Low-dose alum application trialled as a management tool for internal nutrient loads in Lake Okaro, New Zealand

Aluminium sulfate (alum) was applied to Lake Okaro, a eutrophic New Zealand lake with recurrent cyanobacterial blooms, to evaluate its suitability for reducing trophic status and bloom frequency. The dose yielded 0.6 g aluminium m–3 in the epilimnion. Before dosing, pH exceeded 8 in epilimnetic waters but was optimal for flocculation (6–8) below 4 m depth. After dosing, there was no significant change in water clarity, hypolimnetic pH decreased to 5.5, and soluble aluminium exceeded recommended guidelines for protection of freshwater organisms. Epilimnetic phosphate concentrations decreased from 40 to 5 mg m–3 and total nitrogen (TN):total phosphorus (TP) mass ratios increased from 7:1 to 37:1. The dominant phytoplankton species changed from Anabaena spp. before dosing, to Ceratium hirudinella , then Staurastrum sp. after dosing. Detection of effectiveness of dosing may have been limited by sampling duration and design, as well as the low alum dose. The decrease in hypolimnetic pH and epilimnetic TP, and increase in Al3+ and chlorophyll a, are attributed to the low alkalinity lake water and coincidence of alum dosing with a cyanobacterial bloom and high pH

Linear Redshift Distortions and Power in the PSCz Survey

We present a state-of-the-art linear redshift distortion analysis of the recently published IRAS Point Source Catalog Redshift Survey (PSCz). The procedure involves linear compression into 4096 Karhunen-Loeve modes culled from a potential pool of about 3 x 10^5 modes, followed by quadratic compression into three separate power spectra, the galaxy-galaxy, galaxy-velocity, and velocity-velocity power spectra. Least squares fitting to the decorrelated power spectra yields a linear redshift distortion parameter beta = Omega_m^0.6/b = 0.41(+0.13,-0.12).Comment: Minor changes to agree with accepted version. Slight changes to power spectrum, including one more point added at large scales, from binning points formerly discarded as too noisy. 5 pages, including 4 embedded PostScript figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS Letters (pink pages). Power spectrum data available at http://casa.colorado.edu/~ajsh/pscz

Programa FORMO para mejorar la lectura de textos en estudiantes de primaria, Institución Educativa San Juan, San Juan de Miraflores, 2016

El objetivo de la presente investigación fue determinar el efecto de la ejecución del Programa FORMO para mejorar la lectura de textos, en estudiantes de primaria, Institución Educativa San Juan, San Juan de Miraflores, 2016‖, la población estuvo constituida por 139 niños y niñas que cursaban el III ciclo de educación Primaria, tercer grado, turno mañana, la muestra no probabilística intencional consideró 58 estudiantes; en los cuales se ha empleado la variable: Programa FORMO: Fortaleciendo la Memoria Operativa El método empleado en la investigación fue el hipotético deductivo, esta investigación utilizó para su propósito el diseño experimental de nivel explicativo, de clase cuasi experimental, que recogió la información en un período específico, que se desarrolló al aplicar el instrumento: Prueba de Comprensión Lectora de Complejidad Lingüística Progresiva (CPL) 3º Nivel A, cuyos resultados se presentan gráfica y textualmente. La investigación concluye que no existe evidencia significativa para afirmar que: La aplicación del programa ―FORMO‖ mejora significativamente la lectura de textos en estudiantes del tercer grado de primaria de la Institución Educativa San Juan, San Juan de Miraflores, 2016

OASIS: A Large-Scale Dataset for Single Image 3D in the Wild

Single-view 3D is the task of recovering 3D properties such as depth and surface normals from a single image. We hypothesize that a major obstacle to single-image 3D is data. We address this issue by presenting Open Annotations of Single Image Surfaces (OASIS), a dataset for single-image 3D in the wild consisting of annotations of detailed 3D geometry for 140,000 images. We train and evaluate leading models on a variety of single-image 3D tasks. We expect OASIS to be a useful resource for 3D vision research. Project site: https://pvl.cs.princeton.edu/OASIS.Comment: Accepted to CVPR 202

Methods for Rapidly Processing Angular Masks of Next-Generation Galaxy Surveys

As galaxy surveys become larger and more complex, keeping track of the completeness, magnitude limit, and other survey parameters as a function of direction on the sky becomes an increasingly challenging computational task. For example, typical angular masks of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey contain about N=300,000 distinct spherical polygons. Managing masks with such large numbers of polygons becomes intractably slow, particularly for tasks that run in time O(N^2) with a naive algorithm, such as finding which polygons overlap each other. Here we present a "divide-and-conquer" solution to this challenge: we first split the angular mask into predefined regions called "pixels," such that each polygon is in only one pixel, and then perform further computations, such as checking for overlap, on the polygons within each pixel separately. This reduces O(N^2) tasks to O(N), and also reduces the important task of determining in which polygon(s) a point on the sky lies from O(N) to O(1), resulting in significant computational speedup. Additionally, we present a method to efficiently convert any angular mask to and from the popular HEALPix format. This method can be generically applied to convert to and from any desired spherical pixelization. We have implemented these techniques in a new version of the mangle software package, which is freely available at http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/mangle/, along with complete documentation and example applications. These new methods should prove quite useful to the astronomical community, and since mangle is a generic tool for managing angular masks on a sphere, it has the potential to benefit terrestrial mapmaking applications as well.Comment: New version 2.1 of the mangle software now available at http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/mangle/ - includes galaxy survey masks and galaxy lists for the latest SDSS data release and the 2dFGRS final data release as well as extensive documentation and examples. 14 pages, 9 figures, matches version accepted by MNRA

Karhunen-Loeve eigenvalue problems in cosmology: how should we tackle large data sets?

Since cosmology is no longer "the data-starved science", the problem of how to best analyze large data sets has recently received considerable attention, and Karhunen-Loeve eigenvalue methods have been applied to both galaxy redshift surveys and Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) maps. We present a comprehensive discussion of methods for estimating cosmological parameters from large data sets, which includes the previously published techniques as special cases. We show that both the problem of estimating several parameters jointly and the problem of not knowing the parameters a priori can be readily solved by adding an extra singular value decomposition step. It has recently been argued that the information content in a sky map from a next generation CMB satellite is sufficient to measure key cosmological parameters (h, Omega, Lambda, etc) to an accuracy of a few percent or better - in principle. In practice, the data set is so large that both a brute force likelihood analysis and a direct expansion in signal-to-noise eigenmodes will be computationally unfeasible. We argue that it is likely that a Karhunen-Loeve approach can nonetheless measure the parameters with close to maximal accuracy, if preceded by an appropriate form of quadratic "pre-compression". We also discuss practical issues regarding parameter estimation from present and future galaxy redshift surveys, and illustrate this with a generalized eigenmode analysis of the IRAS 1.2 Jy survey optimized for measuring beta=Omega^{0.6}/b using redshift space distortions.Comment: 15 pages, with 5 figures included. Substantially expanded with worked COBE examples for e.g. the multiparameter case. Available from http://www.sns.ias.edu/~max/karhunen.html (faster from the US), from http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/~max/karhunen.html (faster from Europe) or from [email protected]

Interventions for treating anxiety after stroke

Background: Approximately 20% of stroke patients experience anxiety at some point after stroke. Objectives: To determine if any treatment for anxiety after stroke decreases the proportion of patients with anxiety disorders or symptoms, and to determine the effect of treatment on quality of life, disability, depression, social participation, risk of death or caregiver burden. Search methods: We searched the trials register of the Cochrane Stroke Group (October 2010), CENTRAL (The Cochrane Library 2010, Issue 4), MEDLINE (1950 to October 2010), EMBASE (1947 to October 2010), PsycINFO (1806 to October 2010), Allied and Complementary Medicine database (AMED) (1985 to October 2010), Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health (CINAHL) (1982 to October 2010), Proquest Digital Dissertations (1861 to October 2010), and Psychological Database for Brain Impairment Treatment Efficacy (PsycBITE) (2004 to October 2010). In an effort to identify further published, unpublished and ongoing trials, we searched trial registries and major international stroke conference proceedings, scanned reference lists, and contacted select individuals known to the review team who are actively involved in psychological aspects of stroke research, and the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry. Selection criteria: Two review authors independently screened and selected titles and abstracts for inclusion in the review. Randomised trials of any intervention in patients with stroke where the treatment of anxiety was an outcome were eligible. Data collection and analysis: Two review authors independently extracted data for analysis. We performed a narrative review. A meta-analysis was planned but not carried out as studies were not of sufficient quality to warrant doing so. Main results: We included two trials (three interventions) involving 175 participants with co-morbid anxiety and depression in the review. Both trials used the Hamilton Anxiety Scale (HAM-A) to assess anxiety, and neither included a placebo control group. One trial randomised 81 patients to paroxetine, paroxetine plus psychotherapy or standard care. Mean level of anxiety severity scores were 58% and 71% lower in the paroxetine, and paroxetine plus psychotherapy groups respectively compared with those in standard care at follow-up (P < 0.01). The second trial randomised 94 stroke patients, also with co-morbid anxiety and depression, to receive buspirone hydrochloride or standard care. At follow-up, the mean level of anxiety was significantly lower for those receiving buspirone relative to controls (P < 0.01). Half of the participants receiving paroxetine experienced adverse events that included nausea, vomiting or dizziness; however, only 14% of those receiving buspirone experienced nausea or palpitations. No information was provided about the duration of symptoms associated with adverse events. Authors' conclusions: There is insufficient evidence to guide the treatment of anxiety after stroke. The data available suggest that pharmaceutical therapy (paroxetine and buspirone) may be effective in reducing anxiety symptoms in stroke patients with co-morbid anxiety and depression. No information was available for stroke patients with anxiety only. Randomised placebo controlled trials are needed