A critical evaluation of the ability of the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) thermal infrared red-green-blue rendering to identify dust events: theoretical analysis

Using a combination of idealized radiative transfer simulations and a case study from the first field campaign of the Saharan Mineral Dust Experiment (SAMUM) in southern Morocco, this paper provides a systematic assessment of the limitations of the widely used Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) red-green-blue (RGB) thermal infrared dust product. Both analyses indicate that the ability of the product to identify dust, via its characteristic pink coloring, is strongly dependent on the column water vapor, the lower tropospheric lapse rate, and dust altitude. In particular, when column water vapor exceeds ∼20–25 mm, dust presence, even for visible optical depths of the order 0.8, is effectively masked. Variability in dust optical properties also has a marked impact on the imagery, primarily as a result of variability in dust composition. There is a moderate sensitivity to the satellite viewing geometry, particularly in moist conditions. The underlying surface can act to confound the signal seen through variations in spectral emissivity, which are predominantly manifested in the 8.7μm SEVIRI channel. In addition, if a temperature inversion is present, typical of early morning conditions over the Sahara and Sahel, an increased dust loading can actually reduce the pink coloring of the RGB image compared to pristine conditions. Attempts to match specific SEVIRI observations to simulations using SAMUM measurements are challenging because of high uncertainties in surface skin temperature and emissivity. Recommendations concerning the use and interpretation of the SEVIRI RGB imagery are provided on the basis of these findings.

Temporally stable feature clusters for maritime object tracking in visible and thermal imagery

This paper describes a new approach to detect and track maritime objects in real time. The approach particularly addresses the highly dynamic maritime environment, panning cameras, target scale changes, and operates on both visible and thermal imagery. Object detection is based on agglomerative clustering of temporally stable features. Object extents are first determined based on persistence of detected features and their relative separation and motion attributes. An explicit cluster merging and splitting process handles object creation and separation. Stable object clus- ters are tracked frame-to-frame. The effectiveness of the approach is demonstrated on four challenging real-world public datasets.

Female-specific intergenerational transmission patterns of the human corticolimbic circuitry

Parents have large genetic and environmental influences on offspring’s cognition, behavior, and brain. These intergenerational effects are observed in mood disorders, with particularly robust association in depression between mothers and daughters. No studies have thus far examined the neural bases of these intergenerational effects in humans. Corticolimbic circuitry is known to be highly relevant in a wide range of processes including mood regulation and depression. These findings suggest that corticolimbic circuitry may also show matrilineal transmission patterns. We therefore examined human parent-offspring association in this neurocircuitry, and investigated the degree of association in gray matter volume between parent and offspring. We used voxel-wise correlation analysis in a total of 35 healthy families, consisting of parents and their biological offspring. We found positive associations of regional grey matter volume in the corticolimbic circuit including the amygdala, hippocampus, anterior cingulate cortex, and ventromedial prefrontal cortex between biological mothers and daughters. This association was significantly greater than mother-son, father-daughter, and father-son associations. The current study suggests that the corticolimbic circuitry, which has been implicated in mood regulation, shows a matrilineal specific transmission patterns. Our preliminary findings are consistent with what has been found behaviorally in depression, and may have clinical implications for disorders known to have dysfunction in mood regulation such as depression. Studies such as ours will likely bridge animal work examining gene expression in the brains and clinical symptom-based observations, and provide promising ways to investigate intergenerational transmission patterns in the human brain.

Electricity derivatives pricing with forward-looking information

In order to increase overall transparency on key operational information, power transmission system operators publish an increasing amount of fundamental data, including forecasts of electricity demand and available capacity. We employ a fundamental model for electricity prices which lends itself well to integrating such forecasts, while retaining ease of implementation and tractability to allow for analytic derivatives pricing formulae. In an extensive futures pricing study, the pricing performance of our model is shown to further improve based on the inclusion of electricity demand and capacity forecasts, thus confirming the general importance of forward-looking information for electricity derivatives pricing. However, we also find that the usefulness of integrating forecast data into the pricing approach is primarily limited to those periods during which electricity prices are highly sensitive to demand or available capacity, whereas the impact is less visible when fuel prices are the primary underlying driver to prices instead.

Making: the invisible visible

In this book essay I argue that modern and contemporary works of art (i.e. paintings, photographs, films, and videos) really ought to retrieve something of their auratic-character, which turns the physical toward the metaphysical, the material toward the immaterial, the visible toward the invisible - making artworks, ‘things among things, something other than [a] thing’ (Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 86). There is, perhaps, an aura to art or art is a medium or a conduit or a technology for rediscovering and reproducing aura, which makes it something other than a mere thing. Such works of art are constitutively enigmatic, a certain form of magic making: they (re-)distribute the visible and the invisible, they (re-)configure appearance and disappearance. Such works of art may become visual events, which begin an education in and through (dis-)appearances. To achieve this end, I detail Theodor W. Adorno’s and Walter Benjamin’s respective theories of (art’s) aura in the age of technological reproducibility, which I relate to Jacques Rancière’s more recent discussion of the ‘pensive image,’ and I focus my reading on a number of works by Susan Hiller (photographs), John Constable (paintings), Alfred Stieglitz (photographs), and Tacita Dean (photograph and 16mm film).

The housing market channel of monetary policy transmission in the Euro area

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of the housing market in the monetary policy transmission to consumption among euro area member states. It has been argued that the housing market in one country is then important when its mortgage market is well developed. The countries in the euro area follow unitary monetary policy, however, their housing and mortgage markets show some heterogeneity, which may lead to different policy effects on aggregate consumption through the housing market. Design/methodology/approach – The housing market can act as a channel of monetary policy shocks to household consumption through changes in house prices and residential investment – the housing market channel. We estimate vector autoregressive models for each country and conduct a counterfactual analysis in order to disentangle the housing market channel and assess its importance across the euro area member states. Findings – We find little evidence for heterogeneity of the monetary policy transmission through house prices across the euro area countries. Housing market variations in the euro area seem to be better captured by changes in residential investment rather than by changes in house prices. As a result we do not find significantly large house price channels. For some of the countries however, we observe a monetary policy channel through residential investment. The existence of a housing channel may depend on institutional features of both the labour market or with institutional factors capturing the degree of household debt as is the LTV ratio. Originality/value – The study contributes to the existing literature by assessing whether a unitary monetary policy has a different impact on consumption across the euro area countries through their housing and mortgage markets. We disentangle monetary-policy-induced effects on consumption associated with variations on the housing markets due to either house price variations or residential investment changes. We show that the housing market can play a role in the monetary transmission mechanism even in countries with less developed mortgage markets through variations in residential investment.

The “Great Queen of Lightninge Flashes”: the transmission of female-voiced burlesque poetry in the early seventeenth century

The essay uncovers evidence for the construction of the ‘woman author’ in the largely male vogue for bawdy burlesque poetry by tracing the circulation of a pair of verses through seventeenth-century manuscript and print miscellanies. It argues that just as these verses are reworked and recontextualised through the process of transmission, so to their ‘authors’ are re-embodied and ascribed different identities in different publication contexts. Female-voiced bawdy poetry raises particular problems for authorial attribution, rather than searching for the real woman behind the text, the essay examines how the ‘authors’ of female-voiced bawdy poetry were produced and reproduced through shifting formal frameworks and socioliterary networks.

Schooling and the intergenerational transmission of values

We present a model of the evolution of identity via dynamic interaction between the choice of education and the transmission of values in a community from parents to children, when parents care about the preservation of their traditional community values, different from the values of the host society. We compare the educational and socioeconomic outcomes in different scenarios (melting pot versus multiculturalism). If schooling shifts children’s identity away from their parents’ values, parents may choose lower levels of education for their children, at the cost of reducing their future earnings. We show how this effect can be attenuated and reversed when the school or, indeed, the host society are willing to accommodate the values of the community and/or to adjust to these values; otherwise the community gradually becomes alienated. This approach may be applied to the analysis of temporal changes in values and attitudes in a community of immigrants, as well as ethnic, religious, or other minority groups.

A mathematical model for the dynamics of Banana Xanthomonas Wilt with vertical transmission and inflorescence infection

A mathematical model for Banana Xanthomonas Wilt (BXW) spread by insect is presented. The model incorporates inflorescence infection and vertical transmission from the mother corm to attached suckers, but not tool-based transmission by humans. Expressions for the basic reproduction number R0 are obtained and it is verified that disease persists, at a unique endemic level, when R0 > 1. From sensitivity analysis, inflorescence infection rate and roguing rate were the parameters with most influence on disease persistence and equilibrium level. Vertical transmission parameters had less effect on persistence threshold values. Parameters were approximately estimated from field data. The model indicates that single stem removal is a feasible approach to eradication if spread is mainly via inflorescence infection. This requires continuous surveillance and debudding such that a 50% reduction in inflorescence infection and 2–3 weeks interval of surveillance would eventually lead to full recovery of banana plantations and hence improved production.

Tibouchina pulchra (Cham.) Cogn., a native Atlantic Forest species, as a bio-indicator of ozone: Visible injury

Tibouchina pulchra saplings were exposed to carbon filtered air (CF), ambient non-filtered air (NF) and ambient non-filtered air + 40 ppb ozone (NF + O-3) 8 h per day during two months. The AOT40 values at the end of the experiment were 48, 910 and 12,895 ppb h(-1), respectively, for the three treatments. After 25 days of exposure (AOT40=3871 ppb h(-1)), interveinal red stippling appeared in plants in the NF + O-3 chamber. In the NF chamber, symptoms were observed only after 60 days of exposure (AOT40 = 910 ppb h(-1)). After 60 days, injured leaves per plant corresponded to 19% in NF + O-3 and 1% in the NF treatment; and the average leaf area injured was 7% within the NF + O-3 and 0.2% within the NF treatment. The extent of leaf area injured (leaf injury index) was mostly explained by the accumulated exposure of ozone (r(2) = 0.89; p < 0.05). (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.