Survey of the incident solar radiation in Brazil by use of meteosat satellite data

Meteosat-2 satellite data in the visible band were used to calculate monthly averages from daily mean incident solar radiation over Brazil, using the IGMK physical model for the period 1985–1986. Satellite estimates are compared with ground data from 22 national stations. The global root mean square error between model and ground results for all data points was 13%, and the mean bias error was 1.23 MJ m⁻². About 68% of the individual errors were below 10% and clustered around 8%. Global radiation estimated by the model ranged from 9.0 to 27 MJ m⁻² with the diffuse to global ratio falling into the 0.2–0.5 interval. Enhanced inverted zonal trends were found for both satellite predictions and the ground station results.     

Double trade-off curves with different cognitive processing combinations: testing the cancellation axiom of mental workload measurement theory.

The accomplishment model of average mental workload--a formal axiomatic measurement theory--was used as a basis for developing and testing secondary task indices of mental workload (H. A. Colle & G. B. Reid, 1997). Its cancellation axiom implies global sensitivity, which is an important theoretical and practical criterion for mental workload indices. Performance levels of different secondary tasks were empirically equated in mental workload and then used to test the cancellation axiom. Cognitive processing similarity--including orthographic, phonemic, and semantic processing of pairs of operator and secondary tasks--was manipulated in three experiments. Equivalencies between secondary tasks were independent of secondary-operator task similarity, consistent with the cancellation axiom and the global sensitivity of these secondary tasks. The results suggest that standardized secondary task techniques can be developed for the practical measurement of mental workload. Actual or potential applications of this research include the development of functionally useful and realistic secondary task measures of mental workload.     

Influence of GMPLS Recovery Mechanisms on TCP Performance

Optical networks based on wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) techniques are very likely to be omnipresent in future telecommunication networks. Those networks are deployed in order to face the steady growth of traffic, which is for a large part Internet related. In the resulting IP-over-WDM scenario, TCP/IP constitutes an important fraction of the traffic transported over these networks. As IP networks are becoming increasingly mission-critical, it is of the utmost importance that these networks (and hence the supporting transport networks) be able to recover quickly from failures such as cable breaks or equipment outages. To that end, several IP-over-WDM network scenarios and corresponding protection and restoration strategies have been devised. It is clear that some trade-offs will have to be made in order to choose an appropriate strategy. In this paper, we investigate the effects of such recovery actions on the behavior of TCP, being the ubiquitous protocol used by today's network users. We examine the influence of different parameters such as the speed of recovery actions, changing length of the routes followed by the client data (TCP flows), changes in available bandwidth, etc. Thereby, we focus on what the TCP end-users care about, i.e., the number of bytes transported end-to-end within a certain time interval.     

Intelligent optical networking for multilayer survivability

In recent years, telecommunication networks have faced explosive (IP) traffic growth. As traffic keeps growing, network reliability gains more and more importance. This article investigates to which extent switched connections and fast connection provisioning, typical for intelligent optical networks (IONs), can be used to provide resilience in an IP-over-optical multilayer network scenario. This solution, based on transport network flexibility, is compared with more traditional static multilayer resilience schemes in terms of cost (capacity) requirements and operational (dis)advantages     

Scalable architectures for all-optical label swapping nodes

All-Optical Label Swapping (AOLS) nodes are believed to be part of the future networks. The original node designs, however, are very hard scalable. This article presents three alternatives that swap labels analogous to the original design. Two of the proposed new switches use the same all-optical technology to parallelly compare labels but, they divide fibres in data wavelengths that only transport payloads and label wavelengths that only transport labels. The third design sequentially compares the incoming label with addresses in the node available in order to make the routing decision. All three architectures are compared in terms of hardware necessary to perform routing.

Nickel-catalysed carbon gasification: Crystallographic and magnetic studies

Nickel possesses high catalytic activity for steam gasification of carbon at 810K but shows rapid deactivation at 30–50% carbon conversion. In an attempt to understand the mode of deactivation, the crystallographic and magnetic properties of finely divided nickel particles on carbon were determined as a function of gasification conditions. X-ray analyses showed that nickel particles increased in crystallite size with carbon gasification. Magnetic studies related the observed ferromagnetic moment to crystallite size and the degree of metal reduction. Catalyst deactivation was shown to be partially due to crystallite growth and loss of nickel-carbon contact. Furthermore, catalyst activity was shown to be related to the presence of oxidized nickel species. Catalyst deactivation due to nickel oxide formation or carbon dissolution has been ruled out.     

Meat safety and quality: a biological approach

Safe, high-quality meat that is minimally processed, containing few added chemicals, is what is desired by the modern consumer. Biological approaches to meat safety appear more natural and, thus, are more readily acceptable. In this review, we examine biological approaches for meat safety and quality in the preharvest animal as well as during slaughter and in the post-harvest processing of the meat product. Biological components, including probiotics (Direct-Fed Microbials), vaccines, bacteriocins and lytic bacteriophage, are important components of a comprehensive approach to meat safety and quality.     

Multilayer traffic engineering for multiservice environments

Multilayer traffic engineering (MLTE) serves to provide cross-layer online network optimization techniques to cope with rapid variations and short-term evolutions in traffic patterns. MLTE extends traffic engineering as it exists in IP/MPLS-based technology toward the multilayer IP/MPLS-over-optical transport network. In addition to the IP/MPLS traffic routing, MLTE exposes much larger adaptation flexibility by building on next-generation automatic switched optical transport networks. These offer fast setup and teardown of end-to-end multi-hop optical connections (lightpaths), which are offered to the IP/MPLS layer as dynamically provisioned capacity. This dynamic nature leads to an IP/MPLS logical topology that can be reconfigured on the fly, and IP/MPLS link capacity that can be up- or downgraded as client traffic demand varies. These MLTE techniques are generally used to increase perceived network performance in terms of throughput or QoS. As such, a MLTE-managed network offers a better than best-effort service. Many types of traditional and novel services are shifting toward IP/MPLS technology. Consequentially, MLTE algorithms and strategies should be conceived with the characteristics of such services in mind. We present a MLTE strategy that can be implemented in a robust and distributed way. This strategy is then taken as the starting point in a study which evaluates its suitability to such services. We show how the strategy can be adapted considering service performance metrics such as end-to-end delay, traffic loss, and routing stability, and how such service optimizations impact general MLTE objectives such as IP/MPLS logical topology mesh size reduction.

Uncertainty in economical analysis of solar water heating and photovoltaic systems

This paper focuses on the statistical analysis of the energy fraction supplied by solar energy for solar water heating systems based on the f-chart method. An analysis is also presented for photovoltaic systems, where costs are linearly proportional to collector area. The uncertainty of the solar fraction is correlated with the monthly means of the global irradiation and the correlation coefficient between monthly means. Numerical examples for one location in Brazil and three locations in the United States are presented. These examples show that the uncertainty of the life cycle savings is significantly dependent on the uncertainty of the monthly means of the solar radiation data. The present analysis intends to provide a basic procedure that could be useful to make a straightforward feasibility analysis of a solar system. This is particularly interesting to evaluate the investment risk associated with photovoltaic plants, for which the capital costs are comparable to the advantages in saving electric energy from the utility grid under present scenarios in most places.