The Impact of Reflectivity Gradients on the Performance of Range-Oversampling Processing

Author(s):  
Christopher D. Curtis ◽  
Sebastián M. Torres

AbstractRange-oversampling processing is a technique that can be used to lower the variance of radar-variable estimates, reduce radar update times, or a mixture of both. There are two main assumptions for using range-oversampling processing: accurate knowledge of the range correlation and uniform reflectivity in the radar resolution volume. The first assumption has been addressed in previous research; this work focuses on the uniform reflectivity assumption. Earlier research shows that significant reflectivity gradients can occur in storms; we utilized those results to develop realistic simulations of radar returns that include effects of reflectivity gradients in range. An important consideration when using range-oversampling processing is the resulting change in the range weighting function. The range weighting function can change for different types of range-oversampling processing and some techniques, such as adaptive pseudowhitening, can lead to different range weighting functions at each range gate. To quantify the possible effects of differing range weighting functions in the presence of reflectivity gradients, we developed simulations to examine varying types of range-oversampling processing with two receiver filters: a matched receiver filter and a wider-bandwidth receiver filter (as recommended for use with range oversampling). Simulation results show that differences in range weighting functions are the only contributor to differences in radar reflectivity measurements. Results from real weather data demonstrate that the reflectivity gradients that occur in typical severe storms do not cause significant changes in reflectivity measurements, and the benefits from range-oversampling processing outweigh the possible isolated effects from large reflectivity gradients.

2017 ◽  
Vol 76 (3) ◽  
pp. 107-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klea Faniko ◽  
Till Burckhardt ◽  
Oriane Sarrasin ◽  
Fabio Lorenzi-Cioldi ◽  
Siri Øyslebø Sørensen ◽  
...  

Abstract. Two studies carried out among Albanian public-sector employees examined the impact of different types of affirmative action policies (AAPs) on (counter)stereotypical perceptions of women in decision-making positions. Study 1 (N = 178) revealed that participants – especially women – perceived women in decision-making positions as more masculine (i.e., agentic) than feminine (i.e., communal). Study 2 (N = 239) showed that different types of AA had different effects on the attribution of gender stereotypes to AAP beneficiaries: Women benefiting from a quota policy were perceived as being more communal than agentic, while those benefiting from weak preferential treatment were perceived as being more agentic than communal. Furthermore, we examined how the belief that AAPs threaten men’s access to decision-making positions influenced the attribution of these traits to AAP beneficiaries. The results showed that men who reported high levels of perceived threat, as compared to men who reported low levels of perceived threat, attributed more communal than agentic traits to the beneficiaries of quotas. These findings suggest that AAPs may have created a backlash against its beneficiaries by emphasizing gender-stereotypical or counterstereotypical traits. Thus, the framing of AAPs, for instance, as a matter of enhancing organizational performance, in the process of policy making and implementation, may be a crucial tool to countering potential backlash.


Author(s):  
Anne Nassauer

This book provides an account of how and why routine interactions break down and how such situational breakdowns lead to protest violence and other types of surprising social outcomes. It takes a close-up look at the dynamic processes of how situations unfold and compares their role to that of motivations, strategies, and other contextual factors. The book discusses factors that can draw us into violent situations and describes how and why we make uncommon individual and collective decisions. Covering different types of surprise outcomes from protest marches and uprisings turning violent to robbers failing to rob a store at gunpoint, it shows how unfolding situations can override our motivations and strategies and how emotions and culture, as well as rational thinking, still play a part in these events. The first chapters study protest violence in Germany and the United States from 1960 until 2010, taking a detailed look at what happens between the start of a protest and the eruption of violence or its peaceful conclusion. They compare the impact of such dynamics to the role of police strategies and culture, protesters’ claims and violent motivations, the black bloc and agents provocateurs. The analysis shows how violence is triggered, what determines its intensity, and which measures can avoid its outbreak. The book explores whether we find similar situational patterns leading to surprising outcomes in other types of small- and large-scale events: uprisings turning violent, such as Ferguson in 2014 and Baltimore in 2015, and failed armed store robberies.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xichuan Liu ◽  
Taichang Gao ◽  
Yuntao Hu ◽  
Xiaojian Shu

In order to improve the measurement of precipitation microphysical characteristics sensor (PMCS), the sampling process of raindrops by PMCS based on a particle-by-particle Monte-Carlo model was simulated to discuss the effect of different bin sizes on DSD measurement, and the optimum sampling bin sizes for PMCS were proposed based on the simulation results. The simulation results of five sampling schemes of bin sizes in four rain-rate categories show that the raw capture DSD has a significant fluctuation variation influenced by the capture probability, whereas the appropriate sampling bin size and width can reduce the impact of variation of raindrop number on DSD shape. A field measurement of a PMCS, an OTT PARSIVEL disdrometer, and a tipping bucket rain Gauge shows that the rain-rate and rainfall accumulations have good consistencies between PMCS, OTT, and Gauge; the DSD obtained by PMCS and OTT has a good agreement; the probability of N0, μ, and Λ shows that there is a good agreement between the Gamma parameters of PMCS and OTT; the fitted μ-Λ and Z-R relationship measured by PMCS is close to that measured by OTT, which validates the performance of PMCS on rain-rate, rainfall accumulation, and DSD related parameters.


Author(s):  
Amy E. Nivette ◽  
Renee Zahnow ◽  
Raul Aguilar ◽  
Andri Ahven ◽  
Shai Amram ◽  
...  

AbstractThe stay-at-home restrictions to control the spread of COVID-19 led to unparalleled sudden change in daily life, but it is unclear how they affected urban crime globally. We collected data on daily counts of crime in 27 cities across 23 countries in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. We conducted interrupted time series analyses to assess the impact of stay-at-home restrictions on different types of crime in each city. Our findings show that the stay-at-home policies were associated with a considerable drop in urban crime, but with substantial variation across cities and types of crime. Meta-regression results showed that more stringent restrictions over movement in public space were predictive of larger declines in crime.


2021 ◽  
pp. 193896552110335
Author(s):  
John W. O’Neill ◽  
Jihwan Yeon

In recent years, short-term rental platforms in the lodging sector, including Airbnb, VRBO, and HomeAway, have received extensive attention and emerged as potentially alternative suppliers of services traditionally provided by established commercial accommodation providers, that is, hotels. Short-term rentals have dramatically increased the available supply of rooms for visitors to multiple international destinations, potentially siphoning demand away from hotels to short-term rental businesses. In a competitive market, an increase in supply with constant demand would negatively influence incumbent service providers. In this article, we examine the substitution effects of short-term rental supply on hotel performance in different cities around the world. Specifically, we comprehensively investigate the substitution effects of short-term rental supply on hotel performance based on hotel class, location type, and region. Furthermore, we segment the short-term rental supply based on its types of accommodations, that is, shared rooms, private rooms, and entire homes, and both examine and quantify the differential effects of these types of short-term rentals on different types of hotels. This study offers a comprehensive analysis regarding the impact of multiple short-term rental platforms on hotel performance and offers both conceptual and practical insights regarding the nature and extent of the effects that were identified.


2021 ◽  
pp. 026975802110106
Author(s):  
Raoul Notté ◽  
E.R. Leukfeldt ◽  
Marijke Malsch

This article explores the impact of online crime victimisation. A literature review and 41 interviews – 19 with victims and 22 with experts – were carried out to gain insight into this. The interviews show that most impacts of online offences correspond to the impacts of traditional offline offences. There are also differences with offline crime victimisation. Several forms of impact seem to be specific to victims of online crime: the substantial scale and visibility of victimhood, victimisation that does not stop in time, the interwovenness of online and offline, and victim blaming. Victims suffer from double, triple or even quadruple hits; it is the accumulation of different types of impact, enforced by the limitlessness in time and space, which makes online crime victimisation so extremely invasive. Furthermore, the characteristics of online crime victimisation greatly complicate the fight against and prevention of online crime. Finally, the high prevalence of cybercrime victimisation combined with the severe impact of these crimes seems contradictory with public opinion – and associated moral judgments – on victims. Further research into the dominant public discourse on victimisation and how this affects the functioning of the police and victim support would be valuable.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (14) ◽  
pp. 4136
Author(s):  
Clemens Gößnitzer ◽  
Shawn Givler

Cycle-to-cycle variations (CCV) in spark-ignited (SI) engines impose performance limitations and in the extreme limit can lead to very strong, potentially damaging cycles. Thus, CCV force sub-optimal engine operating conditions. A deeper understanding of CCV is key to enabling control strategies, improving engine design and reducing the negative impact of CCV on engine operation. This paper presents a new simulation strategy which allows investigation of the impact of individual physical quantities (e.g., flow field or turbulence quantities) on CCV separately. As a first step, multi-cycle unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (uRANS) computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations of a spark-ignited natural gas engine are performed. For each cycle, simulation results just prior to each spark timing are taken. Next, simulation results from different cycles are combined: one quantity, e.g., the flow field, is extracted from a snapshot of one given cycle, and all other quantities are taken from a snapshot from a different cycle. Such a combination yields a new snapshot. With the combined snapshot, the simulation is continued until the end of combustion. The results obtained with combined snapshots show that the velocity field seems to have the highest impact on CCV. Turbulence intensity, quantified by the turbulent kinetic energy and turbulent kinetic energy dissipation rate, has a similar value for all snapshots. Thus, their impact on CCV is small compared to the flow field. This novel methodology is very flexible and allows investigation of the sources of CCV which have been difficult to investigate in the past.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 7637
Author(s):  
Taekyoung Lee ◽  
Jieun Cha ◽  
Sohyun Sung

Trees’ ability to capture atmospheric Particular Matter (PM) is related to morphological traits (shape, size, and micro-morphology) of the leaves. The objectives of this study were (1) to find out whether cluster pattern of the leaves is also a parameter that affects trees’ PM capturing performance and (2) to apply the cluster patterns of the leaves on architectural surfaces to confirm its impact on PM capturing performance. Two series of chamber experiments were designed to observe the impact of cluster patterns on PM capturing performance whilst other influential variables were controlled. First, we exposed synthetic leaf structures of different cluster patterns (a large and sparsely arranged cluster pattern and a small and densely arranged cluster pattern) to artificially generated PM in a chamber for 60 min and recorded the changing levels of PM2.5 and PM10 every minute. The results confirmed that the small and densely arranged cluster pattern has more significant effect on reducing PM2.5 and PM10 than the large and sparsely arranged cluster pattern. Secondly, we created three different types of architectural surfaces mimicking the cluster patterns of the leaves: a base surface, a folded surface, and a folded and porous surface. The surfaces were also exposed to artificially generated PM in the chamber and the levels of PM2.5 and PM10 were recorded. The results confirmed that the folded and porous surface has a more significant effect on reducing PM2.5 and PM10 than other surfaces. The study has confirmed that the PM capturing performance of architectural surfaces can be improved by mimicking cluster pattern of the leaves.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Davide Vittori

Abstract Scholars have long debated whether populism harms or improves the quality of democracy. This article contributes to this debate by focusing on the impact of populist parties in government. In particular, it inquires: (1) whether populists in government are more likely than non-populists to negatively affect the quality of democracies; (2) whether the role of populists in government matters; and (3) which type of populism is expected to negatively affect the quality of liberal-democratic regimes. The results find strong evidence that the role of populists in government affects several qualities of democracy. While robust, the findings related to (2) are less clear-cut than those pertaining to (1). Finally, regardless of their role in government, different types of populism have different impacts on the qualities of democracy. The results show that exclusionary populist parties in government tend to have more of a negative impact than other forms of populism.


Author(s):  
Gaojian Huang ◽  
Christine Petersen ◽  
Brandon J. Pitts

Semi-autonomous vehicles still require drivers to occasionally resume manual control. However, drivers of these vehicles may have different mental states. For example, drivers may be engaged in non-driving related tasks or may exhibit mind wandering behavior. Also, monitoring monotonous driving environments can result in passive fatigue. Given the potential for different types of mental states to negatively affect takeover performance, it will be critical to highlight how mental states affect semi-autonomous takeover. A systematic review was conducted to synthesize the literature on mental states (such as distraction, fatigue, emotion) and takeover performance. This review focuses specifically on five fatigue studies. Overall, studies were too few to observe consistent findings, but some suggest that response times to takeover alerts and post-takeover performance may be affected by fatigue. Ultimately, this review may help researchers improve and develop real-time mental states monitoring systems for a wide range of application domains.


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