A classification of plane and planar 2-trees

We present new functional equations for the species of plane and of planar (in the sense of Harary and Palmer, 1973) 2-trees and some associated pointed species. We then deduce the explicit molecular expansion of these species, i.e a classification of their structures according to their stabilizers. There result explicit formulas in terms of Catalan numbers for their associated generating series, including the asymmetry index series. This work is closely related to the enumeration of polyene hydrocarbons of molecular formula C_nH_n+2.Comment: 26 pages, 14 figure

Melvin G. Marcus, 1929-1997

[This brief biography chronicles the life and achievements of Dr. Mel Marcus, geographer and climatologist, who died 2 March 1997.] ... His copious field work activities included research on glacier environments in Alaska and the Yukon, New Zealand, Mt. Ararat in Turkey, and the mountains of Nepal, Peru and Bolivia, plus vegetation studies in the Grand Canyon and urban environmental studies. He published about one hundred papers, books and book chapters. ... At his death he was about to receive the Cullum Geographic Medal of the American Geographical Society, and the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Association of American Geographers. ..

Girls in IT: How to develop talent and leverage support

The objectives of this panel are to inform the audience about national and regional initiatives developed by the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) to reach out to middle and high school girls; learn from promising experiences in which the panelists have been directly involved; and discuss venues to scale and sustain efforts to increase women\u27s participation in technology careers. Panelists will describe their particular experiences, and discuss ways to utilize the Aspirations in Computing program to increase enrollment and retention of females in computing. A minimum of 30 minutes will be set aside for question and answer

Modified Large Margin Nearest Neighbor Metric Learning for Regression

The main objective of this letter is to formulate a new approach of learning a Mahalanobis distance metric for nearest neighbor regression from a training sample set. We propose a modified version of the large margin nearest neighbor metric learning method to deal with regression problems. As an application, the prediction of post-operative trunk 3-D shapes in scoliosis surgery using nearest neighbor regression is described. Accuracy of the proposed method is quantitatively evaluated through experiments on real medical data.IRSC / CIH

Statistical model based 3D shape prediction of postoperative trunks for non-invasive scoliosis surgery planning

One of the major concerns of scoliosis patients undergoing surgical treatment is the aesthetic aspect of the surgery outcome. It would be useful to predict the postoperative appearance of the patient trunk in the course of a surgery planning process in order to take into account the expectations of the patient. In this paper, we propose to use least squares support vector regression for the prediction of the postoperative trunk 3D shape after spine surgery for adolescent idiopathic scoliosis. Five dimensionality reduction techniques used in conjunction with the support vector machine are compared. The methods are evaluated in terms of their accuracy, based on the leave-one-out cross-validation performed on a database of 141 cases. The results indicate that the 3D shape predictions using a dimensionality reduction obtained by simultaneous decomposition of the predictors and response variables have the best accuracy.CIHR / IRS

A physically based trunk soft tissue modeling for scoliosis surgery planning systems

One of the major concerns of scoliotic patients undergoing spinal correction surgery is the trunk's external appearance after the surgery. This paper presents a novel incremental approach for simulating postoperative trunk shape in scoliosis surgery. Preoperative and postoperative trunk shapes data were obtained using three-dimensional medical imaging techniques for seven patients with adolescent idiopathic scoliosis. Results of qualitative and quantitative evaluations, based on the comparison of the simulated and actual postoperative trunk surfaces, showed an adequate accuracy of the method. Our approach provides a candidate simulation tool to be used in a clinical environment for the surgery planning process.IRSC / CIH

"Stakepartner management" in projects: A turn-of-the-century turnaround at Alcan

The ideas behind project management have changed significantly since the 1980s. Traditionally based around engineering principles, project management is now primarily focused on creating value jor various groups of stakeholders (SH). In turn, an integral part of stakeholder management moved from a basically contractual approach to a communication focused, or public relations, approach before recently evolving yet again to a partnership approach. The aim of this article is to illustrate the move towards partnership management of stakeholders and to use a case study to discuss the consequences of such a move on management and leadership. The case study in question involved the implementation of a new project management philosophy at Alcan, a multinational company in the aluminum sector, during the construction of an aluminum smelting plant at Alma in Quebec in the early 2000s. This large project involved an investment of over two billion CAD and had the potential to cause significant environmental and socio-economic impacts. Alcan's new project management philosophy and new stakeholder approach directly influenced every stage of the process and were translated into specific and innovative actions that allowed the company to complete the project in the best conditions while obtaining a very high level of social acceptability

Simulation of the postoperative trunk appearance in scoliosis surgery

Persistence of external trunk asymmetry after scoliosis surgical treatment is frequent and difficult to predict by clinicians. This is a significant problem considering that correction of the apparent deformity is a major factor of satisfaction for the patients. A simulation of the correction on the external appearance would allow the clinician to illustrate to the patient the potential result of the surgery and would help in deciding on a surgical strategy that could most improve his/her appearance. We describe a method to predict the scoliotic trunk shape after a spine surgical intervention. The capability of our method was evaluated using real data of scoliotic patients. Results of the qualitative evaluation were very promising and a quantitative evaluation based on the comparison of the simulated and the actual postoperative trunk surface showed an adequate accuracy for clinical assessment. The required short simulation time also makes our approach an eligible candidate for a clinical environment demanding interactive simulations.CIHR / IRS

Supersymmetric Extensions of the Harry Dym Hierarchy

We study the supersymmetric extensions of the Harry Dym hierarchy of equations. We obtain the susy-B extension, the doubly susy-B extension as well as the N=1 and the N=2 supersymmetric extensions for this system. The N=2 supersymmetric extension is particularly interesting, since it leads to new classical integrable systems in the bosonic limit. We prove the integrability of these systems through the bi-Hamiltonian formulation of integrable models and through the Lax description. We also discuss the supersymmetric extension of the Hunter-Zheng equation which belongs to the Harry Dym hierarchy of equations.Comment: 15 pages, Latex fil

Searching for New Physics in Leptonic Decays of Bottomonium

New Physics can show up in various well-known processes already studied in the Standard Model, in particular by modifying decay rates to some extent. In this work, I examine leptonic decays of $\Upsilon$ vector resonances of bottomonium below $B\bar{B}$ production, subsequent to a magnetic dipole radiative structural transition of the vector resonance yielding a pseudoscalar continuum state, searching for the existence of a light Higgs-like neutral boson that would imply a slight but experimentally measurable breaking of lepton universality.Comment: LaTeX, 12 pages, 1 EPS figur