The application of LANDSAT-1 imagery for monitoring strip mines in the new river watershed in northeast Tennessee, part 2

The author has identified the following significant results. LANDSAT imagery and supplementary aircraft photography of the New River drainage basin were subjected to a multilevel analysis using conventional photointerpretation methods, densitometric techniques, multispectral analysis, and statistical tests to determine the accuracy of LANDSAT-1 imagery for measuring strip mines of common size. The LANDSAT areas were compared with low altitude measurements. The average accuracy over all the mined land sample areas mapped from LANDSAT-1 was 90%. The discrimination of strip mine subcategories is somewhat limited on LANDSAT imagery. A mine site, whether active or inactive, can be inferred by lack of vegetation, by shape, or image texture. Mine ponds are difficult or impossible to detect because of their small size and turbidity. Unless bordered and contrasted with vegetation, haulage roads are impossible to delineate. Preparation plants and refuge areas are not detectable. Density slicing of LANDSAT band 7 proved most useful in the detection of reclamation progress within the mined areas. For most state requirements for year-round monitoring of surface mined land, LANDSAT is of limited value. However, for periodic updating of regional surface maps, LANDSAT may provide sufficient accuracies for some users

Remote sensing application to regional activities

Two agencies within the State of Tennessee were identified whereby the transfer of aerospace technology, namely remote sensing, could be applied to their stated problem areas. Their stated problem areas are wetland and land classification and strip mining studies. In both studies, LANDSAT data was analyzed with the UTSI video-input analog/digital automatic analysis and classification facility. In the West Tennessee area three land-use classifications could be distinguished; cropland, wetland, and forest. In the East Tennessee study area, measurements were submitted to statistical tests which verified the significant differences due to natural terrain, stripped areas, various stages of reclamation, water, etc. Classifications for both studies were output in the form of maps of symbols and varying shades of gray

Digital LANDSAT data analysis of Tennessee

There are no author-identified significant results in this report

Detection of human papillomavirus DNA in intraosseus ameloblastoma

Human Papillomavirus (HPV) infection has been shown as a risk factor in oral carcinogenesis. The association between HPV and benign and malignant neoplasm of oral mucosa, especially surface epithelium-derived tumors, is well established. The role of HPV in pathogenesis of odontogenic cysts and tumors has been published in few articles. The aim of this study was detection of HPV in Iranian patients with intrabony ameloblastoma and investigation of specific risk factors associated with ameloblastoma. One hundred intrabony ameloblastoma and 50 age-sex matched samples as controls were evaluated by polymerase chain reaction for the detection and typing of HPV. Fisher exact and chi square tests were used to assess the data. HPV DNA was detected in 32% of patients and 10% of controls. HPV-6 was the most prevalent genotype (31.6%) in infected cases. It was followed by HPV-11 (12.5%), HPV-16 (12.5%) and HPV-31 (3.1%). We found a significant association between presence of HPV and location of tumor (p = 0.02), traumatic history (p = 0.03) and ododontic therapy (p = 0.01). These findings indicated that HPV-6 probably is one of the most important etiologic agents in causing intraosseous ameloblastoma in Iranian population. © 2006 Academic Journals Inc., USA

The quality of life in boys with Duchenne muscular dystrophy

We conducted a study to evaluate the quality of life in boys with Duchenne muscular dystrophy aged 8–18 years, compared with that in matched healthy controls. A total of 85 boys with Duchenne muscular dystrophy aged 8–18 years and 136 age, sex and living place matched healthy controls were included in this study. Patients and one of their parents separately completed the 27-item Persian version of KIDSCREEN questionnaire (child and adolescent version and parent version). From the children's perspective, the quality of life in patients was found to be lower in two subclasses: “physical activities and health” (p < 0.001) and “friends” (p = 0.005). Parental estimation of their sick child's quality of life was significantly lower than children's own assessment in two subclasses: “physical activities and health” (p < 0.001) and “general mood and feelings” (p < 0.001). Our results indicate that boys with Duchenne muscular dystrophy have quite a satisfactory quality of life. A happier and more hopeful life can be promoted through increasing social support and improving the parental knowledge regarding their child's more positive life perspective. © 2016 Elsevier B.V

Psychometric properties of End-of-Life Caregiving Experience Appraisal Scale: Iranian critical care nurses

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Wiley via the DOI in this record.Background: Health care providers should be able to provide good quality end-of-life care. A tool to evaluate the positive and negative consequences of caring for dying patients is warranted. Aim: The aim of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Persian version of the End-of-Life Caregiving Experience Appraisal Scale (EOLCAS). Methods: This research was conducted in two phases. Phase I: The World Health Organization Protocol of forward-backward translation and an expert panel in order to determine face and content validity. Phase II: Survey development with 310 nurses who worked in critical care units, construct validity (construct, convergent and divergent validity), internal consistency (average inter-item correlation, Cronbach's alpha and McDonald's omega) and construct reliability were evaluated. Results: The exploratory factor analysis showed that the present scale (Persian version) has four factors: Negative physical-emotional and social consequences, transcendental communication, information deficits and future rumination, which explained 83·92% of the overall extracted variance. Convergent and divergent validity were confirmed for all factors. The internal consistency and construct reliability were acceptable. Conclusion: The scale has a multidimensional concept that is sufficiently reliable and the use of the scale would be helpful in measuring consequences of caring for dying patients. Relevance to clinical practice: This scale makes a significant contribution in that it helps in the recognition of positive and negative consequences of critical care nurses' caring for dying patients

Modeling Local Energy Market for Energy Management of Multi-Microgrids

The diffusion of distributed energy resources (DERs) has changed the supply-demand balance of power systems. One option to modernize the management of the electricity distribution is to operate the distribution system with interconnected micro-grids (MGs). However, the MG participation in wholesale energy and ancillary service markets creates several challenges in the interactions among the energy market managing entities. To solve these problems, local energy markets (LEMs) have been proposed, where the MGs can trade energy with each other under the management of the LEM manager (LEMM) to minimize their operation cost. In this paper, a local energy market is modeled for multi-MGs (MMGs) to minimize the operation cost of MGs individually and their social welfare in cooperation with each other. In such model, the optimal scheduling of the DERs in each MG is done through the market clearing process. To investigate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, the local energy market is applied to a distribution network with three MGs

Study on population increase parameters of greenbug, Schizaphis graminum (Hem.: Aphididae), on common wheat varieties in Varamin region, Iran

The biology of greenbug, Schizaphis graminum Rondani, one of the most important pests of cereals in Varamin region of Iran, was studied in laboratory at 20 ± 1ËC, 60-70% R.H. and a photoperiod of 16: 8 (L: D) hours. The experiment was carried out by rearing aphids on the leaves of six common wheat varieties including: Mahdavi, Kavir, Niknezhad, Azadi, Tabasi, and Ghods using leaf cages. The nymphal development time, mortality, longevity and adult fertility of the aphid were recorded daily. The intrinsic rate of increase (rm), finite rate of increase (λ), and doubling time (DT) parameters were calculated. Results revealed that nymphal mortality rate was very low resembling that on sensitive wheat varieties. The aphid had relatively high longevity and short nymphal development time on all mentioned wheat varieties. The lowest aphid fertility rate was obtained on Kavir comparing to the fertility yielded on Mahdavi and Tabasi that was significantly higher (P < 0.01). Estimation of the intrinsic rate of increase revealed that the wheat varieties studied were susceptible to aphid, for the reason that the aphid population increased by constant exponential rate of 0.252-0.310 female/female/day. This showed high population increase potential at suitable conditions in the absence of natural enemies. Results proved that the Niknezhad, Tabasi and Ghods were the most suitable wheat varieties for rearing the aphid. The lowest rate of fertility, intrinsic rate of increase, and finite rate of increase, and the longest doubling time of aphid population were observed on Kavir, due to lower fecundity and longer nymphal development period. Therefore, the aphid population increase potential on Kavir was lower than that on the other varieties and so, expansion of sowing Kavir in Varamin region most probably may not result in aphid population increase

On the Number of Iterations for Dantzig-Wolfe Optimization and Packing-Covering Approximation Algorithms

We give a lower bound on the iteration complexity of a natural class of Lagrangean-relaxation algorithms for approximately solving packing/covering linear programs. We show that, given an input with $m$ random 0/1-constraints on $n$ variables, with high probability, any such algorithm requires $\Omega(\rho \log(m)/\epsilon^2)$ iterations to compute a $(1+\epsilon)$-approximate solution, where $\rho$ is the width of the input. The bound is tight for a range of the parameters $(m,n,\rho,\epsilon)$. The algorithms in the class include Dantzig-Wolfe decomposition, Benders' decomposition, Lagrangean relaxation as developed by Held and Karp [1971] for lower-bounding TSP, and many others (e.g. by Plotkin, Shmoys, and Tardos [1988] and Grigoriadis and Khachiyan [1996]). To prove the bound, we use a discrepancy argument to show an analogous lower bound on the support size of $(1+\epsilon)$-approximate mixed strategies for random two-player zero-sum 0/1-matrix games

Ab initio prediction of semiconductivity in a novel two-dimensional Sb2X3 (X= S, Se, Te) monolayers with orthorhombic structure

Sb 2S 3 and Sb 2Se 3 are well-known layered bulk structures with weak van der Waals interactions. In this work we explore the atomic lattice, dynamical stability, electronic and optical properties of Sb 2S 3, Sb 2Se 3 and Sb 2Te 3 monolayers using the density functional theory simulations. Molecular dynamics and phonon dispersion results show the desirable thermal and dynamical stability of studied nanosheets. On the basis of HSE06 and PBE/GGA functionals, we show that all the considered novel monolayers are semiconductors. Using the HSE06 functional the electronic bandgap of Sb 2S 3, Sb 2Se 3 and Sb 2Te 3 monolayers are predicted to be 2.15, 1.35 and 1.37 eV, respectively. Optical simulations show that the first absorption coefficient peak for Sb 2S 3, Sb 2Se 3 and Sb 2Te 3 monolayers along in-plane polarization is suitable for the absorption of the visible and IR range of light. Interestingly, optically anisotropic character along planar directions can be desirable for polarization-sensitive photodetectors. Furthermore, we systematically investigate the electrical transport properties with combined first-principles and Boltzmann transport theory calculations. At optimal doping concentration, we found the considerable larger power factor values of 2.69, 4.91, and 5.45 for hole-doped Sb 2S 3, Sb 2Se 3, and Sb 2Te 3, respectively. This study highlights the bright prospect for the application of Sb 2S 3, Sb 2Se 3 and Sb 2Te 3 nanosheets in novel electronic, optical and energy conversion systems. © 2021, The Author(s)