Compact high-resolution spaceborne echelle grating spectrometer with acousto-optical tunable filter based order sorting for the infrared domain from 2.2 to 4.3 microm

A new compact spaceborne high-resolution spectrometer developed for the European Space Agency's Venus Express spacecraft is described. It operates in the IR wavelength range of 2.2 to 4.3 microm and measures absorption spectra of minor constituents in the Venusian atmosphere. It uses a novel echelle grating with a groove density of 4 lines/mm in a Littrow configuration in combination with an IR acousto-optic tunable filter for order sorting and an actively cooled HgCdTe focal plane array of 256 by 320 pixels. It is designed to obtain an instrument line profile of 0.2 cm(-1). First results on optical and spectral properties are reported.     

Effects of culturally adapted parent management training on Latino youth behavioral health outcomes.

A randomized experimental test of the implementation feasibility and the efficacy of a culturally adapted Parent Management Training intervention was conducted with a sample of 73 Spanish-speaking Latino parents with middle-school-aged youth at risk for problem behaviors. Intervention feasibility was evaluated through weekly parent satisfaction ratings, intervention participation and attendance, and overall program satisfaction. Intervention effects were evaluated by examining changes in parenting and youth adjustment for the intervention and control groups between baseline and intervention termination approximately 5 months later. Findings provided strong evidence for the feasibility of delivering the intervention in a larger community context. The intervention produced benefits in both parenting outcomes (i.e., general parenting, skill encouragement, overall effective parenting) and youth outcomes (i.e., aggression, externalizing, likelihood of smoking and use of alcohol, marijuana, and other drugs). Differential effects of the intervention were based on youth nativity status. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A joint investigation of misclassification treatments and imbalanced datasets on neural network performance

Two important factors that impact a classification model’s performance are imbalanced data and unequal misclassification cost consequences. These are especially important considerations for neural network models developed to estimate the posterior probabilities of group membership used in classification decisions. This paper explores the issues of asymmetric misclassification costs and unbalanced group sizes on neural network classification performance using an artificial data approach that is capable of generating more complex datasets than used in prior studies and which adds new insights to the problem and the results. A different performance measure, that is capable of directly measuring classification performance consistency with Bayes decision rule, is used. The results show that both asymmetric misclassification costs and imbalanced group sizes have significant effects on neural network classification performance both independently and via interaction effects. These are not always intuitive; they supplement prior findings, and raise issues for the future.     

Morris Water Maze Learning in Two Rat Strains Increases the Expression of the Polysialylated Form of the Neural Cell Adhesion Molecule in the Dentate Gyrus But Has No Effect on Hippocampal Neurogenesis.

In the current study, the authors investigated whether Morris water maze learning induces alterations in hippocampal neurogenesis or neural cell adhesion molecule (NCAM) polysialylation in the dentate gyrus. Two frequently used rat strains, Wistar and Sprague-Dawley, were trained in the spatial or the nonspatial version of the water maze. Both training paradigms did not have an effect on survival of newly formed cells that were labeled 7-9 days prior to the training or on progenitor proliferation in the subgranular zone. However, the granule cell layer of the spatially trained rats contained significantly more positive cells of the polysialylated form of the NCAM. These data demonstrate that Morris water maze learning causes plastic change in the dentate gyrus without affecting hippocampal neurogenesis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Assessing woody biomass in African tropical savannahs by multiscale remote sensing

Woody biomass production is a critical indicator in evaluation of land use management and the dynamics of the global carbon cycle (sequestration/emission) in terrestrial ecosystems. The objective of the present study was to develop, through a case study in Sudan, an operational multiscale remote-sensing-based methodology for large-scale estimation of woody biomass in tropical savannahs. Woody biomass estimation models obtained by different authors from destructive field measurements in different tropical savannah ecosystems were expressed as functions of tree canopy cover (CC). The field-measured CC data were used for developing regression equations with atmospherically corrected and reflectance-based vegetation indices derived from Landsat ETM+ (Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus) imagery. Among a set of vegetation indices, the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) provided the best correlation with CC (R² = 0.91) and was hence selected for woodland woody biomass estimation. After validation of the CC-NDVI model and its applicability to Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data, time-series MODIS NDVI data (MOD13Q1) were used to partition the woody component from the herbaceous component for sparse woodlands, woodlands and forests defined by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations Land Cover Map. Following the weighting of the estimation models based on the dominant woody species in each vegetation community, NDVI-based woody biomass models were applied according to their weighted ratios to the decomposed summer and autumn woody NDVI images in all vegetation communities in the whole of Sudan taking the year 2007, for example. The results were found to be in good agreement with those from other authors obtained by either field measurements or other remote sensing methods using MODIS and lidar data. It is concluded that the proposed approach is operational and can be applied for a reliable large-scale assessment of woody biomass at a ground resolution of 250 m in tropical savannah woodlands of any month or season.     

Interval Temporal Logic in General-Purpose Situational Simulations

The need for contextually rich educational environments in construction engineering and management calls for the development of situational simulations. Situational simulations emulate real processes and provide temporally dynamic clinical exercises that expose participants to rapidly unfolding events and the pressures of decision making. A survey of simulations of construction management processes and construction operations shows that commonly used discrete event simulation paradigms are unsuitable for representing actions and events in interactive general purpose situational simulations for the construction domain. Instead, this paper argues that a definition of the situational environment using the semantics of constraint satisfaction and an interval representation of time is more appropriate for representing activities, events, actions, and situations relevant to the construction domain. This paper also illustrates how this new paradigm facilitates the implementation of a reasoning mechanism that can be used by a software agent to perceive present actions and predict the future evolution of a simulated environment.     

Generation of test sequences from formal specifications: GSM 11‐11 standard case study

This paper presents the results of a case study on generating test cases for a fragment of the smart card GSM 11‐11 standard. The generation method is based on an original approach using the B notation and techniques of constraint logic programming with sets. The GSM 11‐11 technical specifications were formalized with the B notation. From this B specification, a system of constraints was derived, equivalent to this formal model. Using a set constraint solver, boundary states were computed and test cases were obtained by traversing the constrained reachability graph of the specifications. The purpose of this project was to evaluate the contribution of this testing environment, called B ‐TESTING ‐TOOLS , in an industrial process on a real life‐size application, by comparing the generated test sequences with the already used and high‐quality manually‐designed tests. This comparison enabled us to validate our approach and showed its effectiveness in the validation process of critical applications: the case study gives a wide coverage (about 85%) of the generated tests compared to the pre‐existing tests and a saving of 30% in test design time. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.