Examination of space-based bulk atmospheric temperatures used in climate research

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment Report 5 (IPCC AR5, 2013) discussed bulk atmospheric temperatures as indicators of climate variability and change. We examine four satellite datasets producing bulk tropospheric temperatures, based on microwave sounding units (MSUs), all updated since IPCC AR5. All datasets produce high correlations of anomalies versus independent observations from radiosondes (balloons), but differ somewhat in the metric of most interest, the linear trend beginning in 1979. The trend is an indicator of the response of the climate system to rising greenhouse gas concentrations and other forcings, and so is critical to understanding the climate. The satellite results indicate a range of near-global (+0.07 to +0.13°C decade^?1) and tropical (+0.08 to +0.17°C decade^?1) trends (1979–2016), and suggestions are presented to account for these differences. We show evidence that MSUs on National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s satellites (NOAA-12 and ?14, 1990–2001+) contain spurious warming, especially noticeable in three of the four satellite datasets.

Comparisons with radiosonde datasets independently adjusted for inhomogeneities and Reanalyses suggest the actual tropical (20°S-20°N) trend is +0.10 ± 0.03°C decade^?1. This tropical result is over a factor of two less than the trend projected from the average of the IPCC climate model simulations for this same period (+0.27°C decade^?1).     

Minimum required angular resolution of smartphone displays for the human visual system

There has been a rapid increase in the resolution of small‐sized and medium‐sized displays. This study determines an upper discernible limit for display resolution. A range of resolutions varying from 254–1016 PPI were evaluated using simulated display by 49 subjects at 300 mm viewing distance. The results of the study conclusively show that users can discriminate between 339 and 508 PPI and in many cases between 508 and 1016 PPI.     

Exploiting Batch Processing on Streaming Architectures to Solve 2D Elliptic Finite Element Problems: A Hybridized Discontinuous Galerkin (HDG) Case Study

Numerical methods for elliptic partial differential equations (PDEs) within both continuous and hybridized discontinuous Galerkin (HDG) frameworks share the same general structure: local (elemental) matrix generation followed by a global linear system assembly and solve. The lack of inter-element communication and easily parallelizable nature of the local matrix generation stage coupled with the parallelization techniques developed for the linear system solvers make a numerical scheme for elliptic PDEs a good candidate for implementation on streaming architectures such as modern graphical processing units (GPUs). We propose an algorithmic pipeline for mapping an elliptic finite element method to the GPU and perform a case study for a particular method within the HDG framework. This study provides comparison between CPU and GPU implementations of the method as well as highlights certain performance-crucial implementation details. The choice of the HDG method for the case study was dictated by the computationally-heavy local matrix generation stage as well as the reduced trace-based communication pattern, which together make the method amenable to the fine-grained parallelism of GPUs. We demonstrate that the HDG method is well-suited for GPU implementation, obtaining total speedups on the order of 30–35 times over a serial CPU implementation for moderately sized problems.     

Reference Monitor Technology: Watching Your Every Keystroke

ABSTRACT

In modern electronic communication, ensuring security during transferring of data is crucial. Digital steganography is the technique that ensures the same, in which any secret data is hidden into the cover mediums such as images, audio or video files. Resistance to removal and invisibility of hidden data are the two important requirements of any steganographic system. This paper proposes a new approach to hide any secret data in images. Also, this paper proposes a new approach which hides an executable file in images. The executable files we have considered are Windows PE (Portable-Executable) files. Moreover from the experimental results, it is proven that the proposed approach is suitable for hiding all type of digital files including exe files. Also, comparing with the existing approaches, this approach shows better performance.     

Exploring album structure for face recognition in online social networks

In this paper, we propose an album-oriented face-recognition model that exploits the album structure for face recognition in online social networks. Albums, usually associated with pictures of a small group of people at a certain event or occasion, provide vital information that can be used to effectively reduce the possible list of candidate labels. We show how this intuition can be formalized into a model that expresses a prior on how albums tend to have many pictures of a small number of people. We also show how it can be extended to include other information available in a social network. Using two real-world datasets independently drawn from Facebook, we show that this model is broadly applicable and can significantly improve recognition rates.     

Thermal behavior of quasiparticles in3He-B

We describe experiments on the transport of heat within a cell cooled by nuclear demagnetization of copper and containing³He-B at temperatures between 0.1 and 0.4 T_C. Within the bulk liquid helium, heat is transported by ballistic quasiparticles. In this case the conventional concept of boundary resistance is not applicable to the analysis of the heat exchange between refrigerant and³He. Rather, the cell geometry plays the important role. A thermal breakthrough in the cell is observed under conditions of heat flow large enough that the spin-lattice Korringa link to the copper refrigerant nuclei becomes saturated. At this point the lattice temperature rises, allowing heat to be transferred rapidly around the cell within the copper lattice, short-circuiting the liquid helium. We develop a simple model of heat transfer by ballistic quasiparticles which describes well the principal experimental features.     

Design and testing of the JPL‐Nautilus Gripper for deep‐ocean geological sampling

We present the design and experimental results for the JPL‐Nautilus Gripper, a 16‐finger highly underactuated microspine gripper for use in the deep ocean. The gripper can grasp objects from 10 to 30 cm in size and anchor to flat and curved rocky surfaces (i.e., cliff faces and seamounts). Laboratory results demonstrated an anchoring capability of greater than 450 N on rough rocks in both shear and normal loading directions. Deployment on the Hercules ROV (remotely operated vehicle) aboard the E/V Nautilus on three deep‐ocean dives verified performance at depths up to to 2,100 m with approximately 100 N loads applied through the ROV's thrusters, including moment loads. The gripper also serves as a development unit for future robotic tools that will include a coring drill in the center of the gripper, as previously demonstrated in non‐ocean environments with microspine grippers. Such a tool will facilitate the collection of geologic samples from the deep ocean using more agile and cost‐effective systems.     

Impact of DEM accuracy and resolution on topographic indices

Topography is an important land-surface characteristic that affects most aspects of the water balance in a catchment, including the generation of surface and sub-surface runoff; the flow paths followed by water as it moves down and through hillslopes and the rate of water movement. All of the spatially explicit fully distributed hydraulic and hydrological models use topography (represented by the DEM of the area modelled) to derive bathymetry. DEM is also used to derive some other key information critical in fully distributed hydraulic and hydrological models.With high-resolution DEMs such as LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) becoming more readily available and also with the advancements in computing facilities which can handle these large data sets, there is a need to quantify the impact of using different resolution DEMs (e.g. 1 m against 10 m or 25 m) on hydrologically important variables and the loss of accuracy and reliability of the results as we move from high resolution to coarser resolution.The results from statistical analysis carried out to compare field survey elevations with the LiDAR DEM-derived elevations, show that there are small differences between the two data sets but LiDAR DEM is a reasonably good representation of the actual ground surface compared to other commonly used DEMs derived from contour maps.The results from the analysis clearly show that the accuracy and resolution of the input DEM have serious implications on the values of the hydrologically important spatial indices derived from the DEM. The result also indicates that the loss of details by re-sampling the higher resolution DEM to coarser resolution are much less compared to the details captured in the commonly available coarse resolution DEM derived from contour maps. Topographic indices based on contour derived DEMs should be used with caution and where available, the higher resolution DEM should be used instead of the coarse resolution one.     

Evenly Spaced Streamlines for Surfaces: An Image-Based Approach

We introduce a novel, automatic streamline seeding algorithm for vector fields defined on surfaces in 3D space. The algorithm generates evenly spaced streamlines fast, simply and efficiently for any general surface-based vector field. It is general because it handles large, complex, unstructured, adaptive resolution grids with holes and discontinuities, does not require a parametrization, and can generate both sparse and dense representations of the flow. It is efficient because streamlines are only integrated for visible portions of the surface. It is simple because the image-based approach removes the need to perform streamline tracing on a triangular mesh, a process which is complicated at best. And it is fast because it makes effective, balanced use of both the CPU and the GPU. The key to the algorithm's speed, simplicity and efficiency is its image-based seeding strategy. We demonstrate our algorithm on complex, real-world simulation data sets from computational fluid dynamics and compare it with object-space streamline visualizations.     

INTERFACIAL MODIFICATION IN METAL MATRIX COMPOSITES BY THE SOL-GEL PROCESS

Detailed examination of thermodynamic and kinetic data suggest that it should be possible to develop an interfacial barrier coating which promotes wetting of metal matrix composite reinforcements, while simultaneously reducing deleterious interfacial chemical interactions. The current study has examined the feasibility of developing a procedure to coat graphite reinforcements with a thin, crack-free, protective oxide layer. Emphasis in this investigation being placed on sol-gel, TiO₂, coated PAN 650/42 graphite for inclusion in an aluminum metal matrix. Initially, the effect of the sol-gel composition and coating procedure on the coating uniformity, structure, and thickness were investigated. These procedures were then utilized for graphite fiber coating, with the coated fiber preforms being subsequently infiltrated by pure liquid aluminum. Energy dispersive x-ray analysis, optical and transmission electron microscopy confirmed that no reaction occurred at the TiO₂ -C interface, while chemical wetting and formation of a mixed (Al, Ti)O₂ oxide occurred at the TiO₂-Al interface.