Memecylon pseudomegacarpum M.Hughes (Melastomataceae), a new species of tree from Peninsular Malaysia

A new species, Memecylon pseudomegacarpum (Melastomataceae), is described from southern Peninsular Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore. This taxon was previously known under the misapplied name M. megacarpum, which is now considered endemic to Borneo. Memecylon pseudomegacarpum sp. nov. differs from M. megacarpum in having smaller leaves (8–)10.5–17(–22.5) cm rather than (10–)17–28(–35) cm long, with an elliptic lamina (not lanceolate) with a raised mid-rib (not sunken) and a marginal vein which is 2–4 mm from the margin (not 5–12 mm). Both species have similar flowers and share large (c. 15 mm diameter) globose fruits

A note on Khovanov-Rozansky sl2sl_2-homology and ordinary Khovanov homology

In this note we present an explicit isomorphism between Khovanov-Rozansky $sl_2$-homology and ordinary Khovanov homology. This result was originally stated in Khovanov and Rozansky's paper \cite{KRI}, though the details have yet to appear in the literature. The main missing detail is providing a coherent choice of signs when identifying variables in the $sl_2$-homology. Along with the behavior of the signs and local orientations in the $sl_2$-homology, both theories behave differently when we try to extend their definitions to virtual links, which seemed to suggest that the $sl_2$-homology may instead correspond to a different variant of Khovanov homology. In this paper we describe both theories and prove that they are in fact isomorphic by showing that a coherent choice of signs can be made. In doing so we emphasize the interpretation of the $sl_2$-complex as a cube of resolutions.Comment: 19 pages, 11 figures. Expanded introduction and abstract. Remark added to end of section 4.

Virtual Reconstruction and Morphological Analysis of the Cranium of an Ancient Egyptian Mummy

A mummy of an Egyptian priestess dating from the 22nd dynasty (c. 770 BC), completely enclosed in an anthropoid (human shaped) coffin, was scanned on a CT scanner. An accurate reconstruction of the cranium was generated from 115 × 2 mm CT images using AVS/Express on a SGI computer. Linear measurements were obtained from six orthogonal cranial views and used in a morphometric analysis software package (CRANID). The analyses carried out were both linear and nearest neighbour discriminant analysis. The results show that there is a 52.9% probability that the mummy is an Egyptian female, with a 24.5% probability that mummy is an African female. Thus the technique confirms that the coffin contains an Egyptian female, which is consistent with the inscription on the coffin and the shape of the pelvic bones as revealed by plain X-rays. These results show that this technique has potential for analysing forensic cases where the bones are obscured by soft tissue and clothing. This technique may have an application in virtual autopsies

Vacancy Reassessed

Since 1950, Philadelphia's population has been declining dramatically, by more than 30 percent. This rapid depopulation has led to the vacancy and abandonment of a large number of unmanaged residential lots and buildings. The future of Philadelphia rests on its ability to manage this decline, and in 1999, efforts were fragmented. This report highlights the barriers that many faced in trying to access vacant property and provides recommendations for a more strategic vision so that the city can create a significant and lasting impact

A study into annotation ranking metrics in geo-tagged image corpora

Community contributed datasets are becoming increasingly common in automated image annotation systems. One important issue with community image data is that there is no guarantee that the associated metadata is relevant. A method is required that can accurately rank the semantic relevance of community annotations. This should enable the extracting of relevant subsets from potentially noisy collections of these annotations. Having relevant, non heterogeneous tags assigned to images should improve community image retrieval systems, such as Flickr, which are based on text retrieval methods. In the literature, the current state of the art approach to ranking the semantic relevance of Flickr tags is based on the widely used tf-idf metric. In the case of datasets containing landmark images, however, this metric is inefficient due to the high frequency of common landmark tags within the data set and can be improved upon. In this paper, we present a landmark recognition framework, that provides end-to-end automated recognition and annotation. In our study into automated annotation, we evaluate 5 alternate approaches to tf-idf to rank tag relevance in community contributed landmark image corpora. We carry out a thorough evaluation of each of these ranking metrics and results of this evaluation demonstrate that four of these proposed techniques outperform the current commonly-used tf-idf approach for this task

Visual and geographical data fusion to classify landmarks in geo-tagged images

High level semantic image recognition and classification is a challenging task and currently is a very active research domain. Computers struggle with the high level task of identifying objects and scenes within digital images accurately in unconstrained environments. In this paper, we present experiments that aim to overcome the limitations of computer vision algorithms by combining them with novel contextual based features to describe geo-tagged imagery. We adopt a machine learning based algorithm with the aim of classifying classes of geographical landmarks within digital images. We use community contributed image sets downloaded from Flickr and provide a thorough investigation, the results of which are presented in an evaluation section

Queer ageing

This paper examines the potential of queer ideas for social gerontology and aged care practice. It overviews developments in lesbian and gay gerontology, and questions heteronormative influences within this literature, particularly in relation to its reliance on concepts such as ‘successful ageing’. The value of a queer approach to ageing and aged care practice lies in its challenging of restrictive binary definitions of both homosexuality and old age. It is argued that a queer ageing approach would encounter older people not just as bodies with sexual needs, but also as erotic beings with diverse sexualities to be celebrated and desired. In aged care practice, awareness of the multiplicity and constructedness of older people’s identities highlights the value of facilitating their narratives so that they might present their own understanding of their identity in their own way