Collocating satellite-based radar and radiometer measurements — methodology and usage examples

Collocations between two satellite sensors are occasions where both sensors observe the same place at roughly the same time. We study collocations between the Microwave Humidity Sounder (MHS) on-board NOAA-18 and the Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR) on-board CloudSat. First, a simple method is presented to obtain those collocations and this method is compared with a more complicated approach found in literature. We present the statistical properties of the collocations, with particular attention to the effects of the differences in footprint size. For 2007, we find approximately two and a half million MHS measurements with CPR pixels close to their centrepoints. Most of those collocations contain at least ten CloudSat pixels and image relatively homogeneous scenes. In the second part, we present three possible applications for the collocations. Firstly, we use the collocations to validate an operational Ice Water Path (IWP) product from MHS measurements, produced by the National Environment Satellite, Data and Information System (NESDIS) in the Microwave Surface and Precipitation Products System (MSPPS). IWP values from the CloudSat CPR are found to be significantly larger than those from the MSPPS. Secondly, we compare the relation between IWP and MHS channel 5 (190.311 GHz) brightness temperature for two datasets: the collocated dataset, and an artificial dataset. We find a larger variability in the collocated dataset. Finally, we use the collocations to train an Artificial Neural Network and describe how we can use it to develop a new MHS-based IWP product. We also study the effect of adding measurements from the High Resolution Infrared Radiation Sounder (HIRS), channels 8 (11.11 μm) and 11 (8.33 μm). This shows a small improvement in the retrieval quality. The collocations described in the article are available for public use.

EDITOR'S CHOICE: REVIEW: Trait matching of flower visitors and crops predicts fruit set better than trait diversity

Understanding the relationships between trait diversity, species diversity and ecosystem functioning is essential for sustainable management. For functions comprising two trophic levels, trait matching between interacting partners should also drive functioning. However, the predictive ability of trait diversity and matching is unclear for most functions, particularly for crop pollination, where interacting partners did not necessarily co-evolve. World-wide, we collected data on traits of flower visitors and crops, visitation rates to crop flowers per insect species and fruit set in 469 fields of 33 crop systems. Through hierarchical mixed-effects models, we tested whether flower visitor trait diversity and/or trait matching between flower visitors and crops improve the prediction of crop fruit set (functioning) beyond flower visitor species diversity and abundance. Flower visitor trait diversity was positively related to fruit set, but surprisingly did not explain more variation than flower visitor species diversity. The best prediction of fruit set was obtained by matching traits of flower visitors (body size and mouthpart length) and crops (nectar accessibility of flowers) in addition to flower visitor abundance, species richness and species evenness. Fruit set increased with species richness, and more so in assemblages with high evenness, indicating that additional species of flower visitors contribute more to crop pollination when species abundances are similar. Synthesis and applications. Despite contrasting floral traits for crops world-wide, only the abundance of a few pollinator species is commonly managed for greater yield. Our results suggest that the identification and enhancement of pollinator species with traits matching those of the focal crop, as well as the enhancement of pollinator richness and evenness, will increase crop yield beyond current practices. Furthermore, we show that field practitioners can predict and manage agroecosystems for pollination services based on knowledge of just a few traits that are known for a wide range of flower visitor species.

On mathematical and physical principles of transformations of the coherent radar backscatter matrix

The congruential rule advanced by Graves for polarization basis transformation of the radar backscatter matrix is now often misinterpreted as an example of consimilarity transformation. However, consimilarity transformations imply a physically unrealistic antilinear time-reversal operation. This is just one of the approaches found in literature to the description of transformations where the role of conjugation has been misunderstood. In this paper, the different approaches are examined in particular in respect to the role of conjugation. In order to justify and correctly derive the congruential rule for polarization basis transformation and properly place the role of conjugation, the origin of the problem is traced back to the derivation of the antenna height from the transmitted field. In fact, careful consideration of the role played by the Green’s dyadic operator relating the antenna height to the transmitted field shows that, under general unitary basis transformation, it is not justified to assume a scalar relationship between them. Invariance of the voltage equation shows that antenna states and wave states must in fact lie in dual spaces, a distinction not captured in conventional Jones vector formalism. Introducing spinor formalism, and with the use of an alternate spin frame for the transmitted field a mathematically consistent implementation of the directional wave formalism is obtained. Examples are given comparing the wider generality of the congruential rule in both active and passive transformations with the consimilarity rule.

Molecular phylogenetics and character evolution of the ""sacaca"" clade: Novel relationships of Croton section Cleodora (Euphorbiaceae)

Phylogenetic relationships of Croton section Cleodora (Klotzsch) Baill. were evaluated using the nuclear ribosomal ITS and the chloroplast trnl-F and trnH-psbA regions. Our results show a strongly supported clade containing most previously recognized section Cleodora species, plus some other species morphologically similar to them. Two morphological synapomorphies that support section Cleodora as a clade include pistillate flowers in which the sepals overlap to some degree, and styles that are connate at the base to varying degrees. The evolution of vegetative and floral characters that have previously been relied on for taxonomic decisions within this group are evaluated in light of the phylogenetic hypotheses. Within section Cleodora there are two well-supported clades, which are proposed here as subsections (subsection Sphaerogyni and subsection Spruceani). The resulting phylogenetic hypothesis identifies the closest relatives of the medicinally important and essential oil-rich Croton cajucara Benth. as candidates for future screening in phytochemical and pharmacological studies. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Screening of bacteria to produce polyhydroxyalkanoates from xylose

Although xylose is a major constituent of lignocellulosic feedstock and the second most abundant sugar in nature, only 22% of 3,152 screened bacterial isolates showed significant growth in xylose in 24 h. Of those 684, only 24% accumulated polyhydroxyalkanoates after 72 h. A mangrove isolate, identified as Bacillus sp. MA3.3, yielded the best results in literature thus far for Gram-positive strains in experiments with glucose and xylose as the sole carbon source. When glucose or xylose were supplied, poly-3-hydroxybutyrate (PHB) contents of cell dry weight were, respectively, 62 and 64%, PHB yield 0.25 and 0.24 g g(-1) and PHB productivity (P(PHB)) 0.10 and 0.06 g l(-1) h(-1). This 40% P(PHB) difference may be related to the theoretical ATP production per 3-hydroxybutyrate (3HB) monomer calculated as 3 mol mol(-1) for xylose, less than half of the ATP/3HB produced from glucose (7 mol mol(-1)). In PHB production using sugar mixtures, all parameters were strongly reduced due to carbon catabolite repression. PHB production using Gram-positive strains is particularly interesting for medical applications because these bacteria do not produce lipopolysaccharide endotoxins which can induce immunogenic reactions. Moreover, the combination of inexpensive substrates and products of more value may lead to the economical sustainability of industrial PHB production.

Strongly damped wave problems: Bootstrapping and regularity of solutions

The aim of the article is to present a unified approach to the existence, uniqueness and regularity of solutions to problems belonging to a class of second order in time semilinear partial differential equations in Banach spaces. Our results are applied next to a number of examples appearing in literature, which fall into the class of strongly damped semilinear wave equations. The present work essentially extends the results on the existence and regularity of solutions to such problems. Previously, these problems have been considered mostly within the Hilbert space setting and with the main part operators being selfadjoint. In this article we present a more general approach, involving sectorial operators in reflexive Banach spaces. (C) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Shape classification using complex network and Multi-scale Fractal Dimension

Shape provides one of the most relevant information about an object. This makes shape one of the most important visual attributes used to characterize objects. This paper introduces a novel approach for shape characterization, which combines modeling shape into a complex network and the analysis of its complexity in a dynamic evolution context. Descriptors computed through this approach show to be efficient in shape characterization, incorporating many characteristics, such as scale and rotation invariant. Experiments using two different shape databases (an artificial shapes database and a leaf shape database) are presented in order to evaluate the method. and its results are compared to traditional shape analysis methods found in literature. (C) 2009 Published by Elsevier B.V.

Nykter bildning : En undersökning över IOGT, NTO och TO:s folkbildningsverksamhet i Dalarna 1921-1939

This study contents a research of the Swedish temperance movements IOGT, NTO and TO:s adult education in Dalarna between 1921 and 1939. A theory that is used in this essay is the publicity theory of Jürgen Habermas. A theory in this essay is that the adult educational work of the temperance movements could bee seen as an alternative publicity because the courses that the temperance movement held in general contents a great part of the movements own literature, the participants in the courses held their own lectures to each other and it was mostly only members of the temperance movements who could join the courses. The main subject of the courses was history in literature, English, Esperanto, and knowledge about local democracy. Not many courses content the drinking issue in Sweden at this time, even thought a national referendum was held in the issue during the research period of this essay. The lack of courses in the drinking issue illustrates of the fact that the courses only was held for the members of the temperance movement, and they don’t drink alcohol in any case. It was not a big difference in the contents of the course between the organisation in the temperance movements and between different years in this research.

A pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic model for duodenal levodopa infusion

Objective Levodopa in presence of decarboxylase inhibitors is following two-compartment kinetics and its effect is typically modelled using sigmoid Emax models. Pharmacokinetic modelling of the absorption phase of oral distributions is problematic because of irregular gastric emptying. The purpose of this work was to identify and estimate a population pharmacokinetic- pharmacodynamic model for duodenal infusion of levodopa/carbidopa (Duodopa®) that can be used for in numero simulation of treatment strategies. Methods The modelling involved pooling data from two studies and fixing some parameters to values found in literature (Chan et al. J Pharmacokinet Pharmacodyn. 2005 Aug;32(3-4):307-31). The first study involved 12 patients on 3 occasions and is described in Nyholm et al. Clinical Neuropharmacology 2003:26:156-63. The second study, PEDAL, involved 3 patients on 2 occasions. A bolus dose (normal morning dose plus 50%) was given after a washout during night. Plasma samples and motor ratings (clinical assessment of motor function from video recordings on a treatment response scale between -3 and 3, where -3 represents severe parkinsonism and 3 represents severe dyskinesia.) were repeatedly collected until the clinical effect was back at baseline. At this point, the usual infusion rate was started and sampling continued for another two hours. Different structural absorption models and effect models were evaluated using the value of the objective function in the NONMEM package. Population mean parameter values, standard error of estimates (SE) and if possible, interindividual/interoccasion variability (IIV/IOV) were estimated. Results Our results indicate that Duodopa absorption can be modelled with an absorption compartment with an added bioavailability fraction and a lag time. The most successful effect model was of sigmoid Emax type with a steep Hill coefficient and an effect compartment delay. Estimated parameter values are presented in the table. Conclusions The absorption and effect models were reasonably successful in fitting observed data and can be used in simulation experiments.

Building a Learning Architecture : e-Learning and e-Services

With the rapid advancement of the webtechnology, more and more educationalresources, including software applications forteaching/learning methods, are available acrossthe web, which enables learners to access thelearning materials and use various ways oflearning at any time and any place. Moreover,various web-based teaching/learning approacheshave been developed during the last decade toenhance the capability of both educators andlearners. Particularly, researchers from bothcomputer science and education are workingtogether, collaboratively focusing ondevelopment of pedagogically enablingtechnologies which are believed to improve theinfrastructure of education systems andprocesses, including curriculum developmentmodels, teaching/learning methods, managementof educational resources, systematic organizationof communication and dissemination ofknowledge and skills required by and adapted tousers. Despite of its fast development, however,there are still great gaps between learningintentions, organization of supporting resources,management of educational structures,knowledge points to be learned and interknowledgepoint relationships such as prerequisites,assessment of learning outcomes, andtechnical and pedagogic approaches. Moreconcretely, the issues have been widelyaddressed in literature include a) availability andusefulness of resources, b) smooth integration ofvarious resources and their presentation, c)learners’ requirements and supposed learningoutcomes, d) automation of learning process interms of its schedule and interaction, and e)customization of the resources and agilemanagement of the learning services for deliveryas well as necessary human interferences.Considering these problems and bearing in mindthe advanced web technology of which weshould make full use, in this report we willaddress the following two aspects of systematicarchitecture of learning/teaching systems: 1)learning objects – a semantic description andorganization of learning resources using the webservice models and methods, and 2) learningservices discovery and learning goals match foreducational coordination and learning serviceplanning.

Evaluation of a PVT Air Collector

Hybrid Photovoltaic Thermal (PVT) collectors are an emerging technology that combines PV and solar thermal systems in a single solar collector producing heat and electricity simultaneously. The focus of this thesis work is to evaluate the performance of unglazed open loop PVT air system integrated on a garage roof in Borlänge. As it is thought to have a significant potential for preheating ventilation of the building and improving the PV modules electrical efficiency. The performance evaluation is important to optimize the cooling strategy of the collector in order to enhance its electrical efficiency and maximize the production of thermal energy. The evaluation process involves monitoring the electrical and thermal energies for a certain period of time and investigating the cooling effect on the performance through controlling the air mass flow provided by a variable speed fan connected to the collector by an air distribution duct. The distribution duct transfers the heated outlet air from the collector to inside the building. The PVT air collector consists of 34 Solibro CIGS type PV modules (115 Wp for each module) which are roof integrated and have replaced the traditional roof material. The collector is oriented toward the south-west with a tilt of 29 ᵒ. The collector consists of 17 parallel air ducts formed between the PV modules and the insulated roof surface. Each air duct has a depth of 0.05 m, length of 2.38 m and width of 2.38 m. The air ducts are connected to each other through holes. The monitoring system is based on using T-type thermocouples to measure the relevant temperatures, air sensor to measure the air mass flow. These parameters are needed to calculate the thermal energy. The monitoring system contains also voltage dividers to measure the PV modules voltage and shunt resistance to measure the PV current, and AC energy meters which are needed to calculate the produced electrical energy. All signals recorded from the thermocouples, voltage dividers and shunt resistances are connected to data loggers. The strategy of cooling in this work was based on switching the fan on, only when the difference between the air duct temperature (under the middle of top of PV column) and the room temperature becomes higher than 5 °C. This strategy was effective in term of avoiding high electrical consumption by the fan, and it is recommended for further development. The temperature difference of 5 °C is the minimum value to compensate the heat losses in the collecting duct and distribution duct. The PVT air collector has an area of (Ac=32 m2), and air mass flow of 0.002 kg/s m2. The nominal output power of the collector is 4 kWppv (34 CIGS modules with 115 Wppvfor each module). The collector produces thermal output energy of 6.88 kWth/day (0.21 kWth/m2 day) and an electrical output energy of 13.46 kWhel/day (0.42 kWhel/m2 day) with cooling case. The PVT air collector has a daily thermal energy yield of 1.72 kWhth/kWppv, and a daily PV electrical energy yield of 3.36 kWhel /kWppv. The fan energy requirement in this case was 0.18 kWh/day which is very small compared to the electrical energy generated by the PV collector. The obtained thermal efficiency was 8 % which is small compared to the results reported in literature for PVT air collectors. The small thermal efficiency was due to small operating air mass flow. Therefore, the study suggests increasing the air mass flow by a factor of 25. The electrical efficiency was fluctuating around 14 %, which is higher than the theoretical efficiency of the PV modules, and this discrepancy was due to the poor method of recording the solar irradiance in the location. Due to shading effect, it was better to use more than one pyranometer.

Why primary health care offers a more comprehensive approach to tackling health inequities than primary care.

As governments attempt to focus more intently on how to deal with alarming measures of health disadvantage and inequities, a reformist gaze seems to have settled on the primary care sector. Simultaneously, in literature about this area, whether intended or not, primary health care and primary care are terms that are increasingly interchanged. This article argues that the slippage in language is counter-productive, first because it disguises the transformative potential of strategies and approaches that can make the fundamental changes necessary to improve health status, and second because the structures and practices of the primary care sector are not necessarily compatible with notions of comprehensive primary health care. There is much to be lost if primary health care and health promotion are disguised as primary care, and not understood for their capacity to make a difference to health inequities although of course in some circumstances, comprehensive primary health care is interdependent with services provided by primary care. In this article, characteristics of primary care and primary health care are juxtaposed to show that if the strengths and limitations of each model are understood, they can be mobilised in collaborative partnerships to deal more effectively with health inequities, than our system has so far been able to do.

Teaching for life : generic capabilities that link university learning with workplace learning

Business schools are under increasing pressure to enhance the learning capability and employability of graduates. Business professional institutes and employer organizations are demanding more than the technical knowledge and skills required to perform discipline/professional specific tasks. They want graduates who can demonstrate capabilities in communication, teamwork, risk taking, decision making, problem solving, critical thinking, analytical reasoning, visioning and innovation, leadership, ethical practices, appreciation of diversity, and a commitment to social justice. Evidence in literature and reports (Karpin, 1995; Kirby, 2000; Commonwealth of Australia, 2002; Nelson, 2002) and in test data (McCowan & Richardson, 1998; Employer Survey, 1998; DETYA, 2000) shows that the employability gap7 is closed when graduates possess these generic capabilities. What is important, however, is the increasing research showing that the strategies used to develop generic capabilities lead to improved learning, both in university courses and in the workplace.

Dialectics of Diaspora Space: a Study of Contemporary, Diasporic, South Asian Fiction

In light of these continuing debates concerning immigration, national identity and belonging, re-examinations of immigrant and ethnic communities, often referred to as ‘diaspora,’ have become increasingly popular and prudent. Khachig Tololian, editor of Diaspora magazine, calls diaspora “exemplary communities of the transnational moment.”5 In an increasingly globalized world, where labor, capital, and resources are passed fluidly from continent to continent, diaspora are created by relocation or displacement of immigrant workers and their descendents.6 For these unskilled, immigrant laborers, middle class immigrants, and the children of both groups, adaptation to the culture, society, and life in a new ‘host’ country can be difficult, to say the least. So, in response to a new cultural landscape and a tenuous sense belonging, as well as to maintain a connection with a shared past, citizens of the world’s numerous diaspora replicate linguistic, cultural, and social norms, creating their own “cultural space[s]” that mirror and often replace a past relationship to their land of origin, or ‘home’.