Constructed wetlands (CWs) are one of the main countermeasures to reduce diffuse phosphorus (P) losses, but there is still a lack of systematic guidance accounting for spatially variable effects of hydraulic and P load on P retention. We present a three-step modelling approach for determining suitable placement of CWs in four different size groups (0.1–1.0 ha), based on incoming hydraulic and P load. The modelled hypothetical CW area was only 17% of that previously estimated and area of efficient CWs is even lower. The mean area-specific P retention increased with CW size. However, the spatial variation in retention was large for all size groups and largest (6–155 kg ha−1 year−1) for the smallest CWs due to highly variable incoming P loads, showing the possible benefits of targeted placement of CWs. The presented modelling approach has also flexibility to include and account for possible future changes in land cover and management.

During testing of parallel systems, which allow asynchronous communication, test flakiness is sometimes avoided by explicitly inserting delays in test code. The choice of delay approach can be a trade-off between short-term gain and long-term robustness. In this work, we present an approach for automatic detection and classification of delay insertions, with the goal of identifying those that could be made more robust. The approach has been implemented using an open-source compiler tooling framework and validated using test code from the telecom industry.

Among advanced manufacturing techniques for Fiber-Reinforced Polymer-matrix Composites (FRPCs) which are critical for aerospace, marine, automotive, and energy industries, Frontal Polymerization (FP) has been recently proposed to save orders of magnitude time and energy. However, the cure kinetics of the matrix phase, usually a thermosetting polymer, brings difculty to the design and control of the process. Here, we develop a deep learning model, ChemNet, to solve an inverse problem in predicting and optimizing the cure kinetics parameters of the thermosetting FRPCs for a desired fabrication strategy. ChemNet consists of a fully connected FeedForward 9-layer deep neural network trained on one million examples, and predicts activation energy and reaction enthalpy given the front characteristics such as speed and maximum temperature. ChemNet provides highly accurate predictions measured by the mean square error (MSE) and by the maximum absolute error metrics. The MSE of ChemNet, on the train set and test set attain the values of 1E-4 and 2E-4, respectively.

In this letter, we propose a novel low-complexity user pairing (UP) and power allocation (PA) technique utilizing the compressive sensing (CS) theory for non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) systems. In the proposed scheme, we formulate the joint UP and PA optimization problem in NOMA systems as a relaxed sparse $l_{1}$ -norm problem, based on the fact that a limited, i.e., ‘sparse,’ number of users has to be paired among a large number of users over a dedicated resource block (RB). By exploiting this inherent sparsity property, we can obtain a near-optimal solution by relaxing the original NP-hard problem of joint UP and PA. Then, a CS technique is proposed to find a solution for the relaxed problem. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of our proposed idea regarding the sum-rate and the reduced complexity compared to the state-of-the-art schemes.

The diploid Celina/QTee® (‘Colorée de Juillet’ × ‘Williams’), one of the most promising pear cultivars developed by the Norwegian breeding program Graminor, was launched in 2010. In Norway, the flowering is medium to late, while the fruits ripen in the beginning of September. The fruits are attractive with an intense red blush (50%) on a green background. Although, ‘Celina’ is cultivated in the most climatically suitable regions for fruit cultivation, present in Norway, unfavorable environmental conditions for pear pollination can have a very negative effect on fruit set and consequent yield. The aim of this study was to determine the S-alleles of ‘Celina’, as well as its frequently used pollinizers, and, through paternity testing of ‘Celina’ seeds, give a recommendation regarding the most important pollinizers of this pear cultivar. In order to accomplish this, ‘Celina’ and its potential pollinizers were all S-genotyped. After harvest, seeds collected from ‘Celina’ fruit in 2017 and 2018 were genotyped using eleven microsatellite markers. Genomic DNA was also extracted from leaf material collected from ‘Celina’, as well as from five pear cultivars used as pollinizers in the three examined orchards, and analyzed using the same marker set. Subsequently a simple sequence repeat (SSR) database was constructed and used for gene assignment analyses with the aim of quantifying pollen donor contribution from individual pollinizers. The obtained results indicate that ‘Anna’, the only examined pollinizer that was fully cross-compatible with ‘Celina’, together with ‘Fritjof’, the genotype which had the highest flowering overlap with ‘Celina’, proved to be the most successful pollinizers across all seasons and orchards. Although both cultivars were ubiquitous in the examined orchards, either as planted trees or as branches introduced during the flowering period, they were the most abundant pollinizers in only one orchard each. It is therefore possible to conclude that pollinizer abundance has a secondary significance in pollinizer success within investigated ‘Celina’ orchards.

This article investigates the impact of the user’s body on wearable antenna radiation characteristics and the consequent effects on the off-body channel, with the focus on the polarization aspect. The impact on antenna gain and polarization is analyzed for different antenna placements and separations from the body, based on electromagnetic simulations with numerical phantoms at 3, 4 and 5 GHz. Results show a strong influence of the body on the antenna efficiency, gain, and polarization. The excess losses due to body-shadowing suppress the antenna radiation behind the body by more than 20 dB, while its polarization changes from vertical in free space, to an elliptical one when placed on the body. The obtained radiation characteristics are then employed for off-body channel simulations using a geometry-based polarized channel model, which employs an analytic mobility model for wearable antennas based on Fourier series. The antenna rotation due to changes in user’s posture is seen as one of the main sources of off-body channel degradation. The polarization mismatch losses imposed by antennas’ physical misalignment, are observed to yield periodic fades of the Line-of-Sight component, with more than 30 dB drops in the received power level.

Objectives Selectively attending to a target talker while ignoring multiple interferers (competing talkers and background noise) is more difficult for hearing-impaired (HI) individuals compared to normal-hearing (NH) listeners. Such tasks also become more difficult as background noise levels increase. To overcome these difficulties, hearing aids (HAs) offer noise reduction (NR) schemes. The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of NR processing (inactive, where the NR feature was switched off, vs. active, where the NR feature was switched on) on the neural representation of speech envelopes across two different background noise levels [+3 dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and +8 dB SNR] by using a stimulus reconstruction (SR) method. Design To explore how NR processing supports the listeners’ selective auditory attention, we recruited 22 HI participants fitted with HAs. To investigate the interplay between NR schemes, background noise, and neural representation of the speech envelopes, we used electroencephalography (EEG). The participants were instructed to listen to a target talker in front while ignoring a competing talker in front in the presence of multi-talker background babble noise. Results The results show that the neural representation of the attended speech envelope was enhanced by the active NR scheme for both background noise levels. The neural representation of the attended speech envelope at lower (+3 dB) SNR was shifted, approximately by 5 dB, toward the higher (+8 dB) SNR when the NR scheme was turned on. The neural representation of the ignored speech envelope was modulated by the NR scheme and was mostly enhanced in the conditions with more background noise. The neural representation of the background noise was modulated (i.e., reduced) by the NR scheme and was significantly reduced in the conditions with more background noise. The neural representation of the net sum of the ignored acoustic scene (ignored talker and background babble) was not modulated by the NR scheme but was significantly reduced in the conditions with a reduced level of background noise. Taken together, we showed that the active NR scheme enhanced the neural representation of both the attended and the ignored speakers and reduced the neural representation of background noise, while the net sum of the ignored acoustic scene was not enhanced. Conclusion Altogether our results support the hypothesis that the NR schemes in HAs serve to enhance the neural representation of speech and reduce the neural representation of background noise during a selective attention task. We contend that these results provide a neural index that could be useful for assessing the effects of HAs on auditory and cognitive processing in HI populations.

Tokom 2019. godine u granicama obuhvata Parka prirode “Orjen” realizovana su višestruka mikološka istraživanja s ciljem inventarizacije gljiva na ovom području. Među rezultatima istraživanja registrovan je i značajan broj pripadnika odjeljka Ascomycota od kojih su neke vrste po prvi put zabilježene na teritoriji Bosne i Hercegovine. U radu je prezentovan preliminarni spisak zabilježenih vrsta odjeljka Ascomycota dok su neke od vrsta (Desmazierella acicola, Bryoscyphus rhytidiadelphi, Pseudombrophila ripensis i Thecotheus keithii) detaljnije obrađene, uključujući njihovu ekologiju, fenologiju, morfološke karakteristike, poznate obrasce distribucije te eventualne egzistirajuće i potencijalne prijetnje na ovom području.