Hydrologic response of a watershed to land use changes: A remote sensing and GIS approach

In the arid and semi-arid tropics, low annual rainfall together with high intensity rains has resulted in excess runoff, soil erosion and low moisture intake leading to poor crop yields. Therefore, adoption of soil and water conservation measures is necessary for the optimal utilization of natural resources and to increase the productivity of land on a sustainable basis. Remote sensing and GIS techniques can be used for generating development plans for the watershed area in consonance with the production potential and limitation of terrain resources, and can also be used for assessing the impact of these measures before actual implementation in the field. This paper describes a case study for the Jasdan taluka (district) of Rajkot in Gujarat, India. The aims are to prioritize watersheds on the basis of runoff generated, expressed as yield, due to existing land use conditions; to suggest soil and water conservation measures; and to evaluate the hydrologic response of these measures on runoff. The Soil Conservation Service Curve Number (CN) method was used for computing the runoff; subsequently runoff yield in percentage was calculated for prioritizing the watersheds. Satellite and other collateral data were used to identify the problems and potential in the watersheds and recommend measures for soil and water conservation. The impact of these measures was assessed by computing runoff under alternative land use and management practices. It was found that the runoff yield decreased by 42.88% of the pre-conservation value for the watershed.     

Variability of sea surface salinity in the tropical Indian Ocean as inferred from Aquarius and in situ data sets

Sea surface salinity (SSS) is one of the key components of the Earth’s global water cycle. Reliable information on SSS is very important for ocean modelling, data assimilation, and ocean and climate research applications. In this study, SSS variability in the tropical Indian Ocean (TIO) was analysed using the Aquarius instrument on board the SAC-D satellite and in situ observations from the Research Moored Array for African–Asian–Australian Monsoon Analysis and Prediction (RAMA) buoys and Array for Real-Time Geostrophic Oceanography (ARGO) data sets for the period 2012–2013. Comparison of two recent versions (V2 and V3) of Aquarius-based SSS estimates to nine RAMA buoys on a daily timescale showed excellent mutual agreement. The systematic underestimation of SSS by satellite-based V2 products over the TIO shows a clear advantage for the new version product (V3). A larger root-mean-square error of the order of 0.50 psu in the satellite-based SSS was observed over the highly variable (larger standard deviation) Bay of Bengal region as compared with ARGO data sets. In the eastern equatorial Indian Ocean region, satellite-based SSS overestimated SSS below 34 psu and underestimated SSS of 34–35 psu as compared with ARGO data. However, the V3 SSS from Aquarius showed marginal improvement over V2 SSS. Monthly variation and fast Fourier analysis of the satellite-based SSS estimates are in reasonably good agreement with in situ observations which suggest that Aquarius is able to capture SSS variability in the TIO. The Aquarius-based V3 SSS showed a temporal autocorrelation of 0.6 over most parts of the TIO up to day 10, and decreased gradually with time. Overall analysis suggests that Aquarius-derived V3 SSS can detect variability in SSS satisfactorily in the TIO and is in reasonably good agreement with in situ observations.     

Graphics and imaging in medicine

To explore the evolving role graphics and imaging might play in medicine over the coming centuries, the author considers three scenarios of the future. These involve medical image processing, computer graphics and robotics     

Learning medicine through collaboration and action: collaborative,experiential, networked learning environments

The SUMMIT Lab and William LeRoy Heinrichs, at Stanford University, were honored to be the 2002 awardees of the Satava Award for Virtual Reality in Medicine. Since the award, the group has followed two main threads of research, which we describe below. The first, “building a high-performance, network-aware, collaborative learning environment” has investigated the framework and components needed when students in multiple locations collaborate using computation-intensive simulations and large image datasets. The second thread, “online, interactive human physiology for medical education and training”, has focused on the application of interactive physiology models embedded in 3D visualizations of virtual patients in naturalistic medical environments. These environments support immersive, experiential learning where students act as medical providers and manage authentic medical events and crises. These research efforts, and our conclusions, are presented in the chapter below.     

Semantic Sensor Web

Sensors are distributed across the globe leading to an avalanche of data about our environment. It is possible today to utilize networks of sensors to detect and identify a multitude of observations, from simple phenomena to complex events and situations. The lack of integration and communication between these networks, however, often isolates important data streams and intensifies the existing problem of too much data and not enough knowledge. With a view to addressing this problem, the Semantic Sensor Web (SSW) proposes that sensor data be annotated with semantic metadata that will both increase interoperability and provide contextual information essential for situational knowledge.     

Detection of moving objects in video using a robust motionsimilarity measure

This correspondence deals with the segmentation of a video clip into independently moving visual objects. This is an important step in structuring video data for storage in digital libraries. The method follows a bottom-up approach. The major contribution is a new well-founded measure for motion similarity leading to a robust method for merging regions. The improvements with respect to existing methods have been confirmed by experimental results.     

Performance of seven highway construction contracting methods analyzed by project size

The conventional Design-Bid-Build (DBB) construction contracting method has had various drawbacks exposed in highway construction practice, including lack of communication, inefficient design, antagonizing relationships, and increased disputes. To mitigate the negative aspects of DBB, several alternative contracting methods and alternative project delivery systems have been devised and introduced to the industry over the past 30 years. Five such innovations were tested by a research team from the University of Florida under the sponsorship of the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT). To perform a realistic assessment, this study categorized FDOT projects built between 2006 and 2015 into groups according to current contract amounts. Both absolute and relative metrics were defined and employed. For comparison purposes, a collective analysis on all gathered data was performed. Additionally, the influence of outliers on the results was examined. The results showed that analyses based on individual cost categories are more convincing because large projects tend to impose stronger influence on the analyses. In addition, outliers must be identified and screened to reach realistic and reliable conclusions. With regard to the actual performance of the contracting methods, each performs differently within different cost categories.     

2D and 3D Multiphysics Voronoi Cells,Based on Radial Basis Functions,for Direct Mesoscale Numerical Simulation (DMNS) of the Switching Phenomena in Ferroelectric Polycrystalline Materials

In this paper, 2D and 3D Multiphysics Voronoi Cells (MVCs) are developed, for the Direct Mesoscale Numerical Simulation (DMNS) of the switching phenomena in ferroelectric polycrystalline materials. These arbitrarily shaped MVCs (arbitrary polygons in 2D, and arbitrary polyhedrons in 3D with each face being an arbitrary polygon) are developed, based on assuming radial basis functions to represent the internal primal variables (mechanical displacements and electric potential), and assuming linear functions to represent the primal variables on the element boundaries. For the 3D case, the linear functions used to represent the primal variables on each of the polygonal surfaces of the polyhedral VCs are the Barycentric Washspress functions. The present 2D MVC is denoted as MVC-RBF, while the 3D MVC is denoted as MVC-RBF-W. Each MVC can represent a single grain or crystallite, with an irregular polygonal shape for the 2D case, and an irregular polyhedral shape for the 3D case. In this work, a nonlinear constitutive model is used to describe the evolution of volume fractions of the constitutive-variants in each grain, as the electric or mechanical loading changes. This constitutive model is based on satisfying a local dissipation inequality in each grain in the polycrystalline that yields the minimum Gibbs free energy in this grain. This requirement should always hold in order to be consistent with the second law of thermodynamics and is used to govern the switching process in each grain in each simulation step. Since the interaction between the grains during the loading cycles has a profound influence on the switching phenomena, it is important to simulate the grains with geometrical shapes that are similar to the real shapes of the grains as seen in the lab experiments. Hence the use of 3D MVCs, which allow for the presence of all the six variants of the constitutive relations, together with the randomly generated crystallographic axes in each grain (or MVC), as done in the present paper, is considered to be the most realistic analytical model that can be used for the direct mesoscale numerical simulation of polycrystalline ferroelectric materials.     

On Solving the Direct/Inverse Cauchy Problems of Laplace Equation in a Multiply Connected Domain,Using the Generalized Multiple-Source-Point Boundary-Collocation Trefftz Method &Characteristic Lengths

In this paper, a multiple-source-point boundary-collocation Trefftz method, with characteristic lengths being introduced in the basis functions, is proposed to solve the direct, as well as inverse Cauchy problems of the Laplace equation for a multiply connected domain. When a multiply connected domain with genus p (p>1) is considered, the conventional Trefftz method (T-Trefftz method) will fail since it allows only one source point, but the representation of solution using only one source point is impossible. We propose to relax this constraint by allowing many source points in the formulation. To set up a complete set of basis functions, we use the addition theorem of Bird and Steele (1992), to discuss how to correctly set up linearly-independent basis functions for each source point. In addition, we clearly explain the reason why using only one source point will fail, from a theoretical point of view, along with a numerical example. Several direct problems and inverse Cauchy problems are solved to check the validity of the proposed method. It is found that the present method can deal with both direct and inverse problems successfully. For inverse problems, the present method does not need to use any regularization technique, or the truncated singular value decomposition at all, since the use of a characteristic length can significantly reduce the ill-posed behavior. Here, the proposed method can be viewed as a general Trefftz method, since the conventional Trefftz method (T-Trefftz method) and the method of fundamental solutions (F-Trefftz method) can be considered as special cases of the presently proposed method.