Coupling GIS with Hydrologic and Hydraulic Flood Modelling

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have been recognised as a powerful means to integrate and analyse data from various sources in the context of comprehensive floodplain management. As part of this comprehensive approach to floodplain management, it is very important to be able to predict the consequences of different scenarios in terms of flooded areas and associated risk. Hydrologic and hydraulic modelling plays a crucial role and there is much to gain in incorporating these modelling capabilities in GIS. This is still a rather complex task and research is being done on the full integration of these models. Interfacing between these models and GIS may be a very efficient way of overcoming the difficulties and getting very good results in terms of engineering practice. This paper presents results based on the use of Intergraph GIS coupled with Idrisi GIS. Using these two systems substantially increased the flexibility of using GIS as a tool for flood studies. A lumped (XSRAIN) and a distributed (OMEGA) hydrologic models were used to simulate flood hydrographs. The well known HEC-2 Hydraulic model was used to compute flooded areas. These models were applied in the Livramento catchment with very good results. The computation of flooded areas for different flood scenarios, and its representation in GIS, can be used in the assessment of affected property and associated damages. This is a very useful GIS-based approach to floodplain management.     

Transmit Diversity Schemes for WCDMA

Previous work on transmitter antenna diversity has shown that the use of multiple transmitter antennas at the base station results in improved performance due to increase of diversity (path diversity). This happens with no bandwidth cost, even when the signal quality along several paths is poor, but the receiver estimates the channel with accuracy. This paper evaluates the effects of channel estimation errors in the performance of the schemes designated as Space-Time Transmitter Diversity (STTD) and Selective Transmitter Diversity (STD). We consider low to medium signal to noise ratios characteristic of Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) networks. Different fading channel models are considered for comparison between the two schemes. The improvement due to convolutional coding associated with these techniques is also evaluated.     

Kinetics of hydration properties of meat emulsions containing various fillers during smokehouse cooking

The cooking kinetics of meat emulsions containing various fillers was determined by monitoring changes in hydration properties such as cooking loss and water-holding capacity during smokehouse cooking. Press juice, consumer cook test and emulsion stability of cooked product were also determined. The fillers used were buttermilk powder, corn starch, microcrystalline cellulose, modified corn starch, modified wheat flour, soy-protein concentrate and whey-protein concentrate. The cooking process was modelled using reaction kinetics and Eyring's absolute reaction rate theory. Enthalpy and entropy changes of activation were calculated for various properties and fillers.     

A Dioid Model for Invariant Resource Sharing Problems

This paper proposes a model for invariant resource sharing problems in dioid algebra. A strong motivation for investigating the issue is the absence of a general systematic technique which can be used to tackle these problems. (min, +) constraints have been developed to handle resource sharing in Discrete-Event Dynamic Systems. In particular, the part that can be modeled by a Timed Event Graph induce (min, +)-linear equations which are constrained by the resource availability. The proposed algebraic model has been proved to describe the actual behavior of the systems dealt with. This paper will show two examples of systems that are modeled and controlled by means of this approach.     

Engineered Multifunctional Albumin‐Decorated Porous Silicon Nanoparticles for FcRn Translocation of Insulin

The last decade has seen remarkable advances in the development of drug delivery systems as alternative to parenteral injection‐based delivery of insulin. Neonatal Fc receptor (FcRn)‐mediated transcytosis has been recently proposed as a strategy to increase the transport of drugs across the intestinal epithelium. FcRn‐targeted nanoparticles (NPs) could hijack the FcRn transcytotic pathway and cross the epithelial cell layer. In this study, a novel nanoparticulate system for insulin delivery based on porous silicon NPs is proposed. After surface conjugation with albumin and loading with insulin, the NPs are encapsulated into a pH‐responsive polymeric particle by nanoprecipitation. The developed NP formulation shows controlled size and homogeneous size distribution. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images show successful encapsulation of the NPs into pH‐sensitive polymeric particles. No insulin release is detected at acidic conditions, but a controlled release profile is observed at intestinal pH. Toxicity studies show high compatibility of the NPs with intestinal cells. In vitro insulin permeation across the intestinal epithelium shows approximately fivefold increase when insulin is loaded into FcRn‐targeted NPs. Overall, these FcRn‐targeted NPs offer a toolbox in the development of targeted therapies for oral delivery of insulin.     

Minimum‐variance control of astronomical adaptive optic systems with actuator dynamics under synchronous and asynchronous sampling

Adaptive optic (AO) systems are now routinely used in ground‐based telescopes to counter the effects of atmospheric turbulence. A deformable mirror (DM) generates a correction wavefront, which is subtracted from the turbulent wavefront using measurements of the residual phase provided by a wavefront sensor (WFS). Minimizing the variance of the residual phase defines a sampled data control problem combining a continuous time minimum‐variance (MV) performance criterion with a discrete‐time controller. For a fairly general class of linear time‐invariant DM and turbulence WFS models, this control problem can be transformed into an equivalent discrete‐time LQ optimization problem involving a set of (discrete‐time) control‐sufficient statistics of the incoming continuous‐time turbulence. This paper shows how to constructively solve this MV problem in the presence of DM's dynamics, starting from continuous‐time models of DM and turbulence. This result is extended to the case of asynchronous DM/WFS sampling. An illustrative application to optimal control of tip‐tilt turbulent modes for the European extremely large telescope in the presence of first‐order DM's dynamics is presented. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Transmission power and data rate aware routing on wireless networks

Wireless networks can vary both the transmission power and modulation of links. Existing routing protocols do not take transmission power control (TPC) and modulation adaptation (also known as rate adaptation – RA) into account at the same time, even though the performance of wireless networks can be significantly improved when routing algorithms use link characteristics to build their routes. This article proposes and evaluates extensions to routing protocols to cope with TPC and RA. The enhancements can be applied to any link state or distance vector routing protocols. An evaluation considering node density, node mobility and link error show that TPC- and RA-aware routing algorithms improve the average latency and the end-to-end throughput, while consuming less energy than traditional protocols.