-FDG accumulates also in sterile inflammation regions and causes false-positive findings, for exam¬ple, due to post-operative healing processes. Therefore, there is a clinical need for new, more infection-specific tracers. In addition, it is still unknown why 18F-FDG PET imaging is less accurate in the detec¬tion of periprosthetic joint infections, most frequently due to Staphylococcus epidermidis. This doctoral thesis focused on testing novel PET tracers (68Ga-chloride and 68Ga-DOTAVAP-P1) for early detections of bone infections and evaluated the role of pathogen-related factors in the appli¬cations of 18F-FDG PET in the diagnostics of bone infections. For preclinical models of S. epidermidis and S. aureus bone/implant infections, the significance of the causative pathogen was studied with respect to 18F-FDG uptake. In a retrospective analysis of patients with confirmed bone infections, the significance of the presence or absence of positive bacterial cultures on 18F-FDG uptake was evalu¬ated. 18F-FDG and 68Ga-chloride resulted in a similar uptake in S. aureus osteomyelitic bones. However, 68Ga-chloride did not show uptake in healing bones, and therefore it may be a more-specific tracer in the early post-operative or post-traumatic phase. 68Ga-DOTAVAP-P1, a novel synthetic peptide bind¬ing to vascular adhesion protein 1 (VAP-1), was able to detect the phase of inflammation in healing bones, but the uptake of the tracer was elevated also in osteomyelitis. Low-grade peri-implant infec¬tions due to S. epidermidis were characterized by a low uptake of 18F-FDG, which reflects the virulence of the causative pathogen and the degree of leukocyte infiltration. In the clinical study, no relationship was found between the level of 18F-FDG uptake and the presence of positive or negative bacterial cul¬tures. Thus 18F-FDG PET may help to confirm metabolically active infection process in patients with culture-negative, histologically confirmed, low-grade osteomyelitis.

A pegada de carbono como um dos indicadores de sustentabilidade para medição da responsabilidade socioambiental empresarial: um estudo de caso na unidade sede da Petrobras em Natal-RN

As a contemporary tendency, it is been evidenced that the environmental changes theme, already admitted as a concernment to international economical and political reality, is also gaining repercussion on industrial and business sector. Firms are implementing actions on trial to minimize their own greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions impacts. However, the great majority of those actions of Corporative Social-Environmental Responsibility (CSR) are referred only to direct emissions of the main production systems. Direct emissions are those derived of an isolate process, without considering the upstream and downstream processes emissions, which respond for the majority of emissions originated because of respective firm‟s production system existence. Because the greenhouse effect occurs globally and the GHG emissions contribute to the environmental changes independently of their origin, it must be taken into account the whole productive life cycle of products and systems, since the energy invested on resources extraction and necessary materials to the final disposal. To do so, it must be investigated all relevant steps of a product/production system life cycle, tracking all activities which emit greenhouse gases, directly or indirectly. This amount of emissions consists in the firm‟s Carbon Footprint. This research purpose is to defend the Carbon Footprint relevance and its adoption viability to be used as an Environmental Indicator on measurement/assessment of CSR. It has been realized a study case on Petrobras‟s seat unity at Natal-Brazil, assessing part of its Carbon Footprint. It has been used the software GEMIS 4.6 to do the emissions quantifying. The items measured were the direct emissions of the own unity vehicles and indirect emissions of offset paper (A4), energy and disposable plastic cups consumed. To 2009, these emissions were 3.811,94 tCO2eq. We may conclude that Carbon Footprint quantification is indispensable to the knowledge of real emissions caused by a productive process existence, must serving as basis to CSR decisions about the environmental changes reversion challenge

EIT: Escalonador Inteligente de Transações

In order to guarantee database consistency, a database system should synchronize operations of concurrent transactions. The database component responsible for such synchronization is the scheduler. A scheduler synchronizes operations belonging to different transactions by means of concurrency control protocols. Concurrency control protocols may present different behaviors: in general, a scheduler behavior can be classified as aggressive or conservative. This paper presents the Intelligent Transaction Scheduler (ITS), which has the ability to synchronize the execution of concurrent transactions in an adaptive manner. This scheduler adapts its behavior (aggressive or conservative), according to the characteristics of the computing environment in which it is inserted, using an expert system based on fuzzy logic. The ITS can implement different correctness criteria, such as conventional (syntactic) serializability and semantic serializability. In order to evaluate the performance of the ITS in relation to others schedulers with exclusively aggressive or conservative behavior, it was applied in a dynamic environment, such as a Mobile Database Community (MDBC). An MDBC simulator was developed and many sets of tests were run. The experimentation results, presented herein, prove the efficiency of the ITS in synchronizing transactions in a dynamic environment

Seleção de features guiada por atenção visual em imagens com fóvea

Visual attention is a very important task in autonomous robotics, but, because of its complexity, the processing time required is significant. We propose an architecture for feature selection using foveated images that is guided by visual attention tasks and that reduces the processing time required to perform these tasks. Our system can be applied in bottom-up or top-down visual attention. The foveated model determines which scales are to be used on the feature extraction algorithm. The system is able to discard features that are not extremely necessary for the tasks, thus, reducing the processing time. If the fovea is correctly placed, then it is possible to reduce the processing time without compromising the quality of the tasks outputs. The distance of the fovea from the object is also analyzed. If the visual system loses the tracking in top-down attention, basic strategies of fovea placement can be applied. Experiments have shown that it is possible to reduce up to 60% the processing time with this approach. To validate the method, we tested it with the feature algorithm known as Speeded Up Robust Features (SURF), one of the most efficient approaches for feature extraction. With the proposed architecture, we can accomplish real time requirements of robotics vision, mainly to be applied in autonomous robotics

Desenvolvimento de um sistema computacional para geração automática de mapas de vulnerabilidade como ferramenta de auxílio às ações de prevenção ao derramamento de óleo em áreas costeiras

The northern portion of the Rio Grande do Norte State is characterized by intense coastal dynamics affecting areas with ecosystems of moderate to high environmental sensitivity. In this region are installed the main socioeconomic activities of RN State: salt industry, shrimp farm, fruit industry and oil industry. The oil industry suffers the effects of coastal dynamic action promoting problems such as erosion and exposure of wells and pipelines along the shore. Thus came the improvement of such modifications, in search of understanding of the changes which causes environmental impacts with the purpose of detecting and assessing areas with greater vulnerability to variations. Coastal areas under influence oil industry are highly vulnerable and sensitive in case of accidents involving oil spill in the vicinity. Therefore, it was established the geoenvironmental monitoring of the region with the aim of evaluating the entire coastal area evolution and check the sensitivity of the site on the presence of oil. The goal of this work was the implementation of a computer system that combines the needs of insertion and visualization of thematic maps for the generation of Environmental Vulnerability maps, using techniques of Business Intelligence (BI), from vector information previously stored in the database. The fundamental design interest was to implement a more scalable system that meets the diverse fields of study and make the appropriate system for generating online vulnerability maps, automating the methodology so as to facilitate data manipulation and fast results in cases of real time operational decision-making. In database development a geographic area was established the conceptual model of the selected data and Web system was done using the template database PostgreSQL, PostGis spatial extension, Glassfish Web server and the viewer maps Web environment, the GeoServer. To develop a geographic database it was necessary to generate the conceptual model of the selected data and the Web system development was done using the PostgreSQL database system, its spatial extension PostGIS, the web server Glassfish and GeoServer to display maps in Web

A STORM* environment for building multimedia presentations

This paper describes an environment for constructing multimedia applications which are used to present different multimedia database objects in accordance with spatiotemporal constraints and from different sources. The main contribution of this paper is to propose an environment which integrates both a modelling case tool and an object-oriented database system.

Produção de fitomassa, teor e composição química do óleo essencial de Baccharis dracunculifolia DC. em função da adubação orgânica

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Teds-easy - descrição automática de transducer electronic data sheet

Pós-graduação em Engenharia Elétrica - FEIS