Water resources management (WRM) for sustainable development presents many challenges in areas with sparse in situ monitoring networks. The exponential growth of satellite based information over the ...past decade provides unprecedented opportunities to support and improve WRM. Furthermore, traditional barriers to the access and usage of satellite data are lowering as technological innovations provide opportunities to manage and deliver this wealth of information to a wider audience. We review data needs for WRM and the role that satellite remote sensing can play to fill gaps and enhance WRM, focusing on the Latin American and Caribbean as an example of a region with potential to further develop its resources and mitigate the impacts of hydrological hazards. We review the state‐of‐the‐art for relevant variables, current satellite missions, and products, how they are being used currently by national agencies across the Latin American and Caribbean region, and the challenges to improving their utility. We discuss the potential of recently launched, upcoming, and proposed missions that are likely to further enhance and transform assessment and monitoring of water resources. Ongoing challenges of accuracy, sampling, and continuity still need to be addressed, and further challenges related to the massive amounts of new data need to be overcome to best leverage the utility of satellite based information for improving WRM.
Key Points
Satellite remote sensing is being incorporated into water resources management but is generally underutilized
New and proposed missions have the potential to transform water resources management for sustainable development, especially in data‐poor regions
Ongoing challenges of accuracy, sampling, and continuity and capacity development need to be addressed, as well as new challenges of information volume and diversity
The work aims at discussing the role of predictive uncertainty in flood forecasting and flood emergency management, its relevance to improve the decision making process and the techniques to be used ...for its assessment. Real time flood forecasting requires taking into account predictive uncertainty for a number of reasons. Deterministic hydrological/hydraulic forecasts give useful information about real future events, but their predictions, as usually done in practice, cannot be taken and used as real future occurrences but rather used as pseudo-measurements of future occurrences in order to reduce the uncertainty of decision makers. Predictive Uncertainty (PU) is in fact defined as the probability of occurrence of a future value of a predictand (such as water level, discharge or water volume) conditional upon prior observations and knowledge as well as on all the information we can obtain on that specific future value from model forecasts. When dealing with commensurable quantities, as in the case of floods, PU must be quantified in terms of a probability distribution function which will be used by the emergency managers in their decision process in order to improve the quality and reliability of their decisions. After introducing the concept of PU, the presently available processors are introduced and discussed in terms of their benefits and limitations. In this work the Model Conditional Processor (MCP) has been extended to the possibility of using two joint Truncated Normal Distributions (TNDs), in order to improve adaptation to low and high flows. The paper concludes by showing the results of the application of the MCP on two case studies, the Po river in Italy and the Baron Fork river, OK, USA. In the Po river case the data provided by the Civil Protection of the Emilia Romagna region have been used to implement an operational example, where the predicted variable is the observed water level. In the Baron Fork River example, the data set provided by the NOAA's National Weather Service, within the DMIP 2 Project, allowed two physically based models, the TOPKAPI model and TETIS model, to be calibrated and a data driven model to be implemented using the Artificial Neural Network. The three model forecasts have been combined with the aim of reducing the PU and improving the probabilistic forecast taking advantage of the different capabilities of each model approach.
The values of thermal conductivity λ at different temperatures for organic and inorganic compounds in the liquid phase is essential in the study of numerous processes, but experimental data are ...frequently not available with acceptable reliability or not available at all, since rigorous theoretical or semi-theoretical models of the liquid state are usually of poor practical use for engineering purposes. The Artificial Neural Network (ANN) approach is a very powerful tool and it can be a good indicator of the lowest limit achievable with a selected database and with a selected set of inputs. This study investigates the applicability of the ANN as an efficient tool for the prediction of pure organic compounds' thermal conductivity of three important families such as alkanes, ketones and silanes, for a wide range of temperatures. The families of n-alkanes, ketones and silanes were chosen to verify the general reliability of the proposed method when used in large temperature ranges for very different organic families, above all the silanes (compounds containing silicon), whose liquid thermal conductivity is experimentally investigated in very few cases. This method appears to be successful: in all reduced temperature range, along or near the saturation line, the average absolute deviations between calculated and experimental thermal conductivity data are 0.19% and the maximum absolute ones 2.44%
Summary
Aim : To decrease the intensity of dyspeptic symptoms by impairing the visceral nociceptive C‐type fibres with capsaicin, contained in red pepper powder.
Methods : The study was performed on ...30 patients with functional dyspepsia and without gastro‐oesophageal reflux disease and irritable bowel syndrome. After a 2‐week washout period, 15 patients received, before meals randomly and in a double‐blind manner, 2.5 g/day of red pepper powder for 5 weeks, and 15 patients received placebo. A diary sheet was given to each patient to record, each day, the scores of individual and overall symptom intensity, which subsequently were averaged weekly and over the entire treatment duration.
Results : The overall symptom score and the epigastric pain, fullness and nausea scores of the red pepper group were significantly lower than those of the placebo group, starting from the third week of treatment. The decrease reached about 60% at the end of treatment in the red pepper group, whilst placebo scores decreased by less than 30%.
Conclusions : Red pepper was more effective than placebo in decreasing the intensity of dyspeptic symptoms, probably through a desensitization of gastric nociceptive C‐fibres induced by its content of capsaicin. It could represent a potential therapy for functional dyspepsia.
High temperature solar cooking allows to cook food fast and with good efficiency. An unavoidable drawback of this technology is that it requires nearly clear-sky conditions. In addition, evening ...cooking is difficult to be accomplished, particularly on the winter season during which solar radiation availability is limited to a few hours in the afternoon in most of countries. These restrictions could be overcome using a cooker thermal storage unit (TSU). In this work, a TSU based on solar salt was studied. The unit consists of two metal concentric cylindrical vessels, connected together to form a double-walled vessel. The volume between walls was filled with a certain amount of nitrate based phase change material (solar salt). In order to characterize the TSU, a test bench used to assess solar cooker performance was adopted. Experimental load tests with the TSU were carried out to evaluate the cooker performance. The obtained preliminary results show that the adoption of the solar salt TSU seems to allow both the opportunity of evening cooking and the possibility to better stabilize the cooker temperature when sky conditions are variable.
BACKGROUND Intrasphincteric injection of botulinum toxin (Botx) has been proposed as treatment for oesophageal achalasia. However, the predictors of response and optimal dose remain unclear. AIMS To ...compare the effect of different doses of Botx and to identify predictors of response. PATIENTS/METHODS A total of 118 achalasic patients were randomised to receive one of three doses of Botx in a single injection: 50 U (n=40), 100 U (n=38), and 200 U (n=40). Of those who received 100 U, responsive patients were reinjected with an identical dose after 30 days. Clinical and manometric assessments were performed at baseline, 30 days after the initial injection of botulinum toxin, and at the end of follow up (mean 12 months; range 7–24 months). RESULTS Thirty days after the initial injection, 82% of patients were considered responders without a clear dose related effect. At the end of follow up however, relapse of symptoms was evident in 19% of patients who received two injections of 100 U compared with 47% and 43% in the 50 U and 200 U groups, respectively. Using Kaplan-Meier analysis, patients in the 100×2 U group were more likely to remain in remission at any time (p<0.04), with 68% (95% CI 59–83) still in remission at 24 months. In a multiple adjusted model, response to Botx was independently predicted by the occurrence of vigorous achalasia (odds ratio 3.3) and the 100×2 U regimen (odds ratio 3.2). CONCLUSIONS Two injections of 100 U of Botx 30 days apart appeared to be the most effective therapeutic schedule. The presence of vigorous achalasia was the principal determinant of the response to Botx.
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