Sudden Ones Research Articles

The ‘Deluge’ of 25 October 1822 in Genoa, Italy

The ‘Deluge’ of 25 October 1822 in Genoa, Italy

Changes in the Price of Food and Agricultural Raw Materials in Poland in the Context of the European Union Accession

Shaping of prices of agricultural raw materials results from the impact of a wide range of factors that influence prices in different links in the marketing chain. Political changes, especially sudden ones, which abruptly changed farming conditions, were one of the reasons for the asymmetry in price transmission. The main purpose of the paper was to estimate the trends in changes in agricultural raw materials prices in comparison to the trends in food prices in Poland in two time frames, differing in political and economic conditions: before (1999–2004) and after Poland’s accession (2005–2019) to the European Union. It was found that the accession to the EU improved the situation of farmers in agricultural markets. There was a reversal of downward price trends in agricultural raw materials and their stabilization. In the years 1995–2005, for most of the prices of agricultural raw materials and food under the analysis, the differences between the trends were not statistically significant. This situation was consistent with the model of market operating under perfect competition. The trends in the prices of wheat, rolls, and bread, as well as the prices of livestock for slaughter-pigs and roast beef were the only exceptions. In turn, in the years 2005–2019 statistically significant differences between the trends in the prices of agricultural raw materials and food were recorded for wheat, bread, and flour; milk, butter, and cottage cheese; eggs and egg retail prices; as well as livestock for slaughter, cattle, and sausages. No statistically significant differences were found for the remaining relationships of the analyzed prices of agricultural raw materials and food. These data indicate a different level of price transmission depending on the product group.

Transport Vehicle Maintenance Optimization

The successful maintenance of transport vehicles in operable condition is facilitated by the proper assessment of their technical condition and forecasting its changes. The efficient operation of vehicles is only achieved if the changes in the engine load in the forecast cause changes in the dynamics of technical condition parameters. Besides, forecasting can help reduce vehicle repair costs. The forecasts are based on vehicle component, assembly, and subsystem failure statistics over a certain period. We must understand that the overall failure values include both gradual and sudden ones. While classifying failures as gradual or sudden when performing repairs is not challenging, forecasting sudden failures is quite difficult. We suggest failure forecasting methods based on the statistical sampling and in line with the following assumptions: Gradual failures are associated with the intensive operation of vehicles and their changes are proportional to the changes in vehicle operation duration. Sudden failures do not depend on the vehicle workload but have an inverse effect on it: the more sudden failures there are, the less useful work vehicles can perform. Thus, it is possible to describe the changes in gradual and sudden failures over time. It can expand the theoretical understanding of vehicle operation and provide repair forecasting tools to operators and maintenance companies.

Convergent Validation of Methods for the Identification of Psychotherapeutic Phase Transitions in Time Series of Empirical and Model Systems.

AimIn many cases, the dynamics of psychotherapeutic change processes is characterized by sudden and critical transitions. In theoretical terms, these transitions may be “phase transitions” of self-organizing nonlinear systems. Meanwhile, a variety of methods is available to identify phase transitions even in short time series. However, it is still an open question if different methods for timeseries analysis reveal convergent results indicating the moments of critical transitions and related precursors.Methods and ProceduresSeven concepts which are commonly used in nonlinear time series analysis were investigated in terms of their ability to identify changes in psychological time series: Recurrence Plots, Change Point Analysis, Dynamic Complexity, Permutation Entropy, Time Frequency Distributions, Instantaneous Frequency, and Synchronization Pattern Analysis, i.e., the dynamic inter-correlation of the system’s variables. Phase transitions were simulated by shifting control parameters in the Hénon map dynamics, in a simulation model of psychotherapy processes (one by an external shift of the control parameter and one created by a simulated control parameter shift), and three sets of empirical time series generated by daily self-ratings of patients during the treatment.ResultsThe applied methods showed converging results indicating the moments of dynamic transitions within an acceptable tolerance. The convergence of change points was confirmed statistically by a comparison to random surrogates. In the three simulated dynamics with known phase transitions, these could be identified, and in the empirical cases, the methods converged indicating one and the same transition (possibly the phase transitions of the cases). Moreover, changes that did not manifest in a shift of mean or variance could be detected.ConclusionChanges can occur in many different ways in the psychotherapeutic process. For instance, there can be very slow and small transitions or very high and sudden ones. The results show the validity and stability of different measures indicating pattern transitions and/or early warning signals of those transitions. This has profound implications for real-time monitoring in psychotherapy, especially in cases where a transition is not obvious to the eye. Reliably identifying points of change is mandatory also for research on precursors, which in turn can help improving treatment.

ST-Elevation Myocardial Infarction in Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy

The papaer presents the cases of a twelve years old boy brought in emergency department with the following symptoms: pain in the thorax and upper abdomen, nausea, vomiting with sudden ones 11 h ago.

Interkey Distances Also Shorten Subjective Time Reproductions in Real Modulating Tonal Music

Real and long music stimuli are seldom used in music cognition and subjective time literatures. We found longer time reproductions for Berio’s Symphony for Eight Voices and Orchestra than for Mahler’s Symphony No. 2. Berio recomposed Mahler’s symphony, inserting complexity in all its elements. The contextual-change model explains these data, predicting longer time reproduction for a greater amount of information. Thereafter, we found synthetic tonal modulations eliciting time reproductions in an inverse function of interkey distances, with major impact for sudden ones, an opposite result from contextual change prediction. Alternatively, we proposed the Expected Development Fraction (EDF) Model, claiming disproportion between expected and perceived times. In this study, we manipulated interkey distance using the real piece Inspiração by Brazilian composer Garoto. Results confirmed the EDF Model prediction. Formatting the EDF Model’s key spatial-axis according to adapted key profile measures of Krumhansl (1990) allowed close correspondence between simulations and data.

Centrifugal Pumps in Downstream: Operational Safety Increase

The paper considers an analysis of vibration changes due to strength degradation of centrifugal pumps details while operating at refineries. The analysis revealed sudden changes of vibration in pump units operation. The paper offers a method of separating smooth changes from sudden ones, degradation process monitoring, and prompting personnel on scheduling the units decommissioning for repair and maintenance. Method of long-term diagnostics for the whole operation life of the pump unit is given.

E-motions

An experiment is presented, aimed at preliminary testing the hypothesis according to which facial expressions related to specific emotions, such as anger, fear, and joy, incorporate a sense of dynamicity and are used to enhance the representation of motion in static artworks. Since a growing body of evidence shows that motion is one of the core components of emotion, and the representation of motion in art is often achieved by portraying unstable poses, we hypothesize that the visually more dynamic emotions are those with ‘unstable’ facial expressions, i.e., expressions that imply muscular tensions that cannot be held for long (e.g., rage, grief, amazement: E-motions) whereas static emotions are those which can last and even represent a constant facial feature in some people. To test this hypothesis we chose eleven static artworks from which we derived twelve human figures that convey different emotions in different proportions. Images were manipulated to produce two sets of stimuli: headless bodies (Set 1) and bodiless heads (Set 2). Participants were asked to rate perceived dynamicity of stimuli from Set 1 on a 7-point Likert scale (Session 1) and to rate each stimulus from Set 2 for joy, sadness, surprise, disgust, anger, fear, serenity, puzzlement and dynamicity (i.e., eight emotions and dynamicity). As expected, we found that some facial emotions (i.e., disgust, anger and fear) are positively related to the dynamicity attributed to the artworks: those emotions are the more sudden ones and thus the more ‘unstable’. We also found that serenity is negatively related to dynamicity. Contrary to our expectations, we found instead that joy is statistically different from dynamicity, a result that calls for further investigation.

Measuring noise in magnetometers: An example using the Mars Global Surveyor magnetometers

[1] A recently developed data analysis tool allows direct measurement of the total root-mean-square noise in magnetometer data. Since the total is a combination of intrinsic instrument noise and solar wind magnetic field fluctuations, we can put upper limits on the instrument noise during periods of relatively quiet solar wind fields. The technique involves taking vector and scalar products of successive magnetic measurements; the resulting scalar quantity is insensitive to slow field variations as well as sudden ones (i.e., tangential discontinuities) and provides a measure of total noise. We illustrate this analysis by determining the noise levels for the Mars Global Surveyor magnetometer. Far from Mars and any obvious waves, we find that the magnetic field measurements noise level is ±0.05 nT. This is consistent with the ground-based instrument's measured noise level of ±0.01 nT expected under ideal conditions.

Approximate Quantum Mechanical Cross Sections and Rate Constants for the H + O3 Atmospheric Reaction Using Novel Elastic Optimum Angle Adiabatic Approaches

Three-dimensional quantum dynamics computations of cross sections and rate constants for the atmospheric reaction H + O3 → O2 + OH are presented. Using a novel elastic optimum angle adiabatic approach published in a previous paper (Varandas, A. J. C.; Szichman, H. Chem. Phys. Lett. 1998, 295, 113), the calculated cross sections cover the range of translational energies 0.035 ≤ Etr/eV ≤ 0.300. Applications of the new approach using both single-path and multiple-path schemes are reported. The results are compared with available classical trajectory and infinite-order-sudden-approximation results. It may be concluded that the calculations obtained from the single-path model give an improved agreement with respect to the sudden ones when compared with the classical trajectory results. In turn, the quantum elastic optimum angle adiabatic multiple-path results show excellent agreement with the same classical results.

Examination of fatigue resistance in turbine rotors on large models

1. The fatigue failures in the rotors of turbine generators can be classified from the dynamics of the fatigue process into slow ones characteristic of nominal working conditions and sudden ones occurring during normal or emergency overload when there are cracks of critical length. 2. The most hazardous points for fatigue failure in the sections of shafts containing segment grooves are the points of emergence of the grooves on the cylindrical surface. 3. It has been shown that SPD methods give good strengthening of rotor steel. which is due to the high residual compressive stresses in the surface layer. 4. Surface plastic deformation methods give high performance in increasing the fatigue strength of shafts with segment grooves.