WorldWideScience

Sample records for vegetation change tracker

  1. Assessing rates of forest change and fragmentation in Alabama, USA, using the vegetation change tracker model

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Mingshi; Huang, Chengquan; Zhu, Zhiliang; Shi, Hua; Lu, Heng; Peng, Shikui

    2009-01-01

    Forest change is of great concern for land use decision makers and conservation communities. Quantitative and spatial forest change information is critical for addressing many pressing issues, including global climate change, carbon budgets, and sustainability. In this study, our analysis focuses on the differences in geospatial patterns and their changes between federal forests and nonfederal forests in Alabama over the time period 1987–2005, by interpreting 163 Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) scenes using a vegetation change tracker (VCT) model. Our analysis revealed that for the most part of 1990 s and between 2000 and 2005, Alabama lost about 2% of its forest on an annual basis due to disturbances, but much of the losses were balanced by forest regeneration from previous disturbances. The disturbance maps revealed that federal forests were reasonably well protected, with the fragmentation remaining relatively stable over time. In contrast, nonfederal forests, which are predominant in area share (about 95%), were heavily disturbed, clearly demonstrating decreasing levels of fragmentation during the time period 1987–1993 giving way to a subsequent accelerating fragmentation during the time period 1994–2005. Additionally, the identification of the statistical relationships between forest fragmentation status and forest loss rate and forest net change rate in relation to land ownership implied the distinct differences in forest cutting rate and cutting patterns between federal forests and nonfederal forests. The forest spatial change information derived from the model has provided valuable insights regarding regional forest management practices and disturbance regimes, which are closely associated with regional economics and environmental concerns.

  2. Behavior Change Techniques Present in Wearable Activity Trackers: A Critical Analysis.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mercer, Kathryn; Li, Melissa; Giangregorio, Lora; Burns, Catherine; Grindrod, Kelly

    2016-04-27

    Wearable activity trackers are promising as interventions that offer guidance and support for increasing physical activity and health-focused tracking. Most adults do not meet their recommended daily activity guidelines, and wearable fitness trackers are increasingly cited as having great potential to improve the physical activity levels of adults. The objective of this study was to use the Coventry, Aberdeen, and London-Refined (CALO-RE) taxonomy to examine if the design of wearable activity trackers incorporates behavior change techniques (BCTs). A secondary objective was to critically analyze whether the BCTs present relate to known drivers of behavior change, such as self-efficacy, with the intention of extending applicability to older adults in addition to the overall population. Wearing each device for a period of 1 week, two independent raters used CALO-RE taxonomy to code the BCTs of the seven wearable activity trackers available in Canada as of March 2014. These included Fitbit Flex, Misfit Shine, Withings Pulse, Jawbone UP24, Spark Activity Tracker by SparkPeople, Nike+ FuelBand SE, and Polar Loop. We calculated interrater reliability using Cohen's kappa. The average number of BCTs identified was 16.3/40. Withings Pulse had the highest number of BCTs and Misfit Shine had the lowest. Most techniques centered around self-monitoring and self-regulation, all of which have been associated with improved physical activity in older adults. Techniques related to planning and providing instructions were scarce. Overall, wearable activity trackers contain several BCTs that have been shown to increase physical activity in older adults. Although more research and development must be done to fully understand the potential of wearables as health interventions, the current wearable trackers offer significant potential with regard to BCTs relevant to uptake by all populations, including older adults.

  3. TRACKER

    CERN Multimedia

    D. Strom

    2011-01-01

    Strip Tracker Since the June CMS Week, the Silicon Strip Tracker has had another period of excellent detector operation with more than 97% system uptime. The focus on stable proton physics collection was fruitful, as CMS recorded greater than 5 fb–1 by the completion of the 2011 pp run. Following the November machine development and technical stop, the Strip Tracker now aims to provide the highest quality data during the heavy-ion run. The detector health, measured by the fraction of alive channels, is largely stable at around 97.8%. Recent failures include a TOB control ring, which now requires redundancy, and a TEC control ring with intermittent failures. These will be investigated during the Year-End Technical Stop. Critical services are very stable. The cooling system has a low total leak rate of less than 1 kg per day, and the power supply exchange rate is less than 1 unit per month. Two operational changes recently went into effect to optimise data-taking efficiency: (1) a tripped power su...

  4. TRACKER

    CERN Multimedia

    K. Gill and G. Bolla

    2010-01-01

    Silicon strips During the first collisions the strip-Tracker operated with excellent performance and stability. The results obtained were very impressive and this exciting experience marked a fine end to another intense year. Several issues were identified during 2009 operations that could benefit from improvement: to suppress the increased output data volume when in STANDBY state (LV ON, HV OFF), which is due to the larger noise amplitudes when the sensors are unbiased; to reduce the strips configuration time; to increase the stability of the power system, particularly during state transitions, and to decrease the powering up time. The strip-Tracker FEDs now react to changes in the HV conditions of the strips. Upon a transition to STAND-BY, central DAQ starts a PAUSE-RESUME cycle and a flag is issued to the FEDSupervisor. This results in forcing the common mode noise artificially to the maximum value, which effectively suppresses the analogue data output. This forced offset is removed as soon as the strips ...

  5. TRACKER

    CERN Multimedia

    C. Barth

    2012-01-01

      Strip Tracker In the end of 2011, the Silicon Strip Tracker participated in the very successful heavy-ion collision data-taking. With zero downtime attributed to the Strip Tracker, CMS could achieve the excellent efficiency of 96%. Thus we were able to improve on the already good uptime during pp collisions, and completed an excellent year for the Strip Tracker. The shift of responsibility to raise the high voltages at the declaration of Stable Beams from the Tracker DOC to the central crew went smoothly. The new scheme is working reliably and we improved our automatic DQM and DCS SMS services. With this further improvement we plan to discontinue calling the TK DOC at each Stable Beam; so far the TK DOC personally checked all systems. The biggest effort of this Year-End Technical Stop was a comprehensive evaluation of the C6F14 cooling system performance with respect to future cold operation. The analysis allows a dedicated planning of system refurbishments to be executed during 2012 and LS1....

  6. Terrestrial transect study on driving mechanism of vegetation changes

    Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

    2008-01-01

    In terms of Chinese climate-vegetation model based on the classification of plant functional types, to- gether with climatic data from 1951 to 1980 and two future climatic scenarios (SRES-A2 and SRES-B2) in China from the highest and the lowest emission scenarios of greenhouse gases, the distribution patterns of vegetation types and their changes along the Northeast China Transect (NECT) and the North-South Transect of Eastern China (NSTEC) were simulated in order to understand the driving mechanisms of vegetation changes under climatic change. The results indicated that the vegetation distribution patterns would change significantly under future climate, and the major factors driving the vegetation changes were water and heat. However, the responses of various vegetation types to the changes in water and heat factors were obviously different. The vegetation changes were more sensi- tive to heat factors than to water factors. Thus, in the future climate warming will significantly affect vegetation distribution patterns.

  7. Temporal reflectance changes in vegetables

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Dissing, Bjørn Skovlund; Clemmensen, Line Katrine Harder; Ersbøll, Bjarne Kjær

    2009-01-01

    Quality control in the food industry is often performed by measuring various chemical compounds of the food involved. We propose an imaging concept for acquiring high quality multispectral images to evaluate changes of carrots and celeriac over a period of 14 days. Properties originating...... in the surface chemistry of vegetables may be captured in an integrating sphere illumination which enables the creation of detailed surface chemistry maps with a good combination of spectral and spatial resolutions. Prior to multispectral image recording, the vegetables were prefried and frozen at -30Â......°C for four months. During the 14 days of image recording, the vegetables were kept at +5°C in refrigeration. In this period, surface changes and thereby reflectance properties were very subtle. To describe this small variation we employed advanced statistical techniques to search a large featurespace...

  8. INNER TRACKER

    CERN Multimedia

    Karl Gill

    A series of important milestones have been passed during the last 3 months. With the delivery of refurbished cooling systems, pixels and strip systems have been brought back into operation after long shutdowns. Pixels has been operating since reinsertion of FPIX in April, and has been running at 4°C since May 16 when the bulkhead thermal screen was commissioned. More recently, on June 10 the Strip Tracker was powered up in its entirety, with cooling fluid circulating at 4°C, allowing commissioning of the Strip Tracker to proceed at full speed. The full Tracker is well on course to be ready for CRAFT, with Strip Tracker readout operation in ‘peak’ mode remaining also on track to be ready for beam operations in the Autumn in ‘deconvolution’ readout mode. The main Tracker activity during the shutdown was the cooling plant refurbishment for Strips and Pixels systems. The objectives were to reduce the serious leaks observed in 2008 and improve the longevity...

  9. INNER TRACKER

    CERN Multimedia

    P. Sharp

    The CMS Inner Tracking Detector continues to make good progress. The Objective for 2007 is to deliver to CMS a completed, installed, commissioned and calibrated Tracking System (Silicon Strip and Pixels) aligned to < 100µ in April 2008 ready for the first physics collisions at LHC. On 21 March 2007, the integration of the CMS Silicon Strip Tracker was completed with the successful integration of TEC- into the Tracker Support Tube (TST). Since then ~25% of the complete Tracker Systems has been commission at the TIF at both room temperature and operating temperature (-100 C), and the Tracker Community has gained very valuable experience in operating, calibrating and aligning the Tracker at the TIF before it is prepared for transportation to P5 in July 2007. The CMS Pixel System continues to make good progress. Module and Plaquette production is very well advanced. The first 25% of the Forward Pixel detector (Fpix) was delivered to CERN in April and the second 25% will shipped to CERN on 19 ...

  10. INNER TRACKER

    CERN Multimedia

    K. Gill.

    The clear highlight of recent months was switching on the Tracker to capture the first LHC collisions with 450GeV beams. This was during the first trial run of the LHC on 23rd November. On that day, the Tracker Outer Barrel (TOB) was powered and the detector performance was excellent, in accord with our expectations. Since then, the full Tracker, strips and pixels, has been powered up during “quiet” beam periods when there was judged to be little risk of damage due to sudden beam losses. All Tracker systems performed very well, considering the beam and trigger conditions in place, and we now eagerly anticipate the first collisions with stable beams. Besides this very intense and exciting recent period there has been a lot of other activity in the last 6 months. The full Tracker participated in CRAFT09 and operations of all systems went very smoothly for both pixels and strips, validating all the meticulous work that had taking place during the long shutdown, the subsequent re-commissionin...

  11. Compositional Changes in Selected Minimally Processed Vegetables

    OpenAIRE

    O'Reilly, Emer, (Thesis)

    2000-01-01

    Compositional, physiological and microbiological changes in selected minimally processed vegetables packaged under a modified atmosphere of 2% oxygen and 5% carbon dioxide were monitored over a ten day storage period at 40 C and 80 C. The analysis targeted specific changes in the nutritional, chemical and physiological make up of the vegetables as well as the changes in the microbial levels. In addition the changes in the gas atmospheres within the packs were monitored. It has been widely acc...

  12. New views on changing Arctic vegetation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kennedy, Robert E.

    2012-03-01

    As climate changes, how will terrestrial vegetation respond? Because the fates of many biogeochemical, hydrological and economic cycles depend on vegetation, this question is fundamental to climate change science but extremely challenging to address. This is particularly true in the Arctic, where temperature change has been most acute globally (IPCC 2007) and where potential feedbacks to carbon, energy and hydrological cycles have important implications for the rest of the Earth system (Chapin et al 2000). It is well known that vegetation is tightly coupled to precipitation and temperature (Whittaker 1975), but predicting the response of vegetation to changes in climate involves much more than invoking the limitations of climate envelopes (Thuiller et al 2008). Models must also consider efficacy of dispersal, soil constraints, ecological interactions, possible CO2 fertilization impacts and the changing impact of other, more proximal anthropogenic effects such as pollution, disturbance, etc (Coops and Waring 2011, Lenihan et al 2008, Scheller and Mladenoff 2005). Given this complexity, a key test will be whether models can match empirical observations of changes that have already occurred. The challenge is finding empirical observations of change that are appropriate to test hypothesized impacts of climate change. As climate gradually changes across broad bioclimatic gradients, vegetation condition may change gradually as well. To capture these gradual trends, observations need at least three characteristics: (1) they must quantify a vegetation attribute that is expected to change, (2) they must measure that attribute in exactly the same way over long periods of time, and (3) they must sample diverse communities at geographic scales commensurate with the scale of expected climatic shifts. Observation networks meeting all three criteria are rare anywhere on the globe, but particularly so in remote areas. For this reason, satellite images have long been used as a

  13. Monitoring temporal Vegetation changes in Lao tropical forests

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Phompila, Chittana; Lewis, Megan; Clarke, Kenneth; Ostendorf, Bertram

    2014-01-01

    Studies on changes in vegetation are essential for understanding the interaction between humans and the environment. These studies provide key information for land use assessment, terrestrial ecosystem monitoring, carbon flux modelling and impacts of global climate change. The primary purpose of this study was to detect temporal vegetation changes in tropical forests in the southern part of Lao PDR from 2001-2012. The study investigated the annual vegetation phenological response of dominant land cover types across the study area and relationships to seasonal precipitation and temperature. Improved understanding of intra-annual patterns of vegetation variation was useful to detect longer term changes in vegetation. The breaks for additive season and trend (BFAST) approach was implemented to detect changes in these land cover types throughout the 2001-2012 period. We used the enhanced vegetation index (EVI) data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) (MOD13Q1 products) and monthly rainfall and temperature data obtained from the Meteorology and Hydrology Department, Ministry of Agriculture-Forestry, published by Lao National Statistical Centre in this research. EVI well documented the annual seasonal growth of vegetation and clearly distinguished the characteristic phenology of four different land use types; native forest, plantation, agriculture and mixed wooded/cleared area. Native forests maintained high EVI throughout the year, while plantations, wooded/cleared areas and agriculture showed greater inter-annual variation, with minimum EVI at the end of the dry season in April and maximum EVI in September-October, around two months after the wet season peak in rainfall. The BFAST analysis detected abrupt temporal changes in vegetation in the tropical forests, especially in a large conversion of mixed wooded/cleared area into plantation. Within the study area from 2001-2012 there has been an overall decreasing trend of vegetation cover for

  14. Global vegetation change predicted by the modified Budyko model

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Monserud, R.A.; Tchebakova, N.M.; Leemans, R. (US Department of Agriculture, Moscow, ID (United States). Intermountain Research Station, Forest Service)

    1993-09-01

    A modified Budyko global vegetation model is used to predict changes in global vegetation patterns resulting from climate change (CO[sub 2] doubling). Vegetation patterns are predicted using a model based on a dryness index and potential evaporation determined by solving radiation balance equations. Climate change scenarios are derived from predictions from four General Circulation Models (GCM's) of the atmosphere (GFDL, GISS, OSU, and UKMO). All four GCM scenarios show similar trends in vegetation shifts and in areas that remain stable, although the UKMO scenario predicts greater warming than the others. Climate change maps produced by all four GCM scenarios show good agreement with the current climate vegetation map for the globe as a whole, although over half of the vegetation classes show only poor to fair agreement. The most stable areas are Desert and Ice/Polar Desert. Because most of the predicted warming is concentrated in the Boreal and Temperate zones, vegetation there is predicted to undergo the greatest change. Most vegetation classes in the Subtropics and Tropics are predicted to expand. Any shift in the Tropics favouring either Forest over Savanna, or vice versa, will be determined by the magnitude of the increased precipitation accompanying global warming. Although the model predicts equilibrium conditions to which many plant species cannot adjust (through migration or microevolution) in the 50-100 y needed for CO[sub 2] doubling, it is not clear if projected global warming will result in drastic or benign vegetation change. 72 refs., 3 figs., 3 tabs.

  15. Investigation on the Patterns of Global Vegetation Change Using a Satellite-Sensed Vegetation Index

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ainong Li

    2010-06-01

    Full Text Available The pattern of vegetation change in response to global change still remains a controversial issue. A Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI dataset compiled by the Global Inventory Modeling and Mapping Studies (GIMMS was used for analysis. For the period 1982–2006, GIMMS-NDVI analysis indicated that monthly NDVI changes show homogenous trends in middle and high latitude areas in the northern hemisphere and within, or near, the Tropic of Cancer and Capricorn; with obvious spatio-temporal heterogeneity on a global scale over the past two decades. The former areas featured increasing vegetation activity during growth seasons, and the latter areas experienced an even greater amplitude in places where precipitation is adequate. The discussion suggests that one should be cautious of using the NDVI time-series to analyze local vegetation dynamics because of its coarse resolution and uncertainties.

  16. Autonomous Star Tracker Algorithms

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Betto, Maurizio; Jørgensen, John Leif; Kilsgaard, Søren

    1998-01-01

    Proposal, in response to an ESA R.f.P., to design algorithms for autonomous star tracker operations.The proposal also included the development of a star tracker breadboard to test the algorithms performances.......Proposal, in response to an ESA R.f.P., to design algorithms for autonomous star tracker operations.The proposal also included the development of a star tracker breadboard to test the algorithms performances....

  17. Vegetation Change in Blue Oak Woodlands in California

    Science.gov (United States)

    Barbara A. Holzman; Barbara H. Allen-Diaz

    1991-01-01

    A preliminary report of a statewide project investigating vegetation change in blue oak (Quercus douglasii) woodlands in California is presented. Vegetation plots taken in the 1930s, as part of a statewide vegetation mapping project, were relocated and surveyed. Species composition, cover and tree stand structure data from the earlier study were...

  18. Climate change and spatial distribution of vegetation in Colombia

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Juan Carlos Alarcon Hincapie

    2013-12-01

    Full Text Available Vegetation change under two climate change scenarios in different periods of the 21st Century are modeled for Colombia. Vegetation for the years 1970 to 2000 was reproduced using the Holdridge model with climate data with a spatial resolution of 900 meters. The vegetation types that occupied the most territory were sub-humid tropical forest, tropical dry forest and Andean wet forest. These results were validated by comparing with the Colombian ecosystem map (SINA, 2007, which confirmed a high degree of similarity between the modeled spatial vegetation patterns and modern ecosystem distributions. Future vegetation maps were simulated using data generated by a regional climate model under two scenarios (A2 and B2; IPCC, 2007 for the periods 2011-2040 and 2070-2100. Based on our predictions high altitude vegetation will convert to that of lower altitudes and drier provinces with the most dramatic change occurring in the A2 scenario from 2070-2100. The most affected areas are the páramo and other high Andean vegetation types, which in the timeframe of the explored scenarios will disappear by the middle of the 21st Century.

  19. Two ATLAS trackers become one

    CERN Multimedia

    2006-01-01

    The ATLAS inner detector barrel comes one step closer to completion as the semiconductor tracker is merged with the transition radiation tracker. ATLAS collaborators prepare for the insertion of the semiconductor tracker (SCT, behind) into the transition radiation tracker (TRT, in front). Some had hoped it would fall on Valentine's Day. But despite the slight delay, Friday 17 February was lovingly embraced as 'Conception Day,' when dozens of physicists and engineers from the international collaboration gathered to witness the insertion of the ATLAS semiconductor tracker into the transition radiation tracker, a major milestone in the assembly of the experiment's inner detector. With just millimeters of room for error, the cylindrical trackers were slid into each other as inner detector integration coordinator Heinz Pernegger issued commands and scientists held out flashlights, lay on their backs and stood on ladders to take careful measurements. Each tracker is the result of about 10 years of international ...

  20. TRACKER

    CERN Multimedia

    L. Demaria

    2011-01-01

    Strip Tracker The Silicon Strip Tracker has maintained excellent operational performance during the 2011 data-taking period. The increase of instantaneous luminosity up to 1033 cm-2s-1 did not introduce any new issues in the detector. The detector has collected high-quality physics data with an uptime greater than 98%. Sources of downtime have been identified and problems were properly addressed. Improved firmware in the Front-End Driver (FED) firmware was deployed to increase the robustness of the readout against spurious extra frames coming from the detector. When a FED detects bad data, it goes into Out-Of-Sync (OOS) status, waits for a L1 resynchronisation command (resync) to clean up the culprit data and restarts. Resync commands are now sent automatically to the Strip Tracker when it signals OOS and, as a result, this source of downtime has been reduced significantly. The dead-time, caused by recoveries from OOS, accounts for less than 0.1%. Downtime was also found to be caused by a FED occasionally ge...

  1. TRACKER

    CERN Multimedia

    G. Dirkes

    2010-01-01

    The strip system has generally exhibited stable and high performance operation during the last six months of pp and heavy ion collisions. The up-time during pp collision from June onwards was 99.0% and during the first weeks of heavy-ion running we reached 99.7%. Most of the down-time during the proton runs came from Tracker DAQ problems. Spurious extra events from individual front-end channels caused ‘sync loss draining’ errors at the central DAQ system downstream of the Tracker FEDs. Once the problem was understood, new firmware that detects this error condition was installed on the FEDs. This has reduced the recovery procedure from this particular condition from a full reconfiguration requiring 170 s, to a simple re-synchronisation taking only ~1 s. We have also streamlined the instructions for the central DAQ shifters in order to minimise the time needed to decide the proper reaction to a given problem. The average down-time for problems triggered by the strip tracker DAQ is 395 s. Th...

  2. TRACKER

    CERN Multimedia

    Frank Hartmann

    2012-01-01

      Strip Tracker In general, the Strip Tracker is operating smoothly with the current peak instantaneous luminosity beyond 6.5E33, high L1 rate and large pile-up. With several improvements in automatic DQM checks and an enhanced SMS and e-mail service system plus additional audio alarms, we have reduced the work-load of our TK DOC and stopped the calls made at the beginning of each fill. We successfully collected more than two million cosmic tracks in peak mode during inter-fill periods before June, fulfilling the request from the Tracker alignment group. Around 500k cosmic tracks were also collected at zero Tesla. All planned special measurements, namely DCU calibration and I-V scans, have been taken during the YETS and other technical stops. A peak-mode run, a delay run and two HV scans have also been taken during early collisions at the initial low-lumi runs as well as during the fill where CMS had a problem with the magnet. The largest source of downtime comes from TIB-2.8.1 a.k.a. FED 101, ...

  3. PageRank tracker: from ranking to tracking.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gong, Chen; Fu, Keren; Loza, Artur; Wu, Qiang; Liu, Jia; Yang, Jie

    2014-06-01

    Video object tracking is widely used in many real-world applications, and it has been extensively studied for over two decades. However, tracking robustness is still an issue in most existing methods, due to the difficulties with adaptation to environmental or target changes. In order to improve adaptability, this paper formulates the tracking process as a ranking problem, and the PageRank algorithm, which is a well-known webpage ranking algorithm used by Google, is applied. Labeled and unlabeled samples in tracking application are analogous to query webpages and the webpages to be ranked, respectively. Therefore, determining the target is equivalent to finding the unlabeled sample that is the most associated with existing labeled set. We modify the conventional PageRank algorithm in three aspects for tracking application, including graph construction, PageRank vector acquisition and target filtering. Our simulations with the use of various challenging public-domain video sequences reveal that the proposed PageRank tracker outperforms mean-shift tracker, co-tracker, semiboosting and beyond semiboosting trackers in terms of accuracy, robustness and stability.

  4. Boosting particle filter-based eye tracker performance through adapted likelihood function to reflexions and light changes

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Hammoud, Riad; Hansen, Dan Witzner

    2005-01-01

    . The tracker overcomes the issues of prior selection of static thresholds during the detection of feature observations in the bright-dark difference images. The auto-initialization process is performed using cascaded classifier trained using adaboost and adapted to IR eye images. Experiments show good...... performance in challenging sequences with test subjects showing large head movements and under significant light changes....

  5. miRNA control of vegetative phase change in trees.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jia-Wei Wang

    2011-02-01

    Full Text Available After germination, plants enter juvenile vegetative phase and then transition to an adult vegetative phase before producing reproductive structures. The character and timing of the juvenile-to-adult transition vary widely between species. In annual plants, this transition occurs soon after germination and usually involves relatively minor morphological changes, whereas in trees and other perennial woody plants it occurs after months or years and can involve major changes in shoot architecture. Whether this transition is controlled by the same mechanism in annual and perennial plants is unknown. In the annual forb Arabidopsis thaliana and in maize (Zea mays, vegetative phase change is controlled by the sequential activity of microRNAs miR156 and miR172. miR156 is highly abundant in seedlings and decreases during the juvenile-to-adult transition, while miR172 has an opposite expression pattern. We observed similar changes in the expression of these genes in woody species with highly differentiated, well-characterized juvenile and adult phases (Acacia confusa, Acacia colei, Eucalyptus globulus, Hedera helix, Quercus acutissima, as well as in the tree Populus x canadensis, where vegetative phase change is marked by relatively minor changes in leaf morphology and internode length. Overexpression of miR156 in transgenic P. x canadensis reduced the expression of miR156-targeted SPL genes and miR172, and it drastically prolonged the juvenile phase. Our results indicate that miR156 is an evolutionarily conserved regulator of vegetative phase change in both annual herbaceous plants and perennial trees.

  6. Advances in RGB and RGBD Generic Object Trackers

    KAUST Repository

    Bibi, Adel

    2016-04-01

    Visual object tracking is a classical and very popular problem in computer vision with a plethora of applications such as vehicle navigation, human computer interface, human motion analysis, surveillance, auto-control systems and many more. Given the initial state of a target in the first frame, the goal of tracking is to predict states of the target over time where the states describe a bounding box covering the target. Despite numerous object tracking methods that have been proposed in recent years [1-4], most of these trackers suffer a degradation in performance mainly because of several challenges that include illumination changes, motion blur, complex motion, out of plane rotation, and partial or full occlusion, while occlusion is usually the most contributing factor in degrading the majority of trackers, if not all of them. This thesis is devoted to the advancement of generic object trackers tackling different challenges through different proposed methods. The work presented propose four new state-of-the-art trackers. One of which is 3D based tracker in a particle filter framework where both synchronization and registration of RGB and depth streams are adjusted automatically, and three works in correlation filters that achieve state-of-the-art performance in terms of accuracy while maintaining reasonable speeds.

  7. Detecting Historical Vegetation Changes in the Dunhuang Oasis Protected Area Using Landsat Images

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Xiuxia Zhang

    2017-09-01

    Full Text Available Abstract: Given its proximity to an artificial oasis, the Donghu Nature Reserve in the Dunhuang Oasis has faced environmental pressure and vegetation disturbances in recent decades. Satellite vegetation indices (VIs can be used to detect such changes in vegetation if the satellite images are calibrated to surface reflectance (SR values. The aim of this study was to select a suitable VI based on the Landsat Climate Data Record (CDR products and the absolute radiation-corrected results of Landsat L1T images to detect the spatio-temporal changes in vegetation for the Donghu Reserve during 1986–2015. The results showed that the VI difference (ΔVI images effectively reduced the changes in the source images. Compared with the other VIs, the soil-adjusted vegetation index (SAVI displayed greater robustness to atmospheric effects in the two types of SR images and was more responsive to vegetation changes caused by human factors. From 1986 to 2015, the positive changes in vegetation dominated the overall change trend, with changes in vegetation in the reserve decreasing during 1990–1995, increasing until 2005–2010, and then decreasing again. The vegetation changes were mainly distributed at the edge of the artificial oasis outside the reserve. The detected changes in vegetation in the reserve highlight the increased human pressure on the reserve.

  8. Impact of dam-induced hydrological changes on riparian vegetation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tealdi, Stefano; Camporeale, Carlo; Ridolfi, Luca

    2010-05-01

    Hydrological disturbances are a key factor for the riparian vegetation, which is a highly dynamic ecosystem prone to external forcing. Random fluctuations of water stages drive in fact the alternation of periods of floods and exposure of the vegetated plots. During flooding, the plots are submerged and vegetation is damaged by burial, uprooting and anoxia, while during exposure periods vegetation grows according to the soil moisture content and the phreatic water table depth. The distribution of vegetation along the riparian transect is then directly connected to the stochasticity of river discharges. River damming can have remarkable impacts on the hydrology of a river and, consequently, on the riparian vegetation. Several field studies show how the river regulation induced by artificial reservoirs can greatly modify the statistical moments and the autocorrelation of the discharge time series. The vegetation responds to these changes reducing its overall heterogeneity, declining - substituted by exotic species - and shifting its starting position nearer or far away from the channel center. These latter processes are known as narrowing and widening, respectively. In our work we explore the effects of dam-induced hydrological changes on the narrowing/widening process and on the total biomass along the transect. To this aim we use an eco-hydrological stochastic model developed by Camporeale and Ridolfi [2006], which is able to give a realistic distribution of the biomass along the transect as a function of a few hydrologic, hydraulic and vegetation parameters. We apply the model to an exemplifying case, by investigating the vegetation response to a set of changes in mean discharge and coefficient of variation. The range of these changes is deduced from the analysis of field data in pre- and post-dam conditions. Firstly, we analyze the narrowing/widening process. In particular, we analyze two percentage differences of the starting transversal position with respect to

  9. INNER TRACKER

    CERN Multimedia

    K. Gill

    During the winter shutdown several parts of the Tracker system are undergoing maintenance, revision or upgrade. The main items are the revision of the strips and pixels cooling plants, removal and maintenance of FPIX, sealing of Tracker patch-panels and the bulkhead, integration of strips and pixels DCS, and further development of the DAQ, Online and commissioning software and firmware. The revision of the cooling system involves the complete replacement of the tanks, distribution lines, valves and manifolds on the SS1 and SS2 strip tracker (182 circuits) and pixels (36 circuits) cooling plants. The objectives are to eliminate the large leaks experienced during 2008 operations and to assure the long-term reliability of the cooling systems. Additional instrumentation is being added to provide more detailed monitoring of the performance of the cooling system. This work is proceeding smoothly under close supervision. Procurements are almost completed and the quality of delivered parts and the subsequent assembl...

  10. The influence of vegetation dynamics on anthropogenic climate change

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    U. Port

    2012-11-01

    Full Text Available In this study, vegetation–climate and vegetation–carbon cycle interactions during anthropogenic climate change are assessed by using the Earth System Model of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI ESM that includes vegetation dynamics and an interactive carbon cycle. We assume anthropogenic CO2 emissions according to the RCP 8.5 scenario in the time period from 1850 to 2120. For the time after 2120, we assume zero emissions to evaluate the response of the stabilising Earth System by 2300.

    Our results suggest that vegetation dynamics have a considerable influence on the changing global and regional climate. In the simulations, global mean tree cover extends by 2300 due to increased atmospheric CO2 concentration and global warming. Thus, land carbon uptake is higher and atmospheric CO2 concentration is lower by about 40 ppm when considering dynamic vegetation compared to the static pre-industrial vegetation cover. The reduced atmospheric CO2 concentration is equivalent to a lower global mean temperature. Moreover, biogeophysical effects of vegetation cover shifts influence the climate on a regional scale. Expanded tree cover in the northern high latitudes results in a reduced albedo and additional warming. In the Amazon region, declined tree cover causes a regional warming due to reduced evapotranspiration. As a net effect, vegetation dynamics have a slight attenuating effect on global climate change as the global climate cools by 0.22 K due to natural vegetation cover shifts in 2300.

  11. Vegetation Change in Interior Alaska Over the Last Four Decades

    Science.gov (United States)

    Huhman, H.; Dewitz, J.; Cristobal, J.; Prakash, A.

    2017-12-01

    The Arctic has become a generally warmer place over the past decades leading to earlier snowmelt, permafrost degradation and changing plant communities. One area in particular, vegetation change, is responding relatively rapidly to climate change, impacting the surrounding environment with changes to forest fire regime, forest type, forest resiliency, habitat availability for subsistence flora and fauna, hydrology, among others. To quantify changes in vegetation in the interior Alaska boreal forest over the last four decades, this study uses the National Land Cover Database (NLCD) decision-tree based classification methods, using both C5 and ERDAS Imagine software, to classify Landsat Surface Reflectance Images into the following NLCD-consistent vegetation classes: planted, herbaceous, shrubland, and forest (deciduous, evergreen and mixed). The results of this process are a total of four vegetation cover maps, that are freely accessible to the public, one for each decade in the 1980's, 1990's, 2000's, and a current map for 2017. These maps focus on Fairbanks, Alaska and the surrounding area covering approximately 36,140 square miles. The maps are validated with over 4,000 ground truth points collected through organizations such as the Landfire Project and the Long Term Ecological Research Network, as well as vegetation and soil spectra collected from the study area concurrent with the Landsat satellite over-passes with a Spectral Evolution PSR+ 3500 spectro-radiometer (0.35 - 2.5 μm). We anticipate these maps to be viewed by a wide user-community and may aid in preparing the residents of Alaska for changes in their subsistence food sources and will contribute to the scientific community in understanding the variety of changes that can occur in response to changing vegetation.

  12. Projected future vegetation changes for the northwest United States and southwest Canada at a fine spatial resolution using a dynamic global vegetation model.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shafer, Sarah; Bartlein, Patrick J.; Gray, Elizabeth M.; Pelltier, Richard T.

    2015-01-01

    Future climate change may significantly alter the distributions of many plant taxa. The effects of climate change may be particularly large in mountainous regions where climate can vary significantly with elevation. Understanding potential future vegetation changes in these regions requires methods that can resolve vegetation responses to climate change at fine spatial resolutions. We used LPJ, a dynamic global vegetation model, to assess potential future vegetation changes for a large topographically complex area of the northwest United States and southwest Canada (38.0–58.0°N latitude by 136.6–103.0°W longitude). LPJ is a process-based vegetation model that mechanistically simulates the effect of changing climate and atmospheric CO2 concentrations on vegetation. It was developed and has been mostly applied at spatial resolutions of 10-minutes or coarser. In this study, we used LPJ at a 30-second (~1-km) spatial resolution to simulate potential vegetation changes for 2070–2099. LPJ was run using downscaled future climate simulations from five coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation models (CCSM3, CGCM3.1(T47), GISS-ER, MIROC3.2(medres), UKMO-HadCM3) produced using the A2 greenhouse gases emissions scenario. Under projected future climate and atmospheric CO2 concentrations, the simulated vegetation changes result in the contraction of alpine, shrub-steppe, and xeric shrub vegetation across the study area and the expansion of woodland and forest vegetation. Large areas of maritime cool forest and cold forest are simulated to persist under projected future conditions. The fine spatial-scale vegetation simulations resolve patterns of vegetation change that are not visible at coarser resolutions and these fine-scale patterns are particularly important for understanding potential future vegetation changes in topographically complex areas.

  13. Response of Vegetation to Climate Change in the Drylands of East Asia

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Dai, L; Wang, K; Wang, R L; Zhang, L

    2014-01-01

    Over the past 25 years, global climate and environmental changes have caused an unprecedented rate of vegetation change, as exemplified in the drylands of East Asia. In this study, we investigated the spatio-temporal changes of vegetation in this region and analysed their relationship with climate data. Our results show that vegetation productivity significantly increased from 1982 to 2006. This increasing trend was observed for most of the region, particularly for northwest Mongolia and central Inner Mongolia. Grasslands, croplands, forests, and shrublands, all exhibited this trend. The annual growth rate of the grasslands determined using the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) was the largest observed change; reaching 0.07% p.a, followed by shrublands (0.06%), croplands (0.03%), and forests (0.02%). In the different geographic regions, the roles of temperature and precipitation on vegetation growth were shown to be different. Temperature was the dominant factor for the observed NDVI increase in northwest Mongolia and the centre of Inner Mongolia. The combined influences of temperature and precipitation changes have resulted in the promotion of vegetation growth, as seen in eastern GanSu. Temperature change is the primary factor for initiating vegetation growth in spring and autumn because warmer temperatures increase the length of the growing season, and are thus evaluated as an increased NDVI value. Increased precipitation has been shown to play a positive role on vegetation growth during summer

  14. Experimental predictions drawn from a computational model of sign-trackers and goal-trackers.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lesaint, Florian; Sigaud, Olivier; Clark, Jeremy J; Flagel, Shelly B; Khamassi, Mehdi

    2015-01-01

    Gaining a better understanding of the biological mechanisms underlying the individual variation observed in response to rewards and reward cues could help to identify and treat individuals more prone to disorders of impulsive control, such as addiction. Variation in response to reward cues is captured in rats undergoing autoshaping experiments where the appearance of a lever precedes food delivery. Although no response is required for food to be delivered, some rats (goal-trackers) learn to approach and avidly engage the magazine until food delivery, whereas other rats (sign-trackers) come to approach and engage avidly the lever. The impulsive and often maladaptive characteristics of the latter response are reminiscent of addictive behaviour in humans. In a previous article, we developed a computational model accounting for a set of experimental data regarding sign-trackers and goal-trackers. Here we show new simulations of the model to draw experimental predictions that could help further validate or refute the model. In particular, we apply the model to new experimental protocols such as injecting flupentixol locally into the core of the nucleus accumbens rather than systemically, and lesioning of the core of the nucleus accumbens before or after conditioning. In addition, we discuss the possibility of removing the food magazine during the inter-trial interval. The predictions from this revised model will help us better understand the role of different brain regions in the behaviours expressed by sign-trackers and goal-trackers. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  15. Intelligent robotic tracker

    Science.gov (United States)

    Otaguro, W. S.; Kesler, L. O.; Land, K. C.; Rhoades, D. E.

    1987-01-01

    An intelligent tracker capable of robotic applications requiring guidance and control of platforms, robotic arms, and end effectors has been developed. This packaged system capable of supervised autonomous robotic functions is partitioned into a multiple processor/parallel processing configuration. The system currently interfaces to cameras but has the capability to also use three-dimensional inputs from scanning laser rangers. The inputs are fed into an image processing and tracking section where the camera inputs are conditioned for the multiple tracker algorithms. An executive section monitors the image processing and tracker outputs and performs all the control and decision processes. The present architecture of the system is presented with discussion of its evolutionary growth for space applications. An autonomous rendezvous demonstration of this system was performed last year. More realistic demonstrations in planning are discussed.

  16. A silicon tracker for Christmas

    CERN Multimedia

    2008-01-01

    The CMS experiment installed the world’s largest silicon tracker just before Christmas. Marcello Mannelli: physicist and deputy CMS project leader, and Alan Honma, physicist, compare two generations of tracker: OPAL for the LEP (at the front) and CMS for the LHC (behind). There is quite a difference between 1m2 and 205m2.. CMS received an early Christmas present on 18 December when the silicon tracker was installed in the heart of the CMS magnet. The CMS tracker team couldn’t have hoped for a better present. Carefully wrapped in shiny plastic, the world’s largest silicon tracker arrived at Cessy ready for installation inside the CMS magnet on 18 December. This rounded off the year for CMS with a major event, the crowning touch to ten years of work on the project by over five hundred scientists and engineers. "Building a scientific instrument of this size and complexity is a huge technical a...

  17. The Impact of Observed Vegetation Changes on Land–Atmosphere Feedbacks During Drought

    KAUST Repository

    Meng, X. H.

    2014-04-01

    Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)-derived vegetation fraction data were used to update the boundary conditions of the advanced research Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model to assess the influence of realistic vegetation cover on climate simulations in southeast Australia for the period 2000–08. Results show that modeled air temperature was improved when MODIS data were incorporated, while precipitation changes little with only a small decrease in the bias. Air temperature changes in different seasons reflect the variability of vegetation cover well, while precipitation changes have a more complicated relationship to changes in vegetation fraction. Both MODIS and climatology-based simulation experiments capture the overall precipitation changes, indicating that precipitation is dominated by the large-scale circulation, with local vegetation changes contributing variations around these. Simulated feedbacks between vegetation fraction, soil moisture, and drought over southeast Australia were also investigated. Results indicate that vegetation fraction changes lag precipitation reductions by 6–8 months in nonarid regions. With the onset of the 2002 drought, a potential fast physical mechanism was found to play a positive role in the soil moisture–precipitation feedback, while a slow biological mechanism provides a negative feedback in the soil moisture–precipitation interaction on a longer time scale. That is, in the short term, a reduction in soil moisture leads to a reduction in the convective potential and, hence, precipitation, further reducing the soil moisture. If low levels of soil moisture persist long enough, reductions in vegetation cover and vigor occur, reducing the evapotranspiration and thus reducing the soil moisture decreases and dampening the fast physical feedback. Importantly, it was observed that these feedbacks are both space and time dependent.

  18. An Optical tracker for the maritime environment

    CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

    Bachoo, AK

    2011-04-01

    Full Text Available that is robust to platform vibration, target appearance changes and short-term occlusions. The optical tracker is developed using a particle filter and an appearance model that is updated online. The system achieves real-time tracking through the use of non...

  19. The CMS Silicon Tracker Alignment

    CERN Document Server

    Castello, R

    2008-01-01

    The alignment of the Strip and Pixel Tracker of the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment, with its large number of independent silicon sensors and its excellent spatial resolution, is a complex and challenging task. Besides high precision mounting, survey measurements and the Laser Alignment System, track-based alignment is needed to reach the envisaged precision.\\\\ Three different algorithms for track-based alignment were successfully tested on a sample of cosmic-ray data collected at the Tracker Integration Facility, where 15\\% of the Tracker was tested. These results, together with those coming from the CMS global run, will provide the basis for the full-scale alignment of the Tracker, which will be carried out with the first \\emph{p-p} collisions.

  20. Analysis of Vegetation Coverage Change Characteristics in Chongqing Based on MODIS - NDVI Data

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jianfeng, WU; Cao, Guangjie; Zhang, Fengtai; Li, Wei; Wang, Haiqing

    2017-12-01

    In order to study the characteristics of vegetation cover change in Chongqing, MODIS-NDVI is used as data source. In this paper, the change of vegetation coverage in Chongqing from 2000 to 2011 was analyzed by mean value method and difference method from year, spring, summer, autumn and winter respectively. The results showed that the change of vegetation cover was larger than that of the western region on the annual scale. On the seasonal scale, the vegetation in the spring was in the middle with a high and low trend. The higher vegetation area was distributed in the summer area, and the lower area of vegetation was concentrated in the western part of the study area. Vegetation in autumn showed a flaky distribution in space. Winter vegetation to the Yangtze River as the boundary, the south cover is slightly higher than the north.

  1. Spatial relationship between climatologies and changes in global vegetation activity.

    Science.gov (United States)

    de Jong, Rogier; Schaepman, Michael E; Furrer, Reinhard; de Bruin, Sytze; Verburg, Peter H

    2013-06-01

    Vegetation forms a main component of the terrestrial biosphere and plays a crucial role in land-cover and climate-related studies. Activity of vegetation systems is commonly quantified using remotely sensed vegetation indices (VI). Extensive reports on temporal trends over the past decades in time series of such indices can be found in literature. However, little remains known about the processes underlying these changes at large spatial scales. In this study, we aimed at quantifying the spatial relationship between changes in potential climatic growth constraints (i.e. temperature, precipitation and incident solar radiation) and changes in vegetation activity (1982-2008). We demonstrate an additive spatial model with 0.5° resolution, consisting of a regression component representing climate-associated effects and a spatially correlated field representing the combined influence of other factors, including land-use change. Little over 50% of the spatial variance could be attributed to changes in climatologies; conspicuously, many greening trends and browning hotspots in Argentina and Australia. The nonassociated model component may contain large-scale human interventions, feedback mechanisms or natural effects, which were not captured by the climatologies. Browning hotspots in this component were especially found in subequatorial Africa. On the scale of land-cover types, strongest relationships between climatologies and vegetation activity were found in forests, including indications for browning under warming conditions (analogous to the divergence issue discussed in dendroclimatology). © 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

  2. Recent change of vegetation growth trend in China

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Peng Shushi; Fang Jingyun; Piao Shilong; Chen, Anping; Xu Liang; Myneni, Ranga B; Cao Chunxiang; Pinzon, Jorge E; Tucker, Compton J

    2011-01-01

    Using satellite-derived normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) data, several previous studies have indicated that vegetation growth significantly increased in most areas of China during the period 1982–99. In this letter, we extended the study period to 2010. We found that at the national scale the growing season (April–October) NDVI significantly increased by 0.0007 yr −1 from 1982 to 2010, but the increasing trend in NDVI over the last decade decreased in comparison to that of the 1982–99 period. The trends in NDVI show significant seasonal and spatial variances. The increasing trend in April and May (AM) NDVI (0.0013 yr −1 ) is larger than those in June, July and August (JJA) (0.0003 yr −1 ) and September and October (SO) (0.0008 yr −1 ). This relatively small increasing trend of JJA NDVI during 1982–2010 compared with that during 1982–99 (0.0012 yr −1 ) (Piao et al 2003 J. Geophys. Res.—Atmos. 108 4401) implies a change in the JJA vegetation growth trend, which significantly turned from increasing (0.0039 yr −1 ) to slightly decreasing ( − 0.0002 yr −1 ) in 1988. Regarding the spatial pattern of changes in NDVI, the growing season NDVI increased (over 0.0020 yr −1 ) from 1982 to 2010 in southern China, while its change was close to zero in northern China, as a result of a significant changing trend reversal that occurred in the 1990s and early 2000s. In northern China, the growing season NDVI significantly increased before the 1990s as a result of warming and enhanced precipitation, but decreased after the 1990s due to drought stress strengthened by warming and reduced precipitation. Our results also show that the responses of vegetation growth to climate change vary across different seasons and ecosystems.

  3. Recent Change of Vegetation Growth Trend in China

    Science.gov (United States)

    Peng, Shushi; Chen, Anping; Xu, Liang; Cao, Chunxiang; Fang, Jingyun; Myneni, Ranga B.; Pinzon, Jorge E.; Tucker, COmpton J.; Piao, Shilong

    2011-01-01

    Using satellite-derived normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) data, several previous studies have indicated that vegetation growth significantly increased in most areas of China during the period 1982-99. In this letter, we extended the study period to 2010. We found that at the national scale the growing season (April-October) NDVI significantly increased by 0.0007/yr from 1982 to 2010, but the increasing trend in NDVI over the last decade decreased in comparison to that of the 1982-99 period. The trends in NDVI show significant seasonal and spatial variances. The increasing trend in April and May (AM) NDVI (0.0013/yr is larger than those in June, July and August (JJA) (0.0003/yr) and September and October (SO) (0.0008/yr). This relatively small increasing trend of JJA NDVI during 1982-2010 compared with that during 1982-99 (0.0012/yr) (Piao et al 2003 J. Geophys. Res.-Atmos. 108 4401) implies a change in the JJA vegetation growth trend, which significantly turned from increasing (0.0039/yr) to slightly decreasing (0:0002/yr) in 1988. Regarding the spatial pattern of changes in NDVI, the growing season NDVI increased (over 0.0020/yr) from 1982 to 2010 in southern China, while its change was close to zero in northern China, as a result of a significant changing trend reversal that occurred in the 1990s and early 2000s. In northern China, the growing season NDVI significantly increased before the 1990s as a result of warming and enhanced precipitation, but decreased after the 1990s due to drought stress strengthened by warming and reduced precipitation. Our results also show that the responses of vegetation growth to climate change vary across different seasons and ecosystems.

  4. MediaTracker system

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Sandoval, D. M. (Dana M.); Strittmatter, R. B. (Richard B.); Abeyta, J. D. (Joline D.); Brown, J. (John); Marks, T. (Thomas), Jr.; Martinez, B. J. (Benny J.); Jones, D. B. (Dana Benelli); Hsue, W.

    2004-01-01

    The initial objectives of this effort were to provide a hardware and software platform that can address the requirements for the accountability of classified removable electronic media and vault access logging. The Media Tracker system software assists classified media custodian in managing vault access logging and Media Tracking to prevent the inadvertent violation of rules or policies for the access to a restricted area and the movement and use of tracked items. The MediaTracker system includes the software tools to track and account for high consequence security assets and high value items. The overall benefits include: (1) real-time access to the disposition of all Classified Removable Electronic Media (CREM), (2) streamlined security procedures and requirements, (3) removal of ambiguity and managerial inconsistencies, (4) prevention of incidents that can and should be prevented, (5) alignment with the DOE's initiative to achieve improvements in security and facility operations through technology deployment, and (6) enhanced individual responsibility by providing a consistent method of dealing with daily responsibilities. In response to initiatives to enhance the control of classified removable electronic media (CREM), the Media Tracker software suite was developed, piloted and implemented at the Los Alamos National Laboratory beginning in July 2000. The Media Tracker software suite assists in the accountability and tracking of CREM and other high-value assets. One component of the MediaTracker software suite provides a Laboratory-approved media tracking system. Using commercial touch screen and bar code technology, the MediaTracker (MT) component of the MediaTracker software suite provides an efficient and effective means to meet current Laboratory requirements and provides new-engineered controls to help assure compliance with those requirements. It also establishes a computer infrastructure at vault entrances for vault access logging, and can

  5. MediaTracker system

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Sandoval, D.M.; Strittmatter, R.B.; Abeyta, J.D.; Brown, J.; Marks, T. Jr.; Martinez, B.J.; Jones, D.B.; Hsue, W.

    2004-01-01

    The initial objectives of this effort were to provide a hardware and software platform that can address the requirements for the accountability of classified removable electronic media and vault access logging. The Media Tracker system software assists classified media custodian in managing vault access logging and Media Tracking to prevent the inadvertent violation of rules or policies for the access to a restricted area and the movement and use of tracked items. The MediaTracker system includes the software tools to track and account for high consequence security assets and high value items. The overall benefits include: (1) real-time access to the disposition of all Classified Removable Electronic Media (CREM), (2) streamlined security procedures and requirements, (3) removal of ambiguity and managerial inconsistencies, (4) prevention of incidents that can and should be prevented, (5) alignment with the DOE's initiative to achieve improvements in security and facility operations through technology deployment, and (6) enhanced individual responsibility by providing a consistent method of dealing with daily responsibilities. In response to initiatives to enhance the control of classified removable electronic media (CREM), the Media Tracker software suite was developed, piloted and implemented at the Los Alamos National Laboratory beginning in July 2000. The Media Tracker software suite assists in the accountability and tracking of CREM and other high-value assets. One component of the MediaTracker software suite provides a Laboratory-approved media tracking system. Using commercial touch screen and bar code technology, the MediaTracker (MT) component of the MediaTracker software suite provides an efficient and effective means to meet current Laboratory requirements and provides new-engineered controls to help assure compliance with those requirements. It also establishes a computer infrastructure at vault entrances for vault access logging, and can accommodate

  6. Remotely Sensed Northern Vegetation Response to Changing Climate: Growing Season and Productivity Perspective

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ganguly, S.; Park, Taejin; Choi, Sungho; Bi, Jian; Knyazikhin, Yuri; Myneni, Ranga

    2016-01-01

    Vegetation growing season and maximum photosynthetic state determine spatiotemporal variability of seasonal total gross primary productivity of vegetation. Recent warming induced impacts accelerate shifts on growing season and physiological status over Northern vegetated land. Thus, understanding and quantifying these changes are very important. Here, we first investigate how vegetation growing season and maximum photosynthesis state are evolved and how such components contribute on inter-annual variation of seasonal total gross primary productivity. Furthermore, seasonally different response of northern vegetation to changing temperature and water availability is also investigated. We utilized both long-term remotely sensed data to extract larger scale growing season metrics (growing season start, end and duration) and productivity (i.e., growing season summed vegetation index, GSSVI) for answering these questions. We find that regionally diverged growing season shift and maximum photosynthetic state contribute differently characterized productivity inter-annual variability and trend. Also seasonally different response of vegetation gives different view of spatially varying interaction between vegetation and climate. These results highlight spatially and temporally varying vegetation dynamics and are reflective of biome-specific responses of northern vegetation to changing climate.

  7. Using management to address vegetation stress related to land-use and climate change

    Science.gov (United States)

    Middleton, Beth A.; Boudell, Jere; Fisichelli, Nicholas

    2017-01-01

    While disturbances such as fire, cutting, and grazing can be an important part of the conservation of natural lands, some adjustments to management designed to mimic natural disturbance may be necessary with ongoing and projected climate change. Stressed vegetation that is incapable of regeneration will be difficult to maintain if adults are experiencing mortality, and/or if their early life-history stages depend on disturbance. A variety of active management strategies employing disturbance are suggested, including resisting, accommodating, or directing vegetation change by manipulating management intensity and frequency. Particularly if land-use change is the main cause of vegetation stress, amelioration of these problems using management may help vegetation resist change (e.g. strategic timing of water release if a water control structure is available). Managers could direct succession by using management to push vegetation toward a new state. Despite the historical effects of management, some vegetation change will not be controllable as climates shift, and managers may have to accept some of these changes. Nevertheless, proactive measures may help managers achieve important conservation goals in the future.

  8. Vegetation response to climate change : implications for Canada's conservation lands

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Scott, D.; Lemieux, C.

    2003-01-01

    Studies have shown that Canada's national parks are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. A wide range of biophysical climate change impacts could affect the integrity of conservation lands in each region of Canada. This report examines the potential impact of climate change on landscape alterations and vegetation distribution in Canada's wide network of conservation lands. It also presents several ways to integrate climate change into existing conservation policy and adaptation strategies. Canada's conservation lands include provincial parks, migratory bird sanctuaries, national wildlife areas and wildlife protected areas. This is the first study to examine biome changes by applying an equilibrium Global Vegetation Model (GVM) to Canada's network of national park systems. Some of the policy and planning challenges posed by changes in landscape level vegetation were also addressed. The report indicates that in terms of potential changes to the biome classification of Canada's national forests, more northern biomes are projected to decrease. These northern biomes include the tundra, taiga and boreal conifer forests. 56 refs., 8 tabs., 6 figs

  9. ATLAS semiconductor tracker installed into its barrel

    CERN Multimedia

    Maximilien Brice

    2005-01-01

    The ATLAS silicon tracker is installed in the silicon tracker barrel. Absolute precision was required in this operation to ensure that the tracker was inserted without damage through minimal clearance. The installation was performed in a clean room on the CERN site so that no impurities in the air would contaminate the tracker's systems.

  10. [Effects of climate and land use change on the changes of vegetation coverage in farming-pastoral ecotone of Northern China].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, Jun-Hui; Gao, Ji-Xi

    2008-09-01

    Based on the remote sensing images and the meteorological data in 1986 and 2000, and by using the model of extracting vegetation coverage, the spatiotemporal changes of vegetation coverage in the farming-pastoral ecotone of Northern China in 1986-2000 were studied, with the effects of climate and land use change on the changes analyzed. The results showed that in this ecotone, the area with lower vegetation coverage was increasing, while that with higher vegetation coverage was in adverse. The regions with increasing vegetation coverage were mainly in the east of northeast section, the west of north section, and the west of northwest section of the ecotone, while the vegetation coverage in the other sections was obviously degraded. The vegetation coverage were positively correlated with precipitation and aridity index, but negatively correlated with temperature. The change direction and extent of the vegetation coverage varied with land use types.

  11. Rendering Future Vegetation Change across Large Regions of the US

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sant'Anna Dias, Felipe; Gu, Yuting; Agarwalla, Yashika; Cheng, Yiwei; Patil, Sopan; Stieglitz, Marc; Turk, Greg

    2015-04-01

    the period 2061 - 2080. The predicted mean annual air temperature change for the three sites ranged from + 1.8°C to + 2.3°C. Precipitation for the three sites changed little. In Oregon, this resulted in a 37% shift of forested areas to shrub vegetation. In New Mexico, shrubs and evergreen vegetation increased by 18% and 5%, respectively. Deciduous and grassland vegetation decreased by 90% and 52%, respectively. In Washington, evergreen vegetation cover decreased by 4.5%. Deciduous vegetation increase by 25%. Shrubs and grasslands increased by 15% and 7%, respectively. Perennial snow cover on mountain tops fell by 46%. Beyond rendering a view of future vegetation cover, we also extracted information regarding the relative controls that climate and topography exert over local vegetation. The three most dominant controls are elevation (most dominant), temperature, and precipitation. In summary, we demonstrate a framework for rendering potential future vegetation in a visually realistic way. Moreover, these machine learning techniques provide a computationally fast framework for exploring the effects of climate change over large-areas and at high-spatial resolution that cannot be accomplished through simulation alone.

  12. Impacts of vegetation change on groundwater recharge

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bond, W. J.; Verburg, K.; Smith, C. J.

    2003-12-01

    Vegetation change is the accepted cause of increasing river salt concentrations and the salinisation of millions of hectares of farm land in Australia. Replacement of perennial native vegetation by annual crops and pastures following European settlement has altered the water balance causing increased groundwater recharge and mobilising the naturally saline groundwater. The Redesigning Agriculture for Australian Landscapes Program, of which the work described here is a part, was established to develop agricultural practices that are more attuned to the delicate water balance described above. Results of field measurements will be presented that contrast the water balance characteristics of native vegetation with those of conventional agricultural plants, and indicate the functional characteristics required of new agricultural practices to reduce recharge. New agricultural practices may comprise different management of current crops and pastures, or may involve introducing totally new species. In either case, long-term testing is required to examine their impact on recharge over a long enough climate record to encompass the natural variability of rainfall that is characteristic of most Australian farming regions. Field experimentation therefore needs to be complemented and extended by computer simulation. This requires a modelling approach that is more robust than conventional crop modelling because (a) it needs to be sensitive enough to predict small changes in the residual recharge term, (b) it needs to be able to simulate a variety of vegetation in different sequences, (c) it needs to be able to simulate continuously for several decades of input data, and (d) it therefore needs to be able to simulate the period between crops, which often has a critical impact on recharge. The APSIM simulation framework will be used to illustrate these issues and to explore the effect of different vegetation combinations on recharge.

  13. Software alignment of the LHCb Outer Tracker chambers

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Deissenroth, Marc

    2010-04-21

    This work presents an alignment algorithm that was developed to precisely determine the positions of the LHCb Outer Tracker detector elements. The algorithm is based on the reconstruction of tracks and exploits that misalignments of the detector change the residual between a measured hit and the reconstructed track. It considers different levels of granularities of the Outer Tracker geometry and fully accounts for correlations of all elements which are imposed by particle trajectories. In extensive tests, simulated shifts and rotations for different levels of the detector granularity have been used as input to the track reconstruction and alignment procedure. With about 260 000 tracks the misalignments are recovered with a statistical precision of O(10 - 100 {mu}m) for the translational degrees of freedom and of O(10{sup -2} - 10{sup -1} mrad) for rotations. A study has been performed to determine the impact of Outer Tracker misalignments on the performance of the track reconstruction algorithms. It shows that the achieved statistical precision does not decrease the track reconstruction performance in a significant way. During the commissioning of the LHCb detector, cosmic ray muon events have been collected. The events have been analysed and used for the first alignment of the 216 Outer Tracker modules. The module positions have been determined within {proportional_to} 90 {mu}m. The developed track based alignment algorithm has demonstrated its reliability and is one of the core algorithms which are used for the precise determination of the positions of the LHCb Outer Tracker elements. (orig.)

  14. Software alignment of the LHCb Outer Tracker chambers

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Deissenroth, Marc

    2010-01-01

    This work presents an alignment algorithm that was developed to precisely determine the positions of the LHCb Outer Tracker detector elements. The algorithm is based on the reconstruction of tracks and exploits that misalignments of the detector change the residual between a measured hit and the reconstructed track. It considers different levels of granularities of the Outer Tracker geometry and fully accounts for correlations of all elements which are imposed by particle trajectories. In extensive tests, simulated shifts and rotations for different levels of the detector granularity have been used as input to the track reconstruction and alignment procedure. With about 260 000 tracks the misalignments are recovered with a statistical precision of O(10 - 100 μm) for the translational degrees of freedom and of O(10 -2 - 10 -1 mrad) for rotations. A study has been performed to determine the impact of Outer Tracker misalignments on the performance of the track reconstruction algorithms. It shows that the achieved statistical precision does not decrease the track reconstruction performance in a significant way. During the commissioning of the LHCb detector, cosmic ray muon events have been collected. The events have been analysed and used for the first alignment of the 216 Outer Tracker modules. The module positions have been determined within ∝ 90 μm. The developed track based alignment algorithm has demonstrated its reliability and is one of the core algorithms which are used for the precise determination of the positions of the LHCb Outer Tracker elements. (orig.)

  15. Effects of climate change on forest vegetation in the Northern Rockies Region [Chapter 6

    Science.gov (United States)

    Keane, Robert E.; Mahalovich, Mary Frances; Bollenbacher, Barry L.; Manning, Mary E.; Loehman, Rachel A.; Jain, Terrie B.; Holsinger, Lisa M.; Larson, Andrew J.; Webster, Meredith M.

    2018-01-01

    The projected rapid changes in climate will affect the unique vegetation assemblages of the Northern Rockies region in myriad ways, both directly through shifts in vegetation growth, mortality, and regeneration, and indirectly through changes in disturbance regimes and interactions with changes in other ecosystem processes, such as hydrology, snow dynamics, and exotic invasions (Bonan 2008; Hansen and Phillips 2015; Hansen et al. 2001; Notaro et al. 2007). These impacts, taken collectively, could change the way vegetation is managed by public land agencies in this area. Some species may be in danger of rapid decreases in abundance, while others may undergo range expansion (Landhäusser et al. 2010). New vegetation communities may form, while historical vegetation complexes may simply shift to other areas of the landscape or become rare. Juxtaposed with climate change concerns are the consequences of other land management policies and past activities, such as fire exclusion, fuels treatments, and grazing. A thorough assessment of the responses of vegetation to projected climate change is needed, along with an evaluation of the vulnerability of important species, communities, and vegetation-related resources that may be influenced by the effects, both direct and indirect, of climate change. This assessment must also account for past management actions and current vegetation conditions and their interactions with future climates.

  16. Hydraulic and Vegetative Models of Historic Environmental Conditions Isolate the Role of Riparian Vegetation in Inducing Channel Change

    Science.gov (United States)

    Manners, R.; Schmidt, J. C.; Wheaton, J. M.

    2011-12-01

    An enduring question in geomorphology is the role of riparian vegetation in inducing or exacerbating channel narrowing. It is typically difficult to isolate the role of vegetation in causing channel narrowing, because narrowing typically occurs where there are changes in stream flow, sediment supply, the invasion of non-native vegetation, and sometimes climate change. Therefore, linkages between changes in vegetation communities and changes in channel form are often difficult to identify. We took a mechanistic approach to isolate the role of the invasive riparian shrub tamarisk (Tamarix spp) in influencing channel narrowing in the Colorado River basin. Detailed geomorphic reconstructions of two sites on the Yampa and Green Rivers, respectively, in Dinosaur National Monument show that channel narrowing has been progressive and that tamarisk encroachment has also occurred; at the same time, dams have been constructed, diversions increased, and spring snowmelt runoff has been occurring earlier in spring. We simulated hydraulic and sediment transport conditions during the two largest floods of record -- 1984 and 2011. Two-dimensional hydraulic models were built to reflect these conditions and allowed us to perform sensitivity tests to determine the dominant determinants of the observed patterns of erosion and deposition. Channel and floodplain topography were constrained through detailed stratigraphic analysis, including precise dating of deposits based on dating of buried tamarisk plants in a series of floodplain trenches and pits. We also used historical air photos to establish past channel topography. To parameterize the influence of riparian vegetation, we developed a model that links detailed terrestrial laser scan (TLS) measurements of stand structure and its corresponding hydraulic roughness at the patch scale to reach-scale riparian vegetation patterns determined from airborne LiDaR (ALS). This model, in conjunction with maps of the ages and establishment

  17. Four years of UAS Imagery Reveals Vegetation Change Due to Permafrost Thaw

    Science.gov (United States)

    DelGreco, J. L.; Herrick, C.; Varner, R. K.; McArthur, K. J.; McCalley, C. K.; Garnello, A.; Finnell, D.; Anderson, S. M.; Crill, P. M.; Palace, M. W.

    2017-12-01

    Warming trends in sub-arctic regions have resulted in thawing of permafrost which in turn induces change in vegetation across peatlands. Collapse of palsas (i.e. permafrost plateaus) has also been correlated to increases in methane (CH4) emissions to the atmosphere. Vegetation change provides new microenvironments that promote CH4 production and emission, specifically through plant interactions and structure. By quantifying the changes in vegetation at the landscape scale, we will be able to understand the impact of thaw on CH4 emissions in these complex and climate sensitive northern ecosystems. We combine field-based measurements of vegetation composition and high resolution Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) imagery to characterize vegetation change in a sub-arctic mire. At Stordalen Mire (1 km x 0.5 km), Abisko, Sweden, we flew a fixed-wing UAS in July of each year between 2014 and 2017. High precision GPS ground control points were used to georeference the imagery. Seventy-five randomized square-meter plots were measured for vegetation composition and individually classified into one of five cover types, each representing a different stage of permafrost degradation. With this training data, each year of imagery was classified by cover type. The developed cover type maps were also used to estimate CH4 emissions across the mire based on average flux CH4 rates from each cover type obtained from flux chamber measurements collected at the mire. This four year comparison of vegetation cover and methane emissions has indicated a rapid response to permafrost thaw and changes in emissions. Estimation of vegetation cover types is vital in our understanding of the evolution of northern peatlands and its future role in the global carbon cycle.

  18. Variation of Vegetation Ecological Water Consumption and Its Response to Vegetation Coverage Changes in the Rocky Desertification Areas in South China.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wan, Long; Tong, Jing; Zhou, Jinxing; Guo, Hongyan; Cui, Ming; Liu, Yuguo; Ning, Like; Tang, Fukai

    2016-01-01

    Over the past several decades, rocky desertification has led to severe ecological problems in karst areas in South China. After a rocky desertification treatment project was completed, the vegetation coverage changed greatly and, consequently, increased the ecology water consumption (approximately equal to the actual evapotranspiration) of the regional vegetation. Thus, it intensified the regional water stresses. This study explored the changes in the actual evapotranspiration (ETa) response to the vegetation coverage changes in the rocky desertification areas in South China based on the precipitation (P), potential evapotranspiration (ETp) and NDVI (the normalized difference vegetation index) datasets. The revised Bagrov model was used to simulate the actual evapotranspiration changes with the supposed increasing NDVI. The results indicated that the average NDVI value was lower when the rocky desertification was more severe. The ETa, evapotranspiration efficiency (ETa/ETp) and potential humidity (P/ETp) generally increased with the increasing NDVI. The sensitivity of the ETa response to vegetation coverage changes varied due to different precipitation conditions and different rocky desertification severities. The ETa was more sensitive under drought conditions. When a drought occurred, the ETa exhibited an average increase of 40~60 mm with the NDVI increasing of 0.1 in the rocky desertification areas. Among the 5 different severity categories of rocky desertification, the ETa values' responses to NDVI changes were less sensitive in the severe rocky desertification areas but more sensitive in the extremely and potential rocky desertification areas. For example, with the NDVI increasing of 0.025, 0.05, 0.075, and 0.1, the corresponding ETa changes increased by an average of 2.64 mm, 10.62 mm, 19.19 mm, and 27.58 mm, respectively, in severe rocky desertification areas but by 4.94 mm, 14.99 mm, 26.80, and 37.13 mm, respectively, in extremely severe rocky

  19. Mechanical stability of the CMS Tracker

    CERN Document Server

    CMS Collaboration

    2015-01-01

    reconstructs the absolute position of individual detector modules with a similar accuracy but after days of data taking. During the long term operation at fixed temperature of +4$^o$C in years 2011--2013 the alignment of tracker components was stable within 10 microns. Temperature variations in the Tracker volume are found to cause the displacements of tracker structures of abou...

  20. Small star trackers for modern space vehicles

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kouzmin, Vladimir; Jushkov, Vladimir; Zaikin, Vladimir

    2017-11-01

    Based on experience of many years creation of spacecrafts' star trackers with diversified detectors (from the first star trackers of 60's to tens versions of star trackers in the following years), using technological achievements in the field of optics and electronics the NPP "Geofizika-Cosmos" has provided celestial orientation for all the space vehicles created in Russia and now has developed a series of new star trackers with CCD matrix and special processors, which are able to meet needs in celestial orientation of the modern spacecrafts for the nearest 10-15 years. In the given article the main characteristics and description of some star trackers' versions are presented. The star trackers have various levels of technical characteristics and use both combined (Russian and foreign) procurement parts, and only national (Russian) procurement parts for the main units.

  1. Trends in landscape and vegetation change and implications for the Santa Cruz Watershed

    Science.gov (United States)

    Villarreal, Miguel; Norman, Laura M.; Webb, Robert H.; Turner, Raymond M.

    2013-01-01

    Monitoring and characterizing the interactive effects of land use and climate on land surface processes is a primary focus of land change science, and of particular concern in arid Wells Distribution in Shallow Groundwater Areas Pumping Trends Increase Streamflow Extent Declines 27 environments where both landscapes and livelihoods can be impacted by short-term climate variability. Using a multi-observational approach to land-change analysis that included landownership data as a proxy for land-use practices, multitemporal land-cover maps, and repeat photography dating to the late 19th century, we examine changing spatial and temporal distributions of two vegetation types with high conservation value in the southwestern United States: grasslands and riparian vegetation. Our study area is the bi-national Santa Cruz Watershed, a topographically complex watershed that straddles the Sonoran Desert and the Madrean Archipelago Ecoregions. In this presentation we focus on historical changes in vegetation and land use in grasslands and riparian areas of the Madrean Ecoregion (San Raphael Valley, Cienega Creek, Sonoita), and compare changes in these areas to changes in the warmer and drier Sonoran Ecoregion. Analysis of historical photography confirms major 20th century vegetation shifts documented in other research: woody plant encroachment, desertification of grasslands, and changing riparian and xeroriparian vegetation occurred in both ecoregions following human settlement. However, vegetation changes over the past decade appear to be more subtle and some of the past trajectories appear to be reversing; most notable are recent mesquite declines in xeroriparian and upland areas, and changes from shrubland to grassland area in the Madrean ecoregion. Land cover changes were temporally variable, reflecting broad climate changes. The most dynamic cover changes occurred during the period from 1989 to 1999, a period with two intense droughts. The degree of vegetation change

  2. The pace of Holocene vegetation change - testing for synchronous developments

    Science.gov (United States)

    Giesecke, Thomas; Bennett, K. D.; Birks, H. John B.; Bjune, Anne E.; Bozilova, Elisaveta; Feurdean, Angelica; Finsinger, Walter; Froyd, Cynthia; Pokorný, Petr; Rösch, Manfred; Seppä, Heikki; Tonkov, Spasimir; Valsecchi, Verushka; Wolters, Steffen

    2011-09-01

    Mid to high latitude forest ecosystems have undergone several major compositional changes during the Holocene. The temporal and spatial patterns of these vegetation changes hold potential information to their causes and triggers. Here we test the hypothesis that the timing of vegetation change was synchronous on a sub-continental scale, which implies a common trigger or a step-like change in climate parameters. Pollen diagrams from selected European regions were statistically divided into assemblage zones and the temporal pattern of the zone boundaries analysed. The results show that the temporal pattern of vegetation change was significantly different from random. Times of change cluster around 8.2, 4.8, 3.7, and 1.2 ka, while times of higher than average stability were found around 2.1 and 5.1 ka. Compositional changes linked to the expansion of Corylus avellana and Alnus glutinosa centre around 10.6 and 9.5 ka, respectively. A climatic trigger initiating these changes may have occurred 0.5 to 1 ka earlier, respectively. The synchronous expansion of C. avellana and A. glutinosa exemplify that dispersal is not necessarily followed by population expansion. The partly synchronous, partly random expansion of A. glutinosa in adjacent European regions exemplifies that sudden synchronous population expansions are not species specific traits but vary regionally.

  3. Permafrost warming and vegetation changes in continental Antarctica

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Guglielmin, Mauro; Dalle Fratte, Michele; Cannone, Nicoletta

    2014-01-01

    Continental Antarctica represents the last pristine environment on Earth and is one of the most suitable contexts to analyze the relations between climate, active layer and vegetation. In 2000 we started long-term monitoring of the climate, permafrost, active layer and vegetation in Victoria Land, continental Antarctica. Our data confirm the stability of mean annual and summer air temperature, of snow cover, and an increasing trend of summer incoming short wave radiation. The active layer thickness is increasing at a rate of 0.3 cm y −1 . The active layer is characterized by large annual and spatial differences. The latter are due to scarce vegetation, a patchy and very thin organic layer and large spatial differences in snow accumulation. The active layer thickening, probably due to the increase of incoming short wave radiation, produced a general decrease of the ground water content due to the better drainage of the ground. The resultant drying may be responsible for the decline of mosses in xeric sites, while it provided better conditions for mosses in hydric sites, following the species-specific water requirements. An increase of lichen vegetation was observed where the climate drying occurred. This evidence emphasizes that the Antarctic continent is experiencing changes that are in total contrast to the changes reported from maritime Antarctica. (paper)

  4. Optical model and calibration of a sun tracker

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Volkov, Sergei N.; Samokhvalov, Ignatii V.; Cheong, Hai Du; Kim, Dukhyeon

    2016-01-01

    Sun trackers are widely used to investigate scattering and absorption of solar radiation in the Earth's atmosphere. We present a method for optimization of the optical altazimuth sun tracker model with output radiation direction aligned with the axis of a stationary spectrometer. The method solves the problem of stability loss in tracker pointing at the Sun near the zenith. An optimal method for tracker calibration at the measurement site is proposed in the present work. A method of moving calibration is suggested for mobile applications in the presence of large temperature differences and errors in the alignment of the optical system of the tracker. - Highlights: • We present an optimal optical sun tracker model for atmospheric spectroscopy. • The problem of loss of stability of tracker pointing at the Sun has been solved. • We propose an optimal method for tracker calibration at a measurement site. • Test results demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed optimization methods.

  5. A CONCEPT OF SOLAR TRACKER SYSTEM DESIGN

    OpenAIRE

    Meita Rumbayan *, Muhamad Dwisnanto Putro

    2017-01-01

    Improvement of solar panel efficiency is an ongoing research work recently. Maximizing the output power by integrating with the solar tracker system becomes a interest point of the research. This paper presents the concept in designing a solar tracker system applied to solar panel. The development of solar panel tracker system design that consist of system display prototype design, hardware design, and algorithm design. This concept is useful as the control system for solar tracker to improve...

  6. Relationships between vegetation and climate change in Transbaikalia, Siberia

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Tchebakova, N.M.; Parfenova, E.I. [V.N. Sukachev Inst. of Forest, Russian Academy of Sciences, Siberian Branch, Akademgorodok, Krasnoyarsk (Russian Federation)

    2002-10-01

    This paper demonstrated how vegetation of the Lake Baikal basin may respond to climate change at a mountain biome (an orobiome over the entire basin) and a stand in a locality. An orobiome vegetation model was developed along with a higher resolution stand model based on climatic parameters. Regional climates were modeled based on physiology and site climates based on topography. Bioclimatic multiple regression models were then developed to predict regional vegetation and forest stand characteristics distribution over a mountain range in Central Transbaikalia under current and future climate scenarios. Bioclimatic models were combined with climatic layers of different resolutions. Tree species composition and wood volume was predicted based on 2 climate indices - temperature sums (base 5 degrees C) and the dryness index. Results indicate that lowland vegetation will shift 250 m upslope and highland vegetation will shift 450 m upslope. This will significantly reduce the tundra and light-needled taiga, and will expand the forest-steppe. Results also indicate that the total phytomass within the entire basin will not change much. Stand phytomass across the basin will, however, increase. The model used in this study does not include climate-forcing factors such as wind, snow and permafrost. The model is open to new development to include a dynamic components that would inject vitality into the model. 13 refs., 2 tabs., 3 figs.

  7. Vegetation Changes along the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Engineering Corridor Since 2000 Induced by Climate Change and Human Activities

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yi Song

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available The Qinghai-Tibet (QT Plateau Engineering Corridor is located in the hinterland of the QT Plateau, which is highly sensitive to global climate change. Climate change causes permafrost degradation, which subsequently affects vegetation growth. This study focused on the vegetation dynamics and their relationships with climate change and human activities in the region surrounding the QT Plateau Engineering Corridor. The vegetation changes were inferred by applying trend analysis, the Mann-Kendall trend test and abrupt change analysis. Six key regions, each containing 40 nested quadrats that ranged in size from 500 × 500 m to 20 × 20 km, were selected to determine the spatial scales of the impacts from different factors. Cumulative growing season integrated enhanced vegetation index (CGSIEVI values were calculated for each of the nested quadrats of different sizes to indicate the overall vegetation state over the entire year at different spatial scales. The impacts from human activities, a sudden increase in precipitation and permafrost degradation were quantified at different spatial scales using the CGSIEVI values and meteorological data based on the double mass curve method. Three conclusions were derived. First, the vegetation displayed a significant increasing trend over 23.6% of the study area. The areas displaying increases were mainly distributed in the Hoh Xil. Of the area where the vegetation displayed a significant decreasing trend, 72.4% was made up of alpine meadows. Second, more vegetation, especially the alpine meadows, has begun to degenerate or experience more rapid degradation since 2007 due to permafrost degradation and overgrazing. Finally, an active layer depth of 3 m to 3.2 m represents a limiting depth for alpine meadows.

  8. Users’ experiences of wearable activity trackers: a cross-sectional study

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Carol Maher

    2017-11-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Wearable activity trackers offer considerable promise for helping users to adopt healthier lifestyles. This study aimed to explore users’ experience of activity trackers, including usage patterns, sharing of data to social media, perceived behaviour change (physical activity, diet and sleep, and technical issues/barriers to use. Methods A cross-sectional online survey was developed and administered to Australian adults who were current or former activity tracker users. Results were analysed descriptively, with differences between current and former users and wearable brands explored using independent samples t-tests, Mann-Whitney, and chi square tests. Results Participants included 200 current and 37 former activity tracker users (total N = 237 with a mean age of 33.1 years (SD 12.4, range 18–74 years. Fitbit (67.5% and Garmin devices (16.5% were most commonly reported. Participants typically used their trackers for sustained periods (5–7 months and most intended to continue usage. Participants reported they had improved their physical activity (51–81% more commonly than they had their diet (14–40% or sleep (11–24%, and slightly more participants reported to value the real time feedback (89% compared to the long-term monitoring (78%. Most users (70% reported they had experienced functionality issues with their devices, most commonly related to battery life and technical difficulties. Conclusions Results suggest users find activity trackers appealing and useful tools for increasing perceived physical activity levels over a sustained period.

  9. TRACKER

    CERN Multimedia

    K. Gill

    2010-01-01

    The Tracker has continued to operate with excellent performance during this first period with 7 TeV collisions. Strips operations have been very smooth. The up-time during collisions was 98.5%, up to end of May, with a large fraction of the down-time coming during the planned fine-timing scan with early 7 TeV collisions. Pixels operations are also going very well, besides problems related to background beam-gas collisions where the particles produced generate very large clusters in the barrel modules. When CMS triggers on these events, the FEDs affected overflow and then timeout. Effort was mobilised very quickly to understand and mitigate this problem, with modifications made to the pixel FED firmware in order to provide automatic recovery. With operations becoming more and more routine at P5, Pixels have begun the transition to centrally attended operation, which means that the P5 shifters will no longer be required to be on duty. The strip-Tracker is also planning to make this transition at the end of Ju...

  10. TRACKER

    CERN Document Server

    Bora Akgun

    2013-01-01

    Pixel Tracker Maintenance of the Pixel Tracker has been ongoing since it was extracted from inside CMS and safely stored at low temperatures in Pixel laboratory at Point 5 (see previous Bulletin).    All four half cylinders of the forward Pixel detector (FPIX) have been repaired and the failures have been understood. In October, a team of technicians from Fermilab replaced a total of three panels that were not repairable in place. The replacement of panels is a delicate operation that involves removing the half disks that hold the panels from the half cylinders, removing the damaged panels from the half disks, installing the new panels on the half disks, and finally putting the half disks back into the half cylinders and hooking up the cooling connections. The work was completed successfully. The same team also prepared the installation of the Phase 1 Pixel pilot blade system, installing a third half disk mechanics in the half cylinders; these half disks will host new Phase 1 P...

  11. Scintillating fibre (SciFi) tracker

    CERN Multimedia

    Caraban Gonzalez, Noemi

    2017-01-01

    128 modules – containing 11 000 km of scintillating fibres – will make up the new SciFi tracker, which will replace the outer and inner trackers of the LHCb detector as part of the experiment’s major upgrade during Long Shutdown 2 (LS2)

  12. The MICE scintillating-fibre tracker

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Matsushita, T [Imperial College London (United Kingdom)], E-mail: T.Matsushita@imperial.ac.uk

    2008-06-15

    The international Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment (MICE) collaboration will carry out a systematic investigation of the ionization cooling of a muon beam. An ionization cooling channel is required to compress the phase-space volume occupied by the muon beam prior to acceleration in the baseline conceptual designs for both the Neutrino Factory and the Muon Collider. Muons entering and leaving the cooling channel will be measured in two solenoidal spectrometers, each of which is instrumented with a scintillating-fibre tracker. Each tracker is composed of five planar scintillating fibre stations, each station being composed of three planar layers of 350 micron scintillating fibres. The devices will be read out using the Visible Light Photon Counters (VLPCs) developed for use in the D0 experiment at the Tevatron. The design of the system will be presented along with the status of the tracker-construction project. The expected performance of prototypes of the full tracker will be summarised.

  13. Productive vegetation: relationships between net primary productivity, vegetation types and climate change in the Wet Tropics bioregion

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Ramirez, Vanessa Valdez; Williams, Stephen E.; VanDerWal, Jeremy

    2007-01-01

    Full text: Full text: There is now ample evidence demonstrating the impacts of climate change on biodiversity and human society (Walther ef a/. 2002). Numerous studies have shown climate change is one of the most significant threats to tropical forests, such as the Wet Tropics Heritage Area, due to their high biodiversity and endemism (Pounds ef al. 1999; Hughes 2000; Parmesan and Yohe 2003). Williams ef al. (2003) suggested that small shifts in net primary productivity (NPP) as a result of climate change could lead to potentially massive follow-on effects for the extremely diverse and vulnerable rainforest flora and fauna. It is therefore crucial to explore the relationships between NPP and local biodiversity, especially to create models for different climate change scenarios. Nevertheless, NPP in the Wet Tropics has yet to be estimated. This is the first study to provide a general NPP estimate for the Wet Tropics bioregion using climate surrogates (Schuur 2003). This technique estimates NPP in an accurate, repeatable, and cost-effective way. NPP values were linked to vegetation types and examined under various climatic and environmental conditions. Results show a significant difference in productivity according to vegetation types and climatic variables, with temperature and rainfall seasonality as the most important determining variables. Additionally, lowland and upland vegetations showed a significant difference in productivity patterns throughout the year. Vegetation types located above 1000 metres in altitude had the lowest values of mean annual productivity due to their high rainfall and low temperatures; vegetation types located below 600 metres showed increased productivity values during the wet season (December-March). Net primary productivity will certainly be impacted by changes in temperature and rainfall, due to climate change. Although an increase in NPP values can be predicted for upland areas, the more widely distributed lowlands will drastically

  14. Orbital scale vegetation change in Africa

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dupont, Lydie

    2011-12-01

    Palynological records of Middle and Late Pleistocene marine sediments off African shores is reviewed in order to reveal long-term patterns of vegetation change during climate cycles. Whether the transport of pollen and spores from the source areas on the continent to the ocean floor is mainly by wind or predominantly by rivers depends on the region. Despite the differences in transportation, accumulation rates in the marine sediments decline exponentially with distance to the shore. The marine sediments provide well-dated records presenting the vegetation history of the main biomes of western and southern Africa. The extent of different biomes varied with the climate changes of the glacial interglacial cycle. The Mediterranean forest area expanded during interglacials, the northern Saharan desert during glacials, and the semi-desert area in between during the transitions. In the sub-Saharan mountains ericaceous scrubland spread mainly during glacials and the mountainous forest area often increased during intermediate periods. Savannahs extended or shifted to lower latitudes during glacials. While the representation of the tropical rain forest fluctuated with summer insolation and precession, that of the subtropical biomes showed more obliquity variability or followed the pattern of glacial and interglacials.

  15. Predictors of changes in adolescents' consumption of fruits, vegetables and energy-dense snacks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pearson, Natalie; Ball, Kylie; Crawford, David

    2011-03-01

    Understanding the predictors of developmental changes in adolescent eating behaviours is important for the design of nutrition interventions. The present study examined associations between individual, social and physical environmental factors and changes in adolescent eating behaviours over 2 years. Consumption of fruits, vegetables and energy-dense snacks was assessed using a Web-based survey completed by 1850 adolescents from years 7 and 9 of secondary schools in Victoria, Australia, at baseline and 2 years later. Perceived value of healthy eating, self-efficacy for healthy eating, social modelling and support, and home availability and accessibility of foods were assessed at baseline. Self-efficacy for increasing fruit consumption was positively associated with the change in fruit and vegetable consumption, while self-efficacy for decreasing junk food consumption was inversely associated with the change in energy-dense snack consumption. Home availability of energy-dense foods was inversely associated with the change in fruit consumption and positively associated with the change in energy-dense snack consumption, while home availability of fruits and vegetables was positively associated with the change in vegetable consumption. Perceived value of healthy eating and modelling of healthy eating by mothers were positively associated with the change in fruit consumption. Support of best friends for healthy eating was positively associated with the change in vegetable consumption. Self-efficacy and home availability of foods appear to be consistent predictors of change in fruit, vegetable and energy-dense snack consumption. Future study should assess the effectiveness of methods to increase self-efficacy for healthy eating and to improve home availability of healthy food options in programmes promoting healthy eating among adolescents.

  16. Vegetation physiology controls continental water cycle responses to climate change

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lemordant, L. A.; Swann, A. L. S.; Cook, B.; Scheff, J.; Gentine, P.

    2017-12-01

    Abstract per se:Predicting how climate change will affect the hydrologic cycle is of utmost importance for ecological systems and for human life and activities. A typical perspective is that global warming will cause an intensification of the mean state, the so-called "dry gets drier, wet gets wetter" paradigm. While this result is robust over the oceans, recent works suggest it may be less appropriate for terrestrial regions. Using Earth System Models (ESMs) with decoupled surface (vegetation physiology, PHYS) and atmospheric (radiative, ATMO) CO2 responses, we show that the CO2 physiological response dominates the change in the continental hydrologic cycle compared to radiative and precipitation changes due to increased atmospheric CO2, counter to previous assumptions. Using multiple linear regression analysis, we estimate the individual contribution of each of the three main drivers, precipitation, radiation and physiological CO2 forcing (see attached figure). Our analysis reveals that physiological effects dominate changes for 3 key indicators of dryness and/or vegetation stress (namely LAI, P-ET and EF) over the largest fraction of the globe, except for soil moisture which exhibits a more complex response. This highlights the key role of vegetation in controlling future terrestrial hydrologic response.Legend of the Figure attached:Decomposition along the three main drivers of LAI (a), P-ET (b), EF (c) in the control run. Green quantifies the effect of the vegetation physiology based on the run PHYS; red and blue quantify the contribution of, respectively, net radiation and precipitation, based on multiple linear regression in ATMO. Pie charts show for each variable the fraction (labelled in %) of land under the main influence (more than 50% of the changes is attributed to this driver) of one the three main drivers (green for grid points dominated by vegetation physiology, red for grid points dominated by net radiation, and blue for grid points dominated by the

  17. Changes in vegetation structure and aboveground biomass in ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Changes in vegetation structure and aboveground biomass in response to traditional rangeland management practices in Borana, southern Ethiopia. ... managed by prescribed fire for five years and grazed only post-fire during dry seasons.

  18. Silicon Tracker Design for the ILC

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Nelson, T.; SLAC

    2005-01-01

    The task of tracking charged particles in energy frontier collider experiments has been largely taken over by solid-state detectors. While silicon microstrip trackers offer many advantages in this environment, large silicon trackers are generally much more massive than their gaseous counterparts. Because of the properties of the machine itself, much of the material that comprises a typical silicon microstrip tracker can be eliminated from a design for the ILC. This realization is the inspiration for a tracker design using lightweight, short, mass-producible modules to tile closed, nested cylinders with silicon microstrips. This design relies upon a few key technologies to provide excellent performance with low cost and complexity. The details of this concept are discussed, along with the performance and status of the design effort

  19. Past and future effects of climate change on spatially heterogeneous vegetation activity in China

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gao, Jiangbo; Jiao, Kewei; Wu, Shaohong; Ma, Danyang; Zhao, Dongsheng; Yin, Yunhe; Dai, Erfu

    2017-07-01

    Climate change is a major driver of vegetation activity but its complex ecological relationships impede research efforts. In this study, the spatial distribution and dynamic characteristics of climate change effects on vegetation activity in China from the 1980s to the 2010s and from 2021 to 2050 were investigated using a geographically weighted regression (GWR) model. The GWR model was based on combined datasets of satellite vegetation index, climate observation and projection, and future vegetation productivity simulation. Our results revealed that the significantly positive precipitation-vegetation relationship was and will be mostly distributed in North China. However, the regions with temperature-dominated distribution of vegetation activity were and will be mainly located in South China. Due to the varying climate features and vegetation cover, the spatial correlation between vegetation activity and climate change may be altered. There will be different dominant climatic factors for vegetation activity distribution in some regions such as Northwest China, and even opposite correlations in Northeast China. Additionally, the response of vegetation activity to precipitation will move southward in the next three decades. In contrast, although the high warming rate will restrain the vegetation activity, precipitation variability could modify hydrothermal conditions for vegetation activity. This observation is exemplified in the projected future enhancement of vegetation activity in the Tibetan Plateau and weakened vegetation activity in East and Middle China. Furthermore, the vegetation in most parts of North China may adapt to an arid environment, whereas in many southern areas, vegetation will be repressed by water shortage in the future.

  20. CMS tracker slides into centre stage

    CERN Document Server

    2006-01-01

    As preparations for the magnet test and cosmic challenge get underway, a prototype tracker has been carefully inserted into the centre of CMS. The tracker, in its special platform, is slowly inserted into the centre of CMS. The CMS prototype tracker to be used for the magnet test and cosmic challenge coming up this summer has the same dimensions -2.5 m in diameter and 6 m in length- as the real one and tooling exactly like it. However, the support tube is only about 1% equipped, with 2 m2 of silicon detectors installed out of the total 200 m2. This is already more than any LEP experiment ever used and indicates the great care needed to be taken by engineers and technicians as these fragile detectors were installed and transported to Point 5. Sixteen thousand silicon detectors with a total of about 10 million strips will make up the full tracker. So far, 140 modules with about 100 000 strips have been implanted into the prototype tracker. These silicon strips will provide precision tracking for cosmic muon...

  1. TRACKER

    CERN Multimedia

    D. Duggan and L. Demaria

    2012-01-01

    Pixels Tracker With the 2012 proton-proton run almost complete, the pixel detector continues to operate well in an environment with large pile-up and high L1 rate. During this period, the pixel detector has shown excellent stability, with the number of current active channels from each the BPIX and FPIX the same as from the first month of 2012 running, resulting in 96.3% of the detector active. This total includes the recovery of six FPIX channels, temporarily disabled due to an unexpected dependence on the magnetic field. From a dedicated study that identified a small crack in an optical cable connector, a repair was made which restored 120 ROCs in the FPIX. During 2012 there has been a close collaboration of the online operations with the offline studies, resulting in the first dedicated HV bias scans used for the pixel Lorentz Angle measurement. These scans help to better understand this important parameter that changes with temperature, irradiation, and bias voltage. This is in addition to all other s...

  2. Notable shifting in the responses of vegetation activity to climate change in China

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chen, Aifang; He, Bin; Wang, Honglin; Huang, Ling; Zhu, Yunhua; Lv, Aifeng

    The weakening relationship between inter-annual temperature variability and vegetation activity in the Northern Hemisphere over the last three decades has been reported by a recent study. However, how and to what extent vegetation activity responds to climate change in China is still unclear. We applied the Pearson correlation and partial correlation methods with a moving 15-y window to the GIMMS NDVI dataset from NOAA/AVHRR and observed climate data to examine the variation in the relationships between vegetation activity and climate variables. Results showed that there was an expanding negative response of vegetation growth to climate warming and a positive role of precipitation. The change patterns between NDVI and climate variables over vegetation types during the past three decades pointed an expending negative correlation between NDVI and temperature and a positive role of precipitation over most of the vegetation types (meadow, grassland, shrub, desert, cropland, and forest). Specifically, correlation between NDVI and temperature (PNDVI-T) have shifted from positive to negative in most of the station of temperature-limited areas with evergreen broadleaf forests, whereas precipitation-limited temperate grassland and desert were characterized by a positive PNDVI-P. This study contributes to ongoing investigations of the effects of climate change on vegetation activity. It is also of great importance for designing forest management strategies to cope with climate change.

  3. The effect of latitude on the performance of different solar trackers in Europe and Africa

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Bahrami, Arian; Okoye, Chiemeka Onyeka; Atikol, Ugur

    2016-01-01

    Highlights: • The effect of latitude on the performance of seven solar trackers is analyzed in Europe and Africa. • The performance of the trackers is ranked according to the area location latitude. • The results showed five ranking patterns. • Based on the five patterns and the site latitude, designers can select the best available tracker. - Abstract: In this paper, the effect of latitude on the performance of different solar trackers is examined. The hourly solar radiation data of different locations around Europe and Africa measured on a horizontal surface is collected and utilized. Widely validated Perez anisotropic model is used to predict the diffuse component of the solar radiation on an inclined surface. Different solar trackers namely, Full/dual-axis, East–West (EW), North–South (NS), Inclined East–West (IEW), and Vertical-axis (V) trackers are considered in calculating the available solar potential of the locations. The performance of the solar trackers in terms of the energy gain is ranked according to the area location latitudes. The results show that the tracking performance is highly dependent on the locations, thus changes with the latitude. The percentage variation among the implemented one-axis tracking options relative to dual-axis trackers ranges from 0.42% to 23.4%. Overall, the increase in the energy gain of dual-axis trackers compared to the optimal fixed panel for the locations varies from 17.72% to 31.23%, thus emphasizes the importance of solar trackers. Finally, the study is expected to aid designers in the selection and installation of appropriate solar trackers in the regions.

  4. Star trackers for attitude determination

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Liebe, Carl Christian

    1995-01-01

    One problem comes to all spacecrafts using vector information. That is the problem of determining the attitude. This paper describes how the area of attitude determination instruments has evolved from simple pointing devices into the latest technology, which determines the attitude by utilizing...... a CCD camera and a powerful microcomputer. The instruments are called star trackers and they are capable of determining the attitude with an accuracy better than 1 arcsecond. The concept of the star tracker is explained. The obtainable accuracy is calculated, the numbers of stars to be included...... in the star catalogue are discussed and the acquisition of the initial attitude is explained. Finally the commercial market for star trackers is discussed...

  5. Responses of Vegetation Cover to Environmental Change in Large Cities of China

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kai Jin

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available Vegetation cover is crucial for the sustainability of urban ecosystems; however, this cover has been undergoing substantial changes in cities. Based on climate data, city statistical data, nighttime light data and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI dataset, we investigate the spatiotemporal variations of climate factors, urban lands and vegetation cover in 71 large cities of China during 1998–2012, and explore their correlations. A regression model between growing-season NDVI (G-NDVI and urban land proportion (PU is built to quantify the impact of urbanization on vegetation cover change. The results indicate that the spatiotemporal variations of temperature, precipitation, PU and G-NDVI are greatly different among the 71 cities which experienced rapid urbanization. The spatial difference of G-NDVI is closely related to diverse climate conditions, while the inter-annual variations of G-NDVI are less sensitive to climate changes. In addition, there is a negative correlation between G-NDVI trend and PU change, indicating vegetation cover in cities have been negatively impacted by urbanization. For most of the inland cities, the urbanization impacts on vegetation cover in urban areas are more severe than in suburban areas. But the opposite occurs in 17 cities mainly located in the coastal areas which have been undergoing the most rapid urbanization. Overall, the impacts of urbanization on G-NDVI change are estimated to be −0.026 per decade in urban areas and −0.015 per decade in suburban areas during 1998–2012. The long-term developments of cities would persist and continue to impact on the environmental change and sustainability. We use a 15-year window here as a case study, which implies the millennia of human effects on the natural biotas and warns us to manage landscapes and preserve ecological environments properly.

  6. Stages of change to increase fruit and vegetable intake and its relationships with fruit and vegetable intake and related psychosocial factors.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chee Yen, Wong; Mohd Shariff, Zalilah; Kandiah, Mirnalini; Mohd Taib, Mohd Nasir

    2014-06-01

    Understanding individual's intention, action and maintenance to increase fruit and vegetable intake is an initial step in designing nutrition or health promotion programs. This study aimed to determine stages of change to increase fruit and vegetable intake and its relationships with fruit and vegetable intake, self-efficacy, perceived benefits and perceived barriers. This cross-sectional study was conducted among 348 public university staff in Universiti Putra Malaysia. A pre-tested self-administered questionnaire and two days 24-hour diet recall were used. Half of the respondents (50%) were in preparation stage, followed by 43% in action/maintenance, 7% in pre-contemplation/contemplation stages. Respondents in action/maintenance stages had significantly higher self-efficacy (F = 9.17, P diet high in fruits and vegetables in order to promote healthy changes in having high fruit and vegetable intake.

  7. Dynamic plant ecology: the spectrum of vegetational change in space and time

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Delcourt, H R; Delcourt, P A; Webb, T III

    1983-01-01

    Different environmental forcing functions influence vegetational patterns and processes over a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. On the micro-scale (1 year to 5 x 10/sup 3/ years, 1 m/sup 2/ to 10/sup 6/m/sup 2/) natural and anthropogenic disturbances affect establishment and succession of species populations. At the macro-scale (5 x 10/sup 3/ years to 10/sup 6/ years and 10/sup 6/m/sup 2/ to 10/sup 12/m/sup 2/) climatic changes influence regional vegetational processes that include migrations of species as well as displacement of ecosystems. Mega-scale phenomena such as plate tectonics, evolution of the biota and development of global patterns of vegetation occur on the time scale of > 10/sup 6/ years and over areas > 10/sup 12/m/sup 2/. Our knowledge of past vegetational changes resulting from Quaternary climatic change can be used to predict biotic responses to future climatic changes such as global warming that may be induced by increased carbon dioxide (CO/sub 2/) concentrations in the atmosphere. The time scale for future climatic warming may be much more rapid than that characterizing the early- to mid-Holocene, increasing the probability of rapid turnover in species composition, changes in local and regional dominance of important taxa, displacement of species ranges and local extinction of species. Integration of ecological and paleoecological perspectives on vegetational dynamics is fundamental to understanding and managing the biosphere.

  8. LHCb upstream tracker

    CERN Multimedia

    Artuso, Marina

    2016-01-01

    The detector for the LHCb upgrade is designed for 40MHz readout, allowing the experiment to run at an instantaneous luminosity of 2x10^33 cm$^2$s$^-1$. The upgrade of the tracker subsystem in front of the dipole magnet, the Upstream Tracker, is crucial for charged track reconstruction and fast trigger decisions based on a tracking algorithm involving also vertex detector information. The detector consists of 4 planes with a total area of about 8.5m$^2$, made of single sided silicon strip sensors read-out by a novel custom-made ASIC (SALT). Details on the performance of prototype sensors, front-end electronics, near-detector electronics and mechanical components are presented.

  9. CMS Tracker Visualisation

    CERN Document Server

    Mennea, Maria Santa; Zito, Giuseppe

    2004-01-01

    To provide improvements in the performance of existing tracker data visualization tools in IGUANA, a 2D visualisation software has been developed, using the object oriented paradigm and software engineering techniques. We have designed 2D graphics objects and some of them have been implemented. The access to the new objects is made in ORCA plugin of IGUANA CMS. A new tracker object oriented model has been designed for developing these 2D graphics objects. The model consists of new classes which represent all its components (layers, modules, rings, petals, rods).The new classes are described here. The last part of this document contains a user manual of the software and will be updated with new releases.

  10. CMS silicon tracker developments

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Civinini, C.; Albergo, S.; Angarano, M.; Azzi, P.; Babucci, E.; Bacchetta, N.; Bader, A.; Bagliesi, G.; Basti, A.; Biggeri, U.; Bilei, G.M.; Bisello, D.; Boemi, D.; Bosi, F.; Borrello, L.; Bozzi, C.; Braibant, S.; Breuker, H.; Bruzzi, M.; Buffini, A.; Busoni, S.; Candelori, A.; Caner, A.; Castaldi, R.; Castro, A.; Catacchini, E.; Checcucci, B.; Ciampolini, P.; Creanza, D.; D'Alessandro, R.; Da Rold, M.; Demaria, N.; De Palma, M.; Dell'Orso, R.; Della Marina, R.D.R.; Dutta, S.; Eklund, C.; Feld, L.; Fiore, L.; Focardi, E.; French, M.; Freudenreich, K.; Frey, A.; Fuertjes, A.; Giassi, A.; Giorgi, M.; Giraldo, A.; Glessing, B.; Gu, W.H.; Hall, G.; Hammarstrom, R.; Hebbeker, T.; Honma, A.; Hrubec, J.; Huhtinen, M.; Kaminsky, A.; Karimaki, V.; Koenig, St.; Krammer, M.; Lariccia, P.; Lenzi, M.; Loreti, M.; Luebelsmeyer, K.; Lustermann, W.; Maettig, P.; Maggi, G.; Mannelli, M.; Mantovani, G.; Marchioro, A.; Mariotti, C.; Martignon, G.; Evoy, B. Mc; Meschini, M.; Messineo, A.; Migliore, E.; My, S.; Paccagnella, A.; Palla, F.; Pandoulas, D.; Papi, A.; Parrini, G.; Passeri, D.; Pieri, M.; Piperov, S.; Potenza, R.; Radicci, V.; Raffaelli, F.; Raymond, M.; Santocchia, A.; Schmitt, B.; Selvaggi, G.; Servoli, L.; Sguazzoni, G.; Siedling, R.; Silvestris, L.; Starodumov, A.; Stavitski, I.; Stefanini, G.; Surrow, B.; Tempesta, P.; Tonelli, G.; Tricomi, A.; Tuuva, T.; Vannini, C.; Verdini, P.G.; Viertel, G.; Xie, Z.; Yahong, Li; Watts, S.; Wittmer, B.

    2002-01-01

    The CMS Silicon tracker consists of 70 m 2 of microstrip sensors which design will be finalized at the end of 1999 on the basis of systematic studies of device characteristics as function of the most important parameters. A fundamental constraint comes from the fact that the detector has to be operated in a very hostile radiation environment with full efficiency. We present an overview of the current results and prospects for converging on a final set of parameters for the silicon tracker sensors

  11. Model of CMS Tracker

    CERN Multimedia

    Breuker

    1999-01-01

    A full scale CMS tracker mock-up exposed temporarily in the hall of building 40. The purpose of the mock-up is to study the routing of services, assembly and installation. The people in front are only a small fraction of the CMS tracker collaboration. Left to right : M. Atac, R. Castaldi, H. Breuker, D. Pandoulas,P. Petagna, A. Caner, A. Carraro, H. Postema, M. Oriunno, S. da Mota Silva, L. Van Lancker, W. Glessing, G. Benefice, A. Onnela, M. Gaspar, G. M. Bilei

  12. ColorTracker

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Holzheu, Stefanie; Lee, S.; Herneoja, Aulikki; Österlund, Toni; Markkanen, Piia

    2016-01-01

    With the work-in-progress research project ColorTracker we explore color as a formal design tool. This project-based paper describes a novel software application that processes color composition of a place and transcribes the data into three-dimensional geometries for architectural design. The

  13. Laser tracker error determination using a network measurement

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Hughes, Ben; Forbes, Alistair; Lewis, Andrew; Sun, Wenjuan; Veal, Dan; Nasr, Karim

    2011-01-01

    We report on a fast, easily implemented method to determine all the geometrical alignment errors of a laser tracker, to high precision. The technique requires no specialist equipment and can be performed in less than an hour. The technique is based on the determination of parameters of a geometric model of the laser tracker, using measurements of a set of fixed target locations, from multiple locations of the tracker. After fitting of the model parameters to the observed data, the model can be used to perform error correction of the raw laser tracker data or to derive correction parameters in the format of the tracker manufacturer's internal error map. In addition to determination of the model parameters, the method also determines the uncertainties and correlations associated with the parameters. We have tested the technique on a commercial laser tracker in the following way. We disabled the tracker's internal error compensation, and used a five-position, fifteen-target network to estimate all the geometric errors of the instrument. Using the error map generated from this network test, the tracker was able to pass a full performance validation test, conducted according to a recognized specification standard (ASME B89.4.19-2006). We conclude that the error correction determined from the network test is as effective as the manufacturer's own error correction methodologies

  14. A monitoring protocol for vegetation change on Irish peatland and heath

    Science.gov (United States)

    O'Connell, J.; Connolly, J.; Holden, N. M.

    2014-09-01

    Amendments to Articles 3.3 and 3.4 of the Kyoto Protocol have meant that detection of vegetation change may now form an interracial part of national soil carbon stocks. In this study multispectral multi-platform satellite data was processed to detect change to the surface vegetation of four peatland sites and one heath in Ireland. Spectral and spatial thresholds were used on difference images between master and slave data in the extraction of temporally invariant targets for multi-platform cross calibration. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was used to evaluate any difference in the cumulative probability distributions of the master, slave and calibrated slave data as expressed by the D statistic, with values reduced by an average of 89.7% due to the cross calibration procedure. A change detection model was created which incorporated a spatial threshold of 9 pixels and a standard deviation (SD) spectral threshold. Kappa accuracy values for the five sites ranged from 80 to 97%, showing that 1.5 SD was the optimum spectral threshold for detecting vegetation change. Change detection results showed mean percentage change ranging from 2.11 to 3.28% of total area and cumulative change over the observed time period of between 15.24 and 49.27% of total area.

  15. Vegetation response to climate change : implications for Canada's conservation lands

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Scott, D. [Environment Canada, Ottawa, ON (Canada). Adaptation and Impact Research Group; Lemieux, C. [Waterloo Univ., ON (Canada). Dept. of Geography

    2003-05-01

    Studies have shown that Canada's national parks are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. A wide range of biophysical climate change impacts could affect the integrity of conservation lands in each region of Canada. This report examines the potential impact of climate change on landscape alterations and vegetation distribution in Canada's wide network of conservation lands. It also presents several ways to integrate climate change into existing conservation policy and adaptation strategies. Canada's conservation lands include provincial parks, migratory bird sanctuaries, national wildlife areas and wildlife protected areas. This is the first study to examine biome changes by applying an equilibrium Global Vegetation Model (GVM) to Canada's network of national park systems. Some of the policy and planning challenges posed by changes in landscape level vegetation were also addressed. The report indicates that in terms of potential changes to the biome classification of Canada's national forests, more northern biomes are projected to decrease. These northern biomes include the tundra, taiga and boreal conifer forests. 56 refs., 8 tabs., 6 figs.

  16. The CMS Tracker upgrade for HL-LHC

    CERN Document Server

    Ahuja, Sudha

    2017-01-01

    The LHC machine is planning an upgrade program which will smoothly bring the luminosity to about 5 $\\times$ $10^{34} $cm$^{-2}$s$^{-1}$ in 2028, to possibly reach an integrated luminosity of 3000 fb$^{-1}$ by the end of 2037. This High Luminosity LHC scenario, HL-LHC, will require a preparation program of the LHC detectors known as Phase-2 upgrade. The current CMS Outer Tracker, already running beyond design specifications, and CMS Phase1 Pixel Detector will not be able to survive HL-LHC radiation conditions and CMS will need completely new devices, in order to fully exploit the high-demanding operating conditions and the delivered luminosity. The new Outer Tracker should have also trigger capabilities. To achieve such goals, R$\\&$D activities are ongoing to explore options both for the Outer Tracker, and for the pixel Inner Tracker. Solutions are being developed that would allow including tracking information at Level-1. The design choices for the Tracker upgrades are discussed along with some highlights...

  17. The LHCb Silicon Tracker, first operational results

    CERN Document Server

    Esperante, D; Adeva, B; Gallas, A; Pérez Trigo, E; Rodríguez Pérez, P; Pazos Álvarez, A; Saborido, J; Vàzquez, P; Bay, A; Bettler, M O; Blanc, F; Bressieux, J; Conti, G; Dupertuis, F; Fave, V; Frei, R; Gauvin, N; Haefeli, G; Keune, A; Luisier, J; Muresan, R; Nakada, T; Needham, M; Nicolas, L; Knecht, M; Potterat, C; Schneider, O; Tran, M; Aquines Gutierrez, O; Bauer, C; Britsch, M; Hofmann, W; Maciuc, F; Schmelling, M; Voss, H; Anderson, J; Buechler, A; Bursche, A; Chiapolini, N; de Cian, M; Elsaesser, C; Hangartner, V; Salzmann, C; Steiner, S; Steinkamp, O; Straumann, U; van Tilburg, J; Tobin, M; Vollhardt, A; Iakovenko, V; Okhrimenko, O; Pugatch, V

    2010-01-01

    The Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) experiment at CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) is designed to perform precision measurements of b quark decays. The LHCb Silicon Tracker consists of two sub-detectors, the Tracker Turicensis and the Inner Tracker, which are built from silicon micro-strip technology. First performance results of both detectors using data from Large Hadron Collider synchronization tests are presented.

  18. Simulation studies for the ATLAS upgrade Strip tracker

    CERN Document Server

    Wang, Jike; The ATLAS collaboration

    2017-01-01

    ATLAS is making extensive efforts towards preparing a detector upgrade for the High luminosity operations of the LHC (HL-LHC), which will commence operation in ~10 years. The current ATLAS Inner Detector will be replaced by a all-silicon tracker (comprising an inner Pixel tracker and outer Strip tracker). The software currently used for the new silicon tracker is broadly inherited from that used for the LHC Run 1 and 2, but many new developments have been made to better fulfil the future detector and operation requirements. One aspect in particular which will be highlighted is the simulation software for the Strip tracker. The available geometry description software (including the detailed description for all the sensitive elements, the services, etc.) did not allow for accurate modeling of the planned detector design. A range of sensors/layouts for the Strip tracker are being considered and must be studied in detailed simulations in order to assess the performance and ascertain that requirements are met. For...

  19. Last Glacial vegetation and climate change in the southern Levant

    Science.gov (United States)

    Miebach, Andrea; Chen, Chunzhu; Litt, Thomas

    2015-04-01

    Reconstructing past climatic and environmental conditions is a key task for understanding the history of modern mankind. The interaction between environmental change and migration processes of the modern Homo sapiens from its source area in Africa into Europe is still poorly understood. The principal corridor of the first human dispersal into Europe and also later migration dynamics crossed the Middle East. Therefore, the southern Levant is a key area to investigate the paleoenvironment during times of human migration. In this sense, the Last Glacial (MIS 4-2) is particularly interesting to investigate for two reasons. Firstly, secondary expansions of the modern Homo sapiens are expected to occur during this period. Secondly, there are ongoing discussions on the environmental conditions causing the prominent lake level high stand of Lake Lisan, the precursor of the Dead Sea. This high stand even culminated in the merging of Lake Lisan and Lake Kinneret (Sea of Galilee). To provide an independent proxy for paleoenvironmental reconstructions in the southern Levant during the Last Glacial, we investigated pollen assemblages of the Dead Sea/Lake Lisan and Lake Kinneret. Located at the Dead Sea Transform, the freshwater Lake Kinneret is nowadays connected via the Jordan with the hypersaline Dead Sea, which occupies Earth's lowest elevation on land. The southern Levant is a transition area of three different vegetation types. Therefore, also small changes in the climate conditions effect the vegetation and can be registered in the pollen assemblage. In contrast to the Holocene, our preliminary results suggest another vegetation pattern during the Last Glacial. The vegetation belt of the fragile Mediterranean biome did no longer exist in the vicinity of Lake Kinneret. Moreover, the vegetation was rather similar in the whole study area. A steppe vegetation with dwarf shrubs, herbs, and grasses predominated. Thermophilous elements like oaks occurred in limited amounts. The

  20. Analyzing Virtual Physics Simulations with Tracker

    Science.gov (United States)

    Claessens, Tom

    2017-12-01

    In the physics teaching community, Tracker is well known as a user-friendly open source video analysis software, authored by Douglas Brown. With this tool, the user can trace markers indicated on a video or on stroboscopic photos and perform kinematic analyses. Tracker also includes a data modeling tool that allows one to fit some theoretical equations of motion onto experimentally obtained data. In the field of particle mechanics, Tracker has been effectively used for learning and teaching about projectile motion, "toss up" and free-fall vertical motion, and to explain the principle of mechanical energy conservation. Also, Tracker has been successfully used in rigid body mechanics to interpret the results of experiments with rolling/slipping cylinders and moving rods. In this work, I propose an original method in which Tracker is used to analyze virtual computer simulations created with a physics-based motion solver, instead of analyzing video recording or stroboscopic photos. This could be an interesting approach to study kinematics and dynamics problems in physics education, in particular when there is no or limited access to physical labs. I demonstrate the working method with a typical (but quite challenging) problem in classical mechanics: a slipping/rolling cylinder on a rough surface.

  1. Star Tracker Performance Estimate with IMU

    Science.gov (United States)

    Aretskin-Hariton, Eliot D.; Swank, Aaron J.

    2015-01-01

    A software tool for estimating cross-boresight error of a star tracker combined with an inertial measurement unit (IMU) was developed to support trade studies for the Integrated Radio and Optical Communication project (iROC) at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Glenn Research Center. Typical laser communication systems, such as the Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration (LLCD) and the Laser Communication Relay Demonstration (LCRD), use a beacon to locate ground stations. iROC is investigating the use of beaconless precision laser pointing to enable laser communication at Mars orbits and beyond. Precision attitude knowledge is essential to the iROC mission to enable high-speed steering of the optical link. The preliminary concept to achieve this precision attitude knowledge is to use star trackers combined with an IMU. The Star Tracker Accuracy (STAcc) software was developed to rapidly assess the capabilities of star tracker and IMU configurations. STAcc determines the overall cross-boresight error of a star tracker with an IMU given the characteristic parameters: quantum efficiency, aperture, apparent star magnitude, exposure time, field of view, photon spread, detector pixels, spacecraft slew rate, maximum stars used for quaternion estimation, and IMU angular random walk. This paper discusses the supporting theory used to construct STAcc, verification of the program and sample results.

  2. A dataset mapping the potential biophysical effects of vegetation cover change

    Science.gov (United States)

    Duveiller, Gregory; Hooker, Josh; Cescatti, Alessandro

    2018-02-01

    Changing the vegetation cover of the Earth has impacts on the biophysical properties of the surface and ultimately on the local climate. Depending on the specific type of vegetation change and on the background climate, the resulting competing biophysical processes can have a net warming or cooling effect, which can further vary both spatially and seasonally. Due to uncertain climate impacts and the lack of robust observations, biophysical effects are not yet considered in land-based climate policies. Here we present a dataset based on satellite remote sensing observations that provides the potential changes i) of the full surface energy balance, ii) at global scale, and iii) for multiple vegetation transitions, as would now be required for the comprehensive evaluation of land based mitigation plans. We anticipate that this dataset will provide valuable information to benchmark Earth system models, to assess future scenarios of land cover change and to develop the monitoring, reporting and verification guidelines required for the implementation of mitigation plans that account for biophysical land processes.

  3. [Vegetation changes during the Holocene in the North Ibersá, Corrientes, Argentina].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fernández Pacella, Lionel; Garralla, Silvina; Anzótegui, Luisa

    2011-03-01

    Vegetation changes during the Holocene in the North Iberá, Corrientes, Argentina. Wetlands are very important sites for palynological studies, since they represent one of the most suitable environments for fossil pollen preservation. The aim of this work was to determine, by palynological analysis of lacustrine sediments, the vegetal communities and the predominant environment during the Holocene in NW of Iberá. Two lagoons were studied: San Sebastián and San Juan Poriahú. Sediment samples were obtained with witness using a "Levingstone square-rod sampler", processed with Faegri e Iversen techniques and dated with C14. The palynological graphs were divided in zones using the Tilia program. The palynological analysis allowed visualizing diverse changes in the vegetation: from 6 140 +/- 50 to 5 170 +/- 100 a. C., the NW of Iberá was characterized by marsh-herbaceous vegetation and arboreal vegetation typical of dry vegetation. From 5 170 +/- 100 to 3 460 +/- 60 a. C., a decrease in the species frequency, typical of wet environments, is produced, and the clogging of the waterbody, from 3460 +/- 60 a. C. onwards, while continuing the dominance of herbaceous vegetation typical of these environments, the arboreal pollen, indicates the beginning of a hygrophilous forest development.

  4. The LHCb Silicon Inner Tracker

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Sievers, P.

    2002-01-01

    A silicon strip detector has been adopted as baseline technology for the LHCb Inner Tracker system. It consists of nine planar stations covering a cross-shaped area around the LHCb beam pipe. Depending on the final layout of the stations the sensitive surface of the Inner Tracker will be of the order of 14 m 2 . Ladders have to be 22 cm long and the pitch of the sensors should be as large as possible in order to reduce costs of the readout electronics. Major design criteria are material budget, short shaping time and a moderate spatial resolution of about 80 μm. After an introduction on the requirements of the LHCb Inner Tracker we present a description and characterization of silicon prototype sensors. First, laboratory and test beam results are discussed

  5. Climate change-induced vegetation change as a driver of increased subarctic biogenic volatile organic compound emissions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Valolahti, Hanna; Kivimäenpää, Minna; Faubert, Patrick; Michelsen, Anders; Rinnan, Riikka

    2015-09-01

    Emissions of biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) have been earlier shown to be highly temperature sensitive in subarctic ecosystems. As these ecosystems experience rapidly advancing pronounced climate warming, we aimed to investigate how warming affects the BVOC emissions in the long term (up to 13 treatment years). We also aimed to assess whether the increased litterfall resulting from the vegetation changes in the warming subarctic would affect the emissions. The study was conducted in a field experiment with factorial open-top chamber warming and annual litter addition treatments on subarctic heath in Abisko, northern Sweden. After 11 and 13 treatment years, BVOCs were sampled from plant communities in the experimental plots using a push-pull enclosure technique and collection into adsorbent cartridges during the growing season and analyzed with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Plant species coverage in the plots was analyzed by the point intercept method. Warming by 2 °C caused a 2-fold increase in monoterpene and 5-fold increase in sesquiterpene emissions, averaged over all measurements. When the momentary effect of temperature was diminished by standardization of emissions to a fixed temperature, warming still had a significant effect suggesting that emissions were also indirectly increased. This indirect increase appeared to result from increased plant coverage and changes in vegetation composition. The litter addition treatment also caused significant increases in the emission rates of some BVOC groups, especially when combined with warming. The combined treatment had both the largest vegetation changes and the highest BVOC emissions. The increased emissions under litter addition were probably a result of a changed vegetation composition due to alleviated nutrient limitation and stimulated microbial production of BVOCs. We suggest that the changes in the subarctic vegetation composition induced by climate warming will be the major factor

  6. Analysis on Temporal-Spatial Changes of Vegetation Cverrge in Farming-Pastoral Ecotone of Inner Mongolia

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yan, X.; Li, J.; Yang, Z.

    2018-04-01

    Chen Barag Banner is located in the typical farming-pastoral ecotone of Inner Mongolia, and it is also the core area of Hulunbuir steppe. Typical agricultural and pastoral staggered production mode so that the vegetation growth of the region not only determines the local ecological environment, and animal husbandry production, but also have a significant impact on the whole Hulunbuir ecological security and economic development. Therefore, it is necessary to monitor the change of vegetation in this area. Based on 17 MODIS Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) images, the authors reconstructed the dynamic change characteristics of Fraction vegetation coverage (FVC) in Chen Barag Banner from 2000 to 2016. In this paper, first at all, Pixel Decomposition Models was introduced to inversion FVC, and the time series of vegetation coverage was reconstructed. Then we analyzed the temporal-spatial changes of FVC by employing transition matrix. Finally, through image analyzing and processing, the results showed that the vegetation coverage in the study area was influenced by effectors including climate, topography and human actives. In the past 17 years, the overall effect of vegetation coverage showed a downward trend of fluctuation. The average vegetation coverage decreased from 58.81 % in 2000 to 48.14 % in 2016, and the area of vegetation cover degradation accounts for 40.09 % of the total change area. Therefore, the overall degradation trend was obvious.

  7. Change in Vegetation Growth and Its Feedback to Climate in the Tibet Plateau

    Science.gov (United States)

    Piao, S.

    2015-12-01

    Vegetation growth is strongly influenced by climate and climate change and can affect the climate system through a number of bio-physical processes. As a result, monitoring, understanding and predicting the response of vegetation growth to global change has been a central activity in Earth system science during the past two decades. The Tibetan Plateau (TP) has experienced a pronounced warming over recent decades. The warming rate of the TP over the period 1960-2009 was about twice the global average warming rate, yet with heterogeneous patterns. In this study, we use satellite derived NDVI data to investigate spatio-temporal change in vegetation growth over the last three decades.

  8. The CMS all silicon Tracker simulation

    CERN Document Server

    Biasini, Maurizio

    2009-01-01

    The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) tracker detector is the world's largest silicon detector with about 201 m$^2$ of silicon strips detectors and 1 m$^2$ of silicon pixel detectors. It contains 66 millions pixels and 10 million individual sensing strips. The quality of the physics analysis is highly correlated with the precision of the Tracker detector simulation which is written on top of the GEANT4 and the CMS object-oriented framework. The hit position resolution in the Tracker detector depends on the ability to correctly model the CMS tracker geometry, the signal digitization and Lorentz drift, the calibration and inefficiency. In order to ensure high performance in track and vertex reconstruction, an accurate knowledge of the material budget is therefore necessary since the passive materials, involved in the readout, cooling or power systems, will create unwanted effects during the particle detection, such as multiple scattering, electron bremsstrahlung and photon conversion. In this paper, we present the CM...

  9. Evaluation of a remote webcam-based eye tracker

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Skovsgaard, Henrik; Agustin, Javier San; Johansen, Sune Alstrup

    2011-01-01

    In this paper we assess the performance of an open-source gaze tracker in a remote (i.e. table-mounted) setup, and compare it with two other commercial eye trackers. An experiment with 5 subjects showed the open-source eye tracker to have a significantly higher level of accuracy than one...

  10. The Changing California Coast: The Effect of a Variable Water Budget on Coastal Vegetation Succession

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hsu, Wei-Chen; Remar, Alex; McClure, Adam; Williams, Emily; Kannan, Soumya; Steers, Robert; Schmidt, Cindy; Skiles, Joseph W.; Hsu, Wei-Chen

    2011-01-01

    The land-ocean interface along the central coast of California is one of the most diverse biogeographic regions of the state. This area is composed of a species-rich mosaic of coastal grassland, shrubland, and forest vegetation types. An acceleration of conifer encroachment into shrublands and shrub encroachment into grasslands along the coast has been recently documented. These vegetation changes are believed to be driven primarily by fire suppression and changing grazing patterns. Climatic variables such as precipitation, fog, cloud cover, temperature, slope, and elevation also play an important role in vegetation succession. Our study area is located along the central California coast, which is characterized by a precipitation gradient from the relatively wetter and cooler north to the drier and warmer south. Some studies indicate changing fog patterns along this coast, which may greatly impact vegetation. A decrease in water availability could slow succession processes. The primary objective of this project is to determine if vegetation succession rates are changing for the study area and to identify climate and ecosystem variables which contribute to succession, specifically the transition among grassland, shrubland, and forest. To identify vegetation types and rates of succession, we classified two Landsat TM 5 scenes from 1985 to 2010 with a resulting overall accuracy of 82.4%. Vegetation succession was correlated to changes in maximum and minimum temperatures, precipitation, and elevation for each sub-region of the study area. Fog frequency was then compared between the northern and southern regions of the study area for determining the spatial relation between fog frequency and the percent of vegetation change.

  11. Tracker Performance Metric

    National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

    Olson, Teresa; Lee, Harry; Sanders, Johnnie

    2002-01-01

    .... We have developed the Tracker Performance Metric (TPM) specifically for this purpose. It was designed to measure the output performance, on a frame-by-frame basis, using its output position and quality...

  12. Autonomous star tracker based on active pixel sensors (APS)

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schmidt, U.

    2017-11-01

    Star trackers are opto-electronic sensors used onboard of satellites for the autonomous inertial attitude determination. During the last years, star trackers became more and more important in the field of the attitude and orbit control system (AOCS) sensors. High performance star trackers are based up today on charge coupled device (CCD) optical camera heads. The Jena-Optronik GmbH is active in the field of opto-electronic sensors like star trackers since the early 80-ties. Today, with the product family ASTRO5, ASTRO10 and ASTRO15, all marked segments like earth observation, scientific applications and geo-telecom are supplied to European and Overseas customers. A new generation of star trackers can be designed based on the APS detector technical features. The measurement performance of the current CCD based star trackers can be maintained, the star tracker functionality, reliability and robustness can be increased while the unit costs are saved.

  13. Using endmembers in AVIRIS images to estimate changes in vegetative biomass

    Science.gov (United States)

    Smith, Milton O.; Adams, John B.; Ustin, Susan L.; Roberts, Dar A.

    1992-01-01

    Field techniques for estimating vegetative biomass are labor intensive, and rarely are used to monitor changes in biomass over time. Remote-sensing offers an attractive alternative to field measurements; however, because there is no simple correspondence between encoded radiance in multispectral images and biomass, it is not possible to measure vegetative biomass directly from AVIRIS images. Ways to estimate vegetative biomass by identifying community types and then applying biomass scalars derived from field measurements are investigated. Field measurements of community-scale vegetative biomass can be made, at least for local areas, but it is not always possible to identify vegetation communities unambiguously using remote measurements and conventional image-processing techniques. Furthermore, even when communities are well characterized in a single image, it typically is difficult to assess the extent and nature of changes in a time series of images, owing to uncertainties introduced by variations in illumination geometry, atmospheric attenuation, and instrumental responses. Our objective is to develop an improved method based on spectral mixture analysis to characterize and identify vegetative communities, that can be applied to multi-temporal AVIRIS and other types of images. In previous studies, multi-temporal data sets (AVIRIS and TM) of Owens Valley, CA were analyzed and vegetation communities were defined in terms of fractions of reference (laboratory and field) endmember spectra. An advantage of converting an image to fractions of reference endmembers is that, although fractions in a given pixel may vary from image to image in a time series, the endmembers themselves typically are constant, thus providing a consistent frame of reference.

  14. Vegetation change: a reunifying concept in plant ecology

    Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

    Davis, M. A.; Pergl, Jan; Truscott, A.; Kollmann, J.; Bakker, J. P.; Domenech, R.; Prach, Karel; Prieur-Richard, A.; Veeneklaas, R. M.; Pyšek, Petr; del Moral, R.; Hobbs, R. J.; Collins, S. L.; Pickett, S. T. A.; Reich, P. B.

    2005-01-01

    Roč. 7, - (2005), s. 69-76 ISSN 1433-8319 R&D Projects: GA ČR(CZ) GA206/02/0617 Institutional research plan: CEZ:AV0Z60050516 Keywords : vegetation succession * climate change * plant invasions Subject RIV: EF - Botanics Impact factor: 3.053, year: 2005

  15. Magnet Test Setup of the CMS Tracker ready for installation

    CERN Multimedia

    Maximilien Brice

    2006-01-01

    The pieces of the Tracker that will be operated in the forthcoming Magnet Test and Cosmic Challenge (MTCC) have been transported inside the dummy tracker support tube to the CMS experimental hall (Point 5, Cessy). The operation took place during the night of 12th May, covering the ~15km distance in about three hours. The transport was monitored for shocks, temperature and humidity with the help of the CERN TS-IC section. The Tracker setup comprises segments of the Tracker Inner Barrel (TIB), the Tracker Outer Barrel (TOB) and Tracker EndCaps (TEC) detectors. It represents roughly 1% of the final CMS Tracker. Installation into the solenoid is foreseen to take place on Wednesday 17th May.

  16. Vegetation-climate feedbacks modulate rainfall patterns in Africa under future climate change

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wu, Minchao; Schurgers, Guy; Rummukainen, Markku; Smith, Benjamin; Samuelsson, Patrick; Jansson, Christer; Siltberg, Joe; May, Wilhelm

    2016-07-01

    Africa has been undergoing significant changes in climate and vegetation in recent decades, and continued changes may be expected over this century. Vegetation cover and composition impose important influences on the regional climate in Africa. Climate-driven changes in vegetation structure and the distribution of forests versus savannah and grassland may feed back to climate via shifts in the surface energy balance, hydrological cycle and resultant effects on surface pressure and larger-scale atmospheric circulation. We used a regional Earth system model incorporating interactive vegetation-atmosphere coupling to investigate the potential role of vegetation-mediated biophysical feedbacks on climate dynamics in Africa in an RCP8.5-based future climate scenario. The model was applied at high resolution (0.44 × 0.44°) for the CORDEX-Africa domain with boundary conditions from the CanESM2 general circulation model. We found that increased tree cover and leaf-area index (LAI) associated with a CO2 and climate-driven increase in net primary productivity, particularly over subtropical savannah areas, not only imposed important local effect on the regional climate by altering surface energy fluxes but also resulted in remote effects over central Africa by modulating the land-ocean temperature contrast, Atlantic Walker circulation and moisture inflow feeding the central African tropical rainforest region with precipitation. The vegetation-mediated feedbacks were in general negative with respect to temperature, dampening the warming trend simulated in the absence of feedbacks, and positive with respect to precipitation, enhancing rainfall reduction over the rainforest areas. Our results highlight the importance of accounting for vegetation-atmosphere interactions in climate projections for tropical and subtropical Africa.

  17. Response of spatial vegetation distribution in China to climate changes since the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM)

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Siyang; Xu, Xiaoting; Shrestha, Nawal; Zimmermann, Niklaus E.; Tang, Zhiyao; Wang, Zhiheng

    2017-01-01

    Analyzing how climate change affects vegetation distribution is one of the central issues of global change ecology as this has important implications for the carbon budget of terrestrial vegetation. Mapping vegetation distribution under historical climate scenarios is essential for understanding the response of vegetation distribution to future climatic changes. The reconstructions of palaeovegetation based on pollen data provide a useful method to understand the relationship between climate and vegetation distribution. However, this method is limited in time and space. Here, using species distribution model (SDM) approaches, we explored the climatic determinants of contemporary vegetation distribution and reconstructed the distribution of Chinese vegetation during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, 18,000 14C yr BP) and Middle-Holocene (MH, 6000 14C yr BP). The dynamics of vegetation distribution since the LGM reconstructed by SDMs were largely consistent with those based on pollen data, suggesting that the SDM approach is a useful tool for studying historical vegetation dynamics and its response to climate change across time and space. Comparison between the modeled contemporary potential natural vegetation distribution and the observed contemporary distribution suggests that temperate deciduous forests, subtropical evergreen broadleaf forests, temperate deciduous shrublands and temperate steppe have low range fillings and are strongly influenced by human activities. In general, the Tibetan Plateau, North and Northeast China, and the areas near the 30°N in Central and Southeast China appeared to have experienced the highest turnover in vegetation due to climate change from the LGM to the present. PMID:28426780

  18. Changes in vegetation in northern Alaska under scenarios of climate change, 2003-2100: implications for climate feedbacks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Euskirchen, Eugénie S.; McGuire, Anthony David; Chapin, F. Stuart; Yi, S.; Thompson, Catharine Copass

    2009-01-01

    Assessing potential future changes in arctic and boreal plant species productivity, ecosystem composition, and canopy complexity is essential for understanding environmental responses under expected altered climate forcing. We examined potential changes in the dominant plant functional types (PFTs) of the sedge tundra, shrub tundra, and boreal forest ecosystems in ecotonal northern Alaska, USA, for the years 2003–2100. We compared energy feedbacks associated with increases in biomass to energy feedbacks associated with changes in the duration of the snow-free season. We based our simulations on nine input climate scenarios from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and a new version of the Terrestrial Ecosystem Model (TEM) that incorporates biogeochemistry, vegetation dynamics for multiple PFTs (e.g., trees, shrubs, grasses, sedges, mosses), multiple vegetation pools, and soil thermal regimes. We found mean increases in net primary productivity (NPP) in all PFTs. Most notably, birch (Betula spp.) in the shrub tundra showed increases that were at least three times larger than any other PFT. Increases in NPP were positively related to increases in growing-season length in the sedge tundra, but PFTs in boreal forest and shrub tundra showed a significant response to changes in light availability as well as growing-season length. Significant NPP responses to changes in vegetation uptake of nitrogen by PFT indicated that some PFTs were better competitors for nitrogen than other PFTs. While NPP increased, heterotrophic respiration (RH) also increased, resulting in decreases or no change in net ecosystem carbon uptake. Greater aboveground biomass from increased NPP produced a decrease in summer albedo, greater regional heat absorption (0.34 ± 0.23 W·m−2·10 yr−1 [mean ± SD]), and a positive feedback to climate warming. However, the decrease in albedo due to a shorter snow season (−5.1 ± 1.6 d/10 yr) resulted in much greater regional heat

  19. ANALYSIS ON TEMPORAL-SPATIAL CHANGES OF VEGETATION CVERRGE IN FARMING-PASTORAL ECOTONE OF INNER MONGOLIA

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    X. Yan

    2018-04-01

    Full Text Available Chen Barag Banner is located in the typical farming-pastoral ecotone of Inner Mongolia, and it is also the core area of Hulunbuir steppe. Typical agricultural and pastoral staggered production mode so that the vegetation growth of the region not only determines the local ecological environment, and animal husbandry production, but also have a significant impact on the whole Hulunbuir ecological security and economic development. Therefore, it is necessary to monitor the change of vegetation in this area. Based on 17 MODIS Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI images, the authors reconstructed the dynamic change characteristics of Fraction vegetation coverage(FVC)in Chen Barag Banner from 2000 to 2016. In this paper, first at all, Pixel Decomposition Models was introduced to inversion FVC, and the time series of vegetation coverage was reconstructed. Then we analyzed the temporal-spatial changes of FVC by employing transition matrix. Finally, through image analyzing and processing, the results showed that the vegetation coverage in the study area was influenced by effectors including climate, topography and human actives. In the past 17 years, the overall effect of vegetation coverage showed a downward trend of fluctuation. The average vegetation coverage decreased from 58.81 % in 2000 to 48.14 % in 2016, and the area of vegetation cover degradation accounts for 40.09 % of the total change area. Therefore, the overall degradation trend was obvious.

  20. Rosetta Star Tracker and Navigation Camera

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Thuesen, Gøsta

    1998-01-01

    Proposal in response to the Invitation to Tender (ITT) issued by Matra Marconi Space (MSS) for the procurement of the ROSETTA Star Tracker and Navigation Camera.......Proposal in response to the Invitation to Tender (ITT) issued by Matra Marconi Space (MSS) for the procurement of the ROSETTA Star Tracker and Navigation Camera....

  1. LHCb Upstream Tracker

    CERN Multimedia

    Gandini, Paolo

    2014-01-01

    The LHCb upgrade requires replacing the silicon strip tracker between the vertex locator (VELO) and the magnet. A new design has been developed and tested based on the "stave" concept planned for the ATLAS upgrade.

  2. LHCb Upstream Tracker

    CERN Multimedia

    Gandini, P

    2014-01-01

    The LHCb upgrade requires replacing the silicon strip tracker between the vertex locator (VELO) and the magnet. A new design has been developed and tested based on the "stave" concept planned for the ATLAS upgrade

  3. Simulated Vegetation Response to Climate Change in California: The Importance of Seasonal Production Patterns

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kim, J. B.; Pitts, B.

    2013-12-01

    MC1 dynamic global vegetation model simulates vegetation response to climate change by simulating vegetation production, soil biogeochemistry, plant biogeography and fire. It has been applied at a wide range of spatial scales, yet the spatio-temporal patterns of simulated vegetation production, which drives the model's response to climate change, has not been examined in detail. We ran MC1 for California at a relatively fine scale, 30 arc-seconds, for the historical period (1895-2006) and for the future (2007-2100), using downscaled data from four CMIP3-based climate projections: A2 and B1 GHG emissions scenarios simulated by PCM and GFDL GCMs. The use of these four climate projections aligns our work with a body of climate change research work commissioned by the California Public Interest Energy Research (PIER) Program. The four climate projections vary not only in terms of changes in their annual means, but in the seasonality of projected climate change. We calibrated MC1 using MODIS NPP data for 2000-2011 as a guide, and adapting a published technique for adjusting simulated vegetation production by increasing the simulated plant rooting depths. We evaluated the simulation results by comparing the model output for the historical period with several benchmark datasets, summarizing by EPA Level 3 Ecoregions. Multi-year summary statistics of model predictions compare moderately well with Kuchler's potential natural vegetation map, National Biomass and Carbon Dataset, Leenhouts' compilation of fire return intervals, and, of course, the MODIS NPP data for 2000-2011. When we compared MC1's monthly NPP values with MODIS monthly GPP data (2000-2011), however, the seasonal patterns compared very poorly, with NPP/GPP ratio for spring (Mar-Apr-May) often exceeding 1, and the NPP/GPP ratio for summer (Jun-Jul-Aug) often flattening to zero. This suggests MC1's vegetation production algorithms are overly biased for spring production at the cost of summer production. We

  4. INNER TRACKER

    CERN Multimedia

    Peter Sharp

    In March the Silicon Strip Detector had been successfully connected to the PP1 patch panels on the CMS Cryostat, and every thing had been prepared to check out the Tracker and commission it with CMS with the ambition of joining the CMS Global Cosmic Run in April.  There followed serious problems with the cooling plant which through tremendous effort have been overcome and recently allowed commissioning of the tracker to proceed. In November 2007 there had been a failure of the heat exchanger in one of the seven cooling plants in the UXC cavern. After an analysis of the failure it was decided to replace this heat exchanger with a well-proven commercial heat exchanger and to re-commission the system. Re-commissioning the system proved to be more difficult than anticipated as on May 8 there was a second failure of a heat exchanger, in the main chiller plant in the USC service cavern. The analysis of the failure showed it was very similar to the previous failure. It was decided to replace all the heat ...

  5. Developments for the TOF Straw Tracker

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Ucar, A.

    2006-07-01

    COSY-TOF is a very large acceptance spectrometer for charged particles using precise information on track geometry and time of flight of reaction products. It is an external detector system at the Cooler Synchrotron and storage ring COSY in Juelich. In order to improve the performance of the COSY-TOF, a new tracking detector ''Straw Tracker'' is being constructed which combines very low mass, operation in vacuum, very good resolution, high sampling density and very high acceptance. A comparison of pp{yields}d{pi}{sup +} data and a simulation using the straw tracker with geometry alone indicates big improvements with the new tracker. In order to investigate the straw tracker properties a small tracking hodoscope ''cosmic ray test facility'' was constructed in advance. It is made of two crossed hodoscopes consisting of 128 straw tubes arranged in 4 double planes. For the first time Juelich straws have been used for 3 dimensional reconstruction of cosmic ray tracks. In this illuminating field the space dependent response of scintillators and a straw tube were studied. (orig.)

  6. Developments for the TOF Straw Tracker

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Ucar, A.

    2006-01-01

    COSY-TOF is a very large acceptance spectrometer for charged particles using precise information on track geometry and time of flight of reaction products. It is an external detector system at the Cooler Synchrotron and storage ring COSY in Juelich. In order to improve the performance of the COSY-TOF, a new tracking detector ''Straw Tracker'' is being constructed which combines very low mass, operation in vacuum, very good resolution, high sampling density and very high acceptance. A comparison of pp→dπ + data and a simulation using the straw tracker with geometry alone indicates big improvements with the new tracker. In order to investigate the straw tracker properties a small tracking hodoscope ''cosmic ray test facility'' was constructed in advance. It is made of two crossed hodoscopes consisting of 128 straw tubes arranged in 4 double planes. For the first time Juelich straws have been used for 3 dimensional reconstruction of cosmic ray tracks. In this illuminating field the space dependent response of scintillators and a straw tube were studied. (orig.)

  7. Human Activity Influences on Vegetation Cover Changes in Beijing, China, from 2000 to 2015

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Meichen Jiang

    2017-03-01

    Full Text Available For centuries, the rapid development of human society has already made human activity the dominant factor in the terrestrial ecosystem. As the city of greatest importance in China, the capital Beijing has experienced eco-environmental changes with unprecedented economic and population growth during the past few decades. To better understand the ecological transition and its correlations in Beijing, Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM and Operational Land Imager (OLI images were used to investigate vegetation coverage changes using a dimidiate pixel model. Piecewise linear regression, bivariate-partial correlation analysis, and factor analysis were applied to the probing of the relationship between vegetation coverage changes and climatic/human-induced factors. The results showed that from 2000 to 2005, 2005 to 2010, and 2010 to 2015, Beijing experienced both restoration (6.33%, 10.08%, and 12.81%, respectively and degradation (13.62%, 9.35%, and 9.49%, respectively. The correlation analysis results between climate and vegetation changes demonstrated that from 2000 to 2015, both the multi-year annual mean temperature (r = −0.819, p < 0.01 and the multi-year annual mean precipitation (r = 0.653, p < 0.05 had a significantly correlated relationship with vegetation change. The Beijing-Tianjin Sandstorm Source Control Project (BTSSCP has shown beneficial spatial effects on vegetation restoration; the total effectiveness in conservation areas (84.94 in 2000–2010 was much better than non-BTSSCP areas (34.34 in 2000–2010. The most contributory socioeconomic factors were the population (contribution = 54.356% and gross domestic product (GDP (contribution = 30.677%. The population showed a significantly negative correlation with the overall vegetation coverage (r = −0.684, p < 0.05. The GDP was significantly negatively correlated with vegetation in Tongzhou, Daxing, Central city, Fangshan, Shunyi, and Changping (r = −0.601, p < 0.01, while positively

  8. A spatio-temporal analysis of climatic drivers for observed changes in Sahelian vegetation productivity 1982-2007

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Kaspersen, Per; Fensholt, Rasmus; Huber Gharib, Silvia

    2011-01-01

    Linear trend analysis and seasonal trend analysis are performed on gridded data of vegetation, rainfall, solar radiation flux, and air temperature, in order to examine the influence of the past three decades of climate variability and change on the Sahelian vegetation dynamics. Per......-pixel correlation analyses are conducted on annual and monthly data, and analyses of change in the potential climatic constraints to the natural vegetation development from 1982–2007 are performed. The results reveal two distinct periods: (a) 1982–1994 marked by large increases in vegetation productivity...... and rainfall and little change in average air temperatures and solar radiation and (b) 1995–2007 characterized by no distinct trends in vegetation productivity and rainfall and increase in average air temperatures and decrease in solar radiation flux. Correlations between vegetation productivity and climatic...

  9. Software and mathematical support of Kazakhstani star tracker

    Science.gov (United States)

    Akhmedov, D.; Yelubayev, S.; Ten, V.; Bopeyev, T.; Alipbayev, K.; Sukhenko, A.

    2016-10-01

    Currently the specialists of Kazakhstan have been developing the star tracker that is further planned to use on Kazakhstani satellites of various purposes. At the first stage it has been developed the experimental model of star tracker that has following characteristics: field of view 20°, update frequency 2 Hz, exclusion angle 40°, accuracy of attitude determination of optical axis/around optical axis 15/50 arcsec. Software and mathematical support are the most high technology parts of star tracker. The results of software and mathematical support development of experimental model of Kazakhstani star tracker are represented in this article. In particular, there are described the main mathematical models and algorithms that have been used as a basis for program units of preliminary image processing of starry sky, stars identification and star tracker attitude determination. The results of software and mathematical support testing with the help of program simulation complex using various configurations of defects including image sensor noises, point spread function modeling, optical system distortion up to 2% are presented. Analysis of testing results has shown that accuracy of attitude determination of star tracker is within the permissible range

  10. Application results for an augmented video tracker

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pierce, Bill

    1991-08-01

    The Relay Mirror Experiment (RME) is a research program to determine the pointing accuracy and stability levels achieved when a laser beam is reflected by the RME satellite from one ground station to another. This paper reports the results of using a video tracker augmented with a quad cell signal to improve the RME ground station tracking system performance. The video tracker controls a mirror to acquire the RME satellite, and provides a robust low bandwidth tracking loop to remove line of sight (LOS) jitter. The high-passed, high-gain quad cell signal is added to the low bandwidth, low-gain video tracker signal to increase the effective tracking loop bandwidth, and significantly improves LOS disturbance rejection. The quad cell augmented video tracking system is analyzed, and the math model for the tracker is developed. A MATLAB model is then developed from this, and performance as a function of bandwidth and disturbances is given. Improvements in performance due to the addition of the video tracker and the augmentation with the quad cell are provided. Actual satellite test results are then presented and compared with the simulated results.

  11. Nile Basin Vegetation Response and Vulnerability to Climate Change: A Multi-Sensor Remote Sensing Approach

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yitayew, M.; Didan, K.; Barreto-munoz, A.

    2013-12-01

    The Nile Basin is one of the world's water resources hotspot that is home to over 437 million people in ten riparian countries with 54% or 238 millions live directly within the basin. The basin like all other basins of the world is facing water resources challenges exacerbated by climate change and increased demand. Nowadays any water resource management action in the basin has to assess the impacts of climate change to be able to predict future water supply and also to help in the negotiation process. Presently, there is a lack of basin wide weather networks to understand sensitivity of the vegetation cover to the impacts of climate change. Vegetation plays major economic and ecological functions in the basin and provides key services ranging from pastoralism, agricultural production, firewood, habitat and food sources for the rich wildlife, as well as a major role in the carbon cycle and climate regulation of the region. Under the threat of climate change and the incessant anthropogenic pressure the distribution and services of the region's ecosystems are projected to change The goal of this work is to assess and characterize how the basin vegetation productivity, distribution, and phenology have changed over the last 30+ years and what are the key climatic drivers of this change. This work makes use of a newly generated multi-sensor long-term land surface data set about vegetation and phenology. Vegetation indices derived from remotely sensed surface reflectance data are commonly used to characterize phenology or vegetation dynamics accurately and with enough spatial and temporal resolution to support change detection. We used more than 30 years of vegetation index and growing season data from AVHRR and MODIS sensors compiled by the Vegetation Index and Phenology laboratory (VIP LAB) at the University of Arizona. Available climate data about precipitation and temperature for the corresponding 30 years period is also used for this analysis. We looked at the

  12. The Laser Alignment System for the CMS silicon strip tracker

    CERN Document Server

    Olzem, Jan

    2009-01-01

    The Laser Alignment System (LAS) of the CMS silicon strip Tracker has been designed for surveying the geometry of the large-scale Tracker support structures. It uses 40 laser beams ($\\lambda$ = 1075 nm) that induce signals on a subset of the Tracker silicon sensors. The positions in space of the laser spots on the sensors are reconstructed with a resolution of 30 $\\mu$m. From this, the LAS is capable of permanent in-time monitoring of the different Tracker components relative to each other with better than 30 $\\mu$m precision. Additionally, it can provide an absolute measurement of the Tracker mechanical structure with an accuracy better than 70 $\\mu$m, thereby supplying additional input to the track based alignment at detector startup. 31 out of the 40 LAS beams have been successfully operated during the CMS cosmic muon data taking campaign in autumn 2008. The alignment of the Tracker Endcap Discs and of the discs with respect to the Tracker Inner Barrel and Tracker Outer Barrel subdetectors was measured w...

  13. The Impact of CO2-Driven Vegetation Changes on Wildfire Risk

    Science.gov (United States)

    Skinner, C. B.; Poulsen, C. J.

    2017-12-01

    While wildfires are a key component of natural ecological restoration and succession, they also pose tremendous risks to human life, health, and property. Wildfire frequency is expected to increase in many regions as the radiative effects of elevated CO2 drive warmer surface air temperatures, earlier spring snow melt, and more frequent meteorological drought. However, high CO2 concentrations will also directly impact vegetation growth and physiology, potentially altering wildfire characteristics through changes in fuel amount and surface hydrology. Depending on the biome and time of year, these vegetation-driven responses may mitigate or enhance radiative-driven wildfire changes. In this study, we use a suite of earth system models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 5 with active biogeophysics and biogeochemistry to understand how the vegetation response to high CO2 (CO2 quadrupling) contributes to future changes in wildfire risk across the globe. Across the models, projected CO2 fertilization enhances aboveground biomass (about a 30% leaf area index (LAI) increase averaged across the globe) during the spring and summer months, increasing the availability of wildfire fuel across all biomes. Despite greater LAI, models robustly project widespread reductions in summer season transpiration (about -15% averaged across the globe) in response to reduced stomatal conductance from CO2 physiological forcing. Reduced transpiration warms summer season near surface temperatures and lowers relative humidity across vegetated regions of the mid-to-high latitudes, heightening the risk of wildfire occurrence. However, as transpiration goes down in response to greater plant water use efficiency, a larger fraction of soil water remains in the soil, potentially halting the spread of wildfires in some regions. Given the myriad ways in which the vegetation response to CO2 may alter wildfire risk, and the robustness of the responses across models, an explicit simulation of

  14. On-Orbit Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) Star Tracker Warm Pixel Analysis

    Science.gov (United States)

    Felikson, Denis; Ekinci, Matthew; Hashmall, Joseph A.; Vess, Melissa

    2011-01-01

    This paper describes the process of identification and analysis of warm pixels in two autonomous star trackers on the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) mission. A brief description of the mission orbit and attitude regimes is discussed and pertinent star tracker hardware specifications are given. Warm pixels are defined and the Quality Index parameter is introduced, which can be explained qualitatively as a manifestation of a possible warm pixel event. A description of the algorithm used to identify warm pixel candidates is given. Finally, analysis of dumps of on-orbit star tracker charge coupled devices (CCD) images is presented and an operational plan going forward is discussed. SDO, launched on February 11, 2010, is operated from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). SDO is in a geosynchronous orbit with a 28.5 inclination. The nominal mission attitude points the spacecraft X-axis at the Sun, with the spacecraft Z-axis roughly aligned with the Solar North Pole. The spacecraft Y-axis completes the triad. In attitude, SDO moves approximately 0.04 per hour, mostly about the spacecraft Z-axis. The SDO star trackers, manufactured by Galileo Avionica, project the images of stars in their 16.4deg x 16.4deg fields-of-view onto CCD detectors consisting of 512 x 512 pixels. The trackers autonomously identify the star patterns and provide an attitude estimate. Each unit is able to track up to 9 stars. Additionally, each tracker calculates a parameter called the Quality Index, which is a measure of the quality of the attitude solution. Each pixel in the CCD measures the intensity of light and a warns pixel is defined as having a measurement consistently and significantly higher than the mean background intensity level. A warns pixel should also have lower intensity than a pixel containing a star image and will not move across the field of view as the attitude changes (as would a dim star image). It should be noted that the maximum error introduced in the star tracker

  15. The Design Parameters for the MICE Tracker Solenoid

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Green, Michael A.; Chen, C.Y.; Juang, Tiki; Lau, Wing W.; Taylor, Clyde; Virostek, Steve P.; Wahrer, Robert; Wang, S.T.; Witte, Holger; Yang, Stephanie Q.

    2006-01-01

    The first superconducting magnets to be installed in the muon ionization cooling experiment (MICE) will be the tracker solenoids. The tracker solenoid module is a five coil superconducting solenoid with a 400 mm diameter warm bore that is used to provide a 4 T magnetic field for the experiment tracker module. Three of the coils are used to produce a uniform field (up to 4 T with better than 1 percent uniformity) in a region that is 300 mm in diameter and 1000 mm long. The other two coils are used to match the muon beam into the MICE cooling channel. Two 2.94-meter long superconducting tracker solenoid modules have been ordered for MICE. The tracker solenoid will be cooled using two-coolers that produce 1.5 W each at 4.2 K. The magnet system is described. The decisions that drive the magnet design will be discussed in this report

  16. Using NDVI to assess vegetative land cover change in central Puget Sound.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Morawitz, Dana F; Blewett, Tina M; Cohen, Alex; Alberti, Marina

    2006-03-01

    We used the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) in the rapidly growing Puget Sound region over three 5-year time blocks between 1986-1999 at three spatial scales in 42 Watershed Administrative Units (WAUs) to assess changes in the amounts and patterns of green vegetation. On average, approximately 20% of the area in each WAU experienced significant NDVI change over each 5-year time block. Cumulative NDVI change over 15 years (summing change over each 5-year time block) was an average of approximately 60% of each WAU, but was as high as 100% in some. At the regional scale, seasonal weather patterns and green-up from logging were the primary drivers of observed increases in NDVI values. At the WAU scale, anthropogenic factors were important drivers of both positive and negative NDVI change. For example, population density was highly correlated with negative NDVI change over 15 years (r = 0.66, P < 0.01), as was road density (r = 0.71, P < 0.01). At the smallest scale (within 3 case study WAUs) land use differences such as preserving versus harvesting forest lands drove vegetation change. We conclude that large areas within most watersheds are continually and heavily impacted by the high levels of human use and development over short time periods. Our results indicate that varying patterns and processes can be detected at multiple scales using changes in NDVIa values.

  17. Detecting long-term changes to vegetation in northern Canada using the Landsat satellite image archive

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Fraser, R H; Olthof, I; Carrière, M; Deschamps, A; Pouliot, D

    2011-01-01

    Analysis of coarse resolution (∼1 km) satellite imagery has provided evidence of vegetation changes in arctic regions since the mid-1980s that may be attributable to climate warming. Here we investigate finer-scale changes to northern vegetation over the same period using stacks of 30 m resolution Landsat TM and ETM + satellite images. Linear trends in the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and tasseled cap indices are derived for four widely spaced national parks in northern Canada. The trends are related to predicted changes in fractional shrub and other vegetation covers using regression tree classifiers trained with plot measurements and high resolution imagery. We find a consistent pattern of greening (6.1–25.5% of areas increasing) and predicted increases in vascular vegetation in all four parks that is associated with positive temperature trends. Coarse resolution (3 km) NDVI trends were not detected in two of the parks that had less intense greening. A range of independent studies and observations corroborate many of the major changes observed.

  18. Sun tracker for clear or cloudy weather

    Science.gov (United States)

    Scott, D. R.; White, P. R.

    1979-01-01

    Sun tracker orients solar collector so that they absorb maximum possible sunlight without being fooled by bright clouds, holes in cloud cover, or other atmospheric conditions. Tracker follows sun within 0.25 deg arc and is accurate within + or - 5 deg when sun is hidden.

  19. A Methodology to Analyze Photovoltaic Tracker Uptime

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Muller, Matthew T [National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States); Ruth, Dan [National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)

    2018-04-17

    A metric is developed to analyze the daily performance of single-axis photovoltaic (PV) trackers. The metric relies on comparing correlations between the daily time series of the PV power output and an array of simulated plane-of-array irradiances for the given day. Mathematical thresholds and a logic sequence are presented, so the daily tracking metric can be applied in an automated fashion on large-scale PV systems. The results of applying the metric are visually examined against the time series of the power output data for a large number of days and for various systems. The visual inspection results suggest that overall, the algorithm is accurate in identifying stuck or functioning trackers on clear-sky days. Visual inspection also shows that there are days that are not classified by the metric where the power output data may be sufficient to identify a stuck tracker. Based on the daily tracking metric, uptime results are calculated for 83 different inverters at 34 PV sites. The mean tracker uptime is calculated at 99% based on 2 different calculation methods. The daily tracking metric clearly has limitations, but as there is no existing metrics in the literature, it provides a valuable tool for flagging stuck trackers.

  20. Vegetation change and the protection of the Csaroda relic mires, Hungary

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Tibor Simon

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available Study of vegetation change of the protected mires situated near Csaroda and Beregdaróc (the Great Hungarian Plain are presented. These are the southermost mires with raised bog communities in the plains of Europe. In the past few decades (by the early 80-s vegetation showed both qualitative and quantitative signs of degradation. These changes were caused by natural (climatic variation, succesion and by human effects. Natural changes were following: the decline or extinction of hygrophytes, the expansion of hydromesophytes and mesophytes and the acceleration of forest growth. The most important human-caused change was the drainage of the bogs. The harmful processes had slight effect on the Sphagnum-dominated associations. The "original" (i.e. before drying out state of mires has been recovered by blocking drainage canals, plantation of a buffor zone and prohibition of using chemicals.

  1. SOLAR TRACKER CERDAS DAN MURAH BERBASIS MIKROKONTROLER 8 BIT ATMega8535

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    I Wayan Sutaya

    2016-08-01

    Full Text Available prototipe produk solar tracker cerdas berbasis mikrokontroler AVR 8 bit. Solar tracker ini memasukkan filter digital IIR (Infinite Impulse Response pada bagian program. Memprogram filter ini membutuhkan perkalian 32 bit sedangkan prosesor yang tersedia pada mikrokontroler yang dipakai adalah 8 bit. Proses perkalian ini hanya bisa dilakukan pada mikrokontroler 8 bit dengan menggunakan bahasa assembly yang merupakan bahasa level hardware. Solar tracker cerdas yang menggunakan mikrokontroler 8 bit sebagai otak utama pada penelitian ini menjadikan produk ini berbiaya rendah. Pengujian yang dilakukan menunjukkan bahwa solar tracker cerdas dibandingkan dengan solar tracker biasa mempunyai perbedaan konsumsi daya baterai yang sangat signifikan yaitu terjadi penghematan sebesar 85 %. Besar penghematan konsumsi daya ini tentunya bukan sebuah angka konstan melainkan tergantung seberapa besar noise yang dikenakan pada alat solar tracker. Untuk sebuah perlakuan yang sama, maka semakin besar noise semakin besar pula perbedaan penghematan konsumsi daya pada solar tracker yang cerdas. Kata-kata kunci: solar tracker, filter digital, mikrokontroler 8 bit, konsumsi daya Abstract This research had made a prototype of smart solar tracker product based on microcontroller AVR 8 bit. The solar tracker used digital filter IIR (Infinite Impulse Response on its software. Filter programming needs 32 bit multiplication but the processor inside of the microcontroller that used in this research is 8 bit. This multiplication is only can be solved on microcontroller 8 bit by using assembly language in programming. The language is a hardware level language. The smart solar tracker using the microcontroller 8 bit as a main brain in this research made the product had a low cost. The test results show that the comparison in saving of baterai power consumption between the smart solar tracker and the normal one is 85 %. The percentage of the saving indubitably is not a constant

  2. Power distribution studies for CMS forward tracker

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Todri, A.; Turqueti, M.; Rivera, R.; Kwan, S.

    2009-01-01

    The Electronic Systems Engineering Department of the Computing Division at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory is carrying out R and D investigations for the upgrade of the power distribution system of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) Pixel Tracker at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Among the goals of this effort is that of analyzing the feasibility of alternative powering schemes for the forward tracker, including DC to DC voltage conversion techniques using commercially available and custom switching regulator circuits. Tests of these approaches are performed using the PSI46 pixel readout chip currently in use at the CMS Tracker. Performance measures of the detector electronics will include pixel noise and threshold dispersion results. Issues related to susceptibility to switching noise will be studied and presented. In this paper, we describe the current power distribution network of the CMS Tracker, study the implications of the proposed upgrade with DC-DC converters powering scheme and perform noise susceptibility analysis.

  3. Uncertainty estimation and multi sensor fusion for kinematic laser tracker measurements

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ulrich, Thomas

    2013-08-01

    Laser trackers are widely used to measure kinematic tasks such as tracking robot movements. Common methods to evaluate the uncertainty in the kinematic measurement include approximations specified by the manufacturers, various analytical adjustment methods and the Kalman filter. In this paper a new, real-time technique is proposed, which estimates the 4D-path (3D-position + time) uncertainty of an arbitrary path in space. Here a hybrid system estimator is applied in conjunction with the kinematic measurement model. This method can be applied to processes, which include various types of kinematic behaviour, constant velocity, variable acceleration or variable turn rates. The new approach is compared with the Kalman filter and a manufacturer's approximations. The comparison was made using data obtained by tracking an industrial robot's tool centre point with a Leica laser tracker AT901 and a Leica laser tracker LTD500. It shows that the new approach is more appropriate to analysing kinematic processes than the Kalman filter, as it reduces overshoots and decreases the estimated variance. In comparison with the manufacturer's approximations, the new approach takes account of kinematic behaviour with an improved description of the real measurement process and a reduction in estimated variance. This approach is therefore well suited to the analysis of kinematic processes with unknown changes in kinematic behaviour as well as the fusion among laser trackers.

  4. Modelling Structural Flexure Effects in CPV Sun Trackers

    OpenAIRE

    Luque-Heredia, Ignacio; Quéméré, G.; Magalhães, P.H.; Fraile de Lerma, Alberto; Hermanns, Lutz Karl Heinz; Alarcón Álvarez, Enrique; Luque López, Antonio

    2006-01-01

    Nowadays CPV trends mostly based in lens parqueted flat modules, enable the separate design of the sun tracker. To enable this possibility a set of specifications is to be prescribed for the tracker design team, which take into account fundamental requisites such as the maximum service loads both permanent and variable, the sun tracking accuracy and the tracker structural stiffness required to maintain the CPV array acceptance angle loss below a certain threshold. In its first part this paper...

  5. [Responses of vegetation changes to climatic variations in Panxi area based on the MODIS multispectral data].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shao, Huai-Yong; Wu, Jin-Hui; Liu, Meng; Yang, Wu-Nian

    2014-01-01

    It is an important research area to quantitatively studying the relationship between global climatic change and vegetation change based on the remote sensing technology. Panxi area is the ecological barrier of the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, and it is essential for the stability of the ecological environment of Sichuan as well as that of the whole China. The present article analyzes the vegetation change in 2001-2008 and the relationship between vegetation change and climatic variations of Panxi area, based on MODIS multispectral data and meteorological data. The results indicate that NDVI is positively correlated with temperature and precipitation. The precipitation is the major factor that affects the change of vegetation in the Panxi region and the trend of NDVI is similar with autumn precipitation; while at the same time the influence of climate has a one-month-time-lag.

  6. Impacts of 21st century climate changes on flora and vegetation in Denmark

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Skov, Flemming; Nygaard, Bettina; Wind, Peter; Floejgaard, Camilla; Borchsenius, Finn; Normand, Signe; Balslev, Henrik; Svenning, Jens-Christian

    2009-01-01

    In this paper we examined the potential impacts of predicted climatic changes on the flora and vegetation in Denmark using data from a digital database on the natural vegetation of Europe. Climate scenarios A2 and B2 were used to find regions with present climatic conditions similar to Denmark's climate in the year 2100. The potential natural vegetation of Denmark today is predominantly deciduous forest that would cover more than 90% of the landscape. Swamps, bogs, and wet forest would be found under moist or wet conditions. Dwarf shrub heaths would be naturally occurring on poor soils along the coast together with dune systems and salt-marsh vegetation. When comparing the natural vegetation of Denmark to the vegetation of five future-climate analogue areas, the most obvious trend is a shift from deciduous to thermophilous broadleaved forest currently found in Southern and Eastern Europe. A total of 983 taxa were recorded for this study of which 539 were found in Denmark. The Soerensen index was used to measure the floristic similarity between Denmark and the five subregions. Deciduous forest, dwarf shrub heath, and coastal vegetation were treated in more detail, focusing on potential new immigrant species to Denmark. Finally, implications for management were discussed. The floristic similarity between Denmark and regions in Europe with a climate similar to what is expected for Denmark in year 2100 was found to vary between 48-78%, decreasing from North to South. Hence, it seems inevitable that climate changes of the magnitudes foreseen will alter the distribution of individual species and the composition of natural vegetation units. Changes, however, will not be immediate. Historic evidence shows a considerable lag in response to climatic change under natural conditions, but little is known about the effects of human land-use and pollution on this process. Facing such uncertainties we suggested that a dynamic strategy based on modeling, monitoring and adaptive

  7. Impacts of 21st century climate changes on flora and vegetation in Denmark

    Science.gov (United States)

    Skov, Flemming; Nygaard, Bettina; Wind, Peter; Borchsenius, Finn; Normand, Signe; Balslev, Henrik; Fløjgaard, Camilla; Svenning, Jens-Christian

    2009-11-01

    In this paper we examined the potential impacts of predicted climatic changes on the flora and vegetation in Denmark using data from a digital database on the natural vegetation of Europe. Climate scenarios A2 and B2 were used to find regions with present climatic conditions similar to Denmark's climate in the year 2100. The potential natural vegetation of Denmark today is predominantly deciduous forest that would cover more than 90% of the landscape. Swamps, bogs, and wet forest would be found under moist or wet conditions. Dwarf shrub heaths would be naturally occurring on poor soils along the coast together with dune systems and salt-marsh vegetation. When comparing the natural vegetation of Denmark to the vegetation of five future-climate analogue areas, the most obvious trend is a shift from deciduous to thermophilous broadleaved forest currently found in Southern and Eastern Europe. A total of 983 taxa were recorded for this study of which 539 were found in Denmark. The Sørensen index was used to measure the floristic similarity between Denmark and the five subregions. Deciduous forest, dwarf shrub heath, and coastal vegetation were treated in more detail, focusing on potential new immigrant species to Denmark. Finally, implications for management were discussed. The floristic similarity between Denmark and regions in Europe with a climate similar to what is expected for Denmark in year 2100 was found to vary between 48-78%, decreasing from North to South. Hence, it seems inevitable that climate changes of the magnitudes foreseen will alter the distribution of individual species and the composition of natural vegetation units. Changes, however, will not be immediate. Historic evidence shows a considerable lag in response to climatic change under natural conditions, but little is known about the effects of human land-use and pollution on this process. Facing such uncertainties we suggested that a dynamic strategy based on modeling, monitoring and adaptive

  8. Impacts of 21st century climate changes on flora and vegetation in Denmark

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Skov, Flemming; Nygaard, Bettina; Wind, Peter; Floejgaard, Camilla [Department of Wildlife Ecology and Biodiversity, National Environmental Research Institute, Aarhus University, Grenaavej 14, DK-8410 Roende (Denmark); Borchsenius, Finn; Normand, Signe; Balslev, Henrik; Svenning, Jens-Christian, E-mail: fs@dmu.d [Department of Biological Sciences, Aarhus University, Ny Munkegade 114, DK-8000 Aarhus C (Denmark)

    2009-11-01

    In this paper we examined the potential impacts of predicted climatic changes on the flora and vegetation in Denmark using data from a digital database on the natural vegetation of Europe. Climate scenarios A2 and B2 were used to find regions with present climatic conditions similar to Denmark's climate in the year 2100. The potential natural vegetation of Denmark today is predominantly deciduous forest that would cover more than 90% of the landscape. Swamps, bogs, and wet forest would be found under moist or wet conditions. Dwarf shrub heaths would be naturally occurring on poor soils along the coast together with dune systems and salt-marsh vegetation. When comparing the natural vegetation of Denmark to the vegetation of five future-climate analogue areas, the most obvious trend is a shift from deciduous to thermophilous broadleaved forest currently found in Southern and Eastern Europe. A total of 983 taxa were recorded for this study of which 539 were found in Denmark. The Soerensen index was used to measure the floristic similarity between Denmark and the five subregions. Deciduous forest, dwarf shrub heath, and coastal vegetation were treated in more detail, focusing on potential new immigrant species to Denmark. Finally, implications for management were discussed. The floristic similarity between Denmark and regions in Europe with a climate similar to what is expected for Denmark in year 2100 was found to vary between 48-78%, decreasing from North to South. Hence, it seems inevitable that climate changes of the magnitudes foreseen will alter the distribution of individual species and the composition of natural vegetation units. Changes, however, will not be immediate. Historic evidence shows a considerable lag in response to climatic change under natural conditions, but little is known about the effects of human land-use and pollution on this process. Facing such uncertainties we suggested that a dynamic strategy based on modeling, monitoring and

  9. GigaTracker, a Thin and Fast Silicon Pixels Tracker

    CERN Document Server

    Velghe, Bob; Bonacini, Sandro; Ceccucci, Augusto; Kaplon, Jan; Kluge, Alexander; Mapelli, Alessandro; Morel, Michel; Noël, Jérôme; Noy, Matthew; Perktold, Lukas; Petagna, Paolo; Poltorak, Karolina; Riedler, Petra; Romagnoli, Giulia; Chiozzi, Stefano; Cotta Ramusino, Angelo; Fiorini, Massimiliano; Gianoli, Alberto; Petrucci, Ferruccio; Wahl, Heinrich; Arcidiacono, Roberta; Jarron, Pierre; Marchetto, Flavio; Gil, Eduardo Cortina; Nuessle, Georg; Szilasi, Nicolas

    2014-01-01

    GigaTracker, the NA62’s upstream spectrometer, plays a key role in the kinematically constrained background suppression for the study of the K + ! p + n ̄ n decay. It is made of three independent stations, each of which is a six by three cm 2 hybrid silicon pixels detector. To meet the NA62 physics goals, GigaTracker has to address challenging requirements. The hit time resolution must be better than 200 ps while keeping the total thickness of the sensor to less than 0.5 mm silicon equivalent. The 200 μm thick sensor is divided into 18000 300 μm 300 μm pixels bump-bounded to ten independent read-out chips. The chips use an end-of-column architecture and rely on time-over- threshold discriminators. A station can handle a crossing rate of 750 MHz. Microchannel cooling technology will be used to cool the assembly. It allows us to keep the sensor close to 0 C with 130 μm of silicon in the beam area. The sensor and read-out chip performance were validated using a 45 pixel demonstrator with a laser test setu...

  10. The CMS tracker control system

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dierlamm, A.; Dirkes, G. H.; Fahrer, M.; Frey, M.; Hartmann, F.; Masetti, L.; Militaru, O.; Shah, S. Y.; Stringer, R.; Tsirou, A.

    2008-07-01

    The Tracker Control System (TCS) is a distributed control software to operate about 2000 power supplies for the silicon modules of the CMS Tracker and monitor its environmental sensors. TCS must thus be able to handle about 104 power supply parameters, about 103 environmental probes from the Programmable Logic Controllers of the Tracker Safety System (TSS), about 105 parameters read via DAQ from the DCUs in all front end hybrids and from CCUs in all control groups. TCS is built on top of an industrial SCADA program (PVSS) extended with a framework developed at CERN (JCOP) and used by all LHC experiments. The logical partitioning of the detector is reflected in the hierarchical structure of the TCS, where commands move down to the individual hardware devices, while states are reported up to the root which is interfaced to the broader CMS control system. The system computes and continuously monitors the mean and maximum values of critical parameters and updates the percentage of currently operating hardware. Automatic procedures switch off selected parts of the detector using detailed granularity and avoiding widespread TSS intervention.

  11. ALAT SOLAR TRACKER BERBASIS MIKROKONTROLER 8 BIT ATMega8535

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    I Wayan Sutaya

    2015-07-01

    Full Text Available Penelitian yang telah dilakukan ini adalah membuat prototipe alat solar tracker. Alat ini berfungsi untuk menggerakkan modul sel surya sehingga permukaan sel surya bisa terkena sinar matahari secara maksimal. Saat ini sel surya di Indonesia banyak terpasang secara statis atau tidak dilengkapi alat solar tracker sehingga energi matahari tidak diterima secara maksimal. Hal ini menyebabkan sel surya yang terpasang di beberapa daerah di Indonesia tidak memberikan manfaat yang optimal. Alat solar tracker yang dihasilkan pada penelitian ini diharapkan sebagai solusi dari permasalahan yang ada saat ini. Mikrokontroler 8 bit ATMega8535 yang digunakan sebagai otak utama dari alat solar tracker menjadikan alat ini menjadi berbiaya murah. Serta teknik memprogram dengan bahasa assembly menjadikan alat ini tahan terhadap kegagalan sistem. Solar tracker ini sudah bisa beroperasi dengan baik dan cocok digunakan pada modul sel surya berukuran kecil.

  12. The CMS silicon tracker

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Focardi, E.; Albergo, S.; Angarano, M.; Azzi, P.; Babucci, E.; Bacchetta, N.; Bader, A.; Bagliesi, G.; Basti, A.; Biggeri, U.; Bilei, G.M.; Bisello, D.; Boemi, D.; Bosi, F.; Borrello, L.; Bozzi, C.; Braibant, S.; Breuker, H.; Bruzzi, M.; Buffini, A.; Busoni, S.; Candelori, A.; Caner, A.; Castaldi, R.; Castro, A.; Catacchini, E.; Checcucci, B; Ciampolini, P.; Civinini, C.; Creanza, D.; D'Alessandro, R.; Da Rold, M.; Demaria, N.; De Palma, M.; Dell'Orso, R.; Della Marina, R.; Dutta, S.; Eklund, C.; Feld, L.; Fiore, L.; French, M.; Freudenreich, K.; Frey, A.; Fuertjes, A.; Giassi, A.; Giorgi, M.; Giraldo, A.; Glessing, B.; Gu, W.H.; Hall, G.; Hammarstrom, R.; Hebbeker, T.; Honma, A.; Hrubec, J.; Huhtinen, M.; Kaminsky, A.; Karimaki, V.; Koenig, St.; Krammer, M.; Lariccia, P.; Lenzi, M.; Loreti, M.; Leubelsmeyer, K.; Lustermann, W.; Maettig, P.; Maggi, G.; Mannelli, M.; Mantovani, G.; Marchioro, A.; Mariotti, C.; Martignon, G.; Evoy, B.Mc; Meschini, M.; Messineo, A.; Migliore, E.; My, S.; Paccagnella, A.; Palla, F.; Pandoulas, D.; Papi, A.; Parrini, G.; Passeri, D.; Pieri, M.; Piperov, S.; Potenza, R.; Radicci, V.; Raffaelli, F.; Raymond, M.; Rizzo, F.; Santocchia, A.; Schmitt, B.; Selvaggi, G.; Servoli, L.; Sguazzoni, G.; Siedling, R.; Silvestris, L.; Starodumov, A.; Stavitski, I.; Stefanini, G.; Surrow, B.; Tempesta, P.; Tonelli, G.; Tricomi, A.; Tuuva, T.; Vannini, C.; Verdini, P.G.; Viertel, G.; Xie, Z.; Yahong, Li; Watts, S.; Wittmer, B.

    2000-01-01

    This paper describes the Silicon microstrip Tracker of the CMS experiment at LHC. It consists of a barrel part with 5 layers and two endcaps with 10 disks each. About 10 000 single-sided equivalent modules have to be built, each one carrying two daisy-chained silicon detectors and their front-end electronics. Back-to-back modules are used to read-out the radial coordinate. The tracker will be operated in an environment kept at a temperature of T=-10 deg. C to minimize the Si sensors radiation damage. Heavily irradiated detectors will be safely operated due to the high-voltage capability of the sensors. Full-size mechanical prototypes have been built to check the system aspects before starting the construction

  13. Assessing 20th century climate-vegetation feedbacks of land-use change and natural vegetation dynamics in a fully coupled vegetation-climate model

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Strengers, B.J.; Müller, C.; Schaeffer, M.; Haarsma, R.J.; Severijns, C.; Gerten, D.; Schaphoff, S.; Houdt, Van den R.; Oostenrijk, R.

    2010-01-01

    This study describes the coupling of the dynamic global vegetation model (DGVM), Lund–Potsdam–Jena Model for managed land (LPJmL), with the general circulation model (GCM), Simplified Parameterizations primitivE Equation DYnamics model (SPEEDY), to study the feedbacks between land-use change and

  14. RFP for the Auroral Multiscale Midex (AMM) Mission star tracker

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Riis, Troels; Betto, Maurizio; Jørgensen, John Leif

    1999-01-01

    This document is in response to the John Hopkins University - Applied Physics Laboratory RFP for the Auroral Multiscale Midex Mission star tracker.It describes the functionality, the requirements and the performance of the ASC Star Tracker.......This document is in response to the John Hopkins University - Applied Physics Laboratory RFP for the Auroral Multiscale Midex Mission star tracker.It describes the functionality, the requirements and the performance of the ASC Star Tracker....

  15. Which cue to ‘want’? Opioid stimulation of central amygdala makes goal-trackers show stronger goal-tracking, just as sign-trackers show stronger sign-tracking

    Science.gov (United States)

    DiFeliceantonio, Alexandra G.; Berridge, Kent C.

    2012-01-01

    Pavlovian cues that have been paired with reward can gain incentive salience. Drug addicts find drug cues motivationally attractive and binge eaters are attracted by food cues. But the level of incentive salience elicited by a cue re-encounter still varies across time and brain states. In an animal model, cues become attractive and ‘wanted’ in an ‘autoshaping’ paradigm, where different targets of incentive salience emerge for different individuals. Some individuals (sign-trackers) find a predictive discrete cue attractive while others find a reward contiguous and goal cue more attractive (location where reward arrives: goal-trackers). Here we assessed whether central amygdala mu opioid receptor stimulation enhances the phasic incentive salience of the goal-cue for goal-trackers during moments of predictive cue presence (expressed in both approach and consummatory behaviors to goal cue), just as it enhances the attractiveness of the predictive cue target for sign-trackers. Using detailed video analysis we measured the approaches, nibbles, sniffs, and bites directed at their preferred target for both sign-trackers and goal-trackers. We report that DAMGO microinjections in central amygdala made goal-trackers, like sign-trackers, show phasic increases in appetitive nibbles and sniffs directed at the goal-cue expressed selectively whenever the predictive cue was present. This indicates enhancement of incentive salience attributed by both goal trackers and sign-trackers, but attributed in different directions: each to their own target cue. For both phenotypes, amygdala opioid stimulation makes the individual’s prepotent cue into a stronger motivational magnet at phasic moments triggered by a CS that predicts the reward UCS. PMID:22391118

  16. To what extent can vegetation change and plant stress be surveyed by remote sensing?

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Toemmervik, Hans

    1998-12-31

    Air pollution from the nickel processing industry in the Kola region of Russia accounts for a large part of the environmental problems in the north-eastern parts of Norway and Finland. The objectives of this thesis were to examine if vegetation damage and plant stress can be surveyed by remote sensing and to assess the use of chlorophyll fluorescence measurements to detect plant stress in the field. The study was carried out in the border area between Norway and Russia. Two spaceborne and one airborne sensors were used. Changes in vegetation cover could be monitored with a degree of accuracy varying from 75 to 83%. A hybrid classification method monitored changes in both lichen dominated vegetation and in vegetation cover types dominated by dwarf shrubs and green plants, which were significantly associated with the differences in SO{sub 2} emission during the period from 1973 to 1994. Vegetation indices, change detection maps and prediction maps provided information on biomass and coverage of green vegetation. This was associated with the differences in the SO{sub 2} emissions during the same period. The vegetation and land cover types with the greatest stress and damage had the largest modelled SO{sub 2} concentration levels in the ground air layer while the vegetation cover types with the lowest degree of stress had the lowest. Comparison of the airborne casi map with the previously processed Landsat TM map from the same area showed that the casi map separated the complete vegetation cover into more detail than the Landsat TM map. The casi images indicated a red-edge shift for the medium to heavily damaged vegetation cover types. Problems with using airborne remote sensing by casi include variable clouds, lack of synoptic view, and cost. The variation in chlorophyll fluorescence of 11 plant species at 16 sites was most influenced by precipitation, temperature and continentality. 373 refs., 49 figs., 37 tabs.

  17. The CMS Outer Tracker for HL-LHC

    CERN Document Server

    Dierlamm, Alexander Hermann

    2018-01-01

    The LHC is planning an upgrade program, which will bring the luminosity to about $5-7\\times10^{34}$~cm$^{-2}$s$^{-1}$ in 2026, with a goal of an integrated luminosity of 3000 fb$^{-1}$ by the end of 2037. This High Luminosity LHC scenario, HL-LHC, will require a preparation program of the LHC detectors known as Phase-2 Upgrade. The current CMS Tracker is already running beyond design specifications and will not be able to cope with the HL-LHC radiation conditions. CMS will need a completely new Tracker in order to fully exploit the highly demanding operating conditions and the delivered luminosity. The new Outer Tracker system is designed to provide robust tracking as well as Level-1 trigger capabilities using closely spaced modules composed of silicon macro-pixel and/or strip sensors. Research and development activities are ongoing to explore options and develop module components and designs for the HL-LHC environment. The design choices for the CMS Outer Tracker Upgrade are discussed along with some highlig...

  18. Simulated effects of a seasonal precipitation change on the vegetation in tropical Africa

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    E. S. Gritti

    2010-03-01

    Full Text Available Pollen data collected in Africa at high (Kuruyange, valley swamp, Burundi and low altitude (Victoria, lake, Uganda; Ngamakala, pond, Congo showed that after 6 ky before present (BP, pollen of deciduous trees increase their relative percentage, suggesting thus the reduction of the annual amount of precipitation and/or an increase of in the length of the dry season. Until now, pollen-climate transfer functions only investigated mean annual precipitation, due to the absence of modern pollen-assemblage analogs under diversified precipitation regimes. Hence these functions omit the potential effect of a change in precipitation seasonality modifying thus the length of the dry season. In the present study, we use an equilibrium biosphere model (i.e. BIOME3.5 to estimate the sensitivity of equatorial African vegetation, at specific sites, to such changes. Climatic scenarios, differing only in the monthly distribution of the current annual amount of precipitation, are examined at the above three locations in equatorial Africa. Soil characteristics, monthly temperatures and cloudiness are kept constant at their present-day values. Good agreement is shown between model simulations and current biomes assemblages, as inferred from pollen data. To date, the increase of the deciduous forest component in the palaeodata around 6 ky BP has been interpreted as the beginning of a drier climate period. However, our results demonstrate that a change in the seasonal distribution of precipitation could also induce the observed changes in vegetation types. This study confirms the importance of taking into account seasonal changes in the hydrological balance. Palaeoecologists can greatly benefit from the use of dynamic process based vegetation models to acccount for modification of the length of the dry season when they wish to reconstruct vegetation composition or to infer quantitative climate parameters, such as temperature and precipitation, from pollen or vegetation

  19. On the statistical analysis of vegetation change: a wetland affected by water extraction and soil acidification

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Braak, ter C.J.F.; Wiertz, J.

    1994-01-01

    A case study is presented on the statistical analysis and interpretation of vegetation change without precise information on environmental change. The changes in a vegetation of a Junco-Molinion grassland are evaluated on the basis of relevés of 1977 and 1988 (20 plots) from a small nature reserve

  20. Analysis of regional vegetation changes with medium and high resolution imagery

    Science.gov (United States)

    Marcello, J.; Eugenio, F.; Medina, A.

    2012-09-01

    The singular characteristics of the Canarian archipelago (Spain) and, in particular, of the Gran Canaria island have allowed the development of a unique biological richness. Almost half of its territory is protected to preserve the natural environment and, in consequence, the monitoring of vegetated regions plays an important role for regional administrations which aim to develop the corresponding policies for the conservation of such ecosystems. The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) is a common index applied for vegetation studies. It is important to emphasize that NDVI is sensor-dependent, and changes are affected by soil background, irradiance, solar position, atmospheric attenuation, season, hydric situation and climate of the area. So, a fixed threshold cannot be set, even for the same sensor or season, to properly segment vegetated areas. In this context, a robust methodology has been applied to ensure a reliable estimation of changes using the same sensor in multiple dates or different sensors. To that respect, a supervised procedure is presented consisting on the selection of different regions within each image to precisely map each cover with its associated NDVI values and, in consequence, obtain for each individual image the optimal threshold to properly segment vegetation without the need to perform the complex preprocessing required to estimate the ground reflectivity. On the other hand, fires are an important aspect of an ecosystem and their study, a fundamental task to perform a complete assessment of the environmental and economic damage. In our work we have also analyzed in detail the fire occurring during 2007 and precisely assessed the results.

  1. Data acquisition software for the CMS strip tracker

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Bainbridge, R; Cripps, N; Fulcher, J; Radicci, V; Wingham, M; Baulieu, G; Bel, S; Delaere, C; Drouhin, F; Gill, K; Mirabito, L; Cole, J; Jesus, A C A; Giassi, A; Giordano, D; Gross, L; Hahn, K; Mersi, S; Nikolic, M; Tkaczyk, S

    2008-01-01

    The CMS silicon strip tracker, providing a sensitive area of approximately 200 m 2 and comprising 10 million readout channels, has recently been completed at the tracker integration facility at CERN. The strip tracker community is currently working to develop and integrate the online and offline software frameworks, known as XDAQ and CMSSW respectively, for the purposes of data acquisition and detector commissioning and monitoring. Recent developments have seen the integration of many new services and tools within the online data acquisition system, such as event building, online distributed analysis, an online monitoring framework, and data storage management. We review the various software components that comprise the strip tracker data acquisition system, the software architectures used for stand-alone and global data-taking modes. Our experiences in commissioning and operating one of the largest ever silicon micro-strip tracking systems are also reviewed

  2. 2D/3D Visual Tracker for Rover Mast

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bajracharya, Max; Madison, Richard W.; Nesnas, Issa A.; Bandari, Esfandiar; Kunz, Clayton; Deans, Matt; Bualat, Maria

    2006-01-01

    A visual-tracker computer program controls an articulated mast on a Mars rover to keep a designated feature (a target) in view while the rover drives toward the target, avoiding obstacles. Several prior visual-tracker programs have been tested on rover platforms; most require very small and well-estimated motion between consecutive image frames a requirement that is not realistic for a rover on rough terrain. The present visual-tracker program is designed to handle large image motions that lead to significant changes in feature geometry and photometry between frames. When a point is selected in one of the images acquired from stereoscopic cameras on the mast, a stereo triangulation algorithm computes a three-dimensional (3D) location for the target. As the rover moves, its body-mounted cameras feed images to a visual-odometry algorithm, which tracks two-dimensional (2D) corner features and computes their old and new 3D locations. The algorithm rejects points, the 3D motions of which are inconsistent with a rigid-world constraint, and then computes the apparent change in the rover pose (i.e., translation and rotation). The mast pan and tilt angles needed to keep the target centered in the field-of-view of the cameras (thereby minimizing the area over which the 2D-tracking algorithm must operate) are computed from the estimated change in the rover pose, the 3D position of the target feature, and a model of kinematics of the mast. If the motion between the consecutive frames is still large (i.e., 3D tracking was unsuccessful), an adaptive view-based matching technique is applied to the new image. This technique uses correlation-based template matching, in which a feature template is scaled by the ratio between the depth in the original template and the depth of pixels in the new image. This is repeated over the entire search window and the best correlation results indicate the appropriate match. The program could be a core for building application programs for systems

  3. A submonthly database for detecting changes in vegetation-atmosphere coupling

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zscheischler, Jakob; Orth, René; Seneviratne, Sonia I.

    2016-04-01

    Land-atmosphere coupling and changes in coupling regimes are important for making precise future climate predictions and understanding vegetation-climate feedbacks. Here we introduce the Vegetation-Atmosphere Coupling (VAC) index which identifies regions and times of concurrent strong anomalies in temperature and photosynthetic activity. The different classes of the index determine whether a location is currently in an energy-limited or water-limited regime, and its high temporal resolution allows to investigate how these regimes change over time at the regional scale. We show that the VAC index helps to distinguish different evaporative regimes. It can therefore provide indirect information about the local soil moisture state. We further demonstrate how the index can be used to understand processes leading to and occurring during extreme climate events, using the 2010 heat wave in Russia and the 2010 Amazon drought as examples.

  4. Study of Maowusu Sandy Land Vegetation Coverage Change Based on Modis Ndvi

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ye, Q.; Liu, H.; Lin, Y.; Han, R.

    2018-04-01

    This paper selected 2006-2016 MODIS NDVI data with a spatial resolution of 500m and time resolution of 16d, got the 11 years' time series NDVI data of Maowusu sandy land through mosaicking, projection transformation, cutting process in batch. Analysed the spatial and temporal distribution and variation characteristics of vegetation cover in year, season and month time scales by maximum value composite, and unary linear regression analysis. Then, we combined the meteorological data of 33 sites around the sandy area, analysed the response characteristics of vegetation cover change to temperature and precipitation through Pearson correlation coefficient. Studies have shown that: (1) The NDVI value has a stable increase trend, which rate is 0.0075 / a. (2) The vegetation growth have significantly difference in four seasons, the NDVI value of summer > autumn > spring > winter. (3) The NDVI value change trend is conformed to the gauss normal distribution in a year, and it comes to be largest in August, its green season is in April, and yellow season is in the middle of November, the growth period is about 220 d. (4) The vegetation has a decreasing trend from the southeast to the northwest, most part is slightly improved, and Etuokeqianqi improved significantly. (5) The correlation indexes of annual NDVI with temperature and precipitation are -0.2178 and 0.6309, the vegetation growth is mainly affected by precipitation. In this study, a complete vegetation cover analysis and evaluation model for sandy land is established. It has important guiding significance for the sand ecological environment protection.

  5. Optical Airborne Tracker System

    Data.gov (United States)

    National Aeronautics and Space Administration — The Optical Airborne Tracker System (OATS) is an airborne dual-axis optical tracking system capable of pointing at any sky location or ground target.  The objectives...

  6. Promoting physical activity using a wearable activity tracker in college students: A cluster randomized controlled trial.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kim, Youngdeok; Lumpkin, Angela; Lochbaum, Marc; Stegemeier, Steven; Kitten, Karla

    2018-08-01

    This study examined the effects of utilizing a wearable activity tracker in a credit-based physical activity instructional program (PAIP) for promoting physical activity (PA) in college students. Fourteen PAIP courses in a large public university were randomly assigned into intervention (k = 7; n = 101) and control (k = 7; n = 86) groups. All courses focused on a core curriculum that covers basic exercise and behavioral science contents through lectures and activity sessions. A Misfit Flash activity tracker was provided to students in the intervention group. Objective PA assessments occurred at baseline, mid-, and end-of-semester during a 15-week academic semester. The control group showed a significant reduction in moderate- and vigorous-intensity PA (MVPA) minutes from baseline to the end-of-semester (P <.05), whereas the intervention group showed no changes in MVPA minutes over time. However, the intervention group also showed increased sedentary time and decreased time spent in light-intensity PA during the intervention period. Taken together, the present study found null effects of utilizing the wearable activity tracker in promoting PA in college students suggesting that intervention of primary using the wearable activity tracker as a behavior change strategy may not be effective to increase in PA in this setting.

  7. Activity trackers: a critical review.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lee, Jeon; Finkelstein, Joseph

    2014-01-01

    The wearable consumer health devices can be mainly divided into activity trackers, sleep trackers, and stress management devices. These devices are widely advertised to provide positive effects on the user's daily behaviours and overall heath. However, objective evidence supporting these claims appears to be missing. The goal of this study was to review available evidence pertaining to performance of activity trackers. A comprehensive review of available information has been conducted for seven representative devices and the validity of marketing claims was assessed. The device assessment was based on availability of verified output metrics, theoretical frameworks, systematic evaluation, and FDA clearance. The review identified critical absence of supporting evidence of advertised functions and benefits for the majority of the devices. Six out of seven devices did not provide any information on sensor accuracy and output validity at all. Possible underestimation or overestimation of specific health indicators reported to consumers was not clearly disclosed to the public. Furthermore, significant limitations of these devices which can be categorized into user restrictions, user responsibilities and company disclaimers could not be easily found or comprehended by unsophisticated users and may represent a serious health hazard.

  8. The CMS tracker control system

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Dierlamm, A; Dirkes, G H; Fahrer, M; Frey, M; Hartmann, F; Masetti, L; Militaru, O; Shah, S Y; Stringer, R; Tsirou, A

    2008-01-01

    The Tracker Control System (TCS) is a distributed control software to operate about 2000 power supplies for the silicon modules of the CMS Tracker and monitor its environmental sensors. TCS must thus be able to handle about 10 4 power supply parameters, about 10 3 environmental probes from the Programmable Logic Controllers of the Tracker Safety System (TSS), about 10 5 parameters read via DAQ from the DCUs in all front end hybrids and from CCUs in all control groups. TCS is built on top of an industrial SCADA program (PVSS) extended with a framework developed at CERN (JCOP) and used by all LHC experiments. The logical partitioning of the detector is reflected in the hierarchical structure of the TCS, where commands move down to the individual hardware devices, while states are reported up to the root which is interfaced to the broader CMS control system. The system computes and continuously monitors the mean and maximum values of critical parameters and updates the percentage of currently operating hardware. Automatic procedures switch off selected parts of the detector using detailed granularity and avoiding widespread TSS intervention

  9. Reliability and validity of ten consumer activity trackers

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Kooiman, Thea; Dontje, Manon L.; Sprenger, Siska; Krijnen, Wim; van der Schans, Cees; de Groot, Martijn

    2015-01-01

    Background: Activity trackers can potentially stimulate users to increase their physical activity behavior. The aim of this study was to examine the reliability and validity of ten consumer activity trackers for measuring step count in both laboratory and free-living conditions. Method: Healthy

  10. Spatio-Temporal Change of Vegetation Coverage and its Driving Forces Based on Landsat Images: a Case Study of Changchun City

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dong, L.; Jiang, H.; Yang, L.

    2018-04-01

    Based on the Landsat images in 2006, 2011 and 2015, and the method of dimidiate pixel model, the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and the vegetation coverage, this paper analyzes the spatio-temporal variation of vegetation coverage in Changchun, China from 2006 to 2015, and investigates the response of vegetation coverage change to natural and artificial factors. The research results show that in nearly 10 years, the vegetation coverage in Changchun dropped remarkably, and reached the minimum in 2011. Moreover, the decrease of maximum NDVI was significant, with a decrease of about 27.43 %, from 2006 to 2015. The vegetation coverage change in different regions of the research area was significantly different. Among them, the vegetation change in Changchun showed a little drop, and it decreased firstly and then increased slowly in Yushu, Nong'an and Dehui. In addition, the temperature and precipitation change, land reclamation all affect the vegetation coverage. In short, the study of vegetation coverage change contributes scientific and technical support to government and environmental protection department, so as to promote the coordinated development of ecology and economy.

  11. Aerodynamical study of a photovoltaic solar tracker

    OpenAIRE

    Gutiérrez Castillo, José Leonardo

    2016-01-01

    Investigate the aerodynamic features of ground-mounted solar trackers under atmospheric boundary layer flows. Study and identify the aerodynamical interactions of solar trackers when they are displayed as an array. State of the art. Literature review about CFD applied to solar panels. Analytic approach of the problem. Application of CFD analysis. Validation of the results. Discussion of the results. Improvements proposal.

  12. Laser tracker TSPI uncertainty quantification via centrifuge trajectory

    Science.gov (United States)

    Romero, Edward; Paez, Thomas; Brown, Timothy; Miller, Timothy

    2009-08-01

    Sandia National Laboratories currently utilizes two laser tracking systems to provide time-space-position-information (TSPI) and high speed digital imaging of test units under flight. These laser trackers have been in operation for decades under the premise of theoretical accuracies based on system design and operator estimates. Advances in optical imaging and atmospheric tracking technology have enabled opportunities to provide more precise six degree of freedom measurements from these trackers. Applying these technologies to the laser trackers requires quantified understanding of their current errors and uncertainty. It was well understood that an assortment of variables contributed to laser tracker uncertainty but the magnitude of these contributions was not quantified and documented. A series of experiments was performed at Sandia National Laboratories large centrifuge complex to quantify TSPI uncertainties of Sandia National Laboratories laser tracker III. The centrifuge was used to provide repeatable and economical test unit trajectories of a test-unit to use for TSPI comparison and uncertainty analysis. On a centrifuge, testunits undergo a known trajectory continuously with a known angular velocity. Each revolution may represent an independent test, which may be repeated many times over for magnitudes of data practical for statistical analysis. Previously these tests were performed at Sandia's rocket sled track facility but were found to be costly with challenges in the measurement ground truth TSPI. The centrifuge along with on-board measurement equipment was used to provide known ground truth position of test units. This paper discusses the experimental design and techniques used to arrive at measures of laser tracker error and uncertainty.

  13. The potential natural vegetation of eastern Africa distribution, conservation and future changes

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    van Breugel, Paulo

    and sustainable management of the natural environment. There is therefore an urgent need for information that allow us to assess the current status of the region’s natural environment and to predict how this may change under future climates. This thesis aims to improve our knowledge on natural vegetation...... and how this is likely to change under different climate change scenarios. Chapter 4 presents an environmental gap analysis to prioritize conservation efforts in eastern Africa, based on an evaluation of the environmental representativeness of protected areas and an assessment of the level of threat...... distribution in eastern African, examine how this may change under future climates, and how this can be used to identify conservation priorities in the region. Chapter 1 presents a brief overview of the concept of the potential natural vegetation (PNV), synthesizes the general findings and discusses future...

  14. Modeling mechanisms of vegetation change due to fire in a semi-arid ecosystem

    Science.gov (United States)

    White, J.D.; Gutzwiller, K.J.; Barrow, W.C.; Randall, L.J.; Swint, P.

    2008-01-01

    Vegetation growth and community composition in semi-arid environments is determined by water availability and carbon assimilation mechanisms specific to different plant types. Disturbance also impacts vegetation productivity and composition dependent on area affected, intensity, and frequency factors. In this study, a new spatially explicit ecosystem model is presented for the purpose of simulating vegetation cover type changes associated with fire disturbance in the northern Chihuahuan Desert region. The model is called the Landscape and Fire Simulator (LAFS) and represents physiological activity of six functional plant types incorporating site climate, fire, and seed dispersal routines for individual grid cells. We applied this model for Big Bend National Park, Texas, by assessing the impact of wildfire on the trajectory of vegetation communities over time. The model was initialized and calibrated based on landcover maps derived from Landsat-5 Thematic Mapper data acquired in 1986 and 1999 coupled with plant biomass measurements collected in the field during 2000. Initial vegetation cover change analysis from satellite data showed shrub encroachment during this time period that was captured in the simulated results. A synthetic 50-year climate record was derived from historical meteorological data to assess system response based on initial landcover conditions. This simulation showed that shrublands increased to the detriment of grass and yucca-ocotillo vegetation cover types indicating an ecosystem-level trajectory for shrub encroachment. Our analysis of simulated fires also showed that fires significantly reduced site biomass components including leaf area, stem, and seed biomass in this semi-arid ecosystem. In contrast to other landscape simulation models, this new model incorporates detailed physiological responses of functional plant types that will allow us to simulated the impact of increased atmospheric CO2 occurring with climate change coupled with fire

  15. Simulating vegetation dynamics in Chile from 21ka BP to present: Effects of climate change on vegetation functions and cover

    Science.gov (United States)

    Werner, Christian; Liakka, Johan; Schmid, Manuel; Fuentes, Juan-Pablo; Ehlers, Todd A.; Hickler, Thomas

    2017-04-01

    Vegetation composition and establishment is strongly dependent on climate conditions but also a result of vegetation dynamics (competition for light, water and nutrients). In addition, vegetation exerts control over the development of landscapes as it mediates the climatic and hydrological forces shaping the terrain via hillslope and fluvial processes. At the same time, topography as well as soil texture and soil depth affect the microclimate, soil water storage and rooting space that is defining the environmental envelope for vegetation development. Within the EarthShape research program (www.earthshape.net) we evaluate these interactions by simulating the co-evolution of landscape and vegetation with a dynamic vegetation model (LPJ-GUESS) and a landscape evolution model (LandLab). LPJ-GUESS is a mechanistic model driven by daily or monthly weather data and explicitly simulates vegetation physiology, succession, competition and water and nutrient cycling. Here we present the results of first transient vegetation simulations from 21kyr BP to present-day using the TraCE-21ka climate dataset for four focus sites along the coastal cordillera of Chile that are exposed to a substantial meridional climate gradient (ranging from hyper-arid to humid-temperate conditions). We show that the warming occurring in the region from LGM to present, in addition to the increase of atmospheric CO2 concentrations, led to a shift in vegetation composition and surface cover. Future work will show how these changes resonate in the dynamics of hillslope and fluvial erosion and ultimately bi-directional feedback mechanisms of vegetation development and landscape evolution/ soil formation (see also companion presentation by Schmid et al., this session).

  16. Seasonal changes in quality of wastewater from fruit and vegetable industry

    Science.gov (United States)

    Puchlik, Monika; Ignatowicz, Katarzyna

    2017-11-01

    The paper aimed at evaluating the seasonal changes in quality of wastewater from facilities producing fruit and vegetable juices, processed and frozen products, and vegetable concentrates. The study revealed that wastewater from fruit and vegetable industry contain large amounts of organic substances expressed as BOD5 (minimum - 500 mgO2/dm3, maximum - 6 100 mgO2/dm3) and COD (minimum - 806 mg O2/dm3, maximum - 7 732 mg O2/dm3), while is deficient in nitrogen and phosphorus. Considerable seasonal oscillations in sewage load disposed by industry to sewerage, were observed. An increase of 50%-60% wastewater concentrations was found between June and October in 2013-2016 as compared to the remaining months.

  17. The research and development of the automatic solar power tracker

    OpenAIRE

    Li Yan Ping; Yuan Zhong Ying

    2016-01-01

    The article describes a kind of automatic tracker using solar power. It depends on two important parts which are servo system and adjusting mechanism system to keep the tracker operating normally. The article focuses on describing the characteristics and functions of two systems and the operating details of the automatic solar power tracker.

  18. Advances in RGB and RGBD Generic Object Trackers

    KAUST Repository

    Bibi, Adel Aamer

    2016-01-01

    new state-of-the-art trackers. One of which is 3D based tracker in a particle filter framework where both synchronization and registration of RGB and depth streams are adjusted automatically, and three works in correlation filters that achieve state-of-the-art

  19. A simulator-based approach to evaluating optical trackers

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Smit, F.A.; Liere, van R.

    2009-01-01

    We describe a software framework to evaluate the performance of model-based optical trackers in virtual environments. The framework can be used to evaluate and compare the performance of different trackers under various conditions, to study the effects of varying intrinsic and extrinsic camera

  20. Direct tracking error characterization on a single-axis solar tracker

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Sallaberry, Fabienne; Pujol-Nadal, Ramon; Larcher, Marco; Rittmann-Frank, Mercedes Hannelore

    2015-01-01

    Highlights: • The solar tracker of a small-size parabolic trough collector was tested. • A testing procedure for the tracking error characterization of a single-axis tracker was proposed. • A statistical analysis on the tracking error distribution was done regarding different variables. • The optical losses due to the tracking error were calculated based on a ray-tracing simulation. - Abstract: The solar trackers are devices used to orientate solar concentrating systems in order to increase the focusing of the solar radiation on a receiver. A solar concentrator with a medium or high concentration ratio needs to be orientated correctly by an accurate solar tracking mechanism to avoid losing the sunrays out from the receiver. Hence, to obtain an appropriate operation, it is important to know the accuracy of a solar tracker in regard to the required precision of the concentrator in order to maximize the collector optical efficiency. A procedure for the characterization of the accuracy of a solar tracker is presented for a single-axis solar tracker. More precisely, this study focuses on the estimation of the positioning angle error of a parabolic trough collector using a direct procedure. A testing procedure, adapted from the International standard IEC 62817 for photovoltaic trackers, was defined. The results show that the angular tracking error was within ±0.4° for this tracker. The optical losses due to the tracking were calculated using the longitudinal incidence angle modifier obtained by ray-tracing simulation. The acceptance angles for various transversal angles were analyzed, and the average optical loss, due to the tracking, was 0.317% during the whole testing campaign. The procedure presented in this work showed that the tracker precision was adequate for the requirements of the analyzed optical system.

  1. Monitoring vegetation change in Abu Dhabi Emirate from 1996 to 2000 and 2004 using Landsat Satellite Imagery

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Starbuck, M.J.; Tamayo, J.

    2007-01-01

    In the fall of 2001, a study was initiated to investigate vegetation changes in the Abu Dhabi Emirates. The vast majority of vegetation present in the region is irrigated and analysis of vegetation change will support groundwater investigations in the region by indicating areas of increased water use. Satellite-based imaging systems provide a good source of data for such an analysis. The recent analysis was completed between February and November 2002 using Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper satellite imagery acquired in 1996 and Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus imagery acquired in 2000. These assessments were augmented in 2004with the study of Landsat 7 imagery acquired in early 2004. The total area of vegetation for each of seven study areas was calculated using the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) technique. Multiband image classification was used to differentiate general vegetation types. Change analysis consisted of simple NDVI image differencing and post-classification change matrices. Measurements of total vegetation are for the Abu Dhabi Emirate indicate an increase from 77,200 hectares in 1996 to 162,700 hectares in 2000 (110% increase). Based on comparison with manual interpretation of satellite imagery, the amount of under-reporting of irrigated land is estimated at about 15% of the actual area. From the assessment of 2004 Landset imagery, it was found that the growth of irrigated vegetation in most areas of Emirate had stabilized and had actually slightly decreased in some cases. The decreases are probably due to variability in the measurement technique and not due to actual decreases in area of vegetation. (author)

  2. Varying responses of vegetation activity to climate changes on the Tibetan Plateau grassland.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cong, Nan; Shen, Miaogen; Yang, Wei; Yang, Zhiyong; Zhang, Gengxin; Piao, Shilong

    2017-08-01

    Vegetation activity on the Tibetan Plateau grassland has been substantially enhanced as a result of climate change, as revealed by satellite observations of vegetation greenness (i.e., the normalized difference vegetation index, NDVI). However, little is known about the temporal variations in the relationships between NDVI and temperature and precipitation, and understanding this is essential for predicting how future climate change would affect vegetation activity. Using NDVI data and meteorological records from 1982 to 2011, we found that the inter-annual partial correlation coefficient between growing season (May-September) NDVI and temperature (R NDVI-T ) in a 15-year moving window for alpine meadow showed little change, likely caused by the increasing R NDVI-T in spring (May-June) and autumn (September) and decreasing R NDVI-T in summer (July-August). Growing season R NDVI-T for alpine steppe increased slightly, mainly due to increasing R NDVI-T in spring and autumn. The partial correlation coefficient between growing season NDVI and precipitation (R NDVI-P ) for alpine meadow increased slightly, mainly in spring and summer, and R NDVI-P for alpine steppe increased, mainly in spring. Moreover, R NDVI-T for the growing season was significantly higher in those 15-year windows with more precipitation for alpine steppe. R NDVI-P for the growing season was significantly higher in those 15-year windows with higher temperature, and this tendency was stronger for alpine meadow than for alpine steppe. These results indicate that the impact of warming on vegetation activity of Tibetan Plateau grassland is more positive (or less negative) during periods with more precipitation and that the impact of increasing precipitation is more positive (or less negative) during periods with higher temperature. Such positive effects of the interactions between temperature and precipitation indicate that the projected warmer and wetter future climate will enhance vegetation activity

  3. Changes in Vegetation Growth Dynamics and Relations with Climate over China’s Landmass from 1982 to 2011

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Guang Xu

    2014-04-01

    Full Text Available Understanding how the dynamics of vegetation growth respond to climate change at different temporal and spatial scales is critical to projecting future ecosystem dynamics and the adaptation of ecosystems to global change. In this study, we investigated vegetated growth dynamics (annual productivity, seasonality and the minimum amount of vegetated cover in China and their relations with climatic factors during 1982–2011, using the updated Global Inventory Modeling and Mapping Studies (GIMMS third generation global satellite Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI dataset and climate data acquired from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP. Major findings are as follows: (1 annual mean NDVI over China significantly increased by about 0.0006 per year from 1982 to 2011; (2 of the vegetated area in China, over 33% experienced a significant positive trend in vegetation growth, mostly located in central and southern China; about 21% experienced a significant positive trend in growth seasonality, most of which occurred in northern China (>35°N; (3 changes in vegetation growth dynamics were significantly correlated with air temperature and precipitation (p < 0.001 at a region scale; (4 at the country scale, changes in NDVI was significantly and positively correlated with annual air temperature (r = 0.52, p < 0.01 and not associated with annual precipitation (p > 0.1; (5 of the vegetated area, about 24% showed significant correlations between annual mean NDVI and air temperature (93% positive and remainder negative, and 12% showed significant correlations of annual mean NDVI with annual precipitation (65% positive and 35% negative. The spatiotemporal variations in vegetation growth dynamics were controlled primarily by temperature and secondly by precipitation. Vegetation growth was also affected by human activities; and (6 monthly NDVI was significantly correlated with the

  4. The research and development of the automatic solar power tracker

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Li Yan Ping

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available The article describes a kind of automatic tracker using solar power. It depends on two important parts which are servo system and adjusting mechanism system to keep the tracker operating normally. The article focuses on describing the characteristics and functions of two systems and the operating details of the automatic solar power tracker.

  5. Effects of projected climate change on vegetation in the Blue Mountains ecoregion, USA

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Becky K. Kerns

    2018-04-01

    Full Text Available We used autecological, paleoecological, and modeling information to explore the potential effects of climate change on vegetation in the Blue Mountains ecoregion, Oregon (USA. Although uncertainty exists about the exact nature of future vegetation change, we infer that the following are likely to occur by the end of the century: (1 dominance of ponderosa pine and sagebrush will increase in many locations, (2 the forest-steppe ecotone will move upward in latitude and elevation, (3 ponderosa pine will be distributed at higher elevations, (4 subalpine and alpine systems will be replaced by grass species, pine, and Douglas-fir, (5 moist forest types may increase under wetter scenarios, (6 the distribution and abundance of juniper woodlands may decrease if the frequency and extent of wildfire increase, and (7 grasslands and shrublands will increase at lower elevations. Tree growth in energy-limited landscapes (high elevations, north aspects will increase as the climate warms and snowpack decreases, whereas tree growth in water-limited landscapes (low elevations, south aspects will decrease. Ecological disturbances, including wildfire, insect outbreaks, and non-native species, which are expected to increase in a warmer climate, will affect species distribution, tree age, and vegetation structure, facilitating transitions to new combinations of species and vegetation patterns. In dry forests where fire has not occurred for several decades, crown fires may result in high tree mortality, and the interaction of multiple disturbances and stressors will probably exacerbate stress complexes. Increased disturbance will favor species with physiological and phenological traits that allow them to tolerate frequent disturbance. Keywords: Climate change, Disturbance, Vegetation, Wildfire

  6. Climate change-induced vegetation shifts lead to more ecological droughts despite projected rainfall increases in many global temperate drylands.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tietjen, Britta; Schlaepfer, Daniel R; Bradford, John B; Lauenroth, William K; Hall, Sonia A; Duniway, Michael C; Hochstrasser, Tamara; Jia, Gensuo; Munson, Seth M; Pyke, David A; Wilson, Scott D

    2017-07-01

    Drylands occur worldwide and are particularly vulnerable to climate change because dryland ecosystems depend directly on soil water availability that may become increasingly limited as temperatures rise. Climate change will both directly impact soil water availability and change plant biomass, with resulting indirect feedbacks on soil moisture. Thus, the net impact of direct and indirect climate change effects on soil moisture requires better understanding. We used the ecohydrological simulation model SOILWAT at sites from temperate dryland ecosystems around the globe to disentangle the contributions of direct climate change effects and of additional indirect, climate change-induced changes in vegetation on soil water availability. We simulated current and future climate conditions projected by 16 GCMs under RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 for the end of the century. We determined shifts in water availability due to climate change alone and due to combined changes of climate and the growth form and biomass of vegetation. Vegetation change will mostly exacerbate low soil water availability in regions already expected to suffer from negative direct impacts of climate change (with the two RCP scenarios giving us qualitatively similar effects). By contrast, in regions that will likely experience increased water availability due to climate change alone, vegetation changes will counteract these increases due to increased water losses by interception. In only a small minority of locations, climate change-induced vegetation changes may lead to a net increase in water availability. These results suggest that changes in vegetation in response to climate change may exacerbate drought conditions and may dampen the effects of increased precipitation, that is, leading to more ecological droughts despite higher precipitation in some regions. Our results underscore the value of considering indirect effects of climate change on vegetation when assessing future soil moisture conditions in water

  7. Climate change-induced vegetation shifts lead to more ecological droughts despite projected rainfall increases in many global temperate drylands

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tietjen, Britta; Schlaepfer, Daniel R.; Bradford, John B.; Laurenroth, William K.; Hall, Sonia A.; Duniway, Michael C.; Hochstrasser, Tamara; Jia, Gensuo; Munson, Seth M.; Pyke, David A.; Wilson, Scott D.

    2017-01-01

    Drylands occur world-wide and are particularly vulnerable to climate change since dryland ecosystems depend directly on soil water availability that may become increasingly limited as temperatures rise. Climate change will both directly impact soil water availability, and also change plant biomass, with resulting indirect feedbacks on soil moisture. Thus, the net impact of direct and indirect climate change effects on soil moisture requires better understanding.We used the ecohydrological simulation model SOILWAT at sites from temperate dryland ecosystems around the globe to disentangle the contributions of direct climate change effects and of additional indirect, climate change-induced changes in vegetation on soil water availability. We simulated current and future climate conditions projected by 16 GCMs under RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 for the end of the century. We determined shifts in water availability due to climate change alone and due to combined changes of climate and the growth form and biomass of vegetation.Vegetation change will mostly exacerbate low soil water availability in regions already expected to suffer from negative direct impacts of climate change (with the two RCP scenarios giving us qualitatively similar effects). By contrast, in regions that will likely experience increased water availability due to climate change alone, vegetation changes will counteract these increases due to increased water losses by interception. In only a small minority of locations, climate change induced vegetation changes may lead to a net increase in water availability. These results suggest that changes in vegetation in response to climate change may exacerbate drought conditions and may dampen the effects of increased precipitation, i.e. leading to more ecological droughts despite higher precipitation in some regions. Our results underscore the value of considering indirect effects of climate change on vegetation when assessing future soil moisture conditions in water

  8. Ecosystem Evapotranspiration as a Response to Climate and Vegetation Coverage Changes in Northwest Yunnan, China.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yang, Hao; Luo, Peng; Wang, Jun; Mou, Chengxiang; Mo, Li; Wang, Zhiyuan; Fu, Yao; Lin, Honghui; Yang, Yongping; Bhatta, Laxmi Dutt

    2015-01-01

    Climate and human-driven changes play an important role in regional droughts. Northwest Yunnan Province is a key region for biodiversity conservation in China, and it has experienced severe droughts since the beginning of this century; however, the extent of the contributions from climate and human-driven changes remains unclear. We calculated the ecosystem evapotranspiration (ET) and water yield (WY) of northwest Yunnan Province, China from 2001 to 2013 using meteorological and remote sensing observation data and a Surface Energy Balance System (SEBS) model. Multivariate regression analyses were used to differentiate the contribution of climate and vegetation coverage to ET. The results showed that the annual average vegetation coverage significantly increased over time with a mean of 0.69 in spite of the precipitation fluctuation. Afforestation/reforestation and other management efforts attributed to vegetation coverage increase in NW Yunnan. Both ET and WY considerably fluctuated with the climate factors, which ranged from 623.29 mm to 893.8 mm and -51.88 mm to 384.40 mm over the time period. Spatially, ET in the southeast of NW Yunnan (mainly in Lijiang) increased significantly, which was in line with the spatial trend of vegetation coverage. Multivariate linear regression analysis indicated that climatic factors accounted for 85.18% of the ET variation, while vegetation coverage explained 14.82%. On the other hand, precipitation accounted for 67.5% of the WY. We conclude that the continuous droughts in northwest Yunnan were primarily climatically driven; however, man-made land cover and vegetation changes also increased the vulnerability of local populations to drought. Because of the high proportion of the water yield consumed for subsistence and poor infrastructure for water management, local populations have been highly vulnerable to climate drought conditions. We suggest that conservation of native vegetation and development of water

  9. Spatio-temporal variation of vegetation coverage and its response to climate change in North China plain in the last 33 years

    Science.gov (United States)

    A, Duo; Zhao, Wenji; Qu, Xinyuan; Jing, Ran; Xiong, Kai

    2016-12-01

    Global climate change has led to significant vegetation changes in the past half century. North China Plain, the most important grain production base of china, is undergoing a process of prominent warming and drying. The vegetation coverage, which is used to monitor vegetation change, can respond to climate change (temperature and precipitation). In this study, GIMMS (Global Inventory Modelling and Mapping Studies)-NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) data, MODIS (Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) - NDVI data and climate data, during 1981-2013, were used to investigate the spatial distribution and changes of vegetation. The relationship between climate and vegetation on different spatial (agriculture, forest and grassland) and temporal (yearly, decadal and monthly) scales were also analyzed in North China Plain. (1) It was found that temperature exhibiting a slight increase trend (0.20 °C/10a, P 0.05). The climate mutation period was during 1991-1994. (2) Vegetation coverage slight increase was observed in the 55% of total study area, with a change rate of 0.00039/10a. Human activities may not only accelerate the changes of the vegetation coverage, but also c effect to the rate of these changes. (3) Overall, the correlation between the vegetation coverage and climatic factor is higher in monthly scale than yearly scale. The correlation analysis between vegetation coverage and climate changes showed that annual vegetation coverage was better correlatend with precipitation in grassland biome; but it showed a better correlated with temperature i the agriculture biome and forest biome. In addition, the vegetation coverage had sensitive time-effect respond to precipitation. (4) The vegetation coverage showed the same increasing trend before and after the climatic variations, but the rate of increase slowed down. From the vegetation coverage point of view, the grassland ecological zone had an obvious response to the climatic variations, but the

  10. Simulating vegetation response to climate change in the Blue Mountains with MC2 dynamic global vegetation model

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    John B. Kim

    2018-04-01

    Full Text Available Warming temperatures are projected to greatly alter many forests in the Pacific Northwest. MC2 is a dynamic global vegetation model, a climate-aware, process-based, and gridded vegetation model. We calibrated and ran MC2 simulations for the Blue Mountains Ecoregion, Oregon, USA, at 30 arc-second spatial resolution. We calibrated MC2 using the best available spatial datasets from land managers. We ran future simulations using climate projections from four global circulation models (GCM under representative concentration pathway 8.5. Under this scenario, forest productivity is projected to increase as the growing season lengthens, and fire occurrence is projected to increase steeply throughout the century, with burned area peaking early- to mid-century. Subalpine forests are projected to disappear, and the coniferous forests to contract by 32.8%. Large portions of the dry and mesic forests are projected to convert to woodlands, unless precipitation were to increase. Low levels of change are projected for the Umatilla National Forest consistently across the four GCM’s. For the Wallowa-Whitman and the Malheur National Forest, forest conversions are projected to vary more across the four GCM-based simulations, reflecting high levels of uncertainty arising from climate. For simulations based on three of the four GCMs, sharply increased fire activity results in decreases in forest carbon stocks by the mid-century, and the fire activity catalyzes widespread biome shift across the study area. We document the full cycle of a structured approach to calibrating and running MC2 for transparency and to serve as a template for applications of MC2. Keywords: Climate change, Regional change, Simulation, Calibration, Forests, Fire, Dynamic global vegetation model

  11. Plot-scale evidence of tundra vegetation change and links to recent summer warming

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sarah C. Elmendorf; Gregory H.R. Henry; Robert D. Hollister; Robert G. Bjork; Noemie Boulanger-Lapointe; Elisabeth J. Cooper; Johannes H.C. Cornelissen; Thomas A. Day; Ellen Dorrepaal; Tatiana G. Elumeeva; Mike Gill; William A. Gould; John Harte; David S. Hik; Annika Hofgaard; David R. Johnson; Jill F. Johnstone; Ingijorg Svala Jonsdottir; Janet C. Jorgenson; Kari Klanderud; Julia A. Klein; Saewan Koh; Gaku Kudo; Mark Lara; Esther Levesque; Borgthor Magnusson; Jeremy L. May; Joel A. Mercado; Anders Michelsen; Ulf Molau; Isla H. Myers-Smith; Steven F. Oberbauer; Vladimir G. Onipchenko; Christian Rixen; Niels Martin Schmidt; Gaius R. Shaver; Marko J. Spasojevic; Pora Ellen Porhallsdottir; Anne Tolvanen; Tiffany Troxler; Craig E. Tweedie; Sandra Villareal; Carl-Henrik Wahren; Xanthe Walker; Patrick J. Webber; Jeffrey M. Welker; Sonja Wipf

    2012-01-01

    Temperature is increasing at unprecedented rates across most of the tundra biome1. Remote-sensing data indicate that contemporary climate warming has already resulted in increased productivity over much of the Arctic2,3, but plot-based evidence for vegetation transformation is not widespread. We analysed change in tundra vegetation surveyed between 1980 and 2010 in 158...

  12. Potential Arctic tundra vegetation shifts in response to changing temperature, precipitation and permafrost thaw

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Kolk, van der Henk-Jan; Heijmans, M.M.P.D.; Huissteden, van J.; Pullens, J.W.M.; Berendse, F.

    2016-01-01

    Over the past decades, vegetation and climate have changed significantly in the Arctic. Deciduous shrub cover is often assumed to expand in tundra landscapes, but more frequent abrupt permafrost thaw resulting in formation of thaw ponds could lead to vegetation shifts towards graminoid-dominated

  13. VEGETATION CHANGES OF SUNDARBANS BASED ON LANDSAT IMAGERY ANALYSIS BETWEEN 1975 AND 2006

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    MD. TARIQUL ISLAM

    2014-06-01

    Full Text Available The Sundarbans in Bangladesh and India is the largest single block of tidal halophytic mangrove forest in the world. This forest is threatened by effect of climate change and manmade activities. The aim of this paper is to show changes in vegetation cover of Sundarbans since 1975 using Landsat imagery. Normalized Difference Vegetation Index is applied to quantify and qualify density of vegetation on a patch of land. Estimated land area (excluded water body of this forest is 66% in Bangladesh, and 34% in India, respectively. Net erosion since 1975 to 2006 is ~5.9%. In vicinity of human settlement, areal changes are not observed since 1975. The mangrove forest is decreased by 19.3% due severe tropical cyclone in 1977 and 1988. Moreover, the dense forest is damaged by about 50%. However, more than 25 years is taken by Sundarbans to recover from damage by a severe tropical cyclone. The biodiversity of Sundarbans depends to fresh water flow through it. Therefore, the future of Sundarbans depends to the impact of climate change which has further effect to increasing intensity and frequency of severe tropical cyclone and salinity in water channels in Sundarbans.

  14. The LHCb Silicon Tracker Project

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Agari, M.; Bauer, C.; Baumeister, D.; Blouw, J.; Hofmann, W.; Knoepfle, K.T.; Loechner, S.; Schmelling, M.; Pugatch, V.; Bay, A.; Carron, B.; Frei, R.; Jiminez-Otero, S.; Tran, M.-T.; Voss, H.; Adeva, B.; Esperante, D.; Lois, C.; Vasquez, P.; Bernhard, R.P.; Bernet, R.; Ermoline, Y.; Gassner, J.; Koestner, S.; Lehner, F.; Needham, M.; Siegler, M.; Steinkamp, O.; Straumann, U.; Vollhardt, A.; Volyanskyy, D.

    2006-01-01

    Two silicon strip detectors, the Trigger Tracker(TT) and the Inner Tracker(Italy) will be constructed for the LHCb experiment. Transverse momentum information extracted from the TT will be used in the Level 1 trigger. The IT is part of the main tracking system behind the magnet. Both silicon detectors will be read out using a custom-developed chip by the ASIC lab in Heidelberg. The signal-over-noise behavior and performance of various geometrical designs of the silicon sensors, in conjunction with the Beetle read-out chip, have been extensively studied in test beam experiments. Results from those experiments are presented, and have been used in the final choice of sensor geometry

  15. The CMS silicon strip tracker

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Focardi, E.; Albergo, S.; Angarano, M.; Azzi, P.; Babucci, E.; Bacchetta, N.; Bader, A.; Bagliesi, G.; Bartalini, P.; Basti, A.; Biggeri, U.; Bilei, G.M.; Bisello, D.; Boemi, D.; Bosi, F.; Borrello, L.; Bozzi, C.; Braibant, S.; Breuker, H.; Bruzzi, M.; Candelori, A.; Caner, A.; Castaldi, R.; Castro, A.; Catacchini, E.; Checcucci, B.; Ciampolini, P.; Civinini, C.; Creanza, D.; D'Alessandro, R.; Da Rold, M.; Demaria, N.; De Palma, M.; Dell'Orso, R.; Marina, R. Della; Dutta, S.; Eklund, C.; Elliott-Peisert, A.; Feld, L.; Fiore, L.; French, M.; Freudenreich, K.; Fuertjes, A.; Giassi, A.; Giraldo, A.; Glessing, B.; Gu, W.H.; Hall, G.; Hammerstrom, R.; Hebbeker, T.; Hrubec, J.; Huhtinen, M.; Kaminsky, A.; Karimaki, V.; Koenig, St.; Krammer, M.; Lariccia, P.; Lenzi, M.; Loreti, M.; Luebelsmeyer, K.; Lustermann, W.; Maettig, P.; Maggi, G.; Mannelli, M.; Mantovani, G.; Marchioro, A.; Mariotti, C.; Martignon, G.; Evoy, B. Mc; Meschini, M.; Messineo, A.; My, S.; Paccagnella, A.; Palla, F.; Pandoulas, D.; Parrini, G.; Passeri, D.; Pieri, M.; Piperov, S.; Potenza, R.; Raffaelli, F.; Raso, G.; Raymond, M.; Santocchia, A.; Schmitt, B.; Selvaggi, G.; Servoli, L.; Sguazzoni, G.; Siedling, R.; Silvestris, L.; Skog, K.; Starodumov, A.; Stavitski, I.; Stefanini, G.; Tempesta, P.; Tonelli, G.; Tricomi, A.; Tuuva, T.; Vannini, C.; Verdini, P.G.; Viertel, G.; Xie, Z.; Wang, Y.; Watts, S.; Wittmer, B.

    1999-01-01

    The Silicon Strip Tracker (SST) is the intermediate part of the CMS Central Tracker System. SST is based on microstrip silicon devices and in combination with pixel detectors and the Microstrip Gas Chambers aims at performing pattern recognition, track reconstruction and momentum measurements for all tracks with p T ≥2 GeV/c originating from high luminosity interactions at √s=14 TeV at LHC. We aim at exploiting the advantages and the physics potential of the precise tracking performance provided by the microstrip silicon detectors on a large scale apparatus and in a much more difficult environment than ever. In this paper we describe the actual SST layout and the readout system. (author)

  16. Nonlinear vegetation cover changes in the North Ethiopian Highlands: Evidence from the Lake Ashenge closed basin

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Lanckriet, Sil, E-mail: sil.lanckriet@ugent.be [Department of Geography, Ghent University, Krijgslaan 281 (S8), B-9000 Ghent (Belgium); Rucina, Stephen [National Museum of Kenya, Earth Science Department, Palynology Section, P.O. Box 40658 00100, Nairobi (Kenya); Frankl, Amaury [Department of Geography, Ghent University, Krijgslaan 281 (S8), B-9000 Ghent (Belgium); Ritler, Alfons [Centre for Development and Environment, University of Bern, Hallerstrasse 10, CH-3012 Bern (Switzerland); Gelorini, Vanessa [Department of Geology and Soil Science, Ghent University, Krijgslaan 281 (S8), B-9000 Ghent (Belgium); Nyssen, Jan [Department of Geography, Ghent University, Krijgslaan 281 (S8), B-9000 Ghent (Belgium)

    2015-12-01

    Vegetation cover changes in African drylands are often thought to result from population growth, social factors and aridification. Here we show that long-term vegetation proxy records can help disentangling these main driving factors. Taking the case of North Ethiopia, we performed an integrated investigation of land cover changes over the last four centuries around the endorheic Lake Ashenge, as derived from pollen analysis and repeat photography complemented with information from historical sources. Pollen and sediment analysis of radiocarbon-dated lake deposits shows a phase of environmental destabilization during the 18th century, after a more stable previous period. This is evidenced by decreases of tree pollen (Juniperus, Olea, Celtis, Podocarpus < 5%), increases in Poaceae (> 40%) and deposition of coarser silt lake sediments (> 70%). Quantitative analysis of 30 repeated landscape photographs around the lake indicates a gradual decline of the vegetation cover since a relative maximum during the mid-19th Century. Vegetation cover declined sharply between the 1950s and the 1980s, but has since begun to recover. Overall, the data from around Lake Ashenge reveal a nonlinear pattern of deforestation and forest regrowth with several periods of vegetation cover change over the past four centuries. While there is forcing of regional drought and the regional land tenure system, the cyclic changes do not support a simplified focus on aridification or population growth. - Highlights: • Vegetation cover changes are often related with population growth or climate • We investigated land cover changes over the last four centuries near Lake Ashenge • Overall, the data reveal a nonlinear pattern of deforestation and forest regrowth.

  17. Nonlinear vegetation cover changes in the North Ethiopian Highlands: Evidence from the Lake Ashenge closed basin

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Lanckriet, Sil; Rucina, Stephen; Frankl, Amaury; Ritler, Alfons; Gelorini, Vanessa; Nyssen, Jan

    2015-01-01

    Vegetation cover changes in African drylands are often thought to result from population growth, social factors and aridification. Here we show that long-term vegetation proxy records can help disentangling these main driving factors. Taking the case of North Ethiopia, we performed an integrated investigation of land cover changes over the last four centuries around the endorheic Lake Ashenge, as derived from pollen analysis and repeat photography complemented with information from historical sources. Pollen and sediment analysis of radiocarbon-dated lake deposits shows a phase of environmental destabilization during the 18th century, after a more stable previous period. This is evidenced by decreases of tree pollen (Juniperus, Olea, Celtis, Podocarpus < 5%), increases in Poaceae (> 40%) and deposition of coarser silt lake sediments (> 70%). Quantitative analysis of 30 repeated landscape photographs around the lake indicates a gradual decline of the vegetation cover since a relative maximum during the mid-19th Century. Vegetation cover declined sharply between the 1950s and the 1980s, but has since begun to recover. Overall, the data from around Lake Ashenge reveal a nonlinear pattern of deforestation and forest regrowth with several periods of vegetation cover change over the past four centuries. While there is forcing of regional drought and the regional land tenure system, the cyclic changes do not support a simplified focus on aridification or population growth. - Highlights: • Vegetation cover changes are often related with population growth or climate • We investigated land cover changes over the last four centuries near Lake Ashenge • Overall, the data reveal a nonlinear pattern of deforestation and forest regrowth

  18. Simulating the vegetation response in western Europe to abrupt climate changes under glacial background conditions

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    M.-N. Woillez

    2013-03-01

    Full Text Available The last glacial period has been punctuated by two types of abrupt climatic events, the Dansgaard–Oeschger (DO and Heinrich (HE events. These events, recorded in Greenland ice and in marine sediments, involved changes in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC and led to major changes in the terrestrial biosphere. Here we use the dynamical global vegetation model ORCHIDEE to simulate the response of vegetation to abrupt changes in the AMOC strength. We force ORCHIDEE offline with outputs from the IPSL_CM4 general circulation model, in which the AMOC is forced to change by adding freshwater fluxes in the North Atlantic. We investigate the impact of a collapse and recovery of the AMOC, at different rates, and focus on Western Europe, where many pollen records are available for comparison. The impact of an AMOC collapse on the European mean temperatures and precipitations simulated by the GCM is relatively small but sufficient to drive an important regression of forests and expansion of grasses in ORCHIDEE, in qualitative agreement with pollen data for an HE event. On the contrary, a run with a rapid shift of the AMOC to a hyperactive state of 30 Sv, mimicking the warming phase of a DO event, does not exhibit a strong impact on the European vegetation compared to the glacial control state. For our model, simulating the impact of an HE event thus appears easier than simulating the abrupt transition towards the interstadial phase of a DO. For both a collapse or a recovery of the AMOC, the vegetation starts to respond to climatic changes immediately but reaches equilibrium about 200 yr after the climate equilibrates, suggesting a possible bias in the climatic reconstructions based on pollen records, which assume equilibrium between climate and vegetation. However, our study does not take into account vegetation feedbacks on the atmosphere.

  19. Work on the ATLAS semiconductor tracker barrel

    CERN Multimedia

    Maximilien Brice

    2005-01-01

    Precision work is performed on the semiconductor tracker barrel of the ATLAS experiment. All work on these delicate components must be performed in a clean room so that impurities in the air, such as dust, do not contaminate the detector. The semiconductor tracker will be mounted in the barrel close to the heart of the ATLAS experiment to detect the path of particles produced in proton-proton collisions.

  20. Climate change and California: potential implications for vegetation, carbon, and fire.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jonathan. Thompson

    2005-01-01

    Nineteen scientists from leading research institutes in the United States collaborated to estimate how California’s environment and economy would respond to global climate change. A scientist from the PNW Research Station led efforts to estimate effects on vegetation, carbon, and fire.To quantify the range of the possible effects of climate change over the...

  1. Combined effects of climate change and forest clearing on the Amazon vegetation: Projections for 2080-2100

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cook, K. H.; Vizy, E. K.

    2007-05-01

    A regional climate model with resolution of 60 km coupled with a potential vegetation model is used to simulate future vegetation distributions over South America. The coupled model, which produces an accurate representation of today's climate and vegetation, is forced with increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations, sea surface temperature from a global model, and scenarios of future land use practices to predict climate and vegetation distributions for the last 2 decades of the 21st century. When only climate change is considered, under a business-as-usual scenario for global emissions, the extent of the Amazon rainforest is reduced by about 70 per cent by the end of this century, and the shrubland (caatinga) vegetation of Brazil's Nordeste region spreads westward and southward. Reductions in annual mean precipitation are widespread and rainfall becomes insufficient to support the rainforest in these regions, but some areas receive more precipitation. The length of the dry season increases in the central and southern Amazon in association with changes in the large-scale tropical circulation. Without this change in seasonality, local refugia of Amazon vegetation would be preserved and the retreat of the rainforest would be somewhat less extensive. Including various projections of future land use practices in addition to climate change may accelerate the unrecoverable demise of the rainforest and feedback to modify climate on regional space scales. The portions of the rainforest that are most vulnerable to climate change are the same as those that are under the most pressure from human activity, presenting a remarkable competition.

  2. Alignment of the CMS Tracker: Latest results from LHC Run-II

    CERN Document Server

    Mittag, Gregor

    2017-01-01

    The all-silicon design of the tracking system of the CMS experiment provides excellent measurements of charged-particle tracks and an efficient tagging of jets. Conditions of the CMS tracker changed repeatedly during the 2015/2016 shutdown and the 2016 data-taking period. Still the true position and orientation of each of the 15 148 silicon strip and 1440 silicon pixel modules need to be known with high precision for all intervals. The alignment constants also need to be promptly re-adjusted each time the state of the CMS magnet is changed between 0T and 3.8 T. Latest Run-II results of the CMS tracker alignment and resolution performance are presented, which are obtained using several millions of reconstructed tracks from collision and cosmic-ray data of 2016. The geometries and the resulting performance of physics observables are carefully validated. In addition to the offline alignment, an online procedure has been put in place which continuously monitors movements of the pixel high-level structures and tri...

  3. Downscaled Climate Change Projections for the Southern Colorado Plateau: Variability and Implications for Vegetation Changes

    Science.gov (United States)

    Garfin, G. M.; Eischeid, J. K.; Cole, K. L.; Ironside, K.; Cobb, N. S.

    2008-12-01

    Recent and rapid forest mortality in western North America and associated changes in fire frequency and area burned are among the chief concerns of ecosystem managers. These examples of climate change surprises demonstrate nonlinear and threshold ecosystem responses to increased temperatures and severe drought. A consistent management request from climate change adaptation workshops held during the last four years in the southwest U.S. is for region-specific estimates of climate and vegetation change, in order to provide guidance for management of federal and state forest, range, and riparian preserves and land holdings. Partly in response to these concerns, and partly in the interest of improving knowledge of potential ecosystem changes and their relationships with observed changes and changes demonstrated in the paleoecological record, we developed a set of integrated climate and ecosystem analyses. We selected five of twenty-two GCMs from the PCMDI archive of IPCC AR4 model runs, based on their approximations of observed critical seasonality for vegetation in the Southern Colorado Plateau (domain: 35°- 38°N, 114°-107°W), centered on the Four Corners states. We used three key seasons in our analysis, winter (November-March), pre-monsoon (May-June), and monsoon (July- September). Projections of monthly and seasonal temperature and precipitation from our five-model ensemble indicate steadily increasing temperatures in our region of interest during the twenty-first century. By 2050, the ensemble projects increases of 3.0°C during May and June, months critical for drought stress and tree mortality, and 4.5-5.0°C by 2090. Projected temperature changes for months during the heart of winter (December and January) are on the order of 2.5°C by 2050 and 3.0°C by 2090; such changes are likely to affect snow hydrology in middle to low elevations in the Southern Colorado Plateau. Summer temperature increases are on the order of 2.5°C (2050) and 4.0°C (2090). The

  4. Spatiotemporal analysis of the effect of climate change on vegetation health in the Drakensberg Mountain Region of South Africa.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mukwada, Geoffrey; Manatsa, Desmond

    2018-05-24

    The impact of climate change on mountain ecosystems has been in the spotlight for the past three decades. Climate change is generally considered to be a threat to ecosystem health in mountain regions. Vegetation indices can be used to detect shifts in ecosystem phenology and climate change in mountain regions while satellite imagery can play an important role in this process. However, what has remained problematic is determining the extent to which ecosystem phenology is affected by climate change under increasingly warming conditions. In this paper, we use climate and vegetation indices that were derived from satellite data to investigate the link between ecosystem phenology and climate change in the Namahadi Catchment Area of the Drakensberg Mountain Region of South Africa. The time series for climate indices as well as those for gridded precipitation and temperature data were analyzed in order to determine climate shifts, and concomitant changes in vegetation health were assessed in the resultant epochs using vegetation indices. The results indicate that vegetation indices should only be used to assess trends in climate change under relatively pristine conditions, where human influence is limited. This knowledge is important for designing climate change monitoring strategies that are based on ecosystem phenology and vegetation health.

  5. Vegetation Changes in the Permafrost Regions of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau from 1982-2012: Different Responses Related to Geographical Locations and Vegetation Types in High-Altitude Areas.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Zhiwei Wang

    Full Text Available The Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP contains the largest permafrost area in a high-altitude region in the world, and the unique hydrothermal environments of the active layers in this region have an important impact on vegetation growth. Geographical locations present different climatic conditions, and in combination with the permafrost environments, these conditions comprehensively affect the local vegetation activity. Therefore, the responses of vegetation to climate change in the permafrost region of the QTP may be varied differently by geographical location and vegetation condition. In this study, using the latest Global Inventory Modeling and Mapping Studies (GIMMS Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI product based on turning points (TPs, which were calculated using a piecewise linear model, 9 areas within the permafrost region of the QTP were selected to investigate the effect of geographical location and vegetation type on vegetation growth from 1982 to 2012. The following 4 vegetation types were observed in the 9 selected study areas: alpine swamp meadow, alpine meadow, alpine steppe and alpine desert. The research results show that, in these study areas, TPs mainly appeared in 2000 and 2001, and almost 55.1% and 35.0% of the TPs were located in 2000 and 2001. The global standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI and 7 meteorological variables were selected to analyze their correlations with NDVI. We found that the main correlative variables to vegetation productivity in study areas from 1982 to 2012 were precipitation, surface downward long-wave radiation and temperature. Furthermore, NDVI changes exhibited by different vegetation types within the same study area followed similar trends. The results show that regional effects rather than vegetation type had a larger impact on changes in vegetation growth in the permafrost regions of the QTP, indicating that climatic factors had a larger impact in the permafrost

  6. Changes in Intake of Fruits and Vegetables and Weight Change in United States Men and Women Followed for Up to 24 Years: Analysis from Three Prospective Cohort Studies.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bertoia, Monica L; Mukamal, Kenneth J; Cahill, Leah E; Hou, Tao; Ludwig, David S; Mozaffarian, Dariush; Willett, Walter C; Hu, Frank B; Rimm, Eric B

    2015-09-01

    Current dietary guidelines recommend eating a variety of fruits and vegetables. However, based on nutrient composition, some particular fruits and vegetables may be more or less beneficial for maintaining or achieving a healthy weight. We hypothesized that greater consumption of fruits and vegetables with a higher fiber content or lower glycemic load would be more strongly associated with a healthy weight. We examined the association between change in intake of specific fruits and vegetables and change in weight in three large, prospective cohorts of 133,468 United States men and women. From 1986 to 2010, these associations were examined within multiple 4-y time intervals, adjusting for simultaneous changes in other lifestyle factors, including other aspects of diet, smoking status, and physical activity. Results were combined using a random effects meta-analysis. Increased intake of fruits was inversely associated with 4-y weight change: total fruits -0.53 lb per daily serving (95% CI -0.61, -0.44), berries -1.11 lb (95% CI -1.45, -0.78), and apples/pears -1.24 lb (95% CI -1.62, -0.86). Increased intake of several vegetables was also inversely associated with weight change: total vegetables -0.25 lb per daily serving (95% CI -0.35, -0.14), tofu/soy -2.47 lb (95% CI, -3.09 to -1.85 lb) and cauliflower -1.37 lb (95% CI -2.27, -0.47). On the other hand, increased intake of starchy vegetables, including corn, peas, and potatoes, was associated with weight gain. Vegetables having both higher fiber and lower glycemic load were more strongly inversely associated with weight change compared with lower-fiber, higher-glycemic-load vegetables (p fruits and non-starchy vegetables is inversely associated with weight change, with important differences by type suggesting that other characteristics of these foods influence the magnitude of their association with weight change.

  7. The influence of a consumer-wearable activity tracker on sedentary time and prolonged sedentary bouts: secondary analysis of a randomized controlled trial.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sloan, Robert A; Kim, Youngdeok; Sahasranaman, Aarti; Müller-Riemenschneider, Falk; Biddle, Stuart J H; Finkelstein, Eric A

    2018-03-22

    A recent meta-analysis surmised pedometers were a useful panacea to independently reduce sedentary time (ST). To further test and expand on this deduction, we analyzed the ability of a consumer-wearable activity tracker to reduce ST and prolonged sedentary bouts (PSB). We originally conducted a 12-month randomized control trial where 800 employees from 13 organizations were assigned to control, activity tracker, or one of two activity tracker plus incentive groups designed to increase step count. The primary outcome was accelerometer measured moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. We conducted a secondary analysis on accelerometer measured daily ST and PSB bouts. A general linear mixed model was used to examine changes in ST and prolonged sedentary bouts, followed by between-group pairwise comparisons. Regression analyses were conducted to examine the association of changes in step counts with ST and PSB. The changes in ST and PSB were not statistically significant and not different between the groups (P consumer-wearable activity trackers as a means to reduce sedentary behavior. Trial registration NCT01855776 Registered: August 8, 2012.

  8. Interannual variability of the normalized difference vegetation index on the Tibetan Plateau and its relationship with climate change

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhou, Dingwen; Fan, Guangzhou; Huang, Ronghui; Fang, Zhifang; Liu, Yaqin; Li, Hongquan

    2007-05-01

    The Qinghai-Xizang Plateau, or Tibetan Plateau, is a sensitive region for climate change, where the manifestation of global warming is particularly noticeable. The wide climate variability in this region significantly affects the local land ecosystem and could consequently lead to notable vegetation changes. In this paper, the interannual variations of the plateau vegetation are investigated using a 21-year normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) dataset to quantify the consequences of climate warming for the regional ecosystem and its interactions. The results show that vegetation coverage is best in the eastern and southern plateau regions and deteriorates toward the west and north. On the whole, vegetation activity demonstrates a gradual enhancement in an oscillatory manner during 1982 2002. The temporal variation also exhibits striking regional differences: an increasing trend is most apparent in the west, south, north and southeast, whereas a decreasing trend is present along the southern plateau boundary and in the central-east region. Covariance analysis between the NDVI and surface temperature/precipitation suggests that vegetation change is closely related to climate change. However, the controlling physical processes vary geographically. In the west and east, vegetation variability is found to be driven predominantly by temperature, with the impact of precipitation being of secondary importance. In the central plateau, however, temperature and precipitation factors are equally important in modulating the interannual vegetation variability.

  9. Climatic Changes Effects On Spectral Vegetation Indices For Forested Areas Analysis From Satellite Data

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Zoran, M.; Stefan, S.

    2007-01-01

    Climate-induced changes at the land surface may in turn feed back on the climate itself through changes in soil moisture, vegetation, radiative characteristics, and surface-atmosphere exchanges of water vapor. Thresholding based on biophysical variables derived from time trajectories of satellite data is a new approach to classifying forest land cover via remote . sensing .The input data are composite values of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). Classification accuracies are function of the class, comparison method and season of the year. The aim of the paper is forest biomass assessment and land-cover changes analysis due to climatic effects

  10. Assessing the Three-North Shelter Forest Program in China by a novel framework for characterizing vegetation changes

    Science.gov (United States)

    Qiu, Bingwen; Chen, Gong; Tang, Zhenghong; Lu, Difei; Wang, Zhuangzhuang; Chen, Chongchen

    2017-11-01

    The Three-North Shelter Forest Program (TNSFP) in China has been intensely invested for approximately 40 years. However, the efficacy of the TNSFP has been debatable due to the spatiotemporal complexity of vegetation changes. A novel framework was proposed for characterizing vegetation changes in the TNSFP region through Combining Trend and Temporal Similarity trajectory (COTTS). This framework could automatically and continuously address the fundamental questions on where, what, how and when vegetation changes have occurred. Vegetation trend was measured by a non-parametric method. The temporal similarity trajectory was tracked by the Jeffries-Matusita (JM) distance of the inter-annual vegetation indices temporal profiles and modeled using the logistic function. The COTTS approach was applied to examine the afforestation efforts of the TNSFP using 500 m 8-day composites MODIS datasets from 2001 to 2015. Accuracy assessment from the 1109 reference sites reveals that the COTTS is capable of automatically determining vegetation dynamic patterns, with an overall accuracy of 90.08% and a kappa coefficient of 0.8688. The efficacy of the TNSFP was evaluated through comprehensive considerations of vegetation, soil and wetness. Around 45.78% areas obtained increasing vegetation trend, 2.96% areas achieved bare soil decline and 4.50% areas exhibited increasing surface wetness. There were 4.49% areas under vegetation degradation & desertification. Spatiotemporal heterogeneity of efficacy of the TNSFP was revealed: great vegetation gain through the abrupt dynamic pattern in the semi-humid and humid regions, bare soil decline & potential efficacy in the semi-arid region and remarkable efficacy in functional region of Eastern Ordos.

  11. Acceleration and Counteraction of Changes in Vegetation Seasonality and Patterns using CMIP5 Projections from Different ESMs.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chavaillaz, Y.; Joussaume, S.; De Noblet-Decoudre, N.

    2017-12-01

    Most climatological studies characterize future climate change as the evolution between a fixed current baseline and the future. Considering the pace of future climate change is however of major importance, since it may strongly influence how we experience climate hazards. To complement previous work related to the pace of temperature and precipitation changes, we propose here to study how fast vegetation seasonality and patterns of climate change evolve in different future configurations according to CMIP5 simulations of several Earth system models. The pace is defined as the difference in relevant metrics between two successive 20-year periods, i.e. with a continually moving baseline. Shifts of vegetation groups and changes in the characteristics of the seasonal cycle are considered. Both accelerate in close relationship with the warming rate regardless of the selected scenario, but they balance each other out, especially for trees in northern mid- and high-latitudes. Efforts are nevertheless strongly needed to harmonize the representation of vegetation in new versions of model inter-comparison projects, in order to properly conduct multi-model analyses related to vegetation changes.

  12. Predicting Changes in Arctic Tundra Vegetation: Towards an Understanding of Plant Trait Uncertainty

    Science.gov (United States)

    Euskirchen, E. S.; Serbin, S.; Carman, T.; Iversen, C. M.; Salmon, V.; Helene, G.; McGuire, A. D.

    2017-12-01

    Arctic tundra plant communities are currently undergoing unprecedented changes in both composition and distribution under a warming climate. Predicting how these dynamics may play out in the future is important since these vegetation shifts impact both biogeochemical and biogeophysical processes. More precise estimates of these future vegetation shifts is a key challenge due to both a scarcity of data with which to parameterize vegetation models, particularly in the Arctic, as well as a limited understanding of the importance of each of the model parameters and how they may vary over space and time. Here, we incorporate newly available field data from arctic Alaska into a dynamic vegetation model specifically developed to take into account a particularly wide array of plant species as well as the permafrost soils of the arctic tundra (the Terrestrial Ecosystem Model with Dynamic Vegetation and Dynamic Organic Soil, Terrestrial Ecosystem Model; DVM-DOS-TEM). We integrate the model within the Predicative Ecosystem Analyzer (PEcAn), an open-source integrated ecological bioinformatics toolbox that facilitates the flows of information into and out of process models and model-data integration. We use PEcAn to evaluate the plant functional traits that contribute most to model variability based on a sensitivity analysis. We perform this analysis for the dominant types of tundra in arctic Alaska, including heath, shrub, tussock and wet sedge tundra. The results from this analysis will help inform future data collection in arctic tundra and reduce model uncertainty, thereby improving our ability to simulate Arctic vegetation structure and function in response to global change.

  13. The CMS Tracker Data Quality Monitoring Expert GUI

    CERN Document Server

    Palmonari, Francesco

    2009-01-01

    The CMS Tracker data quality monitoring (DQM) is a demanding task due the detector's high granularity. It consists of about 15148 strip and 1440 pixel detector modules. About 350,000 histograms are defined and filled accessing information from different stages of data reconstruction to check the data quality. It is impossible to manage such a large number of histograms by shift personnel and experts. A tracker specific Graphical User Interface (GUI) is developed to simplify the navigation and to spot detector problems efficiently. The GUI is web-based and implemented with Ajax technology. We will describe the framework and the specific features of the expert GUI developed for the CMS Tracker DQM system.

  14. Control Algorithms for Large-scale Single-axis Photovoltaic Trackers

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Dorian Schneider

    2012-01-01

    Full Text Available The electrical yield of large-scale photovoltaic power plants can be greatly improved by employing solar trackers. While fixed-tilt superstructures are stationary and immobile, trackers move the PV-module plane in order to optimize its alignment to the sun. This paper introduces control algorithms for single-axis trackers (SAT, including a discussion for optimal alignment and backtracking. The results are used to simulate and compare the electrical yield of fixed-tilt and SAT systems. The proposed algorithms have been field tested, and are in operation in solar parks worldwide.

  15. The DELPHI Silicon Tracker in the global pattern recognition

    CERN Document Server

    Elsing, M

    2000-01-01

    ALEPH and DELPHI were the first experiments operating a silicon vertex detector at LEP. During the past 10 years of data taking the DELPHI Silicon Tracker was upgraded three times to follow the different tracking requirements for LEP 1 and LEP 2 as well as to improve the tracking performance. Several steps in the development of the pattern recognition software were done in order to understand and fully exploit the silicon tracker information. This article gives an overview of the final algorithms and concepts of the track reconstruction using the Silicon Tracker in DELPHI.

  16. The DELPHI Silicon Tracker in the global pattern recognition

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Elsing, M.

    2000-01-01

    ALEPH and DELPHI were the first experiments operating a silicon vertex detector at LEP. During the past 10 years of data taking the DELPHI Silicon Tracker was upgraded three times to follow the different tracking requirements for LEP 1 and LEP 2 as well as to improve the tracking performance. Several steps in the development of the pattern recognition software were done in order to understand and fully exploit the silicon tracker information. This article gives an overview of the final algorithms and concepts of the track reconstruction using the Silicon Tracker in DELPHI

  17. Technical Training Seminar: Laser Trackers: the Local Positioning Technology (LPT)

    CERN Document Server

    Davide Vitè

    2005-01-01

    Friday 20 May from 10:00 to 16:00, Training Centre (bldg. 593) Laser Trackers: the Local Positioning Technology (LPT) Simon Moser, Michael Lettau, Achim Lupus, Niklaus Suter, Leica GEOSYSTEMS AG, Switzerland Laser trackers are used at CERN for different applications within the LHC Project. Leica Geosystems AG have been developing during the last four years the revolutionary Local Positioning Technology (LPT). Laser trackers are increasingly used to ensure accuracy of large fabrications, and alignment in the final assembly process. Competing portable Coordinate Measuring Machines (CMM) with articulated arms require a frequent repositioning, known to lead to a loss of accuracy and efficiency. Leica Geosystems developed armless solutions, the T-Probe and T-Scan, for use with its laser trackers. The combination of the tracker technology with photogrammetry is the base of LPT, enabling real time measurements with free hand-held devices, such as the T-Probe and T-Scan. T-Probe and T-Scan overcome the proble...

  18. How will climate change affect the vegetation cycle over France? A generic modeling approach

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nabil Laanaia

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available The implementation of adaptation strategies of agriculture and forestry to climate change is conditioned by the knowledge of the impacts of climate change on the vegetation cycle and of the associated uncertainties. Using the same generic Land Surface Model (LSM to simulate the response of various vegetation types is more straightforward than using several specialized crop and forestry models, as model implementation differences are difficult to assess. The objective of this study is to investigate the potential of a LSM to address this issue. Using the SURFEX (“Surface Externalisée” modeling platform, we produced and analyzed 150-yr (1950–2100 simulations of the biomass of four vegetation types (rainfed straw cereals, rainfed grasslands, broadleaf and needleleaf forests and of the soil water content associated to each of these vegetation types over France. Statistical methods were used to quantify the impact of climate change on simulated phenological dates. The duration of soil moisture stress periods increases everywhere in France, especially for grasslands with, on average, an increase of 9 days per year in near-future (NF conditions and 36 days per year in distant-future (DF conditions. For all the vegetation types, leaf onset and the annual maximum LAI occur earlier. For straw cereals in the Languedoc-Provence-Corsica area, NF leaf onset occurs 18 days earlier and 37 days earlier in DF conditions, on average. On the other hand, local discrepancies are simulated for the senescence period (e.g. earlier in western and southern France for broadleaf forests, slightly later in mountainous areas of eastern France for both NF and DF. Changes in phenological dates are more uncertain in DF than in NF conditions in relation to differences in climate models, especially for forests. Finally, it is shown that while changes in leaf onset are mainly driven by air temperature, longer soil moisture stress periods trigger earlier leaf senescence

  19. Documentation for delivery of Star Tracker to CHAMP

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Madsen, Peter Buch; Betto, Maurizio; Jørgensen, John Leif

    1999-01-01

    The documentation EIDP (End Item Data Package) describes all the tests which have been performed on the flight hardware of the Star Tracker for the German satellite CHAMP.......The documentation EIDP (End Item Data Package) describes all the tests which have been performed on the flight hardware of the Star Tracker for the German satellite CHAMP....

  20. Factors affecting vegetable preference in adolescents: stages of change and social cognitive theory.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Woo, Taejung; Lee, Kyung-Hea

    2017-08-01

    Despite the importance of consuming sufficient amounts of vegetables, daily vegetable intake among adolescents in Korea is lower than the current dietary recommendation. The objective of this study was to examine determinants affecting vegetable preference in order to suggest a stage-tailored education strategy that can promote vegetable consumption in adolescents. Adolescents (n = 400, aged 16-17 years) from two high schools participated in a cross-sectional study. Survey variables were vegetable preference, the social cognitive theory (SCT) and stages of change (SOC) constructs. Based on vegetable preference, subjects were classified into two groups: a low-preference group (LPG) and a high-preference group (HPG). SOC was subdivided into pre-action and action/maintenance stages. To compare SCT components and SOC related to vegetable preference, chi-squared and t-tests, along with stepwise multiple-regression analysis, were applied. In the LPG, a similar number of subjects were classified into each stage. Significant differences in self-efficacy, affective attitudes, and vegetable accessibility at home and school were detected among the stages. Subjects in the HPG were mainly at the maintenance stage (81%), and there were significant differences among the stages regarding self-efficacy, affective attitudes, and parenting practice. In the predictions of vegetable preference, self-efficacy and parenting practice had a significant effect in the "pre-action" stage. In the action/maintenance stage, outcome expectation, affective attitudes, and vegetable accessibility at school had significant predictive value. In predicting the vegetable preference for all subjects, 42.8% of the predictive variance was accounted for by affective attitudes, self-efficacy, and vegetable accessibility at school. The study revealed that different determinants affect adolescent vegetable preference in each stage. Self-efficacy and affective attitudes are important determinants affecting

  1. The ATLAS Fast Tracker

    CERN Document Server

    Volpi, Guido; The ATLAS collaboration

    2015-01-01

    The use of tracking information at the trigger level in the LHC Run II period is crucial for the trigger an data acquisition (TDAQ) system. The tracking precision is in fact important to identify specific decay products of the Higgs boson or new phenomena, a well as to distinguish the contributions coming from many contemporary collisions that occur at every bunch crossing. However, the track reconstruction is among the most demanding tasks performed by the TDAQ computing farm; in fact, full reconstruction at full Level-1 trigger accept rate (100 KHz) is not possible. In order to overcome this limitation, the ATLAS experiment is planning the installation of a specific processor: the Fast Tracker (FTK), which is aimed at achieving this goal. The FTK is a pipeline of high performance electronic, based on custom and commercial devices, which is expected to reconstruct, with high resolution, the trajectories of charged tracks with a transverse momentum above 1 GeV, using the ATLAS inner tracker information. Patte...

  2. EMC Diagnosis and Corrective Actions for Silicon Strip Tracker Detectors

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Arteche, F.; /CERN /Imperial Coll., London; Rivetta, C.; /SLAC

    2006-06-06

    The tracker sub-system is one of the five sub-detectors of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment under construction at CERN for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) accelerator. The tracker subdetector is designed to reconstruct tracks of charged sub-atomic particles generated after collisions. The tracker system processes analogue signals from 10 million channels distributed across 14000 silicon micro-strip detectors. It is designed to process signals of a few nA and digitize them at 40 MHz. The overall sub-detector is embedded in a high particle radiation environment and a magnetic field of 4 Tesla. The evaluation of the electromagnetic immunity of the system is very important to optimize the performance of the tracker sub-detector and the whole CMS experiment. This paper presents the EMC diagnosis of the CMS silicon tracker sub-detector. Immunity tests were performed using the final prototype of the Silicon Tracker End-Caps (TEC) system to estimate the sensitivity of the system to conducted noise, evaluate the weakest areas of the system and take corrective actions before the integration of the overall detector. This paper shows the results of one of those tests, that is the measurement and analysis of the immunity to CM external conducted noise perturbations.

  3. Performance studies of the CMS Strip Tracker before installation

    CERN Document Server

    Adam, Wolfgang; Dragicevic, Marko; Friedl, Markus; Fruhwirth, R; Hansel, S; Hrubec, Josef; Krammer, Manfred; Oberegger, Margit; Pernicka, Manfred; Schmid, Siegfried; Stark, Roland; Steininger, Helmut; Uhl, Dieter; Waltenberger, Wolfgang; Widl, Edmund; Van Mechelen, Pierre; Cardaci, Marco; Beaumont, Willem; de Langhe, Eric; de Wolf, Eddi A; Delmeire, Evelyne; Hashemi, Majid; Bouhali, Othmane; Charaf, Otman; Clerbaux, Barbara; Dewulf, Jean-Paul; Elgammal, Sherif; Hammad, Gregory Habib; de Lentdecker, Gilles; Marage, Pierre Edouard; Vander Velde, Catherine; Vanlaer, Pascal; Wickens, John; Adler, Volker; Devroede, Olivier; De Weirdt, Stijn; D'Hondt, Jorgen; Goorens, Robert; Heyninck, Jan; Maes, Joris; Mozer, Matthias Ulrich; Tavernier, Stefaan; Van Lancker, Luc; Van Mulders, Petra; Villella, Ilaria; Wastiels, C; Bonnet, Jean-Luc; Bruno, Giacomo; De Callatay, Bernard; Florins, Benoit; Giammanco, Andrea; Gregoire, Ghislain; Keutgen, Thomas; Kcira, Dorian; Lemaitre, Vincent; Michotte, Daniel; Militaru, Otilia; Piotrzkowski, Krzysztof; Quertermont, L; Roberfroid, Vincent; Rouby, Xavier; Teyssier, Daniel; Daubie, Evelyne; Anttila, Erkki; Czellar, Sandor; Engstrom, Pauli; Harkonen, J; Karimaki, V; Kostesmaa, J; Kuronen, Auli; Lampen, Tapio; Linden, Tomas; Luukka, Panja-Riina; Maenpaa, T; Michal, Sebastien; Tuominen, Eija; Tuominiemi, Jorma; Ageron, Michel; Baulieu, Guillaume; Bonnevaux, Alain; Boudoul, Gaelle; Chabanat, Eric; Chabert, Eric Christian; Chierici, Roberto; Contardo, Didier; Della Negra, Rodolphe; Dupasquier, Thierry; Gelin, Georges; Giraud, Noël; Guillot, Gérard; Estre, Nicolas; Haroutunian, Roger; Lumb, Nicholas; Perries, Stephane; Schirra, Florent; Trocme, Benjamin; Vanzetto, Sylvain; Agram, Jean-Laurent; Blaes, Reiner; Drouhin, Frédéric; Ernenwein, Jean-Pierre; Fontaine, Jean-Charles; Berst, Jean-Daniel; Brom, Jean-Marie; Didierjean, Francois; Goerlach, Ulrich; Graehling, Philippe; Gross, Laurent; Hosselet, J; Juillot, Pierre; Lounis, Abdenour; Maazouzi, Chaker; Olivetto, Christian; Strub, Roger; Van Hove, Pierre; Anagnostou, Georgios; Brauer, Richard; Esser, Hans; Feld, Lutz; Karpinski, Waclaw; Klein, Katja; Kukulies, Christoph; Olzem, Jan; Ostapchuk, Andrey; Pandoulas, Demetrios; Pierschel, Gerhard; Raupach, Frank; Schael, Stefan; Schwering, Georg; Sprenger, Daniel; Thomas, Maarten; Weber, Markus; Wittmer, Bruno; Wlochal, Michael; Beissel, Franz; Bock, E; Flugge, G; Gillissen, C; Hermanns, Thomas; Heydhausen, Dirk; Jahn, Dieter; Kaussen, Gordon; Linn, Alexander; Perchalla, Lars; Poettgens, Michael; Pooth, Oliver; Stahl, Achim; Zoeller, Marc Henning; Buhmann, Peter; Butz, Erik; Flucke, Gero; Hamdorf, Richard Helmut; Hauk, Johannes; Klanner, Robert; Pein, Uwe; Schleper, Peter; Steinbruck, G; Blum, P; De Boer, Wim; Dierlamm, Alexander; Dirkes, Guido; Fahrer, Manuel; Frey, Martin; Furgeri, Alexander; Hartmann, Frank; Heier, Stefan; Hoffmann, Karl-Heinz; Kaminski, Jochen; Ledermann, Bernhard; Liamsuwan, Thiansin; Muller, S; Muller, Th; Schilling, Frank-Peter; Simonis, Hans-Jürgen; Steck, Pia; Zhukov, Valery; Cariola, P; De Robertis, Giuseppe; Ferorelli, Raffaele; Fiore, Luigi; Preda, M; Sala, Giuliano; Silvestris, Lucia; Tempesta, Paolo; Zito, Giuseppe; Creanza, Donato; De Filippis, Nicola; De Palma, Mauro; Giordano, Domenico; Maggi, Giorgio; Manna, Norman; My, Salvatore; Selvaggi, Giovanna; Albergo, Sebastiano; Chiorboli, Massimiliano; Costa, Salvatore; Galanti, Mario; Giudice, Nunzio; Guardone, Nunzio; Noto, Francesco; Potenza, Renato; Saizu, Mirela Angela; Sparti, V; Sutera, Concetta; Tricomi, Alessia; Tuve, Cristina; Brianzi, Mirko; Civinini, Carlo; Maletta, Fernando; Manolescu, Florentina; Meschini, Marco; Paoletti, Simone; Sguazzoni, Giacomo; Broccolo, B; Ciulli, Vitaliano; D'Alessandro, Raffaello; Focardi, Ettore; Frosali, Simone; Genta, Chiara; Landi, Gregorio; Lenzi, Piergiulio; Macchiolo, Anna; Magini, Nicolo; Parrini, Giuliano; Scarlini, Enrico; Cerati, Giuseppe Benedetto; Azzi, Patrizia; Bacchetta, Nicola; Candelori, Andrea; Dorigo, Tommaso; Kaminsky, A; Karaevski, S; Khomenkov, Volodymyr; Reznikov, Sergey; Tessaro, Mario; Bisello, Dario; De Mattia, Marco; Giubilato, Piero; Loreti, Maurizio; Mattiazzo, Serena; Nigro, Massimo; Paccagnella, Alessandro; Pantano, Devis; Pozzobon, Nicola; Tosi, Mia; Bilei, Gian Mario; Checcucci, Bruno; Fano, Livio; Servoli, Leonello; Ambroglini, Filippo; Babucci, Ezio; Benedetti, Daniele; Biasini, Maurizio; Caponeri, Benedetta; Covarelli, Roberto; Giorgi, Marco; Lariccia, Paolo; Mantovani, Giancarlo; Marcantonini, Marta; Postolache, Vasile; Santocchia, Attilio; Spiga, Daniele; Bagliesi, Giuseppe; Balestri, Gabriele; Berretta, Luca; Bianucci, S; Boccali, Tommaso; Bosi, Filippo; Bracci, Fabrizio; Castaldi, Rino; Ceccanti, Marco; Cecchi, Roberto; Cerri, Claudio; Cucoanes, Andi Sebastian; Dell'Orso, Roberto; Dobur, Didar; Dutta, Suchandra; Giassi, Alessandro; Giusti, Simone; Kartashov, Dmitry; Kraan, Aafke; Lomtadze, Teimuraz; Lungu, George-Adrian; Magazzu, Guido; Mammini, Paolo; Mariani, Filippo; Martinelli, Giovanni; Moggi, Andrea; Palla, Fabrizio; Palmonari, Francesco; Petragnani, Giulio; Profeti, Alessandro; Raffaelli, Fabrizio; Rizzi, Domenico; Sanguinetti, Giulio; Sarkar, Subir; Sentenac, Daniel; Serban, Alin Titus; Slav, Adrian; Soldani, A; Spagnolo, Paolo; Tenchini, Roberto; Tolaini, Sergio; Venturi, Andrea; Verdini, Piero Giorgio; Vos, Marcel; Zaccarelli, Luciano; Avanzini, Carlo; Basti, Andrea; Benucci, Leonardo; Bocci, Andrea; Cazzola, Ugo; Fiori, Francesco; Linari, Stefano; Massa, Maurizio; Messineo, Alberto; Segneri, Gabriele; Tonelli, Guido; Azzurri, Paolo; Bernardini, Jacopo; Borrello, Laura; Calzolari, Federico; Foa, Lorenzo; Gennai, Simone; Ligabue, Franco; Petrucciani, Giovanni; Rizzi, Andrea; Yang, Zong-Chang; Benotto, Franco; Demaria, Natale; Dumitrache, Floarea; Farano, R; Borgia, Maria Assunta; Castello, Roberto; Costa, Marco; Migliore, Ernesto; Romero, Alessandra; Abbaneo, Duccio; Abbas, M; Ahmed, Ijaz; Akhtar, I; Albert, Eric; Bloch, Christoph; Breuker, Horst; Butt, Shahid Aleem; Buchmuller, Oliver; Cattai, Ariella; Delaere, Christophe; Delattre, Michel; Edera, Laura Maria; Engstrom, Pauli; Eppard, Michael; Gateau, Maryline; Gill, Karl; Giolo-Nicollerat, Anne-Sylvie; Grabit, Robert; Honma, Alan; Huhtinen, Mika; Kloukinas, Kostas; Kortesmaa, Jarmo; Kottelat, Luc-Joseph; Kuronen, Auli; Leonardo, Nuno; Ljuslin, Christer; Mannelli, Marcello; Masetti, Lorenzo; Marchioro, Alessandro; Mersi, Stefano; Michal, Sebastien; Mirabito, Laurent; Muffat-Joly, Jeannine; Onnela, Antti; Paillard, Christian; Pal, Imre; Pernot, Jean-Francois; Petagna, Paolo; Petit, Patrick; Piccut, C; Pioppi, Michele; Postema, Hans; Ranieri, Riccardo; Ricci, Daniel; Rolandi, Gigi; Ronga, Frederic Jean; Sigaud, Christophe; Syed, A; Siegrist, Patrice; Tropea, Paola; Troska, Jan; Tsirou, Andromachi; Vander Donckt, Muriel; Vasey, François; Alagoz, Enver; Amsler, Claude; Chiochia, Vincenzo; Regenfus, Christian; Robmann, Peter; Rochet, Jacky; Rommerskirchen, Tanja; Schmidt, Alexander; Steiner, Stefan; Wilke, Lotte; Church, Ivan; Cole, Joanne; Coughlan, John A; Gay, Arnaud; Taghavi, S; Tomalin, Ian R; Bainbridge, Robert; Cripps, Nicholas; Fulcher, Jonathan; Hall, Geoffrey; Noy, Matthew; Pesaresi, Mark; Radicci, Valeria; Raymond, David Mark; Sharp, Peter; Stoye, Markus; Wingham, Matthew; Zorba, Osman; Goitom, Israel; Hobson, Peter R; Reid, Ivan; Teodorescu, Liliana; Hanson, Gail; Jeng, Geng-Yuan; Liu, Haidong; Pasztor, Gabriella; Satpathy, Asish; Stringer, Robert; Mangano, Boris; Affolder, K; Affolder, T; Allen, Andrea; Barge, Derek; Burke, Samuel; Callahan, D; Campagnari, Claudio; Crook, A; D'Alfonso, Mariarosaria; Dietch, J; Garberson, Jeffrey; Hale, David; Incandela, H; Incandela, Joe; Jaditz, Stephen; Kalavase, Puneeth; Kreyer, Steven Lawrence; Kyre, Susanne; Lamb, James; Mc Guinness, C; Mills, C; Nguyen, Harold; Nikolic, Milan; Lowette, Steven; Rebassoo, Finn; Ribnik, Jacob; Richman, Jeffrey; Rubinstein, Noah; Sanhueza, S; Shah, Yousaf Syed; Simms, L; Staszak, D; Stoner, J; Stuart, David; Swain, Sanjay Kumar; Vlimant, Jean-Roch; White, Dean; Ulmer, Keith; Wagner, Stephen Robert; Bagby, Linda; Bhat, Pushpalatha C; Burkett, Kevin; Cihangir, Selcuk; Gutsche, Oliver; Jensen, Hans; Johnson, Mark; Luzhetskiy, Nikolay; Mason, David; Miao, Ting; Moccia, Stefano; Noeding, Carsten; Ronzhin, Anatoly; Skup, Ewa; Spalding, William J; Spiegel, Leonard; Tkaczyk, Slawek; Yumiceva, Francisco; Zatserklyaniy, Andriy; Zerev, E; Anghel, Ioana Maria; Bazterra, Victor Eduardo; Gerber, Cecilia Elena; Khalatian, S; Shabalina, Elizaveta; Baringer, Philip; Bean, Alice; Chen, Jie; Hinchey, Carl Louis; Martin, Christophe; Moulik, Tania; Robinson, Richard; Gritsan, Andrei; Lae, Chung Khim; Tran, Nhan Viet; Everaerts, Pieter; Hahn, Kristan Allan; Harris, Philip; Nahn, Steve; Rudolph, Matthew; Sung, Kevin; Betchart, Burton; Demina, Regina; Gotra, Yury; Korjenevski, Sergey; Miner, Daniel Carl; Orbaker, Douglas; Christofek, Leonard; Hooper, Ryan; Landsberg, Greg; Nguyen, Duong; Narain, Meenakshi; Speer, Thomas; Tsang, Ka Vang

    2009-01-01

    In March 2007 the assembly of the Silicon Strip Tracker was completed at the Tracker Integration Facility at CERN. Nearly 15% of the detector was instrumented using cables, fiber optics, power supplies, and electronics intended for the operation at the LHC. A local chiller was used to circulate the coolant for low temperature operation. In order to understand the efficiency and alignment of the strip tracker modules, a cosmic ray trigger was implemented. From March through July 4.5 million triggers were recorded. This period, referred to as the Sector Test, provided practical experience with the operation of the Tracker, especially safety, data acquisition, power, and cooling systems. This paper describes the performance of the strip system during the Sector Test, which consisted of five distinct periods defined by the coolant temperature. Significant emphasis is placed on comparisons between the data and results from Monte Carlo studies.

  4. Recent shifts in Himalayan vegetation activity trends in response to climatic change and environmental drivers

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mishra, N. B.; Mainali, K. P.

    2016-12-01

    Climatic changes along with anthropogenic disturbances are causing dramatic ecological impacts in mid to high latitude mountain vegetation including in the Himalayas which are ecologically sensitive environments. Given the challenges associated with in situ vegetation monitoring in the Himalayas, remote sensing based quantification of vegetation dynamics can provide essential ecological information on changes in vegetation activity that may consist of alternative sequence of greening and/or browning periods. This study utilized a trend break analysis procedure for detection of monotonic as well as abrupt (either interruption or reversal) trend changes in smoothed normalized difference vegetation index satellite time-series data over the Himalayas. Overall, trend breaks in vegetation greenness showed high spatio-temporal variability in distribution considering elevation, ecoregion and land cover/use stratifications. Interrupted greening was spatially most dominant in all Himalayan ecoregions followed by abrupt browning. Areas showing trend reversal and monotonic trends appeared minority. Trend type distribution was strongly dependent on elevation as majority of greening (with or without interruption) occurred at lower elevation areas at higher elevation were dominantly. Ecoregion based stratification of trend types highlighted some exception to this elevational dependence as high altitude ecoregions of western Himalayas showed significantly less browning compared to the ecoregions in eastern Himalaya. Land cover/use based analysis of trend distribution showed that interrupted greening was most dominant in closed needleleafed forest following by rainfed cropland and mosaic croplands while interrupted browning most dominant in closed to open herbaceous vegetation found at higher elevation areas followed by closed needleleafed forest and closed to open broad leafed evergreen forests. Spatial analysis of trend break timing showed that for majority of areas experiencing

  5. Ecosystem Evapotranspiration as a Response to Climate and Vegetation Coverage Changes in Northwest Yunnan, China.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hao Yang

    Full Text Available Climate and human-driven changes play an important role in regional droughts. Northwest Yunnan Province is a key region for biodiversity conservation in China, and it has experienced severe droughts since the beginning of this century; however, the extent of the contributions from climate and human-driven changes remains unclear. We calculated the ecosystem evapotranspiration (ET and water yield (WY of northwest Yunnan Province, China from 2001 to 2013 using meteorological and remote sensing observation data and a Surface Energy Balance System (SEBS model. Multivariate regression analyses were used to differentiate the contribution of climate and vegetation coverage to ET. The results showed that the annual average vegetation coverage significantly increased over time with a mean of 0.69 in spite of the precipitation fluctuation. Afforestation/reforestation and other management efforts attributed to vegetation coverage increase in NW Yunnan. Both ET and WY considerably fluctuated with the climate factors, which ranged from 623.29 mm to 893.8 mm and -51.88 mm to 384.40 mm over the time period. Spatially, ET in the southeast of NW Yunnan (mainly in Lijiang increased significantly, which was in line with the spatial trend of vegetation coverage. Multivariate linear regression analysis indicated that climatic factors accounted for 85.18% of the ET variation, while vegetation coverage explained 14.82%. On the other hand, precipitation accounted for 67.5% of the WY. We conclude that the continuous droughts in northwest Yunnan were primarily climatically driven; however, man-made land cover and vegetation changes also increased the vulnerability of local populations to drought. Because of the high proportion of the water yield consumed for subsistence and poor infrastructure for water management, local populations have been highly vulnerable to climate drought conditions. We suggest that conservation of native vegetation and development of water

  6. An Analytical Solution for the Impact of Vegetation Changes on Hydrological Partitioning Within the Budyko Framework

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Shulei; Yang, Yuting; McVicar, Tim R.; Yang, Dawen

    2018-01-01

    Vegetation change is a critical factor that profoundly affects the terrestrial water cycle. Here we derive an analytical solution for the impact of vegetation changes on hydrological partitioning within the Budyko framework. This is achieved by deriving an analytical expression between leaf area index (LAI) change and the Budyko land surface parameter (n) change, through the combination of a steady state ecohydrological model with an analytical carbon cost-benefit model for plant rooting depth. Using China where vegetation coverage has experienced dramatic changes over the past two decades as a study case, we quantify the impact of LAI changes on the hydrological partitioning during 1982-2010 and predict the future influence of these changes for the 21st century using climate model projections. Results show that LAI change exhibits an increasing importance on altering hydrological partitioning as climate becomes drier. In semiarid and arid China, increased LAI has led to substantial streamflow reductions over the past three decades (on average -8.5% in 1990s and -11.7% in 2000s compared to the 1980s baseline), and this decreasing trend in streamflow is projected to continue toward the end of this century due to predicted LAI increases. Our result calls for caution regarding the large-scale revegetation activities currently being implemented in arid and semiarid China, which may result in serious future water scarcity issues here. The analytical model developed here is physically based and suitable for simultaneously assessing both vegetation changes and climate change induced changes to streamflow globally.

  7. Comparison of Modeling Grassland Degradation with and without Considering Localized Spatial Associations in Vegetation Changing Patterns

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yuwei Wang

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available Grassland ecosystems worldwide are confronted with degradation. It is of great importance to understand long-term trajectory patterns of grassland vegetation by advanced analytical models. This study proposes a new approach called a binary logistic regression model with neighborhood interactions, or BLR-NIs, which is based on binary logistic regression (BLR, but fully considers the spatio-temporally localized spatial associations or characterization of neighborhood interactions (NIs in the patterns of grassland vegetation. The BLR-NIs model was applied to a modeled vegetation degradation of grasslands in the Xilin river basin, Inner Mongolia, China. Residual trend analysis on the normalized difference vegetation index (RESTREND-NDVI, which excluded the climatic impact on vegetation dynamics, was adopted as a preprocessing step to derive three human-induced trajectory patterns (vegetation degradation, vegetation recovery, and no significant change in vegetation during two consecutive periods, T1 (2000–2008 and T2 (2007–2015. Human activities, including livestock grazing intensity and transportation accessibility measured by road network density, were included as explanatory variables for vegetation degradation, which was defined for locations if vegetation recovery or no significant change in vegetation in T1 and vegetation degradation in T2 were observed. Our work compared the results of BLR-NIs and the traditional BLR model that did not consider NIs. The study showed that: (1 both grazing intensity and road density had a positive correlation to vegetation degradation based on the traditional BLR model; (2 only road density was found to positively correlate to vegetation degradation by the BLR-NIs model; NIs appeared to be critical factors to predict vegetation degradation; and (3 including NIs in the BLR model improved the model performance substantially. The study provided evidence for the importance of including localized spatial

  8. Temporal Changes in Coupled Vegetation Phenology and Productivity are Biome-Specific in the Northern Hemisphere

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lanhui Wang

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available Global warming has greatly stimulated vegetation growth through both extending the growing season and promoting photosynthesis in the Northern Hemisphere (NH. Analyzing the combined dynamics of such trends can potentially improve our current understanding on changes in vegetation functioning and the complex relationship between anthropogenic and climatic drivers. This study aims to analyze the relationships (long-term trends and correlations of length of vegetation growing season (LOS and vegetation productivity assessed by the growing season NDVI integral (GSI in the NH (>30°N to study any dependency of major biomes that are characterized by different imprint from anthropogenic influence. Spatial patterns of converging/diverging trends in LOS and GSI and temporal changes in the coupling between LOS and GSI are analyzed for major biomes at hemispheric and continental scales from the third generation Global Inventory Monitoring and Modeling Studies (GIMMS Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI dataset for a 32-year period (1982–2013. A quarter area of the NH is covered by converging trends (consistent significant trends in LOS and GSI, whereas diverging trends (opposing significant trends in LOS and GSI cover about 6% of the region. Diverging trends are observed mainly in high latitudes and arid/semi-arid areas of non-forest biomes (shrublands, savannas, and grasslands, whereas forest biomes and croplands are primarily characterized by converging trends. The study shows spatially-distinct and biome-specific patterns between the continental land masses of Eurasia (EA and North America (NA. Finally, areas of high positive correlation between LOS and GSI showed to increase during the period of analysis, with areas of significant positive trends in correlation being more widespread in NA as compared to EA. The temporal changes in the coupled vegetation phenology and productivity suggest complex relationships and interactions that are induced

  9. A Mechanistic Perspective on Process-Induced Changes in Glucosinolate Content in Brassica Vegetables: A Review

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Nugrahedi, P.Y.; Verkerk, R.; Widianarko, B.; Dekker, M.

    2015-01-01

    Brassica vegetables are consumed mostly after processing, which is expected to give beneficial effects on the vegetable properties, such as improved palatability and bioavailability of nutrients, or shelf life extension. But processing also results to various changes in the content of health

  10. Last ATLAS transition radiation tracker module installed

    CERN Multimedia

    Maximilien Brice

    2005-01-01

    The ATLAS transition radiation tracker consists of 96 modules and will join the pixel detector and silicon tracker at the heart of the experiment to map the trajectories of particles and identify electrons produced when proton beams collide. In the last image the team responsible for assembly are shown from left to right: Kirill Egorov (Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute), Pauline Gagnon (Indiana University), Ben Legeyt (University of Pennsylvania), Chuck Long (Hampton University), John Callahan (Indiana University) and Alex High (University of Pennsylvania).

  11. Influence of dynamic vegetation on climate change and terrestrial carbon storage in the Last Glacial Maximum

    Science.gov (United States)

    O'ishi, R.; Abe-Ouchi, A.

    2013-07-01

    When the climate is reconstructed from paleoevidence, it shows that the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, ca. 21 000 yr ago) is cold and dry compared to the present-day. Reconstruction also shows that compared to today, the vegetation of the LGM is less active and the distribution of vegetation was drastically different, due to cold temperature, dryness, and a lower level of atmospheric CO2 concentration (185 ppm compared to a preindustrial level of 285 ppm). In the present paper, we investigate the influence of vegetation change on the climate of the LGM by using a coupled atmosphere-ocean-vegetation general circulation model (AOVGCM, the MIROC-LPJ). The MIROC-LPJ is different from earlier studies in the introduction of a bias correction method in individual running GCM experiments. We examined four GCM experiments (LGM and preindustrial, with and without vegetation feedback) and quantified the strength of the vegetation feedback during the LGM. The result shows that global-averaged cooling during the LGM is amplified by +13.5 % due to the introduction of vegetation feedback. This is mainly caused by the increase of land surface albedo due to the expansion of tundra in northern high latitudes and the desertification in northern middle latitudes around 30° N to 60° N. We also investigated how this change in climate affected the total terrestrial carbon storage by using offline Lund-Potsdam-Jena dynamic global vegetation model (LPJ-DGVM). Our result shows that the total terrestrial carbon storage was reduced by 597 PgC during the LGM, which corresponds to the emission of 282 ppm atmospheric CO2. In the LGM experiments, the global carbon distribution is generally the same whether the vegetation feedback to the atmosphere is included or not. However, the inclusion of vegetation feedback causes substantial terrestrial carbon storage change, especially in explaining the lowering of atmospheric CO2 during the LGM.

  12. Influence of dynamic vegetation on climate change and terrestrial carbon storage in the Last Glacial Maximum

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    R. O'ishi

    2013-07-01

    Full Text Available When the climate is reconstructed from paleoevidence, it shows that the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, ca. 21 000 yr ago is cold and dry compared to the present-day. Reconstruction also shows that compared to today, the vegetation of the LGM is less active and the distribution of vegetation was drastically different, due to cold temperature, dryness, and a lower level of atmospheric CO2 concentration (185 ppm compared to a preindustrial level of 285 ppm. In the present paper, we investigate the influence of vegetation change on the climate of the LGM by using a coupled atmosphere-ocean-vegetation general circulation model (AOVGCM, the MIROC-LPJ. The MIROC-LPJ is different from earlier studies in the introduction of a bias correction method in individual running GCM experiments. We examined four GCM experiments (LGM and preindustrial, with and without vegetation feedback and quantified the strength of the vegetation feedback during the LGM. The result shows that global-averaged cooling during the LGM is amplified by +13.5 % due to the introduction of vegetation feedback. This is mainly caused by the increase of land surface albedo due to the expansion of tundra in northern high latitudes and the desertification in northern middle latitudes around 30° N to 60° N. We also investigated how this change in climate affected the total terrestrial carbon storage by using offline Lund-Potsdam-Jena dynamic global vegetation model (LPJ-DGVM. Our result shows that the total terrestrial carbon storage was reduced by 597 PgC during the LGM, which corresponds to the emission of 282 ppm atmospheric CO2. In the LGM experiments, the global carbon distribution is generally the same whether the vegetation feedback to the atmosphere is included or not. However, the inclusion of vegetation feedback causes substantial terrestrial carbon storage change, especially in explaining the lowering of atmospheric CO2 during the LGM.

  13. Ageing and Performance Studies of the Outer Tracker of the LHCb Detector; Alterungsstudien und Studium der Betriebseigenschaften des Outer Trackers des LHCb Detektors

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Haas, T.

    2007-11-07

    The Outer Tracker is part of the LHCb tracking system. It uses drift chamber to measure the track of a particle. The straws have a length of 2.5m and a diameter of 4.9 mm. They are operated in proportional mode and should measure tracks with a precision of 200 {mu}m per hit. In the first part, this thesis presents the results of a performance study for the Outer Tracker, focussing on spatial resolution and efficiency. The main part of this thesis deals with aging studies. Neither a test with 8 keV X-rays nor with highly ionising protons showed any change in the module behavior due to aging. The acceleration factors compared to LHCb were 8-180 (anode current >80 nA/cm) in the most irradiated areas. A charge of up to 3 C/cm was accumulated. Aging tests at anode currents below 15 nA/cm (acceleration factor 1) showed a significant gain drop for the already produced modules after only a few days (1-2 mC/cm) of irradiation. The aging depends on several parameters like gas flow velocity or gas mixture. There is no aging for anode currents >12 nA/cm. This aging is an effect of outgassing material used in the module. Tests showed that the outgassing is probably caused by the epoxy adhesive. Flushing and warming the modules reduce the aging significantly. As things are, the Outer Tracker modules can be operated in LHCb for several years. (orig.)

  14. Radiation hard silicon sensors for the CMS tracker upgrade

    CERN Document Server

    Pohlsen, Thomas

    2013-01-01

    At an instantaneous luminosity of $5 \\times 10^{34}$ cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$, the high-luminosity phase of the Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) is expected to deliver a total of $3\\,000$ fb$^{-1}$ of collisions, hereby increasing the discovery potential of the LHC experiments significantly. However, the radiation dose of the tracking systems will be severe, requiring new radiation hard sensors for the CMS tracker. The CMS tracker collaboration has initiated a large material investigation and irradiation campaign to identify the silicon material and design that fulfils all requirements for detectors for the HL-LHC. Focussing on the upgrade of the outer tracker region, pad sensors as well as fully functional strip sensors have been implemented on silicon wafers with different material properties and thicknesses. The samples were irradiated with a mixture of neutrons and protons corresponding to fluences as expected for the positions of detector layers in the future tracker. Different proton energies were used for irr...

  15. Rapid characterisation of vegetation structure to predict refugia and climate change impacts across a global biodiversity hotspot.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Antonius G T Schut

    Full Text Available Identification of refugia is an increasingly important adaptation strategy in conservation planning under rapid anthropogenic climate change. Granite outcrops (GOs provide extraordinary diversity, including a wide range of taxa, vegetation types and habitats in the Southwest Australian Floristic Region (SWAFR. However, poor characterization of GOs limits the capacity of conservation planning for refugia under climate change. A novel means for the rapid identification of potential refugia is presented, based on the assessment of local-scale environment and vegetation structure in a wider region. This approach was tested on GOs across the SWAFR. Airborne discrete return Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR data and Red Green and Blue (RGB imagery were acquired. Vertical vegetation profiles were used to derive 54 structural classes. Structural vegetation types were described in three areas for supervised classification of a further 13 GOs across the region. Habitat descriptions based on 494 vegetation plots on and around these GOs were used to quantify relationships between environmental variables, ground cover and canopy height. The vegetation surrounding GOs is strongly related to structural vegetation types (Kappa = 0.8 and to its spatial context. Water gaining sites around GOs are characterized by taller and denser vegetation in all areas. The strong relationship between rainfall, soil-depth, and vegetation structure (R(2 of 0.8-0.9 allowed comparisons of vegetation structure between current and future climate. Significant shifts in vegetation structural types were predicted and mapped for future climates. Water gaining areas below granite outcrops were identified as important putative refugia. A reduction in rainfall may be offset by the occurrence of deeper soil elsewhere on the outcrop. However, climate change interactions with fire and water table declines may render our conclusions conservative. The LiDAR-based mapping approach presented

  16. Changes in vegetation phenology on the Mongolian Plateau and their climatic determinants.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Miao, Lijuan; Müller, Daniel; Cui, Xuefeng; Ma, Meihong

    2017-01-01

    Climate change affects the timing of phenological events, such as the start, end, and length of the growing season of vegetation. A better understanding of how the phenology responded to climatic determinants is important in order to better anticipate future climate-ecosystem interactions. We examined the changes of three phenological events for the Mongolian Plateau and their climatic determinants. To do so, we derived three phenological metrics from remotely sensed vegetation indices and associated these with climate data for the period of 1982 to 2011. The results suggested that the start of the growing season advanced by 0.10 days yr-1, the end was delayed by 0.11 days yr-1, and the length of the growing season expanded by 6.3 days during the period from 1982 to 2011. The delayed end and extended length of the growing season were observed consistently in grassland, forest, and shrubland, while the earlier start was only observed in grassland. Partial correlation analysis between the phenological events and the climate variables revealed that higher temperature was associated with an earlier start of the growing season, and both temperature and precipitation contributed to the later ending. Overall, our findings suggest that climate change will substantially alter the vegetation phenology in the grasslands of the Mongolian Plateau, and likely also in biomes with similar environmental conditions, such as other semi-arid steppe regions.

  17. LHCb: LHCb Upstream Tracker

    CERN Multimedia

    Manning Jr, P; Stone, S

    2014-01-01

    The LHCb upgrade requires replacing the silicon strip tracker between the vertex locator and the magnet. A new design has been developed and tested based on the "stave" concept planned for the ATLAS upgrade. We will describe the new detector being constructed and show its improved performance in charged particle tracking and triggering.

  18. Wearable Gaze Trackers: Mapping Visual Attention in 3D

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Jensen, Rasmus Ramsbøl; Stets, Jonathan Dyssel; Suurmets, Seidi

    2017-01-01

    gaze trackers allows respondents to move freely in any real world 3D environment, removing the previous restrictions. In this paper we propose a novel approach for processing visual attention of respondents using mobile wearable gaze trackers in a 3D environment. The pipeline consists of 3 steps...

  19. Alignment of the CMS Silicon Strip Tracker during stand-alone Commissioning

    CERN Document Server

    Adam, W.; Dragicevic, M.; Friedl, M.; Fruhwirth, R.; Hansel, S.; Hrubec, J.; Krammer, M.; Oberegger, M.; Pernicka, M.; Schmid, S.; Stark, R.; Steininger, H.; Uhl, D.; Waltenberger, W.; Widl, E.; Van Mechelen, P.; Cardaci, M.; Beaumont, W.; de Langhe, E.; de Wolf, E.A.; Delmeire, E.; Hashemi, M.; Bouhali, O.; Charaf, O.; Clerbaux, B.; Dewulf, J.-P.; Elgammal, S.; Hammad, G.; de Lentdecker, G.; Marage, P.; Vander Velde, C.; Vanlaer, P.; Wickens, J.; Adler, V.; Devroede, O.; De Weirdt, S.; D'Hondt, J.; Goorens, R.; Heyninck, J.; Maes, J.; Mozer, Matthias Ulrich; Tavernier, S.; Van Lancker, L.; Van Mulders, P.; Villella, I.; Wastiels, C.; Bonnet, J.-L.; Bruno, G.; De Callatay, B.; Florins, B.; Giammanco, A.; Gregoire, G.; Keutgen, Th.; Kcira, D.; Lemaitre, V.; Michotte, D.; Militaru, O.; Piotrzkowski, K.; Quertermont, L.; Roberfroid, V.; Rouby, X.; Teyssier, D.; daubie, E.; Anttila, E.; Czellar, S.; Engstrom, P.; Harkonen, J.; Karimaki, V.; Kostesmaa, J.; Kuronen, A.; Lampen, T.; Linden, T.; Luukka, P.-R.; Maenaa, T.; Michal, S.; Tuominen, E.; Tuominiemi, J.; Ageron, M.; Baulieu, G.; Bonnevaux, A.; Boudoul, G.; Chabanat, E.; Chabert, E.; Chierici, R.; Contardo, D.; Della Negra, R.; Dupasquier, T.; Gelin, G.; Giraud, N.; Guillot, G.; Estre, N.; Haroutunian, R.; Lumb, N.; Perries, S.; Schirra, F.; Trocme, B.; Vanzetto, S.; Agram, J.-L.; Blaes, R.; Drouhin, F.; Ernenwein, J.-P.; Fontaine, J.-C.; Berst, J.-D.; Brom, J.-M.; Didierjean, F.; Goerlach, U.; Graehling, P.; Gross, L.; Hosselet, J.; Juillot, P.; Lounis, A.; Maazouzi, C.; Olivetto, C.; Strub, R.; Van Hove, P.; Anagnostou, G.; Brauer, R.; Esser, H.; Feld, L.; Karpinski, W.; Klein, K.; Kukulies, C.; Olzem, J.; Ostapchuk, A.; Pandoulas, D.; Pierschel, G.; Raupach, F.; Schael, S.; Schwering, G.; Sprenger, D.; Thomas, M.; Weber, M.; Wittmer, B.; Wlochal, M.; Beissel, F.; Bock, E.; Flugge, G.; Gillissen, C.; Hermanns, T.; Heydhausen, D.; Jahn, D.; Kaussen, G.; Linn, A.; Perchalla, L.; Poettgens, M.; Pooth, O.; Stahl, A.; Zoeller, M.H.; Buhmann, P.; Butz, E.; Flucke, G.; Hamdorf, R.; Hauk, J.; Klanner, R.; Pein, U.; Schleper, P.; Steinbruck, G.; Blum, P.; De Boer, W.; Dierlamm, A.; Dirkes, G.; Fahrer, M.; Frey, M.; Furgeri, A.; Hartmann, F.; Heier, S.; Hoffmann, K.-H.; Kaminski, J.; Ledermann, B.; Liamsuwan, T.; Muller, S.; Muller, Th.; Schilling, F.-P.; Simonis, H.-J.; Steck, P.; Zhukov, V.; Cariola, P.; De Robertis, G.; Ferorelli, R.; Fiore, L.; Preda, M.; Sala, G.; Silvestris, L.; Tempesta, P.; Zito, G.; Creanza, D.; De Filippis, N.; De Palma, M.; Giordano, D.; Maggi, G.; Manna, N.; My, S.; Selvaggi, G.; Albergo, S.; Chiorboli, M.; Costa, S.; Galanti, M.; Giudice, N.; Guardone, N.; Noto, F.; Potenza, R.; Saizu, M.A.; Sparti, V.; Sutera, C.; Tricomi, A.; Tuve, C.; Brianzi, M.; Civinini, C.; Maletta, F.; Manolescu, F.; Meschini, M.; Paoletti, S.; Sguazzoni, G.; Broccolo, B.; Ciulli, V.; D'Alessandro, R.; Focardi, E.; Frosali, S.; Genta, C.; Landi, G.; Lenzi, P.; Macchiolo, A.; Magini, N.; Parrini, G.; Scarlini, E.; Cerati, G.; Azzi, P.; Bacchetta, N.; Candelori, A.; Dorigo, T.; Kaminsky, A.; Karaevski, S.; Khomenkov, V.; Reznikov, S.; Tessaro, M.; Bisello, D.; De Mattia, M.; Giubilato, P.; Loreti, M.; Mattiazzo, S.; Nigro, M.; Paccagnella, A.; Pantano, D.; Pozzobon, N.; Tosi, M.; Bilei, G.M.; Checcucci, B.; Fano, L.; Servoli, L.; Ambroglini, F.; Babucci, E.; Benedetti, D.; Biasini, M.; Caponeri, B.; Covarelli, R.; Giorgi, M.; Lariccia, P.; Mantovani, G.; Marcantonini, M.; Postolache, V.; Santocchia, A.; Spiga, D.; Bagliesi, G.; Balestri, G.; Berretta, L.; Bianucci, S.; Boccali, T.; Bosi, F.; Bracci, F.; Castaldi, R.; Ceccanti, M.; Cecchi, R.; Cerri, C.; Cucoanes, A.S.; Dell'Orso, R.; Dobur, D.; Dutta, S.; Giassi, A.; Giusti, S.; Kartashov, D.; Kraan, A.; Lomtadze, T.; Lungu, G.A.; Magazzu, G.; Mammini, P.; Mariani, F.; Martinelli, G.; Moggi, A.; Palla, F.; Palmonari, F.; Petragnani, G.; Profeti, A.; Raffaelli, F.; Rizzi, D.; Sanguinetti, G.; Sarkar, S.; Sentenac, D.; Serban, A.T.; Slav, A.; Soldani, A.; Spagnolo, P.; Tenchini, R.; Tolaini, S.; Venturi, A.; Verdini, P.G.; Vos, M.; Zaccarelli, L.; Avanzini, C.; Basti, A.; Benucci, L.; Bocci, A.; Cazzola, U.; Fiori, F.; Linari, S.; Massa, M.; Messineo, A.; Segneri, G.; Tonelli, G.; Azzurri, P.; Bernardini, J.; Borrello, L.; Calzolari, F.; Foa, L.; Gennai, S.; Ligabue, F.; Petrucciani, G.; Rizzi, A.; Yang, Z.; Benotto, F.; Demaria, N.; Dumitrache, F.; Farano, R.; Borgia, M.A.; Castello, R.; Costa, M.; Migliore, E.; Romero, A.; Abbaneo, D.; Abbas, M.; Ahmed, I.; Akhtar, I.; Albert, E.; Bloch, C.; Breuker, H.; Butt, S.; Buchmuller, O.; Cattai, A.; Delaere, C.; Delattre, M.; Edera, L.M.; Engstrom, P.; Eppard, M.; Gateau, M.; Gill, K.; Giolo-Nicollerat, A.-S.; Grabit, R.; Honma, A.; Huhtinen, M.; Kloukinas, K.; Kortesmaa, J.; Kottelat, L.J.; Kuronen, A.; Leonardo, N.; Ljuslin, C.; Mannelli, M.; Masetti, L.; Marchioro, A.; Mersi, S.; Michal, S.; Mirabito, L.; Muffat-Joly, J.; Onnela, A.; Paillard, C.; Pal, I.; Pernot, J.F.; Petagna, P.; Petit, P.; Piccut, C.; Pioppi, M.; Postema, H.; Ranieri, R.; Ricci, D.; Rolandi, G.; Ronga, F.; Sigaud, C.; Syed, A.; Siegrist, P.; Tropea, P.; Troska, J.; Tsirou, A.; Vander Donckt, M.; Vasey, F.; Alagoz, E.; Amsler, Claude; Chiochia, V.; Regenfus, Christian; Robmann, P.; Rochet, J.; Rommerskirchen, T.; Schmidt, A.; Steiner, S.; Wilke, L.; Church, I.; Cole, J.; Coughlan, J.; Gay, A.; Taghavi, S.; Tomalin, I.; Bainbridge, R.; Cripps, N.; Fulcher, J.; Hall, G.; Noy, M.; Pesaresi, M.; Radicci, V.; Raymond, D.M.; Sharp, P.; Stoye, M.; Wingham, M.; Zorba, O.; Goitom, I.; Hobson, P.R.; Reid, I.; Teodorescu, L.; Hanson, G.; Jeng, G.-Y.; Liu, H.; Pasztor, G.; Satpathy, A.; Stringer, R.; Mangano, B.; Affolder, K.; Affolder, T.; Allen, A.; Barge, D.; Burke, S.; Callahan, D.; Campagnari, C.; Crook, A.; D'Alfonso, M.; Dietch, J.; Garberson, Jeffrey Ford; Hale, D.; Incandela, H.; Incandela, J.; Jaditz, S.; Kalavase, P.; Kreyer, S.; Kyre, S.; Lamb, J.; Mc Guinnessr, C.; Mills, C.; Nguyen, H.; Nikolic, M.; Lowette, S.; Rebassoo, F.; Ribnik, J.; Richman, J.; Rubinstein, N.; Sanhueza, S.; Shah, Y.; Simms, L.; Staszak, D.; Stoner, J.; Stuart, D.; Swain, S.; Vlimant, J.-R.; White, D.; Ulmer, K.A.; Wagner, S.R.; Bagby, L.; Bhat, P.C.; Burkett, K.; Cihangir, S.; Gutsche, O.; Jensen, H.; Johnson, M.; Luzhetskiy, N.; Mason, D.; Miao, T.; Moccia, S.; Noeding, C.; Ronzhin, A.; Skup, E.; Spalding, W.J.; Spiegel, L.; Tkaczyk, S.; Yumiceva, F.; Zatserklyaniy, A.; Zerev, E.; Anghel, I.; Bazterra, V.E.; Gerber, C.E.; Khalatian, S.; Shabalina, E.; Baringer, Philip S.; Bean, A.; Chen, J.; Hinchey, C.; Martin, C.; Moulik, T.; Robinson, R.; Gritsan, A.V.; Lae, C.K.; Tran, N.V.; Everaerts, P.; Hahn, K.A.; Harris, P.; Nahn, S.; Rudolph, M.; Sung, K.; Betchart, B.; Demina, R.; Gotra, Y.; Korjenevski, S.; Miner, D.; Orbaker, D.; Christofek, L.; Hooper, R.; Landsberg, G.; Nguyen, D.; Narain, M.; Speer, T.; Tsang, K.V.

    2009-01-01

    The results of the CMS tracker alignment analysis are presented using the data from cosmic tracks, optical survey information, and the laser alignment system at the Tracker Integration Facility at CERN. During several months of operation in the spring and summer of 2007, about five million cosmic track events were collected with a partially active CMS Tracker. This allowed us to perform first alignment of the active silicon modules with the cosmic tracks using three different statistical approaches; validate the survey and laser alignment system performance; and test the stability of Tracker structures under various stresses and temperatures ranging from +15C to -15C. Comparison with simulation shows that the achieved alignment precision in the barrel part of the tracker leads to residual distributions similar to those obtained with a random misalignment of 50 (80) microns in the outer (inner) part of the barrel.

  20. 3D Part-Based Sparse Tracker with Automatic Synchronization and Registration

    KAUST Repository

    Bibi, Adel Aamer; Zhang, Tianzhu; Ghanem, Bernard

    2016-01-01

    In this paper, we present a part-based sparse tracker in a particle filter framework where both the motion and appearance model are formulated in 3D. The motion model is adaptive and directed according to a simple yet powerful occlusion handling paradigm, which is intrinsically fused in the motion model. Also, since 3D trackers are sensitive to synchronization and registration noise in the RGB and depth streams, we propose automated methods to solve these two issues. Extensive experiments are conducted on a popular RGBD tracking benchmark, which demonstrate that our tracker can achieve superior results, outperforming many other recent and state-of-the-art RGBD trackers.

  1. 3D Part-Based Sparse Tracker with Automatic Synchronization and Registration

    KAUST Repository

    Bibi, Adel Aamer

    2016-12-13

    In this paper, we present a part-based sparse tracker in a particle filter framework where both the motion and appearance model are formulated in 3D. The motion model is adaptive and directed according to a simple yet powerful occlusion handling paradigm, which is intrinsically fused in the motion model. Also, since 3D trackers are sensitive to synchronization and registration noise in the RGB and depth streams, we propose automated methods to solve these two issues. Extensive experiments are conducted on a popular RGBD tracking benchmark, which demonstrate that our tracker can achieve superior results, outperforming many other recent and state-of-the-art RGBD trackers.

  2. Teaching Astronomy Using Tracker

    Science.gov (United States)

    Belloni, Mario; Christian, Wolfgang; Brown, Douglas

    2013-01-01

    A recent paper in this journal presented a set of innovative uses of video analysis for introductory physics using Tracker. In addition, numerous other papers have described how video analysis can be a meaningful part of introductory courses. Yet despite this, there are few resources for using video analysis in introductory astronomy classes. In…

  3. Prototype ATLAS straw tracker

    CERN Multimedia

    Laurent Guiraud

    1998-01-01

    This is an early prototype of the straw tracking device for the ATLAS detector at CERN. This detector will be part of the LHC project, scheduled to start operation in 2008. The straw tracker will consist of thousands of gas-filled straws, each containing a wire, allowing the tracks of particles to be followed.

  4. Short-term vegetation change on rehabilitated peatland on Rietvlei Nature Reserve

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    C.E. Venter

    2003-12-01

    Full Text Available Natural peatlands occur on the Rietvlei Nature Reserve. Before the Pretoria City Council acquired the land, these peatlands were mined by private land-owners. Ditches were constructed to drain the area for mining and the peatlands became desicrated. Later the area was proclaimed as a nature reserve and has since then been managed as such. Rehabilitation of the drained peatland on Rietvlei Nature Reserve first started in 2000 as a Working for Water project. The aim of the rehabilitation was to close the ditches and rewet the peatland, to enable possible revival of the peatland. A baseline vegetation survey was undertaken during the summer (March to April of 2001 to determine the nature of the pioneer communities that established on the rehabilitated area. This survey was repeated during the summer (March to April of 2002 to detect changes in the vegetation. The same sample plots were used on both occasions. The initial pioneer vegetation was mostly composed of weedy annuals.

  5. Alignment of Ion Accelerator for Surface Analysis using Theodolite and Laser Tracker

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Ahn, Tae Sung; Seo, Dong Hyuk; Kim, Dae Il; Kim, Han Sung; Kwon, Hyeok Jung; Cho, Yong Sub [KAERI, Daejeon (Korea, Republic of)

    2016-05-15

    The method of ion accelerator alignment is used two ways which are a theodolite and laser tracker. For the alignment and maintenance of the proton linear accelerator, the laser tracker is typically used at KOMAC. While the device for alignment by using laser tracker is not installed in all ion accelerator components, it was used in parallel in two methods. In this paper, alignment methods are introduced and the result and comparison of each alignment method are presented. The ion accelerator for surface analysis has aligned using theodolite and laser tracker. The two ways for alignment have advantage as well as weakness. But alignment using laser tracker is stronger than using theodolite. Because it is based on alignment and position data and it is more detailed. Also since the beam distribution is smaller than accelerator component that is direction of beam progress, main component (ex. Magnet, Chamber, Pelletron tank, etc.) alignment using laser tracker is enough to align the ion accelerator.

  6. Novel approach to improve the attitude update rate of a star tracker.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Shuo; Xing, Fei; Sun, Ting; You, Zheng; Wei, Minsong

    2018-03-05

    The star tracker is widely used in attitude control systems of spacecraft for attitude measurement. The attitude update rate of a star tracker is important to guarantee the attitude control performance. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to improve the attitude update rate of a star tracker. The electronic Rolling Shutter (RS) imaging mode of the complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) image sensor in the star tracker is applied to acquire star images in which the star spots are exposed with row-to-row time offsets, thereby reflecting the rotation of star tracker at different times. The attitude estimation method with a single star spot is developed to realize the multiple attitude updates by a star image, so as to reach a high update rate. The simulation and experiment are performed to verify the proposed approaches. The test results demonstrate that the proposed approach is effective and the attitude update rate of a star tracker is increased significantly.

  7. SOLAR TRACKER CERDAS DAN MURAH BERBASIS MIKROKONTROLER 8 BIT ATMega8535

    OpenAIRE

    I Wayan Sutaya; Ketut Udy Ariawan

    2016-01-01

    prototipe produk solar tracker cerdas berbasis mikrokontroler AVR 8 bit. Solar tracker ini memasukkan filter digital IIR (Infinite Impulse Response) pada bagian program. Memprogram filter ini membutuhkan perkalian 32 bit sedangkan prosesor yang tersedia pada mikrokontroler yang dipakai adalah 8 bit. Proses perkalian ini hanya bisa dilakukan pada mikrokontroler 8 bit dengan menggunakan bahasa assembly yang merupakan bahasa level hardware. Solar tracker cerdas yang menggunakan mikrokontroler 8 ...

  8. CMS tracker observes muons

    CERN Multimedia

    2006-01-01

    A computer image of a cosmic ray traversing the many layers of the TEC+ silicon sensors. The first cosmic muon tracks have been observed in one of the CMS tracker endcaps. On 14 March, a sector on one of the two large tracker endcaps underwent a cosmic muon run. Since then, thousands of tracks have been recorded. These data will be used not only to study the tracking, but also to exercise various track alignment algorithms The endcap tested, called the TEC+, is under construction at RWTH Aachen in Germany. The endcaps have a modular design, with silicon strip modules mounted onto wedge-shaped carbon fibre support plates, so-called petals. Up to 28 modules are arranged in radial rings on both sides of these plates. One eighth of an endcap is populated with 18 petals and called a sector. The next major step is a test of the first sector at CMS operating conditions, with the silicon modules at a temperature below -10°C. Afterwards, the remaining seven sectors have to be integrated. In autumn 2006, TEC+ wil...

  9. ATLAS Silicon Microstrip Tracker

    CERN Document Server

    Haefner, Petra; The ATLAS collaboration

    2010-01-01

    The SemiConductor Tracker (SCT), made up from silicon micro-strip detectors is the key precision tracking device in ATLAS, one of the experiments at CERN LHC. The completed SCT is in very good shape: 99.3% of the SCT strips are operational, noise occupancy and hit efficiency exceed the design specifications. In the talk the current status of the SCT will be reviewed. We will report on the operation of the detector and observed problems, with stress on the sensor and electronics performance. TWEPP Summary In December 2009 the ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) recorded the first proton- proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 900 GeV and this was followed by the unprecedented energy of 7 TeV in March 2010. The SemiConductor Tracker (SCT) is the key precision tracking device in ATLAS, made up from silicon micro-strip detectors processed in the planar p-in-n technology. The signal from the strips is processed in the front-end ASICS ABCD3TA, working in the binary readout mode. Data i...

  10. Fine-scale patterns of vegetation assembly in the monitoring of changes in coastal sand-dune landscapes

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    J. Honrado

    2010-02-01

    Full Text Available Understanding dune ecosystem responses to multi-scale environmental changes can provide the framework for reliable forecasts and cost-efficient protocols for detecting shifts in prevailing coastal dynamics. Based on the hypothesis that stress and disturbance interact as primary community controls in coastal dunes, we studied the fine-scale floristic assembly of foredune vegetation, in its relation to topography, along regional and local environmental gradients in the 200 km long coastline of northern Portugal, encompassing a major biogeographic transition in western Europe. Thirty topographic profiles perpendicular to the shoreline were recorded at ten sites along the regional climate gradient, and vegetation was sampled by recording the frequency of plant species along those profiles. Quantitative topographic attributes of vegetated dune profiles (e.g. length or height exhibited wide variations relatable to differences in prevailing coastal dynamics. Metrics of taxonomic diversity (e.g. total species richness and its additive beta component and of the functional composition of vegetation were highly correlated to attributes of dune topography. Under transgressive dynamics, vegetation profiles have fewer species, increased dominance, lower turnover rates, and lower total vegetation cover. These changes may drive a decrease in structural and functional diversity, with important consequences for resistance, resilience and other ecosystem properties. Moreover, differences in both vegetation assembly (in meta-stable dunes and response to increased disturbance (in eroding dunes between distinct biogeographic contexts highlight a possible decline in facilitation efficiency under extreme physical stress (i.e. under Mediterranean climate and support the significance of functional approaches in the study of local ecosystem responses to disturbance along regional gradients. Our results strongly suggest that assessing fine-scale community assembly can

  11. How Can Implicit and Explicit Attitudes Both Be Changed? Testing Two Interventions to Promote Consumption of Green Vegetables.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mattavelli, Simone; Avishai, Aya; Perugini, Marco; Richetin, Juliette; Sheeran, Paschal

    2017-08-01

    Although correlational studies have demonstrated that implicit and explicit attitudes are both important in predicting eating behavior, few studies targeting food choice have attempted to change both types of attitudes. We tested the impact of (a) an evaluative learning intervention that uses the self to change attitudes (i.e., a Self-Referencing task) and (b) a persuasive communication in modifying implicit and explicit attitudes towards green vegetables and promoting readiness to change. The study targeted individuals who explicitly reported they did not like or only moderately liked green vegetables. Participants (N = 273) were randomly allocated to a 2 (self-referencing: present vs. absent) × 2 (persuasive message: present vs. absent) factorial design. The outcomes were implicit and explicit attitudes as well as readiness to increase consumption of green vegetables. Implicit attitudes increased after repeatedly pairing green vegetable stimuli with the self in the self-referencing task but did not change in response to the persuasive communication. The persuasive message increased explicit attitudes and readiness to change, but did not alter implicit attitudes. A three-way interaction with pre-existing explicit attitudes was also observed. In the absence of a persuasive message, the self-referencing task increased on readiness to change among participants with more negative pre-existing explicit attitudes. This study is the first to demonstrate that a self-referencing task is effective in changing both implicit attitudes and readiness to change eating behavior. Findings indicate that distinct intervention strategies are needed to change implicit and explicit attitudes towards green vegetables.

  12. Changes in Intake of Fruits and Vegetables and Weight Change in United States Men and Women Followed for Up to 24 Years: Analysis from Three Prospective Cohort Studies.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Monica L Bertoia

    2015-09-01

    Full Text Available Current dietary guidelines recommend eating a variety of fruits and vegetables. However, based on nutrient composition, some particular fruits and vegetables may be more or less beneficial for maintaining or achieving a healthy weight. We hypothesized that greater consumption of fruits and vegetables with a higher fiber content or lower glycemic load would be more strongly associated with a healthy weight.We examined the association between change in intake of specific fruits and vegetables and change in weight in three large, prospective cohorts of 133,468 United States men and women. From 1986 to 2010, these associations were examined within multiple 4-y time intervals, adjusting for simultaneous changes in other lifestyle factors, including other aspects of diet, smoking status, and physical activity. Results were combined using a random effects meta-analysis. Increased intake of fruits was inversely associated with 4-y weight change: total fruits -0.53 lb per daily serving (95% CI -0.61, -0.44, berries -1.11 lb (95% CI -1.45, -0.78, and apples/pears -1.24 lb (95% CI -1.62, -0.86. Increased intake of several vegetables was also inversely associated with weight change: total vegetables -0.25 lb per daily serving (95% CI -0.35, -0.14, tofu/soy -2.47 lb (95% CI, -3.09 to -1.85 lb and cauliflower -1.37 lb (95% CI -2.27, -0.47. On the other hand, increased intake of starchy vegetables, including corn, peas, and potatoes, was associated with weight gain. Vegetables having both higher fiber and lower glycemic load were more strongly inversely associated with weight change compared with lower-fiber, higher-glycemic-load vegetables (p < 0.0001. Despite the measurement of key confounders in our analyses, the potential for residual confounding cannot be ruled out, and although our food frequency questionnaire specified portion size, the assessment of diet using any method will have measurement error.Increased consumption of fruits and non

  13. CMS tracker towards the HL-LHC

    CERN Document Server

    Alunni Solestizi, Luisa

    2015-01-01

    In sight of the incoming new LHC era (High Luminosity - LHC), characterized by a jump forward in the precision boundary and in the event rate, all the CMS sub-detector are developing and studying innovative strategies of trigger, pattern recognition, event timing and so on. A crucial aspect will be the online event selection: a totally new paradigm is needed, given the huge amount of events. In this picture the most granular and innermost sub-detector, the tracker, will play a decisive role. The phase-2 tracker will be involved in the L1 Trigger and, taking advantage of both the Associative Memories and the FPGA, it can ensure a trigger decision in proper time and with satisfactory performances.

  14. Four-cell solar tracker

    Science.gov (United States)

    Berdahl, C. M.

    1981-01-01

    Forty cm Sun tracker, consisting of optical telescope and four solar cells, stays pointed at Sun throughout day for maximum energy collection. Each solar cell generates voltage proportional to part of solar image it receives; voltages drive servomotors that keep image centered. Mirrored portion of cylinder extends acquisition angle of device by reflecting Sun image back onto solar cells.

  15. Examining Severe Drought-Induced Vegetation Change and its Influence on Water Resources

    Science.gov (United States)

    White, A. B.; Springer, E. P.; Vivoni, E. R.

    2007-12-01

    A "global-change-type" drought that occurred in the southwestern U.S. from 2000 to 2003, accompanied by increased temperatures and bark beetle infestations, induced large-scale woodland overstory mortality, the consequent redistribution of water, radiation, and nutrients, as well as modification of the ecosystem phenology. Our objectives in this research are to examine these vegetation changes in detail and to determine whether they translated to changes in hydrological processes. We chose the Rio Ojo Caliente, a subbasin of the Rio Grande, as a study site since a significant portion of the woodland ecosystem (piñon-juniper) was affected. Examining a remotely-sensed vegetation index (1-km AVHRR NDVI from 1989 to 2006), there is an increasing trend in the mean NDVI from 1989 to 1998 (pre-drought period), a decreasing trend from 1999 to 2003 (drought period), and a dramatic increasing trend from 2004 to 2006 (post-drought period) in which the mean NDVI rebounds to pre- drought magnitudes. Streamflow records from 1932 to 2006 show the watershed to be primarily spring snowmelt-driven, although monsoonal summer precipitation also plays a significant role. We compare the temporal variability in the streamflow to the NDVI, including the mean, anomalies from the mean, and seasonally- based duration curves, and find significant correlations (correlation coefficient ρ = -0.61) between the streamflow and NDVI at approximately a three-month lag (NDVI lagging streamflow). In analyzing the three phases of the drought, the correlation is slightly stronger during the pre-drought (ρ = -0.64) and drought (ρ = -0.65) periods, yet markedly stronger during the post-drought period (ρ = -0.74). This suggests that the coupling between vegetation water use and streamflow is tighter after the drought. This may be attributable to the reduction in the less-responsive overstory (pinñon mortality) and increase in the more-responsive understory (grasses and shrubs exploiting newly

  16. Development of a new Silicon Tracker at CMS for Super-LHC

    CERN Document Server

    Pesaresi, Mark

    2010-01-01

    Tracking is an essential requirement for any high energy particle physics experiment. The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) employs an all silicon tracker, the largest of its kind, for the precise measurement of track momentum and vertex position. With approximately 10 million detector channels in the strip tracker alone, the analogue non-sparsified readout system has been designed to handle the large data volumes generated at the 100 kHz Level 1 (L1) trigger rate. Fluctuations in the event rate are controlled using buffers whose occupancies are constantly monitored to prevent overflows, otherwise causing loss of synchronisation and data. The status of the tracker is reported by the APV emulator (APVe), which has now been successfully commissioned within the silicon strip tracker readout system. The APVe plays a crucial role in the synchronisation of the tracker by deterministic calculation of the front end buffer occupancy and by monitoring the status of the Front End Dr...

  17. In Defense of Sparse Tracking: Circulant Sparse Tracker

    KAUST Repository

    Zhang, Tianzhu; Bibi, Adel Aamer; Ghanem, Bernard

    2016-01-01

    Sparse representation has been introduced to visual tracking by finding the best target candidate with minimal reconstruction error within the particle filter framework. However, most sparse representation based trackers have high computational cost, less than promising tracking performance, and limited feature representation. To deal with the above issues, we propose a novel circulant sparse tracker (CST), which exploits circulant target templates. Because of the circulant structure property, CST has the following advantages: (1) It can refine and reduce particles using circular shifts of target templates. (2) The optimization can be efficiently solved entirely in the Fourier domain. (3) High dimensional features can be embedded into CST to significantly improve tracking performance without sacrificing much computation time. Both qualitative and quantitative evaluations on challenging benchmark sequences demonstrate that CST performs better than all other sparse trackers and favorably against state-of-the-art methods.

  18. In Defense of Sparse Tracking: Circulant Sparse Tracker

    KAUST Repository

    Zhang, Tianzhu

    2016-12-13

    Sparse representation has been introduced to visual tracking by finding the best target candidate with minimal reconstruction error within the particle filter framework. However, most sparse representation based trackers have high computational cost, less than promising tracking performance, and limited feature representation. To deal with the above issues, we propose a novel circulant sparse tracker (CST), which exploits circulant target templates. Because of the circulant structure property, CST has the following advantages: (1) It can refine and reduce particles using circular shifts of target templates. (2) The optimization can be efficiently solved entirely in the Fourier domain. (3) High dimensional features can be embedded into CST to significantly improve tracking performance without sacrificing much computation time. Both qualitative and quantitative evaluations on challenging benchmark sequences demonstrate that CST performs better than all other sparse trackers and favorably against state-of-the-art methods.

  19. Farmers perceptions on climate change in lowland and highland vegetable production centers of South Sulawesi, Indonesia

    Science.gov (United States)

    Adiyoga, W.

    2018-02-01

    A survey was carried out in South Sulawesi, Indonesia interviewing 220 vegetable farmers. It was aimed at examining the vegetable farmers’ perception of climate change and assessing the consistency of farmers’ perception with available time series meteorological data. Results suggest that meteorological data analysis is in agreement with farmers’ perception regarding faster start, longer ending, and longer duration of rainy season. Further data analysis supports the claim of most farmers who perceive the occurrence of increasing air temperature, changing or shifting of the hottest and coldest month. Most respondents also suggest that climate change has affected vegetable farm yield and profitability. Other respondents even predict that climate change may affect the quality of life of their future descendants. Meanwhile, significant number of farmers is quite optimistic that they can cope with climate change problems through adaptation strategy. However, the attitude of farmers towards climate change is mostly negative as compared to positive or neutral feeling. Informative and educational campaign should be continuously carried out to encourage farmers in developing positive attitude or positive thinking towards climate change. Positive attitude may eventually lead to constructive behavior in selecting and implementing adaptation options.

  20. Star tracker operation in a high density proton field

    Science.gov (United States)

    Miklus, Kenneth J.; Kissh, Frank; Flynn, David J.

    1993-01-01

    Algorithms that reject transient signals due to proton effects on charge coupled device (CCD) sensors have been implemented in the HDOS ASTRA-l Star Trackers to be flown on the TOPEX mission scheduled for launch in July 1992. A unique technique for simulating a proton-rich environment to test trackers is described, as well as the test results obtained. Solar flares or an orbit that passes through the South Atlantic Anomaly can subject the vehicle to very high proton flux levels. There are three ways in which spurious proton generated signals can impact tracker performance: the many false signals can prevent or extend the time to acquire a star; a proton-generated signal can compromise the accuracy of the star's reported magnitude and position; and the tracked star can be lost, requiring reacquisition. Tests simulating a proton-rich environment were performed on two ASTRA-1 Star Trackers utilizing these new algorithms. There were no false acquisitions, no lost stars, and a significant reduction in reported position errors due to these improvements.

  1. Upgrading the ATLAS barrel tracker for the super-LHC

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Bates, Richard L.

    2009-01-01

    It has been proposed to increase the luminosity of the large hadron collider (LHC) at CERN by an order of magnitude, with the upgraded machine dubbed super-LHC. The ATLAS experiment will require a new tracker for this high-luminosity operation due to radiation damage and event density. In order to cope with the order of magnitude increase in pile-up backgrounds at the higher luminosity, an all-silicon tracker is being designed. The new strip detector will use significantly shorter strips than the current silicon tracker in order to minimize the occupancy. As the increased luminosity will mean a corresponding increase in radiation dose, a new generation of extremely radiation-hard silicon detectors is required. An R and D program is underway to develop silicon sensors with sufficient radiation hardness. New front-end electronics and readout systems are being designed to cope with the higher data rates. The challenges facing the sensors and the cooling and mechanical support will be discussed. A possible tracker layout will be described.

  2. [Variation trends of natural vegetation net primary productivity in China under climate change scenario].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhao, Dong-sheng; Wu, Shao-hong; Yin, Yun-he

    2011-04-01

    Based on the widely used Lund-Potsdam-Jena Dynamic Global Vegetation Model (LPJ) for climate change study, and according to the features of natural environment in China, the operation mechanism of the model was adjusted, and the parameters were modified. With the modified LPJ model and taking 1961-1990 as baseline period, the responses of natural vegetation net primary productivity (NPP) in China to climate change in 1991-2080 were simulated under the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) B2 scenario. In 1961-1990, the total NPP of natural vegetation in China was about 3.06 Pg C a(-1); in 1961-2080, the total NPP showed a fluctuant decreasing trend, with an accelerated decreasing rate. Under the condition of slight precipitation change, the increase of mean air temperature would have definite adverse impact on the NPP. Spatially, the NPP decreased from southeast coast to northwest inland, and this pattern would have less variation under climate change. In eastern China with higher NPP, especially in Northeast China, east of North China, and Loess Plateau, the NPP would mainly have a decreasing trend; while in western China with lower NPP, especially in the Tibetan Plateau and Tarim Basin, the NPP would be increased. With the intensive climate change, such a variation trend of NPP would be more obvious.

  3. Effects of climate change on forest vegetation in the northern Rockies

    Science.gov (United States)

    Keane, Robert E.; Mahalovich, Mary Frances; Bollenbacher, Barry L.; Manning, Mary E.; Loehman, Rachel A.; Jain, Terrie B.; Holsinger, Lisa M.; Larson, Andrew J.; Halofsky, Jessica E.; Peterson, David L.

    2018-01-01

    Increasing air temperature, through its influence on soil moisture, is expected to cause gradual changes in the abundance and distribution of tree, shrub, and grass species throughout the Northern Rockies, with drought tolerant species becoming more competitive. The earliest changes will be at ecotones between lifeforms (e.g., upper and lower treelines). Ecological disturbance, including wildfire and insect outbreaks, will be the primary facilitator of vegetation change, and future forest landscapes may be dominated by younger age classes and smaller trees. High-elevation forests will be especially vulnerable if disturbance frequency

  4. Direct and terrestrial vegetation-mediated effects of environmental change on aquatic ecosystem processes

    Science.gov (United States)

    Becky A. Ball; John S. Kominoski; Heather E. Adams; Stuart E. Jones; Evan S. Kane; Terrance D. Loecke; Wendy M. Mahaney; Jason P. Martina; Chelse M. Prather; Todd M.P. Robinson; Christopher T. Solomon

    2010-01-01

    Global environmental changes have direct effects on aquatic ecosystems, as well as indirect effects through alterations of adjacent terrestrial ecosystem structure and functioning. For example, shifts in terrestrial vegetation communities resulting from global changes can affect the quantity and quality of water, organic matter, and nutrient inputs to aquatic...

  5. Climate and vegetation changes around the Atlantic Ocean resulting from changes in the meridional overturning circulation during deglaciation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Handiani, D.; Paul, A.; Dupont, L.

    2012-07-01

    The Bølling-Allerød (BA, starting ~ 14.5 ka BP) is one of the most pronounced abrupt warming periods recorded in ice and pollen proxies. The leading explanation of the cause of this warming is a sudden increase in the rate of deepwater formation in the North Atlantic Ocean and the resulting effect on the heat transport by the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). In this study, we used the University of Victoria (UVic) Earth System-Climate Model (ESCM) to run simulations, in which a freshwater perturbation initiated a BA-like warming period. We found that under present climate conditions, the AMOC intensified when freshwater was added to the Southern Ocean. However, under Heinrich event 1 (HE1, ~ 16 ka BP) climate conditions, the AMOC only intensified when freshwater was extracted from the North Atlantic Ocean, possibly corresponding to an increase in evaporation or a decrease in precipitation in this region. The intensified AMOC led to a warming in the North Atlantic Ocean and a cooling in the South Atlantic Ocean, resembling the bipolar seesaw pattern typical of the last glacial period. In addition to the physical response, we also studied the simulated vegetation response around the Atlantic Ocean region. Corresponding with the bipolar seesaw hypothesis, the rainbelt associated with the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) shifted northward and affected the vegetation pattern in the tropics. The most sensitive vegetation area was found in tropical Africa, where grass cover increased and tree cover decreased under dry climate conditions. An equal but opposite response to the collapse and recovery of the AMOC implied that the change in vegetation cover was transient and robust to an abrupt climate change such as during the BA period, which is also supported by paleovegetation data. The results are in agreement with paleovegetation records from Western tropical Africa, which also show a reduction in forest cover during this time period. Further

  6. Changes in vegetation phenology on the Mongolian Plateau and their climatic determinants.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lijuan Miao

    Full Text Available Climate change affects the timing of phenological events, such as the start, end, and length of the growing season of vegetation. A better understanding of how the phenology responded to climatic determinants is important in order to better anticipate future climate-ecosystem interactions. We examined the changes of three phenological events for the Mongolian Plateau and their climatic determinants. To do so, we derived three phenological metrics from remotely sensed vegetation indices and associated these with climate data for the period of 1982 to 2011. The results suggested that the start of the growing season advanced by 0.10 days yr-1, the end was delayed by 0.11 days yr-1, and the length of the growing season expanded by 6.3 days during the period from 1982 to 2011. The delayed end and extended length of the growing season were observed consistently in grassland, forest, and shrubland, while the earlier start was only observed in grassland. Partial correlation analysis between the phenological events and the climate variables revealed that higher temperature was associated with an earlier start of the growing season, and both temperature and precipitation contributed to the later ending. Overall, our findings suggest that climate change will substantially alter the vegetation phenology in the grasslands of the Mongolian Plateau, and likely also in biomes with similar environmental conditions, such as other semi-arid steppe regions.

  7. Documentation for delivery of Star Tracker to ADEOS II

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Madsen, Peter Buch; Betto, Maurizio; Denver, Troelz

    1999-01-01

    The documentation EIDP (End Item Data Package) describes all the tests which have been performed on the Flight Hardware of the Star Tracker for the Japanese satellite ADEOS II.......The documentation EIDP (End Item Data Package) describes all the tests which have been performed on the Flight Hardware of the Star Tracker for the Japanese satellite ADEOS II....

  8. Tracker: Image-Processing and Object-Tracking System Developed

    Science.gov (United States)

    Klimek, Robert B.; Wright, Theodore W.

    1999-01-01

    Tracker is an object-tracking and image-processing program designed and developed at the NASA Lewis Research Center to help with the analysis of images generated by microgravity combustion and fluid physics experiments. Experiments are often recorded on film or videotape for analysis later. Tracker automates the process of examining each frame of the recorded experiment, performing image-processing operations to bring out the desired detail, and recording the positions of the objects of interest. It can load sequences of images from disk files or acquire images (via a frame grabber) from film transports, videotape, laser disks, or a live camera. Tracker controls the image source to automatically advance to the next frame. It can employ a large array of image-processing operations to enhance the detail of the acquired images and can analyze an arbitrarily large number of objects simultaneously. Several different tracking algorithms are available, including conventional threshold and correlation-based techniques, and more esoteric procedures such as "snake" tracking and automated recognition of character data in the image. The Tracker software was written to be operated by researchers, thus every attempt was made to make the software as user friendly and self-explanatory as possible. Tracker is used by most of the microgravity combustion and fluid physics experiments performed by Lewis, and by visiting researchers. This includes experiments performed on the space shuttles, Mir, sounding rockets, zero-g research airplanes, drop towers, and ground-based laboratories. This software automates the analysis of the flame or liquid s physical parameters such as position, velocity, acceleration, size, shape, intensity characteristics, color, and centroid, as well as a number of other measurements. It can perform these operations on multiple objects simultaneously. Another key feature of Tracker is that it performs optical character recognition (OCR). This feature is useful in

  9. LHCb Upgrade: Scintillating Fibre Tracker

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Tobin, Mark

    2016-01-01

    The LHCb detector will be upgraded during the Long Shutdown 2 (LS2) of the LHC in order to cope with higher instantaneous luminosities and to read out the data at 40 MHz using a trigger-less read-out system. All front-end electronics will be replaced and several sub-detectors must be redesigned to cope with higher occupancy. The current tracking detectors downstream of the LHCb dipole magnet will be replaced by the Scintillating Fibre (SciFi) Tracker. The SciFi Tracker will use scintillating fibres read out by Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs). State-of-the-art multi-channel SiPM arrays are being developed to read out the fibres and a custom ASIC will be used to digitise the signals from the SiPMs. The evolution of the design since the Technical Design Report in 2014 and the latest R & D results are presented.

  10. Optical System Error Analysis and Calibration Method of High-Accuracy Star Trackers

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Zheng You

    2013-04-01

    Full Text Available The star tracker is a high-accuracy attitude measurement device widely used in spacecraft. Its performance depends largely on the precision of the optical system parameters. Therefore, the analysis of the optical system parameter errors and a precise calibration model are crucial to the accuracy of the star tracker. Research in this field is relatively lacking a systematic and universal analysis up to now. This paper proposes in detail an approach for the synthetic error analysis of the star tracker, without the complicated theoretical derivation. This approach can determine the error propagation relationship of the star tracker, and can build intuitively and systematically an error model. The analysis results can be used as a foundation and a guide for the optical design, calibration, and compensation of the star tracker. A calibration experiment is designed and conducted. Excellent calibration results are achieved based on the calibration model. To summarize, the error analysis approach and the calibration method are proved to be adequate and precise, and could provide an important guarantee for the design, manufacture, and measurement of high-accuracy star trackers.

  11. Optical system error analysis and calibration method of high-accuracy star trackers.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sun, Ting; Xing, Fei; You, Zheng

    2013-04-08

    The star tracker is a high-accuracy attitude measurement device widely used in spacecraft. Its performance depends largely on the precision of the optical system parameters. Therefore, the analysis of the optical system parameter errors and a precise calibration model are crucial to the accuracy of the star tracker. Research in this field is relatively lacking a systematic and universal analysis up to now. This paper proposes in detail an approach for the synthetic error analysis of the star tracker, without the complicated theoretical derivation. This approach can determine the error propagation relationship of the star tracker, and can build intuitively and systematically an error model. The analysis results can be used as a foundation and a guide for the optical design, calibration, and compensation of the star tracker. A calibration experiment is designed and conducted. Excellent calibration results are achieved based on the calibration model. To summarize, the error analysis approach and the calibration method are proved to be adequate and precise, and could provide an important guarantee for the design, manufacture, and measurement of high-accuracy star trackers.

  12. Application Of Expert System Techniques To A Visual Tracker

    Science.gov (United States)

    Myler, Harley R.; Thompson, Wiley E.; Flachs, Gerald M.

    1985-04-01

    A structure for visual tracking system is presented which relies on information developed from previous tracking scenarios stored in a knowledge base to enhance tracking performance. The system is comprised of a centroid tracker front end which supplies segmented image features to a data reduction algorithm which holds the reduced data in a temporary data base relation. This relation is then classified vio two separate modes, learn and track. Under learn mode, an external teacher-irector operator provides identification and weighting cues for membership in a long-term storage relation within a knowledge base. Track mode operates autonomously from the learn mode where the system determines feature validity by applying fuzzy set membership criteria to previously stored track information in the database. Results determined from the classification generate tracker directives which either enhance or permit current tracking to continue or cause the tracker to search for alternate targets based upon analysis of a global target tracking list. The classification algorithm is based on correlative analysis of the tracker's segmented output presentation after low pass filtering derives lower order harmonics of the feature. The fuzzy set membership criteria is based on size, rotation, Irame location, and past history of the feature. The first three factors are lin-ear operations on the spectra, while the last is generated as a context relation in the knowledge base. The context relation interlinks data between features to facilitate tracker operation during feature occlusion or presence of countermeasures.

  13. Analysis of Seasonal and Annual Change of Vegetation in the Indian Thar Desert Using Modis Data

    Science.gov (United States)

    Santra, P.; Chkraborty, A.

    2011-09-01

    The western part of India, specifically the dry region, will play an important role in determining the Indian monsoon and even global climate patterns. Drastically change in land use pattern of the region has been observed during last few decades. In this paper, an effort was made to track the seasonal as well as annual changes of vegetation pattern in Jaisalmer district using MODIS normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) products. Apart from this, ground data on vegetation were also collected under vegetation carbon pool assessment programme of ISRO-IGBP. It was found that during the hot summer month of May, the area under NDVI class 0-0.1 is reduced from 98% during 2003 to 95% during 2009 with a simultaneous increase in area under NDVI class 0.1-0.2 from 2 to 5%. During the month of September, area under NDVI class 0.2-0.3 increased from almost negligible during May to 34-39% during normal or surplus rainfall year but only to 3% during a deficit year. From the ground data on vegetation biomass, it was found that Prosopis juliflora and Acacia senegal are the most abundant trees in Jaisalmer region of the desert. The sites with NDVI value ≥ 0.2 were mostly found with Prosopis juliflora tree. Among shrubs, the most abundant species was Calotropis procera and Zizyphus numularia. From this study, it has been found that MODIS NDVI products may be used to quickly assess the vegetation changes in response to rainfall as well as due to anthroprogenic interventions in desert.

  14. Consequences of changes in vegetation and snow cover for climate feedbacks in Alaska and northwest Canada

    Science.gov (United States)

    Euskirchen, Eugénie S.; Bennett, A. P.; Breen, Amy L.; Genet, Helene; Lindgren, Michael A.; Kurkowski, Tom; McGuire, A. David; Rupp, T. Scott

    2016-01-01

    Changes in vegetation and snow cover may lead to feedbacks to climate through changes in surface albedo and energy fluxes between the land and atmosphere. In addition to these biogeophysical feedbacks, biogeochemical feedbacks associated with changes in carbon (C) storage in the vegetation and soils may also influence climate. Here, using a transient biogeographic model (ALFRESCO) and an ecosystem model (DOS-TEM), we quantified the biogeophysical feedbacks due to changes in vegetation and snow cover across continuous permafrost to non-permafrost ecosystems in Alaska and northwest Canada. We also computed the changes in carbon storage in this region to provide a general assessment of the direction of the biogeochemical feedback. We considered four ecoregions, or Landscape Conservations Cooperatives (LCCs; including the Arctic, North Pacific, Western Alaska, and Northwest Boreal). We examined the 90 year period from 2010 to 2099 using one future emission scenario (A1B), under outputs from two general circulation models (MPI-ECHAM5 and CCCMA-CGCM3.1). We found that changes in snow cover duration, including both the timing of snowmelt in the spring and snow return in the fall, provided the dominant positive biogeophysical feedback to climate across all LCCs, and was greater for the ECHAM (+3.1 W m−2 decade−1regionally) compared to the CCCMA (+1.3 W m−2 decade−1 regionally) scenario due to an increase in loss of snow cover in the ECHAM scenario. The greatest overall negative feedback to climate from changes in vegetation cover was due to fire in spruce forests in the Northwest Boreal LCC and fire in shrub tundra in the Western LCC (−0.2 to −0.3 W m−2 decade−1). With the larger positive feedbacks associated with reductions in snow cover compared to the smaller negative feedbacks associated with shifts in vegetation, the feedback to climate warming was positive (total feedback of +2.7 W m−2decade regionally in the ECHAM scenario compared to +0.76 W

  15. Performance of the LHCb Outer Tracker

    CERN Document Server

    Arink, R; Bachmann, S.; Bagaturia, Y.; Band, H.; Bauer, Th.; Berkien, A.; Farber, Ch.; Bien, A.; Blouw, J.; Ceelie, L.; Coco, V.; Deckenhoff, M.; Deng, Z.; Dettori, F.; van Eijk, D.; Ekelhof, R.; Gersabeck, E.; Grillo, L.; Hulsbergen, W.D.; Karbach, T.M.; Koopman, R.; Kozlinskiy, A.; Langenbruch, Ch.; Lavrentyev, V.; Linn, Ch.; Merk, M.; Merkel, J.; Meissner, M.; Michalowski, J.; Morawski, P.; Nawrot, A.; Nedos, M.; Pellegrino, A.; Polok, G.; van Petten, O.; Rovekamp, J.; Schimmel, F.; Schuylenburg, H.; Schwemmer, R.; Seyfert, P.; Serra, N.; Sluijk, T.; Spaan, B.; Spelt, J.; Storaci, B.; Szczekowski, M.; Swientek, S.; Tolk, S.; Tuning, N.; Uwer, U.; Wiedner, D.; Witek, M.; Zeng, M.; Zwart, A.

    2014-01-01

    The LHCb Outer Tracker is a gaseous detector covering an area of 5x6 m2 with 12 double layers of straw tubes. The detector with its services are described together with the commissioning and calibration procedures. Based on data of the first LHC running period from 2010 to 2012, the performance of the readout electronics and the single hit resolution and efficiency are presented. The efficiency to detect a hit in the central half of the straw is estimated to be 99.2%, and the position resolution is determined to be approximately 200 um. The Outer Tracker received a dose in the hottest region corresponding to 0.12 C/cm, and no signs of gain deterioration or other ageing effects are observed.

  16. The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer Silicon Tracker

    CERN Document Server

    Burger, W J

    1999-01-01

    The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) is designed as a independent module for installation on the International Space Station Alpha (ISSA) in the year 2002 for an operational period of three years. The principal scientific objectives are the searches for antimatter and dark matter in cosmic rays. The AMS uses 5.5 m sup 2 of silicon microstrip sensors to reconstruct charged particle trajectories in the field of a permanent magnet. The detector design and construction covered a 3 yr period which terminated with a test flight on the NASA space shuttle Discovery during June 2-12, 1988. In this contribution, we describe the shuttle version of the AMS silicon tracker, including preliminary results of the tracker performance during the flight. (author)

  17. The CDF online silicon vertex tracker

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Ashmanskas, W.

    2001-01-01

    The CDF Online Silicon Vertex Tracker reconstructs 2-D tracks by linking hit positions measured by the Silicon Vertex Detector to the Central Outer Chamber tracks found by the eXtremely Fast Tracker. The system has been completely built and assembled and it is now being commissioned using the first CDF run II data. The precision measurement of the track impact parameter will allow triggering on B hadron decay vertices and thus investigating important areas in the B sector, like CP violation and B s mixing. In this paper we briefly review the architecture and the tracking algorithms implemented in the SVT and we report on the performance of the system achieved in the early phase of CDF run II

  18. The CDF online Silicon Vertex Tracker

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Ashmanskas, W.; Bardi, A.; Bari, M.; Belforte, S.; Berryhill, J.; Bogdan, M.; Carosi, R.; Cerri, A.; Chlachidze, G.; Culbertson, R.; Dell'Orso, M.; Donati, S.; Fiori, I.; Frisch, H.J.; Galeotti, S.; Giannetti, P.; Glagolev, V.; Moneta, L.; Morsani, F.; Nakaya, T.; Passuello, D.; Punzi, G.; Rescigno, M.; Ristori, L.; Sanders, H.; Sarkar, S.; Semenov, A.; Shochet, M.; Speer, T.; Spinella, F.; Wu, X.; Yang, U.; Zanello, L.; Zanetti, A.M.

    2002-01-01

    The CDF Online Silicon Vertex Tracker (SVT) reconstructs 2D tracks by linking hit positions measured by the Silicon Vertex Detector to the Central Outer Chamber tracks found by the eXtremely Fast Tracker (XFT). The system has been completely built and assembled and it is now being commissioned using the first CDF run II data. The precision measurement of the track impact parameter will allow triggering on B hadron decay vertices and thus investigating important areas in the B sector, like CP violation and B s mixing. In this paper we briefly review the architecture and the tracking algorithms implemented in the SVT and we report on the performance of the system achieved in the early phase of CDF run II

  19. Changes in Remotely Sensed Vegetation Growth Trend in the Heihe Basin of Arid Northwestern China.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Wenchao Sun

    Full Text Available The Heihe River Basin (HRB is the second largest inland river basin in China, characterized by high diversity in geomorphology and irrigated agriculture in middle reaches. To improve the knowledge about the relationship between biotic and hydrological processes, this study used Global Inventory Modeling and Mapping Studies Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI data (1982-2006 to analyze spatiotemporal variations in vegetation growth by using the Mann-Kendall test together with Sen's slope estimator. The results indicate that 10.1% and 1.6% of basin area exhibit statistically significant (p < 0.05 upward and downward trends, and maximum magnitude is 0.066/10a and 0.026/10a, respectively. More specifically, an increasing trend was observed in the Qilian Mountains and Hexi Corridor and a decreasing trend detected in the transitional region between them. Increases in precipitation and temperature may be one possible reason for the changes of vegetation growth in the Qilian Mountains. And decreasing trend in transitional region may be driven by the changes in precipitation. Increases of irrigation contribute to the upward trend of NDVI for cropland in the Hexi Corridor, reflecting that agricultural development becomes more intensive. Our study demonstrates the complexity of the response of vegetation growth in the HRB to climate change and anthropogenic activities and correspondingly adopting mechanistic ecological models capable of describing both factors is favorable for reasonable predictions of future vegetation growth. It is also indicated that improving irrigation water use efficiency is one practical strategy to balance water demand between human and natural ecosystems in the HRB.

  20. A framework for performance evaluation of model-based optical trackers

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Smit, F.A.; Liere, van R.

    2008-01-01

    We describe a software framework to evaluate the performance of model-based optical trackers in virtual environments. The framework can be used to evaluate and compare the performance of different trackers under various conditions, to study the effects of varying intrinsic and extrinsic camera

  1. The LHCb Silicon Tracker - Control system specific tools and challenges

    CERN Document Server

    Adeva, G; Esperante Pereira, D; Gallas, A; Pazos Alvarez, A; Perez Trigo, E; Rodriguez Perez, P; Saborido, J; Amhis, Y; Bay, A; Blanc, F; Bressieux, J; Conti, G; Dupertuis, F; Fave, V; Frei, R; Gauvin, N; Haefeli, G; Keune, A; Luisier, J; Marki, R; Muresan, R; Nakada, T; Needham, M; Knecht, M; Schneider, O; Tran, M; Anderson, J; Buechler, A; Bursche, A; Chiapolini, N; De Cian, M; Elsasser, C; Salzmann, C; Saornil Gamarra, S; Steiner, S; Steinkamp, O; Straumann, U; van Tilburg, J; Tobin, M; Vollhardt, A; Aquines Gutierrez, O; Bauer, C; Britsch, M; Maciuc, F; Schmelling, M; Voss, H; Iakovenko, V; Okhrimenko, O; Pugatch, V

    2014-01-01

    The Experiment Control System (ECS) of the LHCb Silicon Tracker sub-detectors is built on the integrated LHCb ECS framework. Although all LHCb sub-detectors use the same framework and follow the same guidelines, the Silicon Tracker control system uses some interesting additional features in terms of operation and monitoring. The main details are described in this document. Since its design, the Silicon Tracker control system has been continuously evolving in a quite disorganized way. Some major maintenance activities are required to be able to keep improving. A description of those activities can also be found here.

  2. Forecasting method in multilateration accuracy based on laser tracker measurement

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Aguado, Sergio; Santolaria, Jorge; Samper, David; José Aguilar, Juan

    2017-01-01

    Multilateration based on a laser tracker (LT) requires the measurement of a set of points from three or more positions. Although the LTs’ angular information is not used, multilateration produces a volume of measurement uncertainty. This paper presents two new coefficients from which to determine whether the measurement of a set of points, before performing the necessary measurements, will improve or worsen the accuracy of the multilateration results, avoiding unnecessary measurement, and reducing the time and economic cost required. The first specific coefficient measurement coefficient (MC LT ) is unique for each laser tracker. It determines the relationship between the radial and angular laser tracker measurement noise. Similarly, the second coefficient is related with specific conditions of measurement β . It is related with the spatial angle between the laser tracker positions α and its effect on error reduction. Both parameters MC LT and β are linked in error reduction limits. Beside these, a new methodology to determine the multilateration reduction limit according to the multilateration technique of an ideal laser tracker distribution and a random one are presented. It provides general rules and advice from synthetic tests that are validated through a real test carried out in a coordinate measurement machine. (paper)

  3. The Impact of Climate Change on Recent Vegetation Changes on Dovrefjell, Norway

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jarle Inge Holten

    2011-01-01

    Full Text Available The ongoing climate warming has been reported to affect a broad range of organisms, and mountain ecosystems are considered to be particularly sensitive because they are limited by low temperatures. Meteorological data show an increased temperature for the alpine areas at Dovrefjell, Norway, causing a prolonged growing season and increased temperature sum. As part of the worldwide project Global Observation Research Initiative in Alpine Environments (GLORIA, the short-term changes in vascular plant species richness, species composition of lichen and vascular plant communities, and abundance of single species were studied at four summits representing an altitudinal gradient from the low alpine to the high alpine zone. During the period from 2001 to 2008, an increase in species richness at the lowest summit, as well as a change in the composition of vascular plant communities, was found at the two lowest summits. The results also indicate an increase in abundance of some shrubs and graminoids and a decline in the cover of some species of lichens at the lowest summit. These changes are in accordance with climate induced changes reported in other studies, but other causes for the observed vegetation changes, in particular changes in grazing and trampling pressure, cannot be ruled out.

  4. Plant physiological ecology and the global changes Ecofisiologia vegetal e as mudanças globais

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    João Paulo Rodrigues Alves Delfino Barbosa

    2012-06-01

    Full Text Available The global changes are marked by alteration on the normal patterns of important biochemical and biophysical processes of the Earth. However, the real effects as well as the feedbacks of the global changes over vegetation are still unclear. Part of this uncertainty can be attributed to the inattention of stakeholders and scientists towards vegetation and its complex interrelations with the environment, which drive plant physiological processes in different space-time scales. Notwithstanding, some key subjects of the global changes could be better elucidated with a more plant physiological ecology approach. We discuss some issues related to this topic, going through some limitations of approaching vegetation as a static component of the biosphere as the other sub-systems of the Earth-system change. With this perspective, this review is an initial reflection towards the assessment of the role and place of vegetation structure and function in the global changes context. We reviewed the Earth-system and global changes terminology; attempted to illustrate key plant physiological ecology researches themes in the global changes context; consider approaching plants as complex systems in order to adequately quantify systems characteristics as sensibility, homeostasis, and vulnerability. Moreover, we propose insights that would allow vegetation studies and scaling procedures in the context of the Earth-system. We hope this review will assist researchers on their strategy to identify, understand and anticipate the potential effects of global changes over the most vulnerable vegetation processes from the leaf to the global levels.As mudanças globais englobam importantes alterações nos padrões normais de processos bioquímicos e biofísicos da Terra. Os reais efeitos e retroalimentações das mudanças globais sobre a vegetação ainda são incertos. Parte das incertezas pode ser atribuída à falta de atenção de cientistas e políticos para a vegeta

  5. Exploring the Future of Fuel Loads in Tasmania, Australia: Shifts in Vegetation in Response to Changing Fire Weather, Productivity, and Fire Frequency

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Rebecca Mary Bernadette Harris

    2018-04-01

    Full Text Available Changes to the frequency of fire due to management decisions and climate change have the potential to affect the flammability of vegetation, with long-term effects on the vegetation structure and composition. Frequent fire in some vegetation types can lead to transformational change beyond which the vegetation type is radically altered. Such feedbacks limit our ability to project fuel loads under future climatic conditions or to consider the ecological tradeoffs associated with management burns. We present a “pathway modelling” approach to consider multiple transitional pathways that may occur under different fire frequencies. The model combines spatial layers representing current and future fire danger, biomass, flammability, and sensitivity to fire to assess potential future fire activity. The layers are derived from a dynamically downscaled regional climate model, attributes from a regional vegetation map, and information about fuel characteristics. Fire frequency is demonstrated to be an important factor influencing flammability and availability to burn and therefore an important determinant of future fire activity. Regional shifts in vegetation type occur in response to frequent fire, as the rate of change differs across vegetation type. Fire-sensitive vegetation types move towards drier, more fire-adapted vegetation quickly, as they may be irreversibly impacted by even a single fire, and require very long recovery times. Understanding the interaction between climate change and fire is important to identify appropriate management regimes to sustain fire-sensitive communities and maintain the distribution of broad vegetation types across the landscape.

  6. The Impact of Observed Vegetation Changes on Land–Atmosphere Feedbacks During Drought

    KAUST Repository

    Meng, X. H.; Evans, J. P.; McCabe, Matthew

    2014-01-01

    Simulated feedbacks between vegetation fraction, soil moisture, and drought over southeast Australia were also investigated. Results indicate that vegetation fraction changes lag precipitation reductions by 6–8 months in nonarid regions. With the onset of the 2002 drought, a potential fast physical mechanism was found to play a positive role in the soil moisture–precipitation feedback, while a slow biological mechanism provides a negative feedback in the soil moisture–precipitation interaction on a longer time scale. That is, in the short term, a reduction in soil moisture leads to a reduction in the convective potential and, hence, precipitation, further reducing the soil moisture. If low levels of soil moisture persist long enough, reductions in vegetation cover and vigor occur, reducing the evapotranspiration and thus reducing the soil moisture decreases and dampening the fast physical feedback. Importantly, it was observed that these feedbacks are both space and time dependent.

  7. Determinants for sustained use of an activity tracker : observational study

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Hermsen, Sander; Moons, Jonas; Kerkhof, Peter; Wiekens, Carina; De Groot, Martijn

    2017-01-01

    BACKGROUND: A lack of physical activity is considered to cause 6% of deaths globally. Feedback from wearables such as activity trackers has the potential to encourage daily physical activity. To date, little research is available on the natural development of adherence to activity trackers or on

  8. Changes in vegetation, peat properties and peat accumulation in Swedish peatlands as revealed by archive data.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schoning, Kristian; Sohlenius, Gustav

    2016-04-01

    In this investigation we have studied patterns in peat accumulation and changes in mire status since the early 1900s for two areas in Sweden. In the early 1900s the Geological Survey of Sweden collected a vast amount of peat and peatland data, including information on vegetation and land-use. We have used this archive data to evaluate changes in mire vegetation, mire wetness and surface peat properties, rates of peat accumulation, succession in young wetlands and the effects of cultivation on peatlands. In total 156 mires in an uplift area of eastern middle Sweden were included in the data-set, including both pristine mires and peatlands used for agricultural purposes. In this area new peatlands have continuously been formed during the past 7 000 years making it possible to evaluate changes in peat accumulation over time. The other study area is situated in the south Swedish Uplands where we have revisited some larger bogs. The results from our investigation show that many of the peatlands have underwent major changes since the early 1900s. In most of the small peatlands we have found important changes in vegetation where mire vegetation has been replaced by nutrient demanding and/or dry species flora while the tree stand on large mires in south Sweden have increased. In some mires humification has increased in the uppermost peat-layers and the mire surface have become drier compared to the early 1900s. In eastern middle Sweden there are indications that the peat accumulation is lower 0,5 mm/year in older peatlands compared with younger ones 1,2 mm/year, although the mire vegetation in the older peatlands is dominated by sphagnum. The peat depth of the cultivated mires in this area shows a mean decrease of 40 cm since the early 1900s.

  9. Control system design of the CERN/CMS tracker thermal screen

    CERN Document Server

    Carrone, E

    2003-01-01

    The Tracker is one of the CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid experiment) subdetectors to be installed at the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) accelerator, scheduled to start data taking in 2007 at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research). The tracker will be operated at a temperature of -10 degree C in order to reduce the radiation damage on the silicon detectors; hence, an insulated environment has to be provided by means of a screen that introduces a thermal separation between the Tracker and the neighboring detection systems. The control system design includes a formal description of the process by means of a thermodynamic model; then, the electrical equivalence is derived. The transfer function is inferred by the ratio of the voltage on the outer skin and the voltage input, i.e. the ratio of the temperature outside the tracker and the heat generated (which is the controlled variable). A PID (Proportional Integral Derivative) controller has been designed using MatLab. The results achieved so far prove that thi...

  10. The CMS Tracker Upgrade for HL-LHC\\\\ Sensor R$\\&$D

    CERN Document Server

    Naseri, Mohsen

    2014-01-01

    At an instantaneous luminosity of 5~$\\times10^{34}~cm^{-2}~s^{-1}$, the high-luminosity phase of the Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) is expected to deliver a total of 3000~fb$^{-1}$ of collisions, hereby increasing the discovery potential of the LHC experiments significantly. However, the radiation environment of the tracking system will be severe, requiring new radiation hard sensors for the CMS tracker. Focusing on the upgrade of the outer tracker region, the CMS tracker collaboration has almost completed a large material investigation and irradiation campaign to identify the silicon material and design that fulfils all requirements of a new tracking detector at HL-LHC. Focusing on the upgrade of the outer tracker region, pad diodes as well as fully functional strip sensors have been implemented on silicon wafers with different material properties and thicknesses. The samples were irradiated with a mixture of neutrons and protons corresponding to fluences as expected for various positions in the future track...

  11. Development and Testing of the AMEGO Silicon Tracker System

    Science.gov (United States)

    Griffin, Sean; Amego Team

    2018-01-01

    The All-sky Medium Energy Gamma-ray Observatory (AMEGO) is a probe-class mission in consideration for the 2020 decadal review designed to operate at energies from ˜ 200 keV to > 10 GeV. Operating a detector in this energy regime is challenging due to the crossover in the interaction cross-section for Compton scattering and pair production. AMEGO is made of four major subsystems: a plastic anticoincidence detector for rejecting cosmic-ray events, a silicon tracker for measuring the energies of Compton scattered electrons and pair-production products, a CZT calorimeter for measuring the energy and location of Compton scattered photons, and a CsI calorimeter for measuring the energy of the pair-production products at high energies. The tracker comprises layers of dual-sided silicon strip detectors which provide energy and localization information for Compton scattering and pair-production events. A prototype tracker system is under development at GSFC; in this contribution we provide details on the verification, packaging, and testing of the prototype tracker, as well as present plans for the development of the front-end electronics, beam tests, and a balloon flight.

  12. The AMS silicon tracker readout, performance results with minimum ionizing particles

    CERN Document Server

    Alpat, B; Battiston, R; Bourquin, Maurice; Burger, W J; Extermann, Pierre; Chang, Y H; Hou, S R; Pauluzzi, M; Produit, N; Qiu, S; Rapin, D; Ribordy, R; Toker, O; Wu, S X

    2000-01-01

    First results for the AMS silicon tracker readout performance are presented. Small 20.0*20.0*0.300 mm/sup 3/ silicon microstrip detectors were installed in a 50 GeV electron beam at CERN. The detector readout consisted of prototypes of the tracker data reduction card equipped with a 12-bit ADC and the tracker frontend hybrid with VA_hdr readout chips. The system performance is assessed in terms of signal-to-noise, position resolution, and efficiency. (13 refs).

  13. Vegetation change in northern KwaZulu-Natal since the Anglo-Zulu ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    The quality of the landscape is declining in many grassland and savanna areas of Africa as a consequence of woody plant encroachment. We investigated the changes in vegetation at selected sites on the battlefields of the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879 in KwaZulu-Natal. We used fixed-point repeat photographs to compare the ...

  14. Using an eye tracker for accurate eye movement artifact correction

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Kierkels, J.J.M.; Riani, J.; Bergmans, J.W.M.; Boxtel, van G.J.M.

    2007-01-01

    We present a new method to correct eye movement artifacts in electroencephalogram (EEG) data. By using an eye tracker, whose data cannot be corrupted by any electrophysiological signals, an accurate method for correction is developed. The eye-tracker data is used in a Kalman filter to estimate which

  15. Monitoring radiation damage in the LHCb Silicon Tracker

    CERN Multimedia

    Graverini, Elena

    2018-01-01

    The purpose of LHCb is to search for indirect evidence of new physics in decays of heavy hadrons. The LHCb detector is a single-arm forward spectrometer with precise silicon-strip detectors in the regions with highest particle occupancies. The non-uniform exposure of the LHCb sensors makes it an ideal laboratory to study radiation damage effects in silicon detectors. The LHCb Silicon Tracker is composed of an upstream tracker, the TT, and of the inner part of the downstream tracker (IT). Dedicated scans are regularly taken, which allow a precise measurement of the charge collection efficiency (CCE) and the calibration of the operational voltages. The measured evolution of the effective depletion voltage $V_{depl}$ is shown, and compared with the Hamburg model prediction. The magnitudes of the sensor leakage current are also analysed and compared to their expected evolution according to phenomenological models. Our results prove that both the TT and the IT will withstand normal operation until the end of the L...

  16. A retrospective analysis of real-world use of the eaTracker® My Goals website by adults from Ontario and Alberta, Canada.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lieffers, Jessica R L; Haresign, Helen; Mehling, Christine; Hanning, Rhona M

    2016-09-15

    Little is known about use of goal setting and tracking tools within online programs to support nutrition and physical activity behaviour change. In 2011, Dietitians of Canada added "My Goals," a nutrition and physical activity behaviour goal setting and tracking tool to their free publicly available self-monitoring website (eaTracker® ( http://www.eaTracker.ca/ )). My Goals allows users to: a) set "ready-made" SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-related) goals (choice of n = 87 goals from n = 13 categories) or "write your own" goals, and b) track progress using the "My Goals Tracker." The purpose of this study was to characterize: a) My Goals user demographics, b) types of goals set, and c) My Goals Tracker use. Anonymous data on all goals set using the My Goals feature from December 6/2012-April 28/2014 by users ≥19y from Ontario and Alberta, Canada were obtained. This dataset contained: anonymous self-reported user demographic data, user set goals, and My Goals Tracker use data. Write your own goals were categorized by topic and specificity. Data were summarized using descriptive statistics. Multivariate binary logistic regression was used to determine associations between user demographics and a) goal topic areas and b) My Goals Tracker use. Overall, n = 16,511 goal statements (75.4 % ready-made; 24.6 % write your own) set by n = 8,067 adult users 19-85y (83.3 % female; mean age 41.1 ± 15.0y, mean BMI 28.8 ± 7.6kg/m(2)) were included for analysis. Overall, 33.1 % of ready-made goals were from the "Managing your Weight" category. Of write your own goal entries, 42.3 % were solely distal goals (most related to weight management); 38.6 % addressed nutrition behaviour change (16.6 % had unspecific general eating goals); 18.1 % addressed physical activity behaviour change (47.3 % had goals without information on exercise amount and type). Many write your own goals were poor quality (e.g., non-specific (e.g., missing

  17. Data Quality Monitoring of the CMS Tracker

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Dutta, Suchandra

    2011-01-01

    The Data Quality Monitoring system for the Tracker has been developed within the CMS Software framework. It has been designed to be used during online data taking as well as during offline reconstruction. The main goal of the online system is to monitor detector performance and identify problems very efficiently during data collection so that proper actions can be taken to fix it. On the other hand any issue with data reconstruction or calibration can be detected during offline processing using the same tool. The monitoring is performed using histograms which are filled with information from raw and reconstructed data computed at the level of individual detectors. Furthermore, statistical tests are performed on these histograms to check the quality and flags are generated automatically. Results are visualized with web based graphical user interfaces. Final data certification is done combining these automatic flags and manual inspection. The Tracker DQM system has been successfully used during cosmic data taking and it has been optimised to fulfill the condition of collision data taking. In this paper we describe the functionality of the CMS Tracker DQM system and the experience acquired during proton-proton collision.

  18. CarbonTracker CT2007B release

    Data.gov (United States)

    National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce — CarbonTracker is an open product of the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory using data from the Global Monitoring Division greenhouse gas observational network and...

  19. Early-Holocene warming in Beringia and its mediation by sea-level and vegetation changes

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bartlein, P.J.; Edwards, M.E.; Hostetler, Steven W.; Shafer, Sarah; Anderson, P.M.; Brubaker, L. B; Lozhkin, A. V

    2015-01-01

    Arctic land-cover changes induced by recent global climate change (e.g., expansion of woody vegetation into tundra and effects of permafrost degradation) are expected to generate further feedbacks to the climate system. Past changes can be used to assess our understanding of feedback mechanisms through a combination of process modeling and paleo-observations. The subcontinental region of Beringia (northeastern Siberia, Alaska, and northwestern Canada) was largely ice-free at the peak of deglacial warming and experienced both major vegetation change and loss of permafrost when many arctic regions were still ice covered. The evolution of Beringian climate at this time was largely driven by global features, such as the amplified seasonal cycle of Northern Hemisphere insolation and changes in global ice volume and atmospheric composition, but changes in regional land-surface controls, such as the widespread development of thaw lakes, the replacement of tundra by deciduous forest or woodland, and the flooding of the Bering–Chukchi land bridge, were probably also important. We examined the sensitivity of Beringia's early Holocene climate to these regional-scale controls using a regional climate model (RegCM). Lateral and oceanic boundary conditions were provided by global climate simulations conducted using the GENESIS V2.01 atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM) with a mixed-layer ocean. We carried out two present-day simulations of regional climate – one with modern and one with 11 ka geography – plus another simulation for 6 ka. In addition, we performed five ~ 11 ka climate simulations, each driven by the same global AGCM boundary conditions: (i) 11 ka Control, which represents conditions just prior to the major transitions (exposed land bridge, no thaw lakes or wetlands, widespread tundra vegetation), (ii) sea-level rise, which employed present-day continental outlines, (iii) vegetation change, with deciduous needleleaf and deciduous broadleaf boreal

  20. A Hardware Fast Tracker for the ATLAS Trigger: The Fast TracKer (FTK) Project.

    CERN Document Server

    Asbah, Nedaa; The ATLAS collaboration

    2015-01-01

    The trigger system of the ATLAS experiment is designed to reduce the event rate from the LHC nominal bunch crossing at 40 MHz to about 1 kHz, at the design luminosity of 10^{34} cm^{-2} s{-1}. After a successful period of data taking from 2010 to early 2013, the LHC is restarting in 2015 with much higher instantaneous luminosity and this will increase the load on High Level Trigger system, the second stage of the selection based on software algorithms. More sophisticated algorithms will be needed to achieve higher background rejection while maintaining good efficiency for interesting physics signals. The Fast TracKer is part of the ATLAS trigger upgrade project; it is a hardware processor that will provide, at every level-1 accept (100 kHz) and within 100 microseconds, full tracking information for tracks with momentum as low as 1 GeV. Providing fast extensive access to tracking information, with resolution comparable to the offline reconstruction, the Fast Tracker will for example help the High Level Trigger...

  1. Increasing of Urban Radiation due to Climate Change and Reduction Strategy using Vegetation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Park, C.; Lee, D.; Heo, H. K.; Ahn, S.

    2017-12-01

    Urban Heat Island (UHI) which means urban air temperature is higher than suburban area is one of the most important environmental issues in Urban. High density of buildings and high ratio of impervious surfaces increases the radiation fluxes in urban canopy. Furthermore, climate change is expected to make UHI even more seriously in the future. Increased irradiation and air temperature cause high amount of short wave and long wave radiation, respectively. This increases net radiation negatively affects heat condition of pedestrian. UHI threatens citizen's health by increasing violence and heat related diseases. For this reason, understanding how much urban radiation will increase in the future, and exploring radiation reduction strategies is important for reducing UHI. In this research, we aim to reveal how the radiation flux in the urban canyon will change as the climate change and determine how much of urban vegetation will be needed to cover this degradation. The study area is a commercial district in Seoul where highly populated area. Due to the high density of buildings and lack of urban vegetation, this area has a poor thermal condition in summer. In this research, we simulate the radiation flux on the ground using multi-layer urban canopy model. Unlike conventionally used urban canopy model to simulate radiation transfer using vertically single layer, the multi-layer model we used here, enables to consider the vertical heterogeneous of buildings and urban vegetation. As a result, net radiation of urban ground will be increase 2.1 W/m² in the 2050s and 2.7 W/m² in the 2100s. And to prevent the increase of radiation, it is revealed that the urban vegetation should by increased by 10%. This research will be valuable in establishing greening planning as a strategy to reduce UHI effect.

  2. TRACKER INSERTED INTO YB0 & HEAVY LOWERING COMPLETED

    CERN Multimedia

          The Tracker travelled very smoothly from Meyrin to Point 5 during the early hours of December 13th. Lowered later the same day, insertion was completed 18th December. The intense campaign of Tracker connections, involving 980 pipes, 2330 cables and 3623 fibre ribbons, has since begun and is making good progress. The final large element of CMS YE-1 was lowered gently into the cavern on January 22nd. This marks the end of fourteen months of heavy lowering operations.  

  3. Tracker: A three-dimensional raytracing program for ionospheric radio propagation

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Argo, P.E.; DeLapp, D.; Sutherland, C.D.; Farrer, R.G.

    1994-12-01

    TRACKER is an extension of a three-dimensional Hamiltonian raytrace code developed some thirty years ago by R. Michael Jones. Subsequent modifications to this code, which is commonly called the {open_quotes}Jones Code,{close_quotes} were documented by Jones and Stephensen (1975). TRACKER incorporates an interactive user`s interface, modern differential equation integrators, graphical outputs, homing algorithms, and the Ionospheric Conductivity and Electron Density (ICED) ionosphere. TRACKER predicts the three-dimensional paths of radio waves through model ionospheres by numerically integrating Hamilton`s equations, which are a differential expression of Fermat`s principle of least time. By using continuous models, the Hamiltonian method avoids false caustics and discontinuous raypath properties often encountered in other raytracing methods. In addition to computing the raypath, TRACKER also calculates the group path (or pulse travel time), the phase path, the geometrical (or {open_quotes}real{close_quotes}) pathlength, and the Doppler shift (if the time variation of the ionosphere is explicitly included). Computational speed can be traded for accuracy by specifying the maximum allowable integration error per step in the integration. Only geometrical optics are included in the main raytrace code; no partial reflections or diffraction effects are taken into account. In addition, TRACKER does not lend itself to statistical descriptions of propagation -- it requires a deterministic model of the ionosphere.

  4. You are what you eat: within-subject increases in fruit and vegetable consumption confer beneficial skin-color changes.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ross D Whitehead

    Full Text Available Fruit and vegetable consumption and ingestion of carotenoids have been found to be associated with human skin-color (yellowness in a recent cross-sectional study. This carotenoid-based coloration contributes beneficially to the appearance of health in humans and is held to be a sexually selected cue of condition in other species.Here we investigate the effects of fruit and vegetable consumption on skin-color longitudinally to determine the magnitude and duration of diet change required to change skin-color perceptibly. Diet and skin-color were recorded at baseline and after three and six weeks, in a group of 35 individuals who were without makeup, self-tanning agents and/or recent intensive UV exposure. Six-week changes in fruit and vegetable consumption were significantly correlated with changes in skin redness and yellowness over this period, and diet-linked skin reflectance changes were significantly associated with the spectral absorption of carotenoids and not melanin. We also used psychophysical methods to investigate the minimum color change required to confer perceptibly healthier and more attractive skin-coloration. Modest dietary changes are required to enhance apparent health (2.91 portions per day and attractiveness (3.30 portions.Increased fruit and vegetable consumption confers measurable and perceptibly beneficial effects on Caucasian skin appearance within six weeks. This effect could potentially be used as a motivational tool in dietary intervention.

  5. A Sliding Mode Control for a Sensorless Tracker: Application on a Photovoltaic System

    OpenAIRE

    Rhif, Ahmed

    2012-01-01

    The photovoltaic sun tracker allows us to increase the energy production. The sun tracker considered in this study has two degrees of freedom (2-DOF) and especially specified by the lack of sensors. In this way, the tracker will have as a set point the sun position at every second during the day for a period of five years. After sunset, the tracker goes back to the initial position (which of sunrise). The sliding mode control (SMC) will be applied to ensure at best the tracking mechanism and,...

  6. Reliability and Validity of Ten Consumer Activity Trackers Depend on Walking Speed.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fokkema, Tryntsje; Kooiman, Thea J M; Krijnen, Wim P; VAN DER Schans, Cees P; DE Groot, Martijn

    2017-04-01

    To examine the test-retest reliability and validity of ten activity trackers for step counting at three different walking speeds. Thirty-one healthy participants walked twice on a treadmill for 30 min while wearing 10 activity trackers (Polar Loop, Garmin Vivosmart, Fitbit Charge HR, Apple Watch Sport, Pebble Smartwatch, Samsung Gear S, Misfit Flash, Jawbone Up Move, Flyfit, and Moves). Participants walked three walking speeds for 10 min each; slow (3.2 km·h), average (4.8 km·h), and vigorous (6.4 km·h). To measure test-retest reliability, intraclass correlations (ICC) were determined between the first and second treadmill test. Validity was determined by comparing the trackers with the gold standard (hand counting), using mean differences, mean absolute percentage errors, and ICC. Statistical differences were calculated by paired-sample t tests, Wilcoxon signed-rank tests, and by constructing Bland-Altman plots. Test-retest reliability varied with ICC ranging from -0.02 to 0.97. Validity varied between trackers and different walking speeds with mean differences between the gold standard and activity trackers ranging from 0.0 to 26.4%. Most trackers showed relatively low ICC and broad limits of agreement of the Bland-Altman plots at the different speeds. For the slow walking speed, the Garmin Vivosmart and Fitbit Charge HR showed the most accurate results. The Garmin Vivosmart and Apple Watch Sport demonstrated the best accuracy at an average walking speed. For vigorous walking, the Apple Watch Sport, Pebble Smartwatch, and Samsung Gear S exhibited the most accurate results. Test-retest reliability and validity of activity trackers depends on walking speed. In general, consumer activity trackers perform better at an average and vigorous walking speed than at a slower walking speed.

  7. Use of satellite imagery to identify vegetation cover changes following the Waldo Canyon Fire event, Colorado, 2012-2013

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cole, Christopher J.; Friesen, Beverly A.; Wilson, Earl M.

    2014-01-01

    The Waldo Canyon Fire of 2012 was one of the most destructive wildfire events in Colorado history. The fire burned a total of 18,247 acres, claimed 2 lives, and destroyed 347 homes. The Waldo Canyon Fire continues to pose challenges to nearby communities. In a preliminary emergency assessment conducted in 2012, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) concluded that drainage basins within and near the area affected by the Waldo Canyon Fire pose a risk for future debris flow events. Rainfall over burned, formerly vegetated surfaces resulted in multiple flood and debris flow events that affected the cities of Colorado Springs and Manitou Springs in 2013. One fatality resulted from a mudslide near Manitou Springs in August 2013. Federal, State, and local governments continue to monitor these hazards and other post-fire effects, along with the region’s ecological recovery. At the request of the Colorado Springs Office of Emergency Management, the USGS Special Applications Science Center developed a geospatial product to identify vegetation cover changes following the 2012 Waldo Canyon Fire event. Vegetation cover was derived from July 2012 WorldView-2 and September 2013 QuickBird multispectral imagery at a spatial resolution of two meters. The 2012 image was collected after the fire had reached its maximum extent. Per-pixel increases and decreases in vegetation cover were identified by measuring spectral changes that occurred between the 2012 and 2013 image dates. A Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), and Green-Near Infrared Index (GRNIR) were computed from each image. These spectral indices are commonly used to characterize vegetation cover and health condition, due to their sensitivity to detect foliar chlorophyll content. Vector polygons identifying surface-cover feature boundaries were derived from the 2013 imagery using image segmentation software. This geographic software groups similar image pixels into vector objects based upon their spatial and spectral

  8. Volcanic ash deposition and long-term vegetation change on Subantarctic Marion Island

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Yeloff, D.; Mauquoy, D.S.; Barber, K.; Way, S.; van Geel, B.; Turney, C.S.M.

    2007-01-01

    A c. 5500 year record of peatland development and vegetation change was generated from a core recovered from an Agrostis magellanica peat bog on subantarctic Marion Island, using palynomorph, plant macrofossil, and tephra analyses. Two tephra horizons (both 17 cm thick) were identified and dated to

  9. Changes of Vegetation Distribution in the East Dongting Lake After the Operation of the Three Gorges Dam, China

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jia-Yu Hu

    2018-05-01

    Full Text Available Water regime is regarded as the primary factor influencing the vegetation distribution in natural wetland ecosystems. However, the effect of water regime change induced by large-scale hydraulic engineering on vegetation distribution is still unclear. In this study, multi-temporal TM/ETM+/OLI images and hydrological data from 1995 to 2015 were used to elucidate how the change in water regime influenced the vegetation distribution in the East Dongting Lake (EDTL, especially after the operation of the Three Gorges Dam (TGD in 2003. Using unsupervised and supervised classification methods, three types of land cover were identified in the study area: Water and Mudflat, Grass, and Reed and Forest. Results showed that the total vegetation area in EDTL increased by approximately 78 km2 during 1995–2015. The areas of Reed and Forest and Grass exhibited a contrasting trend, dramatic increase in Reed and Forest but sharp decrease in Grass, particularly after the operation of TGD. The lowest distribution elevations of Grass and Reed and Forest decreased by 0.61 and 0.52 m, respectively. As a result of water level variation, submergence duration increased at 20–21 m and 28 m elevations (1–13 days, but significantly decreased at 22–27 m and 29–30 m elevations (-3 to -31 days. The submergence duration of Grass and Reed and Forest was 246 and 177 days, respectively. This study indicated that wetland vegetation pattern significantly changed after the operation of TGD, mainly as a result of changes in submergence condition. Submergence duration might be an effective indicator to predict the shift of vegetation distribution in EDTL, and which could provide scientific guidance for vegetation restoration and wetland management in this lake.

  10. Vegetation community change points suggest that critical loads of nutrient nitrogen may be too high

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wilkins, Kayla; Aherne, Julian; Bleasdale, Andy

    2016-12-01

    It is widely accepted that elevated nitrogen deposition can have detrimental effects on semi-natural ecosystems, including changes to plant diversity. Empirical critical loads of nutrient nitrogen have been recommended to protect many sensitive European habitats from significant harmful effects. In this study, we used Threshold Indicator Taxa Analysis (TITAN) to investigate shifts in vegetation communities along an atmospheric nitrogen deposition gradient for twenty-two semi-natural habitat types (as described under Annex I of the European Union Habitats Directive) in Ireland. Significant changes in vegetation community, i.e., change points, were determined for twelve habitats, with seven habitats showing a decrease in the number of positive indicator species. Community-level change points indicated a decrease in species abundance along a nitrogen deposition gradient ranging from 3.9 to 15.3 kg N ha-1 yr-1, which were significantly lower than recommended critical loads (Wilcoxon signed-rank test; V = 6, p < 0.05). These results suggest that lower critical loads of empirical nutrient nitrogen deposition may be required to protect many European habitats. Changes to vegetation communities may mean a loss of sensitive indicator species and potentially rare species in these habitats, highlighting how emission reductions policies set under the National Emissions Ceilings Directive may be directly linked to meeting the goal set out under the European Union's Biodiversity Strategy of "halting the loss of biodiversity" across Europe by 2020.

  11. Transient inactivation of the paraventricular nucleus of the thalamus enhances cue-induced reinstatement in goal-trackers, but not sign-trackers.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kuhn, Brittany N; Klumpner, Marin S; Covelo, Ignacio R; Campus, Paolo; Flagel, Shelly B

    2018-04-01

    The paraventricular nucleus of the thalamus (PVT) has been shown to mediate cue-motivated behaviors, such as sign- and goal-tracking, as well as reinstatement of drug-seeking behavior. However, the role of the PVT in mediating individual variation in cue-induced drug-seeking behavior remains unknown. This study aimed to determine if inactivation of the PVT differentially mediates cue-induced drug-seeking behavior in sign-trackers and goal-trackers. Rats were characterized as sign-trackers (STs) or goal-trackers (GTs) based on their Pavlovian conditioned approach behavior. Rats were then exposed to 15 days of cocaine self-administration, followed by a 2-week forced abstinence period and then extinction training. Rats then underwent tests for cue-induced reinstatement and general locomotor activity, prior to which they received an infusion of either saline (control) or baclofen/muscimol (B/M) to inactivate the PVT. Relative to control animals of the same phenotype, GTs show a robust increase in cue-induced drug-seeking behavior following PVT inactivation, whereas the behavior of STs was not affected. PVT inactivation did not affect locomotor activity in either phenotype. In GTs, the PVT appears to inhibit the expression of drug-seeking, presumably by attenuating the incentive value of the drug cue. Thus, inactivation of the PVT releases this inhibition in GTs, resulting in an increase in cue-induced drug-seeking behavior. PVT inactivation did not affect cue-induced drug-seeking behavior in STs, suggesting that the role of the PVT in encoding the incentive motivational value of drug cues differs between STs and GTs.

  12. The CMS silicon strip tracker and its electronic readout

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Friedl, M.

    2001-05-01

    The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN (Geneva, CH) will be the world's biggest accelerator machine when operation starts in 2006. One of its four detector experiments is the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), consisting of a large-scale silicon tracker and electromagnetic and hadron calorimeters, all embedded in a solenoidal magnetic field of 4 T, and a muon system surrounding the magnet coil. The Silicon Strip Tracker has a sensitive area of 206m 2 with 10 million analog channels which are read out at the collider frequency of 40 MHz. The building blocks of the CMS Tracker are the silicon sensors, APV amplifier ASICs, supporting front-end ASICs, analog and digital optical links as well as data processors and control units in the back-end. Radiation tolerance, readout speed and the huge data volume are challenging requirements. The charge collection in silicon detectors was modeled, which is discussed as well as the concepts of readout amplifiers with respect to the LHC requirements, including the deconvolution method of fast pulse shaping, electronic noise constraints and radiation effects. Moreover, extensive measurements on prototype components of the CMS Tracker and different versions of the APV chip in particular were performed. There was a significant contribution to the construction of several detector modules, characterized them in particle beam tests and quantified radiation induced effects on the APV chip and on silicon detectors. In addition, a prototype of the analog optical link and the analog performance of the back-end digitization unit were evaluated. The results are very encouraging, demonstrating the feasibility of the CMS Silicon Strip Tracker system and motivating progress towards the construction phase. (author)

  13. Unravelling long-term vegetation change patterns in a binational watershed using multitemporal land cover data and historical photography

    Science.gov (United States)

    Villarreal, Miguel L.; Norman, Laura M.; Webb, Robert H.; Boyer, Diane E.; Turner, Raymond M.

    2011-01-01

    A significant amount of research conducted in the Sonoran Desert of North America has documented, both anecdotally and empirically, major vegetation changes over the past century due to human land use activities. However, many studies lack coincidental landscape-scale data characterizing the spatial and temporal manifestation of these changes. Vegetation changes in a binational (USA and Mexico) watershed were documented using a series of four land cover maps (1979-2009) derived from multispectral satellite imagery. Cover changes are compared to georeferenced, repeat oblique photographs dating from the late 19th century to present. Results indicate the expansion of grassland over the past 20 years following nearly a century of decline. Historical repeat photography documents early-mid 20th century mesquite invasions, but recent land cover data and rephotography demonstrate declines in xeroriparian/riparian mesquite communities in recent decades. These vegetation changes are variable over the landscape and influenced by topography and land management.

  14. The role of climate change in regulating Arctic permafrost peatland hydrological and vegetation change over the last millennium

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Hui; Piilo, Sanna R.; Amesbury, Matthew J.; Charman, Dan J.; Gallego-Sala, Angela V.; Väliranta, Minna M.

    2018-02-01

    Climate warming has inevitable impacts on the vegetation and hydrological dynamics of high-latitude permafrost peatlands. These impacts in turn determine the role of these peatlands in the global biogeochemical cycle. Here, we used six active layer peat cores from four permafrost peatlands in Northeast European Russia and Finnish Lapland to investigate permafrost peatland dynamics over the last millennium. Testate amoeba and plant macrofossils were used as proxies for hydrological and vegetation changes. Our results show that during the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA), Russian sites experienced short-term permafrost thawing and this induced alternating dry-wet habitat changes eventually followed by desiccation. During the Little Ice Age (LIA) both sites generally supported dry-hummock habitats, at least partly driven by permafrost aggradation. However, proxy data suggest that occasionally, MCA habitat conditions were drier than during the LIA, implying that evapotranspiration may create important additional eco-hydrological feedback mechanisms under warm conditions. All sites showed a tendency towards dry conditions as inferred from both proxies starting either from ca. 100 years ago or in the past few decades after slight permafrost thawing, suggesting that recent warming has stimulated surface desiccation rather than deeper permafrost thawing. This study shows links between two important controls over hydrology and vegetation changes in high-latitude peatlands: direct temperature-induced surface layer response and deeper permafrost layer-related dynamics. These data provide important backgrounds for predictions of Arctic permafrost peatlands and related feedback mechanisms. Our results highlight the importance of increased evapotranspiration and thus provide an additional perspective to understanding of peatland-climate feedback mechanisms.

  15. Global changes in dryland vegetation dynamics (1988–2008 assessed by satellite remote sensing: comparing a new passive microwave vegetation density record with reflective greenness data

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    N. Andela

    2013-10-01

    Full Text Available Drylands, covering nearly 30% of the global land surface, are characterized by high climate variability and sensitivity to land management. Here, two satellite-observed vegetation products were used to study the long-term (1988–2008 vegetation changes of global drylands: the widely used reflective-based Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI and the recently developed passive-microwave-based Vegetation Optical Depth (VOD. The NDVI is sensitive to the chlorophyll concentrations in the canopy and the canopy cover fraction, while the VOD is sensitive to vegetation water content of both leafy and woody components. Therefore it can be expected that using both products helps to better characterize vegetation dynamics, particularly over regions with mixed herbaceous and woody vegetation. Linear regression analysis was performed between antecedent precipitation and observed NDVI and VOD independently to distinguish the contribution of climatic and non-climatic drivers in vegetation variations. Where possible, the contributions of fire, grazing, agriculture and CO2 level to vegetation trends were assessed. The results suggest that NDVI is more sensitive to fluctuations in herbaceous vegetation, which primarily uses shallow soil water, whereas VOD is more sensitive to woody vegetation, which additionally can exploit deeper water stores. Globally, evidence is found for woody encroachment over drylands. In the arid drylands, woody encroachment appears to be at the expense of herbaceous vegetation and a global driver is interpreted. Trends in semi-arid drylands vary widely between regions, suggesting that local rather than global drivers caused most of the vegetation response. In savannas, besides precipitation, fire regime plays an important role in shaping trends. Our results demonstrate that NDVI and VOD provide complementary information and allow new insights into dryland vegetation dynamics.

  16. Curricular activities and change in determinants of fruit and vegetable intake among adolescents

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Jørgensen, Thea Suldrup; Rasmussen, Mette; Jørgensen, Sanne Ellegaard

    2017-01-01

    ) schools at follow-up; and 2) associations between curriculum dose received and delivered (student and teacher data aggregated to school- and class-level) and these determinants among students at intervention schools only. At follow-up, more students from intervention than control schools knew......-component school-based intervention (2010 - 2011) on key determinants of adolescents' fruit and vegetable intake and 2) if dose of curricular activities was positively associated with change in these determinants. Using multi-level linear and logistic regression analyses stratified by gender and socioeconomic...... the recommendation for vegetable intake (OR 1.56, CI:1.18, 2.06) and number of fruits liked (taste preferences) increased by 0.22 (CI:0.04, 0.41). At class-level, curriculum dose received was positively associated with proportion of students knowing the recommendation for vegetable intake (OR 1.06, CI:1.002, 1...

  17. TRACKER

    CERN Multimedia

    M. Dinardo and G. Benelli

    2013-01-01

    Pixel Tracker At the beginning of May, the Pixel detector was successfully extracted from inside CMS. The operation lasted one and a half days each for the forward and barrel Pixel detectors. Everything went smoothly: new people were trained during the exercise and care was taken to minimise radiation exposure – see Image 3.  Lessons learned were noted in an updated written extraction procedure.  Care was also taken to prepare for reinsertion around the new beam pipe next year, with new alignment targets placed on the barrel Pixel detector. All pieces were lifted to the surface and are now safely stored at low temperatures in the dedicated Pixel laboratory at Point 5 (see Image 4 and previous Bulletin). Image 3 (a) and (b): Extracted FPIX and BPIX detector The subsequent maintenance of the forward Pixel detector started on 27 May.  Since then one of four half cylinders has been repaired and, even more importantly, most of the failures have been fully understood. ...

  18. Understanding and changing children’s sensory acceptance for vegetables

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Poelman, A.A.M.

    2016-01-01

    Vegetable intake of children is well below recommendations in Australia and in most other western countries. Vegetables are the food category least liked by children. As acceptance is a key driver of intake, strategies are needed to increase children’s acceptance of vegetables. The present thesis

  19. ATLAS Transition Radiation Tracker - large piece

    CERN Multimedia

    2006-01-01

    The ATLAS transition radiation tracker is made of 300'000 straw tubes, up to 144cm long. Filled with a gas mixture and threaded with a wire, each straw is a complete mini-detector in its own right. An electric field is applied between the wire and the outside wall of the straw. As particles pass through, they collide with atoms in the gas, knocking out electrons. The avalanche of electrons is detected as an electrical signal on the wire in the centre. The tracker plays two important roles. Firstly, it makes more position measurements, giving more dots for the computers to join up to recreate the particle tracks. Also, together with the ATLAS calorimeters, it distinguishes between different types of particles depending on whether they emit radiation as they make the transition from the surrounding foil into the straws.

  20. ATLAS Transition Radiation Tracker - small piece

    CERN Multimedia

    2006-01-01

    The ATLAS transition radiation tracker is made of 300'000 straw tubes, up to 144cm long. Filled with a gas mixture and threaded with a wire, each straw is a complete mini-detector in its own right. An electric field is applied between the wire and the outside wall of the straw. As particles pass through, they collide with atoms in the gas, knocking out electrons. The avalanche of electrons is detected as an electrical signal on the wire in the centre. The tracker plays two important roles. Firstly, it makes more position measurements, giving more dots for the computers to join up to recreate the particle tracks. Also, together with the ATLAS calorimeters, it distinguishes between different types of particles depending on whether they emit radiation as they make the transition from the surrounding foil into the straws.

  1. Changes of Bacterial Diversity Depend on the Spoilage of Fresh Vegetables

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Dong Hwan Lee

    2011-04-01

    Full Text Available Almost 10~30% of vegetables were discarded by the spoilage from farms to tables. After harvest, vegetables are often spoiled by a wide variety of microorganisms including many bacterial and fungal species. This investigation was conducted to extent the knowledge of relationship the spoilage of vegetables and the diversity of microbes. The total aerobic bacterial numbers in fresh lettuce, perilla leaf, and chicory were 2.6~2.7×106, 4.6×105, 1.2×106 CFU/g of fresh weight, respectively. The most common bacterial species were Pseudomonas spp., Alysiella spp., and Burkholderia spp., and other 18 more genera were involved in. After one week of incubation of those vegetables at 28℃, the microbial diversity had been changed. The total aerobic bacterial numbers increased to 1.1~4.6×108, 4.9×107, and 7.6×108 CFU/g of fresh weight for lettuce, perilla leaf, and chicory that is about 102 times increased bacterial numbers than that before spoilage. However, the diversity of microbes isolated had been simplified and fewer bacterial species had been isolated. The most bacterial population (~48% was taken up by Pseudomonas spp., and followed by Arthrobacter spp. and Bacillus spp. The spoilage activity of individual bacterial isolates had been tested using axenic lettuce plants. Among tested isolates, Pseudomonas fluorescence and Pantoea agglomerans caused severe spoilage on lettuce.

  2. Proposal for the LHCb outer tracker front-end electronics

    CERN Document Server

    Deppe, H; Feuerstack-Raible, M; Srowig, A; Stange, U; Hommels, B; Sluijk, T

    2001-01-01

    A market survey on available TDCs for reading out the LHCb Outer Tracker has left over only one TDC, which is not optimal for this purpose. Hence, a new readout architecture which is based on a TDC to be developed anew has been defined. This system fits optimal the requirements of the LHCb Outer Tracker and also should be much cheaper. The system and its main issues are described in this paper.

  3. Muon trackers for imaging a nuclear reactor

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kume, N.; Miyadera, H.; Morris, C. L.; Bacon, J.; Borozdin, K. N.; Durham, J. M.; Fuzita, K.; Guardincerri, E.; Izumi, M.; Nakayama, K.; Saltus, M.; Sugita, T.; Takakura, K.; Yoshioka, K.

    2016-09-01

    A detector system for assessing damage to the cores of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors by using cosmic-ray muon tomography was developed. The system consists of a pair of drift-tube tracking detectors of 7.2× 7.2-m2 area. Each muon tracker consists of 6 x-layer and 6 y-layer drift-tube detectors. Each tracker is capable of measuring muon tracks with 12 mrad angular resolutions, and is capable of operating under 50-μ Sv/h radiation environment by removing gamma induced background with a novel time-coincidence logic. An estimated resolution to observe nuclear fuel debris at Fukushima Daiichi is 0.3 m when the core is imaged from outside the reactor building.

  4. Design and development of hybrid energy generator (photovoltaics) with solar tracker

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mohiuddin, A. K. M.; Sabarudin, Mohamad Syabil Bin; Khan, Ahsan Ali; Izan Ihsan, Sany

    2017-03-01

    This paper is the outcome of a small scale hybrid energy generator (hydro and photovoltaic) project. It contains the photovoltaics part of the project. The demand of energy resources is increasing day by day. That is why people nowadays tend to move on and changes their energy usage from using fossil fuels to a cleaner and green energy like hydro energy, solar energy etc. Nevertheless, energy is hard to come by for people who live in remote areas and also campsites in the remote areas which need continuous energy sources to power the facilities. Thus, the purpose of this project is to design and develop a small scale hybrid energy generator to help people that are in need of power. This main objective of this project is to develop and analyze the effectiveness of solar trackers in order to increase the electricity generation from solar energy. Software like Solidworks and Arduino is used to sketch and construct the design and also to program the microcontroller respectively. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the designed solar tracker sytem.

  5. LHCb Silicon Tracker DAQ and DCS Online Systems

    CERN Multimedia

    Buechler, A; Rodriguez, P

    2009-01-01

    The LHCb experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva Switzerland is specialized on precision measurements of b quark decays. The Silicon Tracker (ST) contributes a crucial part in tracking the particle trajectories and consists of two silicon micro-strip detectors, the Tracker Turicensis upstream of the LHCb magnet and the Inner Tracker downstream. The radiation and the magnetic field represent new challenges for the implementation of a Detector Control System (DCS) and the data acquisition (DAQ). The DAQ has to deal with more than 270K analog readout channels, 2K readout chips and real time DAQ at a rate of 1.1 MHz with data processing at TELL1 level. The TELL1 real time algorithms for clustering thresholds and other computations run on dedicated FPGAs that implement 13K configurable parameters per board, in total 1.17 K parameters for the ST. After data processing the total throughput amounts to about 6.4 Gbytes from an input data rate of around ~337 Gbytes per second. A finite state ma...

  6. The construction of the ATLAS semi-conductor tracker

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Jones, Tim

    2006-01-01

    The ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS) experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN has been designed to explore physics at the TeV energy scale and will be commissioned in 2007. In the innermost region of the experiment is a charged particle tracker, the Inner Detector of which the Semiconductor Tracker (SCT) is a major component. The SCT comprises a central barrel section enclosed by two endcaps (A and C). The construction of the major components of the ATLAS Semi-conductor tracker (SCT) is now nearing completion. Following a brief description of the design of the SCT, the logistics and organisation of the construction phase of the project are discussed. Central to the delivery of a high quality detector is the testing of large numbers of modules both during assembly and after they are mounted on their final support structures. The results of these tests for endcap C are presented showing that the electrical performance of the 988 modules to be installed in ATLAS is compatible with the specifications required

  7. The CMS silicon tracker

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    D'Alessandro, R.; Biggeri, U.; Bruzzi, M.; Catacchini, E.; Civinini, C.; Focardi, E.; Lenzi, M.; Loreti, M.; Meschini, M.; Parrini, G.; Pieri, M.; Albergo, S.; Boemi, D.; Potenza, R.; Tricomi, A.; Angarano, M.; Creanza, D.; Palma, M. de; Fiore, L.; Maggi, G.; My, S.; Raso, G.; Selvaggi, G.; Tempesta, P.; Azzi, P.; Bacchetta, N.; Bisello, D.; Candelori, A.; Castro, A.; Da Rold, M.; Giraldo, A.; Martignon, G.; Paccagnella, A.; Stavitsky, I.; Babucci, E.; Bartalini, P.; Bilei, G.M.; Checcucci, B.; Ciampolini, P.; Lariccia, P.; Mantovani, G.; Passeri, D.; Santocchia, A.; Servoli, L.; Wang, Y.; Bagliesi, G.; Basti, A.; Bosi, F.; Borello, L.; Bozzi, C.; Castaldi, R.; Dell'Orso, R.; Giassi, A.; Messineo, A.; Palla, F.; Raffaelli, F.; Sguazzoni, G.; Starodumov, A.; Tonelli, G.; Vannini, C.; Verdini, P.G.; Xie, Z.; Breuker, H.; Caner, A.; Elliott-Peisert, A.; Feld, L.; Glessing, B.; Hammerstrom, R.; Huhtinen, M.; Mannelli, M.; Marchioro, A.; Schmitt, B.; Stefanini, G.; Connotte, J.; Gu, W.H.; Luebelsmeyer, K.; Pandoulas, D.; Siedling, R.; Wittmer, B.; Della Marina, R.; Freudenreich, K.; Lustermann, W.; Viertel, G.; Eklund, C.; Karimaeki, V.; Skog, K.; French, M.; Hall, G.; Mc Evoy, B.; Raymond, M.; Hrubec, J.; Krammer, M.; Piperov, S.; Tuuva, T.; Watts, S.; Silvestris, L.

    1998-01-01

    The new silicon tracker layout (V4) is presented. The system aspects of the construction are discussed together with the expected tracking performance. Because of the high radiation environment in which the detectors will operate, particular care has been devoted to the study of the characteristics of heavily irradiated detectors. This includes studies on performance (charge collection, cluster size, resolution, efficiency) as a function of the bias voltage, integrated fluence, incidence angle and temperature. (author)

  8. Teaching optical phenomena with Tracker

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rodrigues, M.; Simeão Carvalho, P.

    2014-11-01

    Since the invention and dissemination of domestic laser pointers, observing optical phenomena is a relatively easy task. Any student can buy a laser and experience at home, in a qualitative way, the reflection, refraction and even diffraction phenomena of light. However, quantitative experiments need instruments of high precision that have a relatively complex setup. Fortunately, nowadays it is possible to analyse optical phenomena in a simple and quantitative way using the freeware video analysis software ‘Tracker’. In this paper, we show the advantages of video-based experimental activities for teaching concepts in optics. We intend to show: (a) how easy the study of such phenomena can be, even at home, because only simple materials are needed, and Tracker provides the necessary measuring instruments; and (b) how we can use Tracker to improve students’ understanding of some optical concepts. We give examples using video modelling to study the laws of reflection, Snell’s laws, focal distances in lenses and mirrors, and diffraction phenomena, which we hope will motivate teachers to implement it in their own classes and schools.

  9. The ATLAS semiconductor tracker (SCT)

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Jackson, J.N.

    2005-01-01

    The ATLAS detector (CERN,LHCC,94-43 (1994)) is designed to study a wide range of physics at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at luminosities up to 10 34 cm -2 s -1 with a bunch-crossing rate of 40 MHz. The Semiconductor Tracker (SCT) forms a key component of the Inner Detector (vol. 1, ATLAS TDR 4, CERN,LHCC 97-16 (1997); vol. 2, ATLAS TDR 5, CERN,LHCC 97-17 (1997)) which is situated inside a 2 T solenoid field. The ATLAS Semiconductor Tracker (SCT) utilises 4088 silicon modules with binary readout mounted on carbon fibre composite structures arranged in the forms of barrels in the central region and discs in the forward region. The construction of the SCT is now well advanced. The design of the SCT modules, services and support structures will be briefly outlined. A description of the various stages in the construction process will be presented with examples of the performance achieved and the main difficulties encountered. Finally, the current status of the construction is reviewed

  10. Vegetation change in a man-made salt marsh affected by a reduction in both grazing and drainage

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Esselink, Peter; Fresco, LFM; Dijkema, KS

    In order to restore natural salt marsh in a 460-ha nature reserve established in man-made salt marsh in the Dollard estuary, The Netherlands, the artificial drainage system was neglected and cattle grazing reduced. Vegetation changes were traced through two vegetation surveys and monitoring of

  11. Vegetation Activity Trend and Its Relationship with Climate Change in the Three Gorges Area, China

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Guifeng Han

    2013-01-01

    Full Text Available Based on SPOT/VGT NDVI time series images from 1999 to 2009 in the Three Gorges Area (TGA, we detected vegetation activity and trends using two methods, the Mann-Kendall and Slope tests. The relationships between vegetation activity trends and annual average temperature and annual total precipitation were analyzed using observational data in seven typical meteorological stations. Vegetation activity presents a distinctive uptrend during the study period, especially in Fengjie, Yunyang, Wushan, Wuxi, and Badong counties located in the midstream of the Three Gorges Reservoir. However, in the Chongqing major area (CMA and its surrounding areas and Fuling, Yichang, and part of Wanzhou, vegetation activity shows a decreasing trend as a result of urban expansion. The NDVI has two fluctuation troughs in 2004 and 2006. The annual mean temperature presents a slight overall upward trend, but the annual total precipitation does not present a significant trend. And they almost have no significant correlations with the NDVI. Therefore, temperature and precipitation are not major influences on vegetation activity change. Instead, increasing vegetation cover benefits from a number of environment protection policies and management, and ecological construction is a major factor resulting in the upward trend. In addition, resettlement schemes mitigate the impact of human activity on vegetation activity.

  12. Palynological evidence for Pennsylvanian (Late Carboniferous) vegetation change in the Sydney Coalfield, eastern Canada

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Dimitrova, T.K.; Zodrow, E.L.; Cleal, C.J.; Thomas, B.A. [Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia (Bulgaria). Inst. of Geology

    2010-07-15

    The palynology of elastic samples from seven stratigraphical levels in the late Moscovian Sydney Mines Formation, exposed along the shore at Bras d'Or, Nova Scotia, has been investigated. Most of the samples were from roof shales of major coals; the one sample that was not yielded a much higher proportion of pollen derived from extra-basinal vegetation. The four stratigraphically lower roof shale samples yielded essentially similar palynological spectra, with 39 {+-} 4% lycophytes, 9 {+-} 4% sphenophylls, 23 {+-} 4% tree-ferns, 12 4% other ferns and 5 {+-} 3% cordaites. The palynology of the upper part of the investigated succession suggests a shift in vegetation towards one favouring more marattialean tree-ferns, cordaites and conifers, and fewer lycophytes. This correlates with changes in drainage patterns as the alluvial plain migrated seawards and thus changed water tables. No evidence was found to suggest significant climate change at this time.

  13. Global patterns in the vulnerability of ecosystems to vegetation shifts due to climate change

    Science.gov (United States)

    Patrick Gonzalez; Ronald P. Neilson; James M. Lenihan; Raymond J. Drapek

    2010-01-01

    Climate change threatens to shift vegetation, disrupting ecosystems and damaging human well-being. Field observations in boreal, temperate and tropical ecosystems have detected biome changes in the 20th century, yet a lack of spatial data on vulnerability hinders organizations that manage natural resources from identifying priority areas for adaptation measures. We...

  14. Toward Estimating Wetland Water Level Changes Based on Hydrological Sensitivity Analysis of PALSAR Backscattering Coefficients over Different Vegetation Fields

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ting Yuan

    2015-03-01

    Full Text Available Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR has been successfully used to map wetland’s inundation extents and types of vegetation based on the fact that the SAR backscatter signal from the wetland is mainly controlled by the wetland vegetation type and water level changes. This study describes the relation between L-band PALSAR  and seasonal water level changes obtained from Envisat altimetry over the island of Île Mbamou in the Congo Basin where two distinctly different vegetation types are found. We found positive correlations between and water level changes over the forested southern Île Mbamou whereas both positive and negative correlations were observed over the non-forested northern Île Mbamou depending on the amount of water level increase. Based on the analysis of sensitivity, we found that denser vegetation canopy leads to less sensitive  variation with respect to the water level changes regardless of forested or non-forested canopy. Furthermore, we attempted to estimate water level changes which were then compared with the Envisat altimetry and InSAR results. Our results demonstrated a potential to generate two-dimensional maps of water level changes over the wetlands, and thus may have substantial synergy with the planned Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT mission.

  15. Large-scale module production for the CMS silicon strip tracker

    CERN Document Server

    Cattai, A

    2005-01-01

    The Silicon Strip Tracker (SST) for the CMS experiment at LHC consists of 210 m**2 of silicon strip detectors grouped into four distinct sub-systems. We present a brief description of the CMS Tracker, the industrialised detector module production methods and the current status of the SST with reference to some problems encountered at the factories and in the construction centres.

  16. Quality assurance for CMS Tracker LV and HV Power Supplies

    CERN Document Server

    Costa, Marco; Sertoli, M; Trapani, P; Periale, L; Isabella, L; Landi, C; Lucchesi, A

    2007-01-01

    This work describes the quality assurance measurements that have been carried out on about 2000 Power Supply Units produced in CAEN technology for the CMS Silicon Tracker Detector. The automate procedure and the characteristics of the dedicated Test Fixture developed for this activity are described in details. Magnetic field tolerance and radiation hardness of Tracker power supply units is also discussed at length.

  17. SVT: an online silicon vertex tracker for the CDF upgrade

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Bardi, A.; Belforte, S.; Berryhill, J.

    1997-07-01

    The SVT is an online tracker for the CDF upgrade which will reconstruct 2D tracks using information from the Silicon VerteX detector (SVXII) and Central Outer Tracker (COT). The precision measurement of the track impact parameter will then be used to select and record large samples of B hadrons. We discuss the overall architecture, algorithms, and hardware implementation of the system

  18. A retrospective analysis of real-world use of the eaTracker® My Goals website by adults from Ontario and Alberta, Canada

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jessica R. L. Lieffers

    2016-09-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Little is known about use of goal setting and tracking tools within online programs to support nutrition and physical activity behaviour change. In 2011, Dietitians of Canada added “My Goals,” a nutrition and physical activity behaviour goal setting and tracking tool to their free publicly available self-monitoring website (eaTracker® ( http://www.eaTracker.ca/ . My Goals allows users to: a set “ready-made” SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-related goals (choice of n = 87 goals from n = 13 categories or “write your own” goals, and b track progress using the “My Goals Tracker.” The purpose of this study was to characterize: a My Goals user demographics, b types of goals set, and c My Goals Tracker use. Methods Anonymous data on all goals set using the My Goals feature from December 6/2012-April 28/2014 by users ≥19y from Ontario and Alberta, Canada were obtained. This dataset contained: anonymous self-reported user demographic data, user set goals, and My Goals Tracker use data. Write your own goals were categorized by topic and specificity. Data were summarized using descriptive statistics. Multivariate binary logistic regression was used to determine associations between user demographics and a goal topic areas and b My Goals Tracker use. Results Overall, n = 16,511 goal statements (75.4 % ready-made; 24.6 % write your own set by n = 8,067 adult users 19-85y (83.3 % female; mean age 41.1 ± 15.0y, mean BMI 28.8 ± 7.6kg/m2 were included for analysis. Overall, 33.1 % of ready-made goals were from the “Managing your Weight” category. Of write your own goal entries, 42.3 % were solely distal goals (most related to weight management; 38.6 % addressed nutrition behaviour change (16.6 % had unspecific general eating goals; 18.1 % addressed physical activity behaviour change (47.3 % had goals without information on exercise amount and type. Many write your own

  19. The ATLAS Fast Tracker Processing Units - input and output data preparation

    CERN Document Server

    Bolz, Arthur Eugen; The ATLAS collaboration

    2016-01-01

    The ATLAS Fast Tracker is a hardware processor built to reconstruct tracks at a rate of up to 100 kHz and provide them to the high level trigger system. The Fast Tracker will allow the trigger to utilize tracking information from the entire detector at an earlier event selection stage than ever before, allowing for more efficient event rejection. The connection of the system from to the detector read-outs and to the high level trigger computing farms are made through custom boards implementing Advanced Telecommunications Computing Technologies standard. The input is processed by the Input Mezzanines and Data Formatter boards, designed to receive and sort the data coming from the Pixel and Semi-conductor Tracker. The Fast Tracker to Level-2 Interface Card connects the system to the computing farm. The Input Mezzanines are 128 boards, performing clustering, placed on the 32 Data Formatter mother boards that sort the information into 64 logical regions required by the downstream processing units. This necessitat...

  20. Studies for the Commissioning of the CERN CMS Silicon Strip Tracker

    CERN Document Server

    Bloch, Christoph; Abbaneo, Duccio; Fabjan, Christian Wolfgang

    2008-01-01

    In 2008 the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN will start producing proton-proton collisions of unprecedented energy. One of its main experiments is the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), a general purpose detector, optimized for the search of the Higgs boson and super symmetric particles. The discovery potential of the CMS detector relies on a high precision tracking system, made of a pixel detector and the largest silicon strip Tracker ever built. In order to operate successfully a device as complex as the CMS silicon strip Tracker, and to fully exploit its potential, the properties of the hardware need to be characterized as precisely as possible, and the reconstruction software needs to be commissioned with physics signals. A number of issues were identified and studied to commission the detector, some of which concern the entire Tracker, while some are specific to the Tracker Outer Barrel (TOB): - the time evolution of the signals in the readout electronics need to be precisely measured and correctly simulate...

  1. Design of a cost-effective laser spot tracker

    Science.gov (United States)

    Artan, Göktuǧ Gencehan; Sari, Hüseyin

    2017-05-01

    One of the most important aspects of guided systems is detection. The most convenient detection in the sense of precision can be achieved with a laser spot tracker. This study deals with a military grade, high performance and cost-effective laser spot tracker for a guided system. The aim is to develop a high field of view system that will detect a laser spot from a distance of 3 kilometers in which the target is designated from 3 kilometers with a laser. The study basically consists of the system design, modeling, producing and the conducting performance tests of the whole system.

  2. Dynamic Response of Satellite-Derived Vegetation Growth to Climate Change in the Three North Shelter Forest Region in China

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Bin He

    2015-08-01

    Full Text Available Since the late 1970s, the Chinese government has initiated ecological restoration programs in the Three North Shelter Forest System Project (TNSFSP area. Whether accelerated climate change will help or hinder these efforts is still poorly understood. Using the updated and extended AVHRR NDVI3g dataset from 1982 to 2011 and corresponding climatic data, we investigated vegetation variations in response to climate change. The results showed that the overall state of vegetation in the study region has improved over the past three decades. Vegetation cover significantly decreased in 23.1% and significantly increased in 21.8% of the study area. An increase in all three main vegetation types (forest, grassland, and cropland was observed, but the trend was only statistically significant in cropland. In addition, bare and sparsely vegetated areas, mainly located in the western part of the study area, have significantly expanded since the early 2000s. A moisture condition analysis indicated that the study area experienced significant climate variations, with warm-wet conditions in the western region and warm-dry conditions in the eastern region. Correlation analysis showed that variations in the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI were positively correlated with precipitation and negatively correlated with temperature. Ultimately, climate change influenced vegetation growth by controlling the availability of soil moisture. Further investigation suggested that the positive impacts of precipitation on NDVI have weakened in the study region, whereas the negative impacts from temperature have been enhanced in the eastern study area. However, over recent years, the negative temperature impacts have been converted to positive impacts in the western region. Considering the variations in the relationship between NDVI and climatic variables, the warm–dry climate in the eastern region is likely harmful to vegetation growth, whereas the warm

  3. Precision Attitude Determination System (PADS) system design and analysis: Single-axis gimbal star tracker

    Science.gov (United States)

    1974-01-01

    The feasibility is evaluated of an evolutionary development for use of a single-axis gimbal star tracker from prior two-axis gimbal star tracker based system applications. Detailed evaluation of the star tracker gimbal encoder is considered. A brief system description is given including the aspects of tracker evolution and encoder evaluation. System analysis includes evaluation of star availability and mounting constraints for the geosynchronous orbit application, and a covariance simulation analysis to evaluate performance potential. Star availability and covariance analysis digital computer programs are included.

  4. Network based early warning indicators of vegetation changes in a land–atmosphere model

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Yin, Z.; Dekker, S.C.; Rietkerk, M.; Hurk, B.J.J.M. van den; Dijkstra, H.A.

    2016-01-01

    Abstract Numerous model studies demonstrate that ecosystems might not shift smoothly with a gradual change in resource concentration. At specific points, vegetation can suddenly shift from one stable state to another. To predict such undesirable shifts, statistical indicators are proposed for early

  5. Changes in northeast African hydrology and vegetation associated with Pliocene–Pleistocene sapropel cycles

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rose, Cassaundra; Polissar, Pratigya J.; Tierney, Jessica E.; Filley, Timothy

    2016-01-01

    East African climate change since the Late Miocene consisted of persistent shorter-term, orbital-scale wet–dry cycles superimposed upon a long-term trend towards more open, grassy landscapes. Either or both of these modes of palaeoclimate variability may have influenced East African mammalian evolution, yet the interrelationship between these secular and orbital palaeoclimate signals remains poorly understood. Here, we explore whether the long-term secular climate change was also accompanied by significant changes at the orbital-scale. We develop northeast African hydroclimate and vegetation proxy data for two 100 kyr-duration windows near 3.05 and 1.75 Ma at ODP Site 967 in the eastern Mediterranean basin, where sedimentation is dominated by eastern Sahara dust input and Nile River run-off. These two windows were selected because they have comparable orbital configurations and bracket an important increase in East African C4 grasslands. We conducted high-resolution (2.5 kyr sampling) multiproxy biomarker, H- and C-isotopic analyses of plant waxes and lignin phenols to document orbital-scale changes in hydrology, vegetation and woody cover for these two intervals. Both intervals are dominated by large-amplitude, precession-scale (approx. 20 kyr) changes in northeast African vegetation and rainfall/run-off. The δ13Cwax values and lignin phenol composition record a variable but consistently C4 grass-dominated ecosystem for both intervals (50–80% C4). Precessional δDwax cycles were approximately 20–30‰ in peak-to-peak amplitude, comparable with other δDwax records of the Early Holocene African Humid Period. There were no significant differences in the means or variances of the δDwax or δ13Cwax data for the 3.05 and 1.75 Ma intervals studied, suggesting that the palaeohydrology and palaeovegetation responses to precessional forcing were similar for these two periods. Data for these two windows suggest that the eastern Sahara did not experience the

  6. Vegetation coupling to global climate: Trajectories of vegetation change and phenology modeling from satellite observations

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fisher, Jeremy Isaac

    Important systematic shifts in ecosystem function are often masked by natural variability. The rich legacy of over two decades of continuous satellite observations provides an important database for distinguishing climatological and anthropogenic ecosystem changes. Examples from semi-arid Sudanian West Africa and New England (USA) illustrate the response of vegetation to climate and land-use. In Burkina Faso, West Africa, pastoral and agricultural practices compete for land area, while degradation may follow intensification. The Nouhao Valley is a natural experiment in which pastoral and agricultural land uses were allocated separate, coherent reserves. Trajectories of annual net primary productivity were derived from 18 years of coarse-grain (AVHRR) satellite data. Trends suggested that pastoral lands had responded rigorously to increasing rainfall after the 1980's droughts. A detailed analysis at Landsat resolution (30m) indicated that the increased vegetative cover was concentrated in the river basins of the pastoral region, implying a riparian wood expansion. In comparison, riparian cover was reduced in agricultural regions. We suggest that broad-scale patterns of increasing semi-arid West African greenness may be indicative of climate variability, whereas local losses may be anthropogenic in nature. The contiguous deciduous forests, ocean proximity, topography, and dense urban developments of New England provide an ideal landscape to examine influences of climate variability and the impact of urban development vegetation response. Spatial and temporal patterns of interannual climate variability were examined via green leaf phenology. Phenology, or seasonal growth and senescence, is driven by deficits of light, temperature, and water. In temperate environments, phenology variability is driven by interannual temperature and precipitation shifts. Average and interannual phenology analyses across southern New England were conducted at resolutions of 30m (Landsat

  7. Spacecraft angular velocity estimation algorithm for star tracker based on optical flow techniques

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tang, Yujie; Li, Jian; Wang, Gangyi

    2018-02-01

    An integrated navigation system often uses the traditional gyro and star tracker for high precision navigation with the shortcomings of large volume, heavy weight and high-cost. With the development of autonomous navigation for deep space and small spacecraft, star tracker has been gradually used for attitude calculation and angular velocity measurement directly. At the same time, with the dynamic imaging requirements of remote sensing satellites and other imaging satellites, how to measure the angular velocity in the dynamic situation to improve the accuracy of the star tracker is the hotspot of future research. We propose the approach to measure angular rate with a nongyro and improve the dynamic performance of the star tracker. First, the star extraction algorithm based on morphology is used to extract the star region, and the stars in the two images are matched according to the method of angular distance voting. The calculation of the displacement of the star image is measured by the improved optical flow method. Finally, the triaxial angular velocity of the star tracker is calculated by the star vector using the least squares method. The method has the advantages of fast matching speed, strong antinoise ability, and good dynamic performance. The triaxial angular velocity of star tracker can be obtained accurately with these methods. So, the star tracker can achieve better tracking performance and dynamic attitude positioning accuracy to lay a good foundation for the wide application of various satellites and complex space missions.

  8. Changes in composition, ecology and structure of high-mountain vegetation: a re-visitation study over 42 years.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Evangelista, Alberto; Frate, Ludovico; Carranza, Maria Laura; Attorre, Fabio; Pelino, Giovanni; Stanisci, Angela

    2016-01-27

    High-mountain ecosystems are increasingly threatened by climate change, causing biodiversity loss, habitat degradation and landscape modifications. However, very few detailed studies have focussed on plant biodiversity in the high mountains of the Mediterranean. In this study, we investigated the long-term changes that have occurred in the composition, structure and ecology of high-mountain vegetation in the central Apennines (Majella) over the last 42 years. We performed a re-visitation study, using historical and newly collected vegetation data to explore which ecological and structural features have been the most successful in coping with climatic changes. Vegetation changes were analysed by comparing geo-referenced phytosociological relevés collected in high-mountain habitats (dolines, gentle slopes and ridges) on the Majella massif in 1972 and in 2014. Composition analysis was performed by detrended correspondence analysis, followed by an analysis of similarities for statistical significance assessment and by similarity percentage procedure (SIMPER) for identifying which species indicate temporal changes. Changes in ecological and structural indicators were analysed by a permutational multivariate analysis of variance, followed by a post hoc comparison. Over the last 42 years, clear floristic changes and significant ecological and structural variations occurred. We observed a significant increase in the thermophilic and mesonitrophilic plant species and an increment in the frequencies of hemicryptophytes. This re-visitation study in the Apennines agrees with observations in other alpine ecosystems, providing new insights for a better understanding of the effects of global change on Mediterranean high-mountain biodiversity. The observed changes in floristic composition, the thermophilization process and the shift towards a more nutrient-demanding vegetation are likely attributable to the combined effect of higher temperatures and the increase in soil nutrients

  9. A Brightness-Referenced Star Identification Algorithm for APS Star Trackers

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Peng; Zhao, Qile; Liu, Jingnan; Liu, Ning

    2014-01-01

    Star trackers are currently the most accurate spacecraft attitude sensors. As a result, they are widely used in remote sensing satellites. Since traditional charge-coupled device (CCD)-based star trackers have a limited sensitivity range and dynamic range, the matching process for a star tracker is typically not very sensitive to star brightness. For active pixel sensor (APS) star trackers, the intensity of an imaged star is valuable information that can be used in star identification process. In this paper an improved brightness referenced star identification algorithm is presented. This algorithm utilizes the k-vector search theory and adds imaged stars' intensities to narrow the search scope and therefore increase the efficiency of the matching process. Based on different imaging conditions (slew, bright bodies, etc.) the developed matching algorithm operates in one of two identification modes: a three-star mode, and a four-star mode. If the reference bright stars (the stars brighter than three magnitude) show up, the algorithm runs the three-star mode and efficiency is further improved. The proposed method was compared with other two distinctive methods the pyramid and geometric voting methods. All three methods were tested with simulation data and actual in orbit data from the APS star tracker of ZY-3. Using a catalog composed of 1500 stars, the results show that without false stars the efficiency of this new method is 4∼5 times that of the pyramid method and 35∼37 times that of the geometric method. PMID:25299950

  10. Carbon isotopes and charcoal in soils, vegetation changes and climate inferences in the southeastern Brazil

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Pessenda, L.C.R.; Gouveia, S.E.M; Aravena, R; Boulet, R; Bendassolli, J.A

    2001-01-01

    The use of carbon isotopes in studies of soil organic matter (SOM) dynamics have been applied to infer information about vegetation and climate changes during the late Quaternary (Schwartz et al., 1986; Pessenda et al., 1996). This approach had also been used in different areas in Brazil to document vegetation changes during the Holocene (Desjardins et al., 1996; Gouveia et al., 1997; Pessenda et al., 1998a, b, 2001) and late Pleistocene/Holocene (Freitas et al., 2001). The application of carbon isotopes is based on the different 13 C composition of C 3 and C 4 plants and its preservation in SOM. 13 C values of C 3 plant species range from approximately -32% o to -20% o PDB, with a mean of -27% o . In contrast, δ 13 C of C 4 species range from -17% o to -9% o with mean of -13% o . Thus, C 3 and C 4 plant species have distinct δ 13 C values and differ from each other by approximately 14% o (Boutton, 1991). The study of charcoal fragments found in sediments and soils also supplies information about climatic conditions. Charcoal distribution in the soil profiles can provide information about the occurrence of paleofires (Pessenda et al., 1996), possibly associated with drier climate periods and/or human disturbance. In this paper we report δ 13 C data of soil and 14 C dates on charcoal from five soil profiles collected under natural vegetation in the Parana and Sao Paulo states, southeastern Brazil. Carbon isotopes are used to evaluate vegetation changes during the late Pleistocene and Holocene. Charcoal distribution in the soil and its dating are used to infer linkage between forest fires and climate changes and to establish the chronology (au)

  11. Tropical climate and vegetation changes during Heinrich Event 1: a model-data comparison

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    D. Handiani

    2012-01-01

    Full Text Available Abrupt climate changes from 18 to 15 thousand years before present (kyr BP associated with Heinrich Event 1 (HE1 had a strong impact on vegetation patterns not only at high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, but also in the tropical regions around the Atlantic Ocean. To gain a better understanding of the linkage between high and low latitudes, we used the University of Victoria (UVic Earth System-Climate Model (ESCM with dynamical vegetation and land surface components to simulate four scenarios of climate-vegetation interaction: the pre-industrial era, the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, and a Heinrich-like event with two different climate backgrounds (interglacial and glacial. We calculated mega-biomes from the plant-functional types (PFTs generated by the model to allow for a direct comparison between model results and palynological vegetation reconstructions.

    Our calculated mega-biomes for the pre-industrial period and the LGM corresponded well with biome reconstructions of the modern and LGM time slices, respectively, except that our pre-industrial simulation predicted the dominance of grassland in southern Europe and our LGM simulation resulted in more forest cover in tropical and sub-tropical South America.

    The HE1-like simulation with a glacial climate background produced sea-surface temperature patterns and enhanced inter-hemispheric thermal gradients in accordance with the "bipolar seesaw" hypothesis. We found that the cooling of the Northern Hemisphere caused a southward shift of those PFTs that are indicative of an increased desertification and a retreat of broadleaf forests in West Africa and northern South America. The mega-biomes from our HE1 simulation agreed well with paleovegetation data from tropical Africa and northern South America. Thus, according to our model-data comparison, the reconstructed vegetation changes for the tropical regions around the Atlantic Ocean were physically consistent with the remote

  12. Automated SmartPrep tracker positioning in liver MRI scans

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Goto, Takao; Kabasawa, Hiroyuki

    2013-01-01

    This paper presents a new method for automated SmartPrep tracker positioning in liver MRI scans. SmartPrep is used to monitor the contrast bolus signal in order to detect the arrival time of the bolus. Accurately placing the tracker in the aorta while viewing three planar scout images is a difficult task for the operator and is an important problem from the workflow standpoint. The development of an automated SmartPrep tracker would therefore help to improve workflow in liver MRI scans. In our proposed method, the aorta is detected using AdaBoost (which is a machine learning technique) by searching around the cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) in the spinal cord. Analysis of scout scan images showed that our detection method functioned properly for a variety of axial MR images without intensity correction. A total of 234 images reconstructed from the datasets of 64 volunteers were analyzed, and the results showed that the detection error for the aorta was approximately 3 mm. (author)

  13. Upgrades of the CMS Outer Tracker for HL-LHC

    CERN Document Server

    AUTHOR|(CDS)2067159

    2016-01-01

    The LHC machine is planning an upgrade program which will smoothly bring the luminosity to about 5×1034cm$^{−2}$s$^{−1}$ around 2028, to possibly reach an integrated luminosity of 3000 fb$^{−1}$ in the following decade. This High Luminosity LHC scenario, HL-LHC, will require a preparation program of the LHC detectors known as Phase-2 upgrade. The current CMS Outer Tracker, already running close to its design limits, will not be able to survive HL-LHC radiation conditions and CMS will need a completely new device, in order to fully exploit the highly demanding operating conditions and the delivered luminosity. The new Tracker should have also L1 trigger capabilities. To achieve such goals, R&D; activities are ongoing to explore options and develop solutions that would allow including tracking information at Level-1. The design choices for the CMS Outer Tracker upgrades are discussed along with some highlights of the R&D; activities.

  14. [Dynamic changes in vegetation NDVI from 1982 to 2012 and its responses to climate change and human activities in Xinjiang, China].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Du, Jia-qiang; Jiaerheng, Ahati; Zhao, Chenxi; Fang, Guang-ling; Yin, Jun-qi; Xiang, Bao; Yuan, Xin-jie; Fang, Shi-feng

    2015-12-01

    Vegetation plays an important role in regulating the terrestrial carbon balance and the climate system, and also overwhelmingly dominates the provisioning of ecosystem services. Therefore, it has significance to monitor the growth of vegetation. Based on AVHRR GIMMS NDVI and MODIS NDVI datasets, we analyzed the spatiotemporal patterns of change in NDVI and their linkage with climate change and human activity from 1982 to 2012 in the typical arid region, Xinjiang of northwestern China, at pixel and regional scales. At regional scale, although a statistically significant positive trend of growing season NDVI with a rate of 4.09 x 10⁻⁴· a⁻¹ was found during 1982-2012, there were two distinct periods with opposite trends in growing season NDVI before and after 1998, respectively. NDVI in growing season first significantly increased with a rate of 10 x 10⁻⁴· a⁻¹ from 1982 to 1998, and then decreased with a rate of -3 x 10⁻⁴· a⁻¹ from 1998 to 2012. The change in trend of NDVI from increase to decrease mainly occurred in summer, followed by autumn, and the reversal wasn't observed in spring. At pixel scale, the NDVI in farmland significantly increased; the NDVI changes in the growing season and all seasons showed polarization: Areas with significant change mostly increased in size as the NDVI record grown in length. The rate of increase in size of areas with significantly decreasing NDVI was larger than that with significantly increasing NDVI, which led to the NDVI increase obviously slowing down or stopping at regional scale. The vegetation growth in the study area was regulated by both climate change and human activity. Temperature was the most important driving factor in spring and autumn, whereas precipitation in summer. Extensive use of fertilizers and increased farmland irrigated area promoted the vegetation growth. However, the rapid increase in the proportion of cotton cultivation and use of drip irrigation might reduce spring NDVI in the

  15. Vertex and Tracker Research and Development for CLIC

    CERN Document Server

    Munker, M

    2017-01-01

    Challenging detector requirements are imposed by the physics goals at the future multi-TeV e+e− Compact Linear Collider (CLIC). A single point resolution of 3 μm for the vertex detector and 7 μm for the tracker is required. Moreover, the CLIC vertex detector and tracker need to be extremely light weighted with a material budget of 0.2%X0 per layer in the vertex detector and 1 - 2%X0 in the tracker. A fast time slicing of 10 ns is further required to suppress background from beam-beam interactions. A wide range of sensor and readout ASIC technologies are investigated within the CLIC silicon pixel R&D; effort. Various hybrid planar sensor assemblies with a pixel size of 25 × 25 μm2 and 55 × 55 μm2 have been produced and characterised by laboratory measurements and during test-beam campaigns. Experimental and simulation results for thin (50 μm- 500 μm) slim edge and active-edge planar, and High-Voltage CMOS sensors hybridised to various readout ASICs (Timepix, Timepix3, CLICpix) are presented.

  16. Changes in Vegetation Structure along Four Tourist Trails from Kasprowy Wierch, Tatra Mountains

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Magdalena OPRZĄDEK

    2014-11-01

    Full Text Available In this paper there is a new method to asses tourist impact on vegetation cover presented and tested in four locations, which have a different tourist traffic magnitude. Research area is Kasprowy Wierch surroundings in Tatra Mountains. It is a specific place in Tatra Mts., because it can be reached either by cable car or five tourist trails, being the most visited summit in the Polish Carpathians. Each year, there are about 500 thousand people reaching Kasprowy Wierch with a cable car and thousands of walking people. High tourist impact causes many vegetation injuries. Methods used in this research is based on average daily and monthly magnitude of tourist traffic and geobotanical method, which based on a plant species registration and its’ surface coverage estimation using Daubenmeir scale. The results attest that some species are resistant to the pressure and other not. In this regard, the species composition and species percentage can be suitable indicator to measure vegetation changes due to the tourist impact.

  17. Detecting vegetation cover change on the summit of Cadillac Mountain using multi-temporal remote sensing datasets: 1979, 2001, and 2007.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kim, Min-Kook; Daigle, John J

    2011-09-01

    This study examines the efficacy of management strategies implemented in 2000 to reduce visitor-induced vegetation impact and enhance vegetation recovery at the summit loop trail on Cadillac Mountain at Acadia National Park, Maine. Using single-spectral high-resolution remote sensing datasets captured in 1979, 2001, and 2007, pre-classification change detection analysis techniques were applied to measure fractional vegetation cover changes between the time periods. This popular sub-alpine summit with low-lying vegetation and attractive granite outcroppings experiences dispersed visitor use away from the designated trail, so three pre-defined spatial scales (small, 0-30 m; medium, 0-60 m; and large, 0-90 m) were examined in the vicinity of the summit loop trail with visitor use (experimental site) and a site chosen nearby in a relatively pristine undisturbed area (control site) with similar spatial scales. Results reveal significant changes in terms of rates of vegetation impact between 1979 and 2001 extending out to 90 m from the summit loop trail with no management at the site. No significant differences were detected among three spatial zones (inner, 0-30 m; middle, 30-60 m; and outer, 60-90 m) at the experimental site, but all were significantly higher rates of impact compared to similar spatial scales at the control site (all p time period. In addition, the advantages and some limitations of using remote sensing technologies are discussed in detecting vegetation change in this setting and potential application to other recreation settings.

  18. The ATLAS fast tracker processor design

    CERN Document Server

    Volpi, Guido; Albicocco, Pietro; Alison, John; Ancu, Lucian Stefan; Anderson, James; Andari, Nansi; Andreani, Alessandro; Andreazza, Attilio; Annovi, Alberto; Antonelli, Mario; Asbah, Needa; Atkinson, Markus; Baines, J; Barberio, Elisabetta; Beccherle, Roberto; Beretta, Matteo; Biesuz, Nicolo Vladi; Blair, R E; Bogdan, Mircea; Boveia, Antonio; Britzger, Daniel; Bryant, Partick; Burghgrave, Blake; Calderini, Giovanni; Camplani, Alessandra; Cavaliere, Viviana; Cavasinni, Vincenzo; Chakraborty, Dhiman; Chang, Philip; Cheng, Yangyang; Citraro, Saverio; Citterio, Mauro; Crescioli, Francesco; Dawe, Noel; Dell'Orso, Mauro; Donati, Simone; Dondero, Paolo; Drake, G; Gadomski, Szymon; Gatta, Mauro; Gentsos, Christos; Giannetti, Paola; Gkaitatzis, Stamatios; Gramling, Johanna; Howarth, James William; Iizawa, Tomoya; Ilic, Nikolina; Jiang, Zihao; Kaji, Toshiaki; Kasten, Michael; Kawaguchi, Yoshimasa; Kim, Young Kee; Kimura, Naoki; Klimkovich, Tatsiana; Kolb, Mathis; Kordas, K; Krizka, Karol; Kubota, T; Lanza, Agostino; Li, Ho Ling; Liberali, Valentino; Lisovyi, Mykhailo; Liu, Lulu; Love, Jeremy; Luciano, Pierluigi; Luongo, Carmela; Magalotti, Daniel; Maznas, Ioannis; Meroni, Chiara; Mitani, Takashi; Nasimi, Hikmat; Negri, Andrea; Neroutsos, Panos; Neubauer, Mark; Nikolaidis, Spiridon; Okumura, Y; Pandini, Carlo; Petridou, Chariclia; Piendibene, Marco; Proudfoot, James; Rados, Petar Kevin; Roda, Chiara; Rossi, Enrico; Sakurai, Yuki; Sampsonidis, Dimitrios; Saxon, James; Schmitt, Stefan; Schoening, Andre; Shochet, Mel; Shoijaii, Jafar; Soltveit, Hans Kristian; Sotiropoulou, Calliope-Louisa; Stabile, Alberto; Swiatlowski, Maximilian J; Tang, Fukun; Taylor, Pierre Thor Elliot; Testa, Marianna; Tompkins, Lauren; Vercesi, V; Wang, Rui; Watari, Ryutaro; Zhang, Jianhong; Zeng, Jian Cong; Zou, Rui; Bertolucci, Federico

    2015-01-01

    The extended use of tracking information at the trigger level in the LHC is crucial for the trigger and data acquisition (TDAQ) system to fulfill its task. Precise and fast tracking is important to identify specific decay products of the Higgs boson or new phenomena, as well as to distinguish the contributions coming from the many collisions that occur at every bunch crossing. However, track reconstruction is among the most demanding tasks performed by the TDAQ computing farm; in fact, complete reconstruction at full Level-1 trigger accept rate (100 kHz) is not possible. In order to overcome this limitation, the ATLAS experiment is planning the installation of a dedicated processor, the Fast Tracker (FTK), which is aimed at achieving this goal. The FTK is a pipeline of high performance electronics, based on custom and commercial devices, which is expected to reconstruct, with high resolution, the trajectories of charged-particle tracks with a transverse momentum above 1 GeV, using the ATLAS inner tracker info...

  19. CellTracker (not only) for dummies.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Piccinini, Filippo; Kiss, Alexa; Horvath, Peter

    2016-03-15

    Time-lapse experiments play a key role in studying the dynamic behavior of cells. Single-cell tracking is one of the fundamental tools for such analyses. The vast majority of the recently introduced cell tracking methods are limited to fluorescently labeled cells. An equally important limitation is that most software cannot be effectively used by biologists without reasonable expertise in image processing. Here we present CellTracker, a user-friendly open-source software tool for tracking cells imaged with various imaging modalities, including fluorescent, phase contrast and differential interference contrast (DIC) techniques. CellTracker is written in MATLAB (The MathWorks, Inc., USA). It works with Windows, Macintosh and UNIX-based systems. Source code and graphical user interface (GUI) are freely available at: http://celltracker.website/ horvath.peter@brc.mta.hu Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

  20. TRACKER

    CERN Multimedia

    R. Yohay and E. Butz

    2013-01-01

      Pixel Tracker Preparation of the newly built Pixel clean room in the radioprotection (RP) zone of SX5 has been proceeding at a steady clip since the beginning of 2013. The clean room is designed to provide a cold, dry, dust-free laboratory environment for storage and repairs of the CMS Pixel detector during LS1 and future LHC shutdown periods. To that end, it is required to have robust temperature and humidity control, standalone DAQ and DCS systems, and space for specialised silicon testing and repair equipment. Good progress has been made in delivering each of these items. The ongoing project of commissioning the clean room HVAC system has been a success so far. The clean room will be kept at 10–20 Pa above atmospheric pressure to ensure that contaminants flow out of the room. There are two operating temperatures for the room: 21°C will be used when the Pixel detector components are under cold storage at subzero temperatures in well-sealed “cold boxes,” ...

  1. TRACKER

    CERN Multimedia

    E. Butz

    2011-01-01

    The strip tracker took data very efficiently during 2010 with system availabilities of above 97% in the pp running and close to 100% during the heavy-ion running. The number of active channels in the readout is largely stable around 98%. The maintenance and development during the extended technical stop have been focussed on improving the operating conditions of the main silicon strip cooling plants SS1 and SS2, which have been items of concern (see last Bulletin). In order to stabilise and smooth the operation of SS1 and SS2, larger bypass valves and variable frequency drivers (VFDs) have been introduced. Possible noise induced by operation of the VFDs on other parts of CMS has been evaluated and no increased noise has been reported so far. The leak rate of every single line on SS2 was measured with the precise test-rig. Besides the known leaky lines, ten other SS2 lines were measured to leak between 120 g/day and 1200 g/day under the given test conditions, establishin...

  2. Evaluating the effectiveness of organisational-level strategies with or without an activity tracker to reduce office workers' sitting time: a cluster-randomised trial.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brakenridge, C L; Fjeldsoe, B S; Young, D C; Winkler, E A H; Dunstan, D W; Straker, L M; Healy, G N

    2016-11-04

    Office workers engage in high levels of sitting time. Effective, context-specific, and scalable strategies are needed to support widespread sitting reduction. This study aimed to evaluate organisational-support strategies alone or in combination with an activity tracker to reduce sitting in office workers. From one organisation, 153 desk-based office workers were cluster-randomised (by team) to organisational support only (e.g., manager support, emails; 'Group ORG', 9 teams, 87 participants), or organisational support plus LUMOback activity tracker ('Group ORG + Tracker', 9 teams, 66 participants). The waist-worn tracker provided real-time feedback and prompts on sitting and posture. ActivPAL3 monitors were used to ascertain primary outcomes (sitting time during work- and overall hours) and other activity outcomes: prolonged sitting time (≥30 min bouts), time between sitting bouts, standing time, stepping time, and number of steps. Health and work outcomes were assessed by questionnaire. Changes within each group (three- and 12 months) and differences between groups were analysed by linear mixed models. Missing data were multiply imputed. At baseline, participants (46 % women, 23-58 years) spent (mean ± SD) 74.3 ± 9.7 % of their workday sitting, 17.5 ± 8.3 % standing and 8.1 ± 2.7 % stepping. Significant (p work and overall) were observed within both groups, but only at 12 months. For secondary activity outcomes, Group ORG significantly improved in work prolonged sitting, time between sitting bouts and standing time, and overall prolonged sitting time (12 months), and in overall standing time (three- and 12 months); while Group ORG + Tracker, significantly improved in work prolonged sitting, standing, stepping and overall standing time (12 months). Adjusted for confounders, the only significant between-group differences were a greater stepping time and step count for Group ORG + Tracker relative to Group ORG (+20.6

  3. System-on-a-Chip Based Nano Star Tracker and Its Real-Time Image Processing Approach

    OpenAIRE

    Wei, Minsong; Bao, Jingyu; Xing, Fei; Liu, Zengyi; Sun, Ting; You, Zheng

    2016-01-01

    The star tracker is one of the most accurate components for satellite attitude determination. With the development of the nano star tracker, it is compatible for application on small satellites. However, the drawback in dynamic property of nano star tracker has limited its extensive applications. The principal objective of this study is to introduce a system-on-a-chip (SOC) based nano star tracker with enhanced dynamic property. A morphology based image processing approach was realized based ...

  4. A novel algorithm for single-axis maximum power generation sun trackers

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Lee, Kung-Yen; Chung, Chi-Yao; Huang, Bin-Juine; Kuo, Ting-Jung; Yang, Huang-Wei; Cheng, Hung-Yen; Hsu, Po-Chien; Li, Kang

    2017-01-01

    Highlights: • A novel algorithm for a single-axis sun tracker is developed to increase the efficiency. • Photovoltaic module is rotated to find the optimal angle for generating the maximum power. • Electric energy increases up to 8.3%, compared with that of the tracker with three fixed angles. • The rotation range is optimized to reduce energy consumption from the rotation operations. - Abstract: The purpose of this study is to develop a novel algorithm for a single-axis maximum power generation sun tracker in order to identify the optimal stopping angle for generating the maximum amount of daily electric energy. First, the photovoltaic modules of the single-axis maximum power generation sun tracker are automatically rotated from 50° east to 50° west. During the rotation, the instantaneous power generated at different angles is recorded and compared, meaning that the optimal angle for generating the maximum power can be determined. Once the rotation (detection) is completed, the photovoltaic modules are then rotated to the resulting angle for generating the maximum power. The photovoltaic module is rotated once per hour in an attempt to detect the maximum irradiation and overcome the impact of environmental effects such as shading from cloud cover, other photovoltaic modules and surrounding buildings. Furthermore, the detection range is halved so as to reduce the energy consumption from the rotation operations and to improve the reliability of the sun tracker. The results indicate that electric energy production is increased by 3.4% in spring and autumn, 5.4% in summer, and 8.3% in winter, compared with that of the same sun tracker with three fixed angles of 50° east in the morning, 0° at noon and 50° west in the afternoon.

  5. CO2-vegetation feedbacks and other climate changes implicated in reducing base flow

    Science.gov (United States)

    Trancoso, Ralph; Larsen, Joshua R.; McVicar, Tim R.; Phinn, Stuart R.; McAlpine, Clive A.

    2017-03-01

    Changes in the hydrological cycle have a significant impact in water limited environments. Globally, some of these regions are experiencing declining precipitation yet are simultaneously becoming greener, partly due to vegetation feedbacks associated with increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Reduced precipitation together with increasing rates of actual evapotranspiration diminishes streamflow, especially base flow, a critical freshwater dry-season resource. Here we assess recent changes in base flow in Australia from 1981-2013 and 1950-2013 and separate the contribution of precipitation, potential evapotranspiration, and other factors on base flow trends. Our findings reveal that these other factors influencing the base flow trends are best explained by an increase in photosynthetic activity. These results provide the first robust observational evidence that increasing atmospheric CO2 and its associated vegetation feedbacks are reducing base flow in addition to other climatic impacts. These findings have broad implications for water resource management, especially in the world's water limited regions.

  6. A novel adaptive sun tracker for spacecraft solar panel based on hybrid unsymmetric composite laminates

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wu, Zhangming; Li, Hao

    2017-11-01

    This paper proposes a novel adaptive sun tracker which is constructed by hybrid unsymmetric composite laminates. The adaptive sun tracker could be applied on spacecraft solar panels to increase their energy efficiency through decreasing the inclined angle between the sunlight and the solar panel normal. The sun tracker possesses a large rotation freedom and its rotation angle depends on the laminate temperature, which is affected by the light condition in the orbit. Both analytical model and finite element model (FEM) are developed for the sun tracker to predict its rotation angle in different light conditions. In this work, the light condition of the geosynchronous orbit on winter solstice is considered in the numerical prediction of the temperatures of the hybrid laminates. The final inclined angle between the sunlight and the solar panel normal during a solar day is computed using the finite element model. Parametric study of the adaptive sun tracker is conducted to improve its capacity and effectiveness of sun tracking. The improved adaptive sun tracker is lightweight and has a state-of-the-art design. In addition, the adaptive sun tracker does not consume any power of the solar panel, since it has no electrical driving devices. The proposed adaptive sun tracker provides a potential alternative to replace the traditional sophisticated electrical driving mechanisms for spacecraft solar panels.

  7. Localised proton MR spectroscopy of brain metabolism changes in vegetative patients

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Ricci, R.; Barbarella, G.; Musi, P.; Boldrini, P.; Trevisan, C.; Basaglia, N.

    1997-01-01

    We examined 14 vegetative brain-injured patients with proton magnetic resonance single-volume spectroscopy ( 1 H MRS) at 1.5 T to establish whether there were changes in relative concentrations of N -acetyl aspartate (NAA), choline (Cho) and creatine (CR) metabolites from those found in healthy brains. Spectra were obtained from two different (2 x 2 x 2 cm) volumes of interest in the left and in the right frontal cortex, normal on MRI. All spectra revealed abnormalities compared with normal spectra obtained from age-matched control subjects. Values outside the normal range for at least one of the metabolite ratios were observed in all patients. Cho/Cr was markedly higher and NAA/Cho and NAA/Cr were markedly lower than in the control subjects. At different times six patients regained awareness and the ability to obey commands, and four were re-examined; changes in metabolite ratios were observed, which were different in individual patients. The NAA/Cho ratio reaches statistical significance in discriminating between the patients with a poor outcome (death or prolonged vegetative state) and those who regained awareness; the dividing line appears to be at a value of about 1.6. (orig.). With 8 figs., 2 tabs

  8. Impacts of Climate Change Induced Vegetation Responses on BVOC Emissions from Subarctic Heath Ecosystems

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Valolahti, Hanna Maritta

    The role of biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) affecting Earths’ climate system is one of the greatest uncertainties when modelling the global climate change. BVOCs presence in the atmosphere can have both positive and negative climate feedback mechanisms when they involve atmospheric...... chemistry and physics. Vegetation is the main source of BVOCs. Their production is directly linked to temperature and the foliar biomass. On global scale, vegetation in subarctic and arctic regions has been modeled to have only minor contribution to annual total BVOC emissions. In these regions cold...... temperature has been regulating annual plant biomass production, but ongoing global warming is more pronounced in these regions than what the global average is. This may increase the importance of subarctic and arctic vegetation as a source of BVOC emissions in near future. This thesis aims to increase...

  9. Intraoperative magnetic tracker calibration using a magneto-optic hybrid tracker for 3-D ultrasound-based navigation in laparoscopic surgery.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nakamoto, Masahiko; Nakada, Kazuhisa; Sato, Yoshinobu; Konishi, Kozo; Hashizume, Makoto; Tamura, Shinichi

    2008-02-01

    This paper describes a ultrasound (3-D US) system that aims to achieve augmented reality (AR) visualization during laparoscopic surgery, especially for the liver. To acquire 3-D US data of the liver, the tip of a laparoscopic ultrasound probe is tracked inside the abdominal cavity using a magnetic tracker. The accuracy of magnetic trackers, however, is greatly affected by magnetic field distortion that results from the close proximity of metal objects and electronic equipment, which is usually unavoidable in the operating room. In this paper, we describe a calibration method for intraoperative magnetic distortion that can be applied to laparoscopic 3-D US data acquisition; we evaluate the accuracy and feasibility of the method by in vitro and in vivo experiments. Although calibration data can be acquired freehand using a magneto-optic hybrid tracker, there are two problems associated with this method--error caused by the time delay between measurements of the optical and magnetic trackers, and instability of the calibration accuracy that results from the uniformity and density of calibration data. A temporal calibration procedure is developed to estimate the time delay, which is then integrated into the calibration, and a distortion model is formulated by zeroth-degree to fourth-degree polynomial fitting to the calibration data. In the in vivo experiment using a pig, the positional error caused by magnetic distortion was reduced from 44.1 to 2.9 mm. The standard deviation of corrected target positions was less than 1.0 mm. Freehand acquisition of calibration data was performed smoothly using a magneto-optic hybrid sampling tool through a trocar under guidance by realtime 3-D monitoring of the tool trajectory; data acquisition time was less than 2 min. The present study suggests that our proposed method could correct for magnetic field distortion inside the patient's abdomen during a laparoscopic procedure within a clinically permissible period of time, as well as

  10. Heterogeneity in global vegetation and terrestrial climate change during the late Eocene to early Oligocene transition.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pound, Matthew J; Salzmann, Ulrich

    2017-02-24

    Rapid global cooling at the Eocene - Oligocene Transition (EOT), ~33.9-33.5 Ma, is widely considered to mark the onset of the modern icehouse world. A large and rapid drop in atmospheric pCO 2 has been proposed as the driving force behind extinctions in the marine realm and glaciation on Antarctica. However, the global terrestrial response to this cooling is uncertain. Here we present the first global vegetation and terrestrial temperature reconstructions for the EOT. Using an extensive palynological dataset, that has been statistically grouped into palaeo-biomes, we show a more transitional nature of terrestrial climate change by indicating a spatial and temporal heterogeneity of vegetation change at the EOT in both hemispheres. The reconstructed terrestrial temperatures show for many regions a cooling that started well before the EOT and continued into the Early Oligocene. We conclude that the heterogeneous pattern of global vegetation change has been controlled by a combination of multiple forcings, such as tectonics, sea-level fall and long-term decline in greenhouse gas concentrations during the late Eocene to early Oligocene, and does not represent a single response to a rapid decline in atmospheric pCO 2 at the EOT.

  11. Functional Trait Changes, Productivity Shifts and Vegetation Stability in Mountain Grasslands during a Short-Term Warming.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Debouk, Haifa; de Bello, Francesco; Sebastià, Maria-Teresa

    2015-01-01

    Plant functional traits underlie vegetation responses to environmental changes such as global warming, and consequently influence ecosystem processes. While most of the existing studies focus on the effect of warming only on species diversity and productivity, we further investigated (i) how the structure of community plant functional traits in temperate grasslands respond to experimental warming, and (ii) whether species and functional diversity contribute to a greater stability of grasslands, in terms of vegetation composition and productivity. Intact vegetation turves were extracted from temperate subalpine grassland (highland) in the Eastern Pyrenees and transplanted into a warm continental, experimental site in Lleida, in Western Catalonia (lowland). The impacts of simulated warming on plant production and diversity, functional trait structure, and vegetation compositional stability were assessed. We observed an increase in biomass and a reduction in species and functional diversity under short-term warming. The functional structure of the grassland communities changed significantly, in terms of functional diversity and community-weighted means (CWM) for several traits. Acquisitive and fast-growing species with higher SLA, early flowering, erect growth habit, and rhizomatous strategy became dominant in the lowland. Productivity was significantly positively related to species, and to a lower extent, functional diversity, but productivity and stability after warming were more dependent on trait composition (CWM) than on diversity. The turves with more acquisitive species before warming changed less in composition after warming. Results suggest that (i) the short-term warming can lead to the dominance of acquisitive fast growing species over conservative species, thus reducing species richness, and (ii) the functional traits structure in grassland communities had a greater influence on the productivity and stability of the community under short-term warming

  12. Functional Trait Changes, Productivity Shifts and Vegetation Stability in Mountain Grasslands during a Short-Term Warming.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Haifa Debouk

    Full Text Available Plant functional traits underlie vegetation responses to environmental changes such as global warming, and consequently influence ecosystem processes. While most of the existing studies focus on the effect of warming only on species diversity and productivity, we further investigated (i how the structure of community plant functional traits in temperate grasslands respond to experimental warming, and (ii whether species and functional diversity contribute to a greater stability of grasslands, in terms of vegetation composition and productivity. Intact vegetation turves were extracted from temperate subalpine grassland (highland in the Eastern Pyrenees and transplanted into a warm continental, experimental site in Lleida, in Western Catalonia (lowland. The impacts of simulated warming on plant production and diversity, functional trait structure, and vegetation compositional stability were assessed. We observed an increase in biomass and a reduction in species and functional diversity under short-term warming. The functional structure of the grassland communities changed significantly, in terms of functional diversity and community-weighted means (CWM for several traits. Acquisitive and fast-growing species with higher SLA, early flowering, erect growth habit, and rhizomatous strategy became dominant in the lowland. Productivity was significantly positively related to species, and to a lower extent, functional diversity, but productivity and stability after warming were more dependent on trait composition (CWM than on diversity. The turves with more acquisitive species before warming changed less in composition after warming. Results suggest that (i the short-term warming can lead to the dominance of acquisitive fast growing species over conservative species, thus reducing species richness, and (ii the functional traits structure in grassland communities had a greater influence on the productivity and stability of the community under short

  13. 3D Silicon Tracker for AFP - From Qualification to Operation

    CERN Document Server

    F\\"orster, Fabian Alexander; The ATLAS collaboration

    2017-01-01

    The ATLAS Forward Proton (AFP) experiment is a detector located ~210 m away from the ATLAS interaction point on both sides. Its aim is to tag and measure forward protons produced in diffractive events. The detector consists of a 3D silicon pixel tracker, to measure the proton trajectory, as well as a time-of-flight system to suppress pileup-related backgrounds. Each tracker and the ToF system are placed inside a Roman Pot, allowing operation in the vicinity of the LHC beam, up to 2-3 mm. AFP was installed in 2 stages during the LHC technical shutdowns of 2015-2016 and 2016-2017. This presentation will give an overview of the silicon sensor qualification as well as the production, assembly and quality assurance of the tracker modules. The installation, commissioning and operation of the full detector will also be discussed.

  14. Detector production for the R3B Si-tracker

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Borri, M., E-mail: marcello.borri@liverpool.ac.uk [University of Liverpool, Department of Physics, Oxford Street, Liverpool L69 7ZE (United Kingdom); Lemmon, R. [STFC Daresbury Laboratory, Daresbury, Warrington WA4 4 CE (United Kingdom); Thornhill, J.; Bate, R.; Chartier, M. [University of Liverpool, Department of Physics, Oxford Street, Liverpool L69 7ZE (United Kingdom); Clague, N. [STFC Daresbury Laboratory, Daresbury, Warrington WA4 4 CE (United Kingdom); Herzberg, R.-D. [University of Liverpool, Department of Physics, Oxford Street, Liverpool L69 7ZE (United Kingdom); Labiche, M. [STFC Daresbury Laboratory, Daresbury, Warrington WA4 4 CE (United Kingdom); Lindsay, S.; Nolan, P.; Pearce, F.; Powell, W.; Wells, D. [University of Liverpool, Department of Physics, Oxford Street, Liverpool L69 7ZE (United Kingdom)

    2016-11-11

    R3B is a fixed target experiment which will study reactions with relativistic radioactive beams at FAIR. Its Si-tracker will surround the target volume and it will detect light charged-particles like protons. The detector technology in use consists of double-sided silicon strip sensors wire bonded to the custom made R3B-ASIC. The tracker allows for a maximum of two outer layers and one inner layer. This paper reports on the production of detectors necessary to build the minimum tracking configuration: one inner layer and one outer layer.

  15. Effects of metals on vegetation

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Press, N P

    1972-01-01

    Prospectors have long known that abnormal concentrations of metals in the soil overlying an ore deposit can affect the vegetation rooting in this soil; mineral deposits have even been discovered because of such vegetation changes. Recently, many people have become interested in the possibility of remote sensing such vegetation changes, and perhaps using the results in conjunction with airborne geophysics and photogeological interpretation in integrated prospecting programs.

  16. Ageing and Performance Studies of the Outer Tracker of the LHCb Detector

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Haas, T.

    2007-01-01

    The Outer Tracker is part of the LHCb tracking system. It uses drift chamber to measure the track of a particle. The straws have a length of 2.5m and a diameter of 4.9 mm. They are operated in proportional mode and should measure tracks with a precision of 200 μm per hit. In the first part, this thesis presents the results of a performance study for the Outer Tracker, focussing on spatial resolution and efficiency. The main part of this thesis deals with aging studies. Neither a test with 8 keV X-rays nor with highly ionising protons showed any change in the module behavior due to aging. The acceleration factors compared to LHCb were 8-180 (anode current >80 nA/cm) in the most irradiated areas. A charge of up to 3 C/cm was accumulated. Aging tests at anode currents below 15 nA/cm (acceleration factor 1) showed a significant gain drop for the already produced modules after only a few days (1-2 mC/cm) of irradiation. The aging depends on several parameters like gas flow velocity or gas mixture. There is no aging for anode currents >12 nA/cm. This aging is an effect of outgassing material used in the module. Tests showed that the outgassing is probably caused by the epoxy adhesive. Flushing and warming the modules reduce the aging significantly. As things are, the Outer Tracker modules can be operated in LHCb for several years. (orig.)

  17. Reliability and Validity of Ten Consumer Activity Trackers Depend on Walking Speed

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Fokkema, Tryntsje; Kooiman, Thea J. M.; Krijnen, Wim P.; Van der Schans, Cees P.; De Groot, Martijn

    Purpose: To examine the test-retest reliability and validity of ten activity trackers for step counting at three different walking speeds. Methods: Thirty-one healthy participants walked twice on a treadmill for 30 min while wearing 10 activity trackers (Polar Loop, Garmin Vivosmart, Fitbit Charge

  18. Reliability and validity of ten consumer activity trackers depend on walking speed

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Fokkema, Tryntsje; Kooiman, Thea; Krijnen, Wim; van der Schans, Cees; de Groot, Martijn

    Purpose: To examine the test–retest reliability and validity of ten activity trackers for step counting at three different walking speeds. Methods: Thirty-one healthy participants walked twice on a treadmill for 30 min while wearing 10 activity trackers (Polar Loop, Garmin Vivosmart, Fitbit Charge

  19. An accuracy measurement method for star trackers based on direct astronomic observation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sun, Ting; Xing, Fei; Wang, Xiaochu; You, Zheng; Chu, Daping

    2016-03-07

    Star tracker is one of the most promising optical attitude measurement devices and it is widely used in spacecraft for its high accuracy. However, how to realize and verify such an accuracy remains a crucial but unsolved issue until now. The authenticity of the accuracy measurement method of a star tracker will eventually determine the satellite performance. A new and robust accuracy measurement method for a star tracker based on the direct astronomical observation is proposed here. In comparison with the conventional method with simulated stars, this method utilizes real navigation stars as observation targets which makes the measurement results more authoritative and authentic. Transformations between different coordinate systems are conducted on the account of the precision movements of the Earth, and the error curves of directional vectors are obtained along the three axes. Based on error analysis and accuracy definitions, a three-axis accuracy evaluation criterion has been proposed in this paper, which could determine pointing and rolling accuracy of a star tracker directly. Experimental measurements confirm that this method is effective and convenient to implement. Such a measurement environment is close to the in-orbit conditions and it can satisfy the stringent requirement for high-accuracy star trackers.

  20. Climate change impacts detection in dry forested ecosystem as indicated by vegetation cover change in -Laikipia, of Kenya.

    Science.gov (United States)

    M'mboroki, Kiambi Gilbert; Wandiga, Shem; Oriaso, Silas Odongo

    2018-03-29

    The objective of the study was to detect and identify land cover changes in Laikipia County of Kenya that have occurred during the last three decades. The land use types of study area are six, of which three are the main and the other three are the minor. The main three, forest, shrub or bush land and grassland, changed during the period, of which grasslands reduced by 5864 ha (40%), forest by 3071 ha (24%) and shrub and bush land increased by 8912 ha (43%). The other three minor land use types were bare land which had reduced by 238 ha (45%), river bed vegetation increased by 209 ha (72%) and agriculture increased by 52 ha (600%) over the period decades. Differences in spatiotemporal variations of vegetation could be largely attributed to the effects of climate factors, anthropogenic activities and their interactions. Precipitation and temperature have been demonstrated to be the key climate factors for plant growth and vegetation development where rainfall decreased by 200 mm and temperatures increased by 1.5 °C over the period. Also, the opinion of the community on the change of land use and management was attributed to climate change and also adaptation strategies applied by the community over time. For example unlike the common understanding that forest resources utilisation increases with increasing human population, Mukogodo dry forested ecosystem case is different in that the majority of the respondents (78.9%) reported that the forest resource use was more in that period than now and also a similar majority (74.2%) had the same opinion that forest resource utilisation was low compared to last 30 years. In Yaaku community, change impacts were evidenced and thus mitigation measures suggested to address the impacts which included the following: controlled bush management and indigenous grass reseeding programme were advocated to restore original grasslands, and agricultural (crop farming) activities are carried out in designated areas outside the

  1. Understanding Pan-Arctic Tundra Vegetation Change Through Long-term Remotely Sensed Data

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bhatt, U.; Walker, D. A.; Bieniek, P.; Raynolds, M. K.; Epstein, H. E.; Comiso, J. C.; Pinzon, J. E.; Tucker, C. J.

    2012-12-01

    The goal of this paper is to present an analysis of the seasonality of tundra vegetation variability and change using long-term remotely sensed data as well as ground based measurements and reanalyses. An increase of Pan-Arctic tundra vegetation greenness has been documented using the remotely sensed Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). Coherent variability between NDVI, springtime coastal sea ice (passive microwave) and land surface temperatures (AVHRR) has also been established. Satellite based snow and cloud cover data sets are being incorporated into this analysis. The Arctic tundra is divided into domains based on Treshnikov divisions that are modified based on floristic provinces. There is notable heterogeneity in Pan-Arctic vegetation and climate trends, which necessitates a regional analysis. This study uses remotely sensed weekly 25-km sea ice concentration, weekly surface temperature, and bi-weekly NDVI from 1982 to 2010. The GIMMS NDVI3g data has been corrected for biases during the spring and fall, with special focus on the Arctic. Trends of Maximum NDVI (MaxNDVI), Time Integrated NDVI (TI-NDVI), Summer Warmth Index (SWI, sum of degree months above freezing during May-August), and open water area are calculated for the Pan Arctic. Remotely sensed snow data trends suggest varying patterns throughout the Arctic and may in part explain the heterogeneous MaxNDVI trends. Standard climate data (station, reanalysis, and model data) and ground observations are used in the analysis to provide additional support for hypothesized mechanisms. Overall, we find that trends over the 30-year record are changing as evidenced by the following examples from recent years. The sea ice decline has increased in Eurasia and slowed in North America. The weekly AVHRR landsurface temperatures reveal that there has been summer cooling over Eurasia and that the warming over North America has slowed. The MaxNDVI rates of change have diverged between N. America and Eurasia

  2. Spatial relationship between climatologies and changes in global vegetation activity

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Jong, de R.; Schaepman, M.E.; Furrer, R.; Bruin, de S.; Verburg, P.H.

    2013-01-01

    Vegetation forms a main component of the terrestrial biosphere and plays a crucial role in land-cover and climate-related studies. Activity of vegetation systems is commonly quantified using remotely sensed vegetation indices (VI). Extensive reports on temporal trends over the past decades in time

  3. The assembly of the silicon tracker for the GLAST beam test engineering model

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Allport, P.; Atwood, E.; Atwood, W.; Beck, G.; Bhatnager, B.; Bloom, E.; Broeder, J.; Chen, V.; Clark, J.; Cotton, N.; Couto e Silva, E. do; Feerick, B.; Giebels, G.; Godfrey, G.; Handa, T.; Hernando, J.A.; Hirayama, M.; Johnson, R.P.; Kamae, T.; Kashiguine, S.; Kroeger, W.; Milbury, C.; Miller, W.; Millican, O.; Nikolaou, M.; Nordby, M.; Ohsugi, T.; Paliaga, G.; Ponslet, E.; Rowe, W.; Sadrozinski, H.F.-W.; Spencer, E.; Stromberg, S.; Swensen, E.; Takayuki, M.; Tournear, D.; Webster, A.; Winkler, G.; Yamamoto, K.; Yamamura, K.; Yoshida, S.

    2001-01-01

    The silicon tracker for the engineering model of the GLAST Large Area Telescope (LAT) to date represents the largest surface of silicon microstrip detectors assembled in a tracker (2.7 m 2 ). It demonstrates the feasibility of employing this technology for satellite based experiments, in which large effective areas and high reliability are required. This note gives an overview of the assembly of this silicon tracker and discusses in detail studies performed to track quality assurance: leakage current, mechanical alignment and production yields

  4. Intelligent error correction method applied on an active pixel sensor based star tracker

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schmidt, Uwe

    2005-10-01

    Star trackers are opto-electronic sensors used on-board of satellites for the autonomous inertial attitude determination. During the last years star trackers became more and more important in the field of the attitude and orbit control system (AOCS) sensors. High performance star trackers are based up today on charge coupled device (CCD) optical camera heads. The active pixel sensor (APS) technology, introduced in the early 90-ties, allows now the beneficial replacement of CCD detectors by APS detectors with respect to performance, reliability, power, mass and cost. The company's heritage in star tracker design started in the early 80-ties with the launch of the worldwide first fully autonomous star tracker system ASTRO1 to the Russian MIR space station. Jena-Optronik recently developed an active pixel sensor based autonomous star tracker "ASTRO APS" as successor of the CCD based star tracker product series ASTRO1, ASTRO5, ASTRO10 and ASTRO15. Key features of the APS detector technology are, a true xy-address random access, the multiple windowing read out and the on-chip signal processing including the analogue to digital conversion. These features can be used for robust star tracking at high slew rates and under worse conditions like stray light and solar flare induced single event upsets. A special algorithm have been developed to manage the typical APS detector error contributors like fixed pattern noise (FPN), dark signal non-uniformity (DSNU) and white spots. The algorithm works fully autonomous and adapts to e.g. increasing DSNU and up-coming white spots automatically without ground maintenance or re-calibration. In contrast to conventional correction methods the described algorithm does not need calibration data memory like full image sized calibration data sets. The application of the presented algorithm managing the typical APS detector error contributors is a key element for the design of star trackers for long term satellite applications like

  5. Vegetation dynamic characteristics and its responses to climate change in Jinghe River watershed of Loess Plateau, China

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chang, F.; Liu, W.; Zhou, H.; Ning, T.; Wang, Y.

    2017-12-01

    The Jinghe River is a second-order tributary of the Yellow River, and located in the middle-south part of the Loess Plateau. The watershed area is 45421km², with the mean annual precipitation (P) being about 508mm and aridity index 2.09. For a long time, soil and water loss in this watershed is severe, resulting in very fragile ecological environment. The GIMMS-normalized vegetation index NDVI is used to reflect condition of vegetation cover, and P and Penman potential evapotranspiration (ET) to represent climate water and heat conditions. The annual actual ET is estimated as the difference between P and runoff (ignoring the change of watershed water storage during each hydrological year, May to April of the following year). These concepts were introduced to discuss the dynamic characteristics of vegetation cover and its response to climate change. Results showed that the mean annual NDVI value was 0.51, showing a stable increasing trend from 2000 with an annual increasing rate of 8.7×10¯³. This result is consistent with the implementation of the project that converts farmland to forests and grassland and has achieved remarkable success in the Loess Plateau since 1999. It also indicates that the positive impact of human activity has been strengthened under the background of climate change. From 1982 to 2012, the annual actual ET was 464mm, accounting for 93.6% of annual P over the same period. The NDVI value of main growing season (5-9 months) is significantly correlated with annual P and annual humid index (ratio of annual P to annual potential ET). Vegetation water consumption is the main part of land surface ET, and the relationship between annual actual ET and NDVI value over the same period is also significant. The NDVI value, P and potential ET variation varied substantially within the Jinghe River watershed, and their relationships in different regions at an inter-annual scale are different. Currently, we are investigating the influence of the changes in

  6. Integration and test of the ATLAS Semiconductor Tracker

    CERN Document Server

    Pernegger, H

    2007-01-01

    The ATLAS Semiconductor Tracker (SCT) will be a central part of the tracking system of the ATLAS experiment and is one of the major new silicon detector systems for LHC. The paper summarizes the system integration of the SCT from individual components to the completed tracker barrel and endcaps ready for installation in the pit. Particular attention will be given to the test results obtained during the different integration steps: from single barrels and disks to the final tests inside the ID before installation in the pit. The tests provided us with operational experience for a significant fraction of the full detector system and showed the very good performance of the final assembled detector.

  7. Sensor R&D for the CMS Tracker Upgrade for the HL-LHC

    CERN Document Server

    Behnamian, Hadi

    2014-01-01

    At an instantaneous luminosity of $5\\times 10^{34} cm^{-2} s^{-1}$, the high-luminosity phase of the Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) is expected to deliver a total of 3000 $fb^{-1}$ of collisions, hereby increasing the discovery potential of the LHC experiments significantly. However, the radiation environment of the tracking system will be severe, requiring new radiation hard sensors for the CMS tracker. The CMS tracker collaboration has almost completed a large material investigation and irradiation campaign to identify the silicon material and design that fulfills all requirements of a new tracking detector at HL-LHC. Focusing on the upgrade of the outer tracker region, pad diodes as well as fully functional strip sensors have been implemented on silicon wafers with different material properties and thicknesses. The samples were irradiated with a mixture of neutrons and protons corresponding to fluences as expected for various positions in the future tracker. The measurements performed on the structures inc...

  8. Commissioning and proof of functionality of the OPERA precision tracker, especially of the time measuring system; Inbetriebnahme und Funktionsnachweis des OPERA Precision Trackers insbesondere des Zeitmesssystems

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Janutta, Benjamin

    2008-10-15

    The commissioning and the proof of functionality of the Precision Tracker of the OPERA experiment is subject of this thesis. The timing system of the precision tracker is of major concern here. At first the time.resolution of the timing electronics was characterized additionally general running parameters were studied. Afterwards the installation and commissioning were carried out. The precision tracker is supposed to determine the momentum of throughgoing myons with an accuracy of {delta}p/p<0.25 as well as the sign of their charge. The commissioning is finished by now and it was shown, that the data acquisition system runs very reliable and only 1.5% show an slightly higher number of hits. The nominal spatial track resolution of {sigma}<600 {mu}m was also reached. (orig.)

  9. Module production of the one-arm AFP 3D pixel tracker

    CERN Document Server

    Grinstein, S.; Chmeissani, M.; Dorholt, O.; Förster, F.; Lange, J.; Lopez Paz, I.; Manna, M.; Pellegrini, G.; Quirion, D.; Rijssenbeek, M.; Rohne, O.; Stugu, B.

    2016-01-01

    The ATLAS Forward Proton (AFP) detector is designed to identify events in which one or two protons emerge intact from the LHC collisions. AFP will consist of a tracking detector, to measure the momentum of the protons, and a time of flight system to reduce the background from multiple proton-proton interactions. Following an extensive qualification period, 3D silicon pixel sensors were selected for the AFP tracker. The sensors were produced at CNM (Barcelona) during 2014. The tracker module assembly and quality control was performed at IFAE during 2015. The assembly of the first AFP arm and the following installation in the LHC tunnel took place in February 2016. This paper reviews the fabrication process of the AFP tracker focusing on the pixel modules.

  10. Penerapan Teknologi GPS Tracker Untuk Identifikasi Kondisi Traffik Jalan Raya

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    IM. O. Widyantara

    2015-06-01

    Full Text Available Real time tracking system technology has been made possible by integrating three technologies, namely global positioning system (GPS, database technologies such as geographic information system (GIS and mobile telecommunications technologies such as general packet radio service (GPRS. This paper has proposed a vehicle tracking mechanism based on GPS tracker to build a real-time traffic information system. A GPS server is built to process data of position and speed of the vehicle for further processed into vehicle traffic information. The Server and GPS tracker is designed to communicate using GPRS services in real time. Furthermore, the server processes the data from the GPS tracker into traffic information such as traffic jam, dense, medium and smoothly. Test results showed that the GPS server is able to visualize the real position of the vehicle and is able to decide the category of traffic information in real time.

  11. Monitoring landscape change for LANDFIRE using multi-temporal satellite imagery and ancillary data

    Science.gov (United States)

    Vogelmann, James E.; Kost, Jay R.; Tolk, Brian; Howard, Stephen M.; Short, Karen; Chen, Xuexia; Huang, Chengquan; Pabst, Kari; Rollins, Matthew G.

    2011-01-01

    LANDFIRE is a large interagency project designed to provide nationwide spatial data for fire management applications. As part of the effort, many 2000 vintage Landsat Thematic Mapper and Enhanced Thematic Mapper plus data sets were used in conjunction with a large volume of field information to generate detailed vegetation type and structure data sets for the entire United States. In order to keep these data sets current and relevant to resource managers, there was strong need to develop an approach for updating these products. We are using three different approaches for these purposes. These include: 1) updating using Landsat-derived historic and current fire burn information derived from the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity project; 2) incorporating vegetation disturbance information derived from time series Landsat data analysis using the Vegetation Change Tracker; and 3) developing data products that capture subtle intra-state disturbance such as those related to insects and disease using either Landsat or the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). While no one single approach provides all of the land cover change and update information required, we believe that a combination of all three captures most of the disturbance conditions taking place that have relevance to the fire community.

  12. Models of vegetation change for landscape planning: a comparison of FETM, LANDSUM, SIMPPLLE, and VDDT

    Science.gov (United States)

    T. M. Barrett

    2001-01-01

    Landscape assessment and planning often depend on the ability to predict change of vegetation. This report compares four modeling systems (FETM, LANDSUM, SIMPPLLE, and VDDT) that can be used to understand changes resulting from succession, natural disturbance, and management activities. The four models may be useful for regional or local assessments in National Forest...

  13. Impacts of changes in vegetation cover on soil water heat coupling in an alpine meadow of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, China

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    W. Genxu

    2009-03-01

    Full Text Available Alpine meadow is one of the most widespread grassland types in the permafrost regions of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and the transmission of coupled soil water heat is one of the most crucial processes influencing cyclic variations in the hydrology of frozen soil regions, especially under different vegetation covers. The present study assesses the impact of changes in vegetation cover on the coupling of soil water and heat in a permafrost region. Soil moisture (θv, soil temperature (Ts, soil heat content, and differences in θvTs coupling were monitored on a seasonal and daily basis under three different vegetation covers (30, 65, and 93% on both thawed and frozen soils. Regression analysis of θv vs. Ts plots under different levels of vegetation cover indicates that soil freeze-thaw processes were significantly affected by the changes in vegetation cover. The decrease in vegetation cover of an alpine meadow reduced the difference between air temperature and ground temperature (ΔTa−s, and it also resulted in a decrease in Ts at which soil froze, and an increase in the temperature at which it thawed. This was reflected in a greater response of soil temperature to changes in air temperature (Ta. For ΔTa−s outside the range of −0.1 to 1.0°C, root zone soil-water temperatures showed a significant increase with increasing ΔTa−s; however, the magnitude of this relationship was dampened with increasing vegetation cover. At the time of maximum water content in the thawing season, the soil temperature decreased with increasing vegetation. Changes in vegetation cover also led to variations in θvTs coupling. With the increase in vegetation cover, the surface heat flux decreased. Soil heat storage at 20 cm in

  14. NDVI indicated characteristics of vegetation cover change in China's metropolises over the last three decades.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sun, Jinyu; Wang, Xuhui; Chen, Anping; Ma, Yuecun; Cui, Mengdi; Piao, Shilong

    2011-08-01

    How urban vegetation was influenced by three decades of intensive urbanization in China is of great interest but rarely studied. In this paper, we used satellite derived Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and socioeconomic data to evaluate effects of urbanization on vegetation cover in China's 117 metropolises over the last three decades. Our results suggest that current urbanization has caused deterioration of urban vegetation across most cities in China, particularly in East China. At the national scale, average urban area NDVI (NDVI(u)) significantly decreased during the last three decades (P NDVI(u) did not show statistically significant trend before 1990 but decrease remarkably after 1990 (P NDVI(u) turning point. The year when NDVI(u) started to decline significantly for Central China and East China was 1987 and 1990, respectively, while NDVI(u) in West China remained relatively constant until 1998. NDVI(u) changes in the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta, two regions which has been undergoing the most rapid urbanization in China, also show different characteristics. The Pearl River Delta experienced a rapid decline in NDVI(u) from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s; while in the Yangtze River Delta, NDVI(u) did not decline significantly until the early 1990s. Such different patterns of NDVI(u) changes are closely linked with policy-oriented difference in urbanization dynamics of these regions, which highlights the importance of implementing a sustainable urban development policy.

  15. Changes in vegetation and soil seed bank of meadow after waterlogging caused by Castor fiber

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Magdalena Franczak

    2015-07-01

    Full Text Available Soil waterlogging is among abiotic stresses that influence species composition and productivity in numerous plant communities. The aim of the study was to find answer to the question of how waterlogging caused by beavers’ activity induces quantitative and qualitative changes of vegetation and soil seed bank levels of variable-moist meadows. An immediate effect of the waterlogging at the level of vegetation was the decline in species richness and a decrease in the values of the biodiversity index. Water stress inhibited growth and development of plants already present and, primarily, impeded recruitment of new individuals of species characteristic of variable-moist meadows, e.g. Cirsium rivulare, Filipendula ulmaria and Lythrum salicaria, which were replaced by Carex acutiformis. Prolonged waterlogging did not induce equally substantial changes in the soil seed bank as in the vegetation. Both in the waterlogged and control patches, slightly decreased species richness and biodiversity index were recorded. After waterlogging withdrawal, the reserves of the soil seed bank were slightly higher than the initial values. The differences were not statistically significant. In the waterlogged patch, the qualitative floristic similarity between taxa identified in the soil seed bank and vegetation cover declined, which was evidenced by the value of Jaccard’s index decreasing from 0.46 to 0.36. A reverse relationship was found in control patch, where the value of the similarity index slightly increased from 0.41 to 0.48.

  16. Interannual water-level fluctuations and the vegetation of prairie potholes: Potential impacts of climate change

    Science.gov (United States)

    van der Valk, Arnold; Mushet, David M.

    2016-01-01

    Mean water depth and range of interannual water-level fluctuations over wet-dry cycles in precipitation are major drivers of vegetation zone formation in North American prairie potholes. We used harmonic hydrological models, which require only mean interannual water depth and amplitude of water-level fluctuations over a wet–dry cycle, to examine how the vegetation zones in a pothole would respond to small changes in water depth and/or amplitude of water-level fluctuations. Field data from wetlands in Saskatchewan, North Dakota, and South Dakota were used to parameterize harmonic models for four pothole classes. Six scenarios in which small negative or positive changes in either mean water depth, amplitude of interannual fluctuations, or both, were modeled to predict if they would affect the number of zones in each wetland class. The results indicated that, in some cases, even small changes in mean water depth when coupled with a small change in amplitude of water-level fluctuations can shift a prairie pothole wetland from one class to another. Our results suggest that climate change could alter the relative proportion of different wetland classes in the prairie pothole region.

  17. The NA62 GigaTracker

    CERN Document Server

    Perrin-Terrin, Mathieu

    2015-01-01

    The GigaTracker is an hybrid silicon pixel detector built for the NA62 experiment aiming at measuring the branching fraction of the ultra-rare kaon decay K + ! p + n ̄ n at the CERN SPS. The detector has to track particles in a beam with a flux reaching 1.3 MHz/mm 2 and provide single-hit timing with 200ps RMS resolution for a total material budget of less than 1.5 X 0 . The tracker comprises three 60.8mm 27mm stations installed in vacuum ( 10$^{-6}$ mbar) and cooled with liquid C 6 F 14 circulating through micro-channels etched inside few hundred of microns thick silicon plates. Each station is composed of a 200 m m thick silicon sensor readout by 2 x 5 cus- tom 100 m m thick ASIC, called TDCPix. Each chip contains 40 x 45 asynchronous pixels, each 300 m m x 300 m m and is instrumented with 100ps bin time-to-digital converters. In order to cope with the high rate, the TDCPix is equipped with four 3.2Gb/s serialisers sending out the data. We will describe the detector and the results from the 2014 NA62 ru...

  18. Diurnal Reflectance Changes in Vegetation Observed with AVIRIS

    Science.gov (United States)

    Vanderbilt, V. C.; Ambrosia, V. G.; Ustin, S. L.

    1998-01-01

    Among the most important short-term dynamic biological processes are diurnal changes in canopy water relations. Plant regulation of water transport through stomatal openings affects other gaseous transport processes, often dramatically decreasing photosynthetic fixation of carbon dioxide during periods of water stress. Water stress reduces stomatal conductance of water vapor through the leaf surface and alters the diurnal timing of stomatal opening. Under non-water stressed conditions, stomates typically open soon after dawn and transpire water vapor throughout the daylight period. During stress periods, stomates may close for part of the day, generally near mid-day. Under prolonged stress conditions, stomatal closure shifts to earlier times during the day; stomates may close by mid-morning and remain closed until the following morning - or remain closed entirely. Under these conditions the relationship between canopy greenness (e.g., measured with a vegetation index or by spectral mixture analysis) and photosynthetic fixation of carbon is lost and the remotely sensed vegetation metric is a poor predictor of gas exchange. Prediction of stomatal regulation and exchange of water and trace gases is critical for ecosystem and climate models to correctly estimate budgets of these gases and understand or predict other processes like gross and net ecosystem primary production. Plant gas exchange has been extensively studied by physiologists at the leaf and whole plant level and by biometeorologists at somewhat larger scales. While these energy driven processes follow a predictable if somewhat asymmetric diurnal cycle dependent on soil water availability and the constraints imposed by the solar energy budget, they are nonetheless difficult to measure at the tree and stand levels using conventional methods. Ecologists have long been interested in the potential of remote sensing for monitoring physiological changes using multi-temporal images. Much of this research has

  19. A qualitative evaluation of breast cancer survivors' acceptance of and preferences for consumer wearable technology activity trackers.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nguyen, Nga H; Hadgraft, Nyssa T; Moore, Melissa M; Rosenberg, Dori E; Lynch, Chris; Reeves, Marina M; Lynch, Brigid M

    2017-11-01

    Physical inactivity and sedentary behaviour are common amongst breast cancer survivors. These behaviours are associated with an increased risk of comorbidities such as heart disease, diabetes and other cancers. Commercially available, wearable activity trackers (WATs) have potential utility as behavioural interventions to increase physical activity and reduce sedentary behaviour within this population. The purpose of the study is to explore the acceptability and usability of consumer WAT amongst postmenopausal breast cancer survivors. Fourteen participants tested two to three randomly assigned trackers from six available models (Fitbit One, Jawbone Up 24, Garmin Vivofit 2, Garmin Vivosmart, Garmin Vivoactive and Polar A300). Participants wore each device for 2 weeks, followed by a 1-week washout period before wearing the next device. Four focus groups employing a semi-structured interview guide explored user perceptions and experiences. We used a thematic analysis approach to analyse focus group transcripts. Five themes emerged from our data: (1) trackers' increased self-awareness and motivation, (2) breast cancer survivors' confidence and comfort with wearable technology, (3) preferred and disliked features of WAT, (4) concerns related to the disease and (5) peer support and doctor monitoring were possible strategies for WAT application. WATs are perceived as useful and acceptable interventions by postmenopausal breast cancer survivors. Effective WAT interventions may benefit from taking advantage of the simple features of the trackers paired with other behavioural change techniques, such as specialist counselling, doctor monitoring and peer support, along with simple manual instructions.

  20. Effect of environmental change on yield and quality of fruits and vegetables: two systematic reviews and projections of possible health effects

    Science.gov (United States)

    Smith, P.; Scheelbeek, P.; Bird, F.; Green, R.; Dangour, A.

    2017-12-01

    Background - Environmental changes—including climatic change, water scarcity, and biodiversity loss—threaten agricultural production and pose challenges to global food security. In this study, we review the evidence of the effects of environmental change on the yield and quality of fruits and vegetables - a food group that plays a highly important role in our diets - and assess possible implications for nutrition and health outcomes. Methods - We undertook two systematic reviews of the published literature on the effect of 8 different environmental stressors on yields and nutritional quality of (1) fruits and (2) vegetables, measured in greenhouse and field studies. We combined the review outcomes with Food Balance Sheet data to assess the potential consequences of changed availability and quality of fruits and vegetables for global nutrient deficiencies and related chronic diseases. Findings - Overall, fruits were affected more prominently by changing environmental patterns than vegetables. In tropical countries, there were largely adverse effects on yield of increased temperature and changing precipitation patterns, although in more temperate zones some beneficial effects were reported. In contrast, the effects on nutritional quality were mostly positive, especially in fruit crops, with higher vitamin and mineral content measured in most crops. Increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations had a predominantly positive effect on yield, especially in legumes, but a negative effect on nutritional quality of both fruits and vegetables. Adverse nutritional implications were estimated to be largest in areas characterised by high vulnerability to environmental change, high dependency on local markets, and high rates of food insecurity. Interpretation - Our study identified effects of environmental change on yields and quality of fruits and vegetables that might pose threats to population health, especially in areas vulnerable to climate-change and food insecurity. To

  1. Satellite observations of high northern latitude vegetation productivity changes between 1982 and 2008: ecological variability and regional differences

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Beck, Pieter S A; Goetz, Scott J, E-mail: pbeck@whrc.org [Woods Hole Research Center, 149 Woods Hole Road, Falmouth, MA 02540 (United States)

    2011-10-15

    To assess ongoing changes in high latitude vegetation productivity we compared spatiotemporal patterns in remotely sensed vegetation productivity in the tundra and boreal zones of North America and Eurasia. We compared the long-term GIMMS (Global Inventory Modeling and Mapping Studies) NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) to the more recent and advanced MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) NDVI data set, and mapped circumpolar trends in a gross productivity metric derived from the former. We then analyzed how temporal changes in productivity differed along an evergreen-deciduous gradient in boreal Alaska, along a shrub cover gradient in Arctic Alaska, and during succession after fire in boreal North America and northern Eurasia. We find that the earlier reported contrast between trends of increasing tundra and decreasing boreal forest productivity has amplified in recent years, particularly in North America. Decreases in boreal forest productivity are most prominent in areas of denser tree cover and, particularly in Alaska, evergreen forest stands. On the North Slope of Alaska, however, increases in tundra productivity do not appear restricted to areas of higher shrub cover, which suggests enhanced productivity across functional vegetation types. Differences in the recovery of post-disturbance vegetation productivity between North America and Eurasia are described using burn chronosequences, and the potential factors driving regional differences are discussed.

  2. Satellite observations of high northern latitude vegetation productivity changes between 1982 and 2008: ecological variability and regional differences

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Beck, Pieter S A; Goetz, Scott J

    2011-01-01

    To assess ongoing changes in high latitude vegetation productivity we compared spatiotemporal patterns in remotely sensed vegetation productivity in the tundra and boreal zones of North America and Eurasia. We compared the long-term GIMMS (Global Inventory Modeling and Mapping Studies) NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) to the more recent and advanced MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) NDVI data set, and mapped circumpolar trends in a gross productivity metric derived from the former. We then analyzed how temporal changes in productivity differed along an evergreen-deciduous gradient in boreal Alaska, along a shrub cover gradient in Arctic Alaska, and during succession after fire in boreal North America and northern Eurasia. We find that the earlier reported contrast between trends of increasing tundra and decreasing boreal forest productivity has amplified in recent years, particularly in North America. Decreases in boreal forest productivity are most prominent in areas of denser tree cover and, particularly in Alaska, evergreen forest stands. On the North Slope of Alaska, however, increases in tundra productivity do not appear restricted to areas of higher shrub cover, which suggests enhanced productivity across functional vegetation types. Differences in the recovery of post-disturbance vegetation productivity between North America and Eurasia are described using burn chronosequences, and the potential factors driving regional differences are discussed.

  3. Vegetation Response to Climate Change in the Southern Part of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau at Basinal Scale

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, X.; Liu, C.; Kang, Q.; Yin, B.

    2018-04-01

    Global climate change has significantly affected vegetation variation in the third-polar region of the world - the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. As one of the most important indicators of vegetation variation (growth, coverage and tempo-spatial change), the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) is widely employed to study the response of vegetation to climate change. However, a long-term series analysis cannot be achieved because a single data source is constrained by time sequence. Therefore, a new framework was presented in this paper to extend the product series of monthly NDVI, taking as an example the Yarlung Zangbo River Basin, one of the most important river basins in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. NDVI products were acquired from two public sources: Global Inventory Modeling and Mapping Studies (GIMMS) Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) and Moderate-Resolution Imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS). After having been extended using the new framework, the new time series of NDVI covers a 384 months period (1982-2013), 84 months longer than previous time series of NDVI product, greatly facilitating NDVI related scientific research. In the new framework, the Gauss Filtering Method was employed to filter out noise in the NDVI product. Next, the standard method was introduced to enhance the comparability of the two data sources, and a pixel-based regression method was used to construct NDVI-extending models with one pixel after another. The extended series of NDVI fit well with original AVHRR-NDVI. With the extended time-series, temporal trends and spatial heterogeneity of NDVI in the study area were studied. Principal influencing factors on NDVI were further determined. The monthly NDVI is highly correlated with air temperature and precipitation in terms of climatic change wherein the spatially averaged NDVI slightly increases in the summer and has increased in temperature and decreased in precipitation in the 32 years period. The spatial heterogeneity of

  4. Miniaturized star tracker for micro spacecraft with high angular rate

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Jianhua; Li, Zhifeng; Niu, Zhenhong; Liu, Jiaqi

    2017-10-01

    There is a clear need for miniaturized, lightweight, accurate and inexpensive star tracker for spacecraft with large anglar rate. To face these new constraints, the Beijing Institute of Space Long March Vehicle has designed, built and flown a low cost miniaturized star tracker that provides autonomous ("Lost in Space") inertial attitude determination, 2 Hz 3-axis star tracking, and digital imaging with embedded compression. Detector with high sensitivity is adopted to meet the dynamic and miniature requirement. A Sun and Moon avoiding method based on the calculation of Sun and Moon's vector by astronomical theory is proposed. The produced prototype weight 0.84kg, and can be used for a spacecraft with 6°/s anglar rate. The average angle measure error is less than 43 arc second. The ground verification and application of the star tracker during the pick-up flight test showed that the capability of the product meet the requirement.

  5. CMS Tracker Upgrades: R\\&D Plans, Present Status and Perspectives

    CERN Document Server

    AUTHOR|(CDS)2091649

    2015-01-01

    The present CMS pixel detector designed for a luminosity of $10^{34}\\,\\mathrm{cm}^{-2}\\mathrm{s}^{-1}$ will have to be replaced at the end of 2016. The new upgraded detector will have higher tracking efficiency and lower mass with four barrel layers and three forward/backward disks to provide a hit coverage up to absolute pseudorapidities of $\\mid\\eta\\mid<2.5$. In a second stage, in order to maintain its physics reach during the high luminosity phase of the LHC (HL-LHC), when the machine is expected to deliver an instantaneous luminosity of $5\\times 10^{34}\\,\\mathrm{cm}^{-2} \\mathrm{s}^{-1}$ for a total of $3000\\,\\mathrm{fb}^{-1}$, CMS will build a new tracker, comprising a completely new pixel detector and outer tracker. The ongoing R\\&D activities on both pixel and strip sensors are presented. The present status of the Inner and Outer Tracker projects are illustrated, and the possible perspectives are discussed.

  6. UK semiconductor tracker parts head for CERN

    CERN Multimedia

    Holland, Colin

    2005-01-01

    The last of the 4 barrels that make up the central part of the Semiconductor Tracker (SCT), the heart of the biggest physics collaboration in the world have left Oxford for its new home at the European Particle Physics Laboratory, CERN, near Geneva

  7. Response of vegetation indices to changes in three measures of leaf water stress

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cohen, Warren B.

    1991-01-01

    The responses of vegetation indices to changes in water stress were evaluated in two separate laboratory experiments. In one experiment the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), the near-IR to red ratio (near-IR/red), the Infrared Index (II), and the Moisture Stress Index (MSI) were more highly correlated to leaf water potential in lodgepole pine branches than were the Leaf Water Content Index (LWCI), the mid-IR ratio (Mid-IR), or any of the single Thematic Mapper (TM) bands. In the other experiment, these six indices and the TM Tasseled Cap brightness, greenness, and wetness indices responded to changes in leaf relative water content (RWC) differently than they responded to changes in leaf water content (WC) of three plant species, and the responses were dependent on how experimental replicates were pooled. With no pooling, the LWCI was the most highly correlated index to both RWC and WC among replications, followed by the II, MSI, and wetness. Only the LWCI was highly correlated to RWC and WC when replications were pooled within species. With among species pooling the LWCI was the only index highly correlated with RWC, while the II, MSI, Mid-IR, and wetness were most highly correlated with WC.

  8. Variability and climate change trend in vegetation phenology of recent decades in the Greater Khingan Mountain area, Northeastern China

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Huan Tang

    2015-09-01

    Full Text Available Vegetation phenology has been used in studies as an indicator of an ecosystem’s responses to climate change. Satellite remote sensing techniques can capture changes in vegetation greenness, which can be used to estimate vegetation phenology. In this study, a long-term vegetation phenology study of the Greater Khingan Mountain area in Northeastern China was performed by using the Global Inventory Modeling and Mapping Studies (GIMMS normalized difference vegetation index version 3 (NDVI3g dataset from the years 1982–2012. After reconstructing the NDVI time series, the start date of the growing season (SOS, the end date of the growing season (EOS and the length of the growing season (LOS were extracted using a dynamic threshold method. The response of the variation in phenology with climatic factors was also analyzed. The results showed that the phenology in the study area changed significantly in the three decades between 1982 and 2012, including a 12.1-day increase in the entire region’s average LOS, a 3.3-day advance in the SOS and an 8.8-day delay in the EOS. However, differences existed between the steppe, forest and agricultural regions, with the LOSs of the steppe region, forest region and agricultural region increasing by 4.40 days, 10.42 days and 1.71 days, respectively, and a later EOS seemed to more strongly affect the extension of the growing season. Additionally, temperature and precipitation were closely correlated with the phenology variations. This study provides a useful understanding of the recent change in phenology and its variability in this high-latitude study area, and this study also details the responses of several ecosystems to climate change.

  9. Atmosphere-vegetation-soil interactions in a climate change context; Impact of changing conditions on engineered transport infrastructure slopes in Europe

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Tang, A.M.; Hughes, P.N.; Dijkstra, T.A.; Askarinejad, A.; Brenčič, M.; Cui, Y.J.; Diez, J.J.; Firgi, T.; Gajewska, B.; Gentile, F.; Grossi, G.; Jommi, C.; Kehagia, F.; Koda, E.; Maat, Ter H.W.; Lenart, S.; Lourenco, S.; Oliveira, M.; Osinski, P.; Springman, S.M.; Stirling, R.; Toll, D.G.; Beek, Van V.

    2018-01-01

    In assessing the impact of climate change on infrastructure, it is essential to consider the interactions between the atmosphere, vegetation and the near-surface soil. This paper presents an overview of these processes, focusing on recent advances from the literature and those made by members of

  10. Using a model based fourth-corner analysis to explain vegetation change following an extraordinary fire disturbance.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Venn, S E; Pickering, C M; Butler, S A; Letten, A D

    2016-11-01

    In ecosystems where large-scale disturbances are infrequent, the mode of succession may be difficult to discern and floristic surveys alone cannot be used determine the underlying processes causing vegetation change. To determine the causes of vegetation change in response to a large-scale fire event, we combined traditional floristic survey data, plant functional traits and environmental variables in a model-based solution to the fourth-corner problem. This approach allowed us to describe the trait-environment relationship and provides an intuitive matrix of environment by trait interaction coefficients. We could then quantify the strength and direction of associations between plant traits, species life-forms and environmental factors in two alpine plant communities over nine years post-fire. Initially, the fire drastically reduced vegetation cover and species density to very low levels. The fourth-corner analysis interaction coefficients indicated that over the course of the nine-year study a high abundance of graminoids, a low abundance of shrubs, tall species and those with high leaf dry matter content had the strongest associations with the two plant communities. We also found evidence for functional homogenisation between these two communities using this novel technique. Analysing plant traits and species responses post-fire in this manner can be used to infer the ecological processes driving shifts in vegetation.

  11. Data evaluation and CNGS beam localization with the precision tracker of the OPERA detector

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Bick, D.

    2007-04-01

    In this diploma thesis, the data evaluation for the OPERA precision tracker is presented. Furthermore investigations of a precise CNGS beam localization with the precision tracker are performed. After an overview of past and present developments in neutrino physics, the OPERA detector is presented in this thesis. Emphasis is given to the precision tracker which has been partly commissioned in the end of the last year. A first analysis of the functionality with cosmic muons has been performed, as well as the inclusion of data in the OPERA software framework. Within this thesis some useful tools have been developed which are also presented. Finally, divergence effects from the nominal beam line of the CNGS neutrino beam and possible detection with the precision tracker are studied. (orig.)

  12. Data evaluation and CNGS beam localization with the precision tracker of the OPERA detector

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Bick, D.

    2007-04-15

    In this diploma thesis, the data evaluation for the OPERA precision tracker is presented. Furthermore investigations of a precise CNGS beam localization with the precision tracker are performed. After an overview of past and present developments in neutrino physics, the OPERA detector is presented in this thesis. Emphasis is given to the precision tracker which has been partly commissioned in the end of the last year. A first analysis of the functionality with cosmic muons has been performed, as well as the inclusion of data in the OPERA software framework. Within this thesis some useful tools have been developed which are also presented. Finally, divergence effects from the nominal beam line of the CNGS neutrino beam and possible detection with the precision tracker are studied. (orig.)

  13. Charge determination of nuclei with the AMS-02 silicon tracker

    OpenAIRE

    Alpat, B.; G. Ambrosi; Azzarello, P.; Battiston, R.; Bene, P.; Bertucci, B.; Bizzaglia, S.; Bizzarri, M.; Blasko, S.; Bourquin, M.; Cortina Gil, Eduardo

    2005-01-01

    The silicon tracker of the AMS-02 detector measures the trajectory in three dimensions of electrons, protons and nuclei to high precision in a dipole magnetic field and thus measures their rigidity (momentum over charge) and the sign of their charge. In addition, it measures the specific energy loss of charged particles to determine the charge magnitude. Ladders from the AMS-02 tracker have been exposed to ion beams at CERN and GSI to study their response to nuclei from helium up to the iron ...

  14. Latency and distortion of electromagnetic trackers for augmented reality systems

    CERN Document Server

    Himberg, Henry

    2014-01-01

    Augmented reality (AR) systems are often used to superimpose virtual objects or information on a scene to improve situational awareness. Delays in the display system or inaccurate registration of objects destroy the sense of immersion a user experiences when using AR systems. AC electromagnetic trackers are ideal for these applications when combined with head orientation prediction to compensate for display system delays. Unfortunately, these trackers do not perform well in environments that contain conductive or ferrous materials due to magnetic field distortion without expensive calibration

  15. Simulations of silicon vertex tracker for star experiment at RHIC

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Odyniec, G.; Cebra, D.; Christie, W.; Naudet, C.; Schroeder, L.; Wilson, W. [Lawrence Berkeley Lab., CA (United States); Liko, D. [Institut fur Hochenenergiephysik, Vienna, (Austria); Cramer, J.; Prindle, D.; Trainor, T. [Univ. of Washington, Seattle (United States); Braithwaite, W. [Univ. of Arkansas, Little Rock (United States)

    1991-12-31

    The first computer simulations to optimize the Silicon Vertex Tracker (SVT) designed for the STAR experiment at RHIC are presented. The physics goals and the expected complexity of the events at RHIC dictate the design of a tracking system for the STAR experiment. The proposed tracking system will consist of a silicon vertex tracker (SVT) to locate the primary interaction and secondary decay vertices and to improve the momentum resolution, and a time projection chamber (TPC), positioned inside a solenoidal magnet, for continuous tracking.

  16. Regional cerebral blood flow changes related to affective speech presentation in persistent vegetative state

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    deJong, BM; Willemsen, ATM; Paans, AMJ

    A story told by his mother was presented on tape to a trauma patient in persistent vegetative state (PVS). During auditory presentation, measurements of regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) were performed by means of positron emission tomography (PET). Changes in rCBF related to this stimulus

  17. Vegetation change and pollen geochronology from the Atlantic Coast of the United States during the last Millennium

    Science.gov (United States)

    Christie, M.; Bernhardt, C. E.; Clear, J.; Corbett, D. R.; Horton, B.

    2017-12-01

    Vegetation changes related to anthropogenic and climatic change have been reconstructed at many locations. Synthesizing observations from multiple locations improves our understanding of the regionality of these impacts and drivers. Human alterations to the plant communities vary spatially in timing and impact. For example, deforestation occurred at different times, rates, and magnitudes along the Atlantic Coast of the United States, while of the introduction of non-native plants into ecosystems varies by region. Gradual climate shifts cause the appearance of migration in sensitive plants, so climate-related transitions can be traced from one location to another. Here, we combine new and published pollen data from Florida to Connecticut to produce a regional synthesis of vegetation changes for the last 1000 years. We have produced detailed reconstructions of vegetation changes in response to anthropogenic and climatic forcing. Our database contains pollen assemblages from more than 10 locations along the Atlantic coast of the United States, including new reconstructions from the Florida Keys, Delaware Estuary, and northern New Jersey. All pollen assemblages are placed in a geochronological framework with as fine as decadal resolution using composite chronologies of radiocarbon, pollution histories and cesium isotopes. Anthropogenic impacts, including deforestation from European settlement and the introduction of non-native plants, are observed in the pollen record and serve as useful markers of time. For example, the abrupt increase in Ambrosia pollen in the mid-Atlantic corresponds to 18th Century deforestation. Climate transitions that can be seen in the pollen record during the last millennium include the Medieval Climate Optimum, Little Ice Age, and human-induced warming following industrialization in the 20th century. Plant communities of the United States Atlantic Coast adapted to the evolving climate. For example, Picea and Tsuga are indicative of cooler

  18. Environmental Tests of the Flight GLAST LAT Tracker Towers

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Bagagli, R.; Baldini, L.; Bellazzini, R.; Barbiellini, G.; Belli, F.; Borden, T.; Brez, A.; Brigida, M.; Caliandro, G.A.; Cecchi, C.; Cohen-Tanugi, J.; Angelis, A.De; Drell, P.; Favuzzi, C.; Fusco, P.; Gargano, F.; Germani, S.; Giglietto, N.; Giordano, F.; Goodman, J.; Himel, T.

    2008-03-12

    The Gamma-ray Large Area Space telescope (GLAST) is a gamma-ray satellite scheduled for launch in 2008. Before the assembly of the Tracker subsystem of the Large Area Telescope (LAT) science instrument of GLAST, every component (tray) and module (tower) has been subjected to extensive ground testing required to ensure successful launch and on-orbit operation. This paper describes the sequence and results of the environmental tests performed on an engineering model and all the flight hardware of the GLAST LAT Tracker. Environmental tests include vibration testing, thermal cycles and thermal-vacuum cycles of every tray and tower as well as the verification of their electrical performance.

  19. The LHCb Silicon Tracker

    CERN Document Server

    Elsasser, Ch; Gallas Torreira, A; Pérez Trigo, A; Rodríguez Pérez, P; Bay, A; Blanc, F; Dupertuis, F; Haefeli, G; Komarov, I; Märki, R; Muster, B; Nakada, T; Schneider, O; Tobin, M; Tran, M T; Anderson, J; Bursche, A; Chiapolini, N; Saornil, S; Steiner, S; Steinkamp, O; Straumann, U; Vollhardt, A; Britsch, M; Schmelling, M; Voss, H; Okhrimenko, O; Pugatch, V

    2013-01-01

    The aim of the LHCb experiment is to study rare heavy quark decays and CP vio- lation with the high rate of beauty and charmed hadrons produced in $pp$ collisions at the LHC. The detector is designed as a single-arm forward spectrometer with excellent tracking and particle identification performance. The Silicon Tracker is a key part of the tracking system to measure the particle trajectories to high precision. This paper reports the performance as well as the results of the radiation damage monitoring based on leakage currents and on charge collection efficiency scans during the data taking in the LHC Run I.

  20. The response of lake area and vegetation cover variations to climate change over the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau during the past 30years.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Zengxin; Chang, Juan; Xu, Chong-Yu; Zhou, Yang; Wu, Yanhong; Chen, Xi; Jiang, Shanshan; Duan, Zheng

    2018-09-01

    Lakes and vegetation are important factors of the Earth's hydrological cycle and can be called an "indicator" of climate change. In this study, long-term changes of lakes' area and vegetation coverage in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP) and their relations to the climate change were analyzed by using Mann-Kendall method during the past 30years. Results showed that: 1) the lakes' area of the QTP increased significantly during the past 30years as a whole, and the increasing rates have been dramatically sped up since the year of 2000. Among them, the area of Ayakekumu Lake has the fastest growing rate of 51.35%, which increased from 618km 2 in the 1980s to 983km 2 in the 2010s; 2) overall, the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) increased in the QTP during the past 30years. Above 79% of the area in the QTP showed increasing trend of NDVI before the year of 2000; 3) the air temperature increased significantly, the precipitation increased slightly, and the pan evaporation decreased significantly during the past 30years. The lake area and vegetation coverage changes might be related to the climate change. The shifts in the temporal climate trend occurred around the year 2000 had led the lake area and vegetation coverage increasing. This study is of importance in further understanding the environmental changes under global warming over the QTP. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  1. Climate Action Tracker Update. Climate Shuffle

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Hoehne, N.; Fekete, H.; Vieweg, M.; Hare, B.; Schaeffer, M.; Rocha, M.; Larkin, J.; Guetschow, J.; Jeffery, L.

    2011-11-15

    The Climate Action Tracker (CAT) compares and assesses national and global action against a range of different climate targets across all relevant time frames, starting with an ongoing analysis of countries' current emission reduction pledges. National action on climate change mitigation appears to be joining the international climate negotiations in the new and ever popular 'climate shuffle' dance. It involves maximum effort and motion while staying in the same spot, or even, in some cases, going backwards. Recent emissions trends and estimates of the effects of those policies in place and proposed lead to a new estimate that warming is likely to approach 4C by 2100, significantly above the warming that would result from full implementation of the pledges (3.3C). The continuous global fossil-fuel intensive development of the past decade suggests that high warming levels of 4C are more plausible than assuming full implementation of current pledges. Evidence is ever increasing that existing and planned policies are not sufficient for countries to meet these pledges.

  2. Ozone impacts on vegetation in a nitrogen enriched and changing climate

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Mills, Gina; Harmens, Harry; Wagg, Serena; Sharps, Katrina; Hayes, Felicity; Fowler, David; Sutton, Mark; Davies, Bill

    2016-01-01

    This paper provides a process-oriented perspective on the combined effects of ozone (O_3), climate change and/or nitrogen (N) on vegetation. Whereas increasing CO_2 in controlled environments or open-top chambers often ameliorates effects of O_3 on leaf physiology, growth and C allocation, this is less likely in the field. Combined responses to elevated temperature and O_3 have rarely been studied even though some critical growth stages such as seed initiation are sensitive to both. Under O_3 exposure, many species have smaller roots, thereby enhancing drought sensitivity. Of the 68 species assessed for stomatal responses to ozone, 22.5% were unaffected, 33.5% had sluggish or increased opening and 44% stomatal closure. The beneficial effect of N on root development was lost at higher O_3 treatments whilst the effects of increasing O_3 on root biomass became more pronounced as N increased. Both responses to gradual changes in pollutants and climate and those under extreme weather events require further study. - Highlights: • CO_2 amelioration of O_3 effects on leaf physiology are less likely in the field. • Both extremes of temperature and O_3 impact on critical growth stages. • Many species are more sensitive to drought as a result of exposure to O_3 pollution. • The beneficial effect of N on root development is lost at higher O_3 treatments. • The effects of O_3 on root biomass are higher at high than low N. - A process-oriented perspective on the combined effects of ozone, climate change and/or nitrogen on vegetation.

  3. Analyzing Vegetation Change in an Elephant-Impacted Landscape Using the Moving Standard Deviation Index

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Timothy J. Fullman

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available Northern Botswana is influenced by various socio-ecological drivers of landscape change. The African elephant (Loxodonta africana is one of the leading sources of landscape shifts in this region. Developing the ability to assess elephant impacts on savanna vegetation is important to promote effective management strategies. The Moving Standard Deviation Index (MSDI applies a standard deviation calculation to remote sensing imagery to assess degradation of vegetation. Used previously for assessing impacts of livestock on rangelands, we evaluate the ability of the MSDI to detect elephant-modified vegetation along the Chobe riverfront in Botswana, a heavily elephant-impacted landscape. At broad scales, MSDI values are positively related to elephant utilization. At finer scales, using data from 257 sites along the riverfront, MSDI values show a consistent negative relationship with intensity of elephant utilization. We suggest that these differences are due to varying effects of elephants across scales. Elephant utilization of vegetation may increase heterogeneity across the landscape, but decrease it within heavily used patches, resulting in the observed MSDI pattern of divergent trends at different scales. While significant, the low explanatory power of the relationship between the MSDI and elephant utilization suggests the MSDI may have limited use for regional monitoring of elephant impacts.

  4. Post flight analysis of NASA standard star trackers recovered from the solar maximum mission

    Science.gov (United States)

    Newman, P.

    1985-01-01

    The flight hardware returned after the Solar Maximum Mission Repair Mission was analyzed to determine the effects of 4 years in space. The NASA Standard Star Tracker would be a good candidate for such analysis because it is moderately complex and had a very elaborate calibration during the acceptance procedure. However, the recovery process extensively damaged the cathode of the image dissector detector making proper operation of the tracker and a comparison with preflight characteristics impossible. Otherwise, the tracker functioned nominally during testing.

  5. A Heavy Flavor Tracker for STAR

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Xu, Z.; Chen, Y.; Kleinfelder, S.; Koohi, A.; Li, S.; Huang, H.; Tai, A.; Kushpil, V.; Sumbera, M.; Colledani, C.; Dulinski, W.; Himmi,A.; Hu, C.; Shabetai, A.; Szelezniak, M.; Valin, I.; Winter, M.; Miller,M.; Surrow, B.; Van Nieuwenhuizen G.; Bieser, F.; Gareus, R.; Greiner,L.; Lesser, F.; Matis, H.S.; Oldenburg, M.; Ritter, H.G.; Pierpoint, L.; Retiere, F.; Rose, A.; Schweda, K.; Sichtermann, E.; Thomas, J.H.; Wieman, H.; Yamamoto, E.; Kotov, I.

    2005-03-14

    We propose to construct a Heavy Flavor Tracker (HFT) for theSTAR experiment at RHIC. The HFT will bring new physics capabilities toSTAR and it will significantly enhance the physics capabilities of theSTAR detector at central rapidities. The HFT will ensure that STAR willbe able to take heavy flavor data at all luminosities attainablethroughout the proposed RHIC II era.

  6. A Heavy Flavor Tracker for STAR

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Xu, Z.; Chen, Y.; Kleinfelder, S.; Koohi, A.; Li, S.; Huang, H.; Tai, A.; Kushpil, V.; Sumbera, M.; Colledani, C.; Dulinski, W.; Himmi,A.; Hu, C.; Shabetai, A.; Szelezniak, M.; Valin, I.; Winter, M.; Surrow,B.; Van Nieuwenhuizen, G.; Bieser, F.; Gareus, R.; Greiner, L.; Lesser,F.; Matis, H.S.; Oldenburg, M.; Ritter, H.G.; Pierpoint, L.; Retiere, F.; Rose, A.; Schweda, K.; Sichtermann, E.; Thomas, J.H.; Wieman, H.; Yamamoto, E.; Kotov, I.

    2005-03-14

    We propose to construct a Heavy Flavor Tracker (HFT) for the STAR experiment at RHIC. The HFT will bring new physics capabilities to STAR and it will significantly enhance the physics capabilities of the STAR detector at central rapidities. The HFT will ensure that STAR will be able to take heavy flavor data at all luminosities attainable throughout the proposed RHIC II era.

  7. A Heavy Flavor Tracker for STAR

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Xu, Z.; Chen, Y.; Kleinfelder, S.; Koohi, A.; Li, S.; Huang, H.; Tai, A.; Kushpil, V.; Sumbera, M.; Colledani, C.; Dulinski, W.; Himmi, A.; Hu, C.; Shabetai, A.; Szelezniak, M.; Valin, I.; Winter, M.; Surrow, B.; Van Nieuwenhuizen, G.; Bieser, F.; Gareus, R.; Greiner, L.; Lesser, F.; Matis, H.S.; Oldenburg, M.; Ritter, H.G.; Pierpoint, L.; Retiere, F.; Rose, A.; Schweda, K.; Sichtermann, E.; Thomas, J.H.; Wieman, H.; Yamamoto, E.; Kotov, I.

    2005-01-01

    We propose to construct a Heavy Flavor Tracker (HFT) for the STAR experiment at RHIC. The HFT will bring new physics capabilities to STAR and it will significantly enhance the physics capabilities of the STAR detector at central rapidities. The HFT will ensure that STAR will be able to take heavy flavor data at all luminosities attainable throughout the proposed RHIC II era

  8. Design of the Mechanical Components of a Dual Axis Solar Tracker

    OpenAIRE

    Romero Llanas, Amador

    2013-01-01

    This work is about the design of a solar tracker with the objective of following the sun throughout the day. In order to achieve that objective, the solar tracker has two degrees of freedom. The different mechanical components necessary to build the structure has been designed, calculated and verified. Apart from that, the whole structure has been drawn using the 3D mechanical CAD program SolidWorks. The plans have been drawn too.

  9. The design, construction and performance of the MICE scintillating fibre trackers

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Ellis, M.; Hobson, P.R.; Kyberd, P.; Nebrensky, J.J.; Bross, A.; Fagan, J.; Fitzpatrick, T.; Flores, R.; Kubinski, R.; Krider, J.; Rucinski, R.; Rubinov, P.; Tolian, C.; Hart, T.L.; Kaplan, D.M.; Luebke, W.; Freemire, B.; Wojcik, M.; Barber, G.; Clark, D.

    2011-01-01

    Charged-particle tracking in the international Muon Ionisation Cooling Experiment (MICE) will be performed using two solenoidal spectrometers, each instrumented with a tracking detector based on 350μm diameter scintillating fibres. The design and construction of the trackers is described along with the quality-assurance procedures, photon-detection system, readout electronics, reconstruction and simulation software and the data-acquisition system. Finally, the performance of the MICE tracker, determined using cosmic rays, is presented.

  10. The design, construction and performance of the MICE scintillating fibre trackers

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Ellis, M.; Hobson, P.R.; Kyberd, P.; Nebrensky, J.J. [Brunel University, Uxbridge, Middlesex UB8 3PH (United Kingdom); Bross, A.; Fagan, J.; Fitzpatrick, T.; Flores, R.; Kubinski, R.; Krider, J.; Rucinski, R.; Rubinov, P.; Tolian, C. [Fermilab, P.O. Box 500, Batavia, IL 60510-0500 (United States); Hart, T.L.; Kaplan, D.M.; Luebke, W.; Freemire, B.; Wojcik, M. [Physics Division, Illinois Institute of Technology, 3101 S. Dearborn Street, Chicago, IL 60616 (United States); Barber, G.; Clark, D. [Department of Physics, Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College London, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2AZ (United Kingdom); and others

    2011-12-11

    Charged-particle tracking in the international Muon Ionisation Cooling Experiment (MICE) will be performed using two solenoidal spectrometers, each instrumented with a tracking detector based on 350{mu}m diameter scintillating fibres. The design and construction of the trackers is described along with the quality-assurance procedures, photon-detection system, readout electronics, reconstruction and simulation software and the data-acquisition system. Finally, the performance of the MICE tracker, determined using cosmic rays, is presented.

  11. Retroreflector field tracker. [noncontact optical position sensor for space application

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wargocki, F. E.; Ray, A. J.; Hall, G. E.

    1984-01-01

    An electrooptical position-measuring instrument, the Retroreflector Field Tracker or RFT, is described. It is part of the Dynamic Augmentation Experiment - a part of the payload of Space Shuttle flight 41-D in Summer 1984. The tracker measures and outputs the position of 23 reflective targets placed on a 32-m solar array to provide data for determination of the dynamics of the lightweight structure. The sensor uses a 256 x 256 pixel CID detector; the processor electronics include three Z-80 microprocessors. A pulsed laser diode illuminator is used.

  12. Impact of water-level changes to aquatic vegetation in small oligotrophic lakes

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Egert VANDEL

    2016-06-01

    Full Text Available This study demonstrates the effect of drastic water-level changes to the aquatic vegetation in three small oligotrophic lakes situated in Kurtna Kame Field in north-eastern Estonia. The area holds around 40 lakes in 30 km2 of which 18 lakes are under protection as Natura Habitat lakes (Natura 2000 network. The area is under a strong human impact as it is surrounded by oil shale mines, sand quarry, peat harvesting field etc. The most severe impact comes from the groundwater intake established in 1972 in the vicinity of three studied lakes. The exploitation of groundwater led to drastic water-level drops. In 1980s the water-level drops were measured to be up to 3 to 4 meters compared to the levels of 1946. Lake Martiska and Lake Kuradijärv were severely affected and only 29% and 45% of lake area respectively and 21% of initial volume remained. Both lakes were described as oligotrophic lakes before severe human impact and held characteristic macrophytes such as Isoëtes lacustris L., Sparganium angustifolium Michx and Lobelia dortmanna L. As the water level declined the lakes lost their rare characteristic species and can now be described more as a meso- or even eutrophic lakes. When the volume of groundwater abstraction decreased in the 1990s the water levels started to recover but did not reach the natural levels of pre-industrialized era. Also the vegetation did not show any signs of recovery. In 2012 the pumping rates increased again causing a new rapid decline in water levels which almost exceed the previous minimum levels. The water-level monitoring alongside with the macrophyte monitoring data gives us a good case study on how the long term abrupt water-level changes can affect the aquatic vegetation

  13. Projected future changes in vegetation in western North America in the 21st century

    Science.gov (United States)

    Xiaoyan, Jiang; Rauscher, Sara A.; Ringler, Todd D.; Lawrence, David M.; Williams, A. Park; Allen, Craig D.; Steiner, Allison L.; Cai, D. Michael; McDowell, Nate G.

    2013-01-01

    Rapid and broad-scale forest mortality associated with recent droughts, rising temperature, and insect outbreaks has been observed over western North America (NA). Climate models project additional future warming and increasing drought and water stress for this region. To assess future potential changes in vegetation distributions in western NA, the Community Earth System Model (CESM) coupled with its Dynamic Global Vegetation Model (DGVM) was used under the future A2 emissions scenario. To better span uncertainties in future climate, eight sea surface temperature (SST) projections provided by phase 3 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP3) were employed as boundary conditions. There is a broad consensus among the simulations, despite differences in the simulated climate trajectories across the ensemble, that about half of the needleleaf evergreen tree coverage (from 24% to 11%) will disappear, coincident with a 14% (from 11% to 25%) increase in shrubs and grasses by the end of the twenty-first century in western NA, with most of the change occurring over the latter half of the twenty-first century. The net impact is a ~6 GtC or about 50% decrease in projected ecosystem carbon storage in this region. The findings suggest a potential for a widespread shift from tree-dominated landscapes to shrub and grass-dominated landscapes in western NA because of future warming and consequent increases in water deficits. These results highlight the need for improved process-based understanding of vegetation dynamics, particularly including mortality and the subsequent incorporation of these mechanisms into earth system models to better quantify the vulnerability of western NA forests under climate change.

  14. Kinetics of heat-induced color change of a tuna-vegetable mixture

    OpenAIRE

    Scherer, Erika; Sandoval, Aleida J; Barreiro, José A

    2009-01-01

    Heat induced color change kinetics in a tuna-vegetable mixture was evaluated by measuring color parameter "L" (Hunter-Lab) and 5-hydroxi-methyl-furfural (5-HMF) accumulation. For this purpose small reusable stainless steel TDT cans were used and the kinetic studies performed in a temperature range characteristic of thermal processing of low acid canned foods (110-125°C). The color parameter L was better described by a pseudo zero order while a pseudo first order reaction was found for 5-HMF a...

  15. Overview of the ATLAS Fast Tracker Project

    CERN Document Server

    AUTHOR|(INSPIRE)INSPIRE-00025195; The ATLAS collaboration

    2016-01-01

    The next LHC runs, with a significant increase in instantaneous luminosity, will provide a big challenge for the trigger and data acquisition systems of all the experiments. An intensive use of the tracking information at the trigger level will be important to keep high efficiency for interesting events despite the increase in multiple collisions per bunch crossing. In order to increase the use of tracks within the High Level Trigger, the ATLAS experiment planned the installation of a hardware processor dedicated to tracking: the Fast TracKer processor. The Fast Tracker is designed to perform full scan track reconstruction of every event accepted by the ATLAS first level hardware trigger. To achieve this goal the system uses a parallel architecture, with algorithms designed to exploit the computing power of custom Associative Memory chips, and modern field programmable gate arrays. The processor will provide computing power to reconstruct tracks with transverse momentum greater than 1 GeV in the whole trackin...

  16. The iMPACT project tracker and calorimeter

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Mattiazzo, S., E-mail: serena.mattiazzo@pd.infn.it [Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell' Informazione, Università di Padova, Padova (Italy); Bisello, D. [Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia, Università di Padova, Padova (Italy); INFN Sezione di Padova, Padova (Italy); Giubilato, P. [Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia, Università di Padova, Padova (Italy); INFN Sezione di Padova, Padova (Italy); CERN, Geneve (Switzerland); Pantano, D.; Pozzobon, N. [Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia, Università di Padova, Padova (Italy); INFN Sezione di Padova, Padova (Italy); Snoeys, W. [CERN, Geneve (Switzerland)

    2017-02-11

    In recent years the use of hadrons for cancer radiation treatment has grown in importance, and many facilities are currently operational or under construction worldwide. To fully exploit the therapeutic advantages offered by hadron therapy, precise body imaging for accurate beam delivery is decisive. While traditional X-ray Computed Tomography (xCT) fails in providing 3D images with the precision required for hadrons treatment guidance, Proton Computer Tomography (pCT) scanners, currently in their R&D phase, can. A pCT scanner consists of a tracker system, to track protons, and of a calorimeter, to measure their residual energy. In this paper we will present the iMPACT project, which foresees a novel proton tracking detector with higher scanning speed, better spatial resolution and lower material budget with respect to present state-of-the-art detectors, leading to enhanced performances. The tracker will be matched to a fast, highly segmented proton range calorimeter.

  17. Data quality monitoring of the CMS tracker

    CERN Document Server

    Potamianos, Karolos

    2009-01-01

    The Physics and Data Quality Monitoring (DQM) framework aims at providing a homogeneous monitoring environment across various applications related to data taking at the CMS experiment. It has been designed to be used during online data taking as well as during offline reconstruction. The goal of the online system is to monitor detector performance and identify problems very efficiently during data collection so that proper actions can be taken. On the other hand the reconstruction or calibration problems can be detected during offline processing using the same tool. The monitoring is performed with histograms, which are filled with information from raw and reconstructed data. All histograms can then be displayed both in the central CMS DQM graphical user interface (GUI), as well as in Tracker specific expert GUIs and socalled Tracker Maps. Applications are in place to further process the information from these basic histograms by summarizing them in overview plots, by evaluating them with automated statistica...

  18. The ATLAS Fast TracKer Processing Units

    CERN Document Server

    Krizka, Karol; The ATLAS collaboration

    2016-01-01

    The Fast Tracker is a hardware upgrade to the ATLAS trigger and data-acquisition system, with the goal of providing global track reconstruction by the start of the High Level Trigger starts. The Fast Tracker can process incoming data from the whole inner detector at full first level trigger rate, up to 100 kHz, using custom electronic boards. At the core of the system is a Processing Unit installed in a VMEbus crate, formed by two sets of boards: the Associative Memory Board and a powerful rear transition module called the Auxiliary card, while the second set is the Second Stage board. The associative memories perform the pattern matching looking for correlations within the incoming data, compatible with track candidates at coarse resolution. The pattern matching task is performed using custom application specific integrated circuits, called associative memory chips. The auxiliary card prepares the input and reject bad track candidates obtained from from the Associative Memory Board using the full precision a...

  19. Operation and performance of the ATLAS semiconductor tracker

    CERN Document Server

    Aad, Georges; Abdallah, Jalal; Abdel Khalek, Samah; Abdinov, Ovsat; Aben, Rosemarie; Abi, Babak; Abolins, Maris; AbouZeid, Ossama; Abramowicz, Halina; Abreu, Henso; Abreu, Ricardo; Abulaiti, Yiming; Acharya, Bobby Samir; Adamczyk, Leszek; Adams, David; Adelman, Jahred; Adomeit, Stefanie; Adye, Tim; Agatonovic-Jovin, Tatjana; Aguilar-Saavedra, Juan Antonio; Agustoni, Marco; Ahlen, Steven; Ahmad, Ashfaq; Ahmadov, Faig; Aielli, Giulio; Åkesson, Torsten Paul Ake; Akimoto, Ginga; Akimov, Andrei; Alberghi, Gian Luigi; Albert, Justin; Albrand, Solveig; Alconada Verzini, Maria Josefina; Aleksa, Martin; Aleksandrov, Igor; Alexa, Calin; Alexander, Gideon; Alexandre, Gauthier; Alexopoulos, Theodoros; Alhroob, Muhammad; Alimonti, Gianluca; Alio, Lion; Alison, John; Allbrooke, Benedict; Allison, Lee John; Allport, Phillip; Allwood-Spiers, Sarah; Almond, John; Aloisio, Alberto; Alonso, Alejandro; Alonso, Francisco; Alpigiani, Cristiano; Altheimer, Andrew David; Alvarez Gonzalez, Barbara; Alviggi, Mariagrazia; Amako, Katsuya; Amaral Coutinho, Yara; Amelung, Christoph; Amidei, Dante; Amor Dos Santos, Susana Patricia; Amorim, Antonio; Amoroso, Simone; Amram, Nir; Amundsen, Glenn; Anastopoulos, Christos; Ancu, Lucian Stefan; Andari, Nansi; Andeen, Timothy; Anders, Christoph Falk; Anders, Gabriel; Anderson, Kelby; Andreazza, Attilio; Andrei, George Victor; Anduaga, Xabier; Angelidakis, Stylianos; Angelozzi, Ivan; Anger, Philipp; Angerami, Aaron; Anghinolfi, Francis; Anisenkov, Alexey; Anjos, Nuno; Annovi, Alberto; Antonaki, Ariadni; Antonelli, Mario; Antonov, Alexey; Antos, Jaroslav; Anulli, Fabio; Aoki, Masato; Aperio Bella, Ludovica; Apolle, Rudi; Arabidze, Giorgi; Aracena, Ignacio; Arai, Yasuo; Araque, Juan Pedro; Arce, Ayana; Arguin, Jean-Francois; Argyropoulos, Spyridon; Arik, Metin; Armbruster, Aaron James; Arnaez, Olivier; Arnal, Vanessa; Arnold, Hannah; Arslan, Ozan; Artamonov, Andrei; Artoni, Giacomo; Asai, Shoji; Asbah, Nedaa; Ashkenazi, Adi; Ask, Stefan; Åsman, Barbro; Asquith, Lily; Assamagan, Ketevi; Astalos, Robert; Atkinson, Markus; Atlay, Naim Bora; Auerbach, Benjamin; Augsten, Kamil; Aurousseau, Mathieu; Avolio, Giuseppe; Azuelos, Georges; Azuma, Yuya; Baak, Max; Bacci, Cesare; Bachacou, Henri; Bachas, Konstantinos; Backes, Moritz; Backhaus, Malte; Backus Mayes, John; Badescu, Elisabeta; Bagiacchi, Paolo; Bagnaia, Paolo; Bai, Yu; Bain, Travis; Baines, John; Baker, Oliver Keith; Baker, Sarah; Balek, Petr; Balli, Fabrice; Banas, Elzbieta; Banerjee, Swagato; Banfi, Danilo; Bangert, Andrea Michelle; Bannoura, Arwa A E; Bansal, Vikas; Bansil, Hardeep Singh; Barak, Liron; Baranov, Sergei; Barberio, Elisabetta Luigia; Barberis, Dario; Barbero, Marlon; Barillari, Teresa; Barisonzi, Marcello; Barklow, Timothy; Barlow, Nick; Barnett, Bruce; Barnett, Michael; Barnovska, Zuzana; Baroncelli, Antonio; Barone, Gaetano; Barr, Alan; Barreiro, Fernando; Barreiro Guimarães da Costa, João; Bartoldus, Rainer; Barton, Adam Edward; Bartos, Pavol; Bartsch, Valeria; Bassalat, Ahmed; Basye, Austin; Bates, Richard; Batkova, Lucia; Batley, Richard; Battistin, Michele; Bauer, Florian; Bawa, Harinder Singh; Beau, Tristan; Beauchemin, Pierre-Hugues; Beccherle, Roberto; Bechtle, Philip; Beck, Hans Peter; Becker, Anne Kathrin; Becker, Sebastian; Beckingham, Matthew; Becot, Cyril; Beddall, Andrew; Beddall, Ayda; Bedikian, Sourpouhi; Bednyakov, Vadim; Bee, Christopher; Beemster, Lars; Beermann, Thomas; Begel, Michael; Behr, Katharina; Belanger-Champagne, Camille; Bell, Paul; Bell, William; Bella, Gideon; Bellagamba, Lorenzo; Bellerive, Alain; Bellomo, Massimiliano; Belloni, Alberto; Belotskiy, Konstantin; Beltramello, Olga; Benary, Odette; Benchekroun, Driss; Bendtz, Katarina; Benekos, Nektarios; Benhammou, Yan; Benhar Noccioli, Eleonora; Benitez Garcia, Jorge-Armando; Benjamin, Douglas; Bensinger, James; Benslama, Kamal; Bentvelsen, Stan; Berge, David; Bergeaas Kuutmann, Elin; Berger, Nicolas; Berghaus, Frank; Berglund, Elina; Beringer, Jürg; Bernabéu, José; Bernard, Clare; Bernat, Pauline; Bernius, Catrin; Bernlochner, Florian Urs; Berry, Tracey; Berta, Peter; Bertella, Claudia; Bertolucci, Federico; Besana, Maria Ilaria; Besjes, Geert-Jan; Bessidskaia, Olga; Besson, Nathalie; Betancourt, Christopher; Bethke, Siegfried; Bhimji, Wahid; Bianchi, Riccardo-Maria; Bianchini, Louis; Bianco, Michele; Biebel, Otmar; Bieniek, Stephen Paul; Bierwagen, Katharina; Biesiada, Jed; Biglietti, Michela; Bilbao De Mendizabal, Javier; Bilokon, Halina; Bindi, Marcello; Binet, Sebastien; Bingul, Ahmet; Bini, Cesare; Black, Curtis; Black, James; Black, Kevin; Blackburn, Daniel; Blair, Robert; Blanchard, Jean-Baptiste; Blazek, Tomas; Bloch, Ingo; Blocker, Craig; Blum, Walter; Blumenschein, Ulrike; Bobbink, Gerjan; Bobrovnikov, Victor; Bocchetta, Simona Serena; Bocci, Andrea; Boddy, Christopher Richard; Boehler, Michael; Boek, Jennifer; Boek, Thorsten Tobias; Bogaerts, Joannes Andreas; Bogdanchikov, Alexander; Bogouch, Andrei; Bohm, Christian; Bohm, Jan; Boisvert, Veronique; Bold, Tomasz; Boldea, Venera; Boldyrev, Alexey; Bomben, Marco; Bona, Marcella; Boonekamp, Maarten; Borisov, Anatoly; Borissov, Guennadi; Borri, Marcello; Borroni, Sara; Bortfeldt, Jonathan; Bortolotto, Valerio; Bos, Kors; Boscherini, Davide; Bosman, Martine; Boterenbrood, Hendrik; Boudreau, Joseph; Bouffard, Julian; Bouhova-Thacker, Evelina Vassileva; Boumediene, Djamel Eddine; Bourdarios, Claire; Bousson, Nicolas; Boutouil, Sara; Boveia, Antonio; Boyd, James; Boyko, Igor; Bozovic-Jelisavcic, Ivanka; Bracinik, Juraj; Branchini, Paolo; Brandt, Andrew; Brandt, Gerhard; Brandt, Oleg; Bratzler, Uwe; Brau, Benjamin; Brau, James; Braun, Helmut; Brazzale, Simone Federico; Brelier, Bertrand; Brendlinger, Kurt; Brennan, Amelia Jean; Brenner, Richard; Bressler, Shikma; Bristow, Kieran; Bristow, Timothy Michael; Britton, Dave; Brochu, Frederic; Brock, Ian; Brock, Raymond; Bromberg, Carl; Bronner, Johanna; Brooijmans, Gustaaf; Brooks, Timothy; Brooks, William; Brosamer, Jacquelyn; Brost, Elizabeth; Brown, Gareth; Brown, Jonathan; Bruckman de Renstrom, Pawel; Bruncko, Dusan; Bruneliere, Renaud; Brunet, Sylvie; Bruni, Alessia; Bruni, Graziano; Bruschi, Marco; Bryngemark, Lene; Buanes, Trygve; Buat, Quentin; Bucci, Francesca; Buchholz, Peter; Buckingham, Ryan; Buckley, Andrew; Buda, Stelian Ioan; Budagov, Ioulian; Buehrer, Felix; Bugge, Lars; Bugge, Magnar Kopangen; Bulekov, Oleg; Bundock, Aaron Colin; Burckhart, Helfried; Burdin, Sergey; Burghgrave, Blake; Burke, Stephen; Burmeister, Ingo; Busato, Emmanuel; Büscher, Daniel; Büscher, Volker; Bussey, Peter; Buszello, Claus-Peter; Butler, Bart; Butler, John; Butt, Aatif Imtiaz; Buttar, Craig; Butterworth, Jonathan; Butti, Pierfrancesco; Buttinger, William; Buzatu, Adrian; Byszewski, Marcin; Cabrera Urbán, Susana; Caforio, Davide; Cakir, Orhan; Calafiura, Paolo; Calandri, Alessandro; Calderini, Giovanni; Calfayan, Philippe; Calkins, Robert; Caloba, Luiz; Calvet, David; Calvet, Samuel; Camacho Toro, Reina; Camarda, Stefano; Cameron, David; Caminada, Lea Michaela; Caminal Armadans, Roger; Campana, Simone; Campanelli, Mario; Campoverde, Angel; Canale, Vincenzo; Canepa, Anadi; Cantero, Josu; Cantrill, Robert; Cao, Tingting; Capeans Garrido, Maria Del Mar; Caprini, Irinel; Caprini, Mihai; Capua, Marcella; Caputo, Regina; Cardarelli, Roberto; Carli, Tancredi; Carlino, Gianpaolo; Carminati, Leonardo; Caron, Sascha; Carquin, Edson; Carrillo-Montoya, German D; Carter, Antony; Carter, Janet; Carvalho, João; Casadei, Diego; Casado, Maria Pilar; Castaneda-Miranda, Elizabeth; Castelli, Angelantonio; Castillo Gimenez, Victoria; Castro, Nuno Filipe; Catastini, Pierluigi; Catinaccio, Andrea; Catmore, James; Cattai, Ariella; Cattani, Giordano; Caughron, Seth; Cavaliere, Viviana; Cavalli, Donatella; Cavalli-Sforza, Matteo; Cavasinni, Vincenzo; Ceradini, Filippo; Cerio, Benjamin; Cerny, Karel; Santiago Cerqueira, Augusto; Cerri, Alessandro; Cerrito, Lucio; Cerutti, Fabio; Cerv, Matevz; Cervelli, Alberto; Cetin, Serkant Ali; Chafaq, Aziz; Chakraborty, Dhiman; Chalupkova, Ina; Chan, Kevin; Chang, Philip; Chapleau, Bertrand; Chapman, John Derek; Charfeddine, Driss; Charlton, Dave; Chau, Chav Chhiv; Chavez Barajas, Carlos Alberto; Cheatham, Susan; Chegwidden, Andrew; Chekanov, Sergei; Chekulaev, Sergey; Chelkov, Gueorgui; Chelstowska, Magda Anna; Chen, Chunhui; Chen, Hucheng; Chen, Karen; Chen, Liming; Chen, Shenjian; Chen, Xin; Chen, Yujiao; Cheng, Hok Chuen; Cheng, Yangyang; Cheplakov, Alexander; Cherkaoui El Moursli, Rajaa; Chernyatin, Valeriy; Cheu, Elliott; Chevalier, Laurent; Chiarella, Vitaliano; Chiefari, Giovanni; Childers, John Taylor; Chilingarov, Alexandre; Chiodini, Gabriele; Chisholm, Andrew; Chislett, Rebecca Thalatta; Chitan, Adrian; Chizhov, Mihail; Chouridou, Sofia; Chow, Bonnie Kar Bo; Christidi, Ilektra-Athanasia; Chromek-Burckhart, Doris; Chu, Ming-Lee; Chudoba, Jiri; Chwastowski, Janusz; Chytka, Ladislav; Ciapetti, Guido; Ciftci, Abbas Kenan; Ciftci, Rena; Cinca, Diane; Cindro, Vladimir; Ciocio, Alessandra; Cirkovic, Predrag; Citron, Zvi Hirsh; Citterio, Mauro; Ciubancan, Mihai; Clark, Allan G; Clark, Philip James; Clarke, Robert; Cleland, Bill; Clemens, Jean-Claude; Clement, Christophe; Coadou, Yann; Cobal, Marina; Coccaro, Andrea; Cochran, James H; Coffey, Laurel; Cogan, Joshua Godfrey; Coggeshall, James; Cole, Brian; Cole, Stephen; Colijn, Auke-Pieter; Collins-Tooth, Christopher; Collot, Johann; Colombo, Tommaso; Colon, German; Compostella, Gabriele; Conde Muiño, Patricia; Coniavitis, Elias; Conidi, Maria Chiara; Connell, Simon Henry; Connelly, Ian; Consonni, Sofia Maria; Consorti, Valerio; Constantinescu, Serban; Conta, Claudio; Conti, Geraldine; Conventi, Francesco; Cooke, Mark; Cooper, Ben; Cooper-Sarkar, Amanda; Cooper-Smith, Neil; Copic, Katherine; Cornelissen, Thijs; Corradi, Massimo; Corriveau, Francois; Corso-Radu, Alina; Cortes-Gonzalez, Arely; Cortiana, Giorgio; Costa, Giuseppe; Costa, María José; Costanzo, Davide; Côté, David; Cottin, Giovanna; Cowan, Glen; Cox, Brian; Cranmer, Kyle; Cree, Graham; Crépé-Renaudin, Sabine; Crescioli, Francesco; Crispin Ortuzar, Mireia; Cristinziani, Markus; Croft, Vince; Crosetti, Giovanni; Cuciuc, Constantin-Mihai; Cuenca Almenar, Cristóbal; Cuhadar Donszelmann, Tulay; Cummings, Jane; Curatolo, Maria; Cuthbert, Cameron; Czirr, Hendrik; Czodrowski, Patrick; Czyczula, Zofia; D'Auria, Saverio; D'Onofrio, Monica; Da Cunha Sargedas De Sousa, Mario Jose; Da Via, Cinzia; Dabrowski, Wladyslaw; Dafinca, Alexandru; Dai, Tiesheng; Dale, Orjan; Dallaire, Frederick; Dallapiccola, Carlo; Dam, Mogens; Daniells, Andrew Christopher; Dano Hoffmann, Maria; Dao, Valerio; Darbo, Giovanni; Darlea, Georgiana Lavinia; Darmora, Smita; Dassoulas, James; Dattagupta, Aparajita; Davey, Will; David, Claire; Davidek, Tomas; Davies, Eleanor; Davies, Merlin; Davignon, Olivier; Davison, Adam; Davison, Peter; Davygora, Yuriy; Dawe, Edmund; Dawson, Ian; Daya-Ishmukhametova, Rozmin; De, Kaushik; de Asmundis, Riccardo; De Castro, Stefano; De Cecco, Sandro; de Graat, Julien; De Groot, Nicolo; de Jong, Paul; De la Torre, Hector; De Lorenzi, Francesco; De Nooij, Lucie; De Pedis, Daniele; De Salvo, Alessandro; De Sanctis, Umberto; De Santo, Antonella; De Vivie De Regie, Jean-Baptiste; De Zorzi, Guido; Dearnaley, William James; Debbe, Ramiro; Debenedetti, Chiara; Dechenaux, Benjamin; Dedovich, Dmitri; Degenhardt, James; Deigaard, Ingrid; Del Peso, Jose; Del Prete, Tarcisio; Deliot, Frederic; Delitzsch, Chris Malena; Deliyergiyev, Maksym; Dell'Acqua, Andrea; Dell'Asta, Lidia; Dell'Orso, Mauro; Della Pietra, Massimo; della Volpe, Domenico; Delmastro, Marco; Delsart, Pierre-Antoine; Deluca, Carolina; Demers, Sarah; Demichev, Mikhail; Demilly, Aurelien; Denisov, Sergey; Derendarz, Dominik; Derkaoui, Jamal Eddine; Derue, Frederic; Dervan, Paul; Desch, Klaus Kurt; Deterre, Cecile; Deviveiros, Pier-Olivier; Dewhurst, Alastair; Dhaliwal, Saminder; Di Ciaccio, Anna; Di Ciaccio, Lucia; Di Domenico, Antonio; Di Donato, Camilla; Di Girolamo, Alessandro; Di Girolamo, Beniamino; Di Mattia, Alessandro; Di Micco, Biagio; Di Nardo, Roberto; Di Simone, Andrea; Di Sipio, Riccardo; Di Valentino, David; Diaz, Marco Aurelio; Diehl, Edward; Dietrich, Janet; Dietzsch, Thorsten; Diglio, Sara; Dimitrievska, Aleksandra; Dingfelder, Jochen; Dionisi, Carlo; Dita, Petre; Dita, Sanda; Dittus, Fridolin; Djama, Fares; Djobava, Tamar; Barros do Vale, Maria Aline; Do Valle Wemans, André; Doan, Thi Kieu Oanh; Dobos, Daniel; Dobson, Ellie; Doglioni, Caterina; Doherty, Tom; Dohmae, Takeshi; Dolejsi, Jiri; Dolezal, Zdenek; Dolgoshein, Boris; Donadelli, Marisilvia; Donati, Simone; Dondero, Paolo; Donini, Julien; Dopke, Jens; Doria, Alessandra; Dos Anjos, Andre; Dova, Maria-Teresa; Doyle, Tony; Dris, Manolis; Dubbert, Jörg; Dube, Sourabh; Dubreuil, Emmanuelle; Duchovni, Ehud; Duckeck, Guenter; Ducu, Otilia Anamaria; Duda, Dominik; Dudarev, Alexey; Dudziak, Fanny; Duflot, Laurent; Duguid, Liam; Dührssen, Michael; Dunford, Monica; Duran Yildiz, Hatice; Düren, Michael; Durglishvili, Archil; Dwuznik, Michal; Dyndal, Mateusz; Ebke, Johannes; Edson, William; Edwards, Nicholas Charles; Ehrenfeld, Wolfgang; Eifert, Till; Eigen, Gerald; Einsweiler, Kevin; Ekelof, Tord; El Kacimi, Mohamed; Ellert, Mattias; Elles, Sabine; Ellinghaus, Frank; Ellis, Nicolas; Elmsheuser, Johannes; Elsing, Markus; Emeliyanov, Dmitry; Enari, Yuji; Endner, Oliver Chris; Endo, Masaki; Engelmann, Roderich; Erdmann, Johannes; Ereditato, Antonio; Eriksson, Daniel; Ernis, Gunar; Ernst, Jesse; Ernst, Michael; Ernwein, Jean; Errede, Deborah; Errede, Steven; Ertel, Eugen; Escalier, Marc; Esch, Hendrik; Escobar, Carlos; Esposito, Bellisario; Etienvre, Anne-Isabelle; Etzion, Erez; Evans, Hal; Fabbri, Laura; Facini, Gabriel; Fakhrutdinov, Rinat; Falciano, Speranza; Faltova, Jana; Fang, Yaquan; Fanti, Marcello; Farbin, Amir; Farilla, Addolorata; Farooque, Trisha; Farrell, Steven; Farrington, Sinead; Farthouat, Philippe; Fassi, Farida; Fassnacht, Patrick; Fassouliotis, Dimitrios; Favareto, Andrea; Fayard, Louis; Federic, Pavol; Fedin, Oleg; Fedorko, Wojciech; Fehling-Kaschek, Mirjam; Feigl, Simon; Feligioni, Lorenzo; Feng, Cunfeng; Feng, Eric; Feng, Haolu; Fenyuk, Alexander; Fernandez Perez, Sonia; Ferrag, Samir; Ferrando, James; Ferrari, Arnaud; Ferrari, Pamela; Ferrari, Roberto; Ferreira de Lima, Danilo Enoque; Ferrer, Antonio; Ferrere, Didier; Ferretti, Claudio; Ferretto Parodi, Andrea; Fiascaris, Maria; Fiedler, Frank; Filipčič, Andrej; Filipuzzi, Marco; Filthaut, Frank; Fincke-Keeler, Margret; Finelli, Kevin Daniel; Fiolhais, Miguel; Fiorini, Luca; Firan, Ana; Fischer, Julia; Fisher, Wade Cameron; Fitzgerald, Eric Andrew; Flechl, Martin; Fleck, Ivor; Fleischmann, Philipp; Fleischmann, Sebastian; Fletcher, Gareth Thomas; Fletcher, Gregory; Flick, Tobias; Floderus, Anders; Flores Castillo, Luis; Florez Bustos, Andres Carlos; Flowerdew, Michael; Formica, Andrea; Forti, Alessandra; Fortin, Dominique; Fournier, Daniel; Fox, Harald; Fracchia, Silvia; Francavilla, Paolo; Franchini, Matteo; Franchino, Silvia; Francis, David; Franklin, Melissa; Franz, Sebastien; Fraternali, Marco; French, Sky; Friedrich, Conrad; Friedrich, Felix; Froidevaux, Daniel; Frost, James; Fukunaga, Chikara; Fullana Torregrosa, Esteban; Fulsom, Bryan Gregory; Fuster, Juan; Gabaldon, Carolina; Gabizon, Ofir; Gabrielli, Alessandro; Gabrielli, Andrea; Gadatsch, Stefan; Gadomski, Szymon; Gagliardi, Guido; Gagnon, Pauline; Galea, Cristina; Galhardo, Bruno; Gallas, Elizabeth; Gallo, Valentina Santina; Gallop, Bruce; Gallus, Petr; Galster, Gorm Aske Gram Krohn; Gan, KK; Gandrajula, Reddy Pratap; Gao, Jun; Gao, Yongsheng; Garay Walls, Francisca; Garberson, Ford; García, Carmen; Garcia Argos, Carlos; García Navarro, José Enrique; Garcia-Sciveres, Maurice; Gardner, Robert; Garelli, Nicoletta; Garonne, Vincent; Gatti, Claudio; Gaudio, Gabriella; Gaur, Bakul; Gauthier, Lea; Gauzzi, Paolo; Gavrilenko, Igor; Gay, Colin; Gaycken, Goetz; Gazis, Evangelos; Ge, Peng; Gecse, Zoltan; Gee, Norman; Geerts, Daniël Alphonsus Adrianus; Geich-Gimbel, Christoph; Gellerstedt, Karl; Gemme, Claudia; Gemmell, Alistair; Genest, Marie-Hélène; Gentile, Simonetta; George, Matthias; George, Simon; Gerbaudo, Davide; Gershon, Avi; Ghazlane, Hamid; Ghodbane, Nabil; Giacobbe, Benedetto; Giagu, Stefano; Giangiobbe, Vincent; Giannetti, Paola; Gianotti, Fabiola; Gibbard, Bruce; Gibson, Stephen; Gilchriese, Murdock; Gillam, Thomas; Gillberg, Dag; Gilles, Geoffrey; Gingrich, Douglas; Giokaris, Nikos; Giordani, MarioPaolo; Giordano, Raffaele; Giorgi, Francesco Michelangelo; Giraud, Pierre-Francois; Giugni, Danilo; Giuliani, Claudia; Giulini, Maddalena; Gjelsten, Børge Kile; Gkialas, Ioannis; Gladilin, Leonid; Glasman, Claudia; Glatzer, Julian; Glaysher, Paul; Glazov, Alexandre; Glonti, George; Goblirsch-Kolb, Maximilian; Goddard, Jack Robert; Godfrey, Jennifer; Godlewski, Jan; Goeringer, Christian; Goldfarb, Steven; Golling, Tobias; Golubkov, Dmitry; Gomes, Agostinho; Gomez Fajardo, Luz Stella; Gonçalo, Ricardo; Goncalves Pinto Firmino Da Costa, Joao; Gonella, Laura; González de la Hoz, Santiago; Gonzalez Parra, Garoe; Gonzalez Silva, Laura; Gonzalez-Sevilla, Sergio; Goodrick, Maurice; Goossens, Luc; Gorbounov, Petr Andreevich; Gordon, Howard; Gorelov, Igor; Gorfine, Grant; Gorini, Benedetto; Gorini, Edoardo; Gorišek, Andrej; Gornicki, Edward; Goshaw, Alfred; Gössling, Claus; Gostkin, Mikhail Ivanovitch; Gouighri, Mohamed; Goujdami, Driss; Goulette, Marc Phillippe; Goussiou, Anna; Goy, Corinne; Gozpinar, Serdar; Grabas, Herve Marie Xavier; Graber, Lars; Grabowska-Bold, Iwona; Grafström, Per; Grahn, Karl-Johan; Gramling, Johanna; Gramstad, Eirik; Grancagnolo, Sergio; Grassi, Valerio; Gratchev, Vadim; Gray, Heather; Graziani, Enrico; Grebenyuk, Oleg; Greenwood, Zeno Dixon; Gregersen, Kristian; Gregor, Ingrid-Maria; Grenier, Philippe; Griffiths, Justin; Grigalashvili, Nugzar; Grillo, Alexander; Grimm, Kathryn; Grinstein, Sebastian; Gris, Philippe Luc Yves; Grishkevich, Yaroslav; Grivaz, Jean-Francois; Grohs, Johannes Philipp; Grohsjean, Alexander; Gross, Eilam; Grosse-Knetter, Joern; Grossi, Giulio Cornelio; Groth-Jensen, Jacob; Grout, Zara Jane; Grybel, Kai; Guan, Liang; Guescini, Francesco; Guest, Daniel; Gueta, Orel; Guicheney, Christophe; Guido, Elisa; Guillemin, Thibault; Guindon, Stefan; Gul, Umar; Gumpert, Christian; Gunther, Jaroslav; Guo, Jun; Gupta, Shaun; Gutierrez, Phillip; Gutierrez Ortiz, Nicolas Gilberto; Gutschow, Christian; Guttman, Nir; Guyot, Claude; Gwenlan, Claire; Gwilliam, Carl; Haas, Andy; Haber, Carl; Hadavand, Haleh Khani; Haddad, Nacim; Haefner, Petra; Hageboeck, Stephan; Hajduk, Zbigniew; Hakobyan, Hrachya; Haleem, Mahsana; Hall, David; Halladjian, Garabed; Hamacher, Klaus; Hamal, Petr; Hamano, Kenji; Hamer, Matthias; Hamilton, Andrew; Hamilton, Samuel; Hamnett, Phillip George; Han, Liang; Hanagaki, Kazunori; Hanawa, Keita; Hance, Michael; Hanke, Paul; Hansen, Jørgen Beck; Hansen, Jorn Dines; Hansen, Peter Henrik; Hara, Kazuhiko; Hard, Andrew; Harenberg, Torsten; Harkusha, Siarhei; Harper, Devin; Harrington, Robert; Harris, Orin; Harrison, Paul Fraser; Hartjes, Fred; Hasegawa, Satoshi; Hasegawa, Yoji; Hasib, A; Hassani, Samira; Haug, Sigve; Hauschild, Michael; Hauser, Reiner; Havranek, Miroslav; Hawkes, Christopher; Hawkings, Richard John; Hawkins, Anthony David; Hayashi, Takayasu; Hayden, Daniel; Hays, Chris; Hayward, Helen; Haywood, Stephen; Head, Simon; Heck, Tobias; Hedberg, Vincent; Heelan, Louise; Heim, Sarah; Heim, Timon; Heinemann, Beate; Heinrich, Lukas; Heisterkamp, Simon; Hejbal, Jiri; Helary, Louis; Heller, Claudio; Heller, Matthieu; Hellman, Sten; Hellmich, Dennis; Helsens, Clement; Henderson, James; Henderson, Robert; Hengler, Christopher; Henrichs, Anna; Henriques Correia, Ana Maria; Henrot-Versille, Sophie; Hensel, Carsten; Herbert, Geoffrey Henry; Hernández Jiménez, Yesenia; Herrberg-Schubert, Ruth; Herten, Gregor; Hertenberger, Ralf; Hervas, Luis; Hesketh, Gavin Grant; Hessey, Nigel; Hickling, Robert; Higón-Rodriguez, Emilio; Hill, Ewan; Hill, John; Hiller, Karl Heinz; Hillert, Sonja; Hillier, Stephen; Hinchliffe, Ian; Hines, Elizabeth; Hirose, Minoru; Hirschbuehl, Dominic; Hobbs, John; Hod, Noam; Hodgkinson, Mark; Hodgson, Paul; Hoecker, Andreas; Hoeferkamp, Martin; Hoffman, Julia; Hoffmann, Dirk; Hofmann, Julia Isabell; Hohlfeld, Marc; Holmes, Tova Ray; Hong, Tae Min; Hooft van Huysduynen, Loek; Hostachy, Jean-Yves; Hou, Suen; Hoummada, Abdeslam; Howard, Jacob; Howarth, James; Hrabovsky, Miroslav; Hristova, Ivana; Hrivnac, Julius; Hryn'ova, Tetiana; Hsu, Pai-hsien Jennifer; Hsu, Shih-Chieh; Hu, Diedi; Hu, Xueye; Huang, Yanping; Hubacek, Zdenek; Hubaut, Fabrice; Huegging, Fabian; Huffman, Todd Brian; Hughes, Emlyn; Hughes, Gareth; Huhtinen, Mika; Hülsing, Tobias Alexander; Hurwitz, Martina; Huseynov, Nazim; Huston, Joey; Huth, John; Iacobucci, Giuseppe; Iakovidis, Georgios; Ibragimov, Iskander; Iconomidou-Fayard, Lydia; Idarraga, John; Ideal, Emma; Iengo, Paolo; Igonkina, Olga; Iizawa, Tomoya; Ikegami, Yoichi; Ikematsu, Katsumasa; Ikeno, Masahiro; Iliadis, Dimitrios; Ilic, Nikolina; Inamaru, Yuki; Ince, Tayfun; Ioannou, Pavlos; Iodice, Mauro; Iordanidou, Kalliopi; Ippolito, Valerio; Irles Quiles, Adrian; Isaksson, Charlie; Ishino, Masaya; Ishitsuka, Masaki; Ishmukhametov, Renat; Issever, Cigdem; Istin, Serhat; Iturbe Ponce, Julia Mariana; Ivarsson, Jenny; Ivashin, Anton; Iwanski, Wieslaw; Iwasaki, Hiroyuki; Izen, Joseph; Izzo, Vincenzo; Jackson, Brett; Jackson, John; Jackson, Matthew; Jackson, Paul; Jaekel, Martin; Jain, Vivek; Jakobs, Karl; Jakobsen, Sune; Jakoubek, Tomas; Jakubek, Jan; Jamin, David Olivier; Jana, Dilip; Jansen, Eric; Jansen, Hendrik; Janssen, Jens; Janus, Michel; Jarlskog, Göran; Javadov, Namig; Javůrek, Tomáš; Jeanty, Laura; Jeng, Geng-yuan; Jennens, David; Jenni, Peter; Jentzsch, Jennifer; Jeske, Carl; Jézéquel, Stéphane; Ji, Haoshuang; Ji, Weina; Jia, Jiangyong; Jiang, Yi; Jimenez Belenguer, Marcos; Jin, Shan; Jinaru, Adam; Jinnouchi, Osamu; Joergensen, Morten Dam; Johansson, Erik; Johansson, Per; Johns, Kenneth; Jon-And, Kerstin; Jones, Graham; Jones, Roger; Jones, Tim; Jongmanns, Jan; Jorge, Pedro; Joseph, John; Joshi, Kiran Daniel; Jovicevic, Jelena; Ju, Xiangyang; Jung, Christian; Jungst, Ralph Markus; Jussel, Patrick; Juste Rozas, Aurelio; Kaci, Mohammed; Kaczmarska, Anna; Kado, Marumi; Kagan, Harris; Kagan, Michael; Kajomovitz, Enrique; Kama, Sami; Kanaya, Naoko; Kaneda, Michiru; Kaneti, Steven; Kanno, Takayuki; Kantserov, Vadim; Kanzaki, Junichi; Kaplan, Benjamin; Kapliy, Anton; Kar, Deepak; Karakostas, Konstantinos; Karastathis, Nikolaos; Karnevskiy, Mikhail; Karpov, Sergey; Karthik, Krishnaiyengar; Kartvelishvili, Vakhtang; Karyukhin, Andrey; Kashif, Lashkar; Kasieczka, Gregor; Kass, Richard; Kastanas, Alex; Kataoka, Yousuke; Katre, Akshay; Katzy, Judith; Kaushik, Venkatesh; Kawagoe, Kiyotomo; Kawamoto, Tatsuo; Kawamura, Gen; Kazama, Shingo; Kazanin, Vassili; Kazarinov, Makhail; Keeler, Richard; Keener, Paul; Kehoe, Robert; Keil, Markus; Keller, John; Keoshkerian, Houry; Kepka, Oldrich; Kerševan, Borut Paul; Kersten, Susanne; Kessoku, Kohei; Keung, Justin; Khalil-zada, Farkhad; Khandanyan, Hovhannes; Khanov, Alexander; Khodinov, Alexander; Khomich, Andrei; Khoo, Teng Jian; Khoriauli, Gia; Khoroshilov, Andrey; Khovanskiy, Valery; Khramov, Evgeniy; Khubua, Jemal; Kim, Hee Yeun; Kim, Hyeon Jin; Kim, Shinhong; Kimura, Naoki; Kind, Oliver; King, Barry; King, Matthew; King, Robert Steven Beaufoy; King, Samuel Burton; Kirk, Julie; Kiryunin, Andrey; Kishimoto, Tomoe; Kisielewska, Danuta; Kiss, Florian; Kitamura, Takumi; Kittelmann, Thomas; Kiuchi, Kenji; Kladiva, Eduard; Klein, Max; Klein, Uta; Kleinknecht, Konrad; Klimek, Pawel; Klimentov, Alexei; Klingenberg, Reiner; Klinger, Joel Alexander; Klioutchnikova, Tatiana; Klok, Peter; Kluge, Eike-Erik; Kluit, Peter; Kluth, Stefan; Kneringer, Emmerich; Knoops, Edith; Knue, Andrea; Kobayashi, Tomio; Kobel, Michael; Kocian, Martin; Kodys, Peter; Koevesarki, Peter; Koffas, Thomas; Koffeman, Els; Kogan, Lucy Anne; Kohlmann, Simon; Kohout, Zdenek; Kohriki, Takashi; Koi, Tatsumi; Kolanoski, Hermann; Koletsou, Iro; Koll, James; Komar, Aston; Komori, Yuto; Kondo, Takahiko; Kondrashova, Nataliia; Köneke, Karsten; König, Adriaan; König, Sebastian; Kono, Takanori; Konoplich, Rostislav; Konstantinidis, Nikolaos; Kopeliansky, Revital; Koperny, Stefan; Köpke, Lutz; Kopp, Anna Katharina; Korcyl, Krzysztof; Kordas, Kostantinos; Korn, Andreas; Korol, Aleksandr; Korolkov, Ilya; Korolkova, Elena; Korotkov, Vladislav; Kortner, Oliver; Kortner, Sandra; Kostyukhin, Vadim; Kotov, Sergey; Kotov, Vladislav; Kotwal, Ashutosh; Kourkoumelis, Christine; Kouskoura, Vasiliki; Koutsman, Alex; Kowalewski, Robert Victor; Kowalski, Tadeusz; Kozanecki, Witold; Kozhin, Anatoly; Kral, Vlastimil; Kramarenko, Viktor; Kramberger, Gregor; Krasnopevtsev, Dimitriy; Krasny, Mieczyslaw Witold; Krasznahorkay, Attila; Kraus, Jana; Kravchenko, Anton; Kreiss, Sven; Kretz, Moritz; Kretzschmar, Jan; Kreutzfeldt, Kristof; Krieger, Peter; Kroeninger, Kevin; Kroha, Hubert; Kroll, Joe; Kroseberg, Juergen; Krstic, Jelena; Kruchonak, Uladzimir; Krüger, Hans; Kruker, Tobias; Krumnack, Nils; Krumshteyn, Zinovii; Kruse, Amanda; Kruse, Mark; Kruskal, Michael; Kubik, Petr; Kubota, Takashi; Kuday, Sinan; Kuehn, Susanne; Kugel, Andreas; Kuhl, Andrew; Kuhl, Thorsten; Kukhtin, Victor; Kulchitsky, Yuri; Kuleshov, Sergey; Kuna, Marine; Kunkle, Joshua; Kupco, Alexander; Kurashige, Hisaya; Kurochkin, Yurii; Kurumida, Rie; Kus, Vlastimil; Kuwertz, Emma Sian; Kuze, Masahiro; Kvita, Jiri; La Rosa, Alessandro; La Rotonda, Laura; Lacasta, Carlos; Lacava, Francesco; Lacey, James; Lacker, Heiko; Lacour, Didier; Lacuesta, Vicente Ramón; Ladygin, Evgueni; Lafaye, Remi; Laforge, Bertrand; Lagouri, Theodota; Lai, Stanley; Laier, Heiko; Lambourne, Luke; Lammers, Sabine; Lampen, Caleb; Lampl, Walter; Lançon, Eric; Landgraf, Ulrich; Landon, Murrough; Lang, Valerie Susanne; Lange, Clemens; Lankford, Andrew; Lanni, Francesco; Lantzsch, Kerstin; Laplace, Sandrine; Lapoire, Cecile; Laporte, Jean-Francois; Lari, Tommaso; Lassnig, Mario; Laurelli, Paolo; Lavrijsen, Wim; Law, Alexander; Laycock, Paul; Le, Bao Tran; Le Dortz, Olivier; Le Guirriec, Emmanuel; Le Menedeu, Eve; LeCompte, Thomas; Ledroit-Guillon, Fabienne Agnes Marie; Lee, Claire Alexandra; Lee, Hurng-Chun; Lee, Jason; Lee, Shih-Chang; Lee, Lawrence; Lefebvre, Guillaume; Lefebvre, Michel; Legger, Federica; Leggett, Charles; Lehan, Allan; Lehmacher, Marc; Lehmann Miotto, Giovanna; Lei, Xiaowen; Leister, Andrew Gerard; Leite, Marco Aurelio Lisboa; Leitner, Rupert; Lellouch, Daniel; Lemmer, Boris; Leney, Katharine; Lenz, Tatjana; Lenzen, Georg; Lenzi, Bruno; Leone, Robert; Leonhardt, Kathrin; Leontsinis, Stefanos; Leroy, Claude; Lester, Christopher; Lester, Christopher Michael; Levchenko, Mikhail; Levêque, Jessica; Levin, Daniel; Levinson, Lorne; Levy, Mark; Lewis, Adrian; Lewis, George; Leyko, Agnieszka; Leyton, Michael; Li, Bing; Li, Bo; Li, Haifeng; Li, Ho Ling; Li, Liang; Li, Shu; Li, Yichen; Liang, Zhijun; Liao, Hongbo; Liberti, Barbara; Lichard, Peter; Lie, Ki; Liebal, Jessica; Liebig, Wolfgang; Limbach, Christian; Limosani, Antonio; Limper, Maaike; Lin, Simon; Linde, Frank; Lindquist, Brian Edward; Linnemann, James; Lipeles, Elliot; Lipniacka, Anna; Lisovyi, Mykhailo; Liss, Tony; Lissauer, David; Lister, Alison; Litke, Alan; Liu, Bo; Liu, Dong; Liu, Jianbei; Liu, Kun; Liu, Lulu; Liu, Miaoyuan; Liu, Minghui; Liu, Yanwen; Livan, Michele; Livermore, Sarah; Lleres, Annick; Llorente Merino, Javier; Lloyd, Stephen; Lo Sterzo, Francesco; Lobodzinska, Ewelina; Loch, Peter; Lockman, William; Loddenkoetter, Thomas; Loebinger, Fred; Loevschall-Jensen, Ask Emil; Loginov, Andrey; Loh, Chang Wei; Lohse, Thomas; Lohwasser, Kristin; Lokajicek, Milos; Lombardo, Vincenzo Paolo; Long, Brian Alexander; Long, Jonathan; Long, Robin Eamonn; Lopes, Lourenco; Lopez Mateos, David; Lopez Paredes, Brais; Lorenz, Jeanette; Lorenzo Martinez, Narei; Losada, Marta; Loscutoff, Peter; Lou, XinChou; Lounis, Abdenour; Love, Jeremy; Love, Peter; Lowe, Andrew; Lu, Feng; Lubatti, Henry; Luci, Claudio; Lucotte, Arnaud; Luehring, Frederick; Lukas, Wolfgang; Luminari, Lamberto; Lundberg, Olof; Lund-Jensen, Bengt; Lungwitz, Matthias; Lynn, David; Lysak, Roman; Lytken, Else; Ma, Hong; Ma, Lian Liang; Maccarrone, Giovanni; Macchiolo, Anna; Machado Miguens, Joana; Macina, Daniela; Madaffari, Daniele; Madar, Romain; Maddocks, Harvey Jonathan; Mader, Wolfgang; Madsen, Alexander; Maeno, Mayuko; Maeno, Tadashi; Magradze, Erekle; Mahboubi, Kambiz; Mahlstedt, Joern; Mahmoud, Sara; Maiani, Camilla; Maidantchik, Carmen; Maio, Amélia; Majewski, Stephanie; Makida, Yasuhiro; Makovec, Nikola; Mal, Prolay; Malaescu, Bogdan; Malecki, Pawel; Maleev, Victor; Malek, Fairouz; Mallik, Usha; Malon, David; Malone, Caitlin; Maltezos, Stavros; Malyshev, Vladimir; Malyukov, Sergei; Mamuzic, Judita; Mandelli, Beatrice; Mandelli, Luciano; Mandić, Igor; Mandrysch, Rocco; Maneira, José; Manfredini, Alessandro; Manhaes de Andrade Filho, Luciano; Manjarres Ramos, Joany Andreina; Mann, Alexander; Manning, Peter; Manousakis-Katsikakis, Arkadios; Mansoulie, Bruno; Mantifel, Rodger; Mapelli, Livio; March, Luis; Marchand, Jean-Francois; Marchiori, Giovanni; Marcisovsky, Michal; Marino, Christopher; Marques, Carlos; Marroquim, Fernando; Marsden, Stephen Philip; Marshall, Zach; Marti, Lukas Fritz; Marti-Garcia, Salvador; Martin, Brian; Martin, Brian Thomas; Martin, Jean-Pierre; Martin, Tim; Martin, Victoria Jane; Martin dit Latour, Bertrand; Martinez, Homero; Martinez, Mario; Martin-Haugh, Stewart; Martyniuk, Alex; Marx, Marilyn; Marzano, Francesco; Marzin, Antoine; Masetti, Lucia; Mashimo, Tetsuro; Mashinistov, Ruslan; Masik, Jiri; Maslennikov, Alexey; Massa, Ignazio; Massol, Nicolas; Mastrandrea, Paolo; Mastroberardino, Anna; Masubuchi, Tatsuya; Matricon, Pierre; Matsunaga, Hiroyuki; Matsushita, Takashi; Mättig, Peter; Mättig, Stefan; Mattmann, Johannes; Maurer, Julien; Maxfield, Stephen; Maximov, Dmitriy; Mazini, Rachid; Mazzaferro, Luca; Mc Goldrick, Garrin; Mc Kee, Shawn Patrick; McCarn, Allison; McCarthy, Robert; McCarthy, Tom; McCubbin, Norman; McFarlane, Kenneth; Mcfayden, Josh; Mchedlidze, Gvantsa; Mclaughlan, Tom; McMahon, Steve; McPherson, Robert; Meade, Andrew; Mechnich, Joerg; Medinnis, Michael; Meehan, Samuel; Mehlhase, Sascha; Mehta, Andrew; Meier, Karlheinz; Meineck, Christian; Meirose, Bernhard; Melachrinos, Constantinos; Mellado Garcia, Bruce Rafael; Meloni, Federico; Mengarelli, Alberto; Menke, Sven; Meoni, Evelin; Mercurio, Kevin Michael; Mergelmeyer, Sebastian; Meric, Nicolas; Mermod, Philippe; Merola, Leonardo; Meroni, Chiara; Merritt, Frank; Merritt, Hayes; Messina, Andrea; Metcalfe, Jessica; Mete, Alaettin Serhan; Meyer, Carsten; Meyer, Christopher; Meyer, Jean-Pierre; Meyer, Jochen; Middleton, Robin; Migas, Sylwia; Mijović, Liza; Mikenberg, Giora; Mikestikova, Marcela; Mikuž, Marko; Miller, David; Mills, Corrinne; Milov, Alexander; Milstead, David; Milstein, Dmitry; Minaenko, Andrey; Miñano Moya, Mercedes; Minashvili, Irakli; Mincer, Allen; Mindur, Bartosz; Mineev, Mikhail; Ming, Yao; Mir, Lluisa-Maria; Mirabelli, Giovanni; Mitani, Takashi; Mitrevski, Jovan; Mitsou, Vasiliki A; Mitsui, Shingo; Miucci, Antonio; Miyagawa, Paul; Mjörnmark, Jan-Ulf; Moa, Torbjoern; Mochizuki, Kazuya; Moeller, Victoria; Mohapatra, Soumya; Mohr, Wolfgang; Molander, Simon; Moles-Valls, Regina; Mönig, Klaus; Monini, Caterina; Monk, James; Monnier, Emmanuel; Montejo Berlingen, Javier; Monticelli, Fernando; Monzani, Simone; Moore, Roger; Moraes, Arthur; Morange, Nicolas; Morel, Julien; Moreno, Deywis; Moreno Llácer, María; Morettini, Paolo; Morgenstern, Marcus; Morii, Masahiro; Moritz, Sebastian; Morley, Anthony Keith; Mornacchi, Giuseppe; Morris, John; Morvaj, Ljiljana; Moser, Hans-Guenther; Mosidze, Maia; Moss, Josh; Mount, Richard; Mountricha, Eleni; Mouraviev, Sergei; Moyse, Edward; Muanza, Steve; Mudd, Richard; Mueller, Felix; Mueller, James; Mueller, Klemens; Mueller, Thibaut; Mueller, Timo; Muenstermann, Daniel; Munwes, Yonathan; Murillo Quijada, Javier Alberto; Murray, Bill; Musheghyan, Haykuhi; Musto, Elisa; Myagkov, Alexey; Myska, Miroslav; Nackenhorst, Olaf; Nadal, Jordi; Nagai, Koichi; Nagai, Ryo; Nagai, Yoshikazu; Nagano, Kunihiro; Nagarkar, Advait; Nagasaka, Yasushi; Nagel, Martin; Nairz, Armin Michael; Nakahama, Yu; Nakamura, Koji; Nakamura, Tomoaki; Nakano, Itsuo; Namasivayam, Harisankar; Nanava, Gizo; Narayan, Rohin; Nattermann, Till; Naumann, Thomas; Navarro, Gabriela; Nayyar, Ruchika; Neal, Homer; Nechaeva, Polina; Neep, Thomas James; Negri, Andrea; Negri, Guido; Negrini, Matteo; Nektarijevic, Snezana; Nelson, Andrew; Nelson, Timothy Knight; Nemecek, Stanislav; Nemethy, Peter; Nepomuceno, Andre Asevedo; Nessi, Marzio; Neubauer, Mark; Neumann, Manuel; Neves, Ricardo; Nevski, Pavel; Newcomer, Mitchel; Newman, Paul; Nguyen, Duong Hai; Nickerson, Richard; Nicolaidou, Rosy; Nicquevert, Bertrand; Nielsen, Jason; Nikiforou, Nikiforos; Nikiforov, Andriy; Nikolaenko, Vladimir; Nikolic-Audit, Irena; Nikolics, Katalin; Nikolopoulos, Konstantinos; Nilsson, Paul; Ninomiya, Yoichi; Nisati, Aleandro; Nisius, Richard; Nobe, Takuya; Nodulman, Lawrence; Nomachi, Masaharu; Nomidis, Ioannis; Norberg, Scarlet; Nordberg, Markus; Nowak, Sebastian; Nozaki, Mitsuaki; Nozka, Libor; Ntekas, Konstantinos; Nunes Hanninger, Guilherme; Nunnemann, Thomas; Nurse, Emily; Nuti, Francesco; O'Brien, Brendan Joseph; O'grady, Fionnbarr; O'Neil, Dugan; O'Shea, Val; Oakham, Gerald; Oberlack, Horst; Obermann, Theresa; Ocariz, Jose; Ochi, Atsuhiko; Ochoa, Ines; Oda, Susumu; Odaka, Shigeru; Ogren, Harold; Oh, Alexander; Oh, Seog; Ohm, Christian; Ohman, Henrik; Ohshima, Takayoshi; Okamura, Wataru; Okawa, Hideki; Okumura, Yasuyuki; Okuyama, Toyonobu; Olariu, Albert; Olchevski, Alexander; Olivares Pino, Sebastian Andres; Oliveira Damazio, Denis; Oliver Garcia, Elena; Olszewski, Andrzej; Olszowska, Jolanta; Onofre, António; Onyisi, Peter; Oram, Christopher; Oreglia, Mark; Oren, Yona; Orestano, Domizia; Orlando, Nicola; Oropeza Barrera, Cristina; Orr, Robert; Osculati, Bianca; Ospanov, Rustem; Otero y Garzon, Gustavo; Otono, Hidetoshi; Ouchrif, Mohamed; Ouellette, Eric; Ould-Saada, Farid; Ouraou, Ahmimed; Oussoren, Koen Pieter; Ouyang, Qun; Ovcharova, Ana; Owen, Mark; Ozcan, Veysi Erkcan; Ozturk, Nurcan; Pachal, Katherine; Pacheco Pages, Andres; Padilla Aranda, Cristobal; Pagáčová, Martina; Pagan Griso, Simone; Paganis, Efstathios; Pahl, Christoph; Paige, Frank; Pais, Preema; Pajchel, Katarina; Palacino, Gabriel; Palestini, Sandro; Pallin, Dominique; Palma, Alberto; Palmer, Jody; Pan, Yibin; Panagiotopoulou, Evgenia; Panduro Vazquez, William; Pani, Priscilla; Panikashvili, Natalia; Panitkin, Sergey; Pantea, Dan; Paolozzi, Lorenzo; Papadopoulou, Theodora; Papageorgiou, Konstantinos; Paramonov, Alexander; Paredes Hernandez, Daniela; Parker, Michael Andrew; Parodi, Fabrizio; Parsons, John; Parzefall, Ulrich; Pasqualucci, Enrico; Passaggio, Stefano; Passeri, Antonio; Pastore, Fernanda; Pastore, Francesca; Pásztor, Gabriella; Pataraia, Sophio; Patel, Nikhul; Pater, Joleen; Patricelli, Sergio; Pauly, Thilo; Pearce, James; Pedersen, Maiken; Pedraza Lopez, Sebastian; Pedro, Rute; Peleganchuk, Sergey; Pelikan, Daniel; Peng, Haiping; Penning, Bjoern; Penwell, John; Perepelitsa, Dennis; Perez Codina, Estel; Pérez García-Estañ, María Teresa; Perez Reale, Valeria; Perini, Laura; Pernegger, Heinz; Perrino, Roberto; Peschke, Richard; Peshekhonov, Vladimir; Peters, Krisztian; Peters, Yvonne; Petersen, Brian; Petersen, Jorgen; Petersen, Troels; Petit, Elisabeth; Petridis, Andreas; Petridou, Chariclia; Petrolo, Emilio; Petrucci, Fabrizio; Petteni, Michele; Pettersson, Nora Emilia; Pezoa, Raquel; Phillips, Peter William; Piacquadio, Giacinto; Pianori, Elisabetta; Picazio, Attilio; Piccaro, Elisa; Piccinini, Maurizio; Piegaia, Ricardo; Pieron, Jacek Piotr; Pignotti, David; Pilcher, James; Pilkington, Andrew; Pina, João Antonio; Pinamonti, Michele; Pinder, Alex; Pinfold, James; Pingel, Almut; Pinto, Belmiro; Pires, Sylvestre; Pitt, Michael; Pizio, Caterina; Pleier, Marc-Andre; Pleskot, Vojtech; Plotnikova, Elena; Plucinski, Pawel; Poddar, Sahill; Podlyski, Fabrice; Poettgen, Ruth; Poggioli, Luc; Pohl, David-leon; Pohl, Martin; Polesello, Giacomo; Policicchio, Antonio; Polifka, Richard; Polini, Alessandro; Pollard, Christopher Samuel; Polychronakos, Venetios; Pommès, Kathy; Pontecorvo, Ludovico; Pope, Bernard; Popeneciu, Gabriel Alexandru; Popovic, Dragan; Poppleton, Alan; Portell Bueso, Xavier; Pospelov, Guennady; Pospisil, Stanislav; Potamianos, Karolos; Potrap, Igor; Potter, Christina; Potter, Christopher; Poulard, Gilbert; Poveda, Joaquin; Pozdnyakov, Valery; Pralavorio, Pascal; Pranko, Aliaksandr; Prasad, Srivas; Pravahan, Rishiraj; Prell, Soeren; Price, Darren; Price, Joe; Price, Lawrence; Prieur, Damien; Primavera, Margherita; Proissl, Manuel; Prokofiev, Kirill; Prokoshin, Fedor; Protopapadaki, Eftychia-sofia; Protopopescu, Serban; Proudfoot, James; Przybycien, Mariusz; Przysiezniak, Helenka; Ptacek, Elizabeth; Pueschel, Elisa; Puldon, David; Purohit, Milind; Puzo, Patrick; Qian, Jianming; Qin, Gang; Qin, Yang; Quadt, Arnulf; Quarrie, David; Quayle, William; Quilty, Donnchadha; Qureshi, Anum; Radeka, Veljko; Radescu, Voica; Radhakrishnan, Sooraj Krishnan; Radloff, Peter; Rados, Pere; Ragusa, Francesco; Rahal, Ghita; Rajagopalan, Srinivasan; Rammensee, Michael; Randle-Conde, Aidan Sean; Rangel-Smith, Camila; Rao, Kanury; Rauscher, Felix; Rave, Tobias Christian; Ravenscroft, Thomas; Raymond, Michel; Read, Alexander Lincoln; Rebuzzi, Daniela; Redelbach, Andreas; Redlinger, George; Reece, Ryan; Reeves, Kendall; Rehnisch, Laura; Reinsch, Andreas; Reisin, Hernan; Relich, Matthew; Rembser, Christoph; Ren, Zhongliang; Renaud, Adrien; Rescigno, Marco; Resconi, Silvia; Resende, Bernardo; Rezanova, Olga; Reznicek, Pavel; Rezvani, Reyhaneh; Richter, Robert; Ridel, Melissa; Rieck, Patrick; Rijssenbeek, Michael; Rimoldi, Adele; Rinaldi, Lorenzo; Ritsch, Elmar; Riu, Imma; Rizatdinova, Flera; Rizvi, Eram; Robertson, Steven; Robichaud-Veronneau, Andree; Robinson, Dave; Robinson, James; Robson, Aidan; Roda, Chiara; Rodrigues, Luis; Roe, Shaun; Røhne, Ole; Rolli, Simona; Romaniouk, Anatoli; Romano, Marino; Romeo, Gaston; Romero Adam, Elena; Rompotis, Nikolaos; Roos, Lydia; Ros, Eduardo; Rosati, Stefano; Rosbach, Kilian; Rose, Matthew; Rosendahl, Peter Lundgaard; Rosenthal, Oliver; Rossetti, Valerio; Rossi, Elvira; Rossi, Leonardo Paolo; Rosten, Rachel; Rotaru, Marina; Roth, Itamar; Rothberg, Joseph; Rousseau, David; Royon, Christophe; Rozanov, Alexandre; Rozen, Yoram; Ruan, Xifeng; Rubbo, Francesco; Rubinskiy, Igor; Rud, Viacheslav; Rudolph, Christian; Rudolph, Matthew Scott; Rühr, Frederik; Ruiz-Martinez, Aranzazu; Rurikova, Zuzana; Rusakovich, Nikolai; Ruschke, Alexander; Rutherfoord, John; Ruthmann, Nils; Ryabov, Yury; Rybar, Martin; Rybkin, Grigori; Ryder, Nick; Saavedra, Aldo; Sacerdoti, Sabrina; Saddique, Asif; Sadeh, Iftach; Sadrozinski, Hartmut; Sadykov, Renat; Safai Tehrani, Francesco; Sakamoto, Hiroshi; Sakurai, Yuki; Salamanna, Giuseppe; Salamon, Andrea; Saleem, Muhammad; Salek, David; Sales De Bruin, Pedro Henrique; Salihagic, Denis; Salnikov, Andrei; Salt, José; Salvachua Ferrando, Belén; Salvatore, Daniela; Salvatore, Pasquale Fabrizio; Salvucci, Antonio; Salzburger, Andreas; Sampsonidis, Dimitrios; Sanchez, Arturo; Sánchez, Javier; Sanchez Martinez, Victoria; Sandaker, Heidi; Sandbach, Ruth Laura; Sander, Heinz Georg; Sanders, Michiel; Sandhoff, Marisa; Sandoval, Tanya; Sandoval, Carlos; Sandstroem, Rikard; Sankey, Dave; Sansoni, Andrea; Santoni, Claudio; Santonico, Rinaldo; Santos, Helena; Santoyo Castillo, Itzebelt; Sapp, Kevin; Sapronov, Andrey; Saraiva, João; Sarrazin, Bjorn; Sartisohn, Georg; Sasaki, Osamu; Sasaki, Yuichi; Satsounkevitch, Igor; Sauvage, Gilles; Sauvan, Emmanuel; Savard, Pierre; Savu, Dan Octavian; Sawyer, Craig; Sawyer, Lee; Saxon, James; Sbarra, Carla; Sbrizzi, Antonio; Scanlon, Tim; Scannicchio, Diana; Scarcella, Mark; Schaarschmidt, Jana; Schacht, Peter; Schaefer, Douglas; Schaefer, Ralph; Schaepe, Steffen; Schaetzel, Sebastian; Schäfer, Uli; Schaffer, Arthur; Schaile, Dorothee; Schamberger, R. Dean; Scharf, Veit; Schegelsky, Valery; Scheirich, Daniel; Schernau, Michael; Scherzer, Max; Schiavi, Carlo; Schieck, Jochen; Schillo, Christian; Schioppa, Marco; Schlenker, Stefan; Schmidt, Evelyn; Schmieden, Kristof; Schmitt, Christian; Schmitt, Christopher; Schmitt, Sebastian; Schneider, Basil; Schnellbach, Yan Jie; Schnoor, Ulrike; Schoeffel, Laurent; Schoening, Andre; Schoenrock, Bradley Daniel; Schorlemmer, Andre Lukas; Schott, Matthias; Schouten, Doug; Schovancova, Jaroslava; Schram, Malachi; Schramm, Steven; Schreyer, Manuel; Schroeder, Christian; Schuh, Natascha; Schultens, Martin Johannes; Schultz-Coulon, Hans-Christian; Schulz, Holger; Schumacher, Markus; Schumm, Bruce; Schune, Philippe; Schwartzman, Ariel; Schwegler, Philipp; Schwemling, Philippe; Schwienhorst, Reinhard; Schwindling, Jerome; Schwindt, Thomas; Schwoerer, Maud; Sciacca, Gianfranco; Scifo, Estelle; Sciolla, Gabriella; Scott, Bill; Scuri, Fabrizio; Scutti, Federico; Searcy, Jacob; Sedov, George; Sedykh, Evgeny; Seidel, Sally; Seiden, Abraham; Seifert, Frank; Seixas, José; Sekhniaidze, Givi; Sekula, Stephen; Selbach, Karoline Elfriede; Seliverstov, Dmitry; Sellers, Graham; Semprini-Cesari, Nicola; Serfon, Cedric; Serin, Laurent; Serkin, Leonid; Serre, Thomas; Seuster, Rolf; Severini, Horst; Sforza, Federico; Sfyrla, Anna; Shabalina, Elizaveta; Shamim, Mansoora; Shan, Lianyou; Shank, James; Shao, Qi Tao; Shapiro, Marjorie; Shatalov, Pavel; Shaw, Kate; Shaw, Rick; Sherwood, Peter; Shimizu, Shima; Shimmin, Chase Owen; Shimojima, Makoto; Shiyakova, Mariya; Shmeleva, Alevtina; Shochet, Mel; Short, Daniel; Shrestha, Suyog; Shulga, Evgeny; Shupe, Michael; Shushkevich, Stanislav; Sicho, Petr; Sidorov, Dmitri; Sidoti, Antonio; Siegert, Frank; Sijacki, Djordje; Silbert, Ohad; Silva, José; Silver, Yiftah; Silverstein, Daniel; Silverstein, Samuel; Simak, Vladislav; Simard, Olivier; Simic, Ljiljana; Simion, Stefan; Simioni, Eduard; Simmons, Brinick; Simoniello, Rosa; Simonyan, Margar; Sinervo, Pekka; Sinev, Nikolai; Sipica, Valentin; Siragusa, Giovanni; Sircar, Anirvan; Sisakyan, Alexei; Sivoklokov, Serguei; Sjölin, Jörgen; Sjursen, Therese; Skottowe, Hugh Philip; Skovpen, Kirill; Skubic, Patrick; Slater, Mark; Slavicek, Tomas; Sliwa, Krzysztof; Smakhtin, Vladimir; Smart, Ben; Smestad, Lillian; Smirnov, Sergei; Smirnov, Yury; Smirnova, Lidia; Smirnova, Oxana; Smizanska, Maria; Smolek, Karel; Snesarev, Andrei; Snidero, Giacomo; Snow, Joel; Snyder, Scott; Sobie, Randall; Socher, Felix; Sodomka, Jaromir; Soffer, Abner; Soh, Dart-yin; Solans, Carlos; Solar, Michael; Solc, Jaroslav; Soldatov, Evgeny; Soldevila, Urmila; Solfaroli Camillocci, Elena; Solodkov, Alexander; Solovyanov, Oleg; Solovyev, Victor; Sommer, Philip; Song, Hong Ye; Soni, Nitesh; Sood, Alexander; Sopczak, Andre; Sopko, Vit; Sopko, Bruno; Sorin, Veronica; Sosebee, Mark; Soualah, Rachik; Soueid, Paul; Soukharev, Andrey; South, David; Spagnolo, Stefania; Spanò, Francesco; Spearman, William Robert; Spighi, Roberto; Spigo, Giancarlo; Spousta, Martin; Spreitzer, Teresa; Spurlock, Barry; St Denis, Richard Dante; Staerz, Steffen; Stahlman, Jonathan; Stamen, Rainer; Stanecka, Ewa; Stanek, Robert; Stanescu, Cristian; Stanescu-Bellu, Madalina; Stanitzki, Marcel Michael; Stapnes, Steinar; Starchenko, Evgeny; Stark, Jan; Staroba, Pavel; Starovoitov, Pavel; Staszewski, Rafal; Stavina, Pavel; Steele, Genevieve; Steinberg, Peter; Stekl, Ivan; Stelzer, Bernd; Stelzer, Harald Joerg; Stelzer-Chilton, Oliver; Stenzel, Hasko; Stern, Sebastian; Stewart, Graeme; Stillings, Jan Andre; Stockton, Mark; Stoebe, Michael; Stoicea, Gabriel; Stolte, Philipp; Stonjek, Stefan; Stradling, Alden; Straessner, Arno; Stramaglia, Maria Elena; Strandberg, Jonas; Strandberg, Sara; Strandlie, Are; Strauss, Emanuel; Strauss, Michael; Strizenec, Pavol; Ströhmer, Raimund; Strom, David; Stroynowski, Ryszard; Stucci, Stefania Antonia; Stugu, Bjarne; Styles, Nicholas Adam; Su, Dong; Su, Jun; Subramania, Halasya Siva; Subramaniam, Rajivalochan; Succurro, Antonella; Sugaya, Yorihito; Suhr, Chad; Suk, Michal; Sulin, Vladimir; Sultansoy, Saleh; Sumida, Toshi; Sun, Xiaohu; Sundermann, Jan Erik; Suruliz, Kerim; Susinno, Giancarlo; Sutton, Mark; Suzuki, Yu; Svatos, Michal; Swedish, Stephen; Swiatlowski, Maximilian; Sykora, Ivan; Sykora, Tomas; Ta, Duc; Tackmann, Kerstin; Taenzer, Joe; Taffard, Anyes; Tafirout, Reda; Taiblum, Nimrod; Takahashi, Yuta; Takai, Helio; Takashima, Ryuichi; Takeda, Hiroshi; Takeshita, Tohru; Takubo, Yosuke; Talby, Mossadek; Talyshev, Alexey; Tam, Jason; Tamsett, Matthew; Tan, Kong Guan; Tanaka, Junichi; Tanaka, Reisaburo; Tanaka, Satoshi; Tanaka, Shuji; Tanasijczuk, Andres Jorge; Tani, Kazutoshi; Tannoury, Nancy; Tapprogge, Stefan; Tarem, Shlomit; Tarrade, Fabien; Tartarelli, Giuseppe Francesco; Tas, Petr; Tasevsky, Marek; Tashiro, Takuya; Tassi, Enrico; Tavares Delgado, Ademar; Tayalati, Yahya; Taylor, Frank; Taylor, Geoffrey; Taylor, Wendy; Teischinger, Florian Alfred; Teixeira Dias Castanheira, Matilde; Teixeira-Dias, Pedro; Temming, Kim Katrin; Ten Kate, Herman; Teng, Ping-Kun; Terada, Susumu; Terashi, Koji; Terron, Juan; Terzo, Stefano; Testa, Marianna; Teuscher, Richard; Therhaag, Jan; Theveneaux-Pelzer, Timothée; Thoma, Sascha; Thomas, Juergen; Thomas-Wilsker, Joshuha; Thompson, Emily; Thompson, Paul; Thompson, Peter; Thompson, Stan; Thomsen, Lotte Ansgaard; Thomson, Evelyn; Thomson, Mark; Thong, Wai Meng; Thun, Rudolf; Tian, Feng; Tibbetts, Mark James; Tikhomirov, Vladimir; Tikhonov, Yury; Timoshenko, Sergey; Tiouchichine, Elodie; Tipton, Paul; Tisserant, Sylvain; Todorov, Theodore; Todorova-Nova, Sharka; Toggerson, Brokk; Tojo, Junji; Tokár, Stanislav; Tokushuku, Katsuo; Tollefson, Kirsten; Tomlinson, Lee; Tomoto, Makoto; Tompkins, Lauren; Toms, Konstantin; Topilin, Nikolai; Torrence, Eric; Torres, Heberth; Torró Pastor, Emma; Toth, Jozsef; Touchard, Francois; Tovey, Daniel; Tran, Huong Lan; Trefzger, Thomas; Tremblet, Louis; Tricoli, Alessandro; Trigger, Isabel Marian; Trincaz-Duvoid, Sophie; Tripiana, Martin; Triplett, Nathan; Trischuk, William; Trocmé, Benjamin; Troncon, Clara; Trottier-McDonald, Michel; Trovatelli, Monica; True, Patrick; Trzebinski, Maciej; Trzupek, Adam; Tsarouchas, Charilaos; Tseng, Jeffrey; Tsiareshka, Pavel; Tsionou, Dimitra; Tsipolitis, Georgios; Tsirintanis, Nikolaos; Tsiskaridze, Shota; Tsiskaridze, Vakhtang; Tskhadadze, Edisher; Tsukerman, Ilya; Tsulaia, Vakhtang; Tsuno, Soshi; Tsybychev, Dmitri; Tudorache, Alexandra; Tudorache, Valentina; Tuna, Alexander Naip; Tupputi, Salvatore; Turchikhin, Semen; Turecek, Daniel; Turk Cakir, Ilkay; Turra, Ruggero; Tuts, Michael; Tykhonov, Andrii; Tylmad, Maja; Tyndel, Mike; Uchida, Kirika; Ueda, Ikuo; Ueno, Ryuichi; Ughetto, Michael; Ugland, Maren; Uhlenbrock, Mathias; Ukegawa, Fumihiko; Unal, Guillaume; Undrus, Alexander; Unel, Gokhan; Ungaro, Francesca; Unno, Yoshinobu; Urbaniec, Dustin; Urquijo, Phillip; Usai, Giulio; Usanova, Anna; Vacavant, Laurent; Vacek, Vaclav; Vachon, Brigitte; Valencic, Nika; Valentinetti, Sara; Valero, Alberto; Valery, Loic; Valkar, Stefan; Valladolid Gallego, Eva; Vallecorsa, Sofia; Valls Ferrer, Juan Antonio; Van Berg, Richard; Van Der Deijl, Pieter; van der Geer, Rogier; van der Graaf, Harry; Van Der Leeuw, Robin; van der Ster, Daniel; van Eldik, Niels; van Gemmeren, Peter; Van Nieuwkoop, Jacobus; van Vulpen, Ivo; van Woerden, Marius Cornelis; Vanadia, Marco; Vandelli, Wainer; Vanguri, Rami; Vaniachine, Alexandre; Vankov, Peter; Vannucci, Francois; Vardanyan, Gagik; Vari, Riccardo; Varnes, Erich; Varol, Tulin; Varouchas, Dimitris; Vartapetian, Armen; Varvell, Kevin; Vazeille, Francois; Vazquez Schroeder, Tamara; Veatch, Jason; Veloso, Filipe; Veneziano, Stefano; Ventura, Andrea; Ventura, Daniel; Venturi, Manuela; Venturi, Nicola; Venturini, Alessio; Vercesi, Valerio; Verducci, Monica; Verkerke, Wouter; Vermeulen, Jos; Vest, Anja; Vetterli, Michel; Viazlo, Oleksandr; Vichou, Irene; Vickey, Trevor; Vickey Boeriu, Oana Elena; Viehhauser, Georg; Viel, Simon; Vigne, Ralph; Villa, Mauro; Villaplana Perez, Miguel; Vilucchi, Elisabetta; Vincter, Manuella; Vinogradov, Vladimir; Virzi, Joseph; Vivarelli, Iacopo; Vives Vaque, Francesc; Vlachos, Sotirios; Vladoiu, Dan; Vlasak, Michal; Vogel, Adrian; Vokac, Petr; Volpi, Guido; Volpi, Matteo; von der Schmitt, Hans; von Radziewski, Holger; von Toerne, Eckhard; Vorobel, Vit; Vorobev, Konstantin; Vos, Marcel; Voss, Rudiger; Vossebeld, Joost; Vranjes, Nenad; Vranjes Milosavljevic, Marija; Vrba, Vaclav; Vreeswijk, Marcel; Vu Anh, Tuan; Vuillermet, Raphael; Vukotic, Ilija; Vykydal, Zdenek; Wagner, Wolfgang; Wagner, Peter; Wahrmund, Sebastian; Wakabayashi, Jun; Walder, James; Walker, Rodney; Walkowiak, Wolfgang; Wall, Richard; Waller, Peter; Walsh, Brian; Wang, Chao; Wang, Chiho; Wang, Fuquan; Wang, Haichen; Wang, Hulin; Wang, Jike; Wang, Jin; Wang, Kuhan; Wang, Rui; Wang, Song-Ming; Wang, Tan; Wang, Xiaoxiao; Wanotayaroj, Chaowaroj; Warburton, Andreas; Ward, Patricia; Wardrope, David Robert; Warren, Matthew; Warsinsky, Markus; Washbrook, Andrew; Wasicki, Christoph; Watanabe, Ippei; Watkins, Peter; Watson, Alan; Watson, Ian; Watson, Miriam; Watts, Gordon; Watts, Stephen; Waugh, Ben; Webb, Samuel; Weber, Michele; Weber, Stefan Wolf; Webster, Jordan S; Weidberg, Anthony; Weigell, Philipp; Weinert, Benjamin; Weingarten, Jens; Weiser, Christian; Weits, Hartger; Wells, Phillippa; Wenaus, Torre; Wendland, Dennis; Weng, Zhili; Wengler, Thorsten; Wenig, Siegfried; Wermes, Norbert; Werner, Matthias; Werner, Per; Wessels, Martin; Wetter, Jeffrey; Whalen, Kathleen; White, Andrew; White, Martin; White, Ryan; White, Sebastian; Whiteson, Daniel; Wicke, Daniel; Wickens, Fred; Wiedenmann, Werner; Wielers, Monika; Wienemann, Peter; Wiglesworth, Craig; Wiik-Fuchs, Liv Antje Mari; Wijeratne, Peter Alexander; Wildauer, Andreas; Wildt, Martin Andre; Wilkens, Henric George; Will, Jonas Zacharias; Williams, Hugh; Williams, Sarah; Willis, Christopher; Willocq, Stephane; Wilson, John; Wilson, Alan; Wingerter-Seez, Isabelle; Winklmeier, Frank; Wittgen, Matthias; Wittig, Tobias; Wittkowski, Josephine; Wollstadt, Simon Jakob; Wolter, Marcin Wladyslaw; Wolters, Helmut; Wosiek, Barbara; Wotschack, Jorg; Woudstra, Martin; Wozniak, Krzysztof; Wright, Michael; Wu, Mengqing; Wu, Sau Lan; Wu, Xin; Wu, Yusheng; Wulf, Evan; Wyatt, Terry Richard; Wynne, Benjamin; Xella, Stefania; Xiao, Meng; Xu, Da; Xu, Lailin; Yabsley, Bruce; Yacoob, Sahal; Yamada, Miho; Yamaguchi, Hiroshi; Yamaguchi, Yohei; Yamamoto, Akira; Yamamoto, Kyoko; Yamamoto, Shimpei; Yamamura, Taiki; Yamanaka, Takashi; Yamauchi, Katsuya; Yamazaki, Yuji; Yan, Zhen; Yang, Haijun; Yang, Hongtao; Yang, Un-Ki; Yang, Yi; Yanush, Serguei; Yao, Liwen; Yao, Weiming; Yasu, Yoshiji; Yatsenko, Elena; Yau Wong, Kaven Henry; Ye, Jingbo; Ye, Shuwei; Yen, Andy L; Yildirim, Eda; Yilmaz, Metin; Yoosoofmiya, Reza; Yorita, Kohei; Yoshida, Rikutaro; Yoshihara, Keisuke; Young, Charles; Young, Christopher John; Youssef, Saul; Yu, David Ren-Hwa; Yu, Jaehoon; Yu, Jiaming; Yu, Jie; Yuan, Li; Yurkewicz, Adam; Zabinski, Bartlomiej; Zaidan, Remi; Zaitsev, Alexander; Zaman, Aungshuman; Zambito, Stefano; Zanello, Lucia; Zanzi, Daniele; Zaytsev, Alexander; Zeitnitz, Christian; Zeman, Martin; Zemla, Andrzej; Zengel, Keith; Zenin, Oleg; Ženiš, Tibor; Zerwas, Dirk; Zevi della Porta, Giovanni; Zhang, Dongliang; Zhang, Fangzhou; Zhang, Huaqiao; Zhang, Jinlong; Zhang, Lei; Zhang, Xueyao; Zhang, Zhiqing; Zhao, Zhengguo; Zhemchugov, Alexey; Zhong, Jiahang; Zhou, Bing; Zhou, Lei; Zhou, Ning; Zhu, Cheng Guang; Zhu, Hongbo; Zhu, Junjie; Zhu, Yingchun; Zhuang, Xuai; Zibell, Andre; Zieminska, Daria; Zimine, Nikolai; Zimmermann, Christoph; Zimmermann, Robert; Zimmermann, Simone; Zimmermann, Stephanie; Zinonos, Zinonas; Ziolkowski, Michael; Zobernig, Georg; Zoccoli, Antonio; zur Nedden, Martin; Zurzolo, Giovanni; Zutshi, Vishnu; Zwalinski, Lukasz

    The semiconductor tracker is a silicon microstrip detector forming part of the inner tracking system of the ATLAS experiment at the LHC. The operation and performance of the semiconductor tracker during the first years of LHC running are described. More than 99% of the detector modules were operational during this period, with an average intrinsic hit efficiency of (99.74 +/- 0.04)%. The evolution of the noise occupancy is discussed, and measurements of the Lorentz angle, delta-ray production and energy loss presented. The alignment of the detector is found to be stable at the few-micron level over long periods of time. Radiation damage measurements, which include the evolution of detector leakage currents, are found to be consistent with predictions and are used in the verification of radiation background simulations.

  20. SED16 autonomous star tracker night sky testing

    Science.gov (United States)

    Foisneau, Thierry; Piriou, Véronique; Perrimon, Nicolas; Jacob, Philippe; Blarre, Ludovic; Vilaire, Didier

    2017-11-01

    The SED16 is an autonomous multi-missions star tracker which delivers three axis satellite attitude in an inertial reference frame and the satellite angular velocity with no prior information. The qualification process of this star sensor includes five validation steps using optical star simulator, digitized image simulator and a night sky tests setup. The night sky testing was the final step of the qualification process during which all the functions of the star tracker were used in almost nominal conditions : Autonomous Acquisition of the attitude, Autonomous Tracking of ten stars. These tests were performed in Calern in the premises of the OCA (Observatoire de la Cote d'Azur). The test set-up and the test results are described after a brief review of the sensor main characteristics and qualification process.

  1. Catastrophic shifts in vegetation-soil systems may unfold rapidly or slowly independent of the rate of change in the system driver

    Science.gov (United States)

    Karssenberg, Derek; Bierkens, Marc

    2014-05-01

    Complex systems may switch between contrasting stable states under gradual change of a driver. Such critical transitions often result in considerable long-term damage because strong hysteresis impedes reversion, and the transition becomes catastrophic. Critical transitions largely reduce our capability of forecasting future system states because it is hard to predict the timing of their occurrence [2]. Moreover, for many systems it is unknown how rapidly the critical transition unfolds when the tipping point has been reached. The rate of change during collapse, however, is important information because it determines the time available to take action to reverse a shift [1]. In this study we explore the rate of change during the degradation of a vegetation-soil system on a hillslope from a state with considerable vegetation cover and large soil depths, to a state with sparse vegetation and a bare rock or negligible soil depths. Using a distributed, stochastic model coupling hydrology, vegetation, weathering and water erosion, we derive two differential equations describing the vegetation and the soil system, and their interaction. Two stable states - vegetated and bare - are identified by means of analytical investigation, and it is shown that the change between these two states is a critical transition as indicated by hysteresis. Surprisingly, when the tipping point is reached under a very slow increase of grazing pressure, the transition between the vegetated and the bare state can either unfold rapidly, over a few years, or gradually, occurring over decennia up to millennia. These differences in the rate of change during the transient state are explained by differences in bedrock weathering rates. This finding emphasizes the considerable uncertainty associated with forecasting catastrophic shifts in ecosystems, which is due to both difficulties in forecasting the timing of the tipping point and the rate of change when the transition unfolds. References [1] Hughes

  2. Scaling of vegetation indices for environmental change studies

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Qi, J.; Huete, A.; Sorooshian, S.; Chehbouni, A.; Kerr, Y.

    1992-01-01

    The spatial integration of physical parameters in remote sensing studies is of critical concern when evaluating the global biophysical processes on the earth's surface. When high resolution physical parameters, such as vegetation indices, are degraded for integration into global scale studies, they differ from lower spatial resolution data due to spatial variability and the method by which these parameters are integrated. In this study, multi-spatial resolution data sets of SPOT and ground based data obtained at Walnut Gulch Experimental Watershed in southern Arizona, US during MONSOON '90 were used. These data sets were examined to study the variations of the vegetation index parameters when integrated into coarser resolutions. Different integration methods (conventional mean and Geostatistical mean) were used in simulations of high-to-low resolutions. The sensitivity of the integrated parameters were found to vary with both the spatial variability of the area and the integration methods. Modeled equations describing the scale-dependency of the vegetation index are suggested

  3. The effects of climate, permafrost and fire on vegetation change in Siberia in a changing climate

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Tchebakova, N M; Parfenova, E [V N Sukachev Institute of Forest, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Academgorodok, Krasnoyarsk, 660036 (Russian Federation); Soja, A J, E-mail: ncheby@forest.akadem.r, E-mail: Amber.J.Soja@nasa.go [National Institute of Aerospace (NIA), NASA Langley Research Center, Climate Sciences, 21 Langley Boulevard, Mail Stop 420, Hampton, VA 23681-2199 (United States)

    2009-10-15

    Observations and general circulation model projections suggest significant temperature increases in Siberia this century that are expected to have profound effects on Siberian vegetation. Potential vegetation change across Siberia was modeled, coupling our Siberian BioClimatic Model with several Hadley Centre climate change scenarios for 2020, 2050 and 2080, with explicit consideration of permafrost and fire activity. In the warmer and drier climate projected by these scenarios, Siberian forests are predicted to decrease and shift northwards and forest-steppe and steppe ecosystems are predicted to dominate over half of Siberia due to the dryer climate by 2080. Despite the large predicted increases in warming, permafrost is not predicted to thaw deep enough to sustain dark (Pinus sibirica, Abies sibirica, and Picea obovata) taiga. Over eastern Siberia, larch (Larix dahurica) taiga is predicted to continue to be the dominant zonobiome because of its ability to withstand continuous permafrost. The model also predicts new temperate broadleaf forest and forest-steppe habitats by 2080. Potential fire danger evaluated with the annual number of high fire danger days (Nesterov index is 4000-10 000) is predicted to increase by 2080, especially in southern Siberia and central Yakutia. In a warming climate, fuel load accumulated due to replacement of forest by steppe together with frequent fire weather promotes high risks of large fires in southern Siberia and central Yakutia, where wild fires would create habitats for grasslands because the drier climate would no longer be suitable for forests.

  4. Cosmics in the LHCb Outer Tracker

    CERN Document Server

    Aaij, Roel

    2010-01-01

    The LHCb experiment at the Large Hadron Collider studies the decay of B mesons to test the description of CP violation in the Standard Model and to search for new physics. The decay $B_s \\to \\mu^+ \\mu^-$ has been identified as very promising in the search for new physics. An excellent invariant mass resolution is required to suppress backgrounds to this decay. This in turn requires a momentum resolution of dp/p = 0.4%. The Outer Tracker is part of the LHCb tracking system and has been commissioned with cosmic muons. The noise in the Outer Tracker is shown to be less than 0.05%. To use drift time information in the reconstruction of cosmic tracks, the event time must be known. Four methods to obtain the event time are studied and compared. It is shown that the event time can be obtained with a resolution better than 2.6 ns. Using drift time information, tracks are reconstructed with a resolution of 344 $\\mu$m. Knowledge of the event time enables the calibration of electronic time offsets and the r(t)– relati...

  5. Approaching to a model for evaluating of the vulnerability of the vegetable covers of Colombia in a possible climatic change using SIG

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Gutierrez Rey, Hilda Jeanneth

    2002-01-01

    This technical paper summarizes the gradual thesis Approach to a model for evaluating of the vulnerability of the vegetation covers in Colombia in face of a possible global climate change (Gutierrez, 2001). It present the methodologies and results of the construction of a prospective model using GIS (Geographical Information Systems) for evaluating the vulnerability of the vegetation covers of Colombia, in face of a possible global climate chance. The analysis of the vulnerability of the possible impact on vegetation and for identification of its vulnerability as a consequence of climate change was carried out by application of the method of direct function establishing, recommended by IPCC, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (1999). An analysis of the displacement of Life Zones of Holdridge was made under a scenario with duplication of the CO 2 concentration in the atmosphere and identified vegetation affected by displacement. These results were adjusted to the bioclimatic and biogeographic conditions of the country. The Model of Vulnerability of the Vegetation Covers of Colombia was developed in Spatial Modeler Language, of Arc/lnfo and Erdas Imagine. This model is able to generate the spatial distribution of the climatic variables and Bioclimatic Units, under past, present and future climate scenarios, as well as to evaluate the degree of vulnerability of the vegetation covers of Colombia in face a climatic change. For the improvement of the model of Vulnerability, specially the intermediate products, it was subdivided in three Phases or Subsystems: In the First Phase or Present Subsystem, the sub models generate a Bioclimatic Zonification of the Life Zones of Holdridge, under a currently scenario of Climatic Line Base 1961-1990. In the Second Phase or Subsystem of Climate Change, the sub models develop a Bioclimatic Zonification of the Life Zones of Holdridge, under a future climate Scenario with duplication of the contained of the CO 2 in the atmosphere

  6. A new silicon tracker for proton imaging and dosimetry

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Taylor, J.T., E-mail: jtaylor@hep.ph.liv.ac.uk [Department of Physics, University of Liverpool, Oxford Street, Liverpool L69 7ZE (United Kingdom); Waltham, C. [Laboratory of Vision Engineering, School of Computer Science, University of Lincoln, Lincoln LN6 7TS (United Kingdom); Price, T. [School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B25 2TT (United Kingdom); Allinson, N.M. [Laboratory of Vision Engineering, School of Computer Science, University of Lincoln, Lincoln LN6 7TS (United Kingdom); Allport, P.P. [School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B25 2TT (United Kingdom); Casse, G.L. [Department of Physics, University of Liverpool, Oxford Street, Liverpool L69 7ZE (United Kingdom); Kacperek, A. [Douglas Cyclotron, The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre NHS Foundation Trust, Clatterbridge Road, Bebington, Wirral CH63 4JY (United Kingdom); Manger, S. [Department of Physics, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL (United Kingdom); Smith, N.A.; Tsurin, I. [Department of Physics, University of Liverpool, Oxford Street, Liverpool L69 7ZE (United Kingdom)

    2016-09-21

    For many years, silicon micro-strip detectors have been successfully used as tracking detectors for particle and nuclear physics experiments. A new application of this technology is to the field of particle therapy where radiotherapy is carried out by use of charged particles such as protons or carbon ions. Such a treatment has been shown to have advantages over standard x-ray radiotherapy and as a result of this, many new centres offering particle therapy are currently under construction around the world today. The Proton Radiotherapy, Verification and Dosimetry Applications (PRaVDA) consortium are developing instrumentation for particle therapy based upon technology from high-energy physics. The characteristics of a new silicon micro-strip tracker for particle therapy will be presented. The array uses specifically designed, large area sensors with technology choices that follow closely those taken for the ATLAS experiment at the HL-LHC. These detectors will be arranged into four units each with three layers in an x–u–v configuration to be suitable for fast proton tracking with minimal ambiguities. The sensors will form a tracker capable of tracing the path of ~200 MeV protons entering and exiting a patient allowing a new mode of imaging known as proton computed tomography (pCT). This will aid the accurate delivery of treatment doses and in addition, the tracker will also be used to monitor the beam profile and total dose delivered during the high fluences used for treatment. We present here details of the design, construction and assembly of one of the four units that will make up the complete tracker along with its characterisation using radiation tests carried out using a {sup 90}Sr source in the laboratory and a 60 MeV proton beam at the Clatterbridge Cancer Centre.

  7. Clementine Star Tracker Stellar Compass: Final report part 1

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Priest, R.E.; Kordas, J.F.; Lewis, I.T. [and others

    1995-07-01

    The Clementine mission provided the first ever complete, systematic surface mapping of the moon from the ultra-violet to the near-infrared regions. More than 1.7 million images of the moon, earth and space were returned from this mission. Two star stracker stellar compasses (star tracker camera + stellar compass software) were included on the spacecraft, serving a primary function of providing angle updates to the guidance and navigation system. These cameras served a secondary function by providing a wide field of view imaging capability for lunar horizon glow and other dark-side imaging data. This 290 g camera using a 576 x 384 focal plane array and a 17 mm entrance pupil, detected and centroided stars as dim and dimmer than 4.5 m{sub v}, providing rms pointing accuracy of better than 100 {mu}rad pitch and yaw and 450 {mu}rad roll. A description of this light-weight, low power star tracker camera along with a summary of lessons learned is presented. Design goals and preliminary on-orbit performance estimates are addressed in terms of meeting the mission`s primary objective for flight qualifying the sensors for future Department of Defense flights. Documentation generated during the design, analysis, build, test and characterization of the star tracker cameras are presented. Collectively, this documentation represents a small library of information for this camera, and may be used as a framework for producing copy units by commercial enterprises, and therefore satisfies a Department of Defense and Department of Energy goal to transfer technology to industry. However, the considerable knowledge gained from the experience of the individuals involved in the system trades, design, analysis, production, testing and characterization of the star tracker stellar compass is not contained in this documentation.

  8. The CMS tracker calibration workflow: Experience with cosmic ray data

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Frosali, Simone

    2010-01-01

    During the second part of 2008 a CMS commissioning was performed with the acquisition of cosmic events in global runs. Cosmic rays detected in the muon chambers were used to trigger the readout of all CMS subdetectors in the general data acquisition system. A total of about 300M of tracks were collected by the CMS Muon Chambers with a 3.8T magnetic field produced by the CMS superconducting solenoid, 6M of which pointing to the tracker region and reconstructed by the Si-Strip Tracker (SST) detectors. Other 1M of cosmic tracks were collected with the magnetic field off. Using the cosmic data available it was possible to validate the performances of the CMS tracker calibration workflows. In this paper the adopted calibration workflow is described. In particular, the three main calibration workflows requested for the low level reconstruction of the SST, i.e. gain calibration, Lorentz angle calibration and bad components identification, are described. The results obtained using cosmic tracks for these three calibration workflows are also presented.

  9. CMS silicon tracker alignment strategy with the Millepede II algorithm

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Flucke, G; Schleper, P; Steinbrueck, G; Stoye, M

    2008-01-01

    The positions of the silicon modules of the CMS tracker will be known to O(100 μm) from survey measurements, mounting precision and the hardware alignment system. However, in order to fully exploit the capabilities of the tracker, these positions need to be known to a precision of a few μm. Only a track-based alignment procedure can reach this required precision. Such an alignment procedure is a major challenge given that about 50000 geometry constants need to be measured. Making use of the novel χ 2 minimization program Millepede II an alignment strategy has been developed in which all detector components are aligned simultaneously and all correlations between their position parameters taken into account. Different simulated data, such as Z 0 decays and muons originated in air showers were used for the study. Additionally information about the mechanical structure of the tracker, and initial position uncertainties have been used as input for the alignment procedure. A proof of concept of this alignment strategy is demonstrated using simulated data

  10. Changes in planform geomorphology and vegetation of the Umatilla River during a 50-year period of diminishing peak flow

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hughes, M. L.; McDowell, P. F.

    2017-12-01

    The Umatilla River of northeastern Oregon is a gravel-bedded, mixed pattern, salmonid-bearing channel-floodplain system typical of the Interior Columbia River Basin. Efforts to restore native salmonids in this region since the 1980's coupled with increased scrutiny of flood- and erosion-control activities have prompted a need for better understanding of the biogemorphic implications of flood disturbances. The goals of this study are: (1) to re-examine results of earlier studies of flood impacts on the Umatilla River in light of more recent flow records, and (2) to investigate the degree to which large floods have influenced existing patterns of channel-floodplain geomorphology and vegetation. Mapping of flowing channels, bars, scoured surfaces, and vegetation within the active channel from of aerial photos bracketing flood and inter-flood periods since 1964 indicates complex and spatially variable channel changes. In general, channel scour was the most consistent response to flooding. The direction (gain/loss) and magnitude of changes in bars and vegetation within the active channel, as well as the amount of lateral channel movement and changes in sinuosity, were generally inconsistent across flood events. The removal of vegetation by scour during floods was in many areas compensated by the capture of vegetation from the floodplain by avulsion and activation of secondary channels. To date, the geomorphic impacts of the 1964-65 flood-of-record have not been replicated, despite an overall increase in the frequency of smaller floods. Expansion of riparian vegetation in recent decades has mainly occurred in areas disturbed by scour and bar deposition during the 1964-65 floods. Vegetative succession during this period has caused contraction of the active channel such that it now appears much as it did before the 1964-65 floods. These results underscore the importance of large floods as drivers of biogeormphic processes and patterns over timescales relevant to river

  11. A smart car for the surface shape measurement of large antenna based on laser tracker

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gu, Yonggang; Hu, Jing; Jin, Yi; Zhai, Chao

    2012-09-01

    The geometric accuracy of the surface shape of large antenna is an important indicator of antenna’s quality. Currently, high-precision measurement of large antenna surface shape can be performed in two ways: photogrammetry and laser tracker. Photogrammetry is a rapid method, but its accuracy is not enough good. Laser tracker can achieve high precision, but it is very inconvenient to move the reflector (target mirror) on the surface of the antenna by hand during the measurement. So, a smart car is designed to carry the reflector in this paper. The car, controlled by wireless, has a small weight and a strong ability for climbing, and there is a holding bracket gripping the reflector and controlling reflector rise up and drop down on the car. During the measurement of laser tracker, the laser beam between laser tracker and the reflector must not be interrupted, so two high-precision three-dimensional miniature electronic compasses, which can real-time monitor the relative angle between the holding bracket and the laser tracker’s head, are both equipped on the car and the head of laser tracker to achieve automatic alignment between reflector and laser beam. With the aid of the smart car, the measurement of laser tracker has the advantages of high precision and rapidity.

  12. Irradiation of dehydrated vegetables

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Esterhuyse, A; Esterhuizen, T.

    1985-01-01

    The reason for radurization was to decreased the microbial count of dehydrated vegetables. The average absorbed irradiation dose range between 2kGy and 15kGy. The product catagories include a) Green vegetables b) White vegetables c) Powders of a) and b). The microbiological aspects were: Declining curves for the different products of T.P.C., Coliforms, E. Coli, Stap. areus, Yeast + Mold at different doses. The organoleptical aspects were: change in taste, flavour, texture, colour and moisture. The aim is the marketing of irradiated dehydrated vegetables national and international basis

  13. The impact of future forest dynamics on climate: interactive effects of changing vegetation and disturbance regimes

    Science.gov (United States)

    Thom, Dominik; Rammer, Werner; Seidl, Rupert

    2018-01-01

    Currently, the temperate forest biome cools the earth’s climate and dampens anthropogenic climate change. However, climate change will substantially alter forest dynamics in the future, affecting the climate regulation function of forests. Increasing natural disturbances can reduce carbon uptake and evaporative cooling, but at the same time increase the albedo of a landscape. Simultaneous changes in vegetation composition can mitigate disturbance impacts, but also influence climate regulation directly (e.g., via albedo changes). As a result of a number of interactive drivers (changes in climate, vegetation, and disturbance) and their simultaneous effects on climate-relevant processes (carbon exchange, albedo, latent heat flux) the future climate regulation function of forests remains highly uncertain. Here we address these complex interactions to assess the effect of future forest dynamics on the climate system. Our specific objectives were (1) to investigate the long-term interactions between changing vegetation composition and disturbance regimes under climate change, (2) to quantify the response of climate regulation to changes in forest dynamics, and (3) to identify the main drivers of the future influence of forests on the climate system. We investigated these issues using the individual-based forest landscape and disturbance model (iLand). Simulations were run over 200 yr for Kalkalpen National Park (Austria), assuming different future climate projections, and incorporating dynamically responding wind and bark beetle disturbances. To consistently assess the net effect on climate the simulated responses of carbon exchange, albedo, and latent heat flux were expressed as contributions to radiative forcing. We found that climate change increased disturbances (+27.7% over 200 yr) and specifically bark beetle activity during the 21st century. However, negative feedbacks from a simultaneously changing tree species composition (+28.0% broadleaved species) decreased

  14. The impact of future forest dynamics on climate: interactive effects of changing vegetation and disturbance regimes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Thom, Dominik; Rammer, Werner; Seidl, Rupert

    2017-11-01

    Currently, the temperate forest biome cools the earth's climate and dampens anthropogenic climate change. However, climate change will substantially alter forest dynamics in the future, affecting the climate regulation function of forests. Increasing natural disturbances can reduce carbon uptake and evaporative cooling, but at the same time increase the albedo of a landscape. Simultaneous changes in vegetation composition can mitigate disturbance impacts, but also influence climate regulation directly (e.g., via albedo changes). As a result of a number of interactive drivers (changes in climate, vegetation, and disturbance) and their simultaneous effects on climate-relevant processes (carbon exchange, albedo, latent heat flux) the future climate regulation function of forests remains highly uncertain. Here we address these complex interactions to assess the effect of future forest dynamics on the climate system. Our specific objectives were (1) to investigate the long-term interactions between changing vegetation composition and disturbance regimes under climate change, (2) to quantify the response of climate regulation to changes in forest dynamics, and (3) to identify the main drivers of the future influence of forests on the climate system. We investigated these issues using the individual-based forest landscape and disturbance model (iLand). Simulations were run over 200 yr for Kalkalpen National Park (Austria), assuming different future climate projections, and incorporating dynamically responding wind and bark beetle disturbances. To consistently assess the net effect on climate the simulated responses of carbon exchange, albedo, and latent heat flux were expressed as contributions to radiative forcing. We found that climate change increased disturbances (+27.7% over 200 yr) and specifically bark beetle activity during the 21st century. However, negative feedbacks from a simultaneously changing tree species composition (+28.0% broadleaved species) decreased

  15. Commissioning and Performance of the CMS Silicon Strip Tracker with Cosmic Ray Muons

    CERN Document Server

    Chatrchyan, S; Sirunyan, A M; Adam, W; Arnold, B; Bergauer, H; Bergauer, T; Dragicevic, M; Eichberger, M; Erö, J; Friedl, M; Frühwirth, R; Ghete, V M; Hammer, J; Hänsel, S; Hoch, M; Hörmann, N; Hrubec, J; Jeitler, M; Kasieczka, G; Kastner, K; Krammer, M; Liko, D; Magrans de Abril, I; Mikulec, I; Mittermayr, F; Neuherz, B; Oberegger, M; Padrta, M; Pernicka, M; Rohringer, H; Schmid, S; Schöfbeck, R; Schreiner, T; Stark, R; Steininger, H; Strauss, J; Taurok, A; Teischinger, F; Themel, T; Uhl, D; Wagner, P; Waltenberger, W; Walzel, G; Widl, E; Wulz, C E; Chekhovsky, V; Dvornikov, O; Emeliantchik, I; Litomin, A; Makarenko, V; Marfin, I; Mossolov, V; Shumeiko, N; Solin, A; Stefanovitch, R; Suarez Gonzalez, J; Tikhonov, A; Fedorov, A; Karneyeu, A; Korzhik, M; Panov, V; Zuyeuski, R; Kuchinsky, P; Beaumont, W; Benucci, L; Cardaci, M; De Wolf, E A; Delmeire, E; Druzhkin, D; Hashemi, M; Janssen, X; Maes, T; Mucibello, L; Ochesanu, S; Rougny, R; Selvaggi, M; Van Haevermaet, H; Van Mechelen, P; Van Remortel, N; Adler, V; Beauceron, S; Blyweert, S; D'Hondt, J; De Weirdt, S; Devroede, O; Heyninck, J; Kalogeropoulos, A; Maes, J; Maes, M; Mozer, M U; Tavernier, S; Van Doninck, W; Van Mulders, P; Villella, I; Bouhali, O; Chabert, E C; Charaf, O; Clerbaux, B; De Lentdecker, G; Dero, V; Elgammal, S; Gay, A P R; Hammad, G H; Marage, P E; Rugovac, S; Vander Velde, C; Vanlaer, P; Wickens, J; Grunewald, M; Klein, B; Marinov, A; Ryckbosch, D; Thyssen, F; Tytgat, M; Vanelderen, L; Verwilligen, P; Basegmez, S; Bruno, G; Caudron, J; Delaere, C; Demin, P; Favart, D; Giammanco, A; Grégoire, G; Lemaitre, V; Militaru, O; Ovyn, S; Piotrzkowski, K; Quertenmont, L; Schul, N; Beliy, N; Daubie, E; Alves, G A; Pol, M E; Souza, M H G; Carvalho, W; De Jesus Damiao, D; De Oliveira Martins, C; Fonseca De Souza, S; Mundim, L; Oguri, V; Santoro, A; Silva Do Amaral, S M; Sznajder, A; Fernandez Perez Tomei, T R; Ferreira Dias, M A; Gregores, E M; Novaes, S F; Abadjiev, K; Anguelov, T; Damgov, J; Darmenov, N; Dimitrov, L; Genchev, V; Iaydjiev, P; Piperov, S; Stoykova, S; Sultanov, G; Trayanov, R; Vankov, I; Dimitrov, A; Dyulendarova, M; Kozhuharov, V; Litov, L; Marinova, E; Mateev, M; Pavlov, B; Petkov, P; Toteva, Z; Chen, G M; Chen, H S; Guan, W; Jiang, C H; Liang, D; Liu, B; Meng, X; Tao, J; Wang, J; Wang, Z; Xue, Z; Zhang, Z; Ban, Y; Cai, J; Ge, Y; Guo, S; Hu, Z; Mao, Y; Qian, S J; Teng, H; Zhu, B; Avila, C; Baquero Ruiz, M; Carrillo Montoya, C A; Gomez, A; Gomez Moreno, B; Ocampo Rios, A A; Osorio Oliveros, A F; Reyes Romero, D; Sanabria, J C; Godinovic, N; Lelas, K; Plestina, R; Polic, D; Puljak, I; Antunovic, Z; Dzelalija, M; Brigljevic, V; Duric, S; Kadija, K; Morovic, S; Fereos, R; Galanti, M; Mousa, J; Papadakis, A; Ptochos, F; Razis, P A; Tsiakkouri, D; Zinonos, Z; Hektor, A; Kadastik, M; Kannike, K; Müntel, M; Raidal, M; Rebane, L; Anttila, E; Czellar, S; Härkönen, J; Heikkinen, A; Karimäki, V; Kinnunen, R; Klem, J; Kortelainen, M J; Lampén, T; Lassila-Perini, K; Lehti, S; Lindén, T; Luukka, P; Mäenpää, T; Nysten, J; Tuominen, E; Tuominiemi, J; Ungaro, D; Wendland, L; Banzuzi, K; Korpela, A; Tuuva, T; Nedelec, P; Sillou, D; Besancon, M; Chipaux, R; Dejardin, M; Denegri, D; Descamps, J; Fabbro, B; Faure, J L; Ferri, F; Ganjour, S; Gentit, F X; Givernaud, A; Gras, P; Hamel de Monchenault, G; Jarry, P; Lemaire, M C; Locci, E; Malcles, J; Marionneau, M; Millischer, L; Rander, J; Rosowsky, A; Rousseau, D; Titov, M; Verrecchia, P; Baffioni, S; Bianchini, L; Bluj, M; Busson, P; Charlot, C; Dobrzynski, L; Granier de Cassagnac, R; Haguenauer, M; Miné, P; Paganini, P; Sirois, Y; Thiebaux, C; Zabi, A; Agram, J L; Besson, A; Bloch, D; Bodin, D; Brom, J M; Conte, E; Drouhin, F; Fontaine, J C; Gelé, D; Goerlach, U; Gross, L; Juillot, P; Le Bihan, A C; Patois, Y; Speck, J; Van Hove, P; Baty, C; Bedjidian, M; Blaha, J; Boudoul, G; Brun, H; Chanon, N; Chierici, R; Contardo, D; Depasse, P; Dupasquier, T; El Mamouni, H; Fassi, F; Fay, J; Gascon, S; Ille, B; Kurca, T; Le Grand, T; Lethuillier, M; Lumb, N; Mirabito, L; Perries, S; Vander Donckt, M; Verdier, P; Djaoshvili, N; Roinishvili, N; Roinishvili, V; Amaglobeli, N; Adolphi, R; Anagnostou, G; Brauer, R; Braunschweig, W; Edelhoff, M; Esser, H; Feld, L; Karpinski, W; Khomich, A; Klein, K; Mohr, N; Ostaptchouk, A; Pandoulas, D; Pierschel, G; Raupach, F; Schael, S; Schultz von Dratzig, A; Schwering, G; Sprenger, D; Thomas, M; Weber, M; Wittmer, B; Wlochal, M; Actis, O; Altenhöfer, G; Bender, W; Biallass, P; Erdmann, M; Fetchenhauer, G; Frangenheim, J; Hebbeker, T; Hilgers, G; Hinzmann, A; Hoepfner, K; Hof, C; Kirsch, M; Klimkovich, T; Kreuzer, P; Lanske, D; Merschmeyer, M; Meyer, A; Philipps, B; Pieta, H; Reithler, H; Schmitz, S A; Sonnenschein, L; Sowa, M; Steggemann, J; Szczesny, H; Teyssier, D; Zeidler, C; Bontenackels, M; Davids, M; Duda, M; Flügge, G; Geenen, H; Giffels, M; Haj Ahmad, W; Hermanns, T; Heydhausen, D; Kalinin, S; Kress, T; Linn, A; Nowack, A; Perchalla, L; Poettgens, M; Pooth, O; Sauerland, P; Stahl, A; Tornier, D; Zoeller, M H; Aldaya Martin, M; Behrens, U; Borras, K; Campbell, A; Castro, E; Dammann, D; Eckerlin, G; Flossdorf, A; Flucke, G; Geiser, A; Hatton, D; Hauk, J; Jung, H; Kasemann, M; Katkov, I; Kleinwort, C; Kluge, H; Knutsson, A; Kuznetsova, E; Lange, W; Lohmann, W; Mankel, R; Marienfeld, M; Meyer, A B; Miglioranzi, S; Mnich, J; Ohlerich, M; Olzem, J; Parenti, A; Rosemann, C; Schmidt, R; Schoerner-Sadenius, T; Volyanskyy, D; Wissing, C; Zeuner, W D; Autermann, C; Bechtel, F; Draeger, J; Eckstein, D; Gebbert, U; Kaschube, K; Kaussen, G; Klanner, R; Mura, B; Naumann-Emme, S; Nowak, F; Pein, U; Sander, C; Schleper, P; Schum, T; Stadie, H; Steinbrück, G; Thomsen, J; Wolf, R; Bauer, J; Blüm, P; Buege, V; Cakir, A; Chwalek, T; De Boer, W; Dierlamm, A; Dirkes, G; Feindt, M; Felzmann, U; Frey, M; Furgeri, A; Gruschke, J; Hackstein, C; Hartmann, F; Heier, S; Heinrich, M; Held, H; Hirschbuehl, D; Hoffmann, K H; Honc, S; Jung, C; Kuhr, T; Liamsuwan, T; Martschei, D; Mueller, S; Müller, Th; Neuland, M B; Niegel, M; Oberst, O; Oehler, A; Ott, J; Peiffer, T; Piparo, D; Quast, G; Rabbertz, K; Ratnikov, F; Ratnikova, N; Renz, M; Saout, C; Sartisohn, G; Scheurer, A; Schieferdecker, P; Schilling, F P; Schott, G; Simonis, H J; Stober, F M; Sturm, P; Troendle, D; Trunov, A; Wagner, W; Wagner-Kuhr, J; Zeise, M; Zhukov, V; Ziebarth, E B; Daskalakis, G; Geralis, T; Karafasoulis, K; Kyriakis, A; Loukas, D; Markou, A; Markou, C; Mavrommatis, C; Petrakou, E; Zachariadou, A; Gouskos, L; Katsas, P; Panagiotou, A; Evangelou, I; Kokkas, P; Manthos, N; Papadopoulos, I; Patras, V; Triantis, F A; Bencze, G; Boldizsar, L; Debreczeni, G; Hajdu, C; Hernath, S; Hidas, P; Horvath, D; Krajczar, K; Laszlo, A; Patay, G; Sikler, F; Toth, N; Vesztergombi, G; Beni, N; Christian, G; Imrek, J; Molnar, J; Novak, D; Palinkas, J; Szekely, G; Szillasi, Z; Tokesi, K; Veszpremi, V; Kapusi, A; Marian, G; Raics, P; Szabo, Z; Trocsanyi, Z L; Ujvari, B; Zilizi, G; Bansal, S; Bawa, H S; Beri, S B; Bhatnagar, V; Jindal, M; Kaur, M; Kaur, R; Kohli, J M; Mehta, M Z; Nishu, N; Saini, L K; Sharma, A; Singh, A; Singh, J B; Singh, S P; Ahuja, S; Arora, S; Bhattacharya, S; Chauhan, S; Choudhary, B C; Gupta, P; Jain, S; Jha, M; Kumar, A; Ranjan, K; Shivpuri, R K; Srivastava, A K; Choudhury, R K; Dutta, D; Kailas, S; Kataria, S K; Mohanty, A K; Pant, L M; Shukla, P; Topkar, A; Aziz, T; Guchait, M; Gurtu, A; Maity, M; Majumder, D; Majumder, G; Mazumdar, K; Nayak, A; Saha, A; Sudhakar, K; Banerjee, S; Dugad, S; Mondal, N K; Arfaei, H; Bakhshiansohi, H; Fahim, A; Jafari, A; Mohammadi Najafabadi, M; Moshaii, A; Paktinat Mehdiabadi, S; Rouhani, S; Safarzadeh, B; Zeinali, M; Felcini, M; Abbrescia, M; Barbone, L; Chiumarulo, F; Clemente, A; Colaleo, A; Creanza, D; Cuscela, G; De Filippis, N; De Palma, M; De Robertis, G; Donvito, G; Fedele, F; Fiore, L; Franco, M; Iaselli, G; Lacalamita, N; Loddo, F; Lusito, L; Maggi, G; Maggi, M; Manna, N; Marangelli, B; My, S; Natali, S; Nuzzo, S; Papagni, G; Piccolomo, S; Pierro, G A; Pinto, C; Pompili, A; Pugliese, G; Rajan, R; Ranieri, A; Romano, F; Roselli, G; Selvaggi, G; Shinde, Y; Silvestris, L; Tupputi, S; Zito, G; Abbiendi, G; Bacchi, W; Benvenuti, A C; Boldini, M; Bonacorsi, D; Braibant-Giacomelli, S; Cafaro, V D; Caiazza, S S; Capiluppi, P; Castro, A; Cavallo, F R; Codispoti, G; Cuffiani, M; D'Antone, I; Dallavalle, G M; Fabbri, F; Fanfani, A; Fasanella, D; Giacomelli, P; Giordano, V; Giunta, M; Grandi, C; Guerzoni, M; Marcellini, S; Masetti, G; Montanari, A; Navarria, F L; Odorici, F; Pellegrini, G; Perrotta, A; Rossi, A M; Rovelli, T; Siroli, G; Torromeo, G; Travaglini, R; Albergo, S; Costa, S; Potenza, R; Tricomi, A; Tuve, C; Barbagli, G; Broccolo, G; Ciulli, V; Civinini, C; D'Alessandro, R; Focardi, E; Frosali, S; Gallo, E; Genta, C; Landi, G; Lenzi, P; Meschini, M; Paoletti, S; Sguazzoni, G; Tropiano, A; Benussi, L; Bertani, M; Bianco, S; Colafranceschi, S; Colonna, D; Fabbri, F; Giardoni, M; Passamonti, L; Piccolo, D; Pierluigi, D; Ponzio, B; Russo, A; Fabbricatore, P; Musenich, R; Benaglia, A; Calloni, M; Cerati, G B; D'Angelo, P; De Guio, F; Farina, F M; Ghezzi, A; Govoni, P; Malberti, M; Malvezzi, S; Martelli, A; Menasce, D; Miccio, V; Moroni, L; Negri, P; Paganoni, M; Pedrini, D; Pullia, A; Ragazzi, S; Redaelli, N; Sala, S; Salerno, R; Tabarelli de Fatis, T; Tancini, V; Taroni, S; Buontempo, S; Cavallo, N; Cimmino, A; De Gruttola, M; Fabozzi, F; Iorio, A O M; Lista, L; Lomidze, D; Noli, P; Paolucci, P; Sciacca, C; Azzi, P; Bacchetta, N; Barcellan, L; Bellan, P; Bellato, M; Benettoni, M; Biasotto, M; Bisello, D; Borsato, E; Branca, A; Carlin, R; Castellani, L; Checchia, P; Conti, E; Dal Corso, F; De Mattia, M; Dorigo, T; Dosselli, U; Fanzago, F; Gasparini, F; Gasparini, U; Giubilato, P; Gonella, F; Gresele, A; Gulmini, M; Kaminskiy, A; Lacaprara, S; Lazzizzera, I; Margoni, M; Maron, G; Mattiazzo, S; Mazzucato, M; Meneghelli, M; Meneguzzo, A T; Michelotto, M; Montecassiano, F; Nespolo, M; Passaseo, M; Pegoraro, M; Perrozzi, L; Pozzobon, N; Ronchese, P; Simonetto, F; Toniolo, N; Torassa, E; Tosi, M; Triossi, A; Vanini, S; Ventura, S; Zotto, P; Zumerle, G; Baesso, P; Berzano, U; Bricola, S; Necchi, M M; Pagano, D; Ratti, S P; Riccardi, C; Torre, P; Vicini, A; Vitulo, P; Viviani, C; Aisa, D; Aisa, S; Babucci, E; Biasini, M; Bilei, G M; Caponeri, B; Checcucci, B; Dinu, N; Fanò, L; Farnesini, L; Lariccia, P; Lucaroni, A; Mantovani, G; Nappi, A; Piluso, A; Postolache, V; Santocchia, A; Servoli, L; Tonoiu, D; Vedaee, A; Volpe, R; Azzurri, P; Bagliesi, G; Bernardini, J; Berretta, L; Boccali, T; Bocci, A; Borrello, L; Bosi, F; Calzolari, F; Castaldi, R; Dell'Orso, R; Fiori, F; Foà, L; Gennai, S; Giassi, A; Kraan, A; Ligabue, F; Lomtadze, T; Mariani, F; Martini, L; Massa, M; Messineo, A; Moggi, A; Palla, F; Palmonari, F; Petragnani, G; Petrucciani, G; Raffaelli, F; Sarkar, S; Segneri, G; Serban, A T; Spagnolo, P; Tenchini, R; Tolaini, S; Tonelli, G; Venturi, A; Verdini, P G; Baccaro, S; Barone, L; Bartoloni, A; Cavallari, F; Dafinei, I; Del Re, D; Di Marco, E; Diemoz, M; Franci, D; Longo, E; Organtini, G; Palma, A; Pandolfi, F; Paramatti, R; Pellegrino, F; Rahatlou, S; Rovelli, C; Alampi, G; Amapane, N; Arcidiacono, R; Argiro, S; Arneodo, M; Biino, C; Borgia, M A; Botta, C; Cartiglia, N; Castello, R; Cerminara, G; Costa, M; Dattola, D; Dellacasa, G; Demaria, N; Dughera, G; Dumitrache, F; Graziano, A; Mariotti, C; Marone, M; Maselli, S; Migliore, E; Mila, G; Monaco, V; Musich, M; Nervo, M; Obertino, M M; Oggero, S; Panero, R; Pastrone, N; Pelliccioni, M; Romero, A; Ruspa, M; Sacchi, R; Solano, A; Staiano, A; Trapani, P P; Trocino, D; Vilela Pereira, A; Visca, L; Zampieri, A; Ambroglini, F; Belforte, S; Cossutti, F; Della Ricca, G; Gobbo, B; Penzo, A; Chang, S; Chung, J; Kim, D H; Kim, G N; Kong, D J; Park, H; Son, D C; Bahk, S Y; Song, S; Jung, S Y; Hong, B; Kim, H; Kim, J H; Lee, K S; Moon, D H; Park, S K; Rhee, H B; Sim, K S; Kim, J; Choi, M; Hahn, G; Park, I C; Choi, S; Choi, Y; Goh, J; Jeong, H; Kim, T J; Lee, J; Lee, S; Janulis, M; Martisiute, D; Petrov, P; Sabonis, T; Castilla Valdez, H; Sánchez Hernández, A; Carrillo Moreno, S; Morelos Pineda, A; Allfrey, P; Gray, R N C; Krofcheck, D; Bernardino Rodrigues, N; Butler, P H; Signal, T; Williams, J C; Ahmad, M; Ahmed, I; Ahmed, W; Asghar, M I; Awan, M I M; Hoorani, H R; Hussain, I; Khan, W A; Khurshid, T; Muhammad, S; Qazi, S; Shahzad, H; Cwiok, M; Dabrowski, R; Dominik, W; Doroba, K; Konecki, M; Krolikowski, J; Pozniak, K; Romaniuk, Ryszard; Zabolotny, W; Zych, P; Frueboes, T; Gokieli, R; Goscilo, L; Górski, M; Kazana, M; Nawrocki, K; Szleper, M; Wrochna, G; Zalewski, P; Almeida, N; Antunes Pedro, L; Bargassa, P; David, A; Faccioli, P; Ferreira Parracho, P G; Freitas Ferreira, M; Gallinaro, M; Guerra Jordao, M; Martins, P; Mini, G; Musella, P; Pela, J; Raposo, L; Ribeiro, P Q; Sampaio, S; Seixas, J; Silva, J; Silva, P; Soares, D; Sousa, M; Varela, J; Wöhri, H K; Altsybeev, I; Belotelov, I; Bunin, P; Ershov, Y; Filozova, I; Finger, M; Finger, M., Jr.; Golunov, A; Golutvin, I; Gorbounov, N; Kalagin, V; Kamenev, A; Karjavin, V; Konoplyanikov, V; Korenkov, V; Kozlov, G; Kurenkov, A; Lanev, A; Makankin, A; Mitsyn, V V; Moisenz, P; Nikonov, E; Oleynik, D; Palichik, V; Perelygin, V; Petrosyan, A; Semenov, R; Shmatov, S; Smirnov, V; Smolin, D; Tikhonenko, E; Vasil'ev, S; Vishnevskiy, A; Volodko, A; Zarubin, A; Zhiltsov, V; Bondar, N; Chtchipounov, L; Denisov, A; Gavrikov, Y; Gavrilov, G; Golovtsov, V; Ivanov, Y; Kim, V; Kozlov, V; Levchenko, P; Obrant, G; Orishchin, E; Petrunin, A; Shcheglov, Y; Shchetkovskiy, A; Sknar, V; Smirnov, I; Sulimov, V; Tarakanov, V; Uvarov, L; Vavilov, S; Velichko, G; Volkov, S; Vorobyev, A; Andreev, Yu; Anisimov, A; Antipov, P; Dermenev, A; Gninenko, S; Golubev, N; Kirsanov, M; Krasnikov, N; Matveev, V; Pashenkov, A; Postoev, V E; Solovey, A; Toropin, A; Troitsky, S; Baud, A; Epshteyn, V; Gavrilov, V; Ilina, N; Kaftanov, V; Kolosov, V; Kossov, M; Krokhotin, A; Kuleshov, S; Oulianov, A; Safronov, G; Semenov, S; Shreyber, I; Stolin, V; Vlasov, E; Zhokin, A; Boos, E; Dubinin, M; Dudko, L; Ershov, A; Gribushin, A; Klyukhin, V; Kodolova, O; Lokhtin, I; Petrushanko, S; Sarycheva, L; Savrin, V; Snigirev, A; Vardanyan, I; Dremin, I; Kirakosyan, M; Konovalova, N; Rusakov, S V; Vinogradov, A; Akimenko, S; Artamonov, A; Azhgirey, I; Bitioukov, S; Burtovoy, V; Grishin, V; Kachanov, V; Konstantinov, D; Krychkine, V; Levine, A; Lobov, I; Lukanin, V; Mel'nik, Y; Petrov, V; Ryutin, R; Slabospitsky, S; Sobol, A; Sytine, A; Tourtchanovitch, L; Troshin, S; Tyurin, N; Uzunian, A; Volkov, A; Adzic, P; Djordjevic, M; Jovanovic, D; Krpic, D; Maletic, D; Puzovic, J; Smiljkovic, N; Aguilar-Benitez, M; Alberdi, J; Alcaraz Maestre, J; Arce, P; Barcala, J M; Battilana, C; Burgos Lazaro, C; Caballero Bejar, J; Calvo, E; Cardenas Montes, M; Cepeda, M; Cerrada, M; Chamizo Llatas, M; Clemente, F; Colino, N; Daniel, M; De La Cruz, B; Delgado Peris, A; Diez Pardos, C; Fernandez Bedoya, C; Fernández Ramos, J P; Ferrando, A; Flix, J; Fouz, M C; Garcia-Abia, P; Garcia-Bonilla, A C; Gonzalez Lopez, O; Goy Lopez, S; Hernandez, J M; Josa, M I; Marin, J; Merino, G; Molina, J; Molinero, A; Navarrete, J J; Oller, J C; Puerta Pelayo, J; Romero, L; Santaolalla, J; Villanueva Munoz, C; Willmott, C; Yuste, C; Albajar, C; Blanco Otano, M; de Trocóniz, J F; Garcia Raboso, A; Lopez Berengueres, J O; Cuevas, J; Fernandez Menendez, J; Gonzalez Caballero, I; Lloret Iglesias, L; Naves Sordo, H; Vizan Garcia, J M; Cabrillo, I J; Calderon, A; Chuang, S H; Diaz Merino, I; Diez Gonzalez, C; Duarte Campderros, J; Fernandez, M; Gomez, G; Gonzalez Sanchez, J; Gonzalez Suarez, R; Jorda, C; Lobelle Pardo, P; Lopez Virto, A; Marco, J; Marco, R; Martinez Rivero, C; Martinez Ruiz del Arbol, P; Matorras, F; Rodrigo, T; Ruiz Jimeno, A; Scodellaro, L; Sobron Sanudo, M; Vila, I; Vilar Cortabitarte, R; Abbaneo, D; Albert, E; Alidra, M; Ashby, S; Auffray, E; Baechler, J; Baillon, P; Ball, A H; Bally, S L; Barney, D; Beaudette, F; Bellan, R; Benedetti, D; Benelli, G; Bernet, C; Bloch, P; Bolognesi, S; Bona, M; Bos, J; Bourgeois, N; Bourrel, T; Breuker, H; Bunkowski, K; Campi, D; Camporesi, T; Cano, E; Cattai, A; Chatelain, J P; Chauvey, M; Christiansen, T; Coarasa Perez, J A; Conde Garcia, A; Covarelli, R; Curé, B; De Roeck, A; Delachenal, V; Deyrail, D; Di Vincenzo, S; Dos Santos, S; Dupont, T; Edera, L M; Elliott-Peisert, A; Eppard, M; Favre, M; Frank, N; Funk, W; Gaddi, A; Gastal, M; Gateau, M; Gerwig, H; Gigi, D; Gill, K; Giordano, D; Girod, J P; Glege, F; Gomez-Reino Garrido, R; Goudard, R; Gowdy, S; Guida, R; Guiducci, L; Gutleber, J; Hansen, M; Hartl, C; Harvey, J; Hegner, B; Hoffmann, H F; Holzner, A; Honma, A; Huhtinen, M; Innocente, V; Janot, P; Le Godec, G; Lecoq, P; Leonidopoulos, C; Loos, R; Lourenço, C; Lyonnet, A; Macpherson, A; Magini, N; Maillefaud, J D; Maire, G; Mäki, T; Malgeri, L; Mannelli, M; Masetti, L; Meijers, F; Meridiani, P; Mersi, S; Meschi, E; Meynet Cordonnier, A; Moser, R; Mulders, M; Mulon, J; Noy, M; Oh, A; Olesen, G; Onnela, A; Orimoto, T; Orsini, L; Perez, E; Perinic, G; Pernot, J F; Petagna, P; Petiot, P; Petrilli, A; Pfeiffer, A; Pierini, M; Pimiä, M; Pintus, R; Pirollet, B; Postema, H; Racz, A; Ravat, S; Rew, S B; Rodrigues Antunes, J; Rolandi, G.; Rovere, M; Ryjov, V; Sakulin, H; Samyn, D; Sauce, H; Schäfer, C; Schlatter, W D; Schröder, M; Schwick, C; Sciaba, A; Segoni, I; Sharma, A; Siegrist, N; Siegrist, P; Sinanis, N; Sobrier, T; Sphicas, P; Spiga, D; Spiropulu, M; Stöckli, F; Traczyk, P; Tropea, P; Troska, J; Tsirou, A; Veillet, L; Veres, G I; Voutilainen, M; Wertelaers, P; Zanetti, M; Bertl, W; Deiters, K; Erdmann, W; Gabathuler, K; Horisberger, R; Ingram, Q; Kaestli, H C; König, S; Kotlinski, D; Langenegger, U; Meier, F; Renker, D; Rohe, T; Sibille, J; Starodumov, A; Betev, B; Caminada, L; Chen, Z; Cittolin, S; Da Silva Di Calafiori, D R; Dambach, S; Dissertori, G; Dittmar, M; Eggel, C; Eugster, J; Faber, G; Freudenreich, K; Grab, C; Hervé, A; Hintz, W; Lecomte, P; Luckey, P D; Lustermann, W; Marchica, C; Milenovic, P; Moortgat, F; Nardulli, A; Nessi-Tedaldi, F; Pape, L; Pauss, F; Punz, T; Rizzi, A; Ronga, F J; Sala, L; Sanchez, A K; Sawley, M C; Sordini, V; Stieger, B; Tauscher, L; Thea, A; Theofilatos, K; Treille, D; Trüb, P; Weber, M; Wehrli, L; Weng, J; Zelepoukine, S; Amsler, C; Chiochia, V; De Visscher, S; Regenfus, C; Robmann, P; Rommerskirchen, T; Schmidt, A; Tsirigkas, D; Wilke, L; Chang, Y H; Chen, E A; Chen, W T; Go, A; Kuo, C M; Li, S W; Lin, W; Bartalini, P; Chang, P; Chao, Y; Chen, K F; Hou, W S; Hsiung, Y; Lei, Y J; Lin, S W; Lu, R S; Schümann, J; Shiu, J G; Tzeng, Y M; Ueno, K; Velikzhanin, Y; Wang, C C; Wang, M; Adiguzel, A; Ayhan, A; Azman Gokce, A; Bakirci, M N; Cerci, S; Dumanoglu, I; Eskut, E; Girgis, S; Gurpinar, E; Hos, I; Karaman, T; Kayis Topaksu, A; Kurt, P; Önengüt, G; Önengüt Gökbulut, G; Ozdemir, K; Ozturk, S; Polatöz, A; Sogut, K; Tali, B; Topakli, H; Uzun, D; Vergili, L N; Vergili, M; Akin, I V; Aliev, T; Bilmis, S; Deniz, M; Gamsizkan, H; Guler, A M; Öcalan, K; Serin, M; Sever, R; Surat, U E; Zeyrek, M; Deliomeroglu, M; Demir, D; Gülmez, E; Halu, A; Isildak, B; Kaya, M; Kaya, O; Ozkorucuklu, S; Sonmez, N; Levchuk, L; Lukyanenko, S; Soroka, D; Zub, S; Bostock, F; Brooke, J J; Cheng, T L; Cussans, D; Frazier, R; Goldstein, J; Grant, N; Hansen, M; Heath, G P; Heath, H F; Hill, C; Huckvale, B; Jackson, J; Mackay, C K; Metson, S; Newbold, D M; Nirunpong, K; Smith, V J; Velthuis, J; Walton, R; Bell, K W; Brew, C; Brown, R M; Camanzi, B; Cockerill, D J A; Coughlan, J A; Geddes, N I; Harder, K; Harper, S; Kennedy, B W; Murray, P; Shepherd-Themistocleous, C H; Tomalin, I R; Williams, J H; Womersley, W J; Worm, S D; Bainbridge, R; Ball, G; Ballin, J; Beuselinck, R; Buchmuller, O; Colling, D; Cripps, N; Davies, G; Della Negra, M; Foudas, C; Fulcher, J; Futyan, D; Hall, G; Hays, J; Iles, G; Karapostoli, G; MacEvoy, B C; Magnan, A M; Marrouche, J; Nash, J; Nikitenko, A; Papageorgiou, A; Pesaresi, M; Petridis, K; Pioppi, M; Raymond, D M; Rompotis, N; Rose, A; Ryan, M J; Seez, C; Sharp, P; Sidiropoulos, G; Stettler, M; Stoye, M; Takahashi, M; Tapper, A; Timlin, C; Tourneur, S; Vazquez Acosta, M; Virdee, T; Wakefield, S; Wardrope, D; Whyntie, T; Wingham, M; Cole, J E; Goitom, I; Hobson, P R; Khan, A; Kyberd, P; Leslie, D; Munro, C; Reid, I D; Siamitros, C; Taylor, R; Teodorescu, L; Yaselli, I; Bose, T; Carleton, M; Hazen, E; Heering, A H; Heister, A; John, J St; Lawson, P; Lazic, D; Osborne, D; Rohlf, J; Sulak, L; Wu, S; Andrea, J; Avetisyan, A; Bhattacharya, S; Chou, J P; Cutts, D; Esen, S; Kukartsev, G; Landsberg, G; Narain, M; Nguyen, D; Speer, T; Tsang, K V; Breedon, R; Calderon De La Barca Sanchez, M; Case, M; Cebra, D; Chertok, M; Conway, J; Cox, P T; Dolen, J; Erbacher, R; Friis, E; Ko, W; Kopecky, A; Lander, R; Lister, A; Liu, H; Maruyama, S; Miceli, T; Nikolic, M; Pellett, D; Robles, J; Searle, M; Smith, J; Squires, M; Stilley, J; Tripathi, M; Vasquez Sierra, R; Veelken, C; Andreev, V; Arisaka, K; Cline, D; Cousins, R; Erhan, S; Hauser, J; Ignatenko, M; Jarvis, C; Mumford, J; Plager, C; Rakness, G; Schlein, P; Tucker, J; Valuev, V; Wallny, R; Yang, X; Babb, J; Bose, M; Chandra, A; Clare, R; Ellison, J A; Gary, J W; Hanson, G; Jeng, G Y; Kao, S C; Liu, F; Liu, H; Luthra, A; Nguyen, H; Pasztor, G; Satpathy, A; Shen, B C; Stringer, R; Sturdy, J; Sytnik, V; Wilken, R; Wimpenny, S; Branson, J G; Dusinberre, E; Evans, D; Golf, F; Kelley, R; Lebourgeois, M; Letts, J; Lipeles, E; Mangano, B; Muelmenstaedt, J; Norman, M; Padhi, S; Petrucci, A; Pi, H; Pieri, M; Ranieri, R; Sani, M; Sharma, V; Simon, S; Würthwein, F; Yagil, A; Campagnari, C; D'Alfonso, M; Danielson, T; Garberson, J; Incandela, J; Justus, C; Kalavase, P; Koay, S A; Kovalskyi, D; Krutelyov, V; Lamb, J; Lowette, S; Pavlunin, V; Rebassoo, F; Ribnik, J; Richman, J; Rossin, R; Stuart, D; To, W; Vlimant, J R; Witherell, M; Apresyan, A; Bornheim, A; Bunn, J; Chiorboli, M; Gataullin, M; Kcira, D; Litvine, V; Ma, Y; Newman, H B; Rogan, C; Timciuc, V; Veverka, J; Wilkinson, R; Yang, Y; Zhang, L; Zhu, K; Zhu, R Y; Akgun, B; Carroll, R; Ferguson, T; Jang, D W; Jun, S Y; Paulini, M; Russ, J; Terentyev, N; Vogel, H; Vorobiev, I; Cumalat, J P; Dinardo, M E; Drell, B R; Ford, W T; Heyburn, B; Luiggi Lopez, E; Nauenberg, U; Stenson, K; Ulmer, K; Wagner, S R; Zang, S L; Agostino, L; Alexander, J; Blekman, F; Cassel, D; Chatterjee, A; Das, S; Gibbons, L K; Heltsley, B; Hopkins, W; Khukhunaishvili, A; Kreis, B; Kuznetsov, V; Patterson, J R; Puigh, D; Ryd, A; Shi, X; Stroiney, S; Sun, W; Teo, W D; Thom, J; Vaughan, J; Weng, Y; Wittich, P; Beetz, C P; Cirino, G; Sanzeni, C; Winn, D; Abdullin, S; Afaq, M A; Albrow, M; Ananthan, B; Apollinari, G; Atac, M; Badgett, W; Bagby, L; Bakken, J A; Baldin, B; Banerjee, S; Banicz, K; Bauerdick, L A T; Beretvas, A; Berryhill, J; Bhat, P C; Biery, K; Binkley, M; Bloch, I; Borcherding, F; Brett, A M; Burkett, K; Butler, J N; Chetluru, V; Cheung, H W K; Chlebana, F; Churin, I; Cihangir, S; Crawford, M; Dagenhart, W; Demarteau, M; Derylo, G; Dykstra, D; Eartly, D P; Elias, J E; Elvira, V D; Evans, D; Feng, L; Fischler, M; Fisk, I; Foulkes, S; Freeman, J; Gartung, P; Gottschalk, E; Grassi, T; Green, D; Guo, Y; Gutsche, O; Hahn, A; Hanlon, J; Harris, R M; Holzman, B; Howell, J; Hufnagel, D; James, E; Jensen, H; Johnson, M; Jones, C D; Joshi, U; Juska, E; Kaiser, J; Klima, B; Kossiakov, S; Kousouris, K; Kwan, S; Lei, C M; Limon, P; Lopez Perez, J A; Los, S; Lueking, L; Lukhanin, G; Lusin, S; Lykken, J; Maeshima, K; Marraffino, J M; Mason, D; McBride, P; Miao, T; Mishra, K; Moccia, S; Mommsen, R; Mrenna, S; Muhammad, A S; Newman-Holmes, C; Noeding, C; O'Dell, V; Prokofyev, O; Rivera, R; Rivetta, C H; Ronzhin, A; Rossman, P; Ryu, S; Sekhri, V; Sexton-Kennedy, E; Sfiligoi, I; Sharma, S; Shaw, T M; Shpakov, D; Skup, E; Smith, R P; Soha, A; Spalding, W J; Spiegel, L; Suzuki, I; Tan, P; Tanenbaum, W; Tkaczyk, S; Trentadue, R; Uplegger, L; Vaandering, E W; Vidal, R; Whitmore, J; Wicklund, E; Wu, W; Yarba, J; Yumiceva, F; Yun, J C; Acosta, D; Avery, P; Barashko, V; Bourilkov, D; Chen, M; Di Giovanni, G P; Dobur, D; Drozdetskiy, A; Field, R D; Fu, Y; Furic, I K; Gartner, J; Holmes, D; Kim, B; Klimenko, S; Konigsberg, J; Korytov, A; Kotov, K; Kropivnitskaya, A; Kypreos, T; Madorsky, A; Matchev, K; Mitselmakher, G; Pakhotin, Y; Piedra Gomez, J; Prescott, C; Rapsevicius, V; Remington, R; Schmitt, M; Scurlock, B; Wang, D; Yelton, J; Ceron, C; Gaultney, V; Kramer, L; Lebolo, L M; Linn, S; Markowitz, P; Martinez, G; Rodriguez, J L; Adams, T; Askew, A; Baer, H; Bertoldi, M; Chen, J; Dharmaratna, W G D; Gleyzer, S V; Haas, J; Hagopian, S; Hagopian, V; Jenkins, M; Johnson, K F; Prettner, E; Prosper, H; Sekmen, S; Baarmand, M M; Guragain, S; Hohlmann, M; Kalakhety, H; Mermerkaya, H; Ralich, R; Vodopiyanov, I; Abelev, B; Adams, M R; Anghel, I M; Apanasevich, L; Bazterra, V E; Betts, R R; Callner, J; Castro, M A; Cavanaugh, R; Dragoiu, C; Garcia-Solis, E J; Gerber, C E; Hofman, D J; Khalatian, S; Mironov, C; Shabalina, E; Smoron, A; Varelas, N; Akgun, U; Albayrak, E A; Ayan, A S; Bilki, B; Briggs, R; Cankocak, K; Chung, K; Clarida, W; Debbins, P; Duru, F; Ingram, F D; Lae, C K; McCliment, E; Merlo, J P; Mestvirishvili, A; Miller, M J; Moeller, A; Nachtman, J; Newsom, C R; Norbeck, E; Olson, J; Onel, Y; Ozok, F; Parsons, J; Schmidt, I; Sen, S; Wetzel, J; Yetkin, T; Yi, K; Barnett, B A; Blumenfeld, B; Bonato, A; Chien, C Y; Fehling, D; Giurgiu, G; Gritsan, A V; Guo, Z J; Maksimovic, P; Rappoccio, S; Swartz, M; Tran, N V; Zhang, Y; Baringer, P; Bean, A; Grachov, O; Murray, M; Radicci, V; Sanders, S; Wood, J S; Zhukova, V; Bandurin, D; Bolton, T; Kaadze, K; Liu, A; Maravin, Y; Onoprienko, D; Svintradze, I; Wan, Z; Gronberg, J; Hollar, J; Lange, D; Wright, D; Baden, D; Bard, R; Boutemeur, M; Eno, S C; Ferencek, D; Hadley, N J; Kellogg, R G; Kirn, M; Kunori, S; Rossato, K; Rumerio, P; Santanastasio, F; Skuja, A; Temple, J; Tonjes, M B; Tonwar, S C; Toole, T; Twedt, E; Alver, B; Bauer, G; Bendavid, J; Busza, W; Butz, E; Cali, I A; Chan, M; D'Enterria, D; Everaerts, P; Gomez Ceballos, G; Hahn, K A; Harris, P; Jaditz, S; Kim, Y; Klute, M; Lee, Y J; Li, W; Loizides, C; Ma, T; Miller, M; Nahn, S; Paus, C; Roland, C; Roland, G; Rudolph, M; Stephans, G; Sumorok, K; Sung, K; Vaurynovich, S; Wenger, E A; Wyslouch, B; Xie, S; Yilmaz, Y; Yoon, A S; Bailleux, D; Cooper, S I; Cushman, P; Dahmes, B; De Benedetti, A; Dolgopolov, A; Dudero, P R; Egeland, R; Franzoni, G; Haupt, J; Inyakin, A; Klapoetke, K; Kubota, Y; Mans, J; Mirman, N; Petyt, D; Rekovic, V; Rusack, R; Schroeder, M; Singovsky, A; Zhang, J; Cremaldi, L M; Godang, R; Kroeger, R; Perera, L; Rahmat, R; Sanders, D A; Sonnek, P; Summers, D; Bloom, K; Bockelman, B; Bose, S; Butt, J; Claes, D R; Dominguez, A; Eads, M; Keller, J; Kelly, T; Kravchenko, I; Lazo-Flores, J; Lundstedt, C; Malbouisson, H; Malik, S; Snow, G R; Baur, U; Iashvili, I; Kharchilava, A; Kumar, A; Smith, K; Strang, M; Alverson, G; Barberis, E; Boeriu, O; Eulisse, G; Govi, G; McCauley, T; Musienko, Y; Muzaffar, S; Osborne, I; Paul, T; Reucroft, S; Swain, J; Taylor, L; Tuura, L; Anastassov, A; Gobbi, B; Kubik, A; Ofierzynski, R A; Pozdnyakov, A; Schmitt, M; Stoynev, S; Velasco, M; Won, S; Antonelli, L; Berry, D; Hildreth, M; Jessop, C; Karmgard, D J; Kolberg, T; Lannon, K; Lynch, S; Marinelli, N; Morse, D M; Ruchti, R; Slaunwhite, J; Warchol, J; Wayne, M; Bylsma, B; Durkin, L S; Gilmore, J; Gu, J; Killewald, P; Ling, T Y; Williams, G; Adam, N; Berry, E; Elmer, P; Garmash, A; Gerbaudo, D; Halyo, V; Hunt, A; Jones, J; Laird, E; Marlow, D; Medvedeva, T; Mooney, M; Olsen, J; Piroué, P; Stickland, D; Tully, C; Werner, J S; Wildish, T; Xie, Z; Zuranski, A; Acosta, J G; Bonnett Del Alamo, M; Huang, X T; Lopez, A; Mendez, H; Oliveros, S; Ramirez Vargas, J E; Santacruz, N; Zatzerklyany, A; Alagoz, E; Antillon, E; Barnes, V E; Bolla, G; Bortoletto, D; Everett, A; Garfinkel, A F; Gecse, Z; Gutay, L; Ippolito, N; Jones, M; Koybasi, O; Laasanen, A T; Leonardo, N; Liu, C; Maroussov, V; Merkel, P; Miller, D H; Neumeister, N; Sedov, A; Shipsey, I; Yoo, H D; Zheng, Y; Jindal, P; Parashar, N; Cuplov, V; Ecklund, K M; Geurts, F J M; Liu, J H; Maronde, D; Matveev, M; Padley, B P; Redjimi, R; Roberts, J; Sabbatini, L; Tumanov, A; Betchart, B; Bodek, A; Budd, H; Chung, Y S; de Barbaro, P; Demina, R; Flacher, H; Gotra, Y; Harel, A; Korjenevski, S; Miner, D C; Orbaker, D; Petrillo, G; Vishnevskiy, D; Zielinski, M; Bhatti, A; Demortier, L; Goulianos, K; Hatakeyama, K; Lungu, G; Mesropian, C; Yan, M; Atramentov, O; Bartz, E; Gershtein, Y; Halkiadakis, E; Hits, D; Lath, A; Rose, K; Schnetzer, S; Somalwar, S; Stone, R; Thomas, S; Watts, T L; Cerizza, G; Hollingsworth, M; Spanier, S; Yang, Z C; York, A; Asaadi, J; Aurisano, A; Eusebi, R; Golyash, A; Gurrola, A; Kamon, T; Nguyen, C N; Pivarski, J; Safonov, A; Sengupta, S; Toback, D; Weinberger, M; Akchurin, N; Berntzon, L; Gumus, K; Jeong, C; Kim, H; Lee, S W; Popescu, S; Roh, Y; Sill, A; Volobouev, I; Washington, E; Wigmans, R; Yazgan, E; Engh, D; Florez, C; Johns, W; Pathak, S; Sheldon, P; Andelin, D; Arenton, M W; Balazs, M; Boutle, S; Buehler, M; Conetti, S; Cox, B; Hirosky, R; Ledovskoy, A; Neu, C; Phillips II, D; Ronquest, M; Yohay, R; Gollapinni, S; Gunthoti, K; Harr, R; Karchin, P E; Mattson, M; Sakharov, A; Anderson, M; Bachtis, M; Bellinger, J N; Carlsmith, D; Crotty, I; Dasu, S; Dutta, S; Efron, J; Feyzi, F; Flood, K; Gray, L; Grogg, K S; Grothe, M; Hall-Wilton, R; Jaworski, M; Klabbers, P; Klukas, J; Lanaro, A; Lazaridis, C; Leonard, J; Loveless, R; Magrans de Abril, M; Mohapatra, A; Ott, G; Polese, G; Reeder, D; Savin, A; Smith, W H; Sourkov, A; Swanson, J; Weinberg, M; Wenman, D; Wensveen, M; White, A

    2010-01-01

    During autumn 2008, the Silicon Strip Tracker was operated with the full CMS experiment in a comprehensive test, in the presence of the 3.8 T magnetic field produced by the CMS superconducting solenoid. Cosmic ray muons were detected in the muon chambers and used to trigger the readout of all CMS sub-detectors. About 15 million events with a muon in the tracker were collected. The efficiency of hit and track reconstruction were measured to be higher than 99% and consistent with expectations from Monte Carlo simulation. This article details the commissioning and performance of the Silicon Strip Tracker with cosmic ray muons.

  16. Real-time sharing of gaze data between multiple eye trackers-evaluation, tools, and advice.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nyström, Marcus; Niehorster, Diederick C; Cornelissen, Tim; Garde, Henrik

    2017-08-01

    Technological advancements in combination with significant reductions in price have made it practically feasible to run experiments with multiple eye trackers. This enables new types of experiments with simultaneous recordings of eye movement data from several participants, which is of interest for researchers in, e.g., social and educational psychology. The Lund University Humanities Laboratory recently acquired 25 remote eye trackers, which are connected over a local wireless network. As a first step toward running experiments with this setup, demanding situations with real time sharing of gaze data were investigated in terms of network performance as well as clock and screen synchronization. Results show that data can be shared with a sufficiently low packet loss (0.1 %) and latency (M = 3 ms, M A D = 2 ms) across 8 eye trackers at a rate of 60 Hz. For a similar performance using 24 computers, the send rate needs to be reduced to 20 Hz. To help researchers conduct similar measurements on their own multi-eye-tracker setup, open source software written in Python and PsychoPy are provided. Part of the software contains a minimal working example to help researchers kick-start experiments with two or more eye trackers.

  17. SWaP Reduction for Lost-Cost Star Tracker

    Data.gov (United States)

    National Aeronautics and Space Administration — In the last two years, a low-cost star tracker has been developed for suborbital applications. Currently the system weighs ~9 lbm, uses ~16W and has a parts cost of...

  18. The silicon microstrip sensors of the ATLAS semiconductor tracker

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    ATLAS SCT Collaboration; Spieler, Helmuth G.

    2007-04-13

    This paper describes the AC-coupled, single-sided, p-in-n silicon microstrip sensors used in the Semiconductor Tracker (SCT) of the ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The sensor requirements, specifications and designs are discussed, together with the qualification and quality assurance procedures adopted for their production. The measured sensor performance is presented, both initially and after irradiation to the fluence anticipated after 10 years of LHC operation. The sensors are now successfully assembled within the detecting modules of the SCT, and the SCT tracker is completed and integrated within the ATLAS Inner Detector. Hamamatsu Photonics Ltd. supplied 92.2percent of the 15,392 installed sensors, with the remainder supplied by CiS.

  19. The silicon microstrip sensors of the ATLAS semiconductor tracker

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    ATLAS SCT Collaboration; Spieler, Helmuth G.

    2007-01-01

    This paper describes the AC-coupled, single-sided, p-in-n silicon microstrip sensors used in the Semiconductor Tracker (SCT) of the ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The sensor requirements, specifications and designs are discussed, together with the qualification and quality assurance procedures adopted for their production. The measured sensor performance is presented, both initially and after irradiation to the fluence anticipated after 10 years of LHC operation. The sensors are now successfully assembled within the detecting modules of the SCT, and the SCT tracker is completed and integrated within the ATLAS Inner Detector. Hamamatsu Photonics Ltd. supplied 92.2percent of the 15,392 installed sensors, with the remainder supplied by CiS

  20. Risk and contributing factors of ecosystem shifts over naturally vegetated land under climate change in China.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yin, Yuanyuan; Tang, Qiuhong; Wang, Lixin; Liu, Xingcai

    2016-02-12

    Identifying the areas at risk of ecosystem transformation and the main contributing factors to the risk is essential to assist ecological adaptation to climate change. We assessed the risk of ecosystem shifts in China using the projections of four global gridded vegetation models (GGVMs) and an aggregate metric. The results show that half of naturally vegetated land surface could be under moderate or severe risk at the end of the 21(st) century under the middle and high emission scenarios. The areas with high risk are the Tibetan Plateau region and an area extended northeastward from the Tibetan Plateau to northeast China. With the three major factors considered, the change in carbon stocks is the main contributing factor to the high risk of ecosystem shifts. The change in carbon fluxes is another important contributing factor under the high emission scenario. The change in water fluxes is a less dominant factor except for the Tibetan Plateau region under the high emission scenario. Although there is considerable uncertainty in the risk assessment, the geographic patterns of the risk are generally consistent across different scenarios. The results could help develop regional strategies for ecosystem conservation to cope with climate change.

  1. Vegetation extraction from high-resolution satellite imagery using the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI)

    Science.gov (United States)

    AlShamsi, Meera R.

    2016-10-01

    Over the past years, there has been various urban development all over the UAE. Dubai is one of the cities that experienced rapid growth in both development and population. That growth can have a negative effect on the surrounding environment. Hence, there has been a necessity to protect the environment from these fast pace changes. One of the major impacts this growth can have is on vegetation. As technology is evolving day by day, there is a possibility to monitor changes that are happening on different areas in the world using satellite imagery. The data from these imageries can be utilized to identify vegetation in different areas of an image through a process called vegetation detection. Being able to detect and monitor vegetation is very beneficial for municipal planning and management, and environment authorities. Through this, analysts can monitor vegetation growth in various areas and analyze these changes. By utilizing satellite imagery with the necessary data, different types of vegetation can be studied and analyzed, such as parks, farms, and artificial grass in sports fields. In this paper, vegetation features are detected and extracted through SAFIY system (i.e. the Smart Application for Feature extraction and 3D modeling using high resolution satellite ImagerY) by using high-resolution satellite imagery from DubaiSat-2 and DEIMOS-2 satellites, which provide panchromatic images of 1m resolution and spectral bands (red, green, blue and near infrared) of 4m resolution. SAFIY system is a joint collaboration between MBRSC and DEIMOS Space UK. It uses image-processing algorithms to extract different features (roads, water, vegetation, and buildings) to generate vector maps data. The process to extract green areas (vegetation) utilize spectral information (such as, the red and near infrared bands) from the satellite images. These detected vegetation features will be extracted as vector data in SAFIY system and can be updated and edited by end-users, such as

  2. Comparative palynomorph signals of vegetation change preserved in an adjacent peat swamp and estuary in north-west Nelson, New Zealand

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Armour, R.K.; Kennedy, D.M.

    2005-01-01

    A history of vegetation for the mid-late Holocene was extracted from the southern margins of Whanganui Inlet and Mangarakau Swamp. These two sites represent very different pollen sinks with the estuary being dominated by fluvially transported material and the swamp by in situ pollen rain. They are, however, located very close to each other and therefore provide a unique study area to investigate how differing source environments affect pollen signals. A vegetation change from podocarps to beech forest is recorded in both settings at around 4000 years CalBP which is similar to that recorded at higher altitudes in the region. Robust palynomorphs were found in greater abundance in the inlet while the swamp contained a higher proportion of wetland species. Despite these differences both environments appeared to record a similar regional vegetation signal. This shows that estuarine environments, often characterised by material that has been transported, can provide accurate reconstructions of vegetation change. (author). 31 refs., 8 figs., 1 tab

  3. Maximun power point tracker of photovoltaic s panels for stand alone systems

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Stoll, R; Manno, R

    2005-01-01

    The low energetic efficiency of photovoltaic s panels is known, in addition, due to the use of linear regulators, which dissipate an important bit of the generated energy, the efficiency of the photovoltaic systems is still smaller.Also, the I-V characteristic curve of the photovoltaic modules depends on the solar radiation and the own temperature; consequently, the maximum power point (Wp) changes permanently.In conclusion, to produce electricity with photovoltaic panels is very expensive. However due to preserve the environment this technology is widely used.With the purpose of optimizing the amount of energy produced by the photovoltaic system, two complementary methods are used.One is the Maximum Power Point Tracker (MPPT) system and the other one is the Solar Tracker system.The objective of this project is to reduce that cost increasing the amount of energy produced by the solar panels using a Maximum Power Point Tracker system.This device consists of a DC/DC buck converter of high performance, controlled by a PIC 16F873 micro controller; which carries out the conversions of the analogical signals of the solar array to digital signals (ADC), the PIC output digital signals to the PWM control of the power FET (DAC), and calculates the Duty Cycle (D) for the point of I-V curve where this product becomes maximum.Measurements for different loads and battery charges were made.With the obtained results, the comparisons with a conventional system were made, a greater cession of energy to the load is observed.The main conclusion of this work is: Using a MPPT device to making work the PV module during the greater possible time near the maximum power point, the efficiency of the photovoltaic systems can be increased

  4. VEGETATION RESPONSE TO CLIMATE CHANGE IN THE SOUTHERN PART OF QINGHAI-TIBET PLATEAU AT BASINAL SCALE

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    X. Liu

    2018-04-01

    Full Text Available Global climate change has significantly affected vegetation variation in the third-polar region of the world – the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. As one of the most important indicators of vegetation variation (growth, coverage and tempo-spatial change, the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI is widely employed to study the response of vegetation to climate change. However, a long-term series analysis cannot be achieved because a single data source is constrained by time sequence. Therefore, a new framework was presented in this paper to extend the product series of monthly NDVI, taking as an example the Yarlung Zangbo River Basin, one of the most important river basins in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. NDVI products were acquired from two public sources: Global Inventory Modeling and Mapping Studies (GIMMS Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR and Moderate-Resolution Imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS. After having been extended using the new framework, the new time series of NDVI covers a 384 months period (1982–2013, 84 months longer than previous time series of NDVI product, greatly facilitating NDVI related scientific research. In the new framework, the Gauss Filtering Method was employed to filter out noise in the NDVI product. Next, the standard method was introduced to enhance the comparability of the two data sources, and a pixel-based regression method was used to construct NDVI-extending models with one pixel after another. The extended series of NDVI fit well with original AVHRR-NDVI. With the extended time-series, temporal trends and spatial heterogeneity of NDVI in the study area were studied. Principal influencing factors on NDVI were further determined. The monthly NDVI is highly correlated with air temperature and precipitation in terms of climatic change wherein the spatially averaged NDVI slightly increases in the summer and has increased in temperature and decreased in precipitation in the 32 years period. The

  5. Changes in Soil Carbon Stocks and Fluxes in Response to Altered Above- and Belowground Vegetation Inputs

    Science.gov (United States)

    Marañón-Jiménez, S.; Schuetze, C.; Cuntz, M.; García-Quirós, I.; Dienstbach, L.; Schrumpf, M.; Rebmann, C.

    2016-12-01

    The stimulation of vegetation productivity in response to rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations can potentially compensate climate change feedbacks. However, this will depend on the allocation of C resources of vegetation into biomass production versus root exudates and on the feedbacks with soil microorganisms. These dynamic adjustments of vegetation will result on changes in above- and belowground productivity and on the amount of C exported to root exudates. Consequent alteration of litter and rhizosphere detritus inputs to the soil and their interaction on controlling soil C sequestration capacity has been, however, rarely assessed. We hypothesize that above- and belowground vegetation exert a synergistic control of soil CO2 emissions, and that the activation of soil organic matter mineralization by the addition of labile organic substrates (i.e.: the priming effect) is altered by changes in the amount and in the quality of the carbon inputs. In order to elucidate these questions, different levels of litter addition were implemented on trenched (root exclusion) and non-trenched plots (with roots) in a temperate deciduous forest. Changes in the sensitivity of soil respiration to temperature and moisture were detected by measuring CO2 fluxes continuously at high temporal resolution with automatic chambers, whereas the spatial and seasonal variability was determined using portable chambers. Annual changes in soil carbon and nitrogen stocks provide additional information on the soil carbon sequestration in response to above- and belowground inputs. Both roots and litter inputs significantly enhanced soil CO2 effluxes soon after the implementation of the experiment. We detected synergistic effects between roots and litter inputs on soil CO2 emissions: When roots were present, carbon mineralized in response to litter addition was much higher than the total amount of carbon added in litter (ca. 170 g C m-2 y-1). Preliminary results of this study suggest that labile

  6. Performance and calibration of the CHORUS scintillating fiber tracker and opto-electronics readout system

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Annis, P.; Aoki, S.; Brunner, J.; De Jong, M.; Fabre, J.P.; Ferreira, R.; Flegel, W.; Frekers, D.; Gregoire, G.; Herin, J.; Kobayashi, M.; Konijn, J.; Lemaitre, V.; Macina, D.; Meijer Drees, R.; Meinhard, H.; Michel, L.; Mommaert, C.; Nakamura, K.; Nakamura, M.; Nakano, T.; Niwa, K.; Niu, E.; Panman, J.; Riccardi, F.; Rondeshagen, D.; Sato, O.; Stefanini, G.; Vander Donckt, M.; Vilain, P.; Wilquet, G.; Winter, K.; Wong, H.T.

    1995-01-01

    An essential component of the CERN WA95/CHORUS experiment is a scintillating fiber tracker system for precise track reconstruction of particles. The tracker design, its opto-electronics readout and calibration system are discussed. Performances of the detector are presented. (orig.)

  7. Review of Vegetable Market Development in China

    Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

    Chaoping; LUO; Yuandong; NI; Qiong; ZHAI

    2013-01-01

    This paper has reviewed vegetable market development from vegetable circulation system, the develop history of the liberalize vegetable market and the growth of the vegetable wholesale market in China. From the development of vegetables market in China and its characteristics: the development of vegetable market in China is related to vegetable market system, the change of institution, some technology development and infrastructure. this paper has put forward some related measures to perfect the vegetable market and improve the vegetable circulation efficiency in China.

  8. CMS tracker visualization tools

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Mennea, M.S. [Dipartimento Interateneo di Fisica ' Michelangelo Merlin' e INFN sezione di Bari, Via Amendola 173 - 70126 Bari (Italy); Osborne, I. [Northeastern University, 360 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115 (United States); Regano, A. [Dipartimento Interateneo di Fisica ' Michelangelo Merlin' e INFN sezione di Bari, Via Amendola 173 - 70126 Bari (Italy); Zito, G. [Dipartimento Interateneo di Fisica ' Michelangelo Merlin' e INFN sezione di Bari, Via Amendola 173 - 70126 Bari (Italy)]. E-mail: giuseppe.zito@ba.infn.it

    2005-08-21

    This document will review the design considerations, implementations and performance of the CMS Tracker Visualization tools. In view of the great complexity of this sub-detector (more than 50 millions channels organized in 16540 modules each one of these being a complete detector), the standard CMS visualization tools (IGUANA and IGUANACMS) that provide basic 3D capabilities and integration within CMS framework, respectively, have been complemented with additional 2D graphics objects. Based on the experience acquired using this software to debug and understand both hardware and software during the construction phase, we propose possible future improvements to cope with online monitoring and event analysis during data taking.

  9. CMS tracker visualization tools

    CERN Document Server

    Zito, G; Osborne, I; Regano, A

    2005-01-01

    This document will review the design considerations, implementations and performance of the CMS Tracker Visualization tools. In view of the great complexity of this sub-detector (more than 50 millions channels organized in 16540 modules each one of these being a complete detector), the standard CMS visualization tools (IGUANA and IGUANACMS) that provide basic 3D capabilities and integration within CMS framework, respectively, have been complemented with additional 2D graphics objects. Based on the experience acquired using this software to debug and understand both hardware and software during the construction phase, we propose possible future improvements to cope with online monitoring and event analysis during data taking.

  10. CMS tracker visualization tools

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Mennea, M.S.; Osborne, I.; Regano, A.; Zito, G.

    2005-01-01

    This document will review the design considerations, implementations and performance of the CMS Tracker Visualization tools. In view of the great complexity of this sub-detector (more than 50 millions channels organized in 16540 modules each one of these being a complete detector), the standard CMS visualization tools (IGUANA and IGUANACMS) that provide basic 3D capabilities and integration within CMS framework, respectively, have been complemented with additional 2D graphics objects. Based on the experience acquired using this software to debug and understand both hardware and software during the construction phase, we propose possible future improvements to cope with online monitoring and event analysis during data taking

  11. Detailed Performance of the Outer Tracker at LHCb

    CERN Document Server

    Tuning, N

    2014-01-01

    The LHCb Outer Tracker is a gaseous detector covering an area of 5x6m2 with 12 double layers of straw tubes. Based on data of the first LHC running period from 2010 to 2012, the performance in terms of the single hit resolution and efficiency are presented. Details on the ionization length and subtle effects regarding signal reflections and the subsequent time-walk correction are given. The efficiency to detect a hit in the central half of the straw is estimated to be 99.2%, and the position resolution is determined to be approximately 200 um, depending on the detailed implementation of the internal alignment of individual detector modules. The Outer Tracker received a dose in the hottest region corresponding to 0.12 C/cm, and no signs of gain deterioration or other ageing effects are observed.

  12. Commissioning and Performance of the LHCb Silicon Tracker

    CERN Multimedia

    van Tilburg, J; Buechler, A; Bursche , A; Chiapolini, N; Elsaesser, C; Hangartner, V; Salzmann, C; Steiner, S; Steinkamp, O; Staumann, U; Tobin, M; Vollhardt, A; Bay, A; Bettler, M O; Blanc, F; Bressieux, J; Conti, G; Fave, V; Frei, R; Gauvin, N; Gonzalez, R; Haefeli, G; Hicheur, A; Keune, A; Luisier, J; Muresan, R; Nakada, T; Needham, M; Nicolas, L; Knecht, M; Perrin, A; Potterat, C; Schneider, O; Tran, M; Aquines Gutierrez, O; Bauer, C; Britsch, M; Hofmann, W; Maciuc, F; Schmelling, M; Voss, H; Adeva, B; Esperante, D; Fungueiriño Pazos, J; Gallas, A; Pazos-Alvarez, A; Pérez-Trigo, E; Pló Casasús, M; Rogríguez Pérez, P; Saborido, J; Vázquez, P; Iakovenko, V; Okhrimenko, O; Pugatch, V

    2010-01-01

    The LHCb Silicon Tracker is a silicon micro-strip detector with a sensitive area of 12 m$^2$ and a total of 272k readout channels. The Silicon Tracker consists of two parts that use different detector modules. The detector installation was completed by early summer 2008 and the commissioning without beam has reached its finals stage, successfully overcoming most of the encountered problems. Currently, the detector has more than 99% of the channels fully functioning. Commissioning with particles has started using beam-induced events from the LHC injection tests in 2008 and 2009. These events allowed initial studies of the detector performance. Especially, the detector modules could be aligned with an accuracy of about 20 $\\mu$m. Furthermore, with the first beam collisions that took place end of 2009 we could further study the performance and improve the alignment of the detector.

  13. High voltage multiplexing for the ATLAS Tracker Upgrade

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Villani, E G; Phillips, P; Matheson, J; Lynn, D; Hommels, L B A; Gregor, I; Bessner, M; Tackmann, K; Newcomer, F M; Spencer, E; Greenall, A

    2014-01-01

    The increased luminosity of the HL-LHC will require more channels in the upgraded ATLAS Tracker, as a result of the finer detector segmentation, stemming from the otherwise too high occupancy. Among the many technological challenges facing the ATLAS Tracker Upgrade there is more an efficient power distribution and HV biasing of the sensors. The solution adopted in the current ATLAS detector uses one HV conductor for each sensor, which makes it easy to disable malfunctioning sensors without affecting the others, but space constraints and material budget considerations renders this approach impractical for the Upgraded detector. A number of approaches, including the use of the same HV line to bias several sensors and suitable HV switches, along with their control circuitry, are currently being investigated for this purpose. The proposed solutions along with latest test results and measurements will be described

  14. The contribution of vegetation and landscape configuration for predicting environmental change impacts on Iberian birds

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Triviño, Maria; Thuiller, Wilfried; Cabeza, Mar

    2011-01-01

    of distributions, but they are rarely considered in such assessments. We explore the consequences of using simulated vegetation structure and composition as well as its associated landscape configuration in models projecting global change effects on Iberian bird species distributions. Both present-day and future...

  15. Spider Trait Assembly Patterns and Resilience under Fire-Induced Vegetation Change in South Brazilian Grasslands

    Science.gov (United States)

    Podgaiski, Luciana R.; Joner, Fernando; Lavorel, Sandra; Moretti, Marco; Ibanez, Sebastien; Mendonça, Milton de S.; Pillar, Valério D.

    2013-01-01

    Disturbances induce changes on habitat proprieties that may filter organism's functional traits thereby shaping the structure and interactions of many trophic levels. We tested if communities of predators with foraging traits dependent on habitat structure respond to environmental change through cascades affecting the functional traits of plants. We monitored the response of spider and plant communities to fire in South Brazilian Grasslands using pairs of burned and unburned plots. Spiders were determined to the family level and described in feeding behavioral and morphological traits measured on each individual. Life form and morphological traits were recorded for plant species. One month after fire the abundance of vegetation hunters and the mean size of the chelicera increased due to the presence of suitable feeding sites in the regrowing vegetation, but irregular web builders decreased due to the absence of microhabitats and dense foliage into which they build their webs. Six months after fire rosette-form plants with broader leaves increased, creating a favourable habitat for orb web builders which became more abundant, while graminoids and tall plants were reduced, resulting in a decrease of proper shelters and microclimate in soil surface to ground hunters which became less abundant. Hence, fire triggered changes in vegetation structure that lead both to trait-convergence and trait-divergence assembly patterns of spiders along gradients of plant biomass and functional diversity. Spider individuals occurring in more functionally diverse plant communities were more diverse in their traits probably because increased possibility of resource exploitation, following the habitat heterogeneity hypothesis. Finally, as an indication of resilience, after twelve months spider communities did not differ from those of unburned plots. Our findings show that functional traits provide a mechanistic understanding of the response of communities to environmental change

  16. The Impact of the Rise in Vegetable Prices on Vegetable Producer Behavior–Based on the survey of vegetable producers in Jiayu, Hubei Province

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Liu Pan

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available In order to study the impact of the rise in prices of vegetables on vegetable producers, and to increase the revenue of vegetable producers, this paper does a survey by anonymous sampling questionnaire. Results shows that: most vegetable growers think that vegetable prices should rise and would continue to rise, and that vegetable prices would increase their revenue, thus in the coming year they would expand the planting scale of vegetable variety whose increase rate is the largest in this year. But because of the increase of logistics costs and production costs, some farmers benefit very little from the rising trend of vegetable prices. Most farmers expect too much in the trend estimation of the prices of vegetables and also lack of planning and forward-looking in production, thus the planting area of single variety is often decided by the market of previous year. According to analysis of the impact of the rise in vegetable prices on vegetable producer behavior, this paper gives the following suggestions to increase revenue of vegetable producers: change the mode of thinking, improve rural information platform, and increase capital investment for vegetable production base.

  17. Effects of future climate change, CO2 enrichment, and vegetation structure variation on hydrological processes in China

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhu, Qiuan; Jiang, Hong; Peng, Changhui; Liu, Jinxun; Fang, Xiuqin; Wei, Xiaohua; Liu, Shirong; Zhou, Guomo

    2012-01-01

    Investigating the relationship between factors (climate change, atmospheric CO2 concentrations enrichment, and vegetation structure) and hydrological processes is important for understanding and predicting the interaction between the hydrosphere and biosphere. The Integrated Biosphere Simulator (IBIS) was used to evaluate the effects of climate change, rising CO2, and vegetation structure on hydrological processes in China at the end of the 21st century. Seven simulations were implemented using the assemblage of the IPCC climate and CO2 concentration scenarios, SRES A2 and SRES B1. Analysis results suggest that (1) climate change will have increasing effects on runoff, evapotranspiration (ET), transpiration (T), and transpiration ratio (transpiration/evapotranspiration, T/E) in most hydrological regions of China except in the southernmost regions; (2) elevated CO2 concentrations will have increasing effects on runoff at the national scale, but at the hydrological region scale, the physiology effects induced by elevated CO2 concentration will depend on the vegetation types, climate conditions, and geographical background information with noticeable decreasing effects shown in the arid Inland region of China; (3) leaf area index (LAI) compensation effect and stomatal closure effect are the dominant factors on runoff in the arid Inland region and southern moist hydrological regions, respectively; (4) the magnitudes of climate change (especially the changing precipitation pattern) effects on the water cycle are much larger than those of the elevated CO2 concentration effects; however, increasing CO2 concentration will be one of the most important modifiers to the water cycle; (5) the water resource condition will be improved in northern China but depressed in southernmost China under the IPCC climate change scenarios, SRES A2 and SRES B1.

  18. The Arctic Vegetation Type Change retrieved from Spaceborne Observations and its Influence on the Simulation of Permafrost Thawing

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kim, Y.; Wang, Z.

    2017-12-01

    The vegetation types change in Arctic has been studied using 10 years of MODIS land cover product (MCD12Q1). The shrub expansion is observed in Alaska and Northeast Asia, while shrub fraction decreases in North Canada and Southwest Arctic Eurasia. The total Arctic shrub fraction increases 3% in 10 years. The tundra decreases where the shrub expands, and thrives where the shrub retreats. In order to isolate the influence of the vegetation dynamic on the permafrost thawing, the Arctic terrestrial ecosystem in recent decades will be simulated using the Community Land Model (CLM) with and without the vegetation type changes. The energy and carbon exchange on the land surface will also be simulated and compared. Acknowledgement: This work was supported by the Korea Polar Research Institute (KOPRI, PN17081) and the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT & Future Planning (2015R1C1A2A01054800).

  19. Assessment of Pen Branch delta and corridor vegetation changes using multispectral scanner data 1992--1994

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    1996-01-01

    Airborne multispectral scanner data were used to monitor natural succession of wetland vegetation species over a three-year period from 1992 through 1994 for Pen Branch on the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. Image processing techniques were used to identify and measure wetland vegetation communities in the lower portion of the Pen Branch corridor and delta. The study provided a reliable means for monitoring medium- and large-scale changes in a diverse environment. Findings from the study will be used to support decisions regarding remediation efforts following the cessation of cooling water discharge from K reactor at the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site in South Carolina

  20. Effects of riparian vegetation on topographic change during a large flood event, Rio Puerco, New Mexico, USA

    Science.gov (United States)

    Perignon, M. C.; Tucker, G. E.; Griffin, E. R.; Friedman, J. M.

    2013-09-01

    The spatial distribution of riparian vegetation can strongly influence the geomorphic evolution of dryland rivers during large floods. We present the results of an airborne lidar differencing study that quantifies the topographic change that occurred along a 12 km reach of the Lower Rio Puerco, New Mexico, during an extreme event in 2006. Extensive erosion of the channel banks took place immediately upstream of the study area, where tamarisk and sandbar willow had been removed. Within the densely vegetated study reach, we measure a net volumetric change of 578,050 ± ˜ 490,000 m3, with 88.3% of the total aggradation occurring along the floodplain and channel and 76.7% of the erosion focusing on the vertical valley walls. The sediment derived from the devegetated reach deposited within the first 3.6 km of the study area, with depth decaying exponentially with distance downstream. Elsewhere, floodplain sediments were primarily sourced from the erosion of valley walls. Superimposed on this pattern are the effects of vegetation and valley morphology on sediment transport. Sediment thickness is seen to be uniform among sandbar willows and highly variable within tamarisk groves. These reach-scale patterns of sedimentation observed in the lidar differencing likely reflect complex interactions of vegetation, flow, and sediment at the scale of patches to individual plants.

  1. Water–Soil–Vegetation Dynamic Interactions in Changing Climate

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Xixi Wang

    2017-09-01

    Full Text Available Previous studies of land degradation, topsoil erosion, and hydrologic alteration typically focus on these subjects individually, missing important interrelationships among these important aspects of the Earth’s system. However, an understanding of water–soil–vegetation dynamic interactions is needed to develop practical and effective solutions to sustain the globe’s eco-environment and grassland agriculture, which depends on grasses, legumes, and other fodder or soil-building crops. This special issue is intended to be a platform for a discussion of the relevant scientific findings based on experimental and/or modeling studies. Its 12 peer-reviewed articles present data, novel analysis/modeling approaches, and convincing results of water–soil–vegetation interactions under historical and future climates. Two of the articles examine how lake/pond water quality is related to human activity and climate. Overall, these articles can serve as important references for future studies to further advance our understanding of how water, soil, and vegetation interactively affect the health and productivity of the Earth’s ecosystem.

  2. Exploring vegetation in the fourth dimension.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mitchell, Fraser J G

    2011-01-01

    Much ecological research focuses on changes in vegetation on spatial scales from stands to landscapes; however, capturing data on vegetation change over relevant timescales remains a challenge. Pollen analysis offers unrivalled access to data with global coverage over long timescales. Robust techniques have now been developed that enable pollen data to be converted into vegetation data in terms of individual taxa, plant communities or biomes, with the possibility of deriving from those data a range of plant attributes and ecological indicators. In this review, I discuss how coupling pollen with macrofossil, charcoal and genetic data opens up the extensive pollen databases to investigation of the drivers of vegetation change over time and also provides extensive data sets for testing hypotheses with wide ecological relevance. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  3. Improving automated disturbance maps using snow-covered landsat time series stacks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kirk M. Stueve; Ian W. Housman; Patrick L. Zimmerman; Mark D. Nelson; Jeremy Webb; Charles H. Perry; Robert A. Chastain; Dale D. Gormanson; Chengquan Huang; Sean P. Healey; Warren B. Cohen

    2012-01-01

    Snow-covered winter Landsat time series stacks are used to develop a nonforest mask to enhance automated disturbance maps produced by the Vegetation Change Tracker (VCT). This method exploits the enhanced spectral separability between forested and nonforested areas that occurs with sufficient snow cover. This method resulted in significant improvements in Vegetation...

  4. The silicon strips Inner Tracker (ITk) of the ATLAS Phase-II upgrade detector

    CERN Document Server

    AUTHOR|(INSPIRE)INSPIRE-00220523; The ATLAS collaboration

    2018-01-01

    The inner detector of the present ATLAS detector has been designed and developed to function in the environment of the present Large Hadron Collider (LHC). At the next-generation tracking detector proposed for the High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC), the so-called ATLAS Phase-II Upgrade, the particle densities and radiation levels will be higher by as much as a factor of ten. The new detectors must be faster, they need to be more highly segmented, and covering more area. They also need to be more resistant to radiation, and they require much greater power delivery to the front-end systems. At the same time, they cannot introduce excess material which could undermine performance. For those reasons, the inner tracker of the ATLAS detector must be redesigned and rebuilt completely. The inner detector of the current detector will be replaced by the Inner Tracker (ITk). It consists of an innermost pixel detector and an outer strips tracker. This contribution focuses on the strips tracker. The basic detection unit of the ...

  5. Development and evaluation of a hand tracker using depth images captured from an overhead perspective.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Czarnuch, Stephen; Mihailidis, Alex

    2015-03-27

    We present the development and evaluation of a robust hand tracker based on single overhead depth images for use in the COACH, an assistive technology for people with dementia. The new hand tracker was designed to overcome limitations experienced by the COACH in previous clinical trials. We train a random decision forest classifier using ∼5000 manually labeled, unbalanced, training images. Hand positions from the classifier are translated into task actions based on proximity to environmental objects. Tracker performance is evaluated using a large set of ∼24 000 manually labeled images captured from 41 participants in a fully-functional washroom, and compared to the system's previous colour-based hand tracker. Precision and recall were 0.994 and 0.938 for the depth tracker compared to 0.981 and 0.822 for the colour tracker with the current data, and 0.989 and 0.466 in the previous study. The improved tracking performance supports integration of the depth-based tracker into the COACH toward unsupervised, real-world trials. Implications for Rehabilitation The COACH is an intelligent assistive technology that can enable people with cognitive disabilities to stay at home longer, supporting the concept of aging-in-place. Automated prompting systems, a type of intelligent assistive technology, can help to support the independent completion of activities of daily living, increasing the independence of people with cognitive disabilities while reducing the burden of care experienced by caregivers. Robust motion tracking using depth imaging supports the development of intelligent assistive technologies like the COACH. Robust motion tracking also has application to other forms of assistive technologies including gaming, human-computer interaction and automated assessments.

  6. Eye Tracker Accuracy: Quantitative Evaluation of the Invisible Eye Center Location

    OpenAIRE

    Wyder, Stephan; Cattin, Philippe C.

    2017-01-01

    Purpose. We present a new method to evaluate the accuracy of an eye tracker based eye localization system. Measuring the accuracy of an eye tracker's primary intention, the estimated point of gaze, is usually done with volunteers and a set of fixation points used as ground truth. However, verifying the accuracy of the location estimate of a volunteer's eye center in 3D space is not easily possible. This is because the eye center is an intangible point hidden by the iris. Methods. We evaluate ...

  7. User Acceptance of Wrist-Worn Activity Trackers Among Community-Dwelling Older Adults: Mixed Method Study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Puri, Arjun; Kim, Ben; Nguyen, Olivier; Stolee, Paul; Tung, James; Lee, Joon

    2017-11-15

    Wearable activity trackers are newly emerging technologies with the anticipation for successfully supporting aging-in-place. Consumer-grade wearable activity trackers are increasingly ubiquitous in the market, but the attitudes toward, as well as acceptance and voluntary use of, these trackers in older population are poorly understood. The aim of this study was to assess acceptance and usage of wearable activity trackers in Canadian community-dwelling older adults, using the potentially influential factors as identified in literature and technology acceptance model. A mixed methods design was used. A total of 20 older adults aged 55 years and older were recruited from Southwestern Ontario. Participants used 2 different wearable activity trackers (Xiaomi Mi Band and Microsoft Band) separately for each segment in the crossover design study for 21 days (ie, 42 days total). A questionnaire was developed to capture acceptance and experience at the end of each segment, representing 2 different devices. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 4 participants, and a content analysis was performed. Participants ranged in age from 55 years to 84 years (mean age: 64 years). The Mi Band gained higher levels of acceptance (16/20, 80%) compared with the Microsoft Band (10/20, 50%). The equipment characteristics dimension scored significantly higher for the Mi Band (Ptechnology acceptance (Paccepting of wearable activity trackers, and they had a clear understanding of its value for their lives. Wearable activity trackers were uniquely considered more personal than other types of technologies, thereby the equipment characteristics including comfort, aesthetics, and price had a significant impact on the acceptance. Results indicated that privacy was less of concern for older adults, but it may have stemmed from a lack of understanding of the privacy risks and implications. These findings add to emerging research that investigates acceptance and factors that may influence

  8. Status of the KLOE-2 Inner Tracker

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    De Lucia Erika

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available KLOE-2 at the DAΦNE Φ-factory is the main experiment of the INFN Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati (LNF and is the first high-energy experiment using the GEM technology with a cylindrical geometry, a novel idea developed at LNF. Four concentric cylindrical triple-GEM detectors compose the Inner Tracker, inserted around the interaction region and before the inner wall of the pre-existing KLOE Drift Chamber to improve the resolution on decay vertices close to the interaction point. State-of-the-art solutions have been expressly developed or tuned for this project: single-mask GEM etching, multi-layer XV patterned readout, PEEK spacer grid, GASTONE front-end board, a custom 64-channel ASIC with digital output, and the Global Interface Board for data collection, with a configurable FPGA architecture and Gigabit Ethernet. Alignment and calibration of a cylindrical GEM detector was never done before and represents one of the challenging activities of the experiment. The Inner Tracker detector construction, operation, calibration and performance obtained with cosmic-ray muons and Bhabha scattering events will be reported.

  9. Semiconductor Strip Tracker Endcaps come to CERN

    CERN Multimedia

    P. Bell

    The first few months of 2006 saw the delivery to CERN of the final components of the ATLAS Semi-Conductor Tracker (SCT), namely the completed SCT end-caps. Regular ATLAS eNews readers will recall that the SCT barrel arrived in sections in 2005 and was assembled later that year (see the April 2005 and December 2005 issues, respectively.) And as reported in this issue of the eNews, the barrel SCT has recently been integrated with the barrel Transition Radiation Tracker. The end-caps were constructed in Liverpool (side C) and NIKHEF (side A), using components manufactured at many different sites across the world. End-cap C left Liverpool on Monday 20 February and arrived at CERN after a two-day journey by road and through the Channel Tunnel. Accelerations in all three dimensions were monitored during the trip, as was temperature and humidity inside the container; all values remained within pre-specified safe ranges. The end-cap was visually inspected upon arrival, with no obvious damage being seen. Subsequent ...

  10. Status of the KLOE-2 Inner Tracker

    Science.gov (United States)

    De Lucia, Erika

    2018-01-01

    KLOE-2 at the DAΦNE Φ-factory is the main experiment of the INFN Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati (LNF) and is the first high-energy experiment using the GEM technology with a cylindrical geometry, a novel idea developed at LNF. Four concentric cylindrical triple-GEM detectors compose the Inner Tracker, inserted around the interaction region and before the inner wall of the pre-existing KLOE Drift Chamber to improve the resolution on decay vertices close to the interaction point. State-of-the-art solutions have been expressly developed or tuned for this project: single-mask GEM etching, multi-layer XV patterned readout, PEEK spacer grid, GASTONE front-end board, a custom 64-channel ASIC with digital output, and the Global Interface Board for data collection, with a configurable FPGA architecture and Gigabit Ethernet. Alignment and calibration of a cylindrical GEM detector was never done before and represents one of the challenging activities of the experiment. The Inner Tracker detector construction, operation, calibration and performance obtained with cosmic-ray muons and Bhabha scattering events will be reported.

  11. The ATLAS Semiconductor tracker: operations and performance

    CERN Document Server

    Pani, P; The ATLAS collaboration

    2013-01-01

    Tracker After more than 3 years of successful operation at the LHC, we report on the operation and performance of the Semi-Conductor Tracker (SCT) functioning in a high luminosity, high radiation environment. The SCT is part of the ATLAS experiment at CERN and is constructed of 4088 silicon detector modules for a total of 6.3 million strips. Each module is designed, constructed and tested to operate as a stand-alone unit, mechanically, electrically, optically and thermally. The modules are mounted into two types of structures: one barrel (4 cylinders) and two end-cap systems (9 disks on each end of the barrel). The SCT silicon micro-strip sensors are processed in the planar p-in-n technology. The signals are processed in the front-end ABCD3TA ASICs, which use a binary readout architecture. Data is transferred to the off-detector readout electronics via optical fibers. We find 99.3% of the SCT modules are operational, noise occupancy and hit efficiency exceed the design specifications; the alignment is very cl...

  12. ATLAS SemiConductor Tracker Operation and Performance

    CERN Document Server

    Tojo, J; The ATLAS collaboration

    2011-01-01

    The SemiConductor Tracker (SCT), comprising of silicon micro-strip detectors is one of the key precision tracking devices in the ATLAS Inner Detector. ATLAS is one of the experiments at CERN LHC. The completed SCT is in very good shapes with 99.3% of the SCT’s 4088 modules (a total of 6.3 million strips) are operational. The noise occupancy and hit efficiency exceed the design specifications. In the talk the current status of the SCT will be reviewed. We will report on the operation of the detector, its performance and observed problems, with stress on the sensor and electronics performance. In December 2009 the ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) recorded the first proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 900 GeV and this was followed by the unprecedented energy of 7 TeV in March 2010. The Semi- Conductor Tracker (SCT) is the key precision tracking device in ATLAS, made from silicon micro-strip detectors processed in the planar p-in-n technology. The signals from the stri...

  13. ATLAS Silicon Microstrip Tracker Operation and Performance

    CERN Document Server

    Yamada, M; The ATLAS collaboration

    2011-01-01

    The SemiConductor Tracker (SCT), comprising of silicon micro-strip detectors is one of the key precision tracking devices in the ATLAS Inner Detector. ATLAS is one of the experiments at CERN LHC. The completed SCT is in very good shapes with 99.3% of the SCT’s 4088 modules (a total of 6.3 million strips) are operational. The noise occupancy and hit efficiency exceed the design specifications. In the talk the current status of the SCT will be reviewed. We will report on the operation of the detector, its performance and observed problems, with stress on the sensor and electronics performance. In December 2009 the ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) recorded the first proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 900 GeV and this was followed by the unprecedented energy of 7 TeV in March 2010. The Semi-Conductor Tracker (SCT) is the key precision tracking device in ATLAS, made from silicon micro-strip detectors processed in the planar p-in-n technology. The signals from the strip...

  14. Overview of the ATLAS Fast Tracker Project

    CERN Document Server

    Ancu, Lucian Stefan; The ATLAS collaboration

    2016-01-01

    The next LHC runs, with a significant increase in instantaneous luminosity, will provide a big challenge for the trigger and data acquisition systems of all the experiments. An intensive use of the tracking information at the trigger level will be important to keep high efficiency for interesting events despite the increase in multiple collisions per bunch crossing. In order to increase the use of tracks within the High Level Trigger, the ATLAS experiment planned the installation of a hardware processor dedicated to tracking: the Fast TracKer processor. The Fast Tracker is designed to perform full scan track reconstruction of every event accepted by the ATLAS first level hardware trigger. To achieve this goal the system uses a parallel architecture, with algorithms designed to exploit the computing power of custom Associative Memory chips, and modern field programmable gate arrays. The processor will provide computing power to reconstruct tracks with transverse momentum greater than 1 GeV in the whol...

  15. Tundra vegetation effects on pan-Arctic albedo

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Loranty, Michael M; Goetz, Scott J; Beck, Pieter S A

    2011-01-01

    Recent field experiments in tundra ecosystems describe how increased shrub cover reduces winter albedo, and how subsequent changes in surface net radiation lead to altered rates of snowmelt. These findings imply that tundra vegetation change will alter regional energy budgets, but to date the effects have not been documented at regional or greater scales. Using satellite observations and a pan-Arctic vegetation map, we examined the effects of shrub vegetation on albedo across the terrestrial Arctic. We included vegetation classes dominated by low shrubs, dwarf shrubs, tussock-dominated graminoid tundra, and non-tussock graminoid tundra. Each class was further stratified by bioclimate subzones. Low-shrub tundra had higher normalized difference vegetation index values and earlier albedo decline in spring than dwarf-shrub tundra, but for tussock tundra, spring albedo declined earlier than for low-shrub tundra. Our results illustrate how relatively small changes in vegetation properties result in differences in albedo dynamics, regardless of shrub growth, that may lead to differences in net radiation upwards of 50 W m -2 at weekly time scales. Further, our findings imply that changes to the terrestrial Arctic energy budget during this important seasonal transition are under way regardless of whether recent satellite observed productivity trends are the result of shrub expansion. We conclude that a better understanding of changes in vegetation productivity and distribution in Arctic tundra is essential for accurately quantifying and predicting carbon and energy fluxes and associated climate feedbacks.

  16. arXiv Mechanical stability of the CMS strip tracker measured with a laser alignment system

    CERN Document Server

    Sirunyan, Albert M; Adam, Wolfgang; Aşılar, Ece; Bergauer, Thomas; Brandstetter, Johannes; Brondolin, Erica; Dragicevic, Marko; Erö, Janos; Flechl, Martin; Friedl, Markus; Fruehwirth, Rudolf; Ghete, Vasile Mihai; Hartl, Christian; Hörmann, Natascha; Hrubec, Josef; Jeitler, Manfred; König, Axel; Krätschmer, Ilse; Liko, Dietrich; Matsushita, Takashi; Mikulec, Ivan; Rabady, Dinyar; Rad, Navid; Rahbaran, Babak; Rohringer, Herbert; Schieck, Jochen; Strauss, Josef; Waltenberger, Wolfgang; Wulz, Claudia-Elisabeth; Dvornikov, Oleg; Makarenko, Vladimir; Mossolov, Vladimir; Suarez Gonzalez, Juan; Zykunov, Vladimir; Shumeiko, Nikolai; Alderweireldt, Sara; De Wolf, Eddi A; Janssen, Xavier; Lauwers, Jasper; Van De Klundert, Merijn; Van Haevermaet, Hans; Van Mechelen, Pierre; Van Remortel, Nick; Van Spilbeeck, Alex; Abu Zeid, Shimaa; Blekman, Freya; D'Hondt, Jorgen; Daci, Nadir; De Bruyn, Isabelle; Deroover, Kevin; Lowette, Steven; Moortgat, Seth; Moreels, Lieselotte; Olbrechts, Annik; Python, Quentin; Skovpen, Kirill; Tavernier, Stefaan; Van Doninck, Walter; Van Mulders, Petra; Van Parijs, Isis; Brun, Hugues; Clerbaux, Barbara; De Lentdecker, Gilles; Delannoy, Hugo; Fasanella, Giuseppe; Favart, Laurent; Goldouzian, Reza; Grebenyuk, Anastasia; Karapostoli, Georgia; Lenzi, Thomas; Léonard, Alexandre; Luetic, Jelena; Maerschalk, Thierry; Marinov, Andrey; Randle-conde, Aidan; Seva, Tomislav; Vander Velde, Catherine; Vanlaer, Pascal; Vannerom, David; Yonamine, Ryo; Zenoni, Florian; Zhang, Fengwangdong; Cimmino, Anna; Cornelis, Tom; Dobur, Didar; Fagot, Alexis; Gul, Muhammad; Khvastunov, Illia; Poyraz, Deniz; Salva Diblen, Sinem; Schöfbeck, Robert; Tytgat, Michael; Van Driessche, Ward; Yazgan, Efe; Zaganidis, Nicolas; Bakhshiansohi, Hamed; Beluffi, Camille; Bondu, Olivier; Brochet, Sébastien; Bruno, Giacomo; Caudron, Adrien; De Visscher, Simon; Delaere, Christophe; Delcourt, Martin; Francois, Brieuc; Giammanco, Andrea; Jafari, Abideh; Komm, Matthias; Krintiras, Georgios; Lemaitre, Vincent; Magitteri, Alessio; Mertens, Alexandre; Musich, Marco; Piotrzkowski, Krzysztof; Quertenmont, Loic; Selvaggi, Michele; Vidal Marono, Miguel; Wertz, Sébastien; Beliy, Nikita; Aldá Júnior, Walter Luiz; Alves, Fábio Lúcio; Alves, Gilvan; Brito, Lucas; Hensel, Carsten; Moraes, Arthur; Pol, Maria Elena; Rebello Teles, Patricia; Belchior Batista Das Chagas, Ewerton; Carvalho, Wagner; Chinellato, Jose; Custódio, Analu; Melo Da Costa, Eliza; Da Silveira, Gustavo Gil; De Jesus Damiao, Dilson; De Oliveira Martins, Carley; Fonseca De Souza, Sandro; Huertas Guativa, Lina Milena; Malbouisson, Helena; Matos Figueiredo, Diego; Mora Herrera, Clemencia; Mundim, Luiz; Nogima, Helio; Prado Da Silva, Wanda Lucia; Santoro, Alberto; Sznajder, Andre; Tonelli Manganote, Edmilson José; Torres Da Silva De Araujo, Felipe; Vilela Pereira, Antonio; Ahuja, Sudha; Bernardes, Cesar Augusto; Dogra, Sunil; Tomei, Thiago; De Moraes Gregores, Eduardo; Mercadante, Pedro G; Moon, Chang-Seong; Novaes, Sergio F; Padula, Sandra; Romero Abad, David; Ruiz Vargas, José Cupertino; Aleksandrov, Aleksandar; Hadjiiska, Roumyana; Iaydjiev, Plamen; Rodozov, Mircho; Stoykova, Stefka; Sultanov, Georgi; Vutova, Mariana; Dimitrov, Anton; Glushkov, Ivan; Litov, Leander; Pavlov, Borislav; Petkov, Peicho; Fang, Wenxing; Ahmad, Muhammad; Bian, Jian-Guo; Chen, Guo-Ming; Chen, He-Sheng; Chen, Mingshui; Chen, Ye; Cheng, Tongguang; Jiang, Chun-Hua; Leggat, Duncan; Liu, Zhenan; Romeo, Francesco; Ruan, Manqi; Shaheen, Sarmad Masood; Spiezia, Aniello; Tao, Junquan; Wang, Chunjie; Wang, Zheng; Zhang, Huaqiao; Zhao, Jingzhou; Ban, Yong; Chen, Geng; Li, Qiang; Liu, Shuai; Mao, Yajun; Qian, Si-Jin; Wang, Dayong; Xu, Zijun; Avila, Carlos; Cabrera, Andrés; Chaparro Sierra, Luisa Fernanda; Florez, Carlos; Gomez, Juan Pablo; González Hernández, Carlos Felipe; Ruiz Alvarez, José David; Sanabria, Juan Carlos; Godinovic, Nikola; Lelas, Damir; Puljak, Ivica; Ribeiro Cipriano, Pedro M; Sculac, Toni; Antunovic, Zeljko; Kovac, Marko; Brigljevic, Vuko; Ferencek, Dinko; Kadija, Kreso; Mesic, Benjamin; Susa, Tatjana; Attikis, Alexandros; Mavromanolakis, Georgios; Mousa, Jehad; Nicolaou, Charalambos; Ptochos, Fotios; Razis, Panos A; Rykaczewski, Hans; Tsiakkouri, Demetra; Finger, Miroslav; Finger Jr, Michael; Carrera Jarrin, Edgar; Ellithi Kamel, Ali; Mahmoud, Mohammed; Radi, Amr; Kadastik, Mario; Perrini, Lucia; Raidal, Martti; Tiko, Andres; Veelken, Christian; Eerola, Paula; Pekkanen, Juska; Voutilainen, Mikko; Härkönen, Jaakko; Jarvinen, Terhi; Karimäki, Veikko; Kinnunen, Ritva; Lampén, Tapio; Lassila-Perini, Kati; Lehti, Sami; Lindén, Tomas; Luukka, Panja-Riina; Tuominiemi, Jorma; Tuovinen, Esa; Wendland, Lauri; Talvitie, Joonas; Tuuva, Tuure; Besancon, Marc; Couderc, Fabrice; Dejardin, Marc; Denegri, Daniel; Fabbro, Bernard; Faure, Jean-Louis; Favaro, Carlotta; Ferri, Federico; Ganjour, Serguei; Ghosh, Saranya; Givernaud, Alain; Gras, Philippe; Hamel de Monchenault, Gautier; Jarry, Patrick; Kucher, Inna; Locci, Elizabeth; Machet, Martina; Malcles, Julie; Rander, John; Rosowsky, André; Titov, Maksym; Abdulsalam, Abdulla; Antropov, Iurii; Baffioni, Stephanie; Beaudette, Florian; Busson, Philippe; Cadamuro, Luca; Chapon, Emilien; Charlot, Claude; Davignon, Olivier; Granier de Cassagnac, Raphael; Jo, Mihee; Lisniak, Stanislav; Miné, Philippe; Nguyen, Matthew; Ochando, Christophe; Ortona, Giacomo; Paganini, Pascal; Pigard, Philipp; Regnard, Simon; Salerno, Roberto; Sirois, Yves; Strebler, Thomas; Yilmaz, Yetkin; Zabi, Alexandre; Zghiche, Amina; Agram, Jean-Laurent; Andrea, Jeremy; Aubin, Alexandre; Bloch, Daniel; Brom, Jean-Marie; Buttignol, Michael; Chabert, Eric Christian; Chanon, Nicolas; Collard, Caroline; Conte, Eric; Coubez, Xavier; Fontaine, Jean-Charles; Gelé, Denis; Goerlach, Ulrich; Le Bihan, Anne-Catherine; Van Hove, Pierre; Gadrat, Sébastien; Beauceron, Stephanie; Bernet, Colin; Boudoul, Gaelle; Carrillo Montoya, Camilo Andres; Chierici, Roberto; Contardo, Didier; Courbon, Benoit; Depasse, Pierre; El Mamouni, Houmani; Fay, Jean; Gascon, Susan; Gouzevitch, Maxime; Grenier, Gérald; Ille, Bernard; Lagarde, Francois; Laktineh, Imad Baptiste; Lethuillier, Morgan; Mirabito, Laurent; Pequegnot, Anne-Laure; Perries, Stephane; Popov, Andrey; Sabes, David; Sordini, Viola; Vander Donckt, Muriel; Verdier, Patrice; Viret, Sébastien; Toriashvili, Tengizi; Lomidze, David; Autermann, Christian; Beranek, Sarah; Feld, Lutz; Kiesel, Maximilian Knut; Klein, Katja; Lipinski, Martin; Preuten, Marius; Schomakers, Christian; Schulz, Johannes; Verlage, Tobias; Albert, Andreas; Brodski, Michael; Dietz-Laursonn, Erik; Duchardt, Deborah; Endres, Matthias; Erdmann, Martin; Erdweg, Sören; Esch, Thomas; Fischer, Robert; Güth, Andreas; Hamer, Matthias; Hebbeker, Thomas; Heidemann, Carsten; Hoepfner, Kerstin; Knutzen, Simon; Merschmeyer, Markus; Meyer, Arnd; Millet, Philipp; Mukherjee, Swagata; Olschewski, Mark; Padeken, Klaas; Pook, Tobias; Radziej, Markus; Reithler, Hans; Rieger, Marcel; Scheuch, Florian; Sonnenschein, Lars; Teyssier, Daniel; Thüer, Sebastian; Cherepanov, Vladimir; Flügge, Günter; Kargoll, Bastian; Kress, Thomas; Künsken, Andreas; Lingemann, Joschka; Müller, Thomas; Nehrkorn, Alexander; Nowack, Andreas; Pistone, Claudia; Pooth, Oliver; Stahl, Achim; Aldaya Martin, Maria; Arndt, Till; Asawatangtrakuldee, Chayanit; Beernaert, Kelly; Behnke, Olaf; Behrens, Ulf; Bin Anuar, Afiq Aizuddin; Borras, Kerstin; Campbell, Alan; Connor, Patrick; Contreras-Campana, Christian; Costanza, Francesco; Diez Pardos, Carmen; Dolinska, Ganna; Eckerlin, Guenter; Eckstein, Doris; Eichhorn, Thomas; Eren, Engin; Gallo, Elisabetta; Garay Garcia, Jasone; Geiser, Achim; Gizhko, Andrii; Grados Luyando, Juan Manuel; Grohsjean, Alexander; Gunnellini, Paolo; Harb, Ali; Hauk, Johannes; Hempel, Maria; Jung, Hannes; Kalogeropoulos, Alexis; Karacheban, Olena; Kasemann, Matthias; Keaveney, James; Kleinwort, Claus; Korol, Ievgen; Krücker, Dirk; Lange, Wolfgang; Lelek, Aleksandra; Lenz, Teresa; Leonard, Jessica; Lipka, Katerina; Lobanov, Artur; Lohmann, Wolfgang; Mankel, Rainer; Melzer-Pellmann, Isabell-Alissandra; Meyer, Andreas Bernhard; Mittag, Gregor; Mnich, Joachim; Mussgiller, Andreas; Pitzl, Daniel; Placakyte, Ringaile; Raspereza, Alexei; Roland, Benoit; Sahin, Mehmet Özgür; Saxena, Pooja; Schoerner-Sadenius, Thomas; Spannagel, Simon; Stefaniuk, Nazar; Van Onsem, Gerrit Patrick; Walsh, Roberval; Wissing, Christoph; Blobel, Volker; Centis Vignali, Matteo; Draeger, Arne-Rasmus; Dreyer, Torben; Garutti, Erika; Gonzalez, Daniel; Haller, Johannes; Hoffmann, Malte; Junkes, Alexandra; Klanner, Robert; Kogler, Roman; Kovalchuk, Nataliia; Lapsien, Tobias; Marchesini, Ivan; Marconi, Daniele; Meyer, Mareike; Niedziela, Marek; Nowatschin, Dominik; Pantaleo, Felice; Peiffer, Thomas; Perieanu, Adrian; Poehlsen, Jennifer; Scharf, Christian; Schleper, Peter; Schmidt, Alexander; Schumann, Svenja; Schwandt, Joern; Stadie, Hartmut; Steinbrück, Georg; Stober, Fred-Markus Helmut; Stöver, Marc; Tholen, Heiner; Troendle, Daniel; Usai, Emanuele; Vanelderen, Lukas; Vanhoefer, Annika; Vormwald, Benedikt; Akbiyik, Melike; Barth, Christian; Baur, Sebastian; Baus, Colin; Berger, Joram; Butz, Erik; Caspart, René; Chwalek, Thorsten; Colombo, Fabio; De Boer, Wim; Dierlamm, Alexander; Fink, Simon; Freund, Benedikt; Friese, Raphael; Giffels, Manuel; Gilbert, Andrew; Goldenzweig, Pablo; Haitz, Dominik; Hartmann, Frank; Heindl, Stefan Michael; Husemann, Ulrich; Katkov, Igor; Kudella, Simon; Mildner, Hannes; Mozer, Matthias Ulrich; Müller, Thomas; Plagge, Michael; Quast, Gunter; Rabbertz, Klaus; Röcker, Steffen; Roscher, Frank; Schröder, Matthias; Shvetsov, Ivan; Sieber, Georg; Simonis, Hans-Jürgen; Ulrich, Ralf; Wayand, Stefan; Weber, Marc; Weiler, Thomas; Williamson, Shawn; Wöhrmann, Clemens; Wolf, Roger; Anagnostou, Georgios; Daskalakis, Georgios; Geralis, Theodoros; Giakoumopoulou, Viktoria Athina; Kyriakis, Aristotelis; Loukas, Demetrios; Topsis-Giotis, Iasonas; Kesisoglou, Stilianos; Panagiotou, Apostolos; Saoulidou, Niki; Tziaferi, Eirini; Evangelou, Ioannis; Flouris, Giannis; Foudas, Costas; Kokkas, Panagiotis; Loukas, Nikitas; Manthos, Nikolaos; Papadopoulos, Ioannis; Paradas, Evangelos; Filipovic, Nicolas; Pasztor, Gabriella; Bencze, Gyorgy; Hajdu, Csaba; Horvath, Dezso; Sikler, Ferenc; Veszpremi, Viktor; Vesztergombi, Gyorgy; Zsigmond, Anna Julia; Beni, Noemi; Czellar, Sandor; Karancsi, János; Makovec, Alajos; Molnar, Jozsef; Szillasi, Zoltan; Bartók, Márton; Raics, Peter; Trocsanyi, Zoltan Laszlo; Ujvari, Balazs; Komaragiri, Jyothsna Rani; Bahinipati, Seema; Bhowmik, Sandeep; Choudhury, Somnath; Mal, Prolay; Mandal, Koushik; Nayak, Aruna; Sahoo, Deepak Kumar; Sahoo, Niladribihari; Swain, Sanjay Kumar; Bansal, Sunil; Beri, Suman Bala; Bhatnagar, Vipin; Chawla, Ridhi; Bhawandeep, Bhawandeep; Kalsi, Amandeep Kaur; Kaur, Anterpreet; Kaur, Manjit; Kumar, Ramandeep; Kumari, Priyanka; Mehta, Ankita; Mittal, Monika; Singh, Jasbir; Walia, Genius; Kumar, Ashok; Bhardwaj, Ashutosh; Choudhary, Brajesh C; Garg, Rocky Bala; Keshri, Sumit; Malhotra, Shivali; Naimuddin, Md; Ranjan, Kirti; Sharma, Ramkrishna; Sharma, Varun; Bhattacharya, Rajarshi; Bhattacharya, Satyaki; Chatterjee, Kalyanmoy; Dey, Sourav; Dutt, Suneel; Dutta, Suchandra; Ghosh, Shamik; Majumdar, Nayana; Modak, Atanu; Mondal, Kuntal; Mukhopadhyay, Supratik; Nandan, Saswati; Purohit, Arnab; Roy, Ashim; Roy, Debarati; Roy Chowdhury, Suvankar; Sarkar, Subir; Sharan, Manoj; Thakur, Shalini; Behera, Prafulla Kumar; Chudasama, Ruchi; Dutta, Dipanwita; Jha, Vishwajeet; Kumar, Vineet; Mohanty, Ajit Kumar; Netrakanti, Pawan Kumar; Pant, Lalit Mohan; Shukla, Prashant; Topkar, Anita; Aziz, Tariq; Dugad, Shashikant; Kole, Gouranga; Mahakud, Bibhuprasad; Mitra, Soureek; Mohanty, Gagan Bihari; Parida, Bibhuti; Sur, Nairit; Sutar, Bajrang; Banerjee, Sudeshna; Dewanjee, Ram Krishna; Ganguly, Sanmay; Guchait, Monoranjan; Jain, Sandhya; Kumar, Sanjeev; Maity, Manas; Majumder, Gobinda; Mazumdar, Kajari; Sarkar, Tanmay; Wickramage, Nadeesha; Chauhan, Shubhanshu; Dube, Sourabh; Hegde, Vinay; Kapoor, Anshul; Kothekar, Kunal; Pandey, Shubham; Rane, Aditee; Sharma, Seema; Chenarani, Shirin; Eskandari Tadavani, Esmaeel; Etesami, Seyed Mohsen; Khakzad, Mohsen; Mohammadi Najafabadi, Mojtaba; Naseri, Mohsen; Paktinat Mehdiabadi, Saeid; Rezaei Hosseinabadi, Ferdos; Safarzadeh, Batool; Zeinali, Maryam; Felcini, Marta; Grunewald, Martin; Abbrescia, Marcello; Calabria, Cesare; Caputo, Claudio; Colaleo, Anna; Creanza, Donato; Cristella, Leonardo; De Filippis, Nicola; De Palma, Mauro; Fiore, Luigi; Iaselli, Giuseppe; Maggi, Giorgio; Maggi, Marcello; Miniello, Giorgia; My, Salvatore; Nuzzo, Salvatore; Pompili, Alexis; Pugliese, Gabriella; Radogna, Raffaella; Ranieri, Antonio; Selvaggi, Giovanna; Sharma, Archana; Silvestris, Lucia; Venditti, Rosamaria; Verwilligen, Piet; Abbiendi, Giovanni; Battilana, Carlo; Bonacorsi, Daniele; Braibant-Giacomelli, Sylvie; Brigliadori, Luca; Campanini, Renato; Capiluppi, Paolo; Castro, Andrea; Cavallo, Francesca Romana; Chhibra, Simranjit Singh; Codispoti, Giuseppe; Cuffiani, Marco; Dallavalle, Gaetano-Marco; Fabbri, Fabrizio; Fanfani, Alessandra; Fasanella, Daniele; Giacomelli, Paolo; Grandi, Claudio; Guiducci, Luigi; Marcellini, Stefano; Masetti, Gianni; Montanari, Alessandro; Navarria, Francesco; Perrotta, Andrea; Rossi, Antonio; Rovelli, Tiziano; Siroli, Gian Piero; Tosi, Nicolò; Albergo, Sebastiano; Costa, Salvatore; Di Mattia, Alessandro; Giordano, Ferdinando; Potenza, Renato; Tricomi, Alessia; Tuve, Cristina; Barbagli, Giuseppe; Ciulli, Vitaliano; Civinini, Carlo; D'Alessandro, Raffaello; Focardi, Ettore; Lenzi, Piergiulio; Meschini, Marco; Paoletti, Simone; Russo, Lorenzo; Sguazzoni, Giacomo; Strom, Derek; Viliani, Lorenzo; Benussi, Luigi; Bianco, Stefano; Fabbri, Franco; Piccolo, Davide; Primavera, Federica; Calvelli, Valerio; Ferro, Fabrizio; Monge, Maria Roberta; Robutti, Enrico; Tosi, Silvano; Brianza, Luca; Brivio, Francesco; Ciriolo, Vincenzo; Dinardo, Mauro Emanuele; Fiorendi, Sara; Gennai, Simone; Ghezzi, Alessio; Govoni, Pietro; Malberti, Martina; Malvezzi, Sandra; Manzoni, Riccardo Andrea; Menasce, Dario; Moroni, Luigi; Paganoni, Marco; Pedrini, Daniele; Pigazzini, Simone; Ragazzi, Stefano; Tabarelli de Fatis, Tommaso; Buontempo, Salvatore; Cavallo, Nicola; De Nardo, Guglielmo; Di Guida, Salvatore; Esposito, Marco; Fabozzi, Francesco; Fienga, Francesco; Iorio, Alberto Orso Maria; Lanza, Giuseppe; Lista, Luca; Meola, Sabino; Paolucci, Pierluigi; Sciacca, Crisostomo; Thyssen, Filip; Azzi, Patrizia; Bacchetta, Nicola; Benato, Lisa; Bisello, Dario; Boletti, Alessio; Carlin, Roberto; Checchia, Paolo; Dall'Osso, Martino; De Castro Manzano, Pablo; Dorigo, Tommaso; Dosselli, Umberto; Gasparini, Fabrizio; Lacaprara, Stefano; Margoni, Martino; Maron, Gaetano; Meneguzzo, Anna Teresa; Michelotto, Michele; Montecassiano, Fabio; Pazzini, Jacopo; Pozzobon, Nicola; Ronchese, Paolo; Simonetto, Franco; Torassa, Ezio; Zanetti, Marco; Zotto, Pierluigi; Zumerle, Gianni; Braghieri, Alessandro; Fallavollita, Francesco; Magnani, Alice; Montagna, Paolo; Ratti, Sergio P; Re, Valerio; Riccardi, Cristina; Salvini, Paola; Vai, Ilaria; Vitulo, Paolo; Alunni Solestizi, Luisa; Bilei, Gian Mario; Ciangottini, Diego; Fanò, Livio; Lariccia, Paolo; Leonardi, Roberto; Mantovani, Giancarlo; Menichelli, Mauro; Saha, Anirban; Santocchia, Attilio; Androsov, Konstantin; Azzurri, Paolo; Bagliesi, Giuseppe; Bernardini, Jacopo; Boccali, Tommaso; Castaldi, Rino; Ciocci, Maria Agnese; Dell'Orso, Roberto; Donato, Silvio; Fedi, Giacomo; Giassi, Alessandro; Grippo, Maria Teresa; Ligabue, Franco; Lomtadze, Teimuraz; Martini, Luca; Messineo, Alberto; Palla, Fabrizio; Rizzi, Andrea; Savoy-Navarro, Aurore; Spagnolo, Paolo; Tenchini, Roberto; Tonelli, Guido; Venturi, Andrea; Verdini, Piero Giorgio; Barone, Luciano; Cavallari, Francesca; Cipriani, Marco; Del Re, Daniele; Diemoz, Marcella; Gelli, Simone; Longo, Egidio; Margaroli, Fabrizio; Marzocchi, Badder; Meridiani, Paolo; Organtini, Giovanni; Paramatti, Riccardo; Preiato, Federico; Rahatlou, Shahram; Rovelli, Chiara; Santanastasio, Francesco; Amapane, Nicola; Arcidiacono, Roberta; Argiro, Stefano; Arneodo, Michele; Bartosik, Nazar; Bellan, Riccardo; Biino, Cristina; Cartiglia, Nicolo; Cenna, Francesca; Costa, Marco; Covarelli, Roberto; Degano, Alessandro; Demaria, Natale; Finco, Linda; Kiani, Bilal; Mariotti, Chiara; Maselli, Silvia; Migliore, Ernesto; Monaco, Vincenzo; Monteil, Ennio; Monteno, Marco; Obertino, Maria Margherita; Pacher, Luca; Pastrone, Nadia; Pelliccioni, Mario; Pinna Angioni, Gian Luca; Ravera, Fabio; Romero, Alessandra; Ruspa, Marta; Sacchi, Roberto; Shchelina, Ksenia; Sola, Valentina; Solano, Ada; Staiano, Amedeo; Traczyk, Piotr; Belforte, Stefano; Casarsa, Massimo; Cossutti, Fabio; Della Ricca, Giuseppe; Zanetti, Anna; Kim, Dong Hee; Kim, Gui Nyun; Kim, Min Suk; Lee, Sangeun; Lee, Seh Wook; Oh, Young Do; Sekmen, Sezen; Son, Dong-Chul; Yang, Yu Chul; Lee, Ari; Kim, Hyunchul; Brochero Cifuentes, Javier Andres; Kim, Tae Jeong; Cho, Sungwoong; Choi, Suyong; Go, Yeonju; Gyun, Dooyeon; Ha, Seungkyu; Hong, Byung-Sik; Jo, Youngkwon; Kim, Yongsun; Lee, Kisoo; Lee, Kyong Sei; Lee, Songkyo; Lim, Jaehoon; Park, Sung Keun; Roh, Youn; Almond, John; Kim, Junho; Lee, Haneol; Oh, Sung Bin; Radburn-Smith, Benjamin Charles; Seo, Seon-hee; Yang, Unki; Yoo, Hwi Dong; Yu, Geum Bong; Choi, Minkyoo; Kim, Hyunyong; Kim, Ji Hyun; Lee, Jason Sang Hun; Park, Inkyu; Ryu, Geonmo; Ryu, Min Sang; Choi, Young-Il; Goh, Junghwan; Hwang, Chanwook; Lee, Jongseok; Yu, Intae; Dudenas, Vytautas; Juodagalvis, Andrius; Vaitkus, Juozas; Ahmed, Ijaz; Ibrahim, Zainol Abidin; Md Ali, Mohd Adli Bin; Mohamad Idris, Faridah; Wan Abdullah, Wan Ahmad Tajuddin; Yusli, Mohd Nizam; Zolkapli, Zukhaimira; Castilla-Valdez, Heriberto; De La Cruz-Burelo, Eduard; Heredia-De La Cruz, Ivan; Hernandez-Almada, Alberto; Lopez-Fernandez, Ricardo; Magaña Villalba, Ricardo; Mejia Guisao, Jhovanny; Sánchez Hernández, Alberto; Carrillo Moreno, Salvador; Oropeza Barrera, Cristina; Vazquez Valencia, Fabiola; Carpinteyro, Severiano; Pedraza, Isabel; Salazar Ibarguen, Humberto Antonio; Uribe Estrada, Cecilia; Morelos Pineda, Antonio; Krofcheck, David; Butler, Philip H; Ahmad, Ashfaq; Ahmad, Muhammad; Hassan, Qamar; Hoorani, Hafeez R; Khan, Wajid Ali; Saddique, Asif; Shah, Mehar Ali; Shoaib, Muhammad; Waqas, Muhammad; Bialkowska, Helena; Bluj, Michal; Boimska, Bożena; Frueboes, Tomasz; Górski, Maciej; Kazana, Malgorzata; Nawrocki, Krzysztof; Romanowska-Rybinska, Katarzyna; Szleper, Michal; Zalewski, Piotr; Bunkowski, Karol; Byszuk, Adrian; Doroba, Krzysztof; Kalinowski, Artur; Konecki, Marcin; Krolikowski, Jan; Misiura, Maciej; Olszewski, Michal; Walczak, Marek; Bargassa, Pedrame; Beirão Da Cruz E Silva, Cristóvão; Calpas, Betty; Di Francesco, Agostino; Faccioli, Pietro; Ferreira Parracho, Pedro Guilherme; Gallinaro, Michele; Hollar, Jonathan; Leonardo, Nuno; Lloret Iglesias, Lara; Nemallapudi, Mythra Varun; Rodrigues Antunes, Joao; Seixas, Joao; Toldaiev, Oleksii; Vadruccio, Daniele; Varela, Joao; Vischia, Pietro; Afanasiev, Serguei; Bunin, Pavel; Gavrilenko, Mikhail; Golutvin, Igor; Gorbunov, Ilya; Kamenev, Alexey; Karjavin, Vladimir; Lanev, Alexander; Malakhov, Alexander; Matveev, Viktor; Palichik, Vladimir; Perelygin, Victor; Shmatov, Sergey; Shulha, Siarhei; Skatchkov, Nikolai; Smirnov, Vitaly; Voytishin, Nikolay; Zarubin, Anatoli; Chtchipounov, Leonid; Golovtsov, Victor; Ivanov, Yury; Kim, Victor; Kuznetsova, Ekaterina; Murzin, Victor; Oreshkin, Vadim; Sulimov, Valentin; Vorobyev, Alexey; Andreev, Yuri; Dermenev, Alexander; Gninenko, Sergei; Golubev, Nikolai; Karneyeu, Anton; Kirsanov, Mikhail; Krasnikov, Nikolai; Pashenkov, Anatoli; Tlisov, Danila; Toropin, Alexander; Epshteyn, Vladimir; Gavrilov, Vladimir; Lychkovskaya, Natalia; Popov, Vladimir; Pozdnyakov, Ivan; Safronov, Grigory; Spiridonov, Alexander; Toms, Maria; Vlasov, Evgueni; Zhokin, Alexander; Bylinkin, Alexander; Andreev, Vladimir; Azarkin, Maksim; Dremin, Igor; Kirakosyan, Martin; Leonidov, Andrey; Terkulov, Adel; Baskakov, Alexey; Belyaev, Andrey; Boos, Edouard; Dubinin, Mikhail; Dudko, Lev; Ershov, Alexander; Gribushin, Andrey; Kaminskiy, Alexandre; Klyukhin, Vyacheslav; Kodolova, Olga; Lokhtin, Igor; Miagkov, Igor; Obraztsov, Stepan; Petrushanko, Sergey; Savrin, Viktor; Blinov, Vladimir; Skovpen, Yuri; Shtol, Dmitry; Azhgirey, Igor; Bayshev, Igor; Bitioukov, Sergei; Elumakhov, Dmitry; Kachanov, Vassili; Kalinin, Alexey; Konstantinov, Dmitri; Krychkine, Victor; Petrov, Vladimir; Ryutin, Roman; Sobol, Andrei; Troshin, Sergey; Tyurin, Nikolay; Uzunian, Andrey; Volkov, Alexey; Adzic, Petar; Cirkovic, Predrag; Devetak, Damir; Dordevic, Milos; Milosevic, Jovan; Rekovic, Vladimir; Alcaraz Maestre, Juan; Barrio Luna, Mar; Calvo, Enrique; Cerrada, Marcos; Chamizo Llatas, Maria; Colino, Nicanor; De La Cruz, Begona; Delgado Peris, Antonio; Escalante Del Valle, Alberto; Fernandez Bedoya, Cristina; Fernández Ramos, Juan Pablo; Flix, Jose; Fouz, Maria Cruz; Garcia-Abia, Pablo; Gonzalez Lopez, Oscar; Goy Lopez, Silvia; Hernandez, Jose M; Josa, Maria Isabel; Navarro De Martino, Eduardo; Pérez-Calero Yzquierdo, Antonio María; Puerta Pelayo, Jesus; Quintario Olmeda, Adrián; Redondo, Ignacio; Romero, Luciano; Senghi Soares, Mara; de Trocóniz, Jorge F; Missiroli, Marino; Moran, Dermot; Cuevas, Javier; Fernandez Menendez, Javier; Gonzalez Caballero, Isidro; González Fernández, Juan Rodrigo; Palencia Cortezon, Enrique; Sanchez Cruz, Sergio; Suárez Andrés, Ignacio; Vizan Garcia, Jesus Manuel; Cabrillo, Iban Jose; Calderon, Alicia; Curras, Esteban; Fernandez, Marcos; Garcia-Ferrero, Juan; Gomez, Gervasio; Lopez Virto, Amparo; Marco, Jesus; Martinez Rivero, Celso; Matorras, Francisco; Piedra Gomez, Jonatan; Rodrigo, Teresa; Ruiz-Jimeno, Alberto; Scodellaro, Luca; Trevisani, Nicolò; Vila, Ivan; Vilar Cortabitarte, Rocio; Abbaneo, Duccio; Auffray, Etiennette; Auzinger, Georg; Baillon, Paul; Ball, Austin; Barney, David; Bloch, Philippe; Bocci, Andrea; Botta, Cristina; Camporesi, Tiziano; Castello, Roberto; Cepeda, Maria; Cerminara, Gianluca; Chen, Yi; D'Enterria, David; Dabrowski, Anne; Daponte, Vincenzo; David Tinoco Mendes, Andre; De Gruttola, Michele; De Roeck, Albert; Di Marco, Emanuele; Dobson, Marc; Dorney, Brian; Du Pree, Tristan; Duggan, Daniel; Dünser, Marc; Dupont, Niels; Elliott-Peisert, Anna; Everaerts, Pieter; Fartoukh, Stephane; Franzoni, Giovanni; Fulcher, Jonathan; Funk, Wolfgang; Gigi, Dominique; Gill, Karl; Girone, Maria; Glege, Frank; Gulhan, Doga; Gundacker, Stefan; Guthoff, Moritz; Harris, Philip; Hegeman, Jeroen; Innocente, Vincenzo; Janot, Patrick; Kieseler, Jan; Kirschenmann, Henning; Knünz, Valentin; Kornmayer, Andreas; Kortelainen, Matti J; Kousouris, Konstantinos; Krammer, Manfred; Lange, Clemens; Lecoq, Paul; Lourenco, Carlos; Lucchini, Marco Toliman; Malgeri, Luca; Mannelli, Marcello; Martelli, Arabella; Meijers, Frans; Merlin, Jeremie Alexandre; Mersi, Stefano; Meschi, Emilio; Milenovic, Predrag; Moortgat, Filip; Morovic, Srecko; Mulders, Martijn; Neugebauer, Hannes; Orfanelli, Styliani; Orsini, Luciano; Pape, Luc; Perez, Emmanuel; Peruzzi, Marco; Petrilli, Achille; Petrucciani, Giovanni; Pfeiffer, Andreas; Pierini, Maurizio; Racz, Attila; Reis, Thomas; Rolandi, Gigi; Rovere, Marco; Sakulin, Hannes; Sauvan, Jean-Baptiste; Schäfer, Christoph; Schwick, Christoph; Seidel, Markus; Sharma, Archana; Silva, Pedro; Sphicas, Paraskevas; Steggemann, Jan; Stoye, Markus; Takahashi, Yuta; Tosi, Mia; Treille, Daniel; Triossi, Andrea; Tsirou, Andromachi; Veckalns, Viesturs; Veres, Gabor Istvan; Verweij, Marta; Wardle, Nicholas; Wöhri, Hermine Katharina; Zagoździńska, Agnieszka; Zeuner, Wolfram Dietrich; Bertl, Willi; Deiters, Konrad; Erdmann, Wolfram; Horisberger, Roland; Ingram, Quentin; Kaestli, Hans-Christian; Kotlinski, Danek; Langenegger, Urs; Rohe, Tilman; Bachmair, Felix; Bäni, Lukas; Bianchini, Lorenzo; Casal, Bruno; Dissertori, Günther; Dittmar, Michael; Donegà, Mauro; Grab, Christoph; Heidegger, Constantin; Hits, Dmitry; Hoss, Jan; Kasieczka, Gregor; Lustermann, Werner; Mangano, Boris; Marionneau, Matthieu; Martinez Ruiz del Arbol, Pablo; Masciovecchio, Mario; Meinhard, Maren Tabea; Meister, Daniel; Micheli, Francesco; Musella, Pasquale; Nessi-Tedaldi, Francesca; Pandolfi, Francesco; Pata, Joosep; Pauss, Felicitas; Perrin, Gaël; Perrozzi, Luca; Quittnat, Milena; Rossini, Marco; Schönenberger, Myriam; Starodumov, Andrei; Tavolaro, Vittorio Raoul; Theofilatos, Konstantinos; Wallny, Rainer; Aarrestad, Thea Klaeboe; Amsler, Claude; Caminada, Lea; Canelli, Maria Florencia; De Cosa, Annapaola; Galloni, Camilla; Hinzmann, Andreas; Hreus, Tomas; Kilminster, Benjamin; Ngadiuba, Jennifer; Pinna, Deborah; Rauco, Giorgia; Robmann, Peter; Salerno, Daniel; Seitz, Claudia; Yang, Yong; Zucchetta, Alberto; Candelise, Vieri; Doan, Thi Hien; Jain, Shilpi; Khurana, Raman; Konyushikhin, Maxim; Kuo, Chia-Ming; Lin, Willis; Pozdnyakov, Andrey; Yu, Shin-Shan; Kumar, Arun; Chang, Paoti; Chang, You-Hao; Chao, Yuan; Chen, Kai-Feng; Chen, Po-Hsun; Fiori, Francesco; Hou, George Wei-Shu; Hsiung, Yee; Liu, Yueh-Feng; Lu, Rong-Shyang; Miñano Moya, Mercedes; Paganis, Efstathios; Psallidas, Andreas; Tsai, Jui-fa; Asavapibhop, Burin; Singh, Gurpreet; Srimanobhas, Norraphat; Suwonjandee, Narumon; Adiguzel, Aytul; Cerci, Salim; Damarseckin, Serdal; Demiroglu, Zuhal Seyma; Dozen, Candan; Dumanoglu, Isa; Girgis, Semiray; Gokbulut, Gul; Guler, Yalcin; Hos, Ilknur; Kangal, Evrim Ersin; Kara, Ozgun; Kayis Topaksu, Aysel; Kiminsu, Ugur; Oglakci, Mehmet; Onengut, Gulsen; Ozdemir, Kadri; Sunar Cerci, Deniz; Tali, Bayram; Turkcapar, Semra; Zorbakir, Ibrahim Soner; Zorbilmez, Caglar; Bilin, Bugra; Bilmis, Selcuk; Isildak, Bora; Karapinar, Guler; Yalvac, Metin; Zeyrek, Mehmet; Gülmez, Erhan; Kaya, Mithat; Kaya, Ozlem; Yetkin, Elif Asli; Yetkin, Taylan; Cakir, Altan; Cankocak, Kerem; Sen, Sercan; Grynyov, Boris; Levchuk, Leonid; Sorokin, Pavel; Aggleton, Robin; Ball, Fionn; Beck, Lana; Brooke, James John; Burns, Douglas; Clement, Emyr; Cussans, David; Flacher, Henning; Goldstein, Joel; Grimes, Mark; Heath, Greg P; Heath, Helen F; Jacob, Jeson; Kreczko, Lukasz; Lucas, Chris; Newbold, Dave M; Paramesvaran, Sudarshan; Poll, Anthony; Sakuma, Tai; Seif El Nasr-storey, Sarah; Smith, Dominic; Smith, Vincent J; Bell, Ken W; Belyaev, Alexander; Brew, Christopher; Brown, Robert M; Calligaris, Luigi; Cieri, Davide; Cockerill, David JA; Coughlan, John A; Harder, Kristian; Harper, Sam; Olaiya, Emmanuel; Petyt, David; Shepherd-Themistocleous, Claire; Thea, Alessandro; Tomalin, Ian R; Williams, Thomas; Baber, Mark; Bainbridge, Robert; Buchmuller, Oliver; Bundock, Aaron; Burton, Darren; Casasso, Stefano; Citron, Matthew; Colling, David; Corpe, Louie; Dauncey, Paul; Davies, Gavin; De Wit, Adinda; Della Negra, Michel; Di Maria, Riccardo; Dunne, Patrick; Elwood, Adam; Futyan, David; Haddad, Yacine; Hall, Geoffrey; Iles, Gregory; James, Thomas; Lane, Rebecca; Laner, Christian; Lucas, Robyn; Lyons, Louis; Magnan, Anne-Marie; Malik, Sarah; Mastrolorenzo, Luca; Nash, Jordan; Nikitenko, Alexander; Pela, Joao; Penning, Bjoern; Pesaresi, Mark; Raymond, David Mark; Richards, Alexander; Rose, Andrew; Scott, Edward; Seez, Christopher; Summers, Sioni; Tapper, Alexander; Uchida, Kirika; Vazquez Acosta, Monica; Virdee, Tejinder; Wright, Jack; Zenz, Seth Conrad; Cole, Joanne; Hobson, Peter R; Khan, Akram; Kyberd, Paul; Reid, Ivan; Symonds, Philip; Teodorescu, Liliana; Turner, Mark; Borzou, Ahmad; Call, Kenneth; Dittmann, Jay; Hatakeyama, Kenichi; Liu, Hongxuan; Pastika, Nathaniel; Bartek, Rachel; Dominguez, Aaron; Buccilli, Andrew; Cooper, Seth; Henderson, Conor; Rumerio, Paolo; West, Christopher; Arcaro, Daniel; Avetisyan, Aram; Bose, Tulika; Gastler, Daniel; Rankin, Dylan; Richardson, Clint; Rohlf, James; Sulak, Lawrence; Zou, David; Benelli, Gabriele; Cutts, David; Garabedian, Alex; Hakala, John; Heintz, Ulrich; Hogan, Julie Managan; Jesus, Orduna; Kwok, Ka Hei Martin; Laird, Edward; Landsberg, Greg; Mao, Zaixing; Narain, Meenakshi; Piperov, Stefan; Sagir, Sinan; Spencer, Eric; Syarif, Rizki; Breedon, Richard; Burns, Dustin; Calderon De La Barca Sanchez, Manuel; Chauhan, Sushil; Chertok, Maxwell; Conway, John; Conway, Rylan; Cox, Peter Timothy; Erbacher, Robin; Flores, Chad; Funk, Garrett; Gardner, Michael; Ko, Winston; Lander, Richard; Mclean, Christine; Mulhearn, Michael; Pellett, Dave; Pilot, Justin; Shalhout, Shalhout; Shi, Mengyao; Smith, John; Squires, Michael; Stolp, Dustin; Tos, Kyle; Tripathi, Mani; Bachtis, Michail; Bravo, Cameron; Cousins, Robert; Dasgupta, Abhigyan; Florent, Alice; Hauser, Jay; Ignatenko, Mikhail; Mccoll, Nickolas; Saltzberg, David; Schnaible, Christian; Valuev, Vyacheslav; Weber, Matthias; Bouvier, Elvire; Burt, Kira; Clare, Robert; Ellison, John Anthony; Gary, J William; Ghiasi Shirazi, Seyyed Mohammad Amin; Hanson, Gail; Heilman, Jesse; Jandir, Pawandeep; Kennedy, Elizabeth; Lacroix, Florent; Long, Owen Rosser; Olmedo Negrete, Manuel; Paneva, Mirena Ivova; Shrinivas, Amithabh; Si, Weinan; Wei, Hua; Wimpenny, Stephen; Yates, Brent; Branson, James G; Cerati, Giuseppe Benedetto; Cittolin, Sergio; Derdzinski, Mark; Gerosa, Raffaele; Holzner, André; Klein, Daniel; Krutelyov, Vyacheslav; Letts, James; Macneill, Ian; Olivito, Dominick; Padhi, Sanjay; Pieri, Marco; Sani, Matteo; Sharma, Vivek; Simon, Sean; Tadel, Matevz; Vartak, Adish; Wasserbaech, Steven; Welke, Charles; Wood, John; Würthwein, Frank; Yagil, Avraham; Zevi Della Porta, Giovanni; Amin, Nick; Bhandari, Rohan; Bradmiller-Feld, John; Campagnari, Claudio; Dishaw, Adam; Dutta, Valentina; Franco Sevilla, Manuel; George, Christopher; Golf, Frank; Gouskos, Loukas; Gran, Jason; Heller, Ryan; Incandela, Joe; Mullin, Sam Daniel; Ovcharova, Ana; Qu, Huilin; Richman, Jeffrey; Stuart, David; Suarez, Indara; Yoo, Jaehyeok; Anderson, Dustin; Bendavid, Joshua; Bornheim, Adolf; Bunn, Julian; Duarte, Javier; Lawhorn, Jay Mathew; Mott, Alexander; Newman, Harvey B; Pena, Cristian; Spiropulu, Maria; Vlimant, Jean-Roch; Xie, Si; Zhu, Ren-Yuan; Andrews, Michael Benjamin; Ferguson, Thomas; Paulini, Manfred; Russ, James; Sun, Menglei; Vogel, Helmut; Vorobiev, Igor; Weinberg, Marc; Cumalat, John Perry; Ford, William T; Jensen, Frank; Johnson, Andrew; Krohn, Michael; Leontsinis, Stefanos; Mulholland, Troy; Stenson, Kevin; Wagner, Stephen Robert; Alexander, James; Chaves, Jorge; Chu, Jennifer; Dittmer, Susan; Mcdermott, Kevin; Mirman, Nathan; Nicolas Kaufman, Gala; Patterson, Juliet Ritchie; Rinkevicius, Aurelijus; Ryd, Anders; Skinnari, Louise; Soffi, Livia; Tan, Shao Min; Tao, Zhengcheng; Thom, Julia; Tucker, Jordan; Wittich, Peter; Zientek, Margaret; Winn, Dave; Abdullin, Salavat; Albrow, Michael; Apollinari, Giorgio; Apresyan, Artur; Banerjee, Sunanda; Bauerdick, Lothar AT; Beretvas, Andrew; Berryhill, Jeffrey; Bhat, Pushpalatha C; Bolla, Gino; Burkett, Kevin; Butler, Joel Nathan; Cheung, Harry; Chlebana, Frank; Cihangir, Selcuk; Cremonesi, Matteo; Elvira, Victor Daniel; Fisk, Ian; Freeman, Jim; Gottschalk, Erik; Gray, Lindsey; Green, Dan; Grünendahl, Stefan; Gutsche, Oliver; Hare, Daryl; Harris, Robert M; Hasegawa, Satoshi; Hirschauer, James; Hu, Zhen; Jayatilaka, Bodhitha; Jindariani, Sergo; Johnson, Marvin; Joshi, Umesh; Klima, Boaz; Kreis, Benjamin; Lammel, Stephan; Linacre, Jacob; Lincoln, Don; Lipton, Ron; Liu, Miaoyuan; Liu, Tiehui; Lopes De Sá, Rafael; Lykken, Joseph; Maeshima, Kaori; Magini, Nicolo; Marraffino, John Michael; Maruyama, Sho; Mason, David; McBride, Patricia; Merkel, Petra; Mrenna, Stephen; Nahn, Steve; O'Dell, Vivian; Pedro, Kevin; Prokofyev, Oleg; Rakness, Gregory; Ristori, Luciano; Sexton-Kennedy, Elizabeth; Soha, Aron; Spalding, William J; Spiegel, Leonard; Stoynev, Stoyan; Strait, James; Strobbe, Nadja; Taylor, Lucas; Tkaczyk, Slawek; Tran, Nhan Viet; Uplegger, Lorenzo; Vaandering, Eric Wayne; Vernieri, Caterina; Verzocchi, Marco; Vidal, Richard; Wang, Michael; Weber, Hannsjoerg Artur; Whitbeck, Andrew; Wu, Yujun; Acosta, Darin; Avery, Paul; Bortignon, Pierluigi; Bourilkov, Dimitri; Brinkerhoff, Andrew; Carnes, Andrew; Carver, Matthew; Curry, David; Das, Souvik; Field, Richard D; Furic, Ivan-Kresimir; Konigsberg, Jacobo; Korytov, Andrey; Low, Jia Fu; Ma, Peisen; Matchev, Konstantin; Mei, Hualin; Mitselmakher, Guenakh; Rank, Douglas; Shchutska, Lesya; Sperka, David; Thomas, Laurent; Wang, Jian; Wang, Sean-Jiun; Yelton, John; Linn, Stephan; Markowitz, Pete; Martinez, German; Rodriguez, Jorge Luis; Ackert, Andrew; Adams, Todd; Askew, Andrew; Bein, Samuel; Hagopian, Sharon; Hagopian, Vasken; Johnson, Kurtis F; Prosper, Harrison; Santra, Arka; Yohay, Rachel; Baarmand, Marc M; Bhopatkar, Vallary; Colafranceschi, Stefano; Hohlmann, Marcus; Noonan, Daniel; Roy, Titas; Yumiceva, Francisco; Adams, Mark Raymond; Apanasevich, Leonard; Berry, Douglas; Betts, Russell Richard; Bucinskaite, Inga; Cavanaugh, Richard; Evdokimov, Olga; Gauthier, Lucie; Gerber, Cecilia Elena; Hofman, David Jonathan; Jung, Kurt; Sandoval Gonzalez, Irving Daniel; Varelas, Nikos; Wang, Hui; Wu, Zhenbin; Zakaria, Mohammed; Zhang, Jingyu; Bilki, Burak; Clarida, Warren; Dilsiz, Kamuran; Durgut, Süleyman; Gandrajula, Reddy Pratap; Haytmyradov, Maksat; Khristenko, Viktor; Merlo, Jean-Pierre; Mermerkaya, Hamit; Mestvirishvili, Alexi; Moeller, Anthony; Nachtman, Jane; Ogul, Hasan; Onel, Yasar; Ozok, Ferhat; Penzo, Aldo; Snyder, Christina; Tiras, Emrah; Wetzel, James; Yi, Kai; Anderson, Ian; Blumenfeld, Barry; Cocoros, Alice; Eminizer, Nicholas; Fehling, David; Feng, Lei; Gritsan, Andrei; Maksimovic, Petar; Roskes, Jeffrey; Sarica, Ulascan; Swartz, Morris; Xiao, Meng; Xin, Yongjie; You, Can; Al-bataineh, Ayman; Baringer, Philip; Bean, Alice; Boren, Samuel; Bowen, James; Castle, James; Forthomme, Laurent; Kenny III, Raymond Patrick; Khalil, Sadia; Kropivnitskaya, Anna; Majumder, Devdatta; Mcbrayer, William; Murray, Michael; Sanders, Stephen; Stringer, Robert; Tapia Takaki, Daniel; Wang, Quan; Ivanov, Andrew; Kaadze, Ketino; Maravin, Yurii; Mohammadi, Abdollah; Saini, Lovedeep Kaur; Skhirtladze, Nikoloz; Toda, Sachiko; Rebassoo, Finn; Wright, Douglas; Anelli, Christopher; Baden, Drew; Baron, Owen; Belloni, Alberto; Calvert, Brian; Eno, Sarah Catherine; Ferraioli, Charles; Gomez, Jaime; Hadley, Nicholas John; Jabeen, Shabnam; Jeng, Geng-Yuan; Kellogg, Richard G; Kolberg, Ted; Kunkle, Joshua; Mignerey, Alice; Ricci-Tam, Francesca; Shin, Young Ho; Skuja, Andris; Tonjes, Marguerite; Tonwar, Suresh C; Abercrombie, Daniel; Allen, Brandon; Apyan, Aram; Azzolini, Virginia; Barbieri, Richard; Baty, Austin; Bi, Ran; Bierwagen, Katharina; Brandt, Stephanie; Busza, Wit; Cali, Ivan Amos; D'Alfonso, Mariarosaria; Demiragli, Zeynep; Di Matteo, Leonardo; Gomez Ceballos, Guillelmo; Goncharov, Maxim; Hsu, Dylan; Iiyama, Yutaro; Innocenti, Gian Michele; Klute, Markus; Kovalskyi, Dmytro; Krajczar, Krisztian; Lai, Yue Shi; Lee, Yen-Jie; Levin, Andrew; Luckey, Paul David; Maier, Benedikt; Marini, Andrea Carlo; Mcginn, Christopher; Mironov, Camelia; Narayanan, Siddharth; Niu, Xinmei; Paus, Christoph; Roland, Christof; Roland, Gunther; Salfeld-Nebgen, Jakob; Stephans, George; Tatar, Kaya; Varma, Mukund; Velicanu, Dragos; Veverka, Jan; Wang, Jing; Wang, Ta-Wei; Wyslouch, Bolek; Yang, Mingming; Benvenuti, Alberto; Chatterjee, Rajdeep Mohan; Evans, Andrew; Hansen, Peter; Kalafut, Sean; Kao, Shih-Chuan; Kubota, Yuichi; Lesko, Zachary; Mans, Jeremy; Nourbakhsh, Shervin; Ruckstuhl, Nicole; Rusack, Roger; Tambe, Norbert; Turkewitz, Jared; Acosta, John Gabriel; Oliveros, Sandra; Avdeeva, Ekaterina; Bloom, Kenneth; Claes, Daniel R; Fangmeier, Caleb; Gonzalez Suarez, Rebeca; Kamalieddin, Rami; Kravchenko, Ilya; Malta Rodrigues, Alan; Monroy, Jose; Siado, Joaquin Emilo; Snow, Gregory R; Stieger, Benjamin; Alyari, Maral; Dolen, James; Godshalk, Andrew; Harrington, Charles; Iashvili, Ia; Kaisen, Josh; Nguyen, Duong; Parker, Ashley; Rappoccio, Salvatore; Roozbahani, Bahareh; Alverson, George; Barberis, Emanuela; Hortiangtham, Apichart; Massironi, Andrea; Morse, David Michael; Nash, David; Orimoto, Toyoko; Teixeira De Lima, Rafael; Trocino, Daniele; Wang, Ren-Jie; Wood, Darien; Bhattacharya, Saptaparna; Charaf, Otman; Hahn, Kristan Allan; Kumar, Ajay; Mucia, Nicholas; Odell, Nathaniel; Pollack, Brian; Schmitt, Michael Henry; Sung, Kevin; Trovato, Marco; Velasco, Mayda; Dev, Nabarun; Hildreth, Michael; Hurtado Anampa, Kenyi; Jessop, Colin; Karmgard, Daniel John; Kellams, Nathan; Lannon, Kevin; Marinelli, Nancy; Meng, Fanbo; Mueller, Charles; Musienko, Yuri; Planer, Michael; Reinsvold, Allison; Ruchti, Randy; Rupprecht, Nathaniel; Smith, Geoffrey; Taroni, Silvia; Wayne, Mitchell; Wolf, Matthias; Woodard, Anna; Alimena, Juliette; Antonelli, Louis; Bylsma, Ben; Durkin, Lloyd Stanley; Flowers, Sean; Francis, Brian; Hart, Andrew; Hill, Christopher; Hughes, Richard; Ji, Weifeng; Liu, Bingxuan; Luo, Wuming; Puigh, Darren; Winer, Brian L; Wulsin, Howard Wells; Cooperstein, Stephane; Driga, Olga; Elmer, Peter; Hardenbrook, Joshua; Hebda, Philip; Lange, David; Luo, Jingyu; Marlow, Daniel; Medvedeva, Tatiana; Mei, Kelvin; Ojalvo, Isabel; Olsen, James; Palmer, Christopher; Piroué, Pierre; Stickland, David; Svyatkovskiy, Alexey; Tully, Christopher; Malik, Sudhir; Barker, Anthony; Barnes, Virgil E; Folgueras, Santiago; Gutay, Laszlo; Jha, Manoj; Jones, Matthew; Jung, Andreas Werner; Khatiwada, Ajeeta; Miller, David Harry; Neumeister, Norbert; Schulte, Jan-Frederik; Shi, Xin; Sun, Jian; Wang, Fuqiang; Xie, Wei; Parashar, Neeti; Stupak, John; Adair, Antony; Akgun, Bora; Chen, Zhenyu; Ecklund, Karl Matthew; Geurts, Frank JM; Guilbaud, Maxime; Li, Wei; Michlin, Benjamin; Northup, Michael; Padley, Brian Paul; Roberts, Jay; Rorie, Jamal; Tu, Zhoudunming; Zabel, James; Betchart, Burton; Bodek, Arie; de Barbaro, Pawel; Demina, Regina; Duh, Yi-ting; Ferbel, Thomas; Galanti, Mario; Garcia-Bellido, Aran; Han, Jiyeon; Hindrichs, Otto; Khukhunaishvili, Aleko; Lo, Kin Ho; Tan, Ping; Verzetti, Mauro; Agapitos, Antonis; Chou, John Paul; Gershtein, Yuri; Gómez Espinosa, Tirso Alejandro; Halkiadakis, Eva; Heindl, Maximilian; Hughes, Elliot; Kaplan, Steven; Kunnawalkam Elayavalli, Raghav; Kyriacou, Savvas; Lath, Amitabh; Nash, Kevin; Osherson, Marc; Saka, Halil; Salur, Sevil; Schnetzer, Steve; Sheffield, David; Somalwar, Sunil; Stone, Robert; Thomas, Scott; Thomassen, Peter; Walker, Matthew; Delannoy, Andrés G; Foerster, Mark; Heideman, Joseph; Riley, Grant; Rose, Keith; Spanier, Stefan; Thapa, Krishna; Bouhali, Othmane; Celik, Ali; Dalchenko, Mykhailo; De Mattia, Marco; Delgado, Andrea; Dildick, Sven; Eusebi, Ricardo; Gilmore, Jason; Huang, Tao; Juska, Evaldas; Kamon, Teruki; Mueller, Ryan; Pakhotin, Yuriy; Patel, Rishi; Perloff, Alexx; Perniè, Luca; Rathjens, Denis; Safonov, Alexei; Tatarinov, Aysen; Ulmer, Keith; Akchurin, Nural; Cowden, Christopher; Damgov, Jordan; De Guio, Federico; Dragoiu, Cosmin; Dudero, Phillip Russell; Faulkner, James; Gurpinar, Emine; Kunori, Shuichi; Lamichhane, Kamal; Lee, Sung Won; Libeiro, Terence; Peltola, Timo; Undleeb, Sonaina; Volobouev, Igor; Wang, Zhixing; Greene, Senta; Gurrola, Alfredo; Janjam, Ravi; Johns, Willard; Maguire, Charles; Melo, Andrew; Ni, Hong; Sheldon, Paul; Tuo, Shengquan; Velkovska, Julia; Xu, Qiao; Arenton, Michael Wayne; Barria, Patrizia; Cox, Bradley; Goodell, Joseph; Hirosky, Robert; Ledovskoy, Alexander; Li, Hengne; Neu, Christopher; Sinthuprasith, Tutanon; Sun, Xin; Wang, Yanchu; Wolfe, Evan; Xia, Fan; Clarke, Christopher; Harr, Robert; Karchin, Paul Edmund; Sturdy, Jared; Belknap, Donald; Buchanan, James; Caillol, Cécile; Dasu, Sridhara; Dodd, Laura; Duric, Senka; Gomber, Bhawna; Grothe, Monika; Herndon, Matthew; Hervé, Alain; Klabbers, Pamela; Lanaro, Armando; Levine, Aaron; Long, Kenneth; Loveless, Richard; Perry, Thomas; Pierro, Giuseppe Antonio; Polese, Giovanni; Ruggles, Tyler; Savin, Alexander; Smith, Nicholas; Smith, Wesley H; Taylor, Devin; Woods, Nathaniel

    2017-04-21

    The CMS tracker consists of 206 m$^2$ of silicon strip sensors assembled on carbon fibre composite structures and is designed for operation in the temperature range from $-25$ to $+25^\\circ$C. The mechanical stability of tracker components during physics operation was monitored with a few $\\mu$m resolution using a dedicated laser alignment system as well as particle tracks from cosmic rays and hadron-hadron collisions. During the LHC operational period of 2011-2013 at stable temperatures, the components of the tracker were observed to experience relative movements of less than 30$ \\mu$m. In addition, temperature variations were found to cause displacements of tracker structures of about 2$\\mu$m/$^\\circ$C, which largely revert to their initial positions when the temperature is restored to its original value.

  17. Which Eye Tracker is Right for Your Research Performance Evaluation of Several Cost Variant Eye Trackers

    Science.gov (United States)

    2016-09-19

    utilized to study a diverse number of topics such as the patterns of fixations and saccades while reading text (e.g., Rayner, 1998), the workload of...of their accessibility to our laboratory and because they represent a diverse set of relative price points, from low (Eye Tribe Tracker, Tobii EyeX...see Figure 1 for the layout of those systems). At both workstations, task stimuli were presented to observers on 48.26 cm Samsung SyncMaster 940Bx

  18. Interferometric Star Tracker for High Precision Pointing, Phase I

    Data.gov (United States)

    National Aeronautics and Space Administration — Optical Physics Company (OPC) proposes to adapt the precision star tracker it is currently developing under several DoD contracts for deep space lasercom beam...

  19. The influence of peat volume change and vegetation on the hydrology of a kettle-hole wetland in Southern Ontario, Canada

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    P. Whittington

    2007-12-01

    Full Text Available Links between local hydrology and vegetation type exist in wetlands, yet it is unclear what role peat volume change plays in these interactions. We measured peat volume change and hydraulic conductivity (Kfield at three contrasting sites located on the quaking vegetation mat of a kettle-hole peatland in southern Ontario. The three sites had visibly different plant communities and were named, according to their dominant vegetation, Sedge (Carex spp., Typha (Typha angustifolia and Carr (Cornus stolonifera. Peat was also collected for laboratory studies of peat volume change, vertical (Kv and horizontal (Kh hydraulic conductivity and the effect of compression on hydraulic conductivity (Kc.In the field, the water table rose throughout the study period, resulting in swelling of the peat. Peat volume change above the -100 cm layer was 11.2%, 6.0% and 3.8% at the Sedge, Typha, and Carr sites respectively. In laboratory samples, a falling water table caused compression of the peat below the structured surface mat, and relative peat volume change between the sites followed the same pattern as in the field. Kfield, Kv and Kh generally decreased with depth from ca. 10-2 to 10-6 cm s-1. In the surface layers (0 to -50cm K trended Carr>Typha>Sedge, whereas the reverse trend was observed in deeper peat. Artificial compression affected K only in the uppermost layers (0 to -15cm. The decline in Kc with compression also trended Sedge>Typha>Carr. Differences in peat volume change and K are probably related to differences in vegetation and soil structure, and may be important for maintaining suitable growing conditions within each community.

  20. NDVI-Based Analysis on the Influence of Climate Change and Human Activities on Vegetation Restoration in the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Region, Central China

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Shuangshuang Li

    2015-08-01

    Full Text Available In recent decades, climate change has affected vegetation growth in terrestrial ecosystems. We investigated spatial and temporal patterns of vegetation cover on the Loess Plateau’s Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia region in central China using MODIS-NDVI data for 2000–2014. We examined the roles of regional climate change and human activities in vegetation restoration, particularly from 1999 when conversion of sloping farmland to forestland or grassland began under the national Grain-for-Green program. Our results indicated a general upward trend in average NDVI values in the study area. The region’s annual growth rate greatly exceeded those of the Three-North Shelter Forest, the upper reaches of the Yellow River, the Qinling–Daba Mountains, and the Three-River Headwater region. The green vegetation zone has been annually extending from the southeast toward the northwest, with about 97.4% of the region evidencing an upward trend in vegetation cover. The NDVI trend and fluctuation characteristics indicate the occurrence of vegetation restoration in the study region, with gradual vegetation stabilization associated with 15 years of ecological engineering projects. Under favorable climatic conditions, increasing local vegetation cover is primarily attributable to ecosystem reconstruction projects. However, our findings indicate a growing risk of vegetation degradation in the northern part of Shaanxi Province as a result of energy production facilities and chemical industry infrastructure, and increasing exploitation of mineral resources.