Search results for "Season"
showing 10 items of 1002 documents
A copula-based approach for assessing flood protection overtopping associated with a seasonal flood forecast in Niamey, West Africa
2016
Flood is one of the most important natural disasters that cause huge loss of life and properties every year around the world. Moreover, the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies pointed out that floods were by far the greatest cause of homelessness. In West Africa, many countries are damaged from flooding almost every season. Thus, this study aimed to set a seasonal flood forecast model and carried out an evaluation of the level of risk associated with each seasonal forecast. HEC-RAS (Hydrologic Engineering Centers River Analysis System) was used to develop a hydro-dynamical model of Niger river on a 160km reach (80km upstream to 80kmdownstream of Niamey), the…
Geochemical and hydrogeological characterization of thermal springs in Western Sicily, Italy
1998
Abstract Thermal and cold waters from Castellammare–Alcamo (Western Sicily-Italy) were collected between May 1994 and May 1995 and studied for their chemical and isotopic composition. During the same period, mean monthly samples of meteoric water were also collected and measured for their isotopic composition. The main purpose of this study was the characterization of the acquifers and, if possible, of their recharge areas. According to the results obtained, the acquifers were divided into three main groups: (a) selenitic waters, (b) cold carbonatic waters, and (c) deep thermal waters resulting from the mixing of the other two types. Besides a mixing process between carbonatic and selenitic…
Determining water use of sorghum from two-source energy balance and radiometric temperatures
2011
Estimates of surface actual evapotranspiration (ET) can assist in predicting crop water requirements. An alternative to the traditional crop-coefficient methods are the energy balance models. The objective of this research was to show how surface temperature observations can be used, together with a two-source energy balance model, to determine crop water use throughout the different phenological stages of a crop grown. Radiometric temperatures were collected in a sorghum (<i>Sorghum bicolor</i>) field as part of an experimental campaign carried out in Barrax, Spain, during the 2010 summer growing season. Performance of the Simplified Two-Source Energy Balance (STSEB) model was …
Factors Affecting Polyphenol Biosynthesis in Wild and Field Grown St. John’s Wort (Hypericum perforatum L. Hypericaceae/Guttiferae)
2009
The increasing diffusion of herbal products is posing new questions: why are products so often different in their composition and efficacy? Which approach is more suitable to increase the biochemical productivity of medicinal plants with large-scale, low-cost solutions? Can the phytochemical profile of a medicinal plant be modulated in order to increase the accumulation of its most valuable constituents? Will polyphenol-rich medicinal crops ever be traded as commodities? Providing a proactive answer to such questions is an extremely hard task, due to the large number of variables involved: intraspecific chemodiversity, plant breeding, ontogenetic stage, post-harvest handling, biotic and abi…
“Default” versus “pre-atopic” IgG responses to foodborne and airborne pathogenesis-related group 10 protein molecules in birch-sensitized and nonatop…
2014
Background The route and dose of exposure are believed to be relevant factors in the sensitization process. Pathogenesis-related group 10 protein (PR-10) molecules are a family of allergenic proteins shared by many pollens (eg, birch and alder) and foods (eg, apple, peach, and soy). Children are exposed to both pollen-derived (inhaled) and food-derived (ingested) PR-10 molecules. Objective We sought to investigate the role of route and dose of exposure in the evolution of IgG and IgE responses to recombinant PR-10 molecules. Methods The German Multicentre Allergy Study examined a birth cohort born in 1990. Blood samples were collected at the ages of 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10, and 13 years. Parti…
Modelling the occurrence of rainy days under a typical Mediterranean climate
2014
The statistical inference of the alternation of wet and dry periods in daily rainfall records can be achieved through the modelling of inter-arrival time-series, IT, defined as the succession of times elapsed from a rainy day and the one immediately preceding it. In this paper, under the hypothesis that ITs are independent and identically distributed random variables, a modelling framework based on a generalisation of the commonly adopted Bernoulli process is introduced. Within this framework, the capability of three discrete distributions, belonging to the Hurwitz–Lerch-Zeta family, to reproduce the main statistical features of IT time-series was tested. These distributions namely Lerch-se…
A new index for measuring seasonality: A transportation cost approach
2017
Abstract Seasonal fluctuations characterize many natural and social phenomena. Although the causes and impacts of seasonality are generally well documented in different study contexts, and many methods for isolating the seasonal component have been developed, considerably less attention has been paid to the measurement of the degree of seasonality. After reviewing the main indices used for measuring seasonality in different study contexts, we will propose a new approach in which seasonality is evaluated on the basis of the solution of a transportation problem. By considering the interdisciplinary nature of seasonal phenomena, the topic of measuring seasonality merits attention from a wide v…
Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Suicide-Related Emergency Calls
2017
Considerable effort has been devoted to incorporate temporal trends in disease mapping. In this line, this work describes the importance of including the effect of the seasonality in a particular setting related with suicides. In particular, the number of suicide-related emergency calls is modeled by means of an autoregressive approach to spatio-temporal disease mapping that allows for incorporating the possible interaction between both temporal and spatial effects. Results show the importance of including seasonality effect, as there are differences between the number of suicide-related emergency calls between the four seasons of each year.
Typology of pentad circulation anomalies over the Eastern Africa - Western Indian Ocean region, and their relationship with rainfall
2005
International audience; The aim of this study was to classify the most frequently observed atmospheric circula- tion anomaly patterns in eastern Africa and the adjacent Indian Ocean. As an example of the useful- ness of such a classification, the second objective was to test whether these patterns account for intraseasonal rainfall anomalies in the region. A partitioning algorithm, known as dynamical cluster analysis, was therefore applied to the zonal (U)and meridional (V)components of the wind anom- alies, obtained from the NCEP-NCAR Reanalysis R-2 at the pentad (5 d) timescale. The 3 geopoten- tial levels 850, 700 and 200 hPa were combined. Focus is on the transition seasons (March to Ma…
The Carini Experimental Station for Wastewater Reuse in Agriculture – Preliminary Indications
1992
A two year experiment, to study the feasibility of wastewater reuse for a safe irrigation in the Sicilian context, has been initiated. Eight plots in two fields, totalling 629 m2, were planted with cowpeas (Vigna unguiculata L. Walp.), the irrigation water being supplied by a pilot plant treating 22 m3/day of municipal wastewater. The plant consists of an extended aeration biological system followed by rapid sand filtration and a choice of disinfection systems. Analyses performed on all waters used in the experiment indicate that safe irrigation water, virtually pathogen-free, can be produced if careful operational techniques are adopted. Despite all possible care, however, soil samples tak…