The use of night-time lights satellite imagery as a measure of Australia's regional electricity consumption and population distribution

Satellite imagery of night-time lights provided by the US Air Force Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP), using the Operational Linescan System (OLS), has been used to estimate the spatial distribution of electricity consumption throughout Australia. For the period 1997 to 2002, there was very high correlation between state electricity consumption and night-time lights with an R ² value of 0.9346 at the state and territory spatial resolution. To increase the accuracy at which electricity consumption can be estimated at greater spatial resolution, an Overglow Removal Model (ORM) was developed to overcome the overglow effect caused by the dispersion of light into surrounding areas. The ORM makes use of the relationship between light source strength and the overglow/dispersion distance from the light source. As electricity consumption statistics at a greater spatial resolution than the state or territory level are not publically available in Australia, population statistics at the statistical local area (SLA) were used to demonstrate the increased accuracy of the ORM at returning the overglow light to its source, and, in turn, the accuracy of measuring electricity consumption. The ORM enabled an estimation of the electricity consumption of SLAs, greater than 10 km², with an R ² value of 0.8732, which is a 25.4% increase in accuracy over untreated data before applying the ORM. The increase in accuracy of the location of the origin of night-time lights can enable better georeferencing of satellite imagery of night-time lights and greater accuracy in locating population centres and centres of economic development, and assist with electricity infrastructure planning in regions of the world where statistics are not readily available. The result of the ORM is a map of Australian electricity consumption, and an estimation of the regional electricity consumption for all SLAs greater than 10 km² in size is included.     

Real-Time business data acquisition: How frequent is frequent enough?

Effective data acquisition for business process monitoring has become a critical element in today’s business world. While the need for monitoring is generally agreed upon by both re- searchers and practitioners alike, the means and mechanisms are often vague. This is especially salient with the fast growing availability of various technologies to monitor in real-time through recent advances such as the Internet of Things (IoT) with specific emphasis on Radio-Frequency IDentification (RFID) and associated sensor networks. This study is motivated by the lack of published literature in data acquisition and analytics that specifically addresses sufficient real-time data acquisition for effective managerial monitoring. As a step in addressing this void, we review and extend existing literature in this general area by studying various requirements and information sources that relate to effective management monitoring. We then design an exploratory study to evaluate current managerial monitoring needs and the importance of automated data collection technologies. Results from this study show that the most important latent factor that influences an organization’s information need is its dynamic competitiveness, and consequently, companies with a dynamic supply chain would need a faster transaction and operations data system. The second important latent factor is the behavioral performance, which renders it essential to have a human-centric data system. This study provides evidence for the significance in adopting technologies such as RFID and other IoT systems for real-time monitoring in highly dynamic organizations and offers guidelines for analytical technology adoption for various industries.     

Stress and strain control via level set topology optimization

This paper presents a level set topology optimization method for manipulation of stress and strain integral functions in a prescribed region (herein called sub-structure) of a linear elastic domain. The method is able to deviate or concentrate the flux of stress in the sub-structure by optimizing the shape and topologies of the boundaries outside of that region. A general integral objective function is proposed and its shape sensitivities are derived. For stress isolation or maximization, a von Mises stress integral is used and results show that stresses in the sub-structure can be drastically reduced. For strain control, a strain integral combined with a vector able to select the component of the strain is used. A combination of both can be used to minimize deformation of a prescribed direction. Numerical results show that strain can be efficiently minimized or maximized for a wide range of directions. The proposed methodology can be applied to stress isolation of highly sensitive non strain-based sensors, design for failure, maximization of mechanical strain and strain direction control for strain-based sensors and microdevices.     

Whatever happened to neurosis? An overview.

Discusses the decision to eliminate the term "neurosis" from the DSM-III. The history of the term is traced; weaknesses of DSM-II pertaining to neurosis are presented; theoretical and political processes in the deletion procedure are described; and an overview is given of the current resolution as presented in DSM-III. Instead of neurosis, "neurotic disorder" and "neurotic process" were distinguished to reduce potential theoretical bias. The process may or may not be seen by the clinician as causal in the disorder, but those of all theoretical persuasions should be able to agree on what the disorder is. (13 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The murine plasma protein response to polymicrobial intra-abdominal sepsis

Protein biomarkers in the peripheral blood could potentially be used as early indicators of sepsis and a means to stratify patients for clinical trials. Although individual molecular markers have been proposed for sepsis, none has clinical utility. The global changes in plasma proteins over the clinical course of sepsis have not been characterized using proteomic methods. We used cecal ligation and puncture to induce polymicrobial sepsis in mice and generated plasma protein profiles using 2‐D DIGE of plasma from septic mice and surgical controls. Replicate cohorts (n = 3) of 4–7 animals each were used to identify 62 gel features that changed significantly (Student's t‐test, p<0.05). We identified a suite of plasma proteins that describe uniquely the host plasma response to polymicrobial septic insult. Principal components analysis of protein abundance showed that ～90% of the variability between samples was due to sepsis. In addition to canonical acute phase proteins, we identified proteins that are associated with metabolic changes (e.g. α‐2 HS glycoprotein and zinc α‐2 glycoprotein) consistent with the pathophysiology of sepsis. The panel of sepsis‐associated molecular markers identified herein may prove useful in the diagnosis and categorization of sepsis.     

A level set topology optimization method for the buckling of shell structures

Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization - Shell structures are some of the most widely used in engineering applications. Flat plates, stiffened panels, and wing ribs are each examples of...     

Consumer neuroscience: Assessing the brain response to marketing stimuli using electroencephalogram (EEG) and eye tracking

Application of neuroscience methods to analyze and understand human behavior related to markets and marketing exchange has recently gained research attention. The basic aim is to guide design and presentation of products to optimize them to be as compatible as possible with consumer preferences. This paper investigates physiological decision processes while participants undertook a choice task designed to elicit preferences for a product. The task required participants to choose their preferred crackers described by shape (square, triangle, round), flavor (wheat, dark rye, plain) and topping (salt, poppy, no topping). The two main research objectives were (1) to observe and evaluate the cortical activity of the different brain regions and the interdependencies among the Electroencephalogram (EEG) signals from these regions; and (2) unlike most research in this area that has focused mainly on liking/disliking certain products, we provide a way to quantify the importance of different cracker features that contribute to the product design based on mutual information. We used the commercial Emotiv EPOC wireless EEG headset with 14 channels to collect EEG signals from participants. We also used a Tobii-Studio eye tracker system to relate the EEG data to the specific choice options (crackers). Subjects were shown 57 choice sets; each choice set described three choice options (crackers). The patterns of cortical activity were obtained in the five principal frequency bands, Delta (0–4 Hz), Theta (3–7 Hz), Alpha (8–12 Hz), Beta (13–30 Hz), and Gamma (30–40 Hz). There was a clear phase synchronization between the left and right frontal and occipital regions indicating interhemispheric communications during the chosen task for the 18 participants. Results also indicated that there was a clear and significant change (p < 0.01) in the EEG power spectral activities taking a place mainly in the frontal (delta, alpha and beta across F3, F4, FC5 and FC6), temporal (alpha, beta, gamma across T7), and occipital (theta, alpha, and beta across O1) regions when participants indicated their preferences for their preferred crackers. Additionally, our mutual information analysis indicated that the various cracker flavors and toppings of the crackers were more important factors affecting the buying decision than the shapes of the crackers.     

The behaviour of uranium oxides in low partial pressures of O2 studied using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy

Non-stoichiometry, induced by exposure to oxygen and vacuum has been investigated for the uranium oxides UO₂, U₄O₉ and U₃O₈ using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Each stoichiometric uranium oxide is shown to display a unique X-ray photoelectron spectrum which can be altered quite dramatically by changes in stoichiometry and explained by a defect cluster model.     

Longitudinal patterns of risk for depression in dementia caregivers: Objective and subjective primary stress as predictors.

The present study examined how patterns of risk for depression over 1 year in 188 dementia caregivers (consistently asymptomatic, n ?=?88; consistently symptomatic, n ?=?40; changing risk, n ?=?60) could be predicted by objective (behavior problems of the relative) and subjective (role captivity and overload) primary stress. Results reveal that all primary stressors differentiated caregivers who remained at low levels of symptomatology over the course of 1 year from those who were at risk for experiencing a depressive disorder. In addition, caregivers' subjective experience of role captivity predicted the chronicity of risk. Findings extend prior caregiving research on patterns of depressive symptomatology by highlighting the relationship between subjective primary stressors and stability and change in caregivers' mental health. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)