Orientation and distribution of recent gullies in the southern hemisphere of Mars: observations from HRSC/MEX and MOC/MGS data

Abstract not available

Accent effects on the recognition of speech in noise: Second-language proficiency, accent similarity and adaptation.

One of the key factors that determine speech intelligibility under challenging conditions is the difference between the accents of the talker and listener. For example, normal-hearing listeners can be accurate at recognizing a wide range of accents in quiet, but in noise they are much poorer (e.g., 20 percentage points less accurate) if they try to understand native (L1) or non-native (L2) accented speech that does not closely match their own accent. The aim of this PhD research is to provide a more detailed account of this talker-listener interaction in order to establish the underlying factors involved in L1 and L2 speech communication in noise for normal-hearing populations. Study 1 examined the effects of L2 proficiency on the L1-L2 accent interaction in noise, with Study 2 investigating the contribution of acoustic similarity to accent intelligibility. Study 3 examined L1 listeners’ adaptation processes to unfamiliar accents in noise. Finally, Study 4 took a cross-linguistic approach and investigated how language experience and accent similarity affect the talker-listener accent interaction in noise across languages. Overall, the results revealed that several factors contribute strongly to the L1-L2 accent interaction in noise, with the emerging findings contributing to our general understanding of speech in noise perception. For instance, acoustic similarity in the accents of the talkers and the listeners accounted for a great amount of the variance in intelligibility. Linguistic background and L2 experience were also shown to play a major role in the interaction, shaping the listeners’ accent processing patterns in their L1 and L2, as well as general speech-in-noise processes, with bilingual and highly proficient L2 listeners showing facilitation effects for speech processing in both their languages. Finally, the selective tuning processes found for standard accents in English were not replicated for French, indicating that accent processing varies across languages

Uso de trajetórias na rastreabilidade bovina.

O Brasil é um dos maiores produtores e exportadores de carne bovina do mundo em um mercado extremamente competitivo. As exigências sobre o controle da origem e produção de animais aumentam cada vez mais e novas soluções e alternativas devem ser exploradas para manter a produção de carne e o mercado de exportação. Neste aspecto a rastreabilidade animal torna-se importante como meio para auxiliar na garantia do registro da vida de um animal, desde seu nascimento até o seu abate e exportação, incluindo o registro da permanência em fazendas e contatos com outros animais. O projeto OTAG (Operational Management and Geo-decisional Prototype to Track and Trace Agricultural Production) prevê a utilização de dispositivos eletrônicos de georefenciamento em animais, por meio de colares eletrônicos, e o registro da movimentação animal dentro das propriedades. A partir dos dados de movimentação animal, associados a outras bases de dados, pretende-se obter uma série de informações para diversos níveis de usuários do controle sanitário. O presente trabalho apresenta o uso de trajetórias para a identificação do contatos entre animais, a partir dos dados georefenciados de movimentação animal. A base de dados de contatos entre animais viabiliza a identificação de possíveis animais que contaminaram ou podem ser contaminados a partir de uma determinada ocorrência da febre aftosa, uma das doenças que podem atingir os animais e prejudicar a produção de carne bovina.SBIAgro 2009

Precise design of environmental data warehouses

People use data warehouses to help them make decisions. For example, public policy decision-makers can improve their decisions by using this technology to analyze the environmental effects of human activity. In production systems, data warehouses provide structures for extracting the knowledge required to optimize systems. Designing data warehouses is a complex task; designers need flexible and precise methods to help them create data warehouses and adapt their analysis criteria to developments in the decision-making process. In this paper, we introduce a flexible method based on UML (Unified Modeling Language). We introduce a UML profile for building multi-dimensional models and for choosing different criteria according to analysis requirements. This profile makes it possible to specify integrity constraints in OCL (Object Constraint Language). We apply our method to the construction of an environmental system for analyzing the use of certain agricultural fertilizers. We integrate various data sources into a multi-dimensional model showing several categories of analysis, and the consistency of data can be checked with OCL constraints

Towards a spatial decision support system for animal traceability.

This section presents the contributions of our work to the problems of bovine traceability and contact between animals using trajectory database concepts. This section describes how to delimitate problems and how to represent animal movements as trajectories. Afterwards, the algorithms for the identification of contacts between animals are presented for the calculation of contamination probabilities. In this work we define contamination algorithms for foot-and-mouth disease (FMD). FMD is a highly contagious disease that attacks all cleft-hoofed animals, mainly bovines. It occurs at all ages, regardless of sex, breed, climate, etc. The virus spreads by direct contact of animals as well as through the air, water and food.Contrato nº 43134

MULTIPASS: gestion des consentements pour accéder aux données des exploitations dans une chaîne de confiance afin de favoriser l'émergence de nouveaux services pour les agriculteurs

12th EFITA International Conference, Rhode island, GRC, 27-/06/2019 - 29/06/2019International audienceWith the emergence of digital technologies, farms become a relevant source of data to meet the challenges of multi-performance agriculture. Beyond the services provided, access to farmers' data depends on a clear understanding of their use, which must be done in a transparent way. Several codes of conduct at a national or international level push for a voluntary commitment to respect some good practices in the use of agricultural data. To provide a tool and answer farmer's questions on the control of their data and the transparency of the data processing, the partners of the MULTIPASS project, have imagined an interoperable ecosystem of farmer consents management, protecting farmers from no consented uses of their data.Farmers' expectations of such an ecosystem have been expressed during workshops. They want to better identify existing data flows, including actors, data processes, and data clusters. Based on the farmers' expectations, the MULTIPASS project stakeholders have proposed the architecture of an ecosystem integrating two consent management tools as "pilots". This ecosystem should take in charge the interoperability between each consent management tools or with future tools. This solution is based on a shared typology of data and data processes as well as on the specifications of the consent message content. All these elements should be easily accessible to meet the interoperability need of the ecosystem. It is also based on a router, which provides unified access to consent management tools (using API). In particular, it provides the farmer (beneficiary) with an exhaustive view of his/her consents (which can be distributed on several consent management systems), meeting farmers' expectations for transparency. It is also the point where a data provider can check whether the consent required to provide data exists, without needing to know which consent management system is concerned. In this project, the stakeholders want to demonstrate to agricultural professional organizations the benefits and feasibility of a consent management ecosystem. By strengthening the confidence of farmers to share data, the project will allow the emergence of new knowledge and new services

An adverbial approach for the formal specification of topological constraints involving regions with broad boundaries

Topological integrity constraints control the topological properties of spatial objects and the validity of their topological relationships in spatial databases. These constraints can be specified by using formal languages such as the spatial extension of the Object Constraint Language (OCL). Spatial OCL allows the expression of topological constraints involving crisp spatial objects. However, topological constraints involving spatial objects with vague shapes (e.g., regions with broad boundaries) are not supported by this language. Shape vagueness requires using appropriate topological operators (e.g., strongly Disjoint, fairly Meet) to specify valid relations between these objects; otherwise, the constraints cannot be respected. This paper addresses the problem of the lack of terminology to express topological constraints involving regions with broad boundaries. We propose an extension of Spatial OCL based on a geometric model for objects with vague shapes and an adverbial approach for topological relations between regions with broad boundaries. This extension of Spatial OCL is then tested on an agricultural database

Brendan meets Columbus: A more commodious islescape

This paper proposes that we can reimagine insular literatures and medieval islescapes as commodious seas of cultural and intellectual loci that span time, culture, and text alike. By moving beyond the rhetoric of insular separation or connectivity, we can see that islands connect even when medieval minds saw separation. The essay focuses on the Brendan legend and the commodious cultural ‘sea of islands’ that it inhabits, a space that connects the modern reader to a history of other connections, fact to fancy, and the real and the imaginary. When sailing in this sea, Brendan meets Columbus, and the late medieval idea of a lost island spreads though space and time

Igneous mineralogy at Bradbury Rise: The first ChemCam campaign at Gale crater

Textural and compositional analyses using Chemistry Camera (ChemCam) remote microimager and laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) have been performed on five float rocks and coarse gravels along the first 100 m of the Curiosity traverse at Bradbury Rise. ChemCam, the first LIBS instrument sent to another planet, offers the opportunity to assess mineralogic diversity at grain-size scales (~ 100 µm) and, from this, lithologic diversity. Depth profiling indicates that targets are relatively free of surface coatings. One type of igneous rock is volcanic and includes both aphanitic (Coronation) and porphyritic (Mara) samples. The porphyritic sample shows dark grains that are likely pyroxene megacrysts in a fine-grained mesostasis containing andesine needles. Both types have magnesium-poor basaltic compositions and in this respect are similar to the evolved Jake Matijevic rock analyzed further along the Curiosity traverse both with Alpha-Particle X-ray Spectrometer and ChemCam instruments. The second rock type encountered is a coarse-grained intrusive rock (Thor Lake) showing equigranular texture with millimeter size crystals of feldspars and Fe-Ti oxides. Such a rock is not unique at Gale as the surrounding coarse gravels (such as Beaulieu) and the conglomerate Link are dominated by feldspathic (andesine-bytownite) clasts. Finally, alkali feldspar compositions associated with a silica polymorph have been analyzed in fractured filling material of Preble rock and in Stark, a putative pumice or an impact melt. These observations document magmatic diversity at Gale and describe the first fragments of feldspar-rich lithologies (possibly an anorthosite) that may be ancient crust transported from the crater rim and now forming float rocks, coarse gravel, or conglomerate clasts