This paper was published in the IEEE Infocom of 1999. The main objective, as the title suggested, is to speed up client download speed by accessing multiple mirror sites in parallel. The idea is to allow multiple senders in possession of the same file to simultaneously transmit data to the client using traditional end-to-end scheme, the data transmitted is the craftily encoded and sliced versio...

An experimental study was conducted to quantify the characteristics of wake vortex and flow structures around a high-rise building model as well as the resultant wind loads (both forces and moments) acting on the test model in tornado-like winds. In addition to measuring wind loads acting on the tested high-rise building model using a highsensitivity load cell, a digital Particle Image Velocime...

One of the promising ways to tame a tornado is to inject dust into it. Somewhat counter-intuitively, injecting coarse dust only makes the tornado stronger, while injecting fine dust can indeed help in the taming. This difference has been explained by a mathematical analysis of the corresponding equations, but (in contrast to the usual physics practice) this mathematical analysis has not yet bee...

OBJECTIVES We describe the demographics of the decedents from the tornado outbreak in Alabama on April 27, 2011; examine the circumstances of death surrounding these fatalities; and identify measures to prevent future tornado-related fatalities. METHODS We collected information about the decedents from death certificates, disaster-related mortality surveillance, and interview data collected b...

As the result of an eruption, or some other cause tending to produce rapid convection, a gaseous column moves upward from within the sun toward the surface of the photosphere. Vortex motion is initiated by differences in velocity of adjoining surfaces or by irregularities of structure and is maintained by convection. The circulation in the vortex is vertically upward and then outward along the ...

The 8 May 2003 Oklahoma City tornadic supercell is predicted with the ARPS model using four nested grids with 9-km, 1-km, 100-m, and 50-m grid spacings. The Oklahoma City WSR-88D radar radial velocity and reflectivity data are assimilated through the ARPS 3DVAR and cloud analysis on the 1-km grid to generate an initial condition that includes a well-analyzed supercell and associated low-level m...

Cell mergers have long been believed to play a role in tornado production, although the exact mechanisms are poorly understood. Several studies have noted the resultant thunderstorm intensification that occurs during a cell merger event (e.g., Cunning et al. 1982, Westcott and Kennedy 1989). Numerical simulations (e.g., Tao and Simpson 1989, Kogan and Shapiro 1996, Bluestein and Weisman 2000) h...

Social Media and micro-blogging is being used during crisis events to provide live up-to-date information as events evolve (before, during and after). Messages are posted by citizens or public officials. To understand the effectiveness of these messages, we examined the content of geo-located Twitter messages (“tweets”) sent during the Moore, Oklahoma tornado of May 20, 2013 (+/-1day) to explor...

Without infrastructural support from base stations, mobile nodes in an ad hoc network communicate with each other in a peer-to-peer fashion. This poses a challenge in data dissemination among the mobile peers, each having limited transmission range and unpredictable mobility. In this paper, we first propose a novel mobility model to characterize user mobility in a civilian environment, such as ...

The characteristics of near-storm environments have been elucidated by several studies of observed soundings near reported tornadoes (Maddox 1976; Kerr and Darkow 1996), all soundings for multiple severe weather hazards during a complete year (Rasmussen and Blanchard 1998), or long-period samples of soundings associated with severe thunderstorms (Craven and Brooks 2004). Meanwhile, much attenti...