An integrated impact assessment of the effects of climate change on the Pacific Northwest salmon fishery

Typically natural resource managers do not consider the implications of climate change even though natural resources depend on specific climatic conditions. This omission stems from the uncertainty associated with climate-change research, and an inability to apply that research to decision-making. This paper suggests that an impact assessment approach can be used to assess the impact that climate change may have on natural resource decisions demonstrating the approach by examining salmon fisheries in the Pacific Northwest.     

What should we expect after the next attack?

A test of any science is its ability to predict events under specified conditions. A test for the psychology represented in this special issue of the American Psychologist is its ability to predict individual and social behavior in the aftermath of a next terror attack. This article draws on that science to make such predictions. These predictions are conditioned on both the nature of the attack and our institutional preparations for it. Some attacks will test our resilience more than others. Whatever the attack, we will reduce its impacts if our institutions take advantage of psychological science. That science can reduce the scope of attacks by limiting terrorists' ability to organize their operations and by enhancing our ability to restrain them. It can reduce the impacts of any attacks that do occur by strengthening the institutions and civil society that must respond to them. Realizing these possibilities will require our social institutions to rely on science, rather than intuition, in dealing with these threats. It will require our profession to provide psychologists with rewards for public service, applied research, and interdisciplinary collaboration, as demanded by complex problems. Responding to these challenges could strengthen society and psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Astrobiology, space and the future age of discovery

Astrobiology is the study of the origins, evolution, distribution and future of life in the Universe, and specifically seeks to understand the origin of life and to test the hypothesis that life exists elsewhere than on Earth. There is a general mathematics, physics and chemistry; that is, scientific laws that obtain on Earth also do so elsewhere. Is there a general biology? Is the Universe life-rich or is Earth an isolated island of biology? Exploration in the Age of Enlightenment required the collection of data in unexplored regions and the use of induction and empiricism to derive models and natural laws. The current search for extra-terrestrial life has a similar goal, but with a much greater amount of data and with computers to help with management, correlations, pattern recognition and analysis. There are 60 active space missions, many of them aiding in the search for life. There is not a universally accepted definition of life, but there are a series of characteristics that can aid in the identification of life elsewhere. The study of locations on Earth with similarities to early Mars and other space objects could provide a model that can be used in the search for extra-terrestrial life.     

ETK-an operational explosive testing kit

A chemical kit for field determination of traces of explosives on hands of suspects is described. The system involves three components: dry sampling devices (‘‘detection buttons''), and two tubes of chemical reagents. It detects virtually all the common military explosives, and there is also an option to detect home-made explosives based on inorganic fertilizers. Detection is based on two well known chemical reactions for which optimal conditions have been developed. In stage I polynitro aromatics are detected by the formation of colored Meisenheimer complexes. In stage II organic nitrates and nitramines are consequently detected by modified Griess test.     

Changes in specific markers of haemostasis during reduction mammoplasty

We herein report a case of pure clear cell papillary thyroid carcinoma, which is the first reported case in Japan. The tumors measured 1.0 x 0.9 and 0.7 x 0.4 cm in size. An ultrasonographical examination revealed hypoechoic irregular-shaped lesions with fine internal calcifications. No lymph node metastasis was observed in any of the surgical specimens. Distant metastasis had not been observed as of 6 years after surgical treatment. The number of cases of pure clear cell papillary carcinoma reported so far are too few to clearly elucidate its characteristics; however, the ultrasonographical findings and biological behavior of this case were compatible with those of non-clear cell papillary thyroid carcinoma.     

Segmentation of two-dimensional boundaries using the chain code

We divide the boundary of a two-dimensional object into segments, each of which is either straight or a circular arc; associated with the segment end-points are angle measures that can be used to match an object with a transformed (rotated, scaled) version of itself. The chain code, easily extracted from the boundary pixels, is the basis of this division. The approach avoids problems common to many of the existing methods for identification of curvature extrema: sensitivity to noise and dependence on parameters that are chosen empirically.

To each section of the boundary we assign a code that represents the change in slope between it and the previous section. This set of codes is integrated and thus provides a measure of the total directional change relative to the first section. For a closed object, the sequence of these sums is periodic, and one cycle can be plotted as a function of arc length, s. Such a plot can be shown to contain only straight lines: those that are not parallel to the s-axis (representing circular arcs on the original boundary of the object) and those that are (representing straight sections on the boundary).

This paper describes a recursive procedure for dividing the digital version of the curve described above into its linear segments. Each segment represents an arc that is the best fit to a portion of the original boundary; the angle which is defined by the arc is identical to the angle change of the edge in the same section, and the length of the arc is identical to that of the edge. The recursive procedure measures the error (for each value of arc length) between a proposed fitting line and the actual value of cumulative angle; where the error is maximum, and above a threshold, the line is segmented. The procedure is repeated until the error is sufficiently small. The breakpoints thus indicate the location and value of points of greatest curvature change.

A formal definition of the procedure is given, and it is shown to perform well for rotated, scaled and noisy objects.     

Multilink Solution for Seamless Transition Between Multicast and Unicast Areas in 5G Core Network

Wireless Personal Communications - The exponential growth in technology observed over the past decade has introduced newer ways to exploit network and cyber-physical system-related vulnerabilities....     

Orchestrating the emergence of conceptual learning: a case study in a geometry class

This paper is about orchestrating the emergence of conceptual learning in a collaborative setting. We elaborate on the idea of critical moments in group learning, events which may lead to a particular development at the epistemic level regarding the shared object. We conjecture that teachers’ identification of critical moments may help them guide students to the emergence of conceptual learning. The complexity of small group settings in classrooms prevents teachers from noticing these critical moments, though. Here we present an environment, SAGLET (System for Advancing Group Learning in Educational Technologies), based on the VMT (Virtual Math Teams) environment (Stahl 2009), which allows teachers to observe multiple groups engaging in problem-solving in geometry. SAGLET capitalizes on machine learning techniques to inform teachers about on-line critical moments by sending them alerts, so that they can then decide whether (and how) to use the alerts in guiding their students. One teacher in an elementary school used SAGLET to help multiple groups of students solve difficult problems in geometry. We observed how the teacher mediated two cohorts of multiple groups at two different times in a mathematics classroom. We show that in both cases the teacher could detect the needs of the groups (partly thanks to the alerts) and could provide adaptive guidance for all the groups.     

A note: Maximizing the weighted number of just-in-time jobs on a proportionate flowshop

In most cases, an extension of a polynomial time solution of a scheduling problem on a single machine to a proportionate flowshop leads to a similar (polynomial time) solution. One of the rare cases where the problem becomes hard, is that of maximizing the weighted number of Just-in-Time jobs on a proportionate flowshop. We introduce a (pseudo-polynomial) solution algorithm for this problem, which is faster by a factor of n than the algorithm published in the literature. We also introduce a (polynomial time) solution algorithm for the “no-wait” proportionate flowshop.