Damage to seagrass and seaweed beds in Matsushima Bay,Japan, caused by the huge tsunami of the Great East Japan Earthquake on 11 March 2011

Damage to seagrass and seaweed beds caused by the huge tsunami of the Great East Japan Earthquake on 11 March 2011 was investigated in Matsushima Bay, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan, by comparing satellite images taken before the tsunami in November 2009 and after the tsunami in May 2011. The results showed that the tsunami destroyed 220 ha of seagrass and seaweed beds, from 320 ha in 2009 to 100 ha just after the tsunami. Zostera marina beds on the sandy and muddy bottom were rather severely damaged compared with brown seaweed beds of Sargassum horneri on the rocky substrate. Substrates of the beds and directions of the tsunami seem to be responsible for the magnitude of the damage to the beds. Maps of the spatial distributions of the beds before and after the tsunami can provide information for the restoration of seagrass and seaweed beds as natural infrastructures of coastal fisheries resources.     

A wide view auto‐stereoscopic 3D display with an eye‐tracking system for enhanced horizontal viewing position and viewing distance

This paper describes the development of auto‐stereoscopic three‐dimensional (3D) display with an eye‐tracking system for not only the X‐axis (right–left) and Y‐axis (up–down) plane directions but also the Z‐axis (forward–backward) direction. In the past, the eye‐tracking 3D system for the XY‐axes plane directions that we had developed had a narrow 3D viewing space in the Z‐axis direction because of occurrence of 3D crosstalk variation on screen. The 3D crosstalk variation on screen was occurred when the viewer's eye position moved back and forth along the Z‐axis direction. The reason was that the liquid crystal (LC) barrier pitch was fixed and the LC barrier was able to control the only barrier aperture position. To solve this problem, we developed the LC barrier that is able to control the barrier pitch as well as the barrier aperture position in real time, corresponding to the viewer's eye position. As a result, the 3D viewing space has achieved to expand up to 320–1016 mm from the display surface in the Z‐axis direction and within a range of ±267 mm in the X‐axis direction. In terms of the Y‐axis direction, the viewing space is not necessary to be considered, because of a stripe‐shaped parallax barrier.     

Scalable and portable implementation of the fast multipole method on parallel computers

A scalable and portable Fortran code is developed to calculate Coulomb interaction potentials of charged particles on parallel computers, based on the fast multipole method. The code has a unique feature to calculate microscopic stress tensors due to the Coulomb interactions, which is useful in constant-pressure simulations and local stress analyses. The code is applicable to various boundary conditions, including periodic boundary conditions in two and three dimensions, corresponding to slab and bulk systems, respectively. Numerical accuracy of the code is tested through comparison of its results with those obtained by the Ewald summation method and by direct calculations. Scalability tests show the parallel efficiency of 0.98 for 512 million charged particles on 512 IBM SP3 processors. The timing results on IBM SP3 are also compared with those on IBM SP4.     

Two dimensional shape optimization using partial control and finite element method for compressible flows

The objective of this study is to determine the two dimensional shape of a body located in a compressible viscous flow, where the applied fluid force is minimized. The formulation to obtain the optimal shape is based on an optimal control theory. An optimal state is defined as a state, in which the performance function defined as the integration of the square sum of the applied fluid forces is minimized due to a reduction in the applied fluid forces. Compressible Navier–Stokes equations are treated as constraint equations. In other words, the body is considered to have a shape that minimizes the fluid forces under the constraint of the Navier–Stokes equations. The gradient of the performance function is computed using the adjoint variables. A weighted gradient method is used as the minimization algorithm. The volume of the body is assumed to be the same as that of the initial body. In the case of the algorithm used in this study, both the creation of a structured mesh around the surface of the body and the smoothing procedure are employed for the computation of gradient. In this study, a remeshing technique based on the structured mesh around the body changing its configuration in the iteration cycle is employed. For the correction to keep the volume constant, the surface coordinates are moved along the radial direction. For the discretization of both the state and adjoint equations, the efficient bubble function interpolation presented previously by the authors [18] is employed. The algorithm, which is known as the partial control algorithm, is applied to the numerical procedure to determine the movement of the coordinates. In the case of the gradient method, in order to avoid the convergence of the final shape to the local minimum shape, the new algorithm, which is called the partial control algorithm, is presented in this study. In numerical studies, the shape determination of a body in a uniform flow field is carried out in 2D domains. The initial shape of the body is assumed to be an elliptical cylinder. The shape is modified by minimizing the applied fluid forces. Finally, the desired shape of a body, whose performance function is reduced and converged to a constant value, is obtained. By carrying out a procedure that involves the use of the partial control algorithm, the desired shape of a body, whose performance function is reduced further, is obtained. Stable shape determination of a body in a compressible viscous flow is carried out by using the presented method. It is indicated that the optimal shape can be obtained by using the partial control algorithm.     

Cultural variation in the use of current life satisfaction to predict the future.

Three studies examined cultural and situational influences on the tendency for people to use their current life satisfaction to predict future life events. On the basis of the self-enhancement literature, it was predicted that either writing about a positive personal experience or reading about another's negative experience would lead European Americans to focus their attention on internal attributes and thus would lead them to use their current life satisfaction in predicting the future. Conversely, on the basis of the self-criticism literature, it was predicted that these same conditions would lead Asian Americans to focus their attention on external factors and, therefore, would decrease their likelihood of using their current life satisfaction to predict the future. Studies 1 and 2 supported these hypotheses. Study 3 showed that these patterns could be obtained by subliminally priming concepts associated with individualism and collectivism. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Residential mobility, self-concept, and positive affect in social interactions.

The present research examined (a) the link between personal history of residential mobility and the self-concept and (b) the implications of such a link for positive affect in social interactions. Study 1 showed that the personal self was more central to the self-definition of frequent movers than to that of nonmovers, whereas the collective self was more central to the self-definition of nonmovers than to that of frequent movers. Results from a laboratory and a 2-week event sampling study (Studies 2 and 3) demonstrated that frequent movers felt happier when an interaction partner accurately perceived their personal selves, whereas nonmovers felt happier when a partner accurately perceived their collective selves. These findings present the first direct evidence on how personal history of residential mobility is linked to important individual differences in the self and positive affect in social interactions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The dynamics of daily events and well-being across cultures: When less is more.

The authors examined cultural and individual differences in the relation between daily events and daily satisfaction. In a preliminary study, they established cross-cultural equivalence of 50 daily events. In the main study, participants in the United States, Korea, and Japan completed daily surveys on the 50 events and daily satisfaction for 21 days. The multilevel random coefficient model analyses showed that (a) the within-person association between positive events and daily satisfaction was significantly stronger among Asian American, Korean, and Japanese participants than among European American participants and (b) the within-person association between positive events and daily satisfaction was significantly weaker among individuals high in global life satisfaction than among those low in global life satisfaction. The findings demonstrate a weaker effect of positive events on daily well-being among individuals and cultures high in global well-being. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A numerical model-assisted experimental design study of inertia-based particle focusing in stepped microchannels

Focusing methods based on fluid inertia have been demonstrated to be able to concentrate particles with a high precision and predictability offering great potential for practical application as manipulation of bodily fluids as blood for clinical diagnostics. However, to perform focusing to one single position at the center location of a channel with high focusing quality on the one hand and low pressure losses and shear stresses on the other hand still is a challenge in microchannel design. Three different stepped microchannels are analyzed via bright-field microscopy to investigate the impact of various geometric parameters on the focusing behavior of spherical particles. Reynolds numbers within a range of \( 8 \le Re \le 75\) are measured to evaluate the impact of flow conditions on the focusing characteristics. The microchannels show the ability to focus particles to a single stream with a maximum focusing efficiency of 97.1\(\%\) and purity of 99.1\(\%\). The focusing strongly depends on the channel geometry, that is, step length, step height, and settling length. A semiempirical model is developed to predict force-induced focusing ability at maximum shear stresses that are reduced significantly compared to previous systems. This model is demonstrated to be in very good agreement with experimental results and therefore can be utilized for future device design. Finally, guidelines for the design of stepped single-stream focusing devices at low pressure losses and low maximum shear stresses are derived based on experimental, numerical, and semiempirical data.     

A new Landsat 8 cloud discrimination algorithm using thresholding tests

ABSTRACT

In this work, we propose a Cloud Discrimination Algorithm for Landsat 8 (CDAL8) to improve a high-frequency automatic land change detection system developed at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Japan for large-scale satellite image analysis. Although the land change detection system can process several kinds of satellite remote sensing data, improvements are needed to enable practical applications using Landsat 8 data. Cloud discrimination is a necessary pre-processing step for land cover change detection. Currently, most of the prediction errors on land change detection are caused by the false cloud discrimination results as a pre-processing step. Therefore, we introduce an improved cloud discrimination algorithm (CDAL8) in this study to improve the overall performance of our land change detection system. The algorithm was developed based on a Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) cloud mask algorithm and Cloud and Aerosol Unbiased Decision Intellectual Algorithm (CLAUDIA). CDAL8 is distinct in that it switches judgment tests and their thresholds using a threshold brightness temperature and uses separate features in cloud judgment and clear-sky judgment. To evaluate the accuracy of the proposed algorithm, we compared it with the Automated Cloud-Cover Assessment algorithm (ACCA) and Function of Mask (Fmask) version 3.3 using US Geological Survey Landsat 8 cloud cover assessment validation data, which contain 96 cloud masks. Our proposed cloud discrimination algorithm (CDAL8) have promising results with an accuracy of 88.1%, which was greater than that of the ACCA (82.5%) and Fmask (84.6%). Furthermore, we also confirmed that the average accuracy of CDAL8 was approximately 91.2% when low solar elevation scenes were removed.