lidR : an R package for analysis of Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS) data

Airborne laser scanning (ALS) is a remote sensing technology known for its applicability in natural resources management. By quantifying the three-dimensional structure of vegetation and underlying terrain using laser technology, ALS has been used extensively for enhancing geospatial knowledge in the fields of forestry and ecology. Structural descriptions of vegetation provide a means of estimating a range of ecologically pertinent attributes, such as height, volume, and above-ground biomass. The efficient processing of large, often technically complex datasets requires dedicated algorithms and software. The continued promise of ALS as a tool for improving ecological understanding is often dependent on user-created tools, methods, and approaches. Due to the proliferation of ALS among academic, governmental, and private-sector communities, paired with requirements to address a growing demand for open and accessible data, the ALS community is recognising the importance of free and open-source software (FOSS) and the importance of user-defined workflows. Herein, we describe the philosophy behind the development of the lidR package. Implemented in the R environment with a C/C++ backend, lidR is free, open-source and cross-platform software created to enable simple and creative processing workflows for forestry and ecology communities using ALS data. We review current algorithms used by the research community, and in doing so raise awareness of current successes and challenges associated with parameterisation and common implementation approaches. Through a detailed description of the package, we address the key considerations and the design philosophy that enables users to implement user-defined tools. We also discuss algorithm choices that make the package representative of the ‘state-of-the-art' and we highlight some internal limitations through examples of processing time discrepancies. We conclude that the development of applications like lidR are of fundamental importance for developing transparent, flexible and open ALS tools to ensure not only reproducible workflows, but also to offer researchers the creative space required for the progress and development of the discipline

High definition systems in Japan

The successful implementation of a strategy to produce high-definition systems within the Japanese economy will favorably affect the fundamental competitiveness of Japan relative to the rest of the world. The development of an infrastructure necessary to support high-definition products and systems in that country involves major commitments of engineering resources, plants and equipment, educational programs and funding. The results of these efforts appear to affect virtually every aspect of the Japanese industrial complex. The results of assessments of the current progress of Japan toward the development of high-definition products and systems are presented. The assessments are based on the findings of a panel of U.S. experts made up of individuals from U.S. academia and industry, and derived from a study of the Japanese literature combined with visits to the primary relevant industrial laboratories and development agencies in Japan. Specific coverage includes an evaluation of progress in R&D for high-definition television (HDTV) displays that are evolving in Japan; high-definition standards and equipment development; Japanese intentions for the use of HDTV; economic evaluation of Japan's public policy initiatives in support of high-definition systems; management analysis of Japan's strategy of leverage with respect to high-definition products and systems

Digital Image Access & Retrieval

The 33th Annual Clinic on Library Applications of Data Processing, held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in March of 1996, addressed the theme of "Digital Image Access & Retrieval." The papers from this conference cover a wide range of topics concerning digital imaging technology for visual resource collections. Papers covered three general areas: (1) systems, planning, and implementation; (2) automatic and semi-automatic indexing; and (3) preservation with the bulk of the conference focusing on indexing and retrieval.published or submitted for publicatio

Critical Dialogues : Scotland + Venice 2012

Alberto Campo Baeza writing in the catalogue, Young Spanish Architecture, an Ark Monograph of 1985, talks about, ‘’a world riddled with noise and yet paradoxically mute, creatively speaking, a group of young Spanish architects are playing a very engaging song, their own song, the most beautiful song.’’ Twenty-seven years later that Spanish song has grown in quality and projection as subsequent architects took their lead from this earlier generation resulting in a Spanish architectural culture of great stature and depth. New voices are occasionally heard, often emanating from the architectural edge, such as Pascal Flammer and Raphael Zuber’s work in Switzerland and Alejandro Aravena’s Elemental Housing in Chile. Some of the most beautiful and poignant songs have emerged from China in Atelier Archmixing’s Twin Trees Pavilion and Amateur Architecture Studio’s early Ceramic House, projects that can be heard through the din of the architectural circus that travels the globe, a circus with an increasingly desperate and cynical appetite. For a song to become engaging and powerful, three components are critical: personality, passion and technique. Scotland’s presence in Venice 2012 is about the recognition of four voices that are on the verge of making themselves heard. Scotland lies on the periphery of Europe, nascent both politically and in contemporary terms architecturally. Yet once its architects stood shoulder to shoulder with the best in Europe and many claim that Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s sublime Glasgow School of Art 1899-1909 heralded modernism not just in the UK but also in Europe. In the post-Second World War period Gillespie Kidd and Coia in the West and Morris and Steedman in the East helped propel Scottish architecture in new directions, the former becoming part of a west coast figurative culture that explored a phenomenological sense of section and atmosphere, the latter by an east coast sense of abstraction, detachment and refinement. It seems to me there has always been this kind of architectural watershed that splits Scotland in two. The west possesses a character like its fractured romantic coastline that is passionate about layers, complexity and conversation, whilst the east with its more austere coastline nurtures a more ascetic, reflective, emotionless and silent quality in both its art and architecture. More recently the architectural scene seems to have lost this sense of split personality that came out of place. The new architecture has a tendency towards an image of rediscovered modernism albeit executed with a new graphic material suaveness that could equally be seen anywhere in the UK. The years from the 1970’s have seen a gradual dissolution in the architect’s role. It is a situation that has been greatly exacerbated by the current recession in which many architects have lost not just their voice, but their ability to make architecture altogether. The four architectural practices represented in Venice are all based in Glasgow; they all share a concern for people, the ordinary, and the street. They all have passion and an emerging personality even though their technique has had little opportunity to develop. The critical word that connects these architects is architectural practice. They explore the act of practicing as an architect in a marginal situation, politically, socially, professionally and culturally. Their approach is primarily concerned with conversation and engagement. Venice itself is a city on the edge. Once the edge of Europe and a portal to a far eastern imagination, a city barely founded on land or sea, a mirage. The Scottish contribution to the Venice Biennale itself is a marginal act, emerging, hopeful, outside the main event. Four Northern figures flit amongst southern shadows

Eradication of Candida albicans persister cell biofilm by the membranotropic peptide gH625

Biofilm formation poses an important clinical trouble due to resistance to antimicrobial agents; therefore, there is an urgent demand for new antibiofilm strategies that focus on the use of alternative compounds also in combination with conventional drugs. Drug-tolerant persisters are present in Candida albicans biofilms and are detected following treatment with high doses of amphotericin B. In this study, persisters were found in biofilms treated with amphotericin B of two clinical isolate strains, and were capable to form a new biofilm in situ. We investigated the possibility of eradicating persister-derived biofilms from these two Candida albicans strains, using the peptide gH625 analogue (gH625-M). Confocal microscopy studies allowed us to characterize the persister-derived biofilm and understand the mechanism of interaction of gH625-M with the biofilm. These findings confirm that persisters may be responsible for Candida biofilm survival, and prove that gH625-M was very effective in eradicating persister-derived biofilms both alone and in combination with conventional antifungals, mainly strengthening the antibiofilm activity of fluconazole and 5-flucytosine. Our strategy advances our insights into the development of effective antibiofilm therapeutic approaches

The INCF Digital Atlasing Program: Report on Digital Atlasing Standards in the Rodent Brain

The goal of the INCF Digital Atlasing Program is to provide the vision and direction necessary to make the rapidly growing collection of multidimensional data of the rodent brain (images, gene expression, etc.) widely accessible and usable to the international research community. This Digital Brain Atlasing Standards Task Force was formed in May 2008 to investigate the state of rodent brain digital atlasing, and formulate standards, guidelines, and policy recommendations.

Our first objective has been the preparation of a detailed document that includes the vision and specific description of an infrastructure, systems and methods capable of serving the scientific goals of the community, as well as practical issues for achieving
the goals. This report builds on the 1st INCF Workshop on Mouse and Rat Brain Digital Atlasing Systems (Boline et al., 2007, _Nature Preceedings_, doi:10.1038/npre.2007.1046.1) and includes a more detailed analysis of both the current state and desired state of digital atlasing along with specific recommendations for achieving these goals

Acutely damaged axons are remyelinated in multiple sclerosis and experimental models of demyelination

Remyelination is in the center of new therapies for the treatment of multiple sclerosis to resolve and improve disease symptoms and protect axons from further damage. Although remyelination is considered beneficial in the long term, it is not known, whether this is also the case early in lesion formation. Additionally, the precise timing of acute axonal damage and remyelination has not been assessed so far. To shed light onto the interrelation between axons and the myelin sheath during de- and remyelination, we employed cuprizone- and focal lysolecithin-induced demyelination and performed time course experiments assessing the evolution of early and late stage remyelination and axonal damage. We observed damaged axons with signs of remyelination after cuprizone diet cessation and lysolecithin injection. Similar observations were made in early multiple sclerosis lesions. To assess the correlation of remyelination and axonal damage in multiple sclerosis lesions, we took advantage of a cohort of patients with early and late stage remyelinated lesions and assessed the number of APP- and SMI32- positive damaged axons and the density of SMI31-positive and silver impregnated preserved axons. Early de- and remyelinating lesions did not differ with respect to axonal density and axonal damage, but we observed a lower axonal density in late stage demyelinated multiple sclerosis lesions than in remyelinated multiple sclerosis lesions. Our findings suggest that remyelination may not only be protective over a long period of time, but may play an important role in the immediate axonal recuperation after a demyelinating insult