Background Albatrosses and other large seabirds use dynamic soaring to gain sufficient energy from the wind to travel large distances rapidly and with little apparent effort. The recent development of miniature bird-borne tracking devices now makes it possible to explore the physical and biological implications of this means of locomotion in detail. Here we use GPS tracking and concurrent reana...

Reuse of partially treated domestic wastewater for agricultural irrigation is a growing practice in arid regions throughout the world. A field sampling campaign to determine bioaerosol concentration, culturability, and identity at various wind speeds was conducted at a flooded wastewater irrigation site in Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico. Direct fluorescent microscopy measurements for total a...

Bioassay cages are commonly used to assess efficacy of insecticides against adult mosquitoes in the field. To correlate adult mortality readings to insecticidal efficacy and/or spray application parameters properly, it is important to know how the cage used in the bioassay interacts with the spray cloud containing the applied insecticide. This study compared the size of droplets, wind speed, an...

The vertical scales of turbulence at the Mt. Wilson observatory are inferred from data from the University of Califcmnia at Berkeley Infrared Spatial Interferometer (1S1), by modeling path length fluctuations observed in the interferometric paths to celestial objects and those in instrumental ground-based paths. The correlations between the stellar and ground-based path length fluctuations and ...

This paper presents the technical and economic analysis of a solar–wind electricity generation system to meet power requirements rural community (Okorobo-Ile Town in Rivers State, Nigeria) using Renewable—energy Energy—efficiency Technology Screening (RETScreen) software. The entire load estimation region was classified into high class, middle lower class. Two annual export rates were considere...

Wind environment in the populated built area especially in campus is important. This s tudy tes ted57 crossroad spots over of the whole campus in North China University of Technology (NCUT). The data of wind speed and direction were measured at fixed time and fixed place. The average, maximum values as well as the speed variation scale were calculated. Wind comfort criteria were adopted t...

A method for estimating risk ratios of wind damage for Pinus thunbergii trees and stands was developed based on stem bending theory and coefficients characterizing wind profiles (attenuation coefficients wtr, wst for single tree and stand respectively), distribution of branches (constant ac) and optical stratification porosity (OSP) (extinction coefficient ec). For individual trees, if acs equa...

Previous studies indicated that surface wind speed over China declined during past decades, and several explanations exist in the literature. This study presents long-term (1960–2009) changes of both surface and upper-air wind speeds over China and addresses observed evidence to interpret these changes. It is found that surface wind over China underwent a three-phase change over the past 50 yr:...

Measurements of flow past simulated sinusoidal hills were taken in an atmospheric boundary layer wind tunnel (ABLWT) that modeled typical full-scale complex terrain for many wind turbine locations in the Altamont Pass, California, USA. Velocity profiles and speed-up factors for several model hills were determined. All hills modeled had the same height and sinusoidal cross-section, and length-to...