Two Steps to Obfuscation

This note addresses the historical antecedents of the 1998 PageRank measure of centrality. An identity relation links it to 1990-1991 models of Friedkin and Johnsen

Toxicological Effects of Commercial Sunscreens on Coral Reef Ecosystems: New Protocols for Coral Restoration

The primary purpose of consumer-grade sunscreen is to protect skin from harmful UVA and UVB rays. This market has grown during the past 80 years, and environmental contamination from increasing amounts of sunscreen compounds have created concern. In particular, impacts on ocean ecosystems have inspired investigations and toxicological research on their effects on marine life. Unfortunately, such studies using marine flora and fauna are scarce, and the impact of chemical exposure to consumer sunscreens is neither adequately measured nor completely understood. In a pilot study by the Coral Restoration Foundation, in situ toxicity exposure to 10 different brands of sunscreens was performed on the Caribbean scleractinian staghorn coral, Acropora cervicornis. Coral samples were ranked on tissue degradation following the sunscreen exposure, however no significant differences were found between exposed and control samples. Additional studies should be performed to better understand other possible sub-lethal effects. One such application is in the proper handling of corals during restoration; as other compelling evidence indicates, sunscreens have the potential to be toxic depending on concentration and exposure time, among other factors. This literature review revealed that sunscreens containing only non-nano zinc oxide or non-nano titanium dioxide as primary UV filters may best reduce stress to marine organisms and coral fragments in coral nurseries

Registration of low-SNR high-resolution diffusion-weighted images

This paper introduces a novel, high-speed scheme for intrasubject registration and segmentation of high-resolution multi-shot diffusion-weighted images. Compared to single-shot sequences, multi-shot have advantages in terms of improved spatial resolution and reduced eddy-current and susceptibility artifacts. However, these sequences have prolonged scan times increasing the risk of subject motion, and, a lower signal to noise ratio (SNR) with smaller voxel volumes. The proposed registration algorithm comprises a hybrid thresholding expectation-maximization segmentation method that can cope with the low-SNR, and registers diffusion-weighted to B0 images through fast detection and matching of features found in edge images derived from floating and reference images. We performed validations of the entire pipeline, including assessment of visual appearance by experts, consistency error computations, and analysis of the segmentation, using volunteer images, and found its performance to be comparable with, or exceeding, that of established solutions

Current Status of Rule 11 in the Ninth Circuit and Washington State

Admittedly, amended Rule 11 has stirred up a great deal of controversy. The Advisory Committee of which Professor Miller is now a member will be considering a variety of proposed amendments to the Rule. While in Seattle for the 1991 spring meeting of the American Bar Association, Professor Miller expressed his own personal hope that the Rule be left unchanged for now, predicting that the upsurge in its use (and misuse) will follow a bell-shaped curve. The authors concur with the hope that it be left unchanged until the bench and bar have had both additional time to develop the limits of salutary enforcement and the opportunity to create means for assisting that process such as those suggested in this essay

Current Status of Rule 11 in the Ninth Circuit and Washington State

Admittedly, amended Rule 11 has stirred up a great deal of controversy. The Advisory Committee of which Professor Miller is now a member will be considering a variety of proposed amendments to the Rule. While in Seattle for the 1991 spring meeting of the American Bar Association, Professor Miller expressed his own personal hope that the Rule be left unchanged for now, predicting that the upsurge in its use (and misuse) will follow a bell-shaped curve. The authors concur with the hope that it be left unchanged until the bench and bar have had both additional time to develop the limits of salutary enforcement and the opportunity to create means for assisting that process such as those suggested in this essay

Designing Automated Vehicle and Traffic Systems towards Meaningful Human Control

Ensuring operational control over automated vehicles is not trivial and failing to do so severely endangers the lives of road users. An integrated approach is necessary to ensure that all agents play their part including drivers, occupants, vehicle designers and governments. While progress is being made, a comprehensive approach to the problem is being ignored, which can be solved in the main through considering Meaningful Human Control (MHC). In this research, an Integrated System Proximity framework and Operational Process Design approach to assist the development of Connected Automated Vehicles (CAV) under the consideration of MHC are introduced. These offer a greater understanding and basis for vehicle and traffic system design by vehicle designers and governments as two important influencing stakeholders. The framework includes an extension to a system approach, which also considers ways that MHC can be improved through updating: either implicit proximal updating or explicit distal updating. The process and importance are demonstrated in three recent cases from practice. Finally, a call for action is made to government and regulatory authorities, as well as the automotive industry, to ensure that MHC processes are explicitly included in policy, regulations, and design processes to ensure future ad-vancement of CAVs in a responsible, safe and humanly agreeable fashion.Comment: In: Research Handbook on Meaningful Human Control of Artificial Intelligence Systems. Edward Elgar Publishin

Spin-dynamic field coupling in strongly THz driven semiconductors : local inversion symmetry breaking

We study theoretically the optics in undoped direct gap semiconductors which are strongly driven in the THz regime. We calculate the optical sideband generation due to nonlinear mixing of the THz field and the near infrared probe. Starting with an inversion symmetric microscopic Hamiltonian we include the THz field nonperturbatively using non-equilibrium Green function techniques. We find that a self induced relativistic spin-THz field coupling locally breaks the inversion symmetry, resulting in the formation of odd sidebands which otherwise are absent.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure

Dental Education Required for the Changing Health Care Environment

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/153648/1/jddjde017022.pd