Marxan with Zones: Software for optimal conservation based land- and sea-use zoning

Marxan is the most widely used conservation planning software in the world and is designed for solving complex conservation planning problems in landscapes and seascapes. In this paper we describe a substantial extension of Marxan called Marxan with Zones, a decision support tool that provides land-use zoning options in geographical regions for biodiversity conservation. We describe new functions designed to enhance the original Marxan software and expand on its utility as a decision support tool. The major new element in the decision problem is allowing any parcel of land or sea to be allocated to a specific zone, not just reserved or unreserved. Each zone then has the option of its own actions, objectives and constraints, with the flexibility to define the contribution of each zone to achieve targets for pre-specified features (e.g. species or habitats). The objective is to minimize the total cost of implementing the zoning plan while ensuring a variety of conservation and land-use objectives are achieved. We outline the capabilities, limitations and additional data requirements of this new software and perform a comparison with the original version of Marxan. We feature a number of case studies to demonstrate the functionality of the software and highlight its flexibility to address a range of complex spatial planning problems. These studies demonstrate the design of multiple-use marine parks in both Western Australia and California, and the zoning of forest use in East Kalimantan.     

Don't Search,Just Show Me What I Did: Visualizing Provenance of Documents and Applications

Computer documents have evolved over time. As a result, this article presents the results from a survey that redefines what a “document” is. The study discovered that people think a document is something that holds information; is manipulated by people (not the system); and is anything that can be seen, heard, or touched. Second, based on the results of the survey, we present a novel, real-time visualization tool that shows the results of nonintrusive tracking of documents and applications for a 6-month period. The tool focuses on document provenance—the history or genealogy of a document. It shows every document and application used as well as what happened to those documents (e.g., if the documents were moved, renamed, and/or deleted). These evaluations of the visualization tool are promising in that it helped with refinding documents, finding behavior workflow patterns, finding insight into general document usage, and performing forensic-type activities.     

Plasma panel‐based radiation detectors

The plasma panel sensor (PPS) is a gaseous micropattern radiation detector under current development. It has many operational and fabrication principles common to plasma display panels. It comprises a dense matrix of small, gas plasma discharge cells within a hermetically sealed panel. As in plasma display panels, it uses nonreactive, intrinsically radiation‐hard materials such as glass substrates, refractory metal electrodes, and mostly inert gas mixtures. We are developing these devices primarily as thin, low‐mass detectors with gas gaps from a few hundred microns to a few millimeters. The PPS is a high gain, inherently digital device with the potential for fast response times, fine position resolution (<50‐µm RMS) and low cost. In this paper, we report on prototype PPS experimental results in detecting betas, protons, and cosmic muons, and we extrapolate on the PPS potential for applications including the detection of alphas, heavy ions at low‐to‐medium energy, thermal neutrons, and X‐rays.     

Equivalence of robust stabilization and robust performance via feedback

One approach to robust control for linear plants with structured uncertainty as well as for linear parameter-varying plants (where the controller has on-line access to the varying plant parameters) is through linear-fractional-transformation models. Control issues to be addressed by controller design in this formalism include robust stability and robust performance. Here robust performance is defined as the achievement of a uniform specified L ²-gain tolerance for a disturbance-to-error map combined with robust stability. By setting the disturbance and error channels equal to zero, it is clear that any criterion for robust performance also produces a criterion for robust stability. Counter-intuitively, as a consequence of the so-called Main Loop Theorem, application of a result on robust stability to a feedback configuration with an artificial full-block uncertainty operator added in feedback connection between the error and disturbance signals produces a result on robust performance. The main result here is that this performance-to-stabilization reduction principle must be handled with care for the case of dynamic feedback compensation: casual application of this principle leads to the solution of a physically uninteresting problem, where the controller is assumed to have access to the states in the artificially-added feedback loop. Application of the principle using a known more refined dynamic-control robust stability criterion, where the user is allowed to specify controller partial-state dimensions, leads to correct robust-performance results. These latter results involve rank conditions in addition to linear matrix inequality conditions.     

The incidence of systemic lupus erythematosus in North American Indians

The annual incidence (AI) of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) was determined in 75 highly inbred North American Indian tribes, a total of approximately 800,000 people, during the fiscal years 1971-1975. Seventy-two of the Indian tribes had an AI of SLE which was of similar magnitude to previously published studies from Sweden, Rochester (Minn.), Alabama, New York City, and San Francisco. However, Three tribes, the Crow, Arapahoe, and Sioux Indians, had a markedly elevated AI of SLE. These three tribes share common historical, geographic, and cultural characteristics. Further, they all reside in the northern half of the United States, in states that do not receive intense sun exposure, thereby eliminating photosensitivity as a major determinant of this increased prevalence. Finally, the AI of SLE in the Sioux Indians was highest for "full-blooded" members and lowest for genetic admixtures.     

The CIO's key role in healthcare strategic planning

Chief information officers are not longer technicians overseeing the computer room. They're full-fledged members of the healthcare team. What that means, however, is that the CIO must be both willing and able to participate in planning and building the infrastructure that will underpin healthcare delivery in the future.     

A factorization principle for stabilization of linear control systems

By introducing a fictitious signal y⁰ if necessary we define a transform which generalizes the passage from the scattering to the chain formalism in circuit theory. Given a factorization ??? = ?R of ??? where R is a block matrix function with a certain key block equal to a minimal phase (or outer) matrix function, we show that a given compensator u = Ky is internally stabilizing for the system ?? if and only if a related compensator K′ is stabilizing for ?. Factorizations ??? = ?R with ? having a certain block upper triangular form lead to an alternative derivation of the Youla parametrization of stabilizing compensators. Factorizations with ? equal to a J-inner matrix function (in a precise weak sense) lead to a parametrization of all solutions K of the H^∞ problem associated with ??. This gives a new solution of the H^∞ problem completely in the transfer function domain. Computation of the needed factorization ??? = ?R in terms of a state-space realization of ?? leads to the state-space formulas for the solution of the H^∞ problem recently obtained in the literature.     

Fluctuating epistemic uncertainty in a design team as a metacognitive driver for creative cognitive processes

Abstract

Previous design research has demonstrated how epistemic uncertainty engenders localised, creative reasoning, including analogising and mental simulation. We analysed not just the short-term, localised effects of epistemic uncertainty on creative processing and information selection, but also its long-term impact on downstream creative processes. Our hypothesis was that heightened levels of uncertainty associated with a particular cognitive referent would engender: (1) immediate creative elaboration of that referent aimed at resolving uncertainty and determining information selection; and (2) subsequent attentive returns to that cognitive referent at later points in time, aimed at resolving lingering uncertainty and determining information selection. Findings: First—contrary to expectations—we observed that increased epistemic certainty (rather than increased epistemic uncertainty) in relation to cognitive referents triggered immediate, creative reasoning and information elaboration. Second, epistemic uncertainty was, as predicted, found to engender subsequent attentive returns to cognitive referents. Third, although epistemic uncertainty did not predict the selection of information, both immediate creative elaboration and subsequent attentive returns did predict information selection, with subsequent attentive returns being the stronger predictor. Our findings hold promise for identifying more global impacts of epistemic uncertainty on creative design cognition possibly mediated through the establishment of lasting associations with cognitive referents.     

Controlled Release Characteristics of Aqueous PEO‐PPO‐PEO Micelles With Added Malachite Green,Erythrosin, and Cisplatin Determined by UV–Visible Spectroscopy

Dynamic diffusion experiments were performed on aqueous polymeric micelles mixed with malachite green (0.05% mass v^?1), erythrosin (0.1% mass v^?1), and cisplatin (0.1% mass v^?1) to gauge release from sequestered structures using ultraviolet–visible spectroscopy. The additives were formulated with 20% mass v^?1 aqueous solutions of polyethylene oxide‐polypropylene oxide‐polyethylene oxide, PEO‐PPO‐PEO (F127). Each additive was tested neat at room temperature, neat at 40 °C, and formulated with F127 at room temperature, and 40 °C. After constructing calibration curves, the dynamic release for each ternary additive and corresponding diffusion coefficients were calculated. Results show that F127 retards permeation at room temperature. In general, the neat additives at 40 °C showed the highest permeability for both malachite green and erythrosin. Malachite green released almost 90% of the dye by 60 min of permeation. When formulated with F127 at 40 °C, sizeable release was still noted, but with an induction period of 10–30 min to register release. The behavior with cisplatin was more complicated as the first 5 h of permeation resulted in a burst delivery with cisplatin (6% total release with cisplatin‐F127‐RT compared to 4% total release cisplatin‐RT) but with overall lower release. The higher fluence at elevated temperature is attributed to reducing the blocking effect of the amphiphiles on the walls of the dialysis tubing as they are directed to form colloidal gels. There is also likely a correlation between higher temperature and higher overall permeability if the membrane pores also expand with temperature.