639 research outputs found
Supporting public decision making in policy deliberations: An ontological approach
This is the post-print version of the Paper. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2011 SpringerSupporting public decision making in policy deliberations has been a key objective of eParticipation which is an emerging area of eGovernment. EParticipation aims to enhance citizen involvement in public governance activities through the use of information and communication technologies. An innovative approach towards this objective is exploiting the potentials of semantic web technologies centred on conceptual knowledge models in the form of ontologies. Ontologies are generally defined as explicit human and computer shared views on the world of particular domains. In this paper, the potentials and benefits of using ontologies for policy deliberation processes are discussed. Previous work is then extended and synthesised to develop a deliberation ontology. The ontology aims to define the necessary semantics in order to structure and interrelate the stages and various activities of deliberation processes with legal information, participant stakeholders and their associated arguments. The practical implications of the proposed framework are illustrated.This work is funded by the European Commission under the 2006/1 eParticipation call
Extreme Events in Resonant Radiation from Three-dimensional Light Bullets
We report measurements that show extreme events in the statistics of resonant
radiation emitted from spatiotemporal light bullets. We trace the origin of
these extreme events back to instabilities leading to steep gradients in the
temporal profile of the intense light bullet that occur during the initial
collapse dynamics. Numerical simulations reproduce the extreme valued
statistics of the resonant radiation which are found to be intrinsically linked
to the simultaneous occurrence of both temporal and spatial self-focusing
dynamics. Small fluctuations in both the input energy and in the spatial phase
curvature explain the observed extreme behaviour.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, submitte
USING GIS AND EARTHQUAKE SCENARIOS FOR THE ASSESSMENT OF EMERGENCY RESPONSE IN CASE OF A STRONG EARTHQUAKE. AN APPLICATION IN THE URBAN AREA OF THESSALONIKI, GREECE
The aim of this paper, which is part of the M.Sc Thesis of the first author, is an initial attempt for the assessment of the emergency response through the road network of the Urban Area of Thessaloniki (UAT) after a strong earthquake. The areas of the road network that are to become inaccessible either due to partial collapse of buildings or due to destruction of the road axes by rupture zones, are detected. The inaccessible parts are determined for the cases of three earthquake scenarios using the values of the Peak Ground Acceleration (PGA), which were calculated for about 6000 points over the UAT, as well as spatial overlay tools of a GIS. In the end, by applying network analysis and according to the situation of the network after the earthquake, the possibility of movement of the fire engines and ambulances was studied and least cost routes from ambulance stations to UAT hospitals were tracked
Computer assisted characterization of cervical intervertebral disc degeneration in MRI
A texture-based pattern recognition system is proposed for the automatic characterization of cervical intervertebral disc degeneration from saggital magnetic resonance images of the spine. A case sample of 50 manually segmented ROIs, corresponding to 25 normal and 25 degenerated discs, was analyzed and textural features were generated from each disc-ROI. Student's t-test verified the existence of statistically significant differences between textural feature values generated from normal and degenerated discs. This finding is indicative of disc image texture differentiation due to the degeneration of the disc. The generated features were employed in the design of a pattern recognition system based on the Least Squares Minimum Distance classifier. The system achieved a classification accuracy of 94{%} and it may be of value to physicians for the assessment of cervical intervertebral disc degeneration in MRI
Thermodynamics of Electrolytes on Anisotropic Lattices
The phase behavior of ionic fluids on simple cubic and tetragonal
(anisotropic) lattices has been studied by grand canonical Monte Carlo
simulations. Systems with both the true lattice Coulombic potential and
continuous-space electrostatic interactions have been investigated. At
all degrees of anisotropy, only coexistence between a disordered low-density
phase and an ordered high-density phase with the structure similar to ionic
crystal was found, in contrast to recent theoretical predictions. Tricritical
parameters were determined to be monotonously increasing functions of
anisotropy parameters which is consistent with theoretical calculations based
on the Debye-H\"uckel approach. At large anisotropies a two-dimensional-like
behavior is observed, from which we estimated the dimensionless tricritical
temperature and density for the two-dimensional square lattice electrolyte to
be and .Comment: submitted to PR
Crowding of Polymer Coils and Demixing in Nanoparticle-Polymer Mixtures
The Asakura-Oosawa-Vrij (AOV) model of colloid-polymer mixtures idealizes
nonadsorbing polymers as effective spheres that are fixed in size and
impenetrable to hard particles. Real polymer coils, however, are intrinsically
polydisperse in size (radius of gyration) and may be penetrated by smaller
particles. Crowding by nanoparticles can affect the size distribution of
polymer coils, thereby modifying effective depletion interactions and
thermodynamic stability. To analyse the influence of crowding on polymer
conformations and demixing phase behaviour, we adapt the AOV model to mixtures
of nanoparticles and ideal, penetrable polymer coils that can vary in size. We
perform Gibbs ensemble Monte Carlo simulations, including trial
nanoparticle-polymer overlaps and variations in radius of gyration. Results are
compared with predictions of free-volume theory. Simulation and theory
consistently predict that ideal polymers are compressed by nanoparticles and
that compressibility and penetrability stabilise nanoparticle-polymer mixtures.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figure
Dipolar origin of the gas-liquid coexistence of the hard-core 1:1 electrolyte model
We present a systematic study of the effect of the ion pairing on the
gas-liquid phase transition of hard-core 1:1 electrolyte models. We study a
class of dipolar dimer models that depend on a parameter R_c, the maximum
separation between the ions that compose the dimer. This parameter can vary
from sigma_{+/-} that corresponds to the tightly tethered dipolar dimer model,
to R_c --> infinity, that corresponds to the Stillinger-Lovett description of
the free ion system. The coexistence curve and critical point parameters are
obtained as a function of R_c by grand canonical Monte Carlo techniques. Our
results show that this dependence is smooth but non-monotonic and converges
asymptotically towards the free ion case for relatively small values of R_c.
This fact allows us to describe the gas-liquid transition in the free ion model
as a transition between two dimerized fluid phases. The role of the unpaired
ions can be considered as a perturbation of this picture.Comment: 16 pages, 13 figures, submitted to Physical Review
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