57Fe Mossbauer spectroscopy of radiation damaged allanites

Metamict minerals contain radioactive elements that degrade the crystal structure of the minerals. The degradation occurs primarily through progressive overlapping recoil nuclei collision cascades from ®-decays of 238U, 232Th, 235U and their daughter products. We report the results of 57Fe Mossbauer spectroscopy, gamma-ray spectrometry and microprobe analysis of three partially metamict allanites, (Ca,Ce,REE)2(Fe2+; Fe3+)(Al; Fe3+)2O[Si2O7][SiO4](OH) where REE stands for rare earth elements. The samples were collected in pegmatites from Reno, Nevada (USA), Franklin, New Jersey (USA) and Nya Bast- nas Field (Sweden). The absorbed ®-dose for these minerals was found to range from 5:8 £ 1014 ®-decay/mg for the allanite from Reno to 1:9 £ 1015 ®-decay/mg for the allanite from Franklin. The Mossbauer spectra show a decrease in the Fe2+ doublet intensity with increasing absorber ®-dose. We also observe an increase in the line widths of the Fe2+ and Fe3+ doublets with increasing absorbed ®-dose

Scalable and privacy-respectful interactive discovery of place semantics from human mobility traces

Mobility diaries of a large number of people are needed for assessing transportation infrastructure and for spatial development planning. Acquisition of personal mobility diaries through population surveys is a costly and error-prone endeavour. We examine an alternative approach to obtaining similar information from episodic digital traces of people’s presence in various locations, which appear when people use their mobile devices for making phone calls, accessing the internet, or posting georeferenced contents (texts, photos, or videos) in social media. Having episodic traces of a person over a long time period, it is possible to detect significant (repeatedly visited) personal places and identify them as home, work, or place of social activities based on temporal patterns of a person’s presence in these places. Such analysis, however, can lead to compromising personal privacy. We have investigated the feasibility of deriving place meanings and reconstructing personal mobility diaries while preserving the privacy of individuals whose data are analysed. We have devised a visual analytics approach and a set of supporting tools making such privacy-preserving analysis possible. The approach was tested in two case studies with publicly available data: simulated tracks from the VAST Challenge 2014 and real traces built from georeferenced Twitter posts

Geovisual analytics for spatial decision support: Setting the research agenda

This article summarizes the results of the workshop on Visualization, Analytics & Spatial Decision Support, which took place at the GIScience conference in September 2006. The discussions at the workshop and analysis of the state of the art have revealed a need in concerted cross‐disciplinary efforts to achieve substantial progress in supporting space‐related decision making. The size and complexity of real‐life problems together with their ill‐defined nature call for a true synergy between the power of computational techniques and the human capabilities to analyze, envision, reason, and deliberate. Existing methods and tools are yet far from enabling this synergy. Appropriate methods can only appear as a result of a focused research based on the achievements in the fields of geovisualization and information visualization, human‐computer interaction, geographic information science, operations research, data mining and machine learning, decision science, cognitive science, and other disciplines. The name ‘Geovisual Analytics for Spatial Decision Support’ suggested for this new research direction emphasizes the importance of visualization and interactive visual interfaces and the link with the emerging research discipline of Visual Analytics. This article, as well as the whole special issue, is meant to attract the attention of scientists with relevant expertise and interests to the major challenges requiring multidisciplinary efforts and to promote the establishment of a dedicated research community where an appropriate range of competences is combined with an appropriate breadth of thinking

Synthetic opioids in Poland—A cause for concern or a media distraction?

Background The North American continent has been battling a major health crisis defined by opioids like OxyContin and fentanyl for over two decades now. In that time, it seemed that Europe is rather resilient to a similar problem, and heroin retained its position as a the most problematic opioid. This does seem to be changing and European media, including in Poland, is starting to report on growing popularity of synthetic opioids like fentanyl. Methods We use official data showing the number of prescriptions for synthetic opioids; data showing the percentage of people entering treatment due to different opioids; police data on drug interceptions as well as lab closures, and data on opioid related poisonings. Results The data demonstrates that although Polish physicians are increasingly more likely to prescribe synthetic opioids like OxyContin or Fentanyl, their problematic use remains low. Conclusion Poland currently does not seem to be in a position that resembles an early stage of an opioid crisis. With this article we want to calm a heated public debate that is currently taking place in Poland, and redirect attention to a much more substantial problem of synthetic cathinones