305 research outputs found
Morphological Correlates of Mechanotransduction in Acousticolateral Hair Cells
The development of ideas on mechanotransduction in acousticolateral hair cells is described, leading to the current idea that transduction depends on deflection of the bundle of stereocilia by a force parallel to the plane of the sensory epithelium. Electrophysiological experiments are summarised, suggesting that transduction depends on a shear between the different rows of stereocilia, and that the transducer channels are situated towards the tips of the stereocilia. Analysis of the ways that shear between the rows of stereocilia could be detected suggests that tip links are the structures which are most likely to transmit the stimulus-induced forces to the transducer channels on the membrane. The directional selectivity of mechanotransduction is associated with the position of the kinocilium and gradation in heights of the stereocilia; evidence is presented suggesting that in the lateral line these are partly determined by the mitosis giving rise to the hair cell. Tip links differentiate out of links which initially join the stereocilia in all directions, with their final spatial organisation, which sets the directional selectivity of mechanotransduction, probably being determined by the gradient in growth of the stereocilia
LACO-WIKI: an open access online portal for land cover validation
The LACO-Wiki tool represents an open access, online portal that offers standardized land cover validation at local to global scales. LACO-Wiki integrates the LACOVAL prototype for land cover validation and the Geo-Wiki system for visualization, validation and crowdsourcing of land cover. This paper presents a conceptual overview of the LACO-Wiki system and describes the main validation workflow, in which the user uploads the map for validation, creates a validation sample, carries out the sample interpretation and generates a report detailing the accuracy assessment. In addition to a land cover validation tool, LACO-Wiki is also intended to become an open access repository for calibration and validation data that can be used by the land monitoring community to improve future land cover products
Crowdsourcing EO datasets to improve cloud detection algorithms and land cover change
Involving citizens in science is gaining considerable traction of late. With positive examples
(e.g. Geo-Wiki, FotoQuest Austria), a number of projects are exploring the options to engage
the public in contributing to scientific research, often by asking participants to collect some
data or validate some results. The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
(IIASA), with extensive experience in crowdsourcing and gamification, has joined Sinergise,
Copernicus Masters 2016 winners, to engage the public in an initiative involving ESA’s
Sentinel-2 satellite imagery.
Sentinel-2 imagery offers high revisit times and sufficient resolution for land change
detection applications. Unfortunately, simple (but fast) algorithms often fail due to many
false-positives: changes in clouds are perceived as land changes. The ability to discriminate
of cloudy pixels is thus crucial for any automatic or semi-automatic solutions that detect land
change.
A plethora of algorithms to distinguish clouds in Sentinel-2 data are available. However,
there is a need for better data on where and when clouds occur to help improve these
algorithms. To overcome this current gap in the data, we are engaging the public in this task.
Using a number of tools, developed at IIASA, and Sentinel Hub services, which provide fast
access to the entire global archive of Sentinel-2 data, the aim is to obtain a large data
resource of curated cloud classifications. The resulting dataset will be published as open
data and made available through Geopedia platform.
The gamified process will start by asking users if there are clouds on a small image (e.g. 8x8
pixels at the highest Sentinel-2 resolution of 10 m/px), which will provide us with a screening
process to pinpoint cloudy areas, employing Picture Pile crowdsourcing game from IIASA.
The next step will involve a more detailed workflow, as users will get a slightly larger image
(e.g. 64x64 pixels) and will then be asked to delineate different types of clouds: opaque
clouds (nothing is seen through the clouds), thick clouds (where the surface is still
discernible through the clouds), and thin clouds (where the surface is unequivocally covered
by a cloud); the rest of the image will be implicitly cloud-free. The resulting data will be
made available through the Geopedia portal, both for exploring and downloading. This
paper will demonstrate this process and show some results from a crowdsourcing campaign.
The approach will also allow us to collect other datasets in a rapid and efficient manner. For
example, using a slightly modified configuration, a similar workflow could be used to obtain
a manually curated land cover classification data set, which could be used as training data
for machine learning algorithms
Cropland Capture – A Game for Improving Global Cropland Maps
Current satellite-derived global land-cover products, which
are crucial for many modelling and monitoring applications,
show large disagreements when compared with each another.
To help improve global land cover (in particular the cropland class), we developed a game called Cropland Capture. This is a simple cross-platform game for collecting image classifications that will be used to develop and validate global cropland maps in the future. In this paper, we describe the game design of Cropland Capture in detail, including aspects such as simplicity,efficiency in data collection and what mechanisms were implemented to ensure data quality.We also discuss the impact of incentives on attracting and sustaining players in the game
First detection of thermal radio jets in a sample of proto-brown dwarf candidates
We observed with the JVLA at 3.6 and 1.3 cm a sample of 11 proto-brown dwarf
candidates in Taurus in a search for thermal radio jets driven by the most
embedded brown dwarfs. We detected for the first time four thermal radio jets
in proto-brown dwarf candidates. We compiled data from UKIDSS, 2MASS, Spitzer,
WISE and Herschel to build the Spectral Energy Distribution (SED) of the
objects in our sample, which are similar to typical Class~I SEDs of Young
Stellar Objects (YSOs). The four proto-brown dwarf candidates driving thermal
radio jets also roughly follow the well-known trend of centimeter luminosity
against bolometric luminosity determined for YSOs, assuming they belong to
Taurus, although they present some excess of radio emission compared to the
known relation for YSOs. Nonetheless, we are able to reproduce the flux
densities of the radio jets modeling the centimeter emission of the thermal
radio jets using the same type of models applied to YSOs, but with
corresponding smaller stellar wind velocities and mass-loss rates, and
exploring different possible geometries of the wind or outflow from the star.
Moreover, we also find that the modeled mass outflow rates for the bolometric
luminosities of our objects agree reasonably well with the trends found between
the mass outflow rates and bolometric luminosities of YSOs, which indicates
that, despite the "excess" centimeter emission, the intrinsic properties of
proto-brown dwarfs are consistent with a continuation of those of very low mass
stars to a lower mass range. Overall, our study favors the formation of brown
dwarfs as a scaled-down version of low-mass stars.Comment: 18 pages, 8 figures, 14 tables, accepted by the Astrophysical Journa
LACO-Wiki: A land cover validation tool and a new, innovative teaching resource for remote sensing and the geosciences
The validation of land cover products is an important step in the workflow of generating a land cover map from remotely-sensed imagery. Many students of remote sensing will be given exercises on classifying a land cover map followed by the validation process. Many algorithms exist for classification, embedded within proprietary image processing software or increasingly as open source tools. However, there is little standardization for land cover validation, nor a set of open tools available for implementing this process. The LACO-Wiki tool was developed as a way of filling this gap, bringing together standardized land cover validation methods and workflows into a single portal. This includes the storage and management of land cover maps and validation data; step-by-step instructions to guide users through the validation process; sound sampling designs; an easy-to-use environment for validation sample interpretation; and the generation of accuracy reports based on the validation process. The tool was developed for a range of users including producers of land cover maps, researchers, teachers and students. The use of such a tool could be embedded within the curriculum of remote sensing courses at a university level but is simple enough for use by students aged 13-18. A beta version of the tool is available for testing at: http://www.lacowiki.net
Zeolites as Ingredients of Medicinal Products
Development of new medicinal products for particular therapeutic treatment or for better
manipulations with better quality and less side effects are possible as a result of advanced inorganic
and organic materials application, among which zeolites, due to their properties and versatility, have
been gaining attention. This paper is an overview of the development in the use of zeolite materials
and their composites and modifications as medicinal products for several purposes such as active
agents, carriers, for topical treatments, oral formulations, anticancer, the composition of theragnostic
systems, vaccines, parenteral dosage forms, tissue engineering, etc. The objective of this review is
to explore the main properties of zeolites and associate them with their drug interaction, mainly
addressing the advances and studies related to the use of zeolites for different types of treatments due
to their zeolite characteristics such as molecule storage capacity, physical and chemical stability, cation
exchange capacity, and possibility of functionalization. The use of computational tools to predict the
drug—zeolite interaction is also explored. As conclusion was possible to realize the possibilities and
versatility of zeolite applications as being able to act in several aspects of medicinal products
Correcting for chromatic stellar activity effects in transits with multiband photometric monitoring: Application to WASP-52
The properties of inhomogeneities on the surface of active stars (i.e. dark
spots and bright faculae) significantly influence the determination of the
parameters of an exoplanet. The chromatic effect they have on transmission
spectroscopy could affect the analysis of data from future space missions such
as JWST and Ariel.
To quantify and mitigate the effects of those surface phenomena, we developed
a modelling approach to derive the surface distribution and properties of
active regions by modelling simultaneous multi-wavelength time-series
observables. By using the StarSim code, now featuring the capability to solve
the inverse problem, we analysed 600 days of BVRI multiband photometry
from TJO and STELLA telescopes exoplanet host star WASP-52. From the results,
we simulated the chromatic contribution of surface phenomena on the observables
of its transits.
We are able to determine the relevant activity parameters of WASP-52 and
reconstruct the time-evolving longitudinal map of active regions. The star
shows a heterogeneous surface composed of dark spots with a mean temperature
contrast of K with filling factors ranging from 3 to 14 %. We
studied the chromatic effects on the depths of transits obtained at different
epochs with different stellar spot distributions. For WASP-52, with
peak-to-peak photometric variations of 7 % in the visible, the residual
effects of dark spots on the measured transit depth, after applying the
calculated corrections, are about at 550 nm and at
6m.
We demonstrate that by using contemporaneous ground-based multiband
photometry of an active star, it is possible to reconstruct the parameters and
distribution of active regions over time, and thus, quantify the chromatic
effects on the planetary radii measured with transit spectroscopy and mitigate
them by about an order of magnitude.Comment: 17 pages, 12 figure
Accurate attribute mapping from volunteered geographic information: issues of volunteer quantity and quality
Crowdsourcing is a popular means of acquiring data, but the use of such data is limited by concerns with its quality. This is evident within cartography and geographical sciences more generally, with the quality of volunteered geographic information (VGI) recognized as a major challenge to address if the full potential of citizen sensing in mapping applications is to be realized. Here, a means to characterize the quality of volunteers, based only on the data they contribute, was used to explore issues connected with the quantity and quality of volunteers for attribute mapping. The focus was on data in the form of annotations or class labels provided by volunteers who visually interpreted an attribute, land cover, from a series of satellite sensor images. A latent class model was found to be able to provide accurate characterisations of the quality of volunteers in terms of the accuracy of their labelling, irrespective of the number of cases that they labelled. The accuracy with which a volunteer could be characterized tended to increase with the number of volunteers contributing but was typically good at all but small numbers of volunteers. Moreover, the ability to characterize volunteers in terms of the quality of their labelling could be used constructively. For example, volunteers could be ranked in terms of quality which could then be used to select a sub-set as input to a subsequent mapping task. This was particularly important as an identified subset of volunteers could undertake a task more accurately than when part of a larger group of volunteers. The results highlight that both the quantity and quality of volunteers need consideration and that the use of VGI may be enhanced through information on the quality of the volunteers derived entirely from the data provided without any additional information
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