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Characterization of Titan’s Ontario Lacus region from Cassini/VIMS observations
Publication . Moriconi, M. L.; Lunine, J. I.; Adriani, A.; D’Aversa, E.; Negrão, A.; Filacchione, G.; Coradini, A.
Liquid hydrocarbons were long predicted on Titan's surface before the RADAR instrument onboard Cassini detected lakes poleward of 70°N in July 2006. Before that the Cassini Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) observed a lake-like feature in the South Pole, named Ontario Lacus, in July 2004. Here we analyze one observation of Ontario Lacus taken by the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) on 2007 December 5, during the T 38 flyby. This is the best spatially resolved image of a Titan lake to date by an imaging spectrometer, and has been previously reported in Brown et al. (Brown, R.H., Soderblom, L.A., Soderblom, J.M., Clark, R.N., Jaumann, R., Barnes, J.W., Sotin, C., Buratti, B., Baines, K.H., Nicholson, P.D. [2008]. Nature 454, 607-610) and in Barnes et al. (Barnes, J.W. et al. [2009]. Icarus 201, 217-225). The observing geometry and our data processing will be explained, followed by a discussion of the main characteristics of the image. The analyzed image covers a small portion of Ontario Lacus and shows what appears from RADAR data to be a region of modest slope (" ramp" ) adjacent to the dark lake itself. Our analysis of 5.0 μm spectral data suggests that the previously reported absorption feature of ethane seen at shorter wavelengths may be produced by damp sediments adjacent to the main liquid basin. The latter appears to be absorbing all of the photons incident upon it in the 5 μm spectral region and shows no discernible absorption features. A characterization of the basin composition and morphology is developed with the help of ISS and RADAR observations. The simplest model consistent with the data is an optically deep lake surrounded by a region in which ethane, propane, possibly methane, and other, less volatile hydrocarbons and nitriles are present mixed into spectroscopically neutral sediments. The dominance of relatively low vapor pressure organics outside the lake itself suggests a retreat of Ontario Lacus associated with evaporation on seasonal or longer timescales, consistent with analysis of RADAR and ISS images.
Dynamics of Epidemiological Models
Publication . Pinto, Alberto; Aguiar, Maíra; Martins, José; Stollenwerk, Nico
We study the SIS and SIRI epidemic models discussing different approaches to compute the thresholds that determine the appearance of an epidemic disease. The stochastic SIS model is a well known mathematical model, studied in several contexts. Here, we present recursively derivations of the dynamic equations for all the moments and we derive the stationary states of the state variables using the moment closure method. We observe that the steady states give a good approximation of the quasi-stationary states of the SIS model. We present the relation between the SIS stochastic model and the contact process introducing creation and annihilation operators. For the spatial stochastic epidemic reinfection model SIRI, where susceptibles S can become infected I, then recover and remain only partial immune against reinfection R, we present the phase transition lines using the mean field and the pair approximation for the moments. We use a scaling argument that allow us to determine analytically an explicit formula for the phase transition lines in pair approximation.
A Time Domain Channel Estimation Scheme for Equalize-and-Forward Relay-Assisted Systems
Publication . Neves, D.; Ribeiro, C.; Silva, A.; Gameiro, A.
In this paper we propose a scheme with a dedicated relay node for an OFDM-based system. We consider an antenna array at the base station and a single antenna at both the user terminal and the relay node. The relay-assisted protocol considered is equalize-and-forward. The proposed scheme requires the computation of parameters which depend on unknown variables at the destination and we show that under some assumptions the scheme is suitable to provide all those requirements. Also, we show that since the pilots at the relay node are properly designed the TD-MMSE estimator can still provide the required channel estimate. The system performance is evaluated by considering a typical pedestrian scenario based on WiMAX specification. The results show that the degradation in the estimator performance is negligible.
Factorization à la Dirac applied to the time-fractional telegraph equation
Publication . Ferreira, M.; Rodrigues, M.M.; Vieira, N.
This paper examines a coupled system of two-term time-fractional diffusion Dirac-type equations. The system is derived by factorizing the multi-dimensional time-fractional telegraph equation with Hilfer fractional derivatives, using the Dirac method and a triplet of Pauli matrices. Solutions are obtained using operational methods provided by the combination of the Fourier transform in the space variable and the Laplace transform in the time variable. Key results include the discovery of novel Fourier transform pairs. These pairs relate specific Fourier kernels of bivariate Mittag-Leffler functions to Fox H-functions of two variables. This allows to obtain explicit solutions of the system in both Fourier-time and space-time domains. The asymptotic behaviour of these solutions is rigorously analysed, and graphical representations are generated. Further, we show that the factorization allows for the use of alternative triplets of Pauli matrices yielding related solutions. The results obtained can be generalised to the case of 𝜓-Hilfer derivatives.
Efficient MV prediction for zonal search in video transcoding
Publication . Marcelino, S.; Faria, S.; Assunção, P.; Moiron, S.; Ghanbari, M.
This paper proposes a method to efficiently find motion vector predictions for zonal search motion re-estimation in fast video transcoders. The motion information extracted from the incoming video stream is processed to generate accurate motion vector predictions for transcoding with reduced complexity. Our results demonstrate that motion vector predictions computed by the proposed method outperform those generated by the highly efficient EPZS (Enhanced Predictive Zonal Search) algorithm in H.264/AVC transcoders. The computational complexity is reduced up to 59.6% at negligible cost in R-D performance. The proposed method can be useful in multimedia systems and applications using any type of transcoder, such as transrating and/or spatial resolution downsizing.