Methodological considerations of integrating portable digital technologies in the analysis and management of complex superimposed Californian pictographs: From spectroscopy and spectral imaging to 3-D scanning

How can the utilization of newly developed advanced portable technologies give us greater understandings of the most complex of prehistoric rock art? This is the questions driving The Gordian Knot project analysing the polychrome Californian site known as Pleito. New small transportable devices allow detailed on-site analyses of rock art. These non-destructive portable technologies can use X-ray and Raman technology to determine the chemical elements used to make the pigment that makes the painting; they can use imaging techniques such as Highlight Reflective Transformation Imaging and dStretch© to enhance their visibility; they can use digital imagery to disentangle complex superimposed paintings; and they can use portable laser instruments to analyse the micro-topography of the rock surface and integrate these technologies into a 3-D environment. This paper outlines a robust methodology and preliminary results to show how an integration of different portable technologies can serve rock art research and management

Current advances in systems and integrative biology

Systems biology has gained a tremendous amount of interest in the last few years. This is partly due to the realization that traditional approaches focusing only on a few molecules at a time cannot describe the impact of aberrant or modulated molecular environments across a whole system. Furthermore, a hypothesis-driven study aims to prove or disprove its postulations, whereas a hypothesis-free systems approach can yield an unbiased and novel testable hypothesis as an end-result. This latter approach foregoes assumptions which predict how a biological system should react to an altered microenvironment within a cellular context, across a tissue or impacting on distant organs. Additionally, re-use of existing data by systematic data mining and re-stratification, one of the cornerstones of integrative systems biology, is also gaining attention. While tremendous efforts using a systems methodology have already yielded excellent results, it is apparent that a lack of suitable analytic tools and purpose-built databases poses a major bottleneck in applying a systematic workflow. This review addresses the current approaches used in systems analysis and obstacles often encountered in large-scale data analysis and integration which tend to go unnoticed, but have a direct impact on the final outcome of a systems approach. Its wide applicability, ranging from basic research, disease descriptors, pharmacological studies, to personalized medicine, makes this emerging approach well suited to address biological and medical questions where conventional methods are not ideal

Globe: Asian Growth and Trade Poles: India, China, and East and Southeast Asia

Using a global general equilibrium trade model, this study analyzes the impact on developing countries, of (1) the dramatic expansion of trade by India, China, and an integrated East and Southeast (E&SE) Asia trade bloc and (2) productivity growth in the region. China is an integral member of the E&SE Asia bloc, with strong links through value chains and trade in intermediate inputs, while India is not part of any trade bloc. The analyses consider the importance of their different degrees of integration into regional and global economies, focusing on potential complementarities and competition with other developing countries.

Globe: A SAM Based Global CGE Model using GTAP Data

This paper provides a technical description of a global computable general equilibrium (CGE) model that is calibrated from a Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) representation of the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) database. An important feature of the model is the treatment of nominal and real exchange rates and hence the specification of multiple numéraire. Another distinctive feature of the model is the use of a ‘dummy’ region, known as globe, that allows for the recording of inter regional transactions where either the source or destination are not identified.

The Evolution of Emergency Management Networks: The Brazos County, TX Evacuation Network from 2000-2009

Emergency management is a field in which collaborative activities are inescapable. Emergency planning and response increasingly involves a diverse array of actors across field (emergency management, public health, law enforcement, etc.), sector (government, nonprofit, and for-profit), and level of government (local, state, and federal). The necessity of collaboration is built into the logic of escalation in the Stafford Act and the nature of emergency events as boundary spanning threats. While the necessity of collaboration is clear, the dynamics of this collaboration are less well understood. This paper assesses the temporal dynamics of an emergency management network in a moderately sized community in central Texas. The evolution of the network between 2000 and 2009 make clear that actors are both quick to join and to leave the network while the network maintains its centralized character throughout the time period

Resilience of Post-disaster Emergency Response Networks: Evacuation Response and Texas School Districts

Studies of collaborative public management have relied on a number of concepts that are time-bound. Collaborative networks rely on trust and stable expectations – both elements that have strong temporal elements. Despite this attention, there has been less research into the evolution of collaborative relationships than one would expect – especially using large-N quantitative methodologies. This is due in part to the methodological difficulties of studying relationships across time using survey methodologies. This paper reports results from two surveys of school districts immediately following Hurricane Katrina that asked about their collaborative relationships – including whether they continued collaboration more than a year after the hurricanes. The results suggest that organizational structure plays the largest role in determining whether organizations maintain collaborative relationships

Apparent sharpness of 3D video when one eye's view is more blurry.

When the images presented to each eye differ in sharpness, the fused percept remains relatively sharp. Here, we measure this effect by showing stereoscopic videos that have been blurred for one eye, or both eyes, and psychophysically determining when they appear equally sharp. For a range of blur magnitudes, the fused percept always appeared significantly sharper than the blurrier view. From these data, we investigate to what extent discarding high spatial frequencies from just one eye's view reduces the bandwidth necessary to transmit perceptually sharp 3D content. We conclude that relatively high-resolution video transmission has the most potential benefit from this method