Evaluating tag-based information access in image collections

The availability of social tags has greatly enhanced access to information. Tag clouds have emerged as a new "social" way to find and visualize information, providing both one-click access to information and a snapshot of the "aboutness" of a tagged collection. A range of research projects explored and compared different tag artifacts for information access ranging from regular tag clouds to tag hierarchies. At the same time, there is a lack of user studies that compare the effectiveness of different types of tag-based browsing interfaces from the users point of view. This paper contributes to the research on tag-based information access by presenting a controlled user study that compared three types of tag-based interfaces on two recognized types of search tasks - lookup and exploratory search. Our results demonstrate that tag-based browsing interfaces significantly outperform traditional search interfaces in both performance and user satisfaction. At the same time, the differences between the two types of tag-based browsing interfaces explored in our study are not as clear. Copyright 2012 ACM

The Great Green Forest is here and expanding all on its own: A call for action

Prosopis juliflora is recognized as one of the most invasive tree species worldwide. Following widespread introductions throughout arid and semi-arid regions of Africa and throughout the world, it has spread rapidly, threatening natural ecosystems and livelihoods. Control through utilization as a resource is now accepted as the way forward in developing countries, but efforts have so far been uncoordinated, with only isolated impacts. This paper reports on the global state of knowledge and recent advances, but focuses on prosopis-related research and innovations from IGAD member countries; the successes, failures, challenges and opportunities. It underlines the need to build and apply scientific knowledge to scale up new, resilient, drought-proof livelihood options in the Greater Horn of Africa and elsewhere where introduced, from value-added prosopis wood and non wood products. The authors estimate that there are at least five million hectares of prosopis forest across the region of the perhaps ten million throughout Africa, and growing significantly in extent every year. Experiences from the native range such as in Peru are well documented, where community associations sustainably manage and make a living from fuel, fodder, food, honey and timber from their prosopis forests. Efforts in Ethiopia, Djibouti and Kenya have had mixed results, but milling the sweet protein-rich pods into animal feed is becoming increasingly popular with the introduction of appropriate small scale technologies. Its use as a human food ingredient has also been promoted, though with little uptake, but there is sharp rise in the use of prosopis charcoal in the region, and the possibility of electricity generation using wood chips (bioenergy), with the transfer of experiences from India where there are at least 15 power stations fueled entirely by prosopis. But much more can be done by applying scientific knowledge and innovation to enhance the role of prosopis in improving food security, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and building resilience for millions of the poorest rural and urban people in the Greater Horn of Africa, with great potential for exchange and scaling up in other arid areas in Africa, Asia and the Americas. This paper is a call to the African Union, national governments, IGAD, IFAD, FAO, the Arab League and other international, regional and bilateral donors, to come together and support a regional research and development programme to push the frontiers on prosopis management and utilization and develop a transnational strategy, as the impacts are potentially enormous and immediate. The initial objectives are to take stock of existing knowledge and practices, assess prosopis forest areas throughout the region, estimate wood and pod volumes and production rates, document prosopis management and utilization experiences, enhance South-South knowledge sharing, and rapidly and effectively scale up the successes

Structural and functional, empirical and modeled connectivity in the cerebral cortex of the rat

[EN] Connectomics data from animal models provide an invaluable opportunity to reveal the complex interplay between structure and function in the mammalian brain. In this work, we investigate the relationship between structural and functional connectivity in the rat brain cortex using a directed anatomical network generated from a carefully curated meta-analysis of published tracing data, along with resting-state functional MRI data obtained from a group of 14 anesthetized Wistar rats. We found a high correspondence between the strength of functional connections, measured as blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal correlations between cortical regions, and the weight of the corresponding anatomical links in the connectome graph (maximum Spearman rank-order correlation rho = 0.48). At the network-level, regions belonging to the same functionally defined community tend to form more mutual weighted connections between each other compared to regions located in different communities. We further found that functional communities in resting-state networks are enriched in densely connected anatomical motifs. Importantly, these higher-order structural subgraphs cannot be explained by lower-order topological properties, suggesting that dense structural patterns support functional associations in the resting brain. Simulations of brain-wide resting-state activity based on neural mass models implemented on the empirical rat anatomical connectome demonstrated high correlation between the simulated and the measured functional connectivity (maximum Pearson correlation rho = 0: 53), further suggesting that the topology of structural connections plays an important role in shaping functional cortical networks.This work was supported in part by the Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad (MINECO) and FEDER funds under grants BFU2015-64380-C2-1-R (S.C) and BFU2015-64380-C2-2-R (D.M.) and EU Horizon 2020 Program 668863-SyBil-AA grant (S.C.). S.C. acknowledges financial support from the Spanish State Research Agency, through the "Severo Ochoa" Programme for Centres of Excellence in R&D (ref. SEV-2013-0317). A. D.-P., was supported by grant FPU13/01475 from the Spanish Ministerio de Educacion, Cultura y Deporte (MECD). O.S. acknowledges support by the J.S. McDonnell Foundation (#220020387) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH R01 AT009036-01). We are also grateful to Andrea Avena-Koenigsberger and Begona Fernandez for their technical support.Díaz-Parra, A.; Osborn, Z.; Canals Gamoneda, S.; Moratal, D.; Sporns, O. (2017). Structural and functional, empirical and modeled connectivity in the cerebral cortex of the rat. NeuroImage. 159:170-184. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2017.07.046S17018415

Toxic Gases in Mining

Rapid detection of causes of mining accidents leading to emergencies is to search the  efforts. Controlling fires and gas leaks provides an immediate approach to rescue work for fatalities or injuries and detecting who needs resuscitation outside the mine. Evacuation and recovery operations should be guided by continuous monitoring of the mine environment due to fire and explosion hazards. The main toxic gases in mines are carbon monoxide (CO) and carbon dioxide (CO2); flammable gases are methane (CH4), CO and hydrogen (H2); suffocating gases are CO2, nitrogen (N20) and CH4; and the toxic gases are CO, nitrogen oxides (NOx) and hydrogen sulfide (H 2 S)

Restricted Diffusion of Pus in the Subarachnoid Space: MRSA Meningo-Vasculitis and Progressive Brainstem Ischemic Strokes – A Case Report

Extra-axial restriction on diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) is an unusual finding on brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Intra-axial restriction on DWI, however, is common, and can represent brain parenchymal infarction, tumor, abscess, or toxic-metabolic process. The infrequency of extra-axial DWI restriction and the paucity of clinico-pathological correlation in the literature limit its differential diagnosis. Scant case reports suggest that extra-axial DWI restriction could be a lymphoma, neurenteric cyst, or, in one patient, subdural empyema [1,2,3]. We postulate that pus formation must be excluded first, because it can provoke an aggressive meningo-vasculitis with rapidly fatal, intra-axial infarctions. Our patient was a 45-year-old man, presenting to our hospital with left facial droop and right (contralateral) arm and leg weakness. Initial MRI revealed DWI restriction in the left lateral pons, consistent with a classic Millard-Gubler stroke. Also noted was a subtle, extra-axial area of curvilinear diffusion restriction in the left cerebellar-pontine angle's subarachnoid space. Days later, the patient had a headache, and repeat MRI revealed extension of the two DWI lesions – both the intra-axial pontine infarction and the extra-axial area of restricted diffusion in the subarachnoid space. The patient became comatose, a third MRI revealed more extensive DWI restrictions, and he expired despite aggressive care. Autopsy revealed massive brainstem infarcts, a thick lymphoplasmacytic infiltrate, copious Gram-Positive cocci (likely MRSA) and arteries partially occluded with fibrointimal proliferation. This emphasizes the concept that extra-axial DWI restriction can represent pus development in the subarachnoid space – a radiographic marker to identify a patient at risk for demise due to septic, meningo-vasculitic infarctions

Importancia de la utilización de diferentes tecnicas de digestibilidad en la nutricion y formulacion porcina

El valor nutricional de una ración para cerdos, puede ser expresado mediante el coeficiente de digestibilidad y según el lugar de colecta de la muestra se determina el tipo de digestibilidad: 1) Digestibilidad ileal (DI), tiene como finalidad incrementar la exactitud en la determinación del aporte de los nutrimentos, mediante la utilización de animales modificados quirúrgicamente. 2) Digestibilidad fecal (DF), es una técnica simple de realizar, sin embargo, la proporción digestible de un nutrimento es modificada por las bacterias del intestino grueso, observándose un cambio en el perfil de aminoácidos del contenido ileal con respecto al perfil en las heces. Independientemente del lugar y de la técnica empleada para la obtención de la muestra, se pueden determinar varios tipos de digestibilidad: 1) Digestibilidad aparente (DA), con este método no se conoce la proporción de la proteína y/o aminoácidos (AA) que provienen de la dieta o de la secreción de nitrógeno endógeno (NE), y solo permite asumir que cantidad del alimento fue asimilado por el animal. 2) Digestibilidad verdadera (DV), contempla la excreción de NE en sus cálculos, por lo cual ofrece un valor más exacto de la digestión de algún alimento. 3) Digestibilidad real, es determinada mediante la corrección de la DA de los AA por la cantidad de AA endógenos usando una técnica de dilución isotópica. 4) Digestibilidad estandarizada, es calculada mediante la corrección de la DA por las pérdidas endógenas mínimas de AA usando un flujo promedio de AA endógenos

Effective Field Theory for Extreme Mass Ratios

We derive an effective field theory describing a pair of gravitationally interacting point particles in an expansion in their mass ratio, also known as the self-force (SF) expansion. The 0SF dynamics are trivially obtained to all orders in Newton's constant by the geodesic motion of the light body in a Schwarzschild background encoding the gravitational field of the heavy body. The corrections at 1SF and higher are generated by perturbations about this configuration -- that is, the geodesic deviation of the light body and the fluctuation graviton -- but crucially supplemented by an operator describing the recoil of the heavy body as it interacts with the smaller companion. Using this formalism we compute new results at third post-Minkowskian order for the conservative dynamics of a system of gravitationally interacting massive particles coupled to a set of additional scalar and vector fields.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figur

Women's reproductive rights in the inter-American system of human rights: conclusions from the Field, June - September 2014

The Inter-American System of Human Rights has proven to be a forum for the advancement of women’s reproductive rights in the Inter-American region. However, the Inter-American System faces significant challenges in promoting structural transformative change that enables women’s enjoyment of their reproductive health rights. This report examines three reproductive rights cases from the Inter- American Commission on Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights: María Mamerita Mestanza Chávez v. Peru; Paulina Ramirez Jacinto v. Mexico; and Artavia Murillo et al. v. Costa Rica. In the summer of 2014, interviews were conducted with representatives in each of the case study countries, with the objective of the research being two-fold: (1) to understand how each of the cases developed, and the subsequent challenges and advancements; and (2) to learn from these cases in order to suggest recommendations for how actors can make better use of the Inter-American System as one of several avenues for protecting, promoting and fulfilling women’s reproductive rights. The report first discusses challenges in implementing women’s reproductive health rights, and then explores how the Inter-American System can strengthen its work on women’s reproductive health rights

Considering Fluctuation Energy as a Measure of Gyrokinetic Turbulence

In gyrokinetic theory there are two quadratic measures of fluctuation energy, left invariant under nonlinear interactions, that constrain the turbulence. The recent work of Plunk and Tatsuno [Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 165003 (2011)] reported on the novel consequences that this constraint has on the direction and locality of spectral energy transfer. This paper builds on that work. We provide detailed analysis in support of the results of Plunk and Tatsuno but also significantly broaden the scope and use additional methods to address the problem of energy transfer. The perspective taken here is that the fluctuation energies are not merely formal invariants of an idealized model (two-dimensional gyrokinetics) but are general measures of gyrokinetic turbulence, i.e. quantities that can be used to predict the behavior of the turbulence. Though many open questions remain, this paper collects evidence in favor of this perspective by demonstrating in several contexts that constrained spectral energy transfer governs the dynamics.Comment: Final version as published. Some cosmetic changes and update of reference

Trends in Underground Mining

In this document, we will talk through information collected on all trends in mining in the underground environment as much as what happens in the world as or new machinery America provides the highest mining production in underground mining. We often discover opportunities for improvement in both productivity and costs. Of all these methods, braking is not only the most common, but also offers the largest share of overall production, nearly 50 percent. These underground mining methods are often determined by the deposits and the economics of mining and are therefore somewhat beyond the control of the operator(Trends in underground mining for gold and base metals | McKinsey, s. f.