The feeder system of the Toba supervolcano from the slab to the shallow reservoir.

The Toba Caldera has been the site of several large explosive eruptions in the recent geological past, including the world's largest Pleistocene eruption 74,000 years ago. The major cause of this particular behaviour may be the subduction of the fluid-rich Investigator Fracture Zone directly beneath the continental crust of Sumatra and possible tear of the slab. Here we show a new seismic tomography model, which clearly reveals a complex multilevel plumbing system beneath Toba.

Repetitive patterns in rapid optical variations in the nearby black-hole binary V404 Cygni.

How black holes accrete surrounding matter is a fundamental yet unsolved question in astrophysics. It is generally believed that matter is absorbed into black holes via accretion disks, the state of which depends primarily on the mass-accretion rate. When this rate approaches the critical rate (the Eddington limit), thermal instability is supposed to occur in the inner disk, causing repetitive patterns of large-amplitude X-ray variability (oscillations) on timescales of minutes to hours.

An early prediction of the maximum amplitude of the solar cycle 25.

A solar activity precursor technique of spotless event has been currently used to predict the strengths and the times of rise of the 11-year coming cycles. This simple statistical method has been previously applied to predict the maximum amplitudes and the times of rises of cycles 22 and 23. The results obtained are successful for both cycles.

Testing the applicability of artificial intelligence techniques to the subject of erythemal ultraviolet solar radiation. Part two: an intelligent system based on multi-classifier technique.

The problem we address here describes the on-going research effort that takes place to shed light on the applicability of using artificial intelligence techniques to predict the local noon erythemal UV irradiance in the plain areas of Egypt. In light of this fact, we use the bootstrap aggregating (bagging) algorithm to improve the prediction accuracy reported by a multi-layer perceptron (MLP) network. The results showed that, the overall prediction accuracy for the MLP network was only 80.

Testing the applicability of artificial intelligence techniques to the subject of erythemal ultraviolet solar radiation part one: the applicability of a fuzzy rule based approach.

This work presents the applicability of applying a fuzzy logic approach to the calculation of noontime erythemal UV irradiance for the plain areas of Egypt. When different combinations of data sets were examined from the test performance point of view, it was found that 91% of the whole series was estimated within a deviation of less than +/-10 mW/m(2), and 9% of these deviations lay within the range of +/-15 mW/m(2) to +/-25 mW/m(2).

Influences of the weather and air pollutants on cardiovascular disease in the metropolitan area of São Paulo.

Objective: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) has been associated with meteorological variables and pollutant levels. However, these relationships have rarely been studied in São Paulo, Brazil.

Methods: From 1996 to 2000, biometeorological indices including meteorological variables such as temperature, relative humidity, and wind were used to measure thermal comfort in elderly people mortality (>65 years old), and CVD was quantified.

The relative influence of the anthropogenic air pollutants on the atmospheric turbidity factors measured at an urban monitoring station.

This work is based on simultaneous measurements of direct solar radiation along with other chemical measurements, with the objective of investigating the diurnal and seasonal variations of atmospheric turbidity factors (i.e., Linke's factor, Angström's coefficient, and aerosol optical depth).

Dependence of urban air pollutants on meteorology.

Dependence of air pollutants on meteorology is presented with the aim of understanding the governing processes pollutants phase interaction. Intensive measurements of particulate matter (PM10) and gaseous materials (e.g.

The influence of meteorological conditions on the behavior of pollutants concentrations in São Paulo, Brazil.

The observed behavior of pollution concentrations to the prevailing meteorological conditions has been studied for the period from June 13 to September 2, 1994, for the Metropolitan Area of Sao Paulo (MASP). The synoptic conditions, which prevailed during the period, have been identified. The behavior of these large-scale systems namely the relative positions, the nature and the types of the anticyclone or cold front (CF) has been investigated, and for each identified synoptic situation, trace elements concentrations have been determined.