346 research outputs found

    Remote Sensing of Giant Reed with QuickBird Satellite Imagery

    Get PDF
    QuickBird high resolution (2.8 m) satellite imagery was evaluated for distinguishing giant reed ( Arundo donax L.) infestations along the Rio Grande in southwest Texas. (PDF has 5 pages.

    Patterns, Symmetries, and Mathematical Structures in the Arts

    Get PDF
    Mathematics is a discipline of academia that can be found everywhere in the world around us. Mathematicians and scientists are not the only people who need to be proficient in numbers. Those involved in social sciences and even the arts can benefit from a background in math. In fact, connections between mathematics and various forms of art have been discovered since as early as the fourth century BC. In this thesis we will study such connections and related concepts in mathematics, dances, and music

    Host specificity of divergent populations of the leaf beetle \u3ci\u3eDiorhabda elongata\u3c/i\u3e (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae), a biological control agent of saltcedar (Tamarix spp.)

    Get PDF
    The leaf beetle, Diorhabda elongata (Brullé) sensu lato, was released in 2001 for the classical biological control of exotic saltcedars, a complex of invasive Tamarix species and hybrids. It did not establish at sites south of 37°N latitude where summer daylengths are below the critical photoperiod of the northern-adapted populations of the beetle that were released. Therefore, we assessed the host specificity of four D. elongata populations collected from more southern latitudes in the Old World (Tunisia, Crete, Uzbekistan, and Turpan, China). All populations were similar to each other and the previously released populations of D. elongata in their host specificity. Larval/pupal survival for all populations was 34–100% on Tamarix test plants, 0–76% on native Frankenia plants (both in the order Tamaricales), and 0% on the remaining 28 species of plants on which all the larvae died as 1st instars. D. elongata laid high numbers of eggs on saltcedar, generally fewer eggs on athel (a moderately valued evergreen species of Tamarix) except for Uzbekistan beetles, and few to no eggs on three species of Frankenia. Few to no adults were found on Frankenia plants which also were poor maintenance hosts. The release of any of the four D. elongata populations in the southern US and northern Mexico should pose no risk to plants outside the order Tamaricales and a low risk to native, non-target Frankenia plants. Athel may be less damaged than saltcedar

    Host speciWcity of diVerent populations of the leaf beetle Diorhabda elongata (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae), a biological control agent of saltcedar (Tamarix spp.)

    Get PDF
    Abstract The leaf beetle, Diorhabda elongata (Brullé) sensu lato, was released in 2001 for the classical biological control of exotic saltcedars, a complex of invasive Tamarix species and hybrids. It did not establish at sites south of 37°N latitude where summer daylengths are below the critical photoperiod of the northern-adapted populations of the beetle that were released. Therefore, we assessed the host speciWcity of four D. elongata populations collected from more southern latitudes in the Old World (Tunisia, Crete, Uzbekistan, and Turpan, China). All populations were similar to each other and the previously released populations of D. elongata in their host speciWcity. Larval/pupal survival for all populations was 34-100% on Tamarix test plants, 0-76% on native Frankenia plants (both in the order Tamaricales), and 0% on the remaining 28 species of plants on which all the larvae died as 1st instars. D. elongata laid high numbers of eggs on saltcedar, generally fewer eggs on athel (a moderately valued evergreen species of Tamarix) except for Uzbekistan beetles, and few to no eggs on three species of Frankenia. Few to no adults were found on Frankenia plants which also were poor maintenance hosts. The release of any of the four D. elongata populations in the southern US and northern Mexico should pose no risk to plants outside the order Tamaricales and a low risk to native, non-target Frankenia plants. Athel may be less damaged than saltcedar. Published by Elsevier Inc

    Preflare magnetic and velocity fields

    Get PDF
    A characterization is given of the preflare magnetic field, using theoretical models of force free fields together with observed field structure to determine the general morphology. Direct observational evidence for sheared magnetic fields is presented. The role of this magnetic shear in the flare process is considered within the context of a MHD model that describes the buildup of magnetic energy, and the concept of a critical value of shear is explored. The related subject of electric currents in the preflare state is discussed next, with emphasis on new insights provided by direct calculations of the vertical electric current density from vector magnetograph data and on the role of these currents in producing preflare brightenings. Results from investigations concerning velocity fields in flaring active regions, describing observations and analyses of preflare ejecta, sheared velocities, and vortical motions near flaring sites are given. This is followed by a critical review of prevalent concepts concerning the association of flux emergence with flare

    Evaluating how agent methodologies support the specification of the normative environment through the development process

    Full text link
    [EN] Due to the increase in collaborative work and the decentralization of processes in many domains, there is an expanding demand for large-scale, flexible and adaptive software systems to support the interactions of people and institutions distributed in heterogeneous environments. Commonly, these software applications should follow specific regulations meaning the actors using them are bound by rights, duties and restrictions. Since this normative environment determines the final design of the software system, it should be considered as an important issue during the design of the system. Some agent-oriented software engineering methodologies deal with the development of normative systems (systems that have a normative environment) by integrating the analysis of the normative environment of a system in the development process. This paper analyses to what extent these methodologies support the analysis and formalisation of the normative environment and highlights some open issues of the topic.This work is partially supported by the PROMETEOII/2013/019, TIN2012-36586-C03-01, FP7-29493, TIN2011-27652-C03-00, CSD2007-00022 projects, and the CASES project within the 7th European Community Framework Program under the grant agreement No 294931.Garcia Marques, ME.; Miles, S.; Luck, M.; Giret Boggino, AS. (2014). Evaluating how agent methodologies support the specification of the normative environment through the development process. Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems. 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10458-014-9275-zS120Cossentino, M., Hilaire, V., Molesini, A., & Seidita, V. (Eds.). (2014). Handbook on agent-oriented design processes (Vol. VIII, 569 p. 508 illus.). Berlin: Springer.Akbari, O. (2010). A survey of agent-oriented software engineering paradigm: Towards its industrial acceptance. Journal of Computer Engineering Research, 1, 14–28.Argente, E., Botti, V., Carrascosa, C., Giret, A., Julian, V., & Rebollo, M. (2011). An abstract architecture for virtual organizations: The THOMAS approach. Knowledge and Information Systems, 29(2), 379–403.Argente, E., Botti, V., & Julian, V. (2009). GORMAS: An organizational-oriented methodological guideline for open MAS. In Proceedings of AOSE’09 (pp. 440–449).Argente, E., Botti, V., & Julian, V. (2009). Organizational-oriented methodological guidelines for designing virtual organizations. In Distributed computing, artificial intelligence, bioinformatics, soft computing, and ambient assisted living. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Vol. 5518, pp. 154–162).Boella, G., Pigozzi, G., & van der Torre, L. (2009). Normative systems in computer science—Ten guidelines for normative multiagent systems. In G. Boella, P. Noriega, G. Pigozzi, & H. Verhagen (Eds.), Normative multi-agent systems, number 09121 in Dagstuhl seminar proceedings.Boella, G., Torre, L., & Verhagen, H. (2006). Introduction to normative multiagent systems. Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, 12(2–3), 71–79.Bogdanovych, A., Esteva, M., Simoff, S., Sierra, C., & Berger, H. (2008). A methodology for developing multiagent systems as 3d electronic institutions. In M. Luck & L. Padgham (Eds.), Agent-Oriented Software Engineering VIII (Vol. 4951, pp. 103–117). Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Berlin: Springer.Boissier, O., Padget, J., Dignum, V., Lindemann, G., Matson, E., Ossowski, S., Sichman, J., & Vazquez-Salceda, J. (2006). Coordination, organizations, institutions and norms in multi-agent systems. LNCS (LNAI) (Vol. 3913).Bordini, R. H., Fisher, M., Visser, W., & Wooldridge, M. (2006). Verifying multi-agent programs by model checking. In Autonomous agents and multi-agent systems (Vol. 12, pp. 239–256). Hingham, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers.Botti, V., Garrido, A., Giret, A., & Noriega, P. (2011). The role of MAS as a decision support tool in a water-rights market. In Post-proceedings workshops AAMAS2011 (Vol. 7068, pp. 35–49). Berlin: Springer.Breaux, T. (2009). Exercising due diligence in legal requirements acquisition: A tool-supported, frame-based approach. In Proceedings of the IEEE international requirements engineering conference (pp. 225–230).Breaux, T. D., & Baumer, D. L. (2011). Legally reasonable security requirements: A 10-year ftc retrospective. Computers and Security, 30(4), 178–193.Breaux, T. D., Vail, M. W., & Anton, A. I. (2006). Towards regulatory compliance: Extracting rights and obligations to align requirements with regulations. In Proceedings of the 14th IEEE international requirements engineering conference, RE ’06 (pp. 46–55). Washington, DC: IEEE Computer Society.Bresciani, P., Perini, A., Giorgini, P., Giunchiglia, F., & Mylopoulos, J. (2004). Tropos: An agent-oriented software development methodology. Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, 8(3), 203–236.Cardoso, H. L., & Oliveira, E. (2008). A contract model for electronic institutions. In COIN’07: Proceedings of the 2007 international conference on Coordination, organizations, institutions, and norms in agent systems III (pp. 27–40).Castor, A., Pinto, R. C., Silva, C. T. L. L., & Castro, J. (2004). Towards requirement traceability in tropos. In WER (pp. 189–200).Chopra, A., Dalpiaz, F., Giorgini, P., & Mylopoulos, J. (2009). Modeling and reasoning about service-oriented applications via goals and commitments. ICST conference on digital business.Cliffe, O., Vos, M., & Padget, J. (2006). Specifying and analysing agent-based social institutions using answer set programming. In O. Boissier, J. Padget, V. Dignum, G. Lindemann, E. Matson, S. Ossowski, J. Sichman, & J. Vázquez-Salceda (Eds.), Coordination, organizations, institutions, and norms in multi-agent systems. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Vol. 3913, pp. 99–113). Springer. Berlin.Criado, N., Argente, E., Garrido, A., Gimeno, J. A., Igual, F., Botti, V., Noriega, P., & Giret, A. (2011). Norm enforceability in Electronic Institutions? In Coordination, organizations, institutions, and norms in agent systems VI (Vol. 6541, pp. 250–267). Springer.Dellarocas, C., & Klein, M. (2001). Contractual agent societies. In R. Conte & C. Dellarocas (Eds.), Social order in multiagent systems (Vol. 2, pp. 113–133)., Multiagent Systems, Artificial Societies, and Simulated Organizations New York: Springer.DeLoach, S. A. (2008). Developing a multiagent conference management system using the o-mase process framework. In Proceedings of the international conference on agent-oriented software engineering VIII (pp. 168–181).DeLoach, S. A., & Garcia-Ojeda, J. C. (2010). O-mase; a customisable approach to designing and building complex, adaptive multi-agent systems. International Journal of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering, 4(3), 244–280.DeLoach, S. A., Padgham, L., Perini, A., Susi, A., & Thangarajah, J. (2009). Using three aose toolkits to develop a sample design. International Journal Agent-Oriented Software Engineering, 3, 416–476.Dignum, F., Dignum, V., Thangarajah, J., Padgham, L., & Winikoff, M. (2007). Open agent systems? Eighth international workshop on agent oriented software engineering (AOSE) in AAMAS07.Dignum, V. (2003). A model for organizational interaction:based on agents, founded in logic. PhD thesis, Utrecht University.Dignum, V., Meyer, J., Dignum, F., & Weigand, H. (2003). Formal specification of interaction in agent societies. Formal approaches to agent-based systems (Vol. 2699).Dignum, V., Vazquez-Salceda, J., & Dignum, F. (2005). Omni: Introducing social structure, norms and ontologies into agent organizations. In R. Bordini, M. Dastani, J. Dix, & A. Seghrouchni (Eds.)Programming multi-agent systems. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Vol. 3346, pp. 181–198). Berlin: Springer.d’Inverno, M., Luck, M., Noriega, P., Rodriguez-Aguilar, J., & Sierra, C. (2012). Communicating open systems, 186, 38–94.Elsenbroich, C., & Gilbert, N. (2014). Agent-based modelling. In Modelling norms (pp. 65–84). Dordrecht: Springer.Esteva, M., Rosell, B., Rodriguez, J. A., & Arcos, J. L. (2004). AMELI: An agent-based middleware for electronic institutions. In AAMAS04 (pp. 236–243).Fenech, S., Pace, G. J., & Schneider, G. (2009). Automatic conflict detection on contracts. In Proceedings of the 6th international colloquium on theoretical aspects of computing, ICTAC ’09 (pp. 200–214).Garbay, C., Badeig, F., & Caelen, J. (2012). Normative multi-agent approach to support collaborative work in distributed tangible environments. In Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on computer supported cooperative work companion, CSCW ’12 (pp. 83–86). New York, NY: ACM.Garcia, E., Giret, A., & Botti, V. (2011). Regulated open multi-agent systems based on contracts. In Information Systems Development (pp. 243–255).Garcia, E., Tyson, G., Miles, S., Luck, M., Taweel, A., Staa, T. V., & Delaney, B. (2012). An analysis of agent-oriented engineering of e-health systems. In 13th international eorkshop on sgent-oriented software engineering (AOSE-AAMAS).Garcia, E., Tyson, G., Miles, S., Luck, M., Taweel, A., Staa, T. V., and Delaney, B. (2013). Analysing the Suitability of Multiagent Methodologies for e-Health Systems. In Agent-Oriented Software Engineering XIII, volume 7852, pages 134–150. Springer-Verlag.Garrido, A., Giret, A., Botti, V., & Noriega, P. (2013). mWater, a case study for modeling virtual markets. In New perspectives on agreement technologies (Vol. Law, Gover, pp. 563–579). Springer.Gteau, B., Boissier, O., & Khadraoui, D. (2006). Multi-agent-based support for electronic contracting in virtual enterprises. IFAC Symposium on Information Control Problems in Manufacturing (INCOM), 150(3), 73–91.Hollander, C. D., & Wu, A. S. (2011). The current state of normative agent-based systems. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 14(2), 6.Hsieh, F.-S. (2005). Automated negotiation based on contract net and petri net. In E-commerce and web technologies. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Vol. 3590, pp. 148–157).Kollingbaum, M., Jureta, I. J., Vasconcelos, W., & Sycara, K. (2008). Automated requirements-driven definition of norms for the regulation of behavior in multi-agent systems. In Proceedings of the AISB 2008 workshop on behaviour regulation in multi-agent systems, Aberdeen, Scotland, U.K., April 2008.Li, T., Balke, T., Vos, M., Satoh, K., & Padget, J. (2013). Detecting conflicts in legal systems. In Y. Motomura, A. Butler, & D. Bekki (Eds.), New Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence (Vol. 7856, pp. 174–189)., Lecture Notes in Computer Science Berlin Heidelberg: Springer.Lomuscio, A., Qu, H., & Solanki, M. (2010) Towards verifying contract regulated service composition. Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (pp. 1–29).Lopez, F., Luck, M., & d’Inverno, M. (2006). A normative framework for agent-based systems. Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, 12, 227–250.Lpez, F. y, Luck, M., & dInverno, M. (2006). A normative framework for agent-based systems. Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, 12(2–3), 227–250.Mader, P., & Egyed, A. (2012). Assessing the effect of requirements traceability for software maintenance. In 28th IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance (ICSM) (pp. 171–180), Sept 2012.Mao, X., & Yu, E. (2005). Organizational and social concepts in agent oriented software engineering. In AOSE IV. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (Vol. 3382, pp. 184–202).Meyer, J.-J. C., & Wieringa, R. J. (Eds.). (1993). Deontic logic in computer science: Normative system specification. Chichester, UK: Wiley.Okouya, D., & Dignum, V. (2008). Operetta: A prototype tool for the design, analysis and development of multi-agent organizations (demo paper). In AAMAS (pp. 1667–1678).Malone, T. W., Smith J. B., & Olson, G. M. (2001). Coordination theory and collaboration technology. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Oren, N., Panagiotidi, S., Vázquez-Salceda, J., Modgil, S., Luck, M., & Miles, S. (2009). Towards a formalisation of electronic contracting environments. COIN (pp. 156–171).Osman, N., Robertson, D., & Walton, C. (2006). Run-time model checking of interaction and deontic models for multi-agent systems. In AAMAS ’06: Proceedings of the fifth international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems (pp. 238–240). New York, NY: ACM.Pace, G., Prisacariu, C., & Schneider, G. (2007). Model checking contracts a case study. In Automated technology for verification and analysis. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Vol. 4762, pp. 82–97).Rotolo, A., & van der Torre, L. (2011). Rules, agents and norms: Guidelines for rule-based normative multi-agent systems. RuleML Europe, 6826, 52–66.Saeki, M., & Kaiya, H. (2008). Supporting the elicitation of requirements compliant with regulations. In CAiSE ’08 (pp. 228–242).Siena, A., Mylopoulos, J., Perini, A., & Susi, A. (2009). Designing law-compliant software requirements. In Proceedings of the 28th international conference on conceptual modeling, ER ’09 (pp. 472–486).Singh, M. P. Commitments in multiagent systems: Some history, some confusions, some controversies, some prospects.Solaiman, E., Molina-Jimenez, C., & Shrivastav, S. (2003). Model checking correctness properties of electronic contracts. In Service-oriented computing—ICSOC 2003. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Vol. 2910, pp. 303–318). Berlin: Springer.Telang, P. R., & Singh, M. P. (2009). Conceptual modeling: Foundations and applications. Enhancing tropos with commitments (pp. 417–435).Vázquez-Salceda, J., Confalonieri, R., Gomez, I., Storms, P., Nick Kuijpers, S. P., & Alvarez, S. (2009). Modelling contractually-bounded interactions in the car insurance domain. DIGIBIZ 2009.Viganò, F., & Colombetti, M. (2007). Symbolic model checking of institutions. In ICEC (pp. 35–44).Walton, C. D. (2007). Verifiable agent dialogues. Journal of Applied Logic, 5(2):197–213, Logic-Based Agent Verification.Winkler, S., & Pilgrim, J. (2010). A survey of traceability in requirements engineering and model-driven development. Software and Systems Modeling (SoSyM), 9(4), 529–565.Wooldridge, M., Fisher, M., Huget, M., & Parsons, S. (2002). Model checking multi-agent systems with mable. In AAMAS02 (pp. 952–959). ACM

    Biological Control of Saltcedar

    Get PDF
    Saltcedar is an exotic shrub or small tree that has spread throughout the rivers, streams and lakes of west and southwest Texas and other areas of the western United States. This brochure explains an effort to introduce the saltcedar leaf beetle as a biological control measure against saltcedar. 8 pp., 3 photo

    Stimulated radiative laser cooling

    Full text link
    Building a refrigerator based on the conversion of heat into optical energy is an ongoing engineering challenge. Under well-defined conditions, spontaneous anti-Stokes fluorescence of a dopant material in a host matrix is capable of lowering the host temperature. The fluorescence is conveying away a part of the thermal energy stored in the vibrational oscillations of the host lattice. In particular, applying this principle to the cooling of (solid-state) lasers opens up many potential device applications, especially in the domain of high-power lasers. In this paper, an alternative optical cooling scheme is outlined, leading to radiative cooling of solid-state lasers. It is based on converting the thermal energy stored in the host, into optical energy by means of a stimulated nonlinear process, rather than a spontaneous process. This should lead to better cooling efficiencies and a higher potential of applying the principle for device applications

    Limitations of Absolute Current Densities Derived from the Semel & Skumanich Method

    Full text link
    Semel and Skumanich proposed a method to obtain the absolute electric current density, |Jz|, without disambiguation of 180 degree in the transverse field directions. The advantage of the method is that the uncertainty in the determination of the ambiguity in the magnetic azimuth is removed. Here, we investigate the limits of the calculation when applied to a numerical MHD model. We found that the combination of changes in the magnetic azimuth with vanishing horizontal field component leads to errors, where electric current densities are often strong. Where errors occur, the calculation gives |Jz| too small by factors typically 1.2 ~ 2.0.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures. To appear on Science in China Series G: Physics, Mechanics & Astronomy, October 200

    Modelling S. choleraesuis infection by oral route of inoculation; titration of dose strength

    Get PDF
    Salmonella infections cost the United States swine industry more than 100 million dollars annually (Schwartz, 1990). In the United States, salmonellosis caused by Salmonella choleraesuis, the etiologic agent of swine parathyphoid, occurs most frequently. While pigs can be exposed to broad host range salmonellae, such as Salmonella typhimurium, from a variety of sources, S. choleraesuis is a host adapted pathogen rarely isolated from non-swine sources (Schwartz, 1990). Thus, natural infection of new animals by S. choleraesuis occurs primarily via horizontal transmission from infected animals which shed the pathogen from their gastrointestinal tract
    • …
    corecore