Ozone depletion led to a positive trend in the summertime Southern Annular Mode (SAM) during the last decades of the 20th century. During the present century, global warming (GW) is expected to ...contribute to a positive SAM trend while ozone recovery is expected to act in the opposite direction. Here, Southern Hemisphere (SH) circulation and regional precipitation change are studied with a methodology that separates the effects from GW and ozone depletion/recovery. Our results show that a “tug‐of‐war” between ozone and GW occurs in the summertime stratosphere, propagating to the troposphere where it is manifest in the SAM. However, at the regional scale this “tug‐of‐war” is not as relevant as the combined effects of other remote drivers of circulation change, which force different kinds of precipitation changes in the SH. For regional precipitation changes, the uncertainty in future circulation change is as important as the uncertainty in the GW level.
Plain Language Summary
In the Southern Hemisphere, both ozone depletion and global warming have influenced climate in the past decades. Ozone recovery is expected to reverse the influence of ozone depletion, but the influence of global warming is expected to grow. Here, we investigate the combined effects of these anthropogenic forcings through the second half of the 20th century and the entire 21st century, quantifying their influence on stratospheric and tropospheric circulation and on regional precipitation changes. We find that the summertime stratosphere is affected by a “tug‐of‐war” between these two forcings, and that its effect propagates downward to the tropospheric circulation. On the other hand, summer precipitation in the land areas of the SH that are expected to experience large effects of climate change are not strongly affected by this “tug‐of‐war,” but are instead influenced by the effects of both stratospheric and tropical tropospheric changes.
Key Points
Long‐term changes in the delay of the breakdown of the Southern Hemisphere stratospheric polar vortex can be largely explained by a linear response to ozone‐depleting substances and to global warming
The tug‐of‐war between ozone recovery and global warming manifests itself in the stratospheric vortex breakdown delay and propagates to the troposphere
The uncertainty in future changes in regional precipitation in the Southern Hemisphere is subject to the combined effects of the uncertainty in tropical warming and in the vortex breakdown delay
When the deep inferior epigastric perforator (DIEP) flap is unavailable, autologous reconstruction of a moderate-to-large breast presents a surgical challenge. We retrospectively review our ...experience of unilateral breast reconstruction using double transverse upper gracilis (TUG) flaps and highlight specific technical considerations.
Thirty-four patients underwent double TUG flaps for unilateral breast reconstruction between 2012 and 2020. The average patient age was 50 years and the average body mass index (BMI) was 23.1 kg/m2. In all cases, the indication for surgery was breast cancer: 31 patients had immediate reconstruction, 11 had simultaneous axillary surgery and eight had primary contralateral symmetrising surgery.
Of the 68 TUG flaps, 67 (98.5%) were successful. The mean operative time was 5 h 50 min (195–460 min) and the mean combined flap weight was 551 g (279–916 g). Eight patients returned to the operating theatre in the early post-operative period and five patients underwent secondary lipofilling to address contour deformities.
Most commonly (n = 22), the flaps were oriented horizontally/obliquely, with one flap anastomosed medially to the internal mammary axis and the other anastomosed lateral to the subscapular system. The internal mammary artery perforators and serratus anterior artery provided the best vessel calibre match with the TUG vessels.
Double TUG reconstruction is a safe and reliable option for unilateral breast reconstruction and is an important option when the DIEP flap is unavailable.
In this paper, we proposed a novel smart tug escorting mode to achieve energy conservation during the escorting process under the premise of safe navigation of the serviced ship. A green and smart ...framework is presented for energy-saving escorting. First, an escorting model is established to describe the dynamics of the tug and the relation between the tug and the serviced ship. Secondly, the reference trajectories of the tug and serviced ship are planned collaboratively according to the escorting geometric configuration. Then, the Model Predictive Control (MPC) scheme is adopted for tug trajectory tracking. An optimization problem is formulated, considering the fuel consumption characteristics of the engine. Control strategies are obtained by solving the optimization problem. Two scenarios are simulated to show the energy conservation potential of the proposed framework. In the scenario that the tug is sailing along without load, the fuel consumption can be reduced by 18.47%, while in the scenario that the tug is escorting beside the serviced ship, the fuel consumption can be reduced by 21.56%.
•A novel smart tug escorting mode is proposed considering the collaboration between tugs and the serviced ships.•A green and smart tug motion controller is designed using MPC, considering escorting tasks and energy efficiency.
Gait disorders are common in the elderly people, seriously hinder patients' mobility and sometimes indicate underlying severe neurological diseases. Timely and automatic diagnosis of gait disorders ...is greatly desired. Existing methods with wearable devices put burdens on patients. We establish a video-based algorithm named SAIL to perform contactless gait assessment automatically. The SAIL contains three parts, namely, skeleton detector , parameter extractor , and gait classifier . Using a pose estimation algorithm, the skeleton detector converts RGB videos to a human skeleton sequence. Then, the parameter extractor extracts gait parameters from skeletons with a signal detection technique. Finally, a trained Support vector machine is used as a gait classifier to detect abnormal gait. The SAIL achieves 86.2% sensitivity and 98.5% specificity for abnormal gait detection on our SAIL-TUG dataset, outperforming general clinic doctors with 76.4% and 97.4%, respectively. Nine gait parameters and the binary gait classification result are included in the final gait report. We implement an automatic gait assessment system based on SAIL and deployed the user-interface software in more than 60 hospitals for practical applications. More than 30 000 gait reports have been automatically generated. Moreover, we establish a publicly available dataset named SAIL-TUG including 404 annotated Timed "Up & Go" videos.
In this article, we study the stable control of tethered despin of a massive rotating space object in a central gravity field by a small space tug. A control scheme under the passivity-based model ...predictive control framework is designed to ensure that the constraints of state and input (bounded libration angle, positive tether tension, and bounded thrust) are satisfied. Furthermore, an additional passivity constraint is introduced into the passivity-based model predictive control to guarantee the asymptotic stability of the closed-loop control system. The attainable equilibrium configuration of the tethered system is first analyzed. Then, a framework of the storage energy function is constructed by the potential energy shaping methodology to establish the passivity mapping of the tethered system from input to output. Finally, the strictly asymptotic stability of despinning control of the tethered system under the proposed control law is theoretically proved by the invariance theorem and Lyapunov stability theory. The effectiveness of the proposed control scheme is verified by numerical simulation.
Regularity for nonlinear stochastic games Luiro, Hannes; Parviainen, Mikko
Annales de l'Institut Henri Poincaré. Analyse non linéaire,
September 2018, 2018-09-00, Letnik:
35, Številka:
6
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
We establish regularity for functions satisfying a dynamic programming equation, which may arise for example from stochastic games or discretization schemes. Our results can also be utilized in ...obtaining regularity and existence results for the corresponding partial differential equations.
Introdução: O confinamento imposto pela pandemia COVID-19 resultou na alteração da vida dos idosos, o que poderá ter afetado a sua qualidade de vida e saúde. Objetivo: Descrever a qualidade de vida ...relacionada com a saúde e verificar a sua associação com a ocorrência de quedas e a mobilidade funcional de idosos portugueses, durante a pandemia COVID-19. Método: Estudo transversal descritivo. Participaram 182 idosos, com idade > 65 anos (85.7% do sexo feminino; idade 72.7 ± 6.7 anos), do Baixo Alentejo, Portugal. A qualidade de vida foi avaliada através do questionário SF-36 e exploramos as relações entre os seus domínios e a ocorrência de quedas e a mobilidade funcional (Timed Up & Go). Resultados: Verificaram-se associações significativas entre a qualidade de vida com o género, ocorrência de quedas e a mobilidade. A análise das dimensões SF-36 revelou que uma perceção mais positiva da SM (73.1%) surge associada ao género feminino. Uma perceção de FF (73.1%), DC (53.3%), FS (74.7%), DE (45.1%) e SM (72.5%) mais positiva surge associada à não ocorrência de quedas e verificou-se que perceções mais positivas da FF (82.3%) e DE (53.2%) estão associadas a uma boa mobilidade. Conclusão: Verificou-se que uma melhor perceção da FF, FS, DE, SN e DC estão relacionadas com a não ocorrência de quedas. Uma boa perceção sobre a FF e DE relacionam-se com uma boa mobilidade. As conclusões deste estudo destacam a relação positiva entre a boa perceção de qualidade de vida, a não ocorrência de quedas e a boa mobilidade em idosos. Palavras-chave: SF-36; quedas; mobilidade; TUG; envelhecimento saudável.
Methods for reducing and directly controlling the speed of DNA through a nanopore are needed to enhance sensing performance for direct strand sequencing and detection/mapping of sequence‐specific ...features. A method is created for reducing and controlling the speed of DNA that uses two independently controllable nanopores operated with an active control logic. The pores are positioned sufficiently close to permit cocapture of a single DNA by both pores. Once cocapture occurs, control logic turns on constant competing voltages at the pores leading to a “tug‐of‐war” whereby opposing forces are applied to regions of the molecules threading through the pores. These forces exert both conformational and speed control over the cocaptured molecule, removing folds and reducing the translocation rate. When the voltages are tuned so that the electrophoretic force applied to both pores comes into balance, the life time of the tug‐of‐war state is limited purely by diffusive sliding of the DNA between the pores. A tug‐of‐war state is produced on 76.8% of molecules that are captured with a maximum two‐order of magnitude increase in average pore translocation time relative to the average time for single‐pore translocation. Moreover, the translocation slow‐down is quantified as a function of voltage tuning and it is shown that the slow‐down is well described by a first passage analysis for a 1D subdiffusive process. The ionic current of each nanopore provides an independent sensor that synchronously measures a different region of the same molecule, enabling sequential detection of physical labels, such as monostreptavidin tags. With advances in devices and control logic, future dual‐pore applications include genome mapping and enzyme‐free sequencing.
A dual nanopore approach for reducing and directly controlling the speed of DNA through the nanopore is reported. Constant competing voltages at the dual pores lead to a “tug‐of‐war,” whereby opposing forces are applied to regions of the molecules threading through the pores. These forces exert both conformational and speed control over the cocaptured molecule, removing folds and reducing the translocation rate.
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