Dialogue as the interplay of otherness and shared humanity.

Presents a reply by B. Fowers and B. Davidov to Islam's comments (see record 2007-14606-019) regarding their article (see record 2006-11202-002). Islam noted that virtues are often presented as universally valid character strengths, yet formulations of virtues are always embedded in a particular cultural context, a point we took pains to make in our article. We focus our response on Islam's important suggestion that this tension between universal human characteristics and the particulars of cultural context is indissoluble. Whereas he suggested this tension leads to contradiction and paradox, we see it as a fertile dialectic. The virtue of openness to the other is also subject to the same tension of abstract formulation and particular application. Although we formulated this virtue in a very general way, any instantiation of it would be shaped by the particulars of the cultural context and the situation in which it is exercised. We introduced the concept of dialogue because it is constituted not only by differences between individuals or groups but even more fundamentally by the dialectical relationship between those differences in cultural particularities and the universal human capacities for reason, curiosity, and social engagement, among others. Dialogue acknowledges the indissoluble otherness one finds in those culturally different from oneself, and yet real interchange can only occur because participants in dialogue exercise the cognitive flexibility characteristic of human beings and recognize a shared humanity with the other. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Tower of London performance in relation to Magnetic Resonance Imaging following closed head injury in children.

To investigate the relationship of severity of pediatric closed head injury (CHI), the contribution of frontal lobe lesions, and age at testing (6–10 yr olds vs 11–15 yr olds) to cognitive deficit, 134 head-injured patients were given the Tower of London (TOL) task and underwent magnetic resonance imaging. 89 normal controls were given the TOL for comparison. Severity of CHI and age at testing were strongly related to cognitive performance on the TOL, including the frequency of breaking the rules. Volume of frontal lobe lesion (but not extrafrontal lesion) contributed to the prediction of perfomance on the TOL even after severity of injury was taken into account. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Master sintering curve concepts as applied to the sintering of molybdenum

Sintering experiments with various molybdenum powders are rationalized using a master sintering curve concept that collapses density, grain size, or other parameters onto a single curve. In this case, the integral work of sintering is developed and customized for different green densities. Construction of the master sintering curve is described to show how the curve can be normalized with respect to green density effects. Various grades of molybdenum for metal injection molding and die compaction are included in the analysis, processed over a range of heating cycles. Die-compacted samples of varying green densities are used to illustrate the efficacy of the new, normalized master sintering curve concept. Sintering cycle optimization is one possible outcome from this analysis.     

Accelerating the hydration of calcium sulfate hemihydrate via high energy mixing

High energy mixing of calcium sulfate hemihydrate/water slurries provides a means to accelerate the hydration leading to gypsum formation. Additional benefits associated with high energy mixing include enhanced strength of the resulting gypsum casts. In order to exploit the advantages of high energy mixing, an understanding of the relationship between mixing energy and set acceleration is needed. The present study investigated the relationship between a chemical accelerator and high energy mixing for the purpose of set acceleration. A mathematical model of this relationship allows calculation of the time to achieve 50% hydration given the added specific mixing energy, the percentage of added chemical accelerator by weight of stucco, and the water to stucco ratio for a given slurry. Use of this model along with experimental data allowed a comparison of the accelerative efficacy of mixing energy relative to chemical accelerator. The results show that the accelerative capacity of high energy mixing is rather modest compared to that of the chemical accelerator, with a ten-fold increase in mixing energy required to maintain the same time to achieve 50% hydration when the chemical accelerator loading is reduced by 0.03%.     

Enhanced neointimal growth in cultured rabbit aorta following in vivo balloon angioplasty

We have used in vivo balloon catheterization in combination with in vitro organ culture to develop a model system for vascular neointima formation. A Fogarty balloon catheter was used to deendothelialize and rupture the internal elastic lamina of aortae in adult rabbits. After three d of recovery, aortae were harvested, divided into segments, and placed into organ culture. We obtained a daily index of cell proliferation in cultured vessels using [3H]thymidine incorporation into DNA. Also, segments were collected and processed for routine histology or immunohistochemistry. Aortic segments that had undergone ballooning 3 d before harvest and then cultured exhibited diffuse neointimal growth after several d in vitro, whereas those from sham-operated (nonballooned) rabbits showed generally only a single endothelial cell layer that is characteristic of normal intima. Aortae that were harvested, balloon-damaged in vitro, and then cultured exhibited no neointimal growth. The neointima that developed in cultured segments from in vivo ballooned rabbits was primarily of smooth muscle cell origin as determined by positive immunostaining for alpha-smooth muscle actin. The intima:media thickness ratios were significantly higher in aortic segments from ballooned rabbits at harvest and after 4 or 7 d in culture compared with those from nonballooned rabbits. Also, the [3H]thymidine index was higher in the in vivo ballooned aorta compared to non-ballooned or in vitro ballooned vessel. We conclude that ballooning in vivo followed by exposure to blood-borne elements produces an enhanced proliferative response in cultured vessels that is distinct from other in vitro models of neointimal growth.     

Spatial and temporal scaling of nitrous oxide emissions from the field to the regional scale in Scotland

Nitrous oxide (N₂O) is a powerful greenhouse gas. As the UK government is committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it is important to know not only how much of these gases are released but also where and when. Targeted measurements of emissions in relation to crop growth cycles, soil wetness and fertiliser applications were used to derive annual emission rates for specific combinations of soil type, land management and fertiliser practices. These annual emission rates were then spatially scaled to derive regional figures through the development of a Geographic Information System (GIS) based model framework. Digital soil and land use maps at a scale of 1:25000 for two test areas of approximately 200000 ha each (Lothians and the Ayrshire Basin) were overlain with a climate map within the GIS, deriving unique combinations of soil wetness and land use. The calculated annual emission rates (kg N ha^–1 yr^–1) were then applied to these and multiplied by the total area of each soil/land use type to derive annual emission losses for each area. The annual emission of nitrous oxide from the Lothians was determined as approximately 381000 kg N yr^–1, while the emissions from the Ayrshire Basin were predicted to be 794000 kg N yr^–1. This indicates the increased emissions associated with both the wetter soils of Ayrshire and the greater extent of grazed pasture systems in this area. Due to the detailed scale of the input data, localised areas with large emissions were identified. Abatement strategies would be concentrated on areas of high emissions that include a change to crops with lower emission potential, reducing fertiliser and manure inputs, reducing grazing intensity and improving soil drainage.Supplementary material to this paper is available in electronic form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1024422604493     

An integrated semantic-based approach in concept based video retrieval

Multimedia content has been growing quickly and video retrieval is regarded as one of the most famous issues in multimedia research. In order to retrieve a desirable video, users express their needs in terms of queries. Queries can be on object, motion, texture, color, audio, etc. Low-level representations of video are different from the higher level concepts which a user associates with video. Therefore, query based on semantics is more realistic and tangible for end user. Comprehending the semantics of query has opened a new insight in video retrieval and bridging the semantic gap. However, the problem is that the video needs to be manually annotated in order to support queries expressed in terms of semantic concepts. Annotating semantic concepts which appear in video shots is a challenging and time-consuming task. Moreover, it is not possible to provide annotation for every concept in the real world. In this study, an integrated semantic-based approach for similarity computation is proposed with respect to enhance the retrieval effectiveness in concept-based video retrieval. The proposed method is based on the integration of knowledge-based and corpus-based semantic word similarity measures in order to retrieve video shots for concepts whose annotations are not available for the system. The TRECVID 2005 dataset is used for evaluation purpose, and the results of applying proposed method are then compared against the individual knowledge-based and corpus-based semantic word similarity measures which were utilized in previous studies in the same domain. The superiority of integrated similarity method is shown and evaluated in terms of Mean Average Precision (MAP).     

An Efficient Schema Transformation Technique for Data Migration from Relational to Column-Oriented Databases

Data transformation is the core process in migrating database from relational database to NoSQL database such as column-oriented database. However, there is no standard guideline for data transformation from relational database to NoSQL database. A number of schema transformation techniques have been proposed to improve data transformation process and resulted better query processing time when compared to the relational database query processing time. However, these approaches produced redundant tables in the resulted schema that in turn consume large unnecessary storage size and produce high query processing time due to the generated schema with redundant column families in the transformed column-oriented database. In this paper, an efficient data transformation technique from relational database to column-oriented database is proposed. The proposed schema transformation technique is based on the combination of denormalization approach, data access pattern and multiple-nested schema. In order to validate the proposed work, the proposed technique is implemented by transforming data from MySQL database to HBase database. A benchmark transformation technique is also performed in which the query processing time and the storage size are compared. Based on the experimental results, the proposed transformation technique showed significant improvement in terms query processing time and storage space usage due to the reduced number of column families in the column-oriented database.     

Region-based surveillance video retrieval with effective object representation

Retrieving the most relevant video frames that contain the object specified in a given query (query-by-region) remains a challenging task. Two common challenges of region-based retrieval approaches are to accurately extract or segment object(s) and select a proper matching strategy. This paper addresses these problems by proposing a retrieval approach that uses a new region-based matching technique equipped with an effective object representation method. In the first stage, the proposed approach selects the most informative instances of each object that appeared in the video by utilizing an adapted clustering algorithm over the extracted features. In the retrieval stage, the new matching technique returns the most relevant sequences of video by mapping a given region with those identified representative instances of objects based on their similarity scores. The proposed approach is evaluated on standard datasets and the results demonstrate a 31% improvement in the retrieval performance compared to other state-of-the-art methods.