Future WAN telecommunications

It is argued that broadband communication into the home will bring LAN, WAN, and access transmission speeds into alignment and release the flood of change promised by the information revolution     

Development and analysis of a 12-year daily 1-km forest fire dataset across North America from NOAA/AVHRR data

Fires in boreal and temperate forests play a significant role in the global carbon cycle. While forest fires in North America (NA) have been surveyed extensively by U.S. and Canadian forest services, most fire records are limited to seasonal statistics without information on temporal evolution and spatial expansion. Such dynamic information is crucial for modeling fire emissions. Using the daily Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) data archived from 1989 to 2000, an extensive and consistent fire product was developed across the entire NA forest regions on a daily basis at 1-km resolution. The product was generated following data calibration, geo-referencing, and the application of an active fire detection algorithm and a burned area mapping algorithm. The spatial-temporal variation of forest fire in NA is analyzed in terms of (1) annual and monthly patterns of fire occurrences in different eco-domains, (2) the influence of topographic factors (elevation zones, aspect classes, and slope classes), and (3) major forest types and eco-regions in NA. It was found that 1) among the 12 years analyzed, 1989 and 1995 were the most severe fire years in NA; 2) the majority of burning occurred during June-July and in low elevation zones (< 500 m) with gentle slopes (< 10°), except in the dry eco-domain where more fires occurred in higher elevation zones (> 2000 m); 3) most fires occurred in the polar eco-domain, sub-arctic eco-division, and in the taiga ( boreal forests), forest-tundras and open woodlands eco-provinces in the boreal forests of Canada. The tendency for multiple burns to occur increases with elevation and slope until about 2500 m elevation and 24° slope, and decreases therefore. In comparison with ground observations, the omission and commission errors are on the order of 20%.     

SPOT VEGETATION for characterizing boreal forest fires

The potential of the recent SPOT VEGETATION (VGT) sensor for characterizing boreal forest fires was investigated. Its capability for hotspot detection and burned area mapping was assessed by analysing a series of VGT, NOAA/AVHRR, and Landsat TM images over a 1541 km²     

A biophysically based and objective satellite seasonality observation method for applications over the Arctic

Despite wide applications of remote-sensing data with high temporal resolution for monitoring phenology, two persistent problems have prevented the realization of their full potential. The first is the subjectivity in defining thresholds for a phenological event (e.g. the start or end of growing season ? SOS or EOS). The second is the use of various arbitrarily selected filtering and smoothing algorithms for constructing vegetation index seasonal profiles in order to reduce the noise caused by residue cloud contamination and aerosol variations. In this study, we addressed both problems by developing a biophysically based and objective satellite seasonality observation method (BLOSSOM) for application over Canada’s Arctic. Application of the BLOSSOM method to three northern Canadian national parks (Ivvavik, Wapusk, and Sirmilik) proved that the method is operational. Using the uncertainties in the vegetation index and its threshold, we estimated the overall mean uncertainties as being ?5.3 to 3.4 days, ?4.2 to 5.2 days, and ?6.2 to 8.4 days, respectively, for SOS, EOS, and growing season length (GSL). Further independent tests against SOS, determined using records of snow cover at nearby climate stations (as ‘truth’), indicate that the mean absolute error is less than 3.6 ± 0.2 days.     

Cyclodextrin-based carbohydrate clusters by amide bond formation

Per-6-amino-2,3-dimethyl-ß-cyclodextrin was prepared very efficiently as its hydrochloride salt from native ß-cyclodextrin in four steps and 89% overall yield. O-Acetyl-protected ß-D-thioglucose and ß-D-thiolactose derivatives, containing short spacer arms terminated with carboxylic acid functions, were prepared by the BF₃·OEt₂-catalyzed thioglycosylation of ß-D-glucose pentaacetate and ß-lactose octaacetate with 3-mercaptopropionic acid, respectively. Utilizing amide bond formation as the key step, these thio-ß-D-glucosyl and lactosyl derivatives were coupled to per-6-amino-2,3-dimethyl-ß-cyclodextrin to afford, after deprotection, perfunctionalized ß-cyclodextrin-based clusters containing seven thio-ß-D-glucosyl and seven ß-lactosyl appendages, respectively. Molecular modeling of both these ß-cyclodextrin-based clusters revealed the glucose and lactose clusters to be approximately 23 Å and 27 Å in diameter, respectively, and approximately 19 Å in height in both cases. The association constants for the complexation of the anti-inflammatory drug naproxen by ß-cyclodextrin, per-2,3-dimethyl-ß-cyclodextrin, and the lactose cluster of ß-cyclodextrin in 0.01 M phosphate buffered saline solution (pH 7.4) were found by UV-vis spectrophotometric titration to be 374 ± 75 M⁻¹, 351 ± 70 M⁻¹, and 165 ± 33 M⁻¹, respectively.