Report of the Terrestrial Bodies Science Working Group. Volume 4: The moon

A rationale for furture exploration of the moon is given. Topics discussed include the objectives of the lunar polar orbiter mission, the mission profile, and general characteristics of the spacraft to be used

Age regression from soft aligned face images using low computational resources

The initial step in most facial age estimation systems consists of accurately aligning a model to the output of a face detector (e.g. an Active Appearance Model). This fitting process is very expensive in terms of computational resources and prone to get stuck in local minima. This makes it impractical for analysing faces in resource limited computing devices. In this paper we build a face age regressor that is able to work directly on faces cropped using a state-of-the-art face detector. Our procedure uses K nearest neighbours (K-NN) regression with a metric based on a properly tuned Fisher Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) projection matrix. On FG-NET we achieve a state-of-the-art Mean Absolute Error (MAE) of 5.72 years with manually aligned faces. Using face images cropped by a face detector we get a MAE of 6.87 years in the same database. Moreover, most of the algorithms presented in the literature have been evaluated on single database experiments and therefore, they report optimistically biased results. In our cross-database experiments we get a MAE of roughly 12 years, which would be the expected performance in a real world application

Security governance and networks: New theoretical perspectives in transatlantic security

The end of the Cold War has not only witnessed the rise of new transnational threats such as terrorism, crime, proliferation and civil war; it has also seen the growing role of non-state actors in the provision of security in Europe and North America. Two concepts in particular have been used to describe these transformations: security governance and networks. However, the differences and potential theoretical utility of these two concepts for the study of contemporary security have so far been under-examined. This article seeks to address this gap. It proposes that security governance can help to explain the transformation of Cold War security structures, whereas network analysis is particularly useful for understanding the relations and interactions between public and private actors in the making and implementation of national and international security policies

Free-hand sketch synthesis with deformable stroke models

We present a generative model which can automatically summarize the stroke composition of free-hand sketches of a given category. When our model is fit to a collection of sketches with similar poses, it discovers and learns the structure and appearance of a set of coherent parts, with each part represented by a group of strokes. It represents both consistent (topology) as well as diverse aspects (structure and appearance variations) of each sketch category. Key to the success of our model are important insights learned from a comprehensive study performed on human stroke data. By fitting this model to images, we are able to synthesize visually similar and pleasant free-hand sketches

Justice Beyond Borders? Australia and the International Criminal Court

The International Criminal Court (ICC) came into being on 1 July 2002. A four-person team opened an office in The Hague and will collect reports and allegations of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity until judges and a prosecutor are appointed towards the end of 2003. Although the court was heralded by many states and international lawyers as the most important positive development in international law since the formation of the United Nations, it did not get off to an auspicious start. The Bush administration was concerned that US military forces operating overseas would be particularly vulnerable to what it described as 'politicised' prosecutions. It therefore insisted that not only would it not be a part of the ICC, but also that it would not sanction the continuation of UN peacekeeping operations. Closer to home, the Australian Senate only ratified the ICC's founding treaty, the Rome Statute, after a bitter debate that split both the Liberal and National parties. This was the case even though the Howard government-and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer in particular-had been a leading advocate of the court and ratification of the Rome Statute had been a Liberal Party election promise in 2001. The cost that Downer, and pro-ICC Attorney-General Daryl Williams had to pay in order to appease restive conservative backbenchers, the National Party, and an increasingly reluctant (and pro-US) Prime Minister and secure the ratification was a declaration that reaffirmed the primacy of the Australian judicial system over the ICC. The declaration insisted that no Australian would be prosecuted by the court without the consent of the Attomey-General, and asserted Australia's right to define what is meant by the crimes of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. We argue that although Downer and Williams should be commended for their commitment to international justice, the declaration attached to Australia's ratification was unnecessary and unhelpful. The first and third aspects of the declaration were unnecessary: the principle of complementarity enshrined in the Rome Statute means that the ICC already recognises the primacy of domestic jurisdiction, and the crimes covered are already considered to fall under universal jurisdiction, as the Nuremberg, Tokyo and more recent Pinochet trials showed (see Weller 1999). The second is unhelpful because it contravenes both the letter and the spirit of the Rome Statute. We will begin, then, by tracing the development of the ICC debate in Australian politics. In 1998, the government was an enthusiastic advocate of the court but by 2002 an alliance of an ardently pro-US Prime Minister, vocal right-wing parliamentarians and their supporters, and The Australian (and its foreign affairs editor Greg Sheridan in particular) combined to put ratification in doubt. Contrary to Prime Minister John Howard's claims, this debate was not well informed. Instead, it was characterised by hearsay, inaccuracy and scare-mongering. The subsequent section of the article demonstrates this by focusing on the background to, and creation of, the Rome Statute

Obstetric professionals’ perceptions of non-invasive prenatal testing for Down syndrome: clinical usefulness compared with existing tests and ethical implications

Background: While non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) for fetal aneuploidy is commercially available in many countries, little is known about how obstetric professionals in non-Western populations perceive the clinical usefulness of NIPT in comparison with existing first-trimester combined screening (FTS) for Down syndrome (DS) or invasive prenatal diagnosis (IPD), or perceptions of their ethical concerns arising from the use of NIPT. Methods: A cross-sectional survey among 327 obstetric professionals (237 midwives, 90 obstetricians) in Hong Kong. Results: Compared to FTS, NIPT was believed to: provide more psychological benefits and enable earlier consideration of termination of pregnancy. Compared to IPD, NIPT was believed to: provide less psychological stress for high-risk women and more psychological assurance for low-risk women, and offer an advantage to detect chromosomal abnormalities earlier. Significant differences in perceived clinical usefulness were found by profession and healthcare sector: (1) obstetricians reported more certain views towards the usefulness of NIPT than midwives and (2) professionals in the public sector perceived less usefulness of NIPT than the private sector. Beliefs about earlier detection of DS using NIPT were associated with ethical concerns about increasing abortion. Participants believing that NIPT provided psychological assurance among low-risk women were less likely to be concerned about ethical issues relating to informed decision-making and pre-test consultation for NIPT. Conclusions: Our findings suggest the need for political debate initially on how to ensure pregnant women accessing public services are informed about commercially available more advanced technology, but also on the potential implementation of NIPT within public services to improve access and equity to DS screening services

Prostaglandin E<inf>2</inf> (PGE<inf>2</inf>) exerts biphasic effects on human tendon stem cells

Prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) has been reported to exert different effects on tissues at low and high levels. In the present study, cell culture experiments were performed to determine the potential biphasic effects of PGE2 on human tendon stem/progenitor cells (hTSCs). After treatment with PGE2, hTSC proliferation, stemness, and differentiation were analyzed. We found that high concentrations of PGE 2 ( >1 ng/ml) decreased cell proliferation and induced non-tenocyte differentiation. However, at lower concentrations (1 ng/ml. The findings of this study reveal that PGE2 can exhibit biphasic effects on hTSCs, indicating that while high PGE2 concentrations may be detrimental to tendons, low levels of PGE2 may play a vital role in the maintenance of tendon homeostasis in vivo. © 2014 Zhang, Wang

Anticipated Improvements to River Surface Elevation Profiles From the Surface Water and Ocean Topography Mission

Existing publicly available digital elevation models (DEMs) provide global-scale data but are often not precise enough for studying processes that depend on small-scale topographic features in rivers. For example, slope breaks and knickpoints in rivers can be important in understanding tectonic processes, and riffle-pool structures are important drivers of riverine ecology. More precise data (e.g., lidar) are available in some areas, but their spatial extent limits large-scale research. The upcoming Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite mission is planned to launch in 2021 and will provide measurements of elevation and inundation extent of surface waters between 78° north and south latitude on average twice every 21 days. We present a novel noise reduction method for multitemporal river water surface elevation (WSE) profiles from SWOT that combines a truncated singular value decomposition and a slope-constrained least-squares estimator. We use simulated SWOT data of 85–145 km sections of the Po, Sacramento, and Tanana Rivers to show that 3–12 months of simulated SWOT data can produce elevation profiles with mean absolute errors (MAEs) of 5.38–12.55 cm at 100–200 m along-stream resolution. MAEs can be reduced further to 4–11 cm by averaging all observations. The average profiles have errors much lower than existing DEMs, allowing new advances in riverine research globally. We consider two case studies in geomorphology and ecology that highlight the scientific value of the more accurate in-river DEMs expected from SWOT. Simulated SWOT elevation profiles for the Po reveal convexities in the river longitudinal profile that are spatially coincident with the upward projection of blind thrust faults that are buried beneath the Po Plain at the northern termination of the Apennine Mountains. Meanwhile, simulated SWOT data for the Sacramento River reveals locally steep sections of the river profile that represent important habitat for benthic invertebrates at a spatial scale previously unrecognizable in large-scale DEMs presently available for this river

Interplay of Nkx3.2, Sox9 and Pax3 Regulates Chondrogenic Differentiation of Muscle Progenitor Cells

Muscle satellite cells make up a stem cell population that is capable of differentiating into myocytes and contributing to muscle regeneration upon injury. In this work we investigate the mechanism by which these muscle progenitor cells adopt an alternative cell fate, the cartilage fate. We show that chick muscle satellite cells that normally would undergo myogenesis can be converted to express cartilage matrix proteins in vitro when cultured in chondrogenic medium containing TGFß3 or BMP2. In the meantime, the myogenic program is repressed, suggesting that muscle satellite cells have undergone chondrogenic differentiation. Furthermore, ectopic expression of the myogenic factor Pax3 prevents chondrogenesis in these cells, while chondrogenic factors Nkx3.2 and Sox9 act downstream of TGFß or BMP2 to promote this cell fate transition. We found that Nkx3.2 and Sox9 repress the activity of the Pax3 promoter and that Nkx3.2 acts as a transcriptional repressor in this process. Importantly, a reverse function mutant of Nkx3.2 blocks the ability of Sox9 to both inhibit myogenesis and induce chondrogenesis, suggesting that Nkx3.2 is required for Sox9 to promote chondrogenic differentiation in satellite cells. Finally, we found that in an in vivo mouse model of fracture healing where muscle progenitor cells were lineage-traced, Nkx3.2 and Sox9 are significantly upregulated while Pax3 is significantly downregulated in the muscle progenitor cells that give rise to chondrocytes during fracture repair. Thus our in vitro and in vivo analyses suggest that the balance of Pax3, Nkx3.2 and Sox9 may act as a molecular switch during the chondrogenic differentiation of muscle progenitor cells, which may be important for fracture healing

Gene Expression Dynamics During Bone Healing and Osseointegration

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/141010/1/jper1007.pd