Model reference control design methods fail when the plant has one or more non-minimum phase zeros that are not included in the reference model, leading possibly to an unstable closed loop. This is a very serious problem for data-based control design methods, where the plant is typically unknown. In this paper, we extend the Virtual Reference Feedback Tuning method to non-minimum phase plants. This extension is based on the idea proposed in Lecchini and Gevers (2002) for Iterative Feedback Tuning. We present a simple two-step procedure that can cope with the situation where the unknown plant may or may not have non-minimum phase zeros.

This study is the first assessment of mollusk fossil assemblages relative to the compositional fidelity of modern mollusk living and death assemblages. It also shows that the sedimentary record can provide information on the original, non-human-impacted, freshwater malacofauna biodiversity, based on Late Pleistocene shells. The fossil mollusk assemblage from the Touro Passo Formation (Pleistocene-Holocene) was compared to living and death assemblages of the Touro Passo River, southern Brazil, revealing little resemblance between fossil and live-dead species composition. Although the living and death assemblages agree closely in richness, species composition, and species relative abundances (both proportional and rank), the fossil assemblage differs significantly from both modern assemblages in most of these measures. The fossil assemblage is dominated by the native endemic corbiculid bivalve Cyanocyclas limosa and the gastropod Heleobia aff. bertoniana. These are absent in the living assemblages, and both living and death assemblages are dominated by the alien Asiatic corbiculid C. fluminea, which is absent in the fossil assemblage. The fossil assemblage also contains, overall, a higher proportional abundance of relatively thick-shelled species, suggesting a genuine bias against the thinner-and smaller-shelled species. Our results suggest that contemporary environmental changes, such as the introduction of some alien freshwater mollusk species, together with post-burial taphonomic processes, are the main factors leading to the poor fidelity of the fossil assemblage stu died. Hence, the taxonomic composition of the Late Pleistocene mollusks from the Touro Passo Formation probably would show greater similarity to present-day assemblages wherever the mollusk biodiversity is not disturbed by human activities. © 2011 SEPM (Society for Sedimentary Geology).

The dispersive characteristics and absorption coefficient of Alfvén waves propagating parallel to the ambient magnetic field are discussed, taking into account the effects of both the charged dust particles present in the interplanetary medium and the superthermal character of the electron distribution function, using physical parameters relevant for solar and stellar winds. The solar wind electrons are described by an isotropic $ąppa$ distribution and the protons are described by a Maxwellian. The results are valid for a frequency regime well above the dust-plasma and dust-cyclotron frequencies. However, the theoretical formulation is fully kinetic and the dust charge variation is taken into account. The charging process of the dust is assumed to be associated with the capture of electrons and ions by the dust particles during inelastic collisions with the plasma particles. The dispersion relation for parallel-propagating Alfvén waves is numerically solved and the solutions are compared with particular situations where either the dust particles are absent or the electrons are described by a Maxwellian. It is shown that the presence of both the charged dust particles and the superthermal character of the electron distribution function sensibly modify the dispersion relation of low-frequency and long-wavelength Alfvén waves and significantly increase the absorption coefficient, strongly suggesting that both effects are equally important for a realistic description of the physical processes that occur in solar and stellar winds and that are influenced by the Alfvén waves, such as the energization of particles and the turbulent cascade of magnetic fluctuations.

It is by now well known that electron beams play an important role in generating radio emissions such as type II and type III radio bursts, commonly observed by spacecraft in the interplanetary medium. Electron beams streaming back from Earth's bow shock into the solar wind have been proposed as a possible source for the electron plasma waves observed by spacecraft in the electron foreshock. Recent observations suggest that during the natural evolution of the foreshock plasma, multiple electron beams could be injected over a period of time, losing their individual identity to coalesce into a single beam. In this work, we use an electromagnetic particle-in-cell (PIC) code &\#8220;KEMPO 1D, adapted&\#8221; to simulate two electron beams that are injected into a plasma at different times. The first beam disturbs the background plasma and generates Langmuir waves by electron beam-plasma interaction. Subsequently, another beam is inserted into the system and interacts with the first one and with the driven Langmuir waves to produce electromagnetic radiation. The results of our simulation show that the first beam can produce electrostatic harmonics of the plasma frequency, while the second beam intensifies the emission at the harmonics that is produced by the first one. The behavior of the second beam is strongly determined by the preexisting Langmuir wave electric fields. The simulations also show, as a result of the interaction between both beams, a clear nonlinear frequency shift of the harmonic modes as well as an increase of electromagnetic and kinetic energies of the wave-particle system.