University High Highlights 11/1/1961

This is the student newspaper from University High School, the high school that was on the campus of Western Michigan University, then called University High Highlights, in 1961

The effects of climate, natural disturbances, and human occupation on the rainforest boundary at the eastern foothills of Northern Patagonian Andes since the Late Glacial period

Available studies on the vegetation development in Patagonia cluster along the forest-steppe ecotone, whilst little information is available from within the mountains. This study investigates shifts in the eastern boundary of rainforest taxa during the Late Glacial and Holocene periods. Continuous sections of highly organic sediments with several interbedded tephra layers were obtained at El Laguito del Morro Lake (41° 32′ 24.4″ S, 71° 47’ 50.0” W), which were analyzed for pollen and macro charcoal. Additional macrofossil analysis was conducted to support the interpretations of pollen data and gain reliable material for radiocarbon dating. Fluctuations in regional precipitation were inferred from changes in the adjacent peatbog. The pollen record documents five distinct periods of forest diversity and structure. Late Glacial and early Holocene vegetation were characterized by a combination of Podocarpus and Cupressaceae pollen which has no modern analogue. Taxa in question became rare, and or gradually disappeared around 10,300 cal yr BP when Nothofagus dombeyi type pollen increases but fluctuates. With the overall decline of charcoal concentrations around 7500 cal. BP Nothofagus dombeyi-type pollen stabilizes and dominates the diagram. After the rise in charcoal concentrations around 4000 cal yr BP also the overall vegetation composition changes around 3600 cal yr BP, with the rise of Cupressaceae pollen attributed to Austrocedrus chilensis marking the establishment of the modern vegetation structure. The last stronger change in vegetation composition is characterized by the expansion of the shrub Discaria sp. 770 cal yr BP. Charcoal and pollen data show a clear link between changes in fire regime and vegetation composition, however, changes in climate were most likely the main driver for both. During the Late Glacial period, a rainforest developed under cool temperatures and high moisture. Severity of fires decreased during a cold reversal period from ca. 12,800 to 11,300 cal yr BP. During Early Holocene, increased seasonality, volcanism-derived disturbances, and low-frequency surficial fires, enhanced Nothofagus dombeyi forest establishment. The expansion of the mixed Nothofagus dombeyi - Austrocedrus chilensis forest occurred under increased precipitation variability and the increase of low severity fires related to the establishment of El Niño Southern Oscillation and the Southern Annular Mode during the Late Holocene. Scrub expansion occurred during historical times because of induced fires

Dicom image handling for medical analysis and the ViVa project

The aim of this work was to build the basic system for medical image retrieval and elaboration suitable for the ViVa Project, aiming at building, from clinical data, virtual vascular systems where also blood flow fields can be simulated and analysed

A comparative analysis of the performance of the relational database and the Hadoop environment in the context of analytical data processing

The article presents a detailed comparative analysis of the performance of a Microsoft SQL Server relational database and an Apache Hadoop environment in the context of analytical data processing. The study was carried out by execut-ing more than a dozen research scenarios with different queries on datasets of varying sizes. For each research scenario, the average query execution time on different datasets was compared. Based on the results, it was found that the average execution time of queries from the presented scenarios is significantly shorter in MS SQL Server than in Apache Ha-doop

An energy preserving upscaling technique for enhanced volume rendering of medical data

Proc. 3D Anatomical Human Summer School 2010, 23-24 May, Chania, Greece: EU Marie Curie Research Training Network. 2010.In this paper we describe an edge-directed optimization-based method for volumetric data supersampling. Our method faces the problem of partial volume effect by upscaling the volumetric data, subdividing voxels in smaller parts and performing an optimization step keeping constant the energy of each original subdivided voxel while enhancing edge continuity. Experimental tests show the good quality of the results obtained with our approach. Furthermore, we show how offline 3D upscaling of volumes can be coupled with recent techniques to perform high quality volume rendering of large datsets, obtaining a better inspection of medical volumetric data.In corso di stamp

ViVa: sistema acquisizione geometrie arteriose. Descrizione generale.

Lo scopo di questa attività era di produrre un modulo software in grado di estrarre una caratterizzazione geometrica dei vasi sanguigni a partire da dati volumetrici ottenuti da macchine di acquisizione di tipo clinico, ad esempio TAC a spirale

Matching techniques to compute image motion

This paper describes a thorough analysis of the pattern matching techniques used to compute image motion from a sequence of two or more images. Several correlation/distance measures are tested, and problems in displacement estimation are investigated. As a byproduct of this analysis, several novel techniques are presented which improve the accuracy of flow vector estimation and reduce the computational cost by using filters, multi-scale approach and mask sub-sampling. Further, new algorithms to obtain a sub-pixel accuracy of the flow are proposed. A large amount of experimental tests have been performed to compare all the techniques proposed, in order to understand which are the most useful for practical applications, and the results obtained are very accurate, showing that correlation-based flow computation is suitable for practical and real-time applications.247–260Pubblicat

Rozwiązania mobilne w sprzedaży i serwisie

Growing competition, higher customers expectations involved changes in business models. Today company’s staff have to be closer to the customers, to better understand their needs, provide faster and better service. This situation creates new problems; It is difficult to control and manage staff what spends most of their time outside of the office, also are problems with communication between company and workers. Traditional voice phones are not enough to send all required information, especially when electronic data (e-mails, internet pages) getting more and more important. One possible solution to solve these problems are mobile business (m-enterprise) systems, which base on wireless communication and mobile devices. In this article are describes examples how mobile solutions can be connected with enterprise Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems to provide support for sales and service staff.Wzrastające wymagania klientów i konkurencja powodują, iż pracownicy muszą spędzać coraz więcej czasu poza przedsiębiorstwem. Już nie tylko przedstawiciele handlowi, technicy, czy kierowcy muszą udawać się do klienta - dotyczy to coraz większej grupy pracowników. Problemem staje się zarządzanie pracownikami, przydzielanie im zadań, kontrola czasu pracy i jej jakości. Dlatego też powstają i coraz szerzej rozwijają się aplikacje informatyczne oparte o bezprzewodowe przesyłanie danych, oraz niewielkie przenośne urządzenia umożliwiające pracę poza biurem. Rozwiązania te określane są jako Mobile Enterprise, m-Enterprise, czy też mobile E-business. W artykule przedstawione zostały wybrane rozwiązania informatyczne oparte o technologie mobilne, w powiązaniu z systemem zarządzania relacjami z klientem, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), oraz sposób, w jaki mogą one pomóc w obszarze wspierania sprzedaży i serwisu technicznego.Zadanie pt. „Digitalizacja i udostępnienie w Cyfrowym Repozytorium Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego kolekcji czasopism naukowych wydawanych przez Uniwersytet Łódzki” nr 885/P-DUN/2014 zostało dofinansowane ze środków MNiSW w ramach działalności upowszechniającej nauk