A novel model is here introduced for theSOC change indexdefinedas the normalized difference between the actual Soil Organic Carbon and thevalue assumed at an initial reference year. It is tailored on the RothC carbonmodel dynamics and assumes as baseline the value of the SOC equilibriumunder constant environmental conditions. A sensitivity analysis is performedto evaluate the response of the model to changes of temperature, Net PrimaryProduction (NPP), and land use soil class (forest, grassland, arable).

This paper aims at building a variational approach to the dynamics of discrete topological singularities in two dimensions, based on I"-convergence. We consider discrete systems, described by scalar functions defined on a square lattice and governed by periodic interaction potentials. Our main motivation comes from XY spin systems, described by the phase parameter, and screw dislocations, described by the displacement function. For these systems, we introduce a discrete notion of vorticity.

Trends of soil organic carbon (SOC) are significant indicators for land and soil degradation. Decrease in SOC compromises the efforts to achieve by 2030, a land degradation neutral world, as required by Target 15.3 of the Seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by United Nations in September 2015.

We consider a core-radius approach to nonlocal perimeters governed by isotropic kernels having critical and supercritical exponents, extending the nowadays classical notion of s-fractional perimeter, defined for 0<s<1, to the case s>=1. We show that, as the core-radius vanishes, such core-radius regularized s-fractional perimeters, suitably scaled, ?-converge to the standard Euclidean perimeter.

The improvement of the readability of time-frequency transforms is an important topic in the field of fast-oscillating signal processing. The reassignment method is often used due to its adaptivity to different transforms and nice formal properties. However, it strongly depends on the selection of the analysis window and it requires the computation of the same transform using three different but well-defined windows.

A prodromal phase of Parkinson's disease (PD) may precede motor manifestations by decades. PD patients' siblings are at higher risk for PD, but the prevalence and distribution of prodromal symptoms are unknown. The study objectives were (1) to assess motor and non-motor features estimating prodromal PD probability in PD siblings recruited within the European PROPAG-AGEING project; (2) to compare motor and non-motor symptoms to the well-established DeNoPa cohort.

In this article, a methodology to retrieve the precipitable water vapor (PWV) from a differential interferometric time series is presented. We used external data provided by atmospheric weather models (e.g., ERA-Interim reanalysis) to constrain the initial state and by Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) to phase ambiguities elimination introduced by phase unwrapping algorithm. An iterative least-square is then used to solve the optimization problem.

We consider low-energy configurations for the Heitmann-Radin sticky discs functional, in the limit of diverging number of discs. More precisely, we renormalize the Heitmann-Radin potential by subtracting the minimal energy per particle, i.e. the so-called kissing number.

We present a modified version of an existing lake ecosystem model, describing a trophic chain generated by nutrients, phytoplankton and zooplankton (NPZ model). The NPZ model takes into account the vertical dynamics of the biomasses of the main species. We tailor the model to specific ecosystems by including seasonality in the dynamics of the various compartments. Moreover, different species exhibit a different behaviour with respect to diffusion and to the rate of vertical movement.

We consider a simple discrete model for screw dislocations in crystals. Using a variational discrete scheme we study the motion of a configuration of dislocations toward low energy configurations. We deduce an effective fully overdamped dynamics that follows the maximal dissipation criterion introduced in Cermelli and Gurtin (1999) and predicts motion along the glide directions of the crystal. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.