The Role of Rural Health Systems in Regional Innovation

Health Economics and Policy,

Strategy Constancy Amidst Implementation Differences: Interaction-Intensive Versus Memory-Intensive Adaptations To Information Access In Decision-Making

Over the last two decades attempts to quantify decision-making have established that, under a wide range of conditions, people trade-off effectiveness for efficiency in the strategies they adopt. However, as interesting, significant, and influential as this research has been, its scope is limited by three factors; the coarseness of how effort was measured, the confounding of the costs of steps in the decision-making algorithm with the costs of steps in a given task environment, and the static nature of the decision tasks studied. In the current study, we embedded a decision-making task in a dynamic task environment and varied the cost required for the information access step. Across three conditions, small changes in the cost of interactive behavior led to changes in the strategy adopted for decision-making as well as to differences in how a step in the same strategy was implemented

The Other Iraq

In the Margaret Chase Smith Essay, Wayne Myers discusses the Iraqi Kurds and their uniquely functional society within Iraq

Lending landscape perspective to natural resources education

One of the more challenging aspects of natural resources education is to impart a landscape perspective to students in the course of professional instruction. This is one of the more subtle but important aspects of ecosystem-oriented forestry. The old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words pertains to this context, as does water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink. There is abundant technological potential embodied in the several satellite remote sensors continually adding to an already vast warehouse of image data, but casting this digital image raw material in a form for ready viewing by students has heretofore required technically sophisticated infrastructure and run afoul of copyright restrictions on sharing of such data. Recent developments in compressing image data for viewing and redistribution can resolve much of this difficulty. A PHASE compression of satellite data reduces it to a fraction of its media requirement, frees it from copyright restrictions, and makes it compatible with web downloadable no-cost viewers. Landsat thematic mapper data for the entire state of Pennsylvania have been compressed in this manner to fit on a single CD-ROM and still leave room for a host of other data. An individual diskette will accommodate a chunk of landscape large enough to provide a backdrop for most settings in natural resources education. The PHASE software is shareware, and a little help from local remote sensing specialists should be sufficient for getting started

Orbital maneuvering end effectors

This invention relates to an end effector device for grasping and maneuvering objects such as berthing handles of a space telescope. The device includes a V-shaped capture window defined as inclined surfaces in parallel face plates which converge toward a retainer recess in which the handle is retained. A pivotal finger (30) meshes with a pair of pivoted fingers which rotate in counterrotation. The fingers rotate to pull a handle within the capture window into recess where latches lock handle in the recess. To align the capture window, plates may be cocked plus or minus five degrees on base. Drive means is included in the form of a motor coupled with a harmonic drive speed reducer, which provides for slow movement of the fingers at a high torque so that large articles may be handled. Novelty of the invention is believed to reside in the combined intermeshing finger structure, drive means and the harmonic drive speed reducer, which features provide the required maneuverability and strength

Poly-Pattern Compressive Segmentation of ASTER Data for GIS

Pattern-based segmentation of multi-band image data, such as ASTER, produces one-byte and two-byte approximate compressions. This is a dual segmentation consisting of nested coarser and finer level pattern mappings called poly-patterns. The coarser A-level version is structured for direct incorporation into geographic information systems in the manner of a raster map. GIs renderings of this A-level approximation are called pattern pictures which have the appearance of color enhanced images. The two-byte version consisting of thousands of B-level segments provides a capability for approximate restoration of the multi-band data in selected areas or entire scenes. Poly-patterns are especially useful for purposes of change detection and landscape analysis at multiple scales. The primary author has implemented the segmentation methodology in a public domain software suite

The Nature Press, Vol. 3

Nature News was a newsletter publication about activities at the Cheadle Center for Biodiveristy and Ecological Restoration