Commodity Prices Rock World Markets: Structural Shift or Short Term Adjustments?

International Relations/Trade,

Quantitative analysis of aircraft multispectral-scanner data and mapping of water-quality parameters in the James River in Virginia

Statistical analysis techniques were applied to develop quantitative relationships between in situ river measurements and the remotely sensed data that were obtained over the James River in Virginia on 28 May 1974. The remotely sensed data were collected with a multispectral scanner and with photographs taken from an aircraft platform. Concentration differences among water quality parameters such as suspended sediment, chlorophyll a, and nutrients indicated significant spectral variations. Calibrated equations from the multiple regression analysis were used to develop maps that indicated the quantitative distributions of water quality parameters and the dispersion characteristics of a pollutant plume entering the turbid river system. Results from further analyses that use only three preselected multispectral scanner bands of data indicated that regression coefficients and standard errors of estimate were not appreciably degraded compared with results from the 10-band analysis

A Lot of Bull? Pablo Picasso and Ice Age cave art

Se ha hablado mucho, y se sigue hablando, sobre la reacción de PICASSO ante el arte del periodo glaciar ; en particular se dice que visitó Altamira o Lascaux y declaró : "no hemos inventado nada" o, "ninguno de nosotros puede pintar así". Este artículo investiga esas supuestas reacciones y concluye que no se basan en absoluto en hechos. A PICASSO le influyó muy poco el arte glaciar y expresó muy poco interés por él

Workplace hazard identification: What do workers in mining know?

This paper presents the findings of a study conducted in 2011/2012 that investigated the skills of new entrants to the mining industry’s skills in identifying workplace hazards from photographs of their work areas and strategies to improve these practices identified by health and safety managers. The findings of phase one of the study indicated that there was a greater ability to identify the hazards by those with 6–10 years experience and aged 34–45 years. Phase two of the study, which is the topic of this paper, identified training, communication and documentation as important to improve hazard identification skills. Other strategies suggested included incorporating hazard identification as part of performance management strategies, the role of safety inductions for new entrants (those new to working in mining), the importance of roles in improving organisational safety culture, the use of safety systems, specific training in hazard identification and the use of walkthrough workplace training to identify hazards

Implications of Spatial Autocorrelation and Dispersal for the Modeling of Species Distributions

Modeling the geographical distributions of wildlife species is important for ecology and conservation biology. Spatial autocorrelation in species distributions poses a problem for distribution modeling because it invalidates the assumption of independence among sample locations. I explored the prevalence and causes of spatial autocorrelation in data from the Breeding Bird Survey, covering the conterminous United States, using Regression Trees, Conditional Autoregressive Regressions (CAR), and the partitioning of variance. I also constructed a simulation model to investigate dispersal as a process contributing to spatial autocorrelation, and attempted to verify the connection between dispersal and spatial autocorrelation in species\u27 distributions in empirical data, using three indirect indices of dispersal. All 108 bird species modeled showed strong spatial autocorrelation, which was significantly better modeled with CAR models than with traditional regression-based distribution models. Not all autocorrelation could be explained by spatial autocorrelation in the underlying environmental factors, suggesting another process at work, which I hypothesized to be dispersal. In the simulation model, dispersal produced additional autocorrelation in the distribution of population abundances. The effect of dispersal on autocorrelation was modulated by the potential population growth rate, with low growth rates leading to a stronger effect. The effect of dispersal on population sizes was different between populations at the periphery and core of a range. Due to their relative isolation, peripheral populations received fewer immigrants than populations at the core, causing lower population sizes. Dispersal could therefore be an explanation for range structures independent of environmental conditions. The verification of dispersal as a partial cause of autocorrelation failed. The most plausible cause was the indirectness of the indices used to represent dispersal. Distribution modelers should generally include space explicitly in their models, especially for species with low potential population growth rates. Dispersal has a strong potential to shape species distributions and requires more explicit consideration in distribution models and conservation plans. To reach this goal, direct research on dispersal distances and strength is urgently needed. Disruptions in natural dispersal patterns through removal of habitat isolates populations and thus may harm species beyond the effects of only direct habitat removal