Merger behavior for the United States: Some spatial aspects

This paper examines the effect of distance on acquisition patterns for every fifth year for the period 1955–1980. The fifteen most active merger states are shown to have a relatively constant set of interstate merger relationships once the economic cycle is removed. Finally, the effect of mergers on external control levels for the United States is provided.     

SPATIAL PERSPECTIVES OF THE FLOWS THROUGH THE SOUTHEAST ELECTRICAL TRANSMISSION NETWORK

Cooperative effort among electrical energy utilities is one possible response to increasing stress on generation and transmission systems. Increased interregional flows are a direct consequence of cooperative efforts. Any inefficient electrical flows that may occur among cooperating utilities represent a real cost to society because energy is lost. The Southeast region of the United States provides an ideal situation for investigating the efficiency of flows of electricity. The out-of-kilter algorithm (OKA) is applied to the electrical system of the Southeast abstracted as a graph. Flows are analyzed under various assumptions concerning generative efficiency. Texas and Florida are established as areas where cooperative efforts are inhibited by lack of transmission capacity under possible stress.     

STRUCTURE AND ROTATION OF THE SOLAR INTERIOR: INITIAL RESULTS FROM THE MDI MEDIUM-L PROGRAM

The medium-l program of the Michelson Doppler Imager instrument on board SOHO provides continuous observations of oscillation modes of angular degree, l, from 0 to 300. The data for the program are partly processed on board because only about 3% of MDI observations can be transmitted continuously to the ground. The on-board data processing, the main component of which is Gaussian-weighted binning, has been optimized to reduce the negative influence of spatial aliasing of the high-degree oscillation modes. The data processing is completed in a data analysis pipeline at the SOI Stanford Support Center to determine the mean multiplet frequencies and splitting coefficients. The initial results show that the noise in the medium-l oscillation power spectrum is substantially lower than in ground-based measurements. This enables us to detect lower amplitude modes and, thus, to extend the range of measured mode frequencies. This is important for inferring the Sun's internal structure and rotation. The MDI observations also reveal the asymmetry of oscillation spectral lines. The line asymmetries agree with the theory of mode excitation by acoustic sources localized in the upper convective boundary layer. The sound-speed profile inferred from the mean frequencies gives evidence for a sharp variation at the edge of the energy-generating core. The results also confirm the previous finding by the GONG (Gough et al., 1996) that, in a thin layer just beneath the convection zone, helium appears to be less abundant than predicted by theory. Inverting the multiplet frequency splittings from MDI, we detect significant rotational shear in this thin layer. This layer is likely to be the place where the solar dynamo operates. In order to understand how the Sun works, it is extremely important to observe the evolution of this transition layer throughout the 11-year activity cycle.     

农业气象教育和培训的现状与未来需求

<正>农业气象学是研究农业与气象条件之间相互关系及其规律的科学,它既是应用气象学的一个分支,又是农学的一门基础学科。其基本任务就在于研究这些农业自然资源和农业自然灾害的时空分布规律,为农业的区划和规划、作物的合理布局、人工调节小气候和     

Boundary-layer resistances of artificial leaves in turbulent air II: Leaves inclined to the mean flow

The effect of turbulence on boundary-layer resistances to heat and water vapour transfer from leaves inclined to the mean airflow has been studied using heated square plates in a wind tunnel. Heat and water vapour transfer coefficients increased with streamwise turbulence intensity for all angles of inclination of the plates to the mean flow, and the increase was dependent on the ratio of the longitudinal integral length scale to the plate dimension. This dependence on the turbulence length scale probably results from a resonant interaction between the boundary layer on the plate and the turbulence in the approaching mean flow.The paper also presents results of experiments with heated plates having serrated leading edges and/or a transverse ridge on the surface, conducted in an attempt to understand the aerodynamic importance of morphological irregularities on the leaf surface. The irregularities studied here disturbed the boundary layer on the plate, and greatly increased heat transfer when the angle of inclination of the plates to the mean wind was small, but had little effect when the angle of inclination exceeded 40 °.     

CHANGES IN SOVIET NATURAL GAS FLOWS: 1970–1985*

Natural gas flows in the USSR are modeled using the out-of-kilter algorithm after the transmission system is abstracted into a network of demand and supply nodes and bounded arcs. Evaluation of the resulting flow pattern is done for 1970, 1975, 1980, and 1985. Shifts in gas supplies from the European area to Central Asia and now to West Siberia have necessitated changes in the Soviet natural gas pipeline system. The system is entering a period of long run stability between the geographic distribution of supply and demand in contrast to a continually changing distribution pattern before 1980.     

TIME-DISTANCE HELIOSEISMOLOGY WITH THE MDI INSTRUMENT: INITIAL RESULTS

In time-distance helioseismology, the travel time of acoustic waves is measured between various points on the solar surface. To some approximation, the waves can be considered to follow ray paths that depend only on a mean solar model, with the curvature of the ray paths being caused by the increasing sound speed with depth below the surface. The travel time is affected by various inhomogeneities along the ray path, including flows, temperature inhomogeneities, and magnetic fields. By measuring a large number of times between different locations and using an inversion method, it is possible to construct 3-dimensional maps of the subsurface inhomogeneities. The SOI/MDI experiment on SOHO has several unique capabilities for time-distance helioseismology. The great stability of the images observed without benefit of an intervening atmosphere is quite striking. It has made it possible for us to detect the travel time for separations of points as small as 2.4 Mm in the high-resolution mode of MDI (0.6 arc sec pixel^-1). This has enabled the detection of the supergranulation flow. Coupled with the inversion technique, we can now study the 3-dimensional evolution of the flows near the solar surface.     

V: Daily catchment rainfall estimated from meteosat

Meteosat data for 1986 to 1988 have been used to estimate the daily rainfall over catchments of tributaries of the river Senegal in Mail and Guinea. The technique uses the methodology of the TAMSAT group of the University of Reading, which involves the selection of an appropriate cloud top temperature threshold to determine whether the cloud is producing rain and the rainfall is estimated from the period during which storm clouds remain over a site. After calibration against all available raingauges in the catchments, the daily rainfall estimates derived by this technique were used as inputs to rainfall-runoff models. The results indicate that the streamflow models, which had themselves been calibrated using raingauge data, performed as well or better when the satellite derived estimates were used as inputs than when gauge data were used. An economical, automated operational system is described.     

THE ELIMINATION OF RACIALLY IDENTIFIABLE SCHOOLS *

Recent federal court decisions have emphasized the need to eliminate schools whose racial composition varies from that of the whole district by more than a fixed percent. A linear programming model is presented to assist school administrators in developing desegregation plans that comply with these guidelines. An efficient solutional technique that exploits the special structure of this model increases problem-size capabilities. A study of the Columbus City School District examines the tradeoffs involved at different levels of desegregation.