Physical and numerical constraints in source modeling for finite difference simulation of room acoustics

In finite difference time domain simulation of room acoustics, source functions are subject to various constraints. These depend on the way sources are injected into the grid and on the chosen parameters of the numerical scheme being used. This paper addresses the issue of selecting and designing sources for finite difference simulation, by first reviewing associated aims and constraints, and evaluating existing source models against these criteria. The process of exciting a model is generalized by introducing a system of three cascaded filters, respectively, characterizing the driving pulse, the source mechanics, and the injection of the resulting source function into the grid. It is shown that hard, soft, and transparent sources can be seen as special cases within this unified approach. Starting from the mechanics of a small pulsating sphere, a parametric source model is formulated by specifying suitable filters. This physically constrained source model is numerically consistent, does not scatter incoming waves, and is free from zero- and low-frequency artifacts. Simulation results are employed for comparison with existing source formulations in terms of meeting the spectral and temporal requirements on the outward propagating wave.

Long-term mass balance of perennial firn and ice in an Alpine cave (Austria):Constraints from radiocarbon-dated wood fragments

Hundsalm ice cave located at 1520 m altitude in a karst region of western Austria contains up to 7-m-thick deposits of snow, firn and congelation ice. Wood fragments exposed in the lower parts of an ice and firn wall were radiocarbon accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dated. Although the local stratigraphy is complex, the 19 individual dates - the largest currently available radiocarbon dataset for an Alpine ice cave - allow to place constraints on the accumulation and ablation history of the cave ice. Most of the cave was either ice free or contained only a small firn and ice body during the 'Roman Warm Period'; dates of three wood fragments mark the onset of firn and ice build-up in the 6th and 7th century ad. In the central part of the cave, the oldest samples date back to the 13th century and record ice growth coeval with the onset of the 'Little Ice Age'. The majority of the ice and firn deposit, albeit compromised by a disturbed stratigraphy, appears to have been formed during the subsequent centuries, supported by wood samples from the 15th to the 17th century. The oldest wood remains found so far inside the ice is from the end of the Bronze Age and implies that local relics of prehistoric ice may be preserved in this cave. The wood record from Hundsalm ice cave shows parallels to the Alpine glacier history of the last three millennia, for example, the lack of preserved wood remains during periods of known glacier minima, and underscores the potential of firn and ice in karst cavities as a long-term palaeoclimate archive, which has been degrading at an alarming rate in recent years. © The Author(s) 2013.

Ecological Relevance Determines Task Priority in Older Adults' Multitasking

Objectives: Multitasking is a challenging aspect of human behavior, especially if the concurrently performed tasks are different in nature. Several studies demonstrated pronounced performance decrements (dual-task costs) in older adults for combinations of cognitive and motor tasks. However, patterns of costs among component tasks differed across studies and reasons for participants' resource allocation strategies remained elusive.
Method:We investigated young and older adults' multitasking of a working memory task and two sensorimotor tasks, one with low (finger force control) and one with high ecological relevance (postural control). The tasks were performed in single-, dual-, and triple-task contexts.
Results: Working memory accuracy was reduced in dual-task contexts with either sensorimotor task and deteriorated further under triple-task conditions. Postural and force performance deteriorated with age and task difficulty in dual-task contexts. However, in the triple-task context with its maximum resource demands, older adults prioritized postural control
over both force control and memory.
Discussion: Our results identify ecological relevance as the key factor in older adults’ multitasking.

Assessing the distribution of social-ecological resilience and risk: Ireland as a case study of the uneven impact of famine

Explanations for the causes of famine and food insecurity often reside at a high level of aggregation or abstraction. Popular models within famine studies have often emphasised the role of prime movers such as population stress, or the political-economic structure of access channels, as key determinants of food security. Explanation typically resides at the macro level, obscuring the presence of substantial within-country differences in the manner in which such stressors operate. This study offers an alternative approach to analyse the uneven nature of food security, drawing on the Great Irish famine of 1845–1852. Ireland is often viewed as a classical case of Malthusian stress, whereby population outstripped food supply under a pre-famine demographic regime of expanded fertility. Many have also pointed to Ireland's integration with capitalist markets through its colonial relationship with the British state, and country-wide system of landlordism, as key determinants of local agricultural activity. Such models are misguided, ignoring both substantial complexities in regional demography, and the continuity of non-capitalistic, communal modes of land management long into the nineteenth century. Drawing on resilience ecology and complexity theory, this paper subjects a set of aggregate data on pre-famine Ireland to an optimisation clustering procedure, in order to discern the potential presence of distinctive social–ecological regimes. Based on measures of demography, social structure, geography, and land tenure, this typology reveals substantial internal variation in regional social–ecological structure, and vastly differing levels of distress during the peak famine months. This exercise calls into question the validity of accounts which emphasise uniformity of structure, by revealing a variety of regional regimes, which profoundly mediated local conditions of food security. Future research should therefore consider the potential presence of internal variations in resilience and risk exposure, rather than seeking to characterise cases based on singular macro-dynamics and stressors alone.

Predicting the ecological impacts of a new freshwater invader:Functional responses and prey selectivity of the 'killer shrimp', Dikerogammarus villosus, compared to the native Gammarus pulex

The ability to predict the likely ecological impacts of invasive species in fresh waters is a pressing research requirement. Whilst comparisons of species traits and considerations of invasion history have some efficacy in this respect, we require robust methods that can compare the effects of native and invasive species. Here, we utilise comparative functional responses and prey selectivity experiments to understand and predict the ecological impact of an invader as compared to a native. We compared the predatory functional responses of an emerging invasive species in Europe, the 'killer shrimp', Dikerogammarus villosus, and an analogous native species, Gammarus pulex, towards three representative prey species: Asellus aquaticus, Daphnia magna and Chironomus sp. Furthermore, as ecological impact may be greater for invasive species with more indiscriminate feeding habits, we compared the selectivity for the three prey types between the invasive and native species. In both the presence and absence of experimental habitats, large D. villosus, and those matched for body size with G. pulex, generally showed higher (Type II) functional responses than G. pulex, with the invasive species exhibiting higher maximum feeding rates. Further, D. villosus exhibited significantly more indiscriminate prey selection compared with G. pulex, a trait that became more evident as the invader increased in size. Differences in functional responses and prey selectivity were prey species specific, with higher to lower predicted impacts in the order A. aquaticus, D. magna and Chironomus sp. This is in accord with the impact of this invasive species on macroinvertebrates in the field. We thus provide understanding of the known ecological impact of D. villosus and discuss the utility of the phenomenological use of comparative functional responses and resource use as a tool through which the potential ecological impacts of invasive species may be identified. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Opportunistic spectrum aggregation for cognitive communications under collision constraints

We consider a collision-sensitive secondary system that intends to opportunistically aggregate and utilize spectrum of a primary system to achieve higher data rates. In such opportunistic spectrum access, secondary transmission can collide with primary transmission. When the secondary system aggregates more channels for data transmission, more frequent collisions may occur, limiting the performance obtained by the opportunistic spectrum aggregation. In this context, dynamic spectrum aggregation problem is formulated to maximize the ergodic channel capacity under the constraint of collision tolerable level. To solve the problem, we develop the optimal spectrum aggregation approach, deriving closed-form expressions for the collision probability in terms of primary user traffic load, secondary user transmission interval, and the random number of sub-channels aggregated. Our results show that aggregating only a subset of sub-channels will be a better choice, depending on the ratio of collision sensitivity requirement to the primary user traffic.

Ecological impacts of invasive alien species along temperature gradients: testing the role of environmental matching

Invasive alien species (IAS) can cause substantive ecological impacts, and the role of temperature in mediating these impacts may become increasingly significant in a changing climate. Habitat conditions and physiological optima offer predictive information for IAS impacts in novel environments. Here, using meta-analysis and laboratory experiments, we tested the hypothesis that the impacts of IAS in the field are inversely correlated with the difference in their ambient and optimal temperatures. A meta-analysis of 29 studies of consumptive impacts of IAS in inland waters revealed that the impacts of fishes and crustaceans are higher at temperatures that more closely match their thermal growth optima. In particular, the maximum impact potential was constrained by increased differences between ambient and optimal temperatures, as indicated by the steeper slope of a quantile regression on the upper 25th percentile of impact data compared to that of a weighted linear regression on all data with measured variances. We complemented this study with an experimental analysis of the functional response - the relationship between predation rate and prey supply - of two invasive predators (freshwater mysid shrimp, Hemimysis anomala and Mysis diluviana) across relevant temperature gradients; both of these species have previously been found to exert strong community-level impacts that are corroborated by their functional responses to different prey items. The functional response experiments showed that maximum feeding rates of H. anomala and M. diluviana have distinct peaks near their respective thermal optima. Although variation in impacts may be caused by numerous abiotic or biotic habitat characteristics, both our analyses point to temperature as a key mediator of IAS impact levels in inland waters and suggest that IAS management should prioritize habitats in the invaded range that more closely match the thermal optima of targeted invaders.

Ecological Impacts of Alien Species: Quantification, Scope, Caveats, and Recommendations

Despite intensive research during the past decade on the effects of alien species, invasion science still lacks the capacity to accurately predict the impacts of those species and, therefore, to provide timely advice to managers on where limited resources should be allocated. This capacity has been limited partly by the context-dependent nature of ecological impacts, research highly skewed toward certain taxa and habitat types, and the lack of standardized methods for detecting and quantifying impacts. We review different strategies, including specific experimental and observational approaches, for detecting and quantifying the ecological impacts of alien species. These include a four-way experimental plot design for comparing impact studies of different organisms. Furthermore, we identify hypothesis-driven parameters that should be measured at invaded sites to maximize insights into the nature of the impact. We also present strategies for recognizing high-impact species. Our recommendations provide a foundation for developing systematic quantitative measurements to allow comparisons of impacts across alien species, sites, and time.

Observational Constraints on the Catastrophic Disruption Rate of Small Main Belt Asteroids

We have calculated 90% confidence limits on the steady-state rate of catastrophic disruptions of main belt asteroids in terms of the absolute magnitude at which one catastrophic disruption occurs per year  as a function of the post-disruption increase in brightness (Δm) and subsequent brightness decay rate (τ  ). The confidence limits were calculated using the brightest unknown main belt asteroid (V=18.5) detected with the Pan-STARRS1 (Pan-STARRS1) telescope. We measured the Pan-STARRS1’s catastrophic disruption detection efficiency over a 453-day interval using the Pan-STARRS moving object processing system (MOPS) and a simple model for the catastrophic disruption event’s photometric behavior in a small aperture centered on the catastrophic disruption event. We then calculated the  contours in the ranges from  and  encompassing measured values from known cratering and disruption events and our model’s predictions. Our simplistic catastrophic disruption model suggests that  and  which would imply that H_0≳28—strongly inconsistent withH_{0,B2005=23.26±0.02} predicted by Bottke et al. (Bottke, W.F., Durda, D.D., Nesvorný, D., Jedicke, R., Morbidelli, A., Vokrouhlický, D., Levison, H.F. [2005]. Icarus, 179, 63–94.) using purely collisional models. However, if we assume that H_0=H0,B2005 our results constrain , inconsistent with our simplistic impact-generated catastrophic disruption model. We postulate that the solution to the discrepancy is that >99% of main belt catastrophic disruptions in the size range to which this study was sensitive (∼100 m) are not impact-generated, but are instead due to fainter rotational breakups, of which the recent discoveries of disrupted asteroids P/2013 P5 and P/2013 R3 are probable examples. We estimate that current and upcoming asteroid surveys may discover up to 10 catastrophic disruptions/year brighter than V=18.5.

Impact of composite ply continuity constraints on aerospace stiffened panel design

Considering the development of aerospace composite components, designing for reduced manufacturing layup cost and structural complexity is increasingly important. While the advantage of composite materials is the ability to tailor designs to various structural loads for minimum mass, the challenge is obtaining a design that is manufacturable and minimizes local ply incompatibility. The focus of the presented research is understanding how the relationships between mass, manufacturability and design complexity, under realistic loads and design requirements, can be affected by enforcing ply continuity in the design process. Presented are a series of sizing case studies on an upper wing cover, designed using conventional analyses and the tabular laminate design process. Introducing skin ply continuity constraints can generate skin designs with minimal ply discontinuities, fewer ply drops and larger ply areas than designs not constrained for continuity. However, the reduced design freedom associated with the addition of these constraints results in a weight penalty over the total wing cover. Perhaps more interestingly, when considering manual hand layup the reduced design complexity is not translated into a reduced recurring manufacturing cost. In contrast, heavier wing cover designs appear to take more time to layup regardless of the laminate design complexity. © 2012 AIAA.

Choosing and using diversity indices: Insights for ecological applications from the German Biodiversity Exploratories

Biodiversity, a multidimensional property of natural systems, is difficult to quantify partly because of the multitude of indices proposed for this purpose. Indices aim to describe general properties of communities that allow us to compare different regions, taxa, and trophic levels. Therefore, they are of fundamental importance for environmental monitoring and conservation, although there is no consensus about which indices are more appropriate and informative. We tested several common diversity indices in a range of simple to complex statistical analyses in order to determine whether some were better suited for certain analyses than others. We used data collected around the focal plant Plantago lanceolata on 60 temperate grassland plots embedded in an agricultural landscape to explore relationships between the common diversity indices of species richness (S), Shannon's diversity (H'), Simpson's diversity (D1), Simpson's dominance (D2), Simpson's evenness (E), and Berger–Parker dominance (BP). We calculated each of these indices for herbaceous plants, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, aboveground arthropods, belowground insect larvae, and P. lanceolata molecular and chemical diversity. Including these trait-based measures of diversity allowed us to test whether or not they behaved similarly to the better studied species diversity. We used path analysis to determine whether compound indices detected more relationships between diversities of different organisms and traits than more basic indices. In the path models, more paths were significant when using H', even though all models except that with E were equally reliable. This demonstrates that while common diversity indices may appear interchangeable in simple analyses, when considering complex interactions, the choice of index can profoundly alter the interpretation of results. Data mining in order to identify the index producing the most significant results should be avoided, but simultaneously considering analyses using multiple indices can provide greater insight into the interactions in a system.