Long-term trends in accumulated metals (Cd, Cu and Zn) and metallothionein in bivalves from lakes within a smelter-impacted region

Temporal monitoring studies are needed to detect long-term trends in ecosystem health. In the present study, we tested metallothionein (MT) as a potential biomarker for long-term variations in trace metal levels in lakes subject to atmospheric metal inputs from a nearby copper smelter. Over a 13-year period, we estimated on several occasions ambient free Cd2+, Cu2+ and Zn2+ concentrations at the sediment-water interface in six lakes with contrasting metal levels, and measured metal and metallothionein concentrations in gills of bivalves (Pyganodon grandis) living in these lakes. All but one of the study lakes had comparable drainage ratios, so inter-lake differences in hydrological export of metals from contaminated watersheds to receiving waters were likely minimal. Declines in the metal emissions from the smelter (especially for Cd and Zn) during the 1980s led to appreciable decreases in both calculated free Cd2+ ion concentrations in the study lakes (-59+/-21% between 1989 and 1998) and accumulated Cd levels in their clam populations (-46+/-12% between 1989 and 2002). Taking all lakes into account, MT concentrations in bivalves have comparatively dropped by 44% (+/-10%) since 1989. In contrast to what we found for Cd, there were no significant reductions in the calculated free Cu2+ and Zn2+ concentrations in the various lakes during our study period (-2 and -10%, respectively, with 95% confidence intervals spanning zero). Overall, observed decreases in MT in bivalves over time were best correlated with similar decreases in both ambient and accumulated Cd levels (r = 0.77, P = 0.0003 and r = 0.79, P < 0.0001, respectively, both P-values corrected for temporal autocorrelation), suggesting that long-term trends in gill MT concentrations in P. grandis may be useful as predictors of temporal changes in environmental Cd contamination in lakes.     

DataLab-J: a signal and image processing laboratory for teachingand research

DataLab-J is a software signal and image processing laboratory which has proved effective both as an educational "workbench" and in practical operational use. It requires a pedagogical tool, a research environment, and a fully operational data analysis system, i.e., it is used not only in undergraduate engineering courses, but in graduate study and general research. The system must be easily extendable, e.g., to allow undergraduates to perform practical programming of standard digital filters and image processing algorithms, or to provide a realistic platform upon which novel algorithms can be implemented. On a further dimension, the system must handle seamlessly and efficiently three broad data types: digital signals (sequences), images (possibly multiband), and multivariate data sets. The system is implemented in the programming language Java. DataLab-J has been operational for four years, has been used in an undergraduate image processing course, and as a platform for a great many dissertation projects. In addition it is in everyday use within a university signal and image processing research group     

Waveguide In0.53Ga0.47As-In0.52Al0.48As avalanche photodiode

A high-speed waveguide In_0.53Ga_0.47As-In_0.52Al_0.48 As separate absorption, charge, and multiplication avalanche photodiode suitable for operation at 1.55 μm has been demonstrated, a unity-gain bandwidth of 27 GHz was achieved with a gain-bandwidth product of 120 GHz     

Pricing, provisioning and peering: dynamic markets fordifferentiated Internet services and implications for networkinterconnections

This paper presents a decentralized auction-based approach to pricing of edge-allocated bandwidth in a differentiated services Internet. The players in our network economy model are one raw-capacity seller per network, one broker per service per network, and users, to play the roles of whole-sellers, retailers, and end-buyers, respectively, in a two-tier wholeseller/retailer market, which is best interpreted as a “sender-pay” model. With the progressive second price auction mechanism as the basic building block, we conduct a game theoretic analysis, deriving optimal strategies for buyers and brokers, and show the existence of networkwide market equilibria. In addition to pricing, another key consideration in building differentiated network services is the feasibility of maintaining stable and consistent service level agreements across multiple networks where demand-driven dynamic allocations are made only at the edges. Based on the proposed game-theoretic model, we are able to construct an explicit necessary and sufficient condition for the stability of the game, which determines the sustainability of any set of service level agreement configurations between Internet service providers. These analytical results are validated with simulations of user and broker dynamics, using the distributed progressive second price auction as the spot market mechanism in a scenario with three interconnected networks, and two services based on the proposed standard expedited forwarding and assured forwarding per-hop behavior     

The influence of a seated break on prolonged standing induced low back pain development

With the recent attention to ‘sitting disease’, health practitioners and scientists are promoting standing in the workplace to decrease sedentary time, despite a high prevalence of low back pain (LBP) development during prolonged standing. The purpose of this study was to assess how a seated break inserted between bouts of prolonged standing would influence LBP development, posture and movement. A total of 20 participants stood for 45 minutes, sat for 15 minutes and repeated this sequence while lumbar and thoracic angles were measured, and LBP visual analogue scale reports were taken. Of the sample, 55% participants reported LBP in standing. A stand to sit ratio of 3:1 did not provide lasting recovery of LBP from standing and pain developers utilised a limited range of their lumbar spine angle and increased thoracic extension, resulting in static postures that caused tissue aggravation that was not resolved after 15 minutes of sitting. Prolonged standing in the workplace has the potential to result in LBP for some workers and alternate ways to reduce sedentary time should be investigated.     

Auxiliary signal design for robust active fault detection of linear discrete-time systems

In this paper, algorithms are proposed to design auxiliary signals for active fault detection based on a multi-model formulation of discrete-time systems. Two different scenarios are considered for this problem; the first one assumes there is no a priori information on initial conditions and no exogenous input signal, while the second allows for having a priori information and the possibility of having a known input in addition to the test signal. Approaches are proposed for solving these two types of problems which are capable of solving the problems efficiently. This is achieved by using a recursive approach based on the use of special Riccati equations. These algorithms can be used for systems of higher dimension and on longer time horizons than the existing methods.