SEACORM Net - Southeast Asia's coral reef monitoring network

Coral reefs, Information handling, Southeast Asia,

An efficient rate control algorithm for a wavelet video codec

Rate control plays an essential role in video coding and transmission to provide the best video quality at the receiver's end given the constraint of certain network conditions. In this paper, a rate control algorithm using the Quality Factor (QF) optimization method is proposed for the wavelet-based video codec and implemented on an open source Dirac video encoder. A mathematical model which we call Rate-QF (R - QF) model is derived to generate the optimum QF for the current coding frame according to the target bitrate. The proposed algorithm is a complete one pass process and does not require complex mathematical calculation. The process of calculating the QF is quite simple and further calculation is not required for each coded frame. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can control the bitrate precisely (within 1% of target bitrate in average). Moreover, the variation of bitrate over each Group of Pictures (GOPs) is lower than that of H.264. This is an advantage in preventing the buffer overflow and underflow for real-time multimedia data streaming

THE IMPACT OF THE TOURISM SECTOR ON THE VERMONT ECONOMY: THE INPUT-OUTPUT ANALYSIS

There are only few states in the United States where state income relies heavily on tourism industry, and Vermont is one of them. Vermont has the advantage in possessing spectacular landscape, clean environment, and attractive agriculturally based rural community, which provide an excellent opportunity for tourism industry development. Vermont economy also benefits from the tourists' activities because: (1) tourists contribute significant amount of income to Vermont economy, especially from ski business; (2) tourists' expenditures in Vermont become a significant source of state tax income; and (3) to sustain tourism industry in Vermont helps to preserve rural community environment as well as nature beauty in Vermont. Although tourism industry is very important to Vermont, there is limited information associated with the economic impacts from the tourism industry to Vermont economy. The objectives of this article include: (1) to quantify the economic activities of tourism-related sectors in Vermont in order to create a tourism industry; and (2) to estimate the economic impacts of the tourism industry on Vermont economy in terms of total output, Gross State Product (GSP), employment, and dependency and inter-industry linkages between tourism industry and other industries in Vermont. Three surveys have been designed to gather data for tourists' activities and expenditures: (1) a nation-wide visitor survey in order to understand the profiles and expenditures of Vermont tourists; (1) a lodging business survey to estimate total revenue and cost structures for three sizes of the lodging businesses - small, medium, and large; and (3) a ski resort survey to estimate ski total revenue and cost structure and its contribution to recreation industry in Vermont. Further analysis in tourism impacts on Vermont economy is carried out by running a input-output model using Impact analysis for PLANing (IMPLAN) software. Several interesting results are concluded from this study. For the profile of the visitors, the majority tourists coming to Vermont are domestic pleasure travelers, every visiting domestic household spends approximately $323.66 for every trip to Vermont, and 75$29,000, and finally winter average revenue for a ski area is $19 millions of dollars ($4.3 millions of dollars in summer/fall). The impacts of tourism industry on Vermont economy include: (1) tourism industry counts for 15% of the total state output value, 22% of the state employment, and 26% of the indirect business tax; (2) for every million dollars spent by tourists in Vermont - 35 jobs are created, additional 690 thousands of dollars worth output will be generated, employment compensation will increase by $540,546 dollars, and indirect business tax will increase by$127,807 dollars. It has been shown that Tourism industry contributes significantly to Vermont economy relative to Agriculture and Manufacturing industries.tourism, Vermont, Input-Output model, Visitor survey, Lodging survey, Ski Survey, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

A Complex Stereochemical Relay Approach To The Antimalarial Alkaloid Ocimicide A1. Evidence For A Structural Revision

Ocimicide A1 (1) and the semisynthetic derivative ocimicide A2 (2) are highly potent antimalarial agents efficacious against chloroquine-sensitive and -resistant Plasmodium falciparum strains with IC50 values in the nanomolar and picomolar range, respectively. Members of this family have demonstrated radical cure in rhesus monkeys, without detectable toxicity, but their structure–function relationships and mechanism of action are unknown. Herein we describe a twelve-step synthesis of an advanced N-acylated pentacyclic precursor to the proposed structure of 1 (11% overall yield). Instability and poor P. falciparum growth inhibition of the corresponding free donor–acceptor cyclopropylamine, and large discrepancies between reported and both experimental and DFT-calculated 13C chemical shifts and coupling constants, suggest that substantial revision of the proposed structures may be necessary

Phase separation and electron pairing in repulsive Hubbard clusters

Exact thermal studies of small (4-site, 5-site and 8-site) Hubbard clusters with local electron repulsion yield intriguing insight into phase separation, charge-spin separation, pseudogaps, condensation, in particular, pairing fluctuations away from half filling (near optimal doping). These exact calculations, carried out in canonical (i.e. for fixed electron number N) and grand canonical (i.e. fixed chemical potential $\mu$) ensembles, monitoring variations in temperature T and magnetic field h, show rich phase diagrams in a T-$\mu$ space consisting of pairing fluctuations and signatures of condensation. These electron pairing instabilities are seen when the onsite Coulomb interaction U is smaller than a critical value U$_c$(T) and they point to a possible electron pairing mechanism. The specific heat, magnetization, charge pairing and spin pairing provide strong support for the existence of competing (paired and unpaired) phases near optimal doping in these clusters as observed in recent experiments in doped La$_{2-x}$Sr$_x$CuO$_{4+y}$ high T$_c$ superconductors.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

SEACORM Net - Southeast Asia's coral reef monitoring network

The region's scientists work together to formed the SEACORM Net (Southeast Asia Coral Reef Monitoring Network) for better integration of information and resources. The group intends to establish a strong working relationship between member countries, share information and lessons learnt, inform and update each other on research and monitoring activities in each country, and provide a mechanism for cross-country assistance and collaboration

The GCRMN - coordinating coral reef monitoring efforts for effective management

The Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN) is an operational unit of the International Coral Reef Initiative (ICRI), established in 1995 and maintained by the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS). The main responsibilities are to provide data and information on the global status of coral reefs, assess how people use and interact with reefs, assist coral reef management, and raise awareness among all stakeholders of the status of reefs and the need for urgent action. It is represented by 17 regional nodes, with overall coordination by a global coordinator based at AIMS

Metabolic pathways variability and sequence/networks comparisons

BACKGROUND: In this work a simple method for the computation of relative similarities between homologous metabolic network modules is presented. The method is similar to classical sequence alignment and allows for the generation of phenotypic trees amenable to be compared with correspondent sequence based trees. The procedure can be applied to both single metabolic modules and whole metabolic network data without the need of any specific assumption. RESULTS: We demonstrate both the ability of the proposed method to build reliable biological classification of a set of microrganisms and the strong correlation between the metabolic network wiringand involved enzymes sequence space. CONCLUSION: The method represents a valuable tool for the investigation of genotype/phenotype correlationsallowing for a direct comparison of different species as for their metabolic machinery. In addition the detection of enzymes whose sequence space is maximally correlated with the metabolicnetwork space gives an indication of the most crucial (on an evolutionary viewpoint) steps of the metabolic process

Pengaruh Teknik Sintesis Terhadap Kualitas Produk Fattyamina Sekunder

Secondary fattyamines has been synthesized by reacting primary fatty amines with acylchlorides and continued with reducing the corresponding secondary fattyamides formed to secondary fattyamines using LiAIH<I'Fatty amines are raw material of natural-based surfactants that can be derived from fatty acids, olefins, or alcohols, of which can be synthesized from natural sources such as palm oil. Conversion of secondary fatty amides to secondary fatty amines was evaluated through the quality of FTIR spectra on wave number of 1639-1645 em' (C=O vibration) and 1544-1555 em" (vibrations of C-H and of secondary amine N-H). Method of synthesis by using closed reflux syncore reactor was better than those of using microwave teflon tubes, and open reflux. The yield of 9 different secondary fatty amines obtainedfrom 5 to 27 replicates by the closed reflux syncore reactor method varied from 17%to 96%