bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Propuesta de líneas de mejora de la experiencia operística desde el ocio creativo
Authors: Amigo M. Luisa , Cuenca Macarena , Cuenca Macarena
Published: May 2012

Este trabajo se enmarca en un área de investigación de ocio creativo, que se lleva a cabo en el Instituto de Estudios de Ocio de la Universidad de Deusto. Los programas didácticos han constituido, tradicionalmente, una herramienta para acercar la ópera a nuevos colectivos. En este artículo analizaremos las iniciativas didácticas de una decena de organizaciones operísticas europeas utilizando la técnica de análisis de contenidos. Para ello, partiremos de unos principios teóricos procedentes de la teoría del ocio y la teoría de la estética, cuya misión es favorecer experiencias de ocio estético más satisfactorias. Tras evaluar si dichos principios tienen su reflejo en la realidad, propondremos algunas líneas de intervención que puedan contribuir a favorecer el proceso de recepción de la ópera y que, de esta manera, mejoren la experiencia operística de los participantes en los programas didácticos.
Didactisation d’un contenu cinématographique et acquisition d’une L/C2 (langue/culture cible)
Authors: Dubrac Anne-Laure
Published: May 2012

Notre article vise à considérer en quoi le septième art peut stimuler et développer les compétences de compréhension et de production orales des apprenants. Le public visé est une classe de première littéraire.Le paradigme épistémologique qui guide notre réflexion est socioconstructiviste. La démarche didactique choisie est celle de l’approche par la tâche.La méthodologie employée est la suivante : les élèves, après avoir visionné un extrait de film, sont sollicités pour jouer le passage. Leur interprétation de la scène est filmée puis commentée par eux de façon à les conduire à une attitude réflexive à l’égard de leurs besoins langagiers. Une fois identifiés, les élèves tentent de les combler, en effectuant des micro-tâches. Puis ils sont appelés à rejouer la scène. La comparaison entre les deux scènes filmées permet de mesurer s’il y a eu progression. L’article expose les résultats de l’expérimentation sur le plan phonologique et dégage plusieurs pistes de réflexion.
Supports filmiques transversaux en pratique de la langue : document authentique ou authentiquement intéressant ?
Authors: Rémon Joséphine
Published: May 2012

Dans le cadre d’une réflexion sur les supports filmiques dans l’enseignement des langues, nous nous proposons de revisiter la notion de document authentique pour apporter une contribution théorique à l’appréhension de l’attractivité d’une ressource filmique et à l’appréhension de la nature de l’acte pédagogique que représente l’utilisation de ces ressources. Des exemples de vidéos disponibles sur Internet montrent que l’opposition entre le didactique et l’authentique laisse place à la transversalité des thématiques, fédérées par le concept de « question socialement vive ».Si les ressources filmiques n’ont pas le monopole des questionnements éthiques, le « regarder ensemble pédagogique » en fait un vecteur privilégié pour aborder les questions vives.Avec ces ressources capables de générer une « écoute engagée », la langue devient le vecteur d’une modification d’un système de connaissances, au-delà de la poursuite d’objectifs langagiers mis au service d’une interpellation citoyenne.
Les séries télévisuelles juridiques américaines : représentations langagières et culturelles d’une communauté professionnelle
Authors: O’Connell Anne-Marie
Published: May 2012

En s’appuyant sur la notion de « tâche » dans une perspective actionnelle de l’enseignement de l’anglais juridique, la présente contribution propose le recours à des séries télévisuelles juridiques américaines parce qu’elles constituent un réservoir important d’activités pédagogiques ordonnées autour de tâches centrales. Après une brève présentation des séries retenues comme supports (premières saisons de Damages et The Good Wife), la première partie rapprochera le travail de l’enseignant de celui du scénariste en matière d’élaboration de séquences. La seconde partie examinera comment le support télévisuel permet de créer des activités relatives aux composantes pragmatiques et sociolinguistiques de la tâche pédagogique. La conclusion insistera sur la vraisemblance des situations que l’élément fictionnel apporte au cours de langue de spécialité.
Learning Different Concept Hierarchies and the Relations Between them from Classified Data
Authors: Benites Fernando , Sapozhnikova Elena
Published: May 2012

Methods for the automatic extraction of taxonomies and concept hierarchies from data have recently emerged as essential assistance for humans in ontology construction. The objective of this chapter is to show how the extraction of concept hierarchies and finding relations between them can be effectively coupled with a multi-label classification task. The authors introduce a data mining system which performs classification and addresses both issues by means of association rule mining. The proposed system has been tested on two real-world datasets with the class labels of each dataset coming from two different class hierarchies. Several experiments on hierarchy extraction and concept relation were conducted in order to evaluate the system and three different interestingness measures were applied, to select the most important relations between concepts. One of the measures was developed by the authors. The experimental results showed that the system is able to infer quite accurate concept hierarchies and associations among the concepts. It is therefore well suited for classification-based reasoning.
Supervised Classification with Bayesian Networks
Authors: Flores M. Julia , Gámez José A. , Martínez Ana M.
Published: May 2012

Bayesian Network classifiers (BNCs) are Bayesian Network (BN) models specifically tailored for classification tasks. There is a wide range of existing models that vary in complexity and efficiency. All of them have in common the ability to deal with uncertainty in a very natural way, at the same time providing a descriptive environment. In this chapter, the authors focus on the family of semi-naïve Bayesian classifiers (naïve Bayes, AODE, TAN, kDB, etc.), motivated by the good trade-off between efficiency and performance they provide. The domain of the BNs is generally of discrete nature, but since the presence of continuous variables is very common, the chapter discusses more classical and novel approaches to handling numeric data. In this chapter the authors also discuss more recent techniques such as multi-dimensional and dynamic models. Last but not least, they focus on applications and recent developments, including some of the BNCs approaches to the multi-class problem together with other traditionally successful and cutting edge cases regarding real-world applications.
Detecting Impact Craters in Planetary Images Using Machine Learning
Authors: Stepinski T. F. , Ding Wei , Vilalta R.
Published: May 2012

Prompted by crater counts as the only available tool for measuring remotely the relative ages of geologic formations on planets, advances in remote sensing have produced a very large database of high resolution planetary images, opening up an opportunity to survey much more numerous small craters improving the spatial and temporal resolution of stratigraphy. Automating the process of crater detection is key to generate comprehensive surveys of smaller craters. Here, the authors discuss two supervised machine learning techniques for crater detection algorithms (CDA): identification of craters from digital elevation models (also known as range images), and identification of craters from panchromatic images. They present applications of both techniques and demonstrate how such automated analysis has produced new knowledge about planet Mars.
Supervision of Industrial Processes using Self Organizing Maps
Authors: Díaz Ignacio , Cuadrado Abel A. , Diez Alberto B. , Domínguez Manuel , Fuertes Juan J. , Prada Miguel A.
Published: May 2012

The objective of this chapter is to present, in a comprehensive and unified way, a corpus of data and knowledge visualization techniques based on the Self-Organizing Map (SOM). These techniques allow exploring the behavior of the process in a visual and intuitive way through the integration of existing process-related knowledge with information extracted from data, providing new ways for knowledge discovery. With a special focus on the application to process supervision and modeling, the chapter reviews well known techniques –such as component planes, u-matrix, and projection of the process state– but also presents recent developments for visualizing process-related knowledge, such as fuzzy maps, local correlation maps, and model maps. It also introduces the maps of dynamics, which allow users to visualize the dynamical behavior of the process on a local model basis, in a seamless integration with the former visualizations, making it possible to confront all them for discovery of new knowledge.
Computer-Controlled Graphical Avatars and Reinforcement Learning
Authors: He Yuesheng , Tang Yuan Yan
Published: May 2012

Controlling Graphical avatars intelligently in real-time applications such as 3D computer simulating environment has become important as the storage and computational power of computers has increased. Such avatars are usually controlled by Finite State Machines (FSM), in which each individual state represents the status of the avatars. The FSMs are usually manually designed, and the number of states and transitions are therefore limited. A more complex approach is needed for the avatar’s actions, which are automatically generated to adapt to different situation. The levels of the missions and algorithms for the control are the essential elements to achieve the requirements, respectively. Reinforcement Learning can be used to control the avatar intelligently in the 3D environment. When simulating the interactions between avatars and changeable environments, the problem becomes more difficult than working in a certain unchanged situation. Specific Framework and methods should be created for controlling the behaviors of avatars, such as using hierarchical structure to describe these actions. The approach has many problems to solve such as where the levels of the missions will be defined and how the learning algorithm will be used to control the avatars, et cetera. In this chapter, these problems will be discussed.
Machine Learning Techniques in Handwriting Recognition
Authors: Lee Hong , Verma Brijesh , Li Michael , Rahman Ashfaqur
Published: May 2012

Handwriting recognition is a process of recognizing handwritten text on a paper in the case of offline handwriting recognition and on a tablet in the case of online handwriting recognition and converting it into an editable text. In this chapter, the authors focus on offline handwriting recognition, which means that recognition system accepts a scanned handwritten page as an input and outputs an editable recognized text. Handwriting recognition has been an active research area for more than four decades, but some of the major problems still remained unsolved. Many techniques, including the machine learning techniques, have been used to improve the accuracy. This chapter focuses on describing the problems of handwriting recognition and presents the solutions using machine learning techniques for solving major problems in handwriting recognition. The chapter also reviews and presents the state of the art techniques with results and future research for improving handwriting recognition.
Applications of Machine Learning for Linguistic Analysis of Texts
Authors: Torney Rosemary , Yearwood John , Vamplew Peter , Kelarev Andrei V.
Published: May 2012

This chapter describes a novel multistage method for linguistic clustering of large collections of texts available on the Internet as a precursor to linguistic analysis of these texts. This method addresses the practicalities of applying clustering operations to a very large set of text documents by using a combination of unsupervised clustering and supervised classification. The method relies on creating a multitude of independent clusterings of a randomized sample selected from the International Corpus of Learner English. Several consensus functions and sophisticated algorithms are applied in two substages to combine these independent clusterings into one final consensus clustering, which is then used to train fast classifiers in order to enable them to perform the profiling of very large collections of text and web data. This approach makes it possible to apply advanced highly accurate and sophisticated clustering techniques by combining them with fast supervised classification algorithms. For the effectiveness of this multistage method it is crucial to determine how well the supervised classification algorithms are going to perform at the final stage, when they are used to process large data sets available on the Internet. This performance may also serve as an indication of the quality of the combined consensus clustering obtained in the preceding stages. The authors’ experimental results compare the performance of several classification algorithms incorporated in this multistage scheme and demonstrate that several of these classification algorithms achieve very high precision and recall and can be used in practical implementations of their method.
An Automatic Machine Learning Method for the Study of Keyword Suggestion
Authors: Chen Lin-Chih
Published: May 2012

Keyword suggestion is an automatic machine learning method to suggest relevant keywords to users in order to help users better specify their information needs. In this chapter, the authors adopt two semantic analysis models to build a keyword suggestion system. The suggested keywords returned from the system not only with a certain semantic relationship, but also with a similarity measure. The benefit of the authors’ method is to overcome the problems of synonymy and polysemy over the information retrieval field by using a vector space model. This chapter shows that using multiple semantic analysis techniques to generate relevant keywords can give significant performance gains.
Predicting Adsorption Behavior in Engineered Floodplain Filtration System Using Backpropagation Neural Networks
Authors: Rene Eldon R. , Behera Shishir Kumar , Park Hung Suck
Published: May 2012

Engineered floodplain filtration (EFF) system is an eco-friendly low-cost water treatment process wherein water contaminants can be removed, by adsorption and-or degraded by microorganisms, as the infiltrating water moves from the wastewater treatment plants to the rivers. An artificial neural network (ANN) based approach was used in this study to approximate and interpret the complex input/output relationships, essentially to understand the breakthrough times in EFF. The input parameters to the ANN model were inlet concentration of a pharmaceutical, ibuprofen (ppm) and flow rate (md– 1), and the output parameters were six concentration-time pairs (C, t). These C, t pairs were the times in the breakthrough profile, when 1%, 5%, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 95% of the pollutant was present at the outlet of the system. The most dependable condition for the network was selected by a trial and error approach and by estimating the determination coefficient (R2) value (>0.99) achieved during prediction of the testing set. The proposed ANN model for EFF operation could be used as a potential alternative for knowledge-based models through proper training and testing of variables.
A PSO-Based Framework for Designing Fuzzy Systems from Noisy Data Set
Authors: Singh Satvir , Saini J. S. , Khosla Arun
Published: May 2012

In most of Fuzzy Logic System (FLS) designs, human reasoning is encoded into programs to make decisions and/or control systems. Designing an optimal FLS is equivalent to an optimization problem, in which efforts are made to locate a point in fitness search-space where the performance is better than that of other locations. The number of parameters to be tuned in designing an FLS is quite large. Also, fitness search space is highly non-linear, deceptive, non-differentiable, and multi-modal in nature. Noisy data, from which to construct the FLS, may make the design problem even more difficult. This chapter presents a framework to design Type-1 (T1) and Interval Type-2 (IT2) FLSs (Liang and Mendel, 2000c, Mendel, 2001, 2007, Mendel et al., 2006) using Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) (Eberhart and Kennedy, 1995, Kennedy and Eberhart, 1995). This framework includes the use of PSO based Nature Inspired (NI) Toolbox discussed in the chapter titled, “Nature-Inspired Toolbox to Design and Optimize Systems.”
Neural Network Based Classifier Ensembles
Authors: Verma B.
Published: May 2012

This chapter presents the state of the art in classifier ensembles and their comparative performance analysis. The main aim and focus of this chapter is to present and compare the author’s recently developed neural network based classifier ensembles. The three types of neural classifier ensembles are considered and discussed. The first type is a classifier ensemble that uses a neural network for all its base classifiers. The second type is a classifier ensemble that uses a neural network as one of the classifiers among many of its base classifiers. The third and final type is a classifier ensemble that uses a neural network as a fusion classifier. The chapter reviews recent neural network based ensemble classifiers and compares their performances with other machine learning based classifier ensembles such as bagging, boosting, and rotation forest. The comparison is conducted on selected benchmark datasets from UCI machine learning repository.
Development of an Intelligent Neural Model to Predict and Analyze the VOC Removal Pattern in a Photocatalytic Reactor
Authors: Krishnan Jagannathan , Rene Eldon Raj , Lenskiy Artem A. , Swaminathan Tyagarajan
Published: May 2012

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) belong to a new class of air pollutant that causes significant effect on human health and environment. Photocatalytic oxidation is an innovative, highly efficient, and promising option to decontaminate air polluted with VOCs, at faster elimination rates. This study pertains to the application of artificial neural networks to model the removal dynamics of an annular type photoreactor for gas – phase VOC removal. Relevant literature pertaining to the experimental work has been reported in this chapter. The different steps involved in developing a suitable neural model have been outlined by considering the influence of internal network parameters on the model architecture. Anew, the neural network modeling results were also subjected to sensitivity analysis in order to identify the most influential parameter affecting the VOC removal process in the photoreactor.
Adaptive Intelligent Systems for Recognition of Cancerous Cervical Cells Based on 2D Cervical Cytological Digital Images
Authors: Ane Bernadetta Kwintiana , Roller Dieter
Published: May 2012

To date, cancer of uterine cervix is still a leading cause of cancer-related deaths in women in the world. Papanicolau smear test is a well-known screening method of detecting abnormalities of the cervix cells. Due to scarce number of skilled and experienced cytologists, the screening procedure becomes time consuming and highly prone to human errors that leads to inaccurate and inconsistent diagnosis. This condition increases the risk of patients who get HPV infection not be detected and become HPV carriers. Coping with this problem, an adaptive intelligent system is developed to enable automatic recognition of cancerous cells from. Here pattern recognition is done based on three morphological cell characteristics, i.e. size, shape, and color features, and measured as numerical values in terms of N/C ratio, nucleus perimeter, nucleus radius, cell deformity, texture heterogeneity, wavelet approximation coefficients, and gray-level intensity. Through a supervised learning of multilayer perceptron network, the system is able to percept abnormality in the cervix cells, and to assign them into a predicted group membership, i.e. normal or cancerous cells. Based on thorough observation upon the selected features and attributes, it can be recognized that the cancerous cells follow certain patterns and highly distinguishable from the normal cells.
A Beam Search Based Decision Tree Induction Algorithm
Authors: Basgalupp Márcio Porto , Barros Rodrigo Coelho , de Carvalho André C. P. L. F. , Freitas Alex A.
Published: May 2012

Decision tree induction algorithms are highly used in a variety of domains for knowledge discovery and pattern recognition. They have the advantage of producing a comprehensible classification model and satisfactory accuracy levels in several application domains. Most well-known decision tree induction algorithms perform a greedy top-down strategy for node partitioning that may lead to sub-optimal solutions that overfit the training data. Some alternatives for the greedy strategy are the use of ensemble of classifiers or, more recently, the employment of the evolutionary algorithms (EA) paradigm to evolve decision trees by performing a global search in the space of candidate trees. Both strategies have their own disadvantages, like the lack of comprehensible solutions (in the case of ensembles) or the high computation cost of EAs. Hence, the authors of this chapter present a new algorithm that seeks to avoid being trapped in local-optima by doing a beam search during the decision tree growth. In addition, their strategy keeps the comprehensibility of the traditional methods and is much less time-consuming than evolutionary algorithms.
Strengthening Laboratory Management Towards Accreditation: The Lesotho experience
Authors: Mothabeng David , Maruta Talkmore , Lebina Mathabo , Lewis Kim , Wanyoike Joe , Mengstu Yohannes
Published: May 2012

Introduction: The Lesotho Ministry of Health and Social Welfare’s (MOHSW) 5-year strategic plan, as well as their national laboratory policy and yearly operational plans, directly addresses issues of accreditation, indicating their commitment to fulfilling their mandate. As such, the MOHSW adopted the World Health Organization Regional Headquarters for Africa’s Stepwise Laboratory Quality Improvement Toward Accreditation (WHO–AFRO–SLIPTA) process and subsequently rolled out the Strengthening Laboratory Management Towards Accreditation (SLMTA) programme across the whole country, becoming the first African country to do so. Methods: SLMTA in Lesotho was implemented in two cohorts. Twelve and nineteen laboratory supervisors and quality officers were enrolled in Cohort 1 and Cohort 2, respectively. These 31 participants represented 18 of the 19 laboratories nationwide. For the purposes of this programme, the Queen Elizabeth II (QE II) Central Laboratory had its seven sections of haematology, blood bank, cytology, blood transfusion, microbiology, tuberculosis laboratory and chemistry assessed as separate sections. Performance was tracked using the WHO–AFRO-SLIPTA checklist, with assessments carried out at baseline and at the end of SLMTA. Two methods were used to implement SLMTA: the traditional ‘three workshops’ approach and twinning SLMTA with mentorship. The latter, with intensive follow-up visits, was concluded in 9 months and the former in 11 months. A standard data collection tool was used for site visits.Results: Of the 31 participants across both cohorts, 25 (81%) graduated (9 from Cohort 1 and 16 from Cohort 2). At baseline, all but one laboratory attained a rating of zero stars, with the exception attaining one star. At the final assessment, 7 of the 25 laboratories examined at baseline were still at a rating of zero stars, whilst 8 attained one star, 5 attained two stars and 4 attained three stars. None scored above three stars. The highest percentage improvement for any laboratory was 51%, whereas the least improved dropped by 6% when compared to its baseline assessment. The most improved areas were corrective actions (34%) and documents and records (32%). Process improvement demonstrated the least improvement (10%).Conclusion: The SLMTA programme had an immediate, measurable and positive impact on laboratories in Lesotho. This success was possible because of the leadership and ownership of the programme by the MOHSW, as well as the coordination of partner support.
Psychiatric nurse practitioners’ experiences of working with mental health care users presenting with acute symptoms
Authors: Ngako Kgalabi J. , Van Rensburg Elsie S.J. , Mataboge Sanah M.L.
Published: May 2012

Psychiatric nurse practitioners (PNPs) working with mental health care users presenting with acute symptoms work in a complex environment. This environment is characterised by mental health care users who may present with a history of violence, sexual assault and substance misuse.The objectives of this study were twofold: firstly, to explore and describe the experiences of PNPs working with mental health care users (MHCUs) presenting with acute symptoms; and secondly, to make recommendations for the advanced PNPs to facilitate promotion of the mental health of PNPs with reference to nursing practice, research and education.A qualitative, explorative, descriptive and contextual design was used. The target population was PNPs working with MHCUs presenting with acute symptoms in a public mental health care institution in Gauteng. Data were collected by means of four focus group interviews involving 21 PNPs. The researcher made use of drawings, naïve sketches and field notes for the purpose of data triangulation. Data were analysed in accordance with Tesch’s method of open coding.The three themes that emerged were: PNPs experienced working with these MHCUs as entering an unsafe world where care became a burden; they experienced negative emotional reactions and attitudes towards these MHCUs that compromised quality nursing care; and they made a plea for a nurturing environment that would enhance quality nursing care.The PNPs suggest skills and competency development, organisational support, and a need for external resources. Creation of a positive environment and mobilisation of resources as well as the identification and bridging of obstacles are essential in the promotion of the overall wellbeing and mental health of PNPs.
Malachi 4:4−6 (Heb 3:22−24) as a point of convergence in the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible: A consideration of the intra and intertextual relationships
Authors: Snyman S.D.
Published: May 2012

Malachi 4:4−6 (Heb 3:22−24) occupies a special place in the canon of Scriptures. In Malachi 4:4−6 (Heb 3:22−24) not only the book of Malachi comes to a close but the whole of the Prophets (Nebi’im), and the second part of the Hebrew Bible. In the Christian Bible the book of Malachi is the last book in the Old Testament, which is concluded with this passage, before one turns to the New Testament. In this article it was argued the these three verses serve not only as the conclusion to the book of Malachi but also as a fitting close to the second part of the Hebrew Bible. It also serves as a link to both the Pentateuch as the first part, and the Psalms as the third part, of the Hebrew canon of Scriptures. In this sense Malachi 4:4−6 (Heb 3:22−24) can be viewed as a point of convergence in the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible.
Preliminary investigation into the ventilatory effects of midazolam in isoflurane-anaesthetised goats
Authors: Stegmann George F. , Bester Lynette
Published: May 2012

The ventilatory effects of intravenous midazolam (MDZ) were evaluated in isoflurane- anaesthetised goats. Eight female goats aged 2–3 years were fasted from food and water for 12 h. Anaesthesia was then induced using a face mask with isoflurane in oxygen, whilst the trachea was intubated with a cuffed tracheal tube and anaesthesia maintained with isoflurane at 1.5% end-tidal concentration. Ventilation was spontaneous. The goats were treated with either a saline placebo (PLC) or MDZ intravenously at 0.2 mg/kg. Analysis of variance for repeated measures was used for the analysis of data. Significance was taken at the 0.05 level. Differences between treatments were not statistically significant (p 0.05) for tidal volume, ventilation rate, tidal volume/kg (VT/kg) and end-tidal carbon dioxide partial pressure. Within treatments, VT and VT/kg differed 5 min after MDZ administration; this was statistically significant (p 0.05). The occurrence of apnoea in the MDZ-treated goats was statistically significant (p = 0.04) compared with the PLC treated goats. Intravenous MDZ at 0.2 mg/kg administered to isoflurane-anaesthetised goats may result in transient apnoea and a mild decrease in VT and VT/kg.
Stent Implantation for Effective Treatment of Refractory Chylothorax due to Superior Vena Cava Obstruction as a Complication of Congenital Cardiac Surgery
Authors: Tamai Akiko , Kurishima Clara , Seki Mitsuru , Masutani Satoshi , Taketazu Mio , Senzaki Hideaki
Published: May 2012

Chylothorax is a serious complication of congenital cardiac surgery and is significantly associated with increased morbidity and mortality. Central venous obstruction, which is often related to the insertion of central venous catheters for postoperative management, is known to be an important risk factor for treatment failure and mortality associated with this condition. We present the case of a 6-month-old girl with refractory chylothorax after surgical repair of tetralogy of Fallot. The chylous drainage continued for more than 2 months despite maximal conservative therapy (water restriction, total parenteral nutrition, and infusion of somatostatin and steroid) and surgical ligation of the thoracic duct. Subsequently, we observed stenosis of the superior vena cava (SVC) caused by large thrombi possibly associated with the prolonged use of central venous catheter placed in the internal jugular vein. Because transcatheter balloon dilation failed to relieve the stenosis, we performed stent implantation for the SVC and innominate vein. After the procedure, chylous drainage dramatically reduced, and the patient was discharged from the hospital. In conclusion, central venous obstruction due to thrombosis should be routinely examined when chylothorax is diagnosed and is resistant to conservative therapy after congenital heart surgery. Stent implantation can effectively relieve the venous obstruction and thus be a life-saving treatment option for this difficult condition.
Modular functors are determined by their genus zero data
Authors: Andersen Jørgen Ellegaard , Ueno Kenji
Published: May 2012

We prove in this paper that the genus zero data of a modular functor determines the modular functor. We do this by establishing that the S-matrix in genus one with one point labeled arbitrarily can be expressed in terms of the genus zero information and we give an explicit formula. We do not assume the modular functor in question has duality or is unitary, in order to establish this.
Hitchin’s connection in metaplectic quantization
Authors: Andersen Jørgen Ellegaard , Gammelgaard Niels Leth , Lauridsen Magnus Roed
Published: May 2012

We give a differential geometric construction of a connection, which we call the Hitchin connection, in the bundle of quantum Hilbert spaces arising from metaplectically corrected geometric quantization of a prequantizable, symplectic manifold, endowed with a rigid family of Kähler structures, all of which give vanishing first Dolbeault cohomology groups.

This generalizes work of both Hitchin, Scheinost and Schottenloher, and Andersen, since our construction does not need that the first Chern class is proportional to the class of the symplectic form, nor do we need compactness of the symplectic manifold in question.

Furthermore, when we are in a setting similar to the moduli space, we give an explicit formula and show that this connection agrees with previous constructions.
Health Information Exchange and Ambulatory Quality of Care
Authors: Barrón Y. , Dhopeshwarkar R.V. , Kaushal R. , Kern L.M.
Published: May 2012

Background: Health information exchange is a national priority, but there is limited evidence of its effectiveness.

Objective: We sought to determine the effect of health information exchange on ambulatory quality.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort study over two years of 138 primary care physicians in small group practices in the Hudson Valley region of New York State. All physicians had access to an electronic portal, through which they could view clinical data (such as laboratory and radiology test results) for their patients over time, regardless of the ordering physician. We considered 15 quality measures that were being used by the community for a pay-for-performance program, as well as the subset of 8 measures expected to be affected by the portal. We adjusted for 11 physician characteristics (including health care quality at baseline).

Results: Nearly half (43%) of the physicians were portal users. Non-users performed at or above the regional benchmark on 48% of the measures at baseline and 49% of the measures at follow-up (p = 0.58). Users performed at or above the regional benchmark on 57% of the measures at baseline and 64% at follow-up (p<0.001). Use of the portal was independently associated with higher quality of care at follow-up for those measures expected to be affected by the portal (p = 0.01), but not for those not expected to be affected by the portal (p = 0.12).

Conclusions: Use of an electronic portal for viewing clinical data was associated with modest improvements in ambulatory quality.
Enhanced solar energy absorption by internally-mixed black carbon in snow grains
Authors: Flanner M. G. , Liu X. , Zhou C. , Penner J. E. , Jiao C.
Published: May 2012

Abstract. Here we explore light absorption by snowpack containing black carbon (BC) particles residing within ice grains. Basic considerations of particle volumes and BC/snow mass concentrations show that there are generally 0.05–109 BC particles for each ice grain. This suggests that internal BC is likely distributed as multiple inclusions within ice grains, and thus the dynamic effective medium approximation (DEMA) (Chýlek and Srivastava, 1983) is a more appropriate optical representation for BC/ice composites than coated-sphere or standard mixing approximations. DEMA calculations show that the 460 nm absorption cross-section of BC/ice composites, normalized to the mass of BC, is typically enhanced by factors of 1.8–2.1 relative to interstitial BC. BC effective radius is the dominant cause of variation in this enhancement, compared with ice grain size and BC volume fraction. We apply two atmospheric aerosol models that simulate interstitial and within-hydrometeor BC lifecycles. Although only ~2% of the atmospheric BC burden is cloud-borne, 71–83% of the BC deposited to global snow and sea-ice surfaces occurs within hydrometeors. Key processes responsible for within-snow BC deposition are development of hydrophilic coatings on BC, activation of liquid droplets, and subsequent snow formation through riming or ice nucleation by other species and aggregation/accretion of ice particles. Applying deposition fields from these aerosol models in offline snow and sea-ice simulations, we calculate that 32–73% of BC in global surface snow resides within ice grains. This fraction is smaller than the within-hydrometeor deposition fraction because meltwater flux preferentially removes internal BC, while sublimation and freezing within snowpack expose internal BC. Incorporating the DEMA into a global climate model, we simulate increases in BC/snow radiative forcing of 43–86%, relative to scenarios that apply external optical properties to all BC. We show that snow metamorphism driven by diffusive vapor transfer likely proceeds too slowly to alter the mass of internal BC while it is radiatively active, but neglected processes like wind pumping and convection may play much larger roles. These results suggest that a large portion of BC in surface snowpack may reside within ice grains and increase BC/snow radiative forcing, although measurements to evaluate this are lacking. Finally, previous studies of BC/snow forcing that neglected this absorption enhancement are not necessarily biased low, because of application of absorption-enhancing sulfate coatings to hydrophilic BC, neglect of coincident absorption by dust in snow, and implicit treatment of cloud-borne BC resulting in longer-range transport.
Documentary evidence for changing climatic and anthropogenic influences on the Bermejo Wetland in Mendoza, Argentina, during the 16th–20th century
Authors: Prieto M. R. , Rojas F.
Published: May 2012

Abstract. This paper examines the processes underlying changes to the once-extensive Bermejo Wetland, east of the city of Mendoza, Argentina (32°55' S, 68°51' W). Historical documents and maps from the 16th to 20th century are used to reconstruct environmental shifts. Historical documents indicate periods of increased snowfall in the adjacent Andes mountains, as well as high flow volumes in the Mendoza River. Data from georeferenced maps, the first from 1802 and the last from 1903, reflect the changes in the surface area of the wetland. The combined data sets show pulses of growth and retraction, in which major expansions coincided with more intense snowstorms and increased flow in the Mendoza River, which in turn influenced socio-economic activities. The wetland became progressively drier during the 19th century, before drying up completely around 1930, due in part to the construction of drainages and channels.
An assessment of key model parametric uncertainties in projections of Greenland Ice Sheet behavior
Authors: Applegate P. J. , Kirchner N. , Stone E. J. , Keller K. , Greve R.
Published: May 2012

Abstract. Lack of knowledge about the values of ice sheet model input parameters introduces substantial uncertainty into projections of Greenland Ice Sheet contributions to future sea level rise. Computer models of ice sheet behavior provide one of several means of estimating future sea level rise due to mass loss from ice sheets. Such models have many input parameters whose values are not well known. Recent studies have investigated the effects of these parameters on model output, but the range of potential future sea level increases due to model parametric uncertainty has not been characterized. Here, we demonstrate that this range is large, using a 100-member perturbed-physics ensemble with the SICOPOLIS ice sheet model. Each model run is spun up over 125 000 yr using geological forcings and subsequently driven into the future using an asymptotically increasing air temperature anomaly curve. All modeled ice sheets lose mass after 2005 AD. Parameters controlling surface melt dominate the model response to temperature change. After culling the ensemble to include only members that give reasonable ice volumes in 2005 AD, the range of projected sea level rise values in 2100 AD is ~40 % or more of the median. Data on past ice sheet behavior can help reduce this uncertainty, but none of our ensemble members produces a reasonable ice volume change during the mid-Holocene, relative to the present. This problem suggests that the model's exponential relation between temperature and precipitation does not hold during the Holocene, or that the central-Greenland temperature forcing curve used to drive the model is not representative of conditions around the ice margin at this time (among other possibilities). Our simulations also lack certain observed physical processes that may tend to enhance the real ice sheet's response. Regardless, this work has implications for other studies that use ice sheet models to project or hindcast the behavior of the Greenland Ice Sheet.
Honeybee Floral Resources in Southwestern Nigeria
Authors: Ayansola Abel Adebayo , Adedoyin Davies Banjo
Published: May 2012

Every beekeeper is expected to be familiar with the bee floral resources near/ or around his/her apiary for successful beekeeping operation. Understanding the major nectar and pollen producing plants and their flowering period is of great advantage to maximise the efficiency of the bees. Regrettably however, there is dearth of information on floral resources of honeybees in southwestern Nigeria. This study investigated the food-plants of honeybees (Apis mellifera andasonii) in the rainforest and derived savannah zones of southwestern Nigeria between April 2009 and March 2011. Forty nine species of melliferous plants belonging to different families were recorded. The flowering period of each plant species differs from one another. However, there was no month in the year that a plant was not in flower. Differences in bee visitation rates to each plant species were observed. Bee flowering calendar was prepared with the intensity of bee visitation rates. The ethno-medicinal uses of the bee-plants were also documented.
The effects of ultrasonic pretreatment and structural changes during the osmotic dehydration of the ˈStarkingˈ apple (Malus domestica Borkh)
Authors: Rosas-Mendoza M. E. , Fernández-Muñoz J. L. , Arjona-Román J. L.
Published: May 2012

During the osmotic dehydration (OD) of fruit, the cell membrane displays a high resistance to mass transfer, thereby reducing the dehydration rate. To reduce thermal damage to cell membranes, alternative methods have recently been introduced to reduce the initial moisture content and/or modify the structure of fruit tissue. The aim of this work was to evaluate the effects of an ultrasound (US) pretreatment for OD on the effective diffusion coefficients and to observe the changes in the molecular structure of Starking apple cubes by Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) during a 3 h process using a 45°Bx sucrose solution at 60°C. In the pretreatment step, apple samples were immersed in an ultrasonic bath at 45 kHz for 20 min. The effective diffusion coefficients for water (Dew) and solids (Des) were calculated from the observed osmotic kinetics according to Fick´s second law for the transient state. The solids coefficients were higher than the water coefficients in both processes due to the concentration difference (Des= 7.7×10-9 and 9.7×10-9 m2 s-1 for ODUS).The structural changes were determined by FTIR by measuring the molecular vibration frequency for sucrose. The 1,500–900 cm-1 region of the infrared spectra was used to monitor the effect of sucrose concentration on fruit structure. We observed that the first bonds formed were C-H and C-O-C stretching (at 920 and 1,129 cm−1, respectively) in the sucrose skeleton and glycoside bonds among sucrose molecules. The water concentration affected the diffusion coefficient significantly due to its dependence on the physical structure of the food.
Factors influencing the success of an artificial insemination program in Florida goats
Authors: Arrebola F. A. , Pardo B. , Sanchez M. , Lopez M. D. , Perez-Marin C. C.
Published: May 2012

An artificial insemination (AI) program using cooled semen was evaluated over a 7-year period in Florida goats. The effect of the following variables on pregnancy rates was analysed: production system, year and season of AI, synchronisation treatment, bucks, AI technicians, semen deposition site, days in milk at AI, milk yield and parity. Animals were reared under field conditions on commercial farms in southern Spain. Semen was collected from nine bucks and cooled at 4ºC until use. A total of 3941 goats were synchronised using intravaginal progesterone sponges and inseminated 46.0 ± 0.5 h. after sponge removal. Pregnancy was diagnosed by ultrasonography 42-46 days after AI, obtaining an average pregnancy rate of 48.7%. Logistic regression showed that production system, AI year and season, bucks and semen deposition site had a significant effect (p<0.05) on pregnancy rate, while the other variables analysed were removed from the model. The final statistical model accounted for 59.7% of the cases analysed, suggesting that other factors not studied here may influence pregnancy rates in Florida goats.
Effects of climate and fertilization strategy on nitrogen balance in an outdoor potted crop of Viburnum tinus L.
Authors: Narváez L. , Cáceres R. , Marfà O.
Published: May 2012

Little information is currently available on how fertilization management affects leachate composition and the plant nitrogen (N) uptake of crops under Mediterranean climate. The objectives of this study were to determine the effect of different fertilization strategies and doses on the composition of the leachates and the use of N by plants, to establish a N balance for the different fertilization strategies and doses used and to establish a linear regression model to predict N concentration in leachates from an outdoor potted crop of Viburnum tinus L. ‘Eve Price’. Two fertilizations strategies, i.e. continuous fertigation (NS) and incorporated controlled-release fertilizer (CRF), were applied to the crop. The treatments were two NS doses (NSA: 57.4 mg NO3--NL-1 and NSB: 43.4 mg NO3--NL-1) and two CRF doses (CRFC: 5 g L-1 and CRFD: 7 g L-1).The NO3--N concentration in the leachates from the CRF treatments was high in the first weeks of growing (100-300 mg L-1). The efficiency of use of N was greater in the NSA treatment (9.2 g g-1). When CRFC was applied there was an increased loss of N by leaching (48 % of the total N). The concentration of N in the leachates for both fertilization strategies was found to be correlated with the variables substrate temperature and precipitation. Therefore, these variables must be considered when determining the dose of fertilizer to be added to a crop, especially when CRF are chosen, to avoid high losses of N by leaching.
Evaluation of global, photosynthetically active radiation and diffuse radiation transmission of agricultural screens
Authors: Romero-Gámez M. , Suárez-Rey E. M. , Castilla N. , Soriano T.
Published: May 2012

Transmittance of a material depends on the type of radiation impinging on the material (direct or diffuse), the angle of incidence of the sun’s rays (in direct radiation conditions) and the structure and characteristics of the material itself. The aim of this study was to evaluate the performance of nine agricultural screens of different densities, colours, thread diameters and porosities. A simple metal frame was used to quantify global, diffuse and photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) transmission to determine their transmittance values (as a function of the incidence angle of solar rays in direct radiation conditions) for global radiation and PAR, as well as the diffuse radiation transmitted characteristics of the screens (ratio of diffuse radiation to global radiation transmitted by screens). Non-coloured (translucent) screens contributed to a higher and more efficient proportion of diffuse radiation (Di/Gi ≈ 90%). The green screen behaved similarly to the non-coloured 20×10 type as far as global radiation was concerned, although the PAR transmittance values were lower (up to 12.4% at 15º). Variation in transmission according to diameter and density of the threads was greatest in the black screens. The non-coloured-thread screens may be the best option for maximising the transmission of diffuse radiation and the 6×6 green screen for vegetables cultivation during the summer in inland areas with latitudes close to 36ºN.