2,058 research outputs found
Conference Summary Report: Overview of the 10th African Crop Science Society Conference held in Maputo, Mozambique from the 10th to 13th of October 2011
No full textAuthored by the Local Organizing Committee of the 10th African Crop Science Society ConferenceThe 10th African Crop Science Society (ACSS) Conference emphasized the role of research in providing new and improved livelihood opportunities for farmers in Africa, which will impact income generation and food security. With the theme “From soil to soul - crop production for improved African livelihoods and a better environment for future generations” the Conference intended to highlight Africa’s potential to grow crops as well as the complex and challenging agricultural issues still troubling the continent. The report reviews organization of the conference agenda
Plasma arc cutting technology: simulation and experiments
No full textTransferred arc plasma torches are widely used in industrial cutting process of metallic materials because of their ability to cut a wide range of metals and because of the very high productivity that can be achieved with this technology. Various experimental and computational activities will be reported here and in particular: high speed imaging of transient phenomena and Schlieren photography in Plasma Arc Cutting (PAC), experimental analysis of the behavior of high current electrodes in PAC during first cycles and plasma modelling and numerical simulation as a useful tools for the design and optimization of these kinds of devices.
Proceedings of the XVIII International Conference on Gas Discharges and Their Applications-GD 2010, (Editor Prof. K.-D. Weltmann), GD 2010 Local Organizing Committee, Greifswald, 2010, pp. 18-25 (ISBN: 0-9539105-4-7)
Measuring the Impacts of Advocacy and Community Organizing: Application of a Methodology and Initial Findings
No full text· The increasing emphasis by funders on strategic grantmaking and measurable outcomes may be a disincentive to support policy and advocacy work, because of the perception that outcomes can be difficult to assess.
· A tool for measuring impact can reduce the barriers to funding advocacy and policy work.
· The tool draws upon the literatures on evaluating advocacy and organizing, social capital building efforts, and return on investment approaches to evaluation.
· The tool was applied in two sites, where funders found it useful to understand advocacy impacts and learn how advocacy can enhance their grantmaking goals
The impact of climate change and local microclimatic variance on building design decision making
No full textnone - see english versionThis paper presents the results of a recent research effort involving an actual urban development project for the city of Vienna.
The project developers requested scientifically-based information concerning future microclimatic changes in the development
area and their potential ramifications for the thermal performance of the projected buildings. To address this inquiry, simulation
models were generated to compute the buildings' thermal performance both for the current and projected climatic conditions.
Thereby, alternative building designs (specifically, various surface design options) were considered in view of their mitigation
effectiveness vis-à-vis climate change projections. The results help providing qualified evaluations of such building design
features
Student engagement on the TRU 2010/11 Research Conference Organizing Committee
No full textThrough problem based Interdisciplinary study of student engagement, this paper will explore student and faculty findings by using student and faculty primary research. The findings of student engagement research will show if the goals of Thompson Rivers University work experience on an undergraduate conference organizing committee were met, or not. The student and faculty experiences of service learning show the adaptations and transformations taking place on the committee.problem based interdisciplinary studystudent engagementservice learnin
Seam weld characterization by FEM analysys in aluminium extrusion
No full textIn recent years aluminum extruded hollow profiles are increasingly used in near-net shape manufacturing processes such as bending and hydroforming; in fact, by applying these secondary processes, it is possible to obtain very high complex parts, especially for the transport industry. It is known that hollow profiles obtained by direct hot extrusion necessarily have some longitudinal welding lines (so called seam welds) produced inside the die and it is common experience, during secondary forming processes, the appearance of early cracking in proximity of those lines [1,2]. At the same time, the direct hot extrusion is the only process able to produce hollow extruded profiles at low cost. The early cracking of the profiles during secondary deformation is not a consistent effect [3]: sometimes it happens at low strains, sometimes at high ones, thus suggesting a dependency of the phenomena on extrusion parameters and in particular on die design [4]. As a consequence, today the hollow profiles produced by direct extrusion are designed for very low-strain forming processes or directly used in the shape determined by the extrusion step. This greatly reduces the industrial applicability of the products, especially regarding the possibility to adopt high-strength light-alloys for reduced-weight vehicle parts. The problem of assessing the formation of seam welds in aluminium extrusion processes is here presented. The paper reviews and discusses the application of the principal criteria proposed in literature for seam welds characterization [5,6,7], one of them being proposed by the authors, by implementing them into the complete thermo-mechanical 3D finite element simulation of a specific welding experiment [8]. The experiment consisted in the extrusion of an I-shaped profile with a seam welds in the middle of its length; the die assembly was modified throughout the experiments in order to determine different local welding conditions and, as a result, different welding qualities on the extruded profiles, ranging from perfect welds to completely unwelded profiles. The possibility for each adopted criterion to clearly separate the good welds from the bad ones is investigated and the failures, when found, were discussed. The relationship between the output of the welding criteria and the local welding parameters, such as contact pressure, temperature, time of contact, strain and strain rate is also analyzed, in order to evidence the sensitivity of the method
Local Conformal Prediction For Non-Parametric Uncertainty Bands In Functional Ordinary Kriging
No full textThe prediction of spatial functional data, functions observed at spatial locations, represents a
key aspect in many fields, including ecology, medicine and geosciences. A major challenge lies
in providing reliable uncertainty quantification for predictions at unobserved sites. Traditional
methods, such as Functional Ordinary Kriging (FOK) and Functional Universal Kriging (FUK),
offer accurate spatial predictions; however, they often depend on strong assumptions and require
computationally intensive resampling to construct prediction bands. Assessing uncertainty in
Functional Ordinary Kriging (FOK) involves evaluating the variability in the predicted functions
at unsampled locations. The process can include analyzing prediction variance, constructing
confidence bands, using cross-validation, and applying simulation methods. Techniques such
as resampling methods have been introduced to estimate the uncertainty in predicted curves,
allowing for confidence bands for functional predictions. However, these are computationally
intensive, especially for large datasets, due to the need for multiple resampling iterations. In
addition, they may lead to biased estimates if the sample size is small or not representative
of the population. In this work, we propose a Local Spatial Conformal Prediction (LSCP)
method, which constructs prediction bands with finite-sample coverage guarantees without requiring strict distributional assumptions on residuals. LSCP adapts to spatial heterogeneity
by selecting an adaptive neighborhood around each prediction site and modulates uncertainty
along the functional domain using a spatial varibility measure. Unlike previous conformal approaches based on fixed spatial kernels, our method allows local adaptation in both space and
function shape, enhancing flexibility and interpretability. Extensive simulations and a real-world
application to the prediction of vegetation cycles in Fire Rings demonstrate that LSCP achieves
accurate coverage and competitive band widths compared to existing kriging-based techniques.
Our findings indicate that LSCP is a robust and computationally efficient alternative for uncer-
tainty quantification in spatial functional data analysis
Committee on An Appeal for Human Rights Organizing Notes, circa 1960
No full textOtis Moss of the Committee on An Appeal for Human Rights organizing notes. The document briefly addresses the activities, assessments, and needs for local student demonstrations. 1 page
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