PIXEL 2010 - a Resume

The Pixel 2010 conference focused on semiconductor pixel detectors for particle tracking/vertexing as well as for imaging, in particular for synchrotron light sources and XFELs. The big LHC hybrid pixel detectors have impressively started showing their capabilities. X-ray imaging detectors, also using the hybrid pixel technology, have greatly advanced the experimental possibilities for diiffraction experiments. Monolithic or semi-monolithic devices like CMOS active pixels and DEPFET pixels have now reached a state such that complete vertex detectors for RHIC and superKEKB are being built with these technologies. Finally, new advances towards fully monolithic active pixel detectors, featuring full CMOS electronics merged with efficient signal charge collection, exploiting standard CMOS technologies, SOI and/or 3D integration, show the path for the future. This r\'esum\'e attempts to extract the main statements of the results and developments presented at this conference.Comment: 8 pages, 19 figures, conference summar

How to phrase critical realist interview questions in applied social science research

The tenets of critical and social realism are well supported in the literature. However, researchers following a realist paradigm have concerns about the lack of methodical guidance for qualitative interviewing, despite their affirmation about the importance of in-depth interviews. A conducted review of empirical realist literature provides evidence of an absence of guidance and commonality regarding interview planning practices. To overcome this absence, this paper composes a guiding framework to assist researchers to phrase more appropriate interview questions in realist research. The steps are founded on critical and social realist concepts while guided by methodological realist principles. Its contribution aims to not only improve the practice of realist inquiry methods but also to introduce more research transparency. A more transparent method for interview questions can lead to increased validity and afford replicability of mechanism-based theories resulting from empirical realist research

From climate to weather reconstructions

Climate reconstructions have contributed tremendously to our understanding of changes in the climate system and will continue to do so. However, in climate science the focus has partly shifted away from past seasonal and annual mean climate towards weather variability and extreme events. Weather events are more directly relevant for climate impacts and they capture the scale at which important processes take place. Weather reconstructions therefore help to better understand atmospheric processes, particularly during extreme events, to assess decadal-to-multidecadal climate variability through the lens of weather changes, and they allow impact modelling of past events. Consequently, attempts are currently undertaken to extend weather data sets far back into the past. In this review I discuss methods of weather reconstructions that are in use today. The methods range from expert analyses to data assimilation, from analog approaches to machine learning. Products range from weather types to four-dimensional fields. The methods complement each other as they are based on different assumptions and are based on different data sets. Weather reconstructions require more meteorological data than climate reconstructions. Additional data rescue efforts are therefore needed

Memory-Constrained Algorithms for Simple Polygons

A constant-workspace algorithm has read-only access to an input array and may use only O(1) additional words of $O(\log n)$ bits, where $n$ is the size of the input. We assume that a simple $n$-gon is given by the ordered sequence of its vertices. We show that we can find a triangulation of a plane straight-line graph in $O(n^2)$ time. We also consider preprocessing a simple polygon for shortest path queries when the space constraint is relaxed to allow $s$ words of working space. After a preprocessing of $O(n^2)$ time, we are able to solve shortest path queries between any two points inside the polygon in $O(n^2/s)$ time.Comment: Preprint appeared in EuroCG 201