Drought Severity Assessment Based on Bivariate Probability Analysis

Conventionally drought severity is assessed based on drought indices. Recently the Reconnaissance Drought Index (RDI) was proposed to assess drought severity based on the precipitation to potential evapotranspiration ratio (P/PET). In this paper RDI is studied as a bivariate index under a set of assumptions and simplifications. The paper presents a simple computational procedure for estimating the P/PET ratio for selected reference periods varying from 3 to 12 months, for any return period of drought. Alternatively, based on this procedure, the severity of any drought episode is rationally assessed. A bivariate probability analysis is employed based on the assumption that P and PET values are normally distributed and often negatively correlated. Examples for the application of the proposed procedure are presented using data from several meteorological stations in Greece. It is shown that the assumption of normality of both P and PET holds for long periods at all examined stations.     

Notions of exponential robust stochastic stability,ISS and their Lyapunov characterizations

Concepts of exponential global robust stability for stochastic control systems are analysed in terms of Lyapunov functions. The main result of the paper constitutes a generalization of a converse stability theorem due to Khasminskii for stochastic differential equations and establishes that, under certain hypotheses, the origin is robustly exponentially stable in the rth mean, if and only if the system admits a Lyapunov function which is smooth except possibly at the origin. The main result concerning robust asymptotic stability enable us to derive a Lyapunov‐like characterization for the concept of stochastic input‐to‐state stability (ISS). Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Prebiotic potential of barley derived β-glucan at low intake levels: A randomised,double-blinded,placebo-controlled clinical study

This randomised, double-blinded, placebo-controlled clinical study aimed to evaluate the in vivo prebiotic potential of barley β-glucan. Fifty-two healthy volunteers aged 39–70 years were randomly assigned to consume daily a cake containing 0.75 g of barley β-glucan or a placebo for 30 d. Stool samples were collected before, during and 2 weeks after the intervention for bacterial enumeration. Gastrointestinal side effects were recorded during the treatment period. In older subjects (?50 years old), barley β-glucan induced a strong bifidogenic effect and an increase of bifidobacteria into traceable range in cases of no detectable baseline levels. A concurrent significant increase in bacteroides was also observed in this age group. Ingestion of the experimental food resulted in no undesirable gastrointestinal side effects in older subjects. We concluded that the daily intake of a cake containing barley β-glucan is well-tolerated and demonstrated significant bifidogenic properties in older healthy volunteers consuming their usual diets.     

The Role of Leptin in Childhood Immune Thrombocytopenia (ITP): An Anti-Inflammatory Agent?

To investigate the effect of leptin in childhood ITP, we measured plasma leptin in 39 children with acute ITP, after treatment and in remission, and in 33 healthy age/BMI-matched controls. We also cultured ITP and control peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) with recombinant leptin to assess its direct effect on pro/anti-inflammatory cytokine gene expression. A significant increase in leptin was observed in children with active disease compared to controls. A significant inverse correlation of leptin with platelet count was also observed in children with acute ITP. Leptin remained high after treatment with IVIg, whereas steroid treatment lowered leptin below control levels. In remission, leptin was in the control range. Cytokine gene expression was significantly increased in children with acute ITP compared with controls, with highest expression for IFN-γ and IL-10. IVIg/steroid treatment significantly decreased IFN-γ and IL-10 expression. In remission, IFN-γ and IL-10 expression remained low. Addition of leptin to PBMCs isolated from patients in remission resulted in a significant increase in IL-10 gene expression compared to controls. Further experiments with purified T-cells and monocytes identified monocytes as the source of leptin-induced IL-10. We suggest that leptin acts as an active anti-inflammatory agent in childhood ITP by promoting IL-10 secretion by monocytes.     

Water Distribution System Analysis: Newton-Raphson Method Revisited

Looped water distribution systems are conventionally analyzed using iterative methods such as Cross, Linear, Newton-Raphson, and Gradient algorithm methods. Depending on the unknown (hydraulic head or discharge), the methods are characterized as h or Q methods. This paper focuses on the h-Newton-Raphson method, which uses the Darcy-Weisbach head loss equation. The paper presents a procedure for improving the h-Newton-Raphson iterative procedure by directly calculating the discharge of each branch by using the Swamee and Jain equation. The proposed procedure leads to a simplified algorithm and more accurate determination of the Jacobian matrix, which accelerates the convergence of the algorithm.     

Dam- Breach Hydrograph Modelling: An Innovative Semi- Analytical Approach

The delineation of the areas exposed to flood hazard caused by a dam existence upstream and its possible failure needs a thorough analysis of the hypothetical dam break incident. The study presented in this paper focusses on the simulation of the dam breach formation and the calculation of the resulting outflow hydrograph using a semi- analytical approach. More specifically the method presented addresses the dam break incident of an embankment dam caused by overtopping. The analysis is based on the assumptions of constant vertical erosion rate for the formation of the breach and the parabolic shape of the breach. Two solutions are presented dependent on whether the capacity of the reservoir is considered prismatic or it is a power function of the water depth in the reservoir. Finally the proposed method is illustrated through the analysis of a hypothetical dam break incident.     

Nonlinear Galerkin methods for a system of PDEs with Turing instabilities

We address and discuss the application of nonlinear Galerkin methods for the model reduction and numerical solution of partial differential equations (PDE) with Turing instabilities in comparison with standard (linear) Galerkin methods. The model considered is a system of PDEs modelling the pattern formation in vegetation dynamics. In particular, by constructing the approximate inertial manifold on the basis of the spectral decomposition of the solution, we implement the so-called Euler–Galerkin method and we compare its efficiency and accuracy versus the linear Galerkin methods. We compare the efficiency of the methods by (a) the accuracy of the computed bifurcation points, and, (b) by the computation of the Hausdorff distance between the limit sets obtained by the Galerkin methods and the ones obtained with a reference finite difference scheme. The efficiency with respect to the required CPU time is also accessed. For our illustrations we used three different ODE time integrators, from the Matlab ODE suite. Our results indicate that the performance of the Euler–Galerkin method is superior compared to the linear Galerkin method when either explicit or linearly implicit time integration scheme are adopted. For the particular problem considered, we found that the dimension of approximate inertial manifold is strongly affected by the lenght of the spatial domain. Indeeed, we show that the number of modes required to accurately describe the long time Turing pattern forming solutions increases as the domain increases.     

Parameterized real-time moment computation on gray images using block techniques

Moments constitute a well-known tool in the field of image analysis and pattern recognition, but they suffer from the drawback of high computational cost. Efforts for the reduction of the required computational complexity have been reported, mainly focused on binary images, but recently some approaches for gray images have been also presented. In this study, we propose a simple but effective approach for the computation of gray image moments. The gray image is decomposed in a set of binary images. Some of these binary images are substituted by an ideal image, which is called “half-intensity” image. The remaining binary images are represented using the image block representation concept and their moments are computed fast using block techniques. The proposed method computes approximated moment values with an error of 2–3% from the exact values and operates in real time (i.e., video rate). The procedure is parameterized by the number m of “half-intensity” images used, which controls the approximation error and the speed gain of the method. The computational complexity is O(kL ²), where k is the number of blocks and L is the moment order.     

Fast algorithms for basic processing and analysis operations on block-represented binary images

This paper describes a binary image representation scheme, called Image Block Representation and presents new algorithms for a number of basic binary image processing and analysis operations, which are rapidly implemented on block-represented binary images. The main purpose of the Image Block Representation is to provide an efficient binary image representation that permits the execution of operations on image areas instead of image points.     

Fracture Characteristics of Fatigue Failure of a Vehicle’s Ductile Iron Steering Knuckle

The steering knuckle, being a part of the vehicle’s steering and suspension system, undergoes time-varying loading during its service life. Since it is connected to the steering parts and strut assembly from one side and the wheel hub assembly from the other, it has complex restraint and constraint conditions and tolerates a combination of loads. In addition, parameters such as internal defects, stress concentrations and gradients, surface finish, and residual stresses can have considerable influence while designing for fatigue. A vehicle with a 2.500 cm³ (2.5 L) volume engine was being driven during a rainy day in a congested road at a speed of about 10 km/h, when suddenly the vehicle lost its orientation and crushed over a parked vehicle on the right side of the road without any human injury. The driver insisted that he heard an intense noise of a metal undergoing rupture from the front right side of the vehicle’s suspension system and immediately lost control of the vehicle. The producing company of the vehicle on the other hand, after on-site visual inspection, came to the conclusion that due to the driver’s error the vehicle turned to the right and as a consequence of the crash the steering knuckle was broken into two parts. Failure analysis conducted as presented in this article reveals the mechanism of fracture mainly due to bending fatigue.