Factors associated with trends in bare ground in high country

Environment Canterbury has responsibility for promoting sustainable management of the region’s natural resources. Soil erosion in the Canterbury high country has been a long-term concern, and was the subject of the problem brought to MISG. Pre-European and early European burning and grazing not only induced large tracts of tussock grassland in areas that were previously wooded, but also exposed areas of soil to further erosion by wind, rain and frost. In the 1960s to 1980s the government encouraged de-stocking on some properties, with the aim of restoring vegetative cover. In the late 1970s, a monitoring programme was set up in parts of the Canterbury high country to track the effects of lowered grazing levels

The Cardinality of an Oracle in Blum-Shub-Smale Computation

We examine the relation of BSS-reducibility on subsets of the real numbers. The question was asked recently (and anonymously) whether it is possible for the halting problem H in BSS-computation to be BSS-reducible to a countable set. Intuitively, it seems that a countable set ought not to contain enough information to decide membership in a reasonably complex (uncountable) set such as H. We confirm this intuition, and prove a more general theorem linking the cardinality of the oracle set to the cardinality, in a local sense, of the set which it computes. We also mention other recent results on BSS-computation and algebraic real numbers

Noncomputable functions in the Blum-Shub-Smale model

Working in the Blum-Shub-Smale model of computation on the real numbers, we answer several questions of Meer and Ziegler. First, we show that, for each natural number d, an oracle for the set of algebraic real numbers of degree at most d is insufficient to allow an oracle BSS-machine to decide membership in the set of algebraic numbers of degree d + 1. We add a number of further results on relative computability of these sets and their unions. Then we show that the halting problem for BSS-computation is not decidable below any countable oracle set, and give a more specific condition, related to the cardinalities of the sets, necessary for relative BSS-computability. Most of our results involve the technique of using as input a tuple of real numbers which is algebraically independent over both the parameters and the oracle of the machine

Provenance of sedimentary rocks

Understanding the origins, or provenance, of a sedimentary deposit is an important aspect of geology. Sedimentary rocks are derived from the erosion of other rocks and thus provide important records of the geological environment at the time they were deposited. Some minerals found in sedimentary rocks, such as zircon particles, can be dated using uranium-lead techniques to trace the age of their parent rock thus providing useful information about the geological environment. Statistical and mathematical analyses that can assist in the analysis of the distribution of ages of the zircon crystals are examined. Methods of defining a difference between the distributions of ages found in rock samples are proposed, and demonstrated in the division of multiple rock samples into clusters of similar types. A test for the existence of a cluster is developed, and statistics for comparing different rock samples examined. Estimating an accurate age for the sedimentary deposit itself proves to be difficult unless prior distributions providing significant extra information are available

Advice for the potential statistical consultant

Many of those who have never practised statistical consulting seem to view it from one of two extremes: a trivial exercise that any statistician could do, or an extremely difficult task occasioning extreme anxiety. Of course, the truth is that it lies somewhere in between. I will consider various aspects of statistical consulting, including the characteristics of a successful consultation, the necessary knowledge, skills and attributes of the consultant, things to do and not to do, and the pleasures and frustrations that one can gain from consulting

Crossing the ‘Uncanny Valley’: Adaptation to Cartoon Faces Can Influence Perception of Human Faces

In this study we assessed whether there is a single face space common to both human and cartoon faces by testing whether adaptation to cartoon faces can affect perception of human faces. Participants were shown Japanese animation cartoon videos containing faces with abnormally large eyes. The use of animated videos eliminated the possibility of position-dependent retinotopic adaptation (because the faces appear at many different locations) and more closely simulated naturalistic exposure. Adaptation to cartoon faces with large eyes significantly shifted preferences for human faces toward larger eyes, consistent with a common, non-retinotopic representation for both cartoon and human faces. This supports the possibility that there are representations that are specific to faces yet common to all kinds of faces

Emotional Intelligence: An Untapped Resource for Alcohol and Other Drug Related Prevention among Adolescents and Adults

Alcohol and Other Drug abuse in adolescents and adults continues to be a major public health problem in the United States. Care in intervention programs aimed at high risk populations identified occurs after the maladaptive behavioral delinquency has occurred, and only then is an individual afforded the opportunity to join an intervention program. The focus of this paper is to illustrate and highlight the value of prevention programs which emphasize altering maladaptive behavior before the behavior becomes problematic. Emotional Intelligence is not only an indicator of alcohol and other drug abuse, but is linked to emotional competence, social and emotional learning, the development of healthy and life promoting behavior, and has been proven to reduce some of the risk factors associated with alcohol and other drug abuse in adolescents and adults. This paper seeks to recognize the significance of Emotional Intelligence as a desirable health promoting attribute and to establish the importance of its conceptual use in a prevention based model for reducing associated high risk behaviors