Special Issue On Estimation Of Baselines And Leakage In CarbonMitigation Forestry Projects

There is a growing acceptance that the environmentalbenefits of forests extend beyond traditional ecological benefits andinclude the mitigation of climate change. Interest in forestry mitigationactivities has led to the inclusion of forestry practices at the projectlevel in international agreements. Climate change activities place newdemands on participating institutions to set baselines, establishadditionality, determine leakage, ensure permanence, and monitor andverify a project's greenhouse gas benefits. These issues are common toboth forestry and other types of mitigation projects. They demandempirical evidence to establish conditions under which such projects canprovide sustained long term global benefits. This Special Issue reportson papers that experiment with a range of approaches based on empiricalevidence for the setting of baselines and estimation of leakage inprojects in developing Asia and Latin America

Airglow-CubeSat with Orientation Control by Aerospike Puff-jets

Observations of upper atmospheric emissions further the understanding of the effects of the chemiluminescent energetics of the Earth’s atmosphere. The Airglow- CubeSat will scan the desired altitudes of the mesosphere and the upper thermosphere. The resulting data is intended to help validate results collected from measurements taken from rocket profiles as well as the SABER/TIMED satellite. The Airglow-CubeSat will be monitoring the atomic oxygen green line at a wavelength of 557 nm. Research is also being conducted into the feasibility of using aerospike technology for altitude maintenance and satellite orientation control

Objective paper structure comparison: Assessing comparison algorithms

This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Forensic Science International. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Forensic Science International, 222, 1-3, (2012) DOI: 10.1016/j.forsciint.2012.07.018More than just being a substrate, paper can also provide evidence for the provenance of documents. An earlier paper described a method to compare paper structure, based on the Fourier power spectra of light transmission images. Good results were obtained by using the 2D correlation of images derived from the power spectra as a similarity score, but the method was very computationally intensive. Different comparison algorithms are evaluated in this paper, using information theoretical criteria. An angular invariant algorithm turned out to be as effective as the original one but 4 orders of magnitude faster, making the use of much larger databases possible

Effect of lens care system on silicone hydrogel contact lens wettability

Purpose: The purpose was to compare the effect of the repeated usage of two care systems (one hydrogen peroxide cleaning and disinfecting system and one polyaminopropyl biguanide (PHMB) containing multi-purpose system) with silicone hydrogel contact lenses worn for three months on a daily wear modality. A specific aspect of interest was of the effect of the care systems on contact lens wettability. Methods: Seventy-four symptomatic contact lens wearers, habitually wearing either ACUVUE® OASYS® (n = 37) or PureVision™ (n = 37), constituted the study population. The study was a two-arm prospective, investigator-masked, bilateral study of three-month duration to evaluate the effects of CLEAR CARE® compared with renu® fresh™. The subjects were randomized to one of the two lens care systems. Contact lens wettability and surface cleanliness were assessed with the Tearscope and reported in terms of pre-lens non-invasive break-up time (PL-NIBUT) and visible deposits. Baseline assessments at enrollment were with the subjects’ own contact lenses worn for at least 6 h when using their habitual PHMB-preserved care system and at the dispensing visit with new contact lenses. At the follow-up visits, the contact lenses were worn for at least 6 h, and were at least 11 days old for ACUVUE® OASYS® and 25 days old for PureVision™. Results: The results obtained showed that: (i) with CLEAR CARE®, a significant improvement in contact lens wettability was recorded compared with the habitual care system at the three-month follow-up visit (mean median PL-NIBUT 5.8 vs. 4.0 s, p < 0.001). Further, with this same lens care system a significant increase in wettability was observed at the three-month follow-up visit compared with dispensing (mean median PL-NIBUT 5.8 vs. 4.5 s, p = 0.022). (ii) Whereas no difference in contact lens wettability was observed at dispensing between the two lens care groups (mean PL-NIBUT: 4.5 vs. 4.2 s, p = 0.518), a significantly more stable pre-lens tear film was observed with CLEAR CARE® than with renu® fresh™ at both the two-month (mean PL-NIBUT: 4.6 vs. 3.7 s, p = 0.005) and three-month (mean PL-NIBUT: 5.8 vs. 4.2 s, p = 0.028) visits. iii. With renu® fresh™, no significant differences were observed at the end of three months of use compared with either the habitual care system or the new contact lens solution (mean PL-NIBUT: 3 M 4.2 vs. Disp 4.2 s (p = 0.420) vs. enrolment habitual care solution 5.1 s (p = 0.734)). iv. With CLEAR CARE® significant increases in the incidence of surfaces free of both mucus (3 month 95%. vs. habitual solution 82% enrolment; p = 0.005) and lipid (3 month 87% vs. habitual solution 72% enrolment; p = 0.009) were observed. Conclusion: Significantly better contact lens wettability and surface cleanliness were achieved for ACUVUE® OASYS® and PureVision™ with CLEAR CARE® than with renu® fresh™ at the end of three months of use

Qualitative and quantitative characterization of the in vitro dehydration process of hydrogel contact lenses

PURPOSE: To investigate the in vitro dehydration process of conventional hydrogel and silicone-hydrogel contact lens materials. METHODS: Eight conventional hydrogel and five silicone-hydrogel contact lenses were dehydrated under controlled environmental conditions on an analytical balance. Data were taken at 1-min intervals and dehydration curves of cumulative dehydration (CD), valid dehydration (VD), and dehydration rate (DR) were obtained. Several quantitative descriptors of the dehydration process were obtained by further processing of the information. RESULTS: Duration of phase I (r(2) = 0.921), CD at end of phase I (r(2) = 0.971), time to achieve a DR of -1%/min (r(2) = 0.946) were strongly correlated with equilibrium water content (EWC) of the materials. For each individual sample, the VD at different time intervals can be accurately determined using a 2nd order regression equation (r(2) > 0.99 for all samples). The first 5 min of the dehydration process show a relatively uniform average CD of about -1.5%/min. After that, there was a trend towards higher average CD for the following 15 min as the EWC of the material increases (r(2) = 0.701). As a consequence, average VD for the first 5 min displayed a negative correlation with EWC (r(2) = 0.835), and a trend towards uniformization among CL materials for the following periods (r(2) = 0.014). Overall, silicone-hydrogel materials display a lower dehydration, but this seems to be primarily due to their lower EWC. CONCLUSIONS: DR curves under the conditions of the present study can be described as a three-phase process. Phase I consists of a relatively uniform DR with a duration that ranges from 10 to almost 60 min and is strongly correlated with the EWC of the polymer as it is the CD during this phase. Overall, HEMA-based hydrogels dehydrate to a greater extent and faster than silicone-hydrogel materials. There are differences in water retention between lenses of similar water content and thickness that should be further investigated

A Blue Spectral Shift of the Hemoglobin Soret Band Correlates with the Age (Time Since Deposition) of Dried Bloodstains

The ability to determine the time since deposition of a bloodstain found at a crime scene could prove invaluable to law enforcement investigators, defining the time frame in which the individual depositing the evidence was present. Although various methods of accomplishing this have been proposed, none has gained widespread use due to poor time resolution and weak age correlation. We have developed a method for the estimation of the time since deposition (TSD) of dried bloodstains using UV-VIS spectrophotometric analysis of hemoglobin (Hb) that is based upon its characteristic oxidation chemistry. A detailed study of the Hb Soret band (λmax = 412 nm) in aged bloodstains revealed a blue shift (shift to shorter wavelength) as the age of the stain increases. The extent of this shift permits, for the first time, a distinction to be made between bloodstains that were deposited minutes, hours, days and weeks prior to recovery and analysis. The extent of the blue shift was found to be a function of ambient relative humidity and temperature. The method is extremely sensitive, requiring as little as a 1 µl dried bloodstain for analysis. We demonstrate that it might be possible to perform TSD measurements at the crime scene using a portable low-sample-volume spectrophotometer