bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Object learning and detection using evolutionary deformable models for mobile robot navigation
Authors: Mata M. , Armingol J. M. , Fernández J. , de la Escalera A. 
Published: October 2007

SUMMARYDeformable models have been studied in image analysis over the last decade and used for recognition of flexible or rigid templates under diverse viewing conditions. This article addresses the question of how to define a deformable model for a real-time color vision system for mobile robot navigation. Instead of receiving the detailed model definition from the user, the algorithm extracts and learns the information from each object automatically. How well a model represents the template that exists in the image is measured by an energy function. Its minimum corresponds to the model that best fits with the image and it is found by a genetic algorithm that handles the model deformation. At a later stage, if there is symbolic information inside the object, it is extracted and interpreted using a neural network. The resulting perception module has been integrated successfully in a complex navigation system. Various experimental results in real environments are presented in this article, showing the effectiveness and capacity of the system.
The effect of experimental warming on the root-associated fungal community of Salix arctica
Authors: Fujimura Kei E , Egger Keith N , Henry Gregory H R 
Published: October 2007

Abstract
The effect of experimental warming on the root-associated fungal community of arctic willow (Salix arctica) was studied in three distinct habitats at a tundra site in the Canadian High Arctic. Plots were passively warmed for 5–7 years using open-top chambers and compared to control plots at ambient temperature. Fungal communities were assessed using terminal restriction fragment length polymorphisms. We found the following: (1) the root-associated fungal community in these high arctic tundra habitats is highly diverse; (2) site and soil characteristics are the most important drivers of community structure and (3) warming increased the density of different genotypes on individual root sections but has not (yet) affected the composition, richness or evenness of the community. The change in genotype density in the warmed plots was associated with an increase in PCR amplification efficiency, suggesting that increased C allocation belowground is increasing the overall biomass of the fungal community.
Magnetic resonance-assisted imaging of slow flow in the pancreatic and common bile duct in healthy volunteers
Authors: Hellund J. C. , Storaas T. , Gjesdal K. I. , Klow N. E. , Geitung J. T. 
Published: October 2007

Background: Magnetic resonance cholangiopancreaticography (MRCP) is commonly used to evaluate the pancreatic (PD) and common bile duct (CBD), and the addition of secretin is used to obtain functional information (S-MRCP). Neither method gives any information on flow velocities within the ducts. Purpose: To evaluate a new, MRI diffusion-based, slow-flow-sensitive sequence for the detection of slow flow changes in the PD and CBD. Material and Methods: Seven healthy volunteers were examined. A modified single-shot turbo spin-echo sequence was used to detect slow flow changes. Three b factors (0, 6, and 12 s/mm2) were used. The flow sensitivity was applied in two directions, vertically and horizontally. Scanning was performed before and after glucagon was given, and again after an intravenous injection of secretin. The sequence gives signal loss from a duct when flow increases, and such changes were recorded. Results: All images showed the PD with b = 0 (no flow sensitization). After administration of glucagon, artifacts from bowel movements were reduced and visibility of the PD was improved at both b = 6 and b = 12. Significant reduction of the visibility of the PD, indicating increased flow, was recorded both at b = 6 and b = 12 after the administration of secretin. There were no changes in the visibility of the CBD. Conclusion: This study shows that MRI-based detection of slow flow changes inside the PD is possible. Due to the sequence’s high sensitivity to any motion, further studies are required before adopting the method for clinical use.
Pelvic venous variations in patients with congenital inferior vena cava anomalies: classification with computed tomography
Authors: Morita S. , Higuchi M. , Saito N. , Mitsuhashi N. 
Published: October 2007

Background: Pelvic venous variations of congenital inferior vena cava (IVC) anomalies that have the potential to cause problems during related surgery and interventional radiology are not fully appreciated. Purpose: To classify pelvic venous variations of congenital IVC anomalies using computed tomography (CT). Material and Methods: CT images for 36 patients with congenital IVC anomalies were retrospectively reviewed. Pelvic venous variations were classified with regard to the relationship with the iliac veins and the presence of interiliac communication. Results: Pelvic venous variations were classified into eight types. One azygous continuation displayed normal connection with the bilateral common iliac veins (CIV) (type 1). Of 28 double IVCs, 11 (39.3%) displayed no interiliac communication (type 2a), five (17.9%) displayed interiliac communication from the left CIV (type 2b), one (3.6%) had communication from the right CIV (type 2c), six (21.4%) had communication from the left internal iliac vein (IIV) (type 2d), and five (17.9%) had communication from the right IIV (type 2e). Six left IVCs displayed symmetrical-to-normal connection with the bilateral CIV (type 3). One absence of infrarenal IVC displayed no connection with the CIV (type 4). Conclusion: Eight types of pelvic venous variations of congenital IVC anomalies were classified using CT.
Value of apparent diffusion coefficient calculation in the differential diagnosis of parotid gland tumors
Authors: Yerli H. , Agildere A. M. , Aydin E. , Geyik E. , Haberal N. , Kaskati T. , Oguz D. , Ozluoglu L. N. 
Published: October 2007

Background: The differential diagnosis of parotid gland tumors is often difficult with conventional magnetic resonance imaging. Purpose: To determine whether the calculation of the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) is valuable for making the differential diagnosis of parotid tumors. Material and Methods: Thirty parotid masses in 28 patients and 24 healthy parotid glands in 12 controls were examined in this prospective study. Diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging with echo-planar spin-echo sequences was used to evaluate each subject. The ADC of each tumor and each healthy parotid gland was calculated. Tumor diagnoses were confirmed by the results of histopathologic analysis. Results: The following types of masses were identified: 11 Warthin tumors, nine pleomorphic adenomas, seven malignant tumors, one basal cell adenoma, and two benign cysts. The mean ADC value for the Warthin tumors was 0.97±0.16×10−3 mm2/s, for the pleomorphic adenomas was 1.74±0.37×10−3 mm2/s, for the malignant tumors was 1.04±0.35×10−3 mm2/s, and for the normal parotid glands was 0.34±0.20×10−3 mm2/s. The respective ADC value for the single basal cell adenoma was 1.40×10−3 mm2/s. Statistically significant differences were identified between the subjects with pleomorphic adenoma and those with another type of parotid tumor, and between subjects with healthy parotid glands and those with a tumor. Conclusion: Calculating the ADC appears to be useful in differentiating pleomorphic adenomas from other types of parotid gland tumors.
Computed tomography features of recurrent ovarian carcinoma according to time to relapse
Authors: Sahdev A. , Hughes J. H. , Barwick T. , Rockall A. G. , Gallagher C. J. , Reznek R. H. 
Published: October 2007

Background: Although the sites of recurrent ovarian cancer are individually described in the literature, patterns of recurrent disease are poorly understood. Purpose: To describe CT patterns of disease in recurrent ovarian cancer. To emphasize common patterns, recognise subtle and unusual sites of recurrent disease. Materials and Methods: We identified patients between 1981–2004 presenting with clinical recurrence or elevated CA 125 after complete primary clinical and radiological response. CT imaging at primary diagnosis, during and after treatment and at recurrence was retrospectively reviewed. Site, distribution, stage of disease and time to relapse was recorded. Results: 400 patients were treated for ovarian cancer. 214(54%) achieved complete primary response. 161(75%) relapsed with complete imaging available in 67 patients. Of the 67 patients, 14 (21%) recurred within 1 year, 44 (66%) relapsed between 1–5 years. Therefore 87% of relapses occurred within 5 years following primary treatment. Five (8%) relapsed between 5–10 years and 4 (6%) relapsed after 10 years. Commonest pattern of relapse was pelvic mass in 35 (48%) patients, solitary in 15 (22%). 27 (45%) relapsed with peritoneal thickening, 27 (45%) had small or large bowel serosal disease, 22 (33%) had enlarged lymphadenopathy, 6 as sole manifestation of recurrence, 20 (30%) presented with unusual sites of recurrence: 6 splenic, 10 hepatic, 2 biliary, 3 brain and 2 muscle. Conclusion: Our study is the first to describe common patterns of recurrence in ovarian cancer. Most frequent site is pelvis, followed by peritoneum, serosal surfaces and nodal disease. 30% presented with disease at ‘unusual’ sites.
Talking Chinese
Authors: Farmer Penelope 
Published: October 2007

The highly visible base of the Chinese in Britain, in the form of their restaurants and fast-food outlets, belies the near invisibility of the community itself. Those who run the restaurants work night and day, seven days a week; only the waiters learn English and then only as much as they need to do the job. The community is not concentrated in any one town or region, and has little time to set up community associations, or lobby on their own behalf. Nor, unlike other immigrant communities, are they linked by ready-made religious institutions; religion is a family affair largely concerned with appeasing the ancestors. The women, in particular, are cut off from the host community. Many never work in the restaurants but stay at home looking after children or grandchildren; many grannies, as in the cases below, have been brought over in later life for precisely that purpose. They have no chance to learn English, let alone adapt to English society and its strange cuisine. Their problems are compounded by age when, with the breakdown of the extended family, many are abandoned to their fate. The case of Mrs Wong is quite atypical. There is little provision for them in the host community: sheltered housing schemes such as that below are rare and, in this case at least, happened almost incidentally. This is a community hiding behind its stoicism and unwillingness to complain — even when communication is possible. Mrs Lee No 1, for instance, was chosen to talk to me because her community worker saw her as cheerful and communicative; he had no idea that she had been abandoned by most of her children and grandchildren, or of the pain this caused her. Tales of neglect and of literal abandonment abound. All the women here are from Hong Kong not from the Cantonese-speaking cities, however, but from the rural New Territory where they were small farmers living in extended family compounds. The isolation they encounter in Britain feels especially acute. Their families operate the lower end of the Chinese catering business — takeaways and fish-and-chip shops.
China's Listing Social Structure He Qinglian
Authors: Qinglian He 
Published: October 2007

As a result of the corrupt accumulation of wealth by the top few, China's society has regressed to a worse state than anything Mao fought against; the allure of the World Trade Organisation is a golden fantasy that will exacerbate the divisive trends of the drive to free markets; crimes committed by peasants and workers on the scrap heap of socialism have gone from random acts of opportunism to organised attacks on wealth; many of those in power have the cash and the will to leave this sinking ship and should do so before they're locked in the hold. So says the author of the most controversial book to be published in China in recent years. The essay from which this excerpt is taken appeared in the March 2000 issue of the journal Shuwu (House of Books). It sold out within ten days, only to be denounced by the propaganda department of the Central Committee of the CCP as a 'liberal' document guilty of 'inciting antagonism between the different strata of Chinese society'. He Qinglian was demoted from her editorial position at the Shenzhen Legal Daily and placed under domestic surveillance . She is believed to have left the country since. Her article continues to provoke intense unofficial discussion and has been compared to Mao's 1920s Analysis of Classes in Chinese Society as a gripping class analysis of contemporary China.
A Tiny Red Flower
Authors: Bykau Vasil 
Published: October 2007

VASIL BYKAU, the most eminent Belarusan writer of the past half-century, died of cancer on 22 June 2003, three days after his 79th birthday. Bykau came to prominence on the Soviet literary scene with the publication of his novel The Third Flare (1962) set during World War II. This, and the novels that followed, The Dead Feel No Pain (1965), Alpine Ballad (1966), The Accursed Hill (1968), The Kruhlanski Bridge (1969), Sotnikau (1970), Obelisk (1971) and Pack of Wolves (1981), revolutionised the war-reportage /novel genre throughout the Soviet Union, replacing the hitherto standard stereotypes of 'good' Soviet partisans, wicked Nazis and treacherous collaborators with more complex individual characterisation and the grim realism of war. His books became bestsellers throughout the USSR, translated into Russian and other Soviet languages, and he won a number of leading Soviet literary prizes. Fame, however, did not protect Bykau from the attentions of the censors, who disliked critics of the Stalinist regime. With the arrival of Mikhail Gorbachev, perestroika and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Bykau was at the forefront of the campaign for Belarusan independence and the revival of the Belarusan language and culture which, under Soviet rule, had been downplayed. He became a leading member of the pro-democracy pro-independence Belarusan Popular Front and of Martiraloh - the organisation set up to honour the victims of Stalin's purges in Belarus - and was elected first president of the new Belarusan PEN Centre. The arrival of Alaksandr Lukashenka as president of Belarus in 1994 changed all that: control over all aspects of life increased; Belarusan language and culture were discouraged; freedom of speech and of the press was under constant threat. Under Bykau's leadership, Belarusan PEN resisted these trends. The regime retaliated with various forms of bureaucratic harrassment. At the end of 1998, Bykau left Belarus under the auspices of the 'Cities of Refuge' initiative. He finally settled in Prague at the personal invitation of Czech President Vaclav Havel. Back in Belarus, literary magazines were forbidden to publish any of Bykau's works. Bykau repeatedly stressed that his stay abroad was purely temporary, but his health was deteriorating; in March this year he underwent surgery for cancer and, as soon as he was able to travel, returned to Belarus where his death on 22 June coincided with the anniversary of Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union, an event that had been so central to his work.
The case of Vasyl Stus
Authors: poet Persecuted 
Published: October 2007

Vasyl Semyonovich Stus is a noted poet and translator who first fell victim to official wrath twelve years ago, in 1965, when he took part in a meeting in Kiev to protest against the suppression of Ukrainian literature and culture. As a result of that gesture, Stus was forced to abandon his doctorate, his poems were banned, and in 1966 he was sacked from his post at the State Historical Archives in Kiev. Stus found a job on a building site, but was dismissed for ‘working outside his profession’. He continued to protest publicly against the persecution of other writers, including his fellow-Ukrainian Valentyn Moroz, who was arrested in 1970: Two years later Stus was himself arrested arid charged with ‘the distribution of false ideas harmful to the Soviet order’. In September 1972 he was sentenced to five years' imprisonment and three years' exile. The following account of his experiences in jail Was compiled by Malva Landa and Toryana Khodorovich, who simultaneously launched an appeal for clemency. The account has been slightly edited and abbreviated by Index?
A Time and a Place
Authors: Kheifets Mikhail , Chandler Robert 
Published: October 2007

Goldberg is called in by the KGB, who want him to renounce any intention of emigrating to Israel. After a protracted session, Goldberg finally succumbs and agrees to write a leter of renunciation to his relatives. The KGB officials hand him pen and paper. Under their watchful gaze Goldberg begins his letter to his uncle in Haifa: ‘Dear Uncle Yoram, ‘I've been meaning to write to you for absolute ages. At last I have found a time and a place…’ For Mikhail Kheifets, author of A Time and a Place, from which the extract below is taken, the time was the summer and autumn of 1976 and the place the ‘Dubrovlag’ prison camp in Mordovia (USSR). Sentenced in September 1974 to four years in strict regime labour camps for compiling the works of the exiled poet, Joseph Brodsky, and writing an introduction to the collection, he was released in April of last year and is now serving a two-year term of exile in Kazakhstan.
Letter to my Friends Overseas
Authors: Laabi Abdellatif 
Published: October 2007

bdellatif Laabi was born in Fez, Morocco, in 1942. He took a degree in French literature at Rabat University, and until the time of his arrest in 1972, he taught French at the Lycée Al Laymoune in Rabat. Laabi is a leader of Morocco's Marxist-Leninist Frontiste movement. In 1966 he founded the radical literary revue Souffles, first published in French and later in French and Arabic. In 1971 he founded another magazine, Anfas ( in Arabic). Both Souffles and Anfas were important influences on the new generation of writers and poets in Morocco, and both were banned when Frontiste members were rounded up in 1972. Arrested on 27 January 1972 along with a number of teachers, students and other intellectuals, Laabi was tortured, imprisoned, given a provisional release, then re-arrested and transferred to the secret detention centre at Moulay Cherif in Casablanca. He undertook a series of hunger strikes before he was granted a trial in August 1973, when he was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment for conspiracy against the state. After being held at Casablanca and later at Kenitra, where he spent several months in solitary confinement, Laabi was transferred to a prison hospital in 1978, suffering from severe rheumatism ( with a risk of paralysis) and eye problems. Laabi's long poem Letter to My Friends Overseas, excerpts of which we reproduce here, was sent out of prison part by part, ostensibly as separate letters to twenty different ‘friends overseas’. The poem was later assembled and published with Laabi's permission by the Paris magazine La Nouvelle Critique, in its issue of August-September 1978. Other poems by Abdellatif Laabi are available from Inéditions Barbare publishers, Paris.
Cambodian Holocaust
Authors: Lek Hor Tan 
Published: October 2007

Chroniques de guerre … et d'espoir by Norodom Sihanouk Hachette/Stock Paris 303pp L'Utopie meurtrière: un rescapé du génocide cambodgien témoigne by Pin Yathay Robert Laffont Paris 415pp Cambodge: la massue de l'Angkar by Boun Sokha Atelier Marcel Jullian Paris 256pp Before Kampuchea, Preludes to Tragedy by Milton Osborne George Allen & Unwin 197pp £5.95 Survive le peuple cambodgien! by Jean Lacouture Editions du Seuil Paris 142pp
Poet in opposition
Authors: Brown Stewart 
Published: October 2007

For several years tensions in the former British colony of Guyana have been running high. Since the late 1960s Prime Minister Forbes Burnham and his party, the Peoples National Congress, have been accused of keeping power through a combination of fraudulent elections, the sponsoring and equipping of private armies of thugs (often linked to religious cults such as that of the notorious Rev Jim Jones and, currently, the ‘House of Israel’ led by the self-dubbed' Rabbi Washington'), the manipulation of the ugly racial divisions between those of African and Indian origin, and the harassment of the opposition. This last has included restrictions on the press, by interrupting newsprint supplies and intimidating printers, and outright murder. A number of recent events have brought the situation to a head. On 14 February 1980 the PNC-dominated National Assembly approved a new constitution which gives Burnham the position of Executive President and virtually unlimited powers. At the beginning of June the trial finally began, after two postponements, of three leading members of the left-wing opposition Working Peoples Alliance - academics Drs Walter Rodney, Rupert Roopnaraine and Omawale - accused of burning down the PNC headquarters in Georgetown in July 1979. Such were the doubts about the fairness of the trial, which the authorities had decided should be held summarily before a judge rather than by jury, that several international human rights agencies, including Amnesty International, the UK Parliamentary Human Rights Group and the United States National Council of Churches, sent observers. In the event, lack of evidence and radical inconsistencies in that which was presented, resulted in a further adjournment until August. The trial was accompanied by widespread arrests in various parts of the country, the erection of roadblocks, house searches and heavy-handed police operations to prevent demonstrations. Finally, on the evening of 13 June, days after the trial was adjourned, Walter Rodney was killed when a bomb exploded in his brother's car in Georgetown. Despite official denials all the indications were of assassination by a government-sponsored death squad. There was world-wide outrage, including statements by Commonwealth leaders Michael Manley and Robert Mugabe. Rodney's death deprives Guyana of one of the world's foremost specialists in African and Caribbean history, as well as of an able political leader, whose young and growing party has made considerable strides in overcoming racial antagonism. In the article which follows, Stewart Brown, an English specialist in Caribbean literature and himself a poet, looks at the writing of Guyana's leading poet, Martin Carter, and, through his work, at the general situation of the writer in the post-independence Caribbean.
Death of Jorge Cedron: Tribute to a leading film-maker
Authors: Cortazar Julio 
Published: October 2007

A tribute to the maker of Operation Massacre, one of Argentina's most famous films On 1 June 1980, Jorge Cedrón, one of Argentina's major film-makers, then in exile, committed suicide by stabbing himself four times in the heart, while in the Quai des Orfevres Judicial Police Station, in Paris. Accompanied by his wife, Marta, Cedrón had gone to the police station to report the kidnapping of his father-in-law, St Saturnino Montero Ruiz the ex-mayor of Buenos Aires, which had taken place in Paris on 25 May. The abduction had been carried out by men with Argentinian accents. While his wife was in Argentina attempting to raise money for the ransom, Cedrón had remained in Paris with their five-year-old daughter. Under threat himself from the kidnappers, he was in a bad psychological state. His friends believe that the police station, and the interrogation of himself and his wife by the police after they had reported the abduction, proved too strong a reminder to Cedrón of his experiences, and those of colleagues and friends, in Argentina. The following tribute to Jorge Cedrón is signed collectively by a group of his friends, including the novelist Julio Cortázar, Jean-Paul Carrière, Anatole Dauman, Paco Ibañez, Jacqueline Lenoir, and Antonio Segui.