Impacts of a marine fish farm in Argolikos Gulf (Greece) on the water column and the sediment

The aim of this study was the qualitative and quantitative assessment of impacts on the physicochemical characteristics of the water column and the sediment caused by an intensive marine fish farm. The study area was the Plateia Island which is located in an open seawater area in the outer part of Argolikos Gulf (Northeastern Peloponnese, Greece). The particular plant has been in operation since 1988, producing about 350-400 tons per year of Gilthead seabream (Sparus auratus) and European seabass (Dicentrarchus labrax). The samples were taken on a three-season period started in August 2001 and ended in May 2002. During this study, the main physical and geochemical parameters on the water column and the sediment were investigated. Specifically, the parameters that were measured included: ammonium-nitrogen, phosphate and suspended solids in the water column and organic matter, organic carbon, and phosphorus (total and inorganic) in the sediment samples. The conclusions drawn from this work clearly verify that the most important impacts, mainly identified as increased nutrients and organics concentrations both in the water column and the sediment, were realized at the stations closest to the farm. These concentrations gradually decreased with increasing distance from the cages. The peak values in most of the parameters measured were obtained during summer or spring. However, it has to be mentioned that although the measured concentrations clearly depict the influence of the fish farm especially on the sediment, their values were, in general, considerably lower than those reported in relative studies in Greek fish farms.     

Trends in low flows of German rivers since 1950: Comparability of different low‐flow indicators and their spatial patterns

Climate change, land‐use shifts, reservoir storage, and water withdrawals impact low flows in rivers, creating challenges for ecological integrity and human uses. A systematic investigation of river discharges was carried out for 79 stream gauges in Germany. Available time series between 1950 and 2013 were analysed for trends in annual minimum low flows, discharge deficits, and low‐flow durations. The application of different low‐flow indicators led to similar spatial patterns, although each metric is used for different purposes in water management applications. Statistical tests identified significant discharge trends at more than half of the stations investigated. Low‐flow trends since 1950 tended to be catchment specific, suggesting that climate change has not been the dominant driver. Most of the gauges investigated showed statistically significant increases in low flows. This can be mainly attributed to reservoir management. For rivers showing snow‐ and icemelt‐dominated flow regimes, such trends are probably overlain by climate‐driven changes (increasing amounts of rainfall, earlier snowmelt in spring). In contrast, stations showing statistically significant decreases in low flows were correlated with areas of decreasing mining activity. Hydrologic impacts of climate change are widespread and significant, but the results here suggest that human river management remains the dominant hydrologic driver on many rivers.     

Stability analysis of bilinear systems under aperiodic sampled-data control

This note considers the problem of local stability of bilinear systems with aperiodic sampled-data linear state feedback control. The sampling intervals are time-varying and upper bounded. It is shown that the feasibility of some linear matrix inequalities (LMIs), implies the local asymptotic stability of the sampled-data system in an ellipsoidal region containing the equilibrium. The method is based on the analysis of contractive invariant sets, and it is inspired by the dissipativity theory. The results are illustrated by means of numerical examples.     

Local artificial boundary conditions for Schrödinger and heat equations by using high-order azimuth derivatives on circular artificial boundary

The aim of the paper is to design high-order artificial boundary conditions for the Schrödinger equation on unbounded domains in parallel with a treatment of the heat equation. We first introduce a circular artificial boundary to divide the unbounded definition domain into a bounded computational domain and an unbounded exterior domain. On the exterior domain, the Laplace transformation in time and Fourier series in space are applied to achieve the relation of special functions. Then the rational functions are used to approximate the relation of the special functions. Applying the inverse Laplace transformation to a series of simple rational function, we finally obtain the corresponding high-order artificial boundary conditions, where a sequence of auxiliary variables are utilized to avoid the high-order derivatives in respect to time and space. Furthermore, the finite difference method is formulated to discretize the reduced initial–boundary value problem with high-order artificial boundary conditions on a bounded computational domain. Numerical experiments are presented to illustrate the performance of our method.     

A strengthened analysis of a local algorithm for the minimum dominating set problem in planar graphs

In recent years growing interest in local distributed algorithms has widely been observed. This results from their high resistance to errors and damage, as well as from their good performance, which is independent of the size of the network. A local deterministic distributed algorithm finding an approximation of a Minimum Dominating Set in planar graphs has been presented by Lenzen et al., and they proved that the algorithm returns a 130-approximation of the Minimum Dominating Set. In this article we will show that the algorithm is two times more effective than was previously assumed, and we prove that the algorithm by Lenzen et al. outputs a 52-approximation to a Minimum Dominating Set. Therefore the gap between the lower bound and the approximation ratio of the best yet local deterministic distributed algorithm is reduced by half.     

Reactive Search strategies using Reinforcement Learning,local search algorithms and Variable Neighborhood Search

Optimization techniques known as metaheuristics have been applied successfully to solve different problems, in which their development is characterized by the appropriate selection of parameters (values) for its execution. Where the adjustment of a parameter is required, this parameter will be tested until viable results are obtained. Normally, such adjustments are made by the developer deploying the metaheuristic. The quality of the results of a test instance [The term instance is used to refer to the assignment of values to the input variables of a problem.] will not be transferred to the instances that were not tested yet and its feedback may require a slow process of “trial and error” where the algorithm has to be adjusted for a specific application. Within this context of metaheuristics the Reactive Search emerged defending the integration of machine learning within heuristic searches for solving complex optimization problems. Based in the integration that the Reactive Search proposes between machine learning and metaheuristics, emerged the idea of putting Reinforcement Learning, more specifically the Q-learning algorithm with a reactive behavior, to select which local search is the most appropriate in a given time of a search, to succeed another local search that can not improve the current solution in the VNS metaheuristic. In this work we propose a reactive implementation using Reinforcement Learning for the self-tuning of the implemented algorithm, applied to the Symmetric Travelling Salesman Problem.     

Present it like it is here: Creating local presence to improve online product experiences

Advanced online product presentation technologies such as virtual mirrors enable consumers to experience products like they are actually present with them in the real world. This study is one of the first to address the mechanism underlying this phenomenon. Inspired by literature on media technology the concept of local presence is put forward and applied to the online consumer behavior domain. A key objective of this paper is to examine whether local presence adds to our understanding of how emerging product presentation formats influence online product experiences. To this end, a laboratory experiment (N = 366) was conducted with product presentation format as a three level (pictures, 360-spin rotation, and virtual mirror) independent variable, allowing for a comparison of the effectiveness of different presentation formats in creating perceptions of local presence. As a second objective, the influence of local presence on perceptions of product tangibility and product likability, two key facets of the online product experience, were assessed. The results, obtained with the use of analysis of variance and partial least squares modeling, show the superiority of the virtual mirror in creating local presence, and demonstrate that local presence is highly predictive of product tangibility and product likability. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.     

板式精馏塔的塔板效率

塔板效率包括:点效率、莫夫里效率和全塔效率,它们的值主要受流体多相流动时的动力学体系特性的影响;点效率可由双膜理论推出,莫夫里效率和全塔效率存在一定的内在关系。     

Face recognition with Symmetric Local Graph Structure (SLGS)

Face recognition demonstrates the significant progress in the research field of biometric and computer vision. The fact is due to the current systems perform well under relatively control environments but tend to suffer when the present of variation in pose, illumination, and facial expression. In this work, a novel approach for face recognition called Symmetric Local Graph Structure (SLGS) is presented based on the Local Graph Structure (LGS). Each pixel is represented with a graph structure of its neighbours’ pixels. The histograms of the SLGS were used for recognition by using the nearest neighbour classifiers that include Euclidean distance, correlation coefficient and chi-square distance measures. AT&T and Yale face databases were used to be experimented with the proposed method. Extensive experiments on the face database clearly showed the superiority of the proposed approach over Local Binary Pattern (LBP) and LGS. The proposed SLGS is robust to variation in term of facial expressions, facial details, and illumination. Due to good performance of SLGS, it is expected that SLGS has a potential for application implementation in computer vision.