Search results for "SEP"

A new rationale for not picking low hanging fruits: The separation of ownership and control

2019

Recent attempts at explaining the energy-efficiency gap rely on considerations related to organizational and behavioral/cognitive failures. In this paper, we build on the strategic delegation literature to advance a complementary explanation. It is shown that strategic market interaction may encourage business owners to instill a bias against energy efficiency in managerial compensation contracts. Since managers respond to financial incentives, their decisions will reflect this bias, resulting in lack of investment.

2019

Reptiles use pterin and carotenoid pigments to produce yellow, orange, and red colors. These conspicuous colors serve a diversity of signaling functions, but their molecular basis remains unresolved. Here, we show that the genomes of sympatric color morphs of the European common wall lizard ( Podarcis muralis ), which differ in orange and yellow pigmentation and in their ecology and behavior, are virtually undifferentiated. Genetic differences are restricted to two small regulatory regions near genes associated with pterin [ sepiapterin reductase ( SPR )] and carotenoid [ beta-carotene oxygenase 2 ( BCO2 )] metabolism, demonstrating that a core gene in the housekeeping pathway of pterin bi…

2017

Diversification in flower shape and function is triggered by the high plasticity of flower meristems. Minute changes in space and time can profoundly affect the formation of adult structures. Dipsacoideae provides an excellent model system to investigate the evolutionary aspects of temporal and spatial changes in flower development due to its small size, the resolved phylogenetic framework, and significant diversity of perianth form and merosity. In the present study, we investigated the sequence of floral organ initiation and quantified the interactions between flower meristem expansion and petal primordium size in eight species representing two major clades of Dipsacoideae. Our quantitati…

Gauge theory of the long-range proximity effect and spontaneous currents in superconducting heterostructures with strong ferromagnets

2017

We present the generalized quasiclassical theory of the long-range superconducting proximity effect in heterostructures with strong ferromagnets, where the exchange splitting is of the order of Fermi energy. In the ferromagnet the propagation of equal-spin Cooper pairs residing on the spin-split Fermi surfaces is shown to be governed by the spin-dependent Abelian gauge field which results either from the spin-orbital coupling or from the magnetic texture. This additional gauge field enters into the quasiclassical equations in superposition with the usual electromagnetic vector potential and results in the generation of spontaneous superconducting currents and phase shifts in various geometr…

The role of extracellular polymeric substances on aerobic granulation with stepwise increase of salinity

2018

Abstract A granular sequencing batch reactor (GSBR) worked for 164 days to study the effect of salinity on aerobic granulation. The feeding had an organic loading rate (OLR) of 1.6 kg COD⋅m −3 ⋅d −1 and a gradual increase of salinity (from 0.30 to 38 g NaCl − ⋅L −1 ) to promote a biological salt-adaptation. First aggregates (average diameter ≈ 0.4 mm) appeared after 14 days. Extracellular polymeric substances (EPSs) analyses revealed that proteins were mainly higher than polysaccharides, and microorganisms metabolized EPSs as additional carbon source, mostly in feast phase, to face the energy demand for salinity adaptation. No significant worsening of organic matter removal was observed. Th…

Occurrence of antibiotics and antiretroviral drugs in source-separated urine, groundwater, surface water and wastewater in the peri-urban area of Chu…

2020

Recently, there has been an increased interest in bridging the knowledge gap in the occurrence and fate of pharmaceuticals in African urban water  cycles. In this study, the occurrence of 7 antibiotics and 3 antiretrovirals in source-separated urine, groundwater, wastewater and surface water of the peri-urban area of Chunga in Lusaka, Zambia, was studied. In groundwater, the pharmaceuticals were only sporadically present with 4 antibiotics and 1 antiretroviral detected. The concentration of the antibiotics ranged from below limit of quantification (<LOQ) to 880 ng/L, with sulfamethoxazole having the highest detection frequency of 42.3%. In the surface water, a comparatively high concentrati…

Robustness with Respect to Delay Uncertainties of a Predictor-Observer Based Discrete-Time Controller

2006

This paper focuses on the delay-dependent stability problem of a discrete-time prediction scheme to stabilize possible unstable continuous-time systems. The delay-dependent stability condition is expressed in terms of LMIs. The separation principle between the proposed predictor and a state observer is also proved. The closed-loop system is shown to be robust with respect to uncertainties in the knowledge on the plant parameters, the delay and the sampling period. The proposed scheme has been tested in a real-time application to control the roll angle in a prototype of a quad-rotor mini-helicopter.

El obispo Vicente Roca de la Serna y su sepulcro en san Juan de la Ribera, obra del maestro marmolista Juan Bautista Semería

2016

VV. AA. (Obra coordinada por Tito Llopis / VTiM) L' escultor Josep Ginés i Marín (1768-1823). A propòsit de "La matança dels innocents" : Catálogo de…

2020

Automated Dental Identification with Lowest Cost Path-Based Teeth and Jaw Separation

2016

Abstract Teeth are some of the most resilient tissues of the human body. Because of their placement, teeth often yield intact indicators even when other metrics, such as finger prints and DNA, are missing. Forensics on dental identification is now mostly manual work which is time and resource intensive. Systems for automated human identification from dental X-ray images have the potential to greatly reduce the necessary efforts spent on dental identification, but it requires a system with high stability and accuracy so that the results can be trusted. This paper proposes a new system for automated dental X-ray identification. The scheme extracts tooth and dental work contours from the X-ray…