Sap transport in trees has long fascinated scientists, and a vast literature exists on experimental and modelling studies of trees during the growing season when large negative stem pressures are generated by transpiration from leaves. Much less attention has been paid to winter months when trees are largely dormant but nonetheless continue to exhibit interesting flow behaviour. A prime example is sap exudation, which refers to the peculiar ability of sugar maple (Acer saccharum) and related species to generate positive stem pressure while in a leafless state.

Hybrid particle-continuum computational frameworks permit the simulation of gas flows by locally adjusting the resolution to the degree of non-equilibrium displayed by the flow in different regions of space and time. In this work, we present a new scheme that couples the direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) with the lattice Boltzmann (LB) method in the limit of isothermal flows.

We use high-resolution direct numerical simulations to study the anisotropic contents of a turbulent, statistically homogeneous flow with random transitions among multiple energy containing states. We decompose the velocity correlation functions on different sectors of the three-dimensional group of rotations, SO(3), using a high-precision quadrature. Scaling properties of anisotropic components of longitudinal and transverse velocity fluctuations are accurately measured at changing Reynolds numbers.

The Stokes drag force and the gravity force are usually sufficient to describe the behavior of sub-Kolmogorovsize (or pointlike) heavy particles in turbulence, in particular when the particle-to-fluid density ratio rho(p)/rho(integral) greater than or similar to 10(3) (with rho(p) and rho(f) the particle and fluid density, respectively). This is, in general, not the case for smaller particle-to-fluid density ratios, in particular not for rho(p)/rho(f) greater than or similar to 10(2).

Anisotropic particles are present in many natural and industrial flows. Here we perform direct numerical simulation (DNS) of turbulent pipe flows with dispersed finite-size prolate spheroids simulated by means of the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM). We consider three different particle shapes: spheroidal (aspect ratio 2 and 3) and spherical. These three simulations are complemented with a reference simulation of a single-phase flow. For the sake of comparison, all simulations, laden or unladen have the same energy input.

We present the results of a comparative study performed with three numerical methods applied to a flow in a three-dimensional geometry characterized by weak compressibility and large rarefaction effects. The employed methods, all based on the kinetic theory of gases, are the Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM) in a regularized formulation, the Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) approach and a hybrid method coupling the LBM and the DSMC recently developed by Di Staso et al., in this contribution extended to the case of simulations involving many particles and three-dimensional geometries.

To reduce the data acquisition time and the high-level sidelobes produced by conventional focusing methods for ground-based synthetic aperture radar interferometry, we present a new method to provide accurate displacement maps based on the dimension-reduced compressive sensing (CS) method combined with the multiple measurement vectors (MMVs) model. The proposed CS method consists in selecting the supported area of targets, estimated by the fast conventional method with undersampled data. The following sparse reconstruction is applied only to the selected areas.

A Global Navigational Satellite System (GNSS) tomography system is implemented in the Lisbon area, Portugal, to estimate the water vapor dynamics at a local scale. A field experiment was carried out, in which a series of temporary GNSS stations were installed, increasing the network from 9 permanent stations to a total of 17 GNSS stations. A radiosonde campaign was also performed with high sampling launches, at 4-h intervals, for 1 week. A time series of hourly 3D wet refractivity solutions were obtained during the radiosonde campaign.

In this paper we summarize the results of an experiment aiming to compare soil moisture estimates obtained by Sentinel-l interferometric data with in-situ measurements. The study area, located close to Lisbon in Companhia das Lezirias, Portugal is characterized by a flat topography, large agricultural areas and sparse vegetation. In a test site, four soil moisture sensors were deployed and soil moisture was measured (at a depth of 5 cm) for a period of 7 months in an hourly basis.