Cooperative Research Centre

About: Cooperative Research Centre is a based out in . It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Sea ice. The organization has 7633 authors who have published 8607 publications receiving 429721 citations.

Direct and Stochastic Generation of Network Models from Tomographic Images; Effect of Topology on Residual Saturations

Abstract: We generate the network model equivalents of four samples of Fontainebleau sandstone obtained from the analysis of microtomographic images. We present the measured distributions of flow-relevant geometric and topological properties of the pore space. We generate via bond dilution from a regular lattice, stochastic network models with identical geometric (pore-size, throat-size) and topological (coordination number distribution) properties. We then simulate the two-phase flow properties directly on the network model and the stochastic equivalent for each sample. The simulations on the stochastic networks are found to provide a poor representation of the results on the direct network equivalents. We find that the description of the network topology is particularly crucial in accurately predicting the residual phase saturations. We also find it necessary to introduce into the stochastic network geometry both extended pore-pore correlations and local pore-throat correlations to obtain good agreement with flow properties on the rock-equivalent network.

Tunability of polarization-insensitive wavelength converters based on four-wave mixing in semiconductor optical amplifiers

Abstract: Optically transparent wavelength converters, in which the output is a wavelength-converted replica of the input, may be required to improve performance and ease management in future "mixed-mode" wavelength division multiplexed networks. Four-wave mixing (FWM) in semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOA's) is an attractive optically transparent wavelength conversion technique because it allows pump tunability. So far, three schemes for polarization-insensitive FWM in SOA's have been demonstrated, using two copolarized pumps, two orthogonal pumps, and polarization diversity. This paper presents a comparison of their output signal-to-noise ratio, and hence their ultimate tunability. A simple analytical model for FWM in SOA's is used to predict that when each scheme has the same inputs and produces the same frequency shift, the polarization-diversity scheme has the highest output signal-to-noise ratio of the three schemes, and hence promises the greatest tunability.

Self-reported health and comfort in ‘modern’ office buildings: first results from the European OFFICAIR study

Abstract: In the European research project OFFICAIR, a procedure was developed to determine associations between characteristics of European offices and health and comfort of office workers, through a checklist and a selfadministered questionnaire including environmental, physiological, psychological, and social aspects. This procedure was applied in 167 office buildings in eight European countries (Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, France, Hungary, the Netherlands, and Finland) during the winter of 2011–2012. About 26 735 survey invitation e-mails were sent, and 7441 office workers were included in the survey. Among respondents who rated an overall comfort less than 4 (23%), ‘noise (other than from building systems)’, air ‘too dry’, and temperature ‘too variable’ were the main complaints selected. An increase of perceived control over indoor climate was positively associated with the perceived indoor environment quality. Almost one-third of office workers suffered from dry eyes and headache in the last 4 weeks. Physical building characteristics were associated with occupants’ overall satisfaction (acoustical solutions, mold growth, complaints procedure, cleaning activities) and health (number of occupants, lack of operable windows, presence of carpet and cleaning activities). OFFICAIR project provides a useful database to identify stressors related to indoor environmental quality and office worker’s health.

A genome-wide association study of meat and carcass traits in Australian cattle.

Abstract: Chromosomal regions containing DNA variation affecting the traits intramuscular fat percentage (IMF), meat tenderness measured as peak force to shear the LM (LLPF), and rump fat measured at the sacro-iliac crest in the chiller (CHILLP8) were identified using a set of 53,798 SNP genotyped on 940 taurine and indicine cattle sampled from a large progeny test experiment. Of these SNP, 87, 64, and 63 were significantly (P G SNP, was used to confirm these locations. In total, 37 SNP were significantly (P < 0.05) associated with the same trait and with the same favorable homozygote in both data sets, representing 27 chromosomal regions. For the trait IMF, the effect of SNP in the confirmation data set was predicted from the discovery set by multiplying the estimated allele effect of each SNP in the discovery set by the number of copies of the reference allele of each SNP in the confirmation set. These weighted effects were then summed over all SNP to generate a molecular breeding value (MBV) for each animal in the confirmation data set. Using a bivariate analysis of MBV and IMF phenotypes of animals in the confirmation set, a panel of 14 SNP explained 5.6 and 15.6% of the phenotypic and genetic variance of IMF, respectively, in the confirmation data set. The amount of variation did not increase as more SNP were added to the MBV and instead decreased to 1.2 and 3.8% of the phenotypic and genetic variance of IMF, respectively, when 329 SNP were included in the analysis.