Evaluation of Reference Evapotranspiration Equations Under Humid Conditions

Five reference evapotranspiration (ET₀) equations are evaluated using data from seven humid locations. The equations evaluated include Hargreaves, Thornthwaite, Turc, Priestley–Taylor, and Jensen–Haise. The objective of this study is to evaluate ET₀ estimated by these equations against the corresponding values estimated using the standardized FAO-56 Penman–Monteith (PM) equation. For each location, ET₀ estimates by the all equations were statistically compared with FAO-56 PM ET₀ estimates. The Turc equation yielded the smallest root-mean-square-difference (RMSD) values at the all locations except Novi Sad, Serbia. The final ranking of equations was based on the weighted RMSD. The Turc equation has the lowest weighted RMSD and ranking first, and other equations ranked in decreasing order are: Priestley–Taylor, Jensen–Haise, Thornthwaite, and Hargreaves. The Turc equation gives the reliable calculation at all humid locations and it has proven to be the most adjustable to the local climatic conditions. The results obtained from this study, indicate very clearly that the Turc equation is most suitable for estimating reference evapotranspiration at humid locations when weather data are insufficient to apply the FAO-56 PM equation.     

Discovery,Biocatalytic Exploration and Structural Analysis of a 4-Ethylphenol Oxidase from Gulosibacter chungangensis

The vanillyl-alcohol oxidase (VAO) family is a rich source of biocatalysts for the oxidative bioconversion of phenolic compounds. Through genome mining and sequence comparisons, we found that several family members lack a generally conserved catalytic aspartate. This finding led us to study a VAO-homolog featuring a glutamate residue in place of the common aspartate. This 4-ethylphenol oxidase from Gulosibacter chungangensis (Gc4EO) shares 42 % sequence identity with VAO from Penicillium simplicissimum, contains the same 8α-N³-histidyl-bound FAD and uses oxygen as electron acceptor. However, Gc4EO features a distinct substrate scope and product specificity as it is primarily effective in the dehydrogenation of para-substituted phenols with little generation of hydroxylated products. The three-dimensional structure shows that the characteristic glutamate side chain creates a closely packed environment that may limit water accessibility and thereby protect from hydroxylation. With its high thermal stability, well defined structural properties and high expression yields, Gc4EO may become a catalyst of choice for the specific dehydrogenation of phenolic compounds bearing small substituents.     

Towards a Theoretical Framework of Autonomous Systems Underpinned by Intelligence and Systems Sciences

Autonomous systems are an emerging AI technology functioning without human intervention underpinned by the latest advances in intelligence,cognition,computer,and systems sciences.This paper explores the intelligent and mathematical foundations of autonomous systems.It focuses on structural and behavioral properties that constitute the intelligent power of autonomous systems.It explains how system intelligence aggregates from reflexive,imperative,adaptive intelligence to autonomous and cognitive intelligence.A hierarchical intelligence model(HIM)is introduced to elaborate the evolution of human and system intelligence as an inductive process.The properties of system autonomy are formally analyzed towards a wide range of applications in computational intelligence and systems engineering.Emerging paradigms of autonomous systems including brain-inspired systems,cognitive robots,and autonomous knowledge learning systems are described.Advances in autonomous systems will pave a way towards highly intelligent machines for augmenting human capabilities.     

在FPGA中实施4G无线球形检测器

WiMAX对宽带互联网接入如同手机对语音通信一样意义非凡。它可以取代DSL和有线服务，随时随地提供互联网接入。只需要打开计算机，连接到最近的WiMAX天线，就可以畅游全世界的网络了。     

Congestion control for multimedia services

The problem of congestion control in high-speed networks for multimedia traffic, such as voice and video, is considered. It is shown that the performance requirements of high-speed networks involve delay, delay-jitter, and packet loss. A framing congestion control strategy based on a packet admission policy at the edges of the network and on a service discipline called stop-and-go queuing at the switching nodes is described. This strategy provides bounded end-to-end delay and a small and controllable delay-jitter. The strategy is applicable to packet switching networks in general, including fixed cell length asynchronous transfer mode (ATM), as well as networks with variable-size packets     

Drought Characterisation Based on Water Surplus Variability Index

Drought assessment, characterisation and monitoring increasingly requires considering not only precipitation but also the other meteorological parameters such as an evapotranspiration. Thus, some new drought indices based on precipitation and evapotranspiration have been developed. This study introduces a new drought index named the water surplus variability index (WSVI). The procedure to estimate the index involves accumulation water surplus at different time scales. To approve the proposed procedure, the WSVI is compared with the standardized precipitation index (SPI), the reconnaissance drought index (RDI) and the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI) based on 1-, 3-, 6- and 12-month timescales using data from several weather stations located in regions with different aridity index. Near perfect agreement (d?~?1) between WSVI and SPI, RDI and SPEI was indicated in humid and sub-humid locations. The results also showed that the correlation coefficients between WSVI and SPI, RDI and SPEI were higher for semi-arid stations than for arid ones.