Species richness, structural diversity and species composition in meadows created by visitors of a botanical garden in Switzerland

Biodiversity is an increasingly important criterion in designing ecological compensation areas and urban green areas. However, little is known about how important biodiversity is to the general public. This paper presents the results of two complementary studies investigating the meadow preferences of visitors to a botanical garden in Switzerland. In the first study, 152 people were asked to create their own favourite meadow patch by selecting 25 out of 779 local wild plants (54 species) that were displayed in flowerpots. In the second study, 143 people were asked with the help of a written questionnaire to imagine a bare piece of land the size of 100 m × 100 m close to their place of living and mentally create the meadow of their dreams. In both cases, study participants assembled meadows that were species-rich and rich in structural diversity (expressed by plant height and leaf forms). Moreover, they explicitly stated diversity as their main assemblage criterion. Although study participants favoured plants with large or colourful flowers, only a third of all plants in the meadows created with real plants were flowering and in people's imagined meadows grasses were frequently included, indicating that people like diverse meadows consisting of a green matrix with some colourful flowers.     

Osteoid osteoma in a three-year-old child--a case report

Osteoid osteoma is an uncommon tumour in the very young. We present a case of osteoid osteoma in a three-year-old boy, who was treated as a case of sclerosing osteomyelitis of the femur. Because of persistent pain and lack of response to treatment, further radiological investigation confirmed the diagnosis to be that of an osteoid osteoma.     

Design of some new efficient balanced codes

A balanced code with r check bits and k information bits is a binary code of length k+r and cardinality 2^k such that each codeword is balanced; that is, it has [(k+r)/2] 1's and [(k+r)/2] 0's. This paper contains new methods to construct efficient balanced codes. To design a balanced code, an information word with a low number of 1's or 0's is compressed and then balanced using the saved space. On the other hand, an information word having almost the same number of 1's and 0's is encoded using the single maps defined by Knuth's (1986) complementation method. Three different constructions are presented. Balanced codes with r check bits and k information bits with k⩽2^r+1-2, k⩽3×2^r-8, and k⩽5×2^r-10r+c(r), c(r)∈{-15, -10, -5, 0, +5}, are given, improving the constructions found in the literature. In some cases, the first two constructions have a parallel coding scheme     

On limit cycles inn-order direct-form digital filters

The relationship between the elements in the vector of any limit cycle due to rounding in ann-order direct-form digital filter is established. Some bounds on the elements in such vectors are also determined. Sufficient conditions for the accessibility of period-r limit cycles due to rounding inn-order digital filters are presented.     

A testbed for performance evaluation of load‐balancing strategies for Web server systems

To improve response time of a Web site, one replicates the site on multiple servers. The effectiveness of a replicated server system will depend on how the incoming requests are distributed among replicas. A large number of load‐balancing strategies for Web server systems have been proposed. In this paper we describe a testbed that can be used to evaluate the performance of different load‐balancing strategies. The testbed uses a general architecture which allows different load‐balancing approaches to be supported easily. It emulates a typical World Wide Web scenario and allows variable load generation and performance measurement. We have performed some preliminary experiments to measure the performance of a few policies for load balancing using this testbed. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Performance analysis and its impact on design

Methods for designing new computer systems have changed rapidly. Consider general purpose microprocessors: gone are the days when one or two expert architects would use hunches, experience, and rules of thumb to determine a processor's features. Marketplace competition has long since forced companies to replace this ad hoc process with a targeted and highly systematic process that focuses new designs on specific workloads. Although the process differs from company to company, there are common elements. The main advantage of a systematic process is that it produces a finely tuned design targeted at a particular market. At its core are models of the processor's performance and its workloads. Developing and verifying these models is the domain now called performance analysis. We cover some of the advances in dealing with modern problems in performance analysis. Our focus is on architectural performance, typically measured in cycles per instruction     

Alternating current impedance studies on oxide films in metal/oxide/electrolyte systems: a modified approach

The accurate determination of the impedance of oxide films in metal/oxide/electrolyte systems is shown to be possible through a modified procedure. The film impedance thus determined is found to be quite different from the measured cell impedance for anodic aluminium oxide formed on pure aluminium. The computed values of tan and conductivity are found to be in agreement with the values reported earlier for anodic and thermal oxides.