413 research outputs found
Task 2: Analysis of the MS replies to the EEA request for inventorying existing LU information in the countries : D2 - Report containing an assessment of the LU inventory by MS, including an assessment on the impact of existing / missing LU parameters for the creation of CLC+ LULUCF and Legacy instances
Implementation of CLC+ based on the EAGLE concept –additional support for further development of CLC+ databases (CLC+ and CLC+ instances, namely CLC+ LULUCF instance and CLC+ Legacy instance) <br/
Plastic Ingestion by Northern Fulmars, Fulmarus glacialis, in Svalbard and Iceland, and Relationships between Plastic Ingestion and Contaminant Uptake
The EAGLE concept - A vision of a future European Land Monitoring Framework
Abstract. This paper describes the EAGLE concept, an object-oriented data model for land moni-toring. It highlights the background situation in the field of land monitoring, identifies the team in-volved, explains the technical and strategic considerations behind the concept, describes the cur-rent status of the harmonization and the developments made and outlines the future activities and requirements. After the structure and the content of the data model and matrix are explained, ex-amples are given on how to use the matrix. Besides its possible function as a semantic translation tool between different classification systems, it also can help to analyze class definitions to find semantic gaps, overlaps and inconsistencies and can serve as data model for new mapping initia-tives. On the long-term, the EAGLE concept aims at sketching a vision of a future integrated and harmonized European land monitoring system, which is designed to store all kinds of environmen-tally relevant information on the Earth´s surface, coming from both national and European data sources. Being still in the state of development, some first applications and test cases are under way. This paper also dedicates a chapter referring to the context between the concept and remote sensing in general as well as the relation between land monitoring and the principles of the Euro
Taxonomic surrogacy in biodiversity assessments, and the meaning of Linnaean ranks
Copyright © 2006 The Natural History MuseumThe majority of biodiversity assessments use species as the base unit. Recently, a series of studies have suggested replacing numbers of species with higher ranked taxa (genera, families, etc.); a method known as taxonomic surrogacy that has an important potential to save time and resources in assesments of biological diversity. We examine the relationships between taxa and ranks, and suggest that species/higher taxon exchanges are founded on misconceptions about the properties of Linnaean classification. Rank allocations in current classifications constitute a heterogeneous mixture of various historical and contemporary views. Even if all taxa were monophyletic, those referred to the same rank would simply denote separate clades without further equivalence. We conclude that they are no more comparable than any other, non-nested taxa, such as, for example, the genus Rattus and the phylum Arthropoda, and that taxonomic surrogacy lacks justification. These problems are also illustrated with data of polychaetous annelid worms from a broad-scale study of benthic biodiversity and species distributions in the Irish Sea. A recent consensus phylogeny for polychaetes is used to provide three different family-level classifications of polychaetes. We use families as a surrogate for species, and present Shannon–Wiener diversity indices for the different sites and the three different classifications, showing how the diversity measures rely on subjective rank allocations.Y. Bertrand, F. Pleijel and G. W. Rous
HerMES: The contribution to the cosmic infrared background from galaxies selected by mass and redshift
The cosmic infrared background (CIB), discovered in Far
Infrared Absolute Spectrophotometer (FIRAS) data from the
Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE; Puget et al. 1996;
Fixsen et al. 1998), originates from thermal re-radiation of
imagine cutting out hundreds of thumbnails from a map centered
on the positions where galaxies are known to be, and averaging
those thumbnails together until an image of the average galaxy
emerges from the noise. These positional priors can come
in many forms, e.g., they could be catalogs of UV, optical,
IR, or radio sources. Note that the output is the average of
that population in the stacked maps, i.e., there will likely be
sources whose actual fluxes are higher or lower. Thus, the more
homogeneous the sources comprising the input list, the more
meaningful the stacked flux will be.Web of Scienc
Measurement of the partial widths of the Z into up- and down-type quarks
Using the entire OPAL LEP1 on-peak Z hadronic decay sample, Z -> qbarq gamma
decays were selected by tagging hadronic final states with isolated photon
candidates in the electromagnetic calorimeter. Combining the measured rates of
Z -> qbarq gamma decays with the total rate of hadronic Z decays permits the
simultaneous determination of the widths of the Z into up- and down-type
quarks. The values obtained, with total errors, were Gamma u = 300 ^{+19}_{-18}
MeV and Gamma d = 381 ^{+12}_{-12} MeV. The results are in good agreement with
the Standard Model expectation.Comment: 22 pages, 5 figures, Submitted to Phys. Letts.
Search for R-Parity Violating Decays of Scalar Fermions at LEP
A search for pair-produced scalar fermions under the assumption that R-parity
is not conserved has been performed using data collected with the OPAL detector
at LEP. The data samples analysed correspond to an integrated luminosity of
about 610 pb-1 collected at centre-of-mass energies of sqrt(s) 189-209 GeV. An
important consequence of R-parity violation is that the lightest supersymmetric
particle is expected to be unstable. Searches of R-parity violating decays of
charged sleptons, sneutrinos and squarks have been performed under the
assumptions that the lightest supersymmetric particle decays promptly and that
only one of the R-parity violating couplings is dominant for each of the decay
modes considered. Such processes would yield final states consisting of
leptons, jets, or both with or without missing energy. No significant
single-like excess of events has been observed with respect to the Standard
Model expectations. Limits on the production cross- section of scalar fermions
in R-parity violating scenarios are obtained. Constraints on the supersymmetric
particle masses are also presented in an R-parity violating framework analogous
to the Constrained Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model.Comment: 51 pages, 24 figures, Submitted to Eur. Phys. J.
Measurement of the Strong Coupling alpha s from Four-Jet Observables in e+e- Annihilation
Data from e+e- annihilation into hadrons at centre-of-mass energies between
91 GeV and 209 GeV collected with the OPAL detector at LEP, are used to study
the four-jet rate as a function of the Durham algorithm resolution parameter
ycut. The four-jet rate is compared to next-to-leading order calculations that
include the resummation of large logarithms. The strong coupling measured from
the four-jet rate is alphas(Mz0)=
0.1182+-0.0003(stat.)+-0.0015(exp.)+-0.0011(had.)+-0.0012(scale)+-0.0013(mass)
in agreement with the world average. Next-to-leading order fits to the
D-parameter and thrust minor event-shape observables are also performed for the
first time. We find consistent results, but with significantly larger
theoretical uncertainties.Comment: 25 pages, 15 figures, Submitted to Euro. Phys. J.
Measurement of the Hadronic Photon Structure Function F_2^gamma at LEP2
The hadronic structure function of the photon F_2^gamma is measured as a
function of Bjorken x and of the factorisation scale Q^2 using data taken by
the OPAL detector at LEP. Previous OPAL measurements of the x dependence of
F_2^gamma are extended to an average Q^2 of 767 GeV^2. The Q^2 evolution of
F_2^gamma is studied for average Q^2 between 11.9 and 1051 GeV^2. As predicted
by QCD, the data show positive scaling violations in F_2^gamma. Several
parameterisations of F_2^gamma are in agreement with the measurements whereas
the quark-parton model prediction fails to describe the data.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, to appear in the proceedings of Photon 2001,
Ascona, Switzerlan
A measurement of the tau mass and the first CPT test with tau leptons
We measure the mass of the tau lepton to be 1775.1+-1.6(stat)+-1.0(syst.) MeV
using tau pairs from Z0 decays. To test CPT invariance we compare the masses of
the positively and negatively charged tau leptons. The relative mass difference
is found to be smaller than 3.0 10^-3 at the 90% confidence level.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, Submitted to Phys. Letts.
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