Microwave Radar-Based Breast Cancer Detection:Imaging in Inhomogeneous Breast Phantoms

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Seasonality, water quality trends and biological responses in four streams in the Cairngorm Mountains, Scotland

The chemical composition and invertebrate communities found in four streams in the Cairngorms, Scotland, were monitored between 1985-1997. Stream waters were mildly acidic (mean pH ca. 6.5), with low alkalinity (mean acid neutralising capacity varying from 35-117 meq l^-1) and low ionic strength. Subtle differences in the chemistry of each stream were reflected in their invertebrate faunas. Strong seasonality in water chemistry occurred, with the most acid, low alkalinity waters observed during the winter and early spring. This was particularly marked during snowmelt between January and April. In contrast, summer flows were usually groundwater dominated and characterised by higher alkalinity and higher concentrations of most other weathering-derived solutes. Seasonality was also clear in the invertebrate data, with Canonical Correspondence Analysis (CCA) separating seasonal samples along axes related to water temperature and discharge characteristics. Inter-annual hydrological and chemical differences were marked, particularly with respect to the winter period. Invertebrate communities found in each of the streams also varied from year to year, with spring communities significantly more variable (<i>P</i><0.01) than other seasons (quantified using Euclidean distance on CCA ordinations). <br>Hydrochemical trends over the study period were analysed using a seasonal Kendall test, LOcally WEighted Scatterplot Smoothing (LOWESS) and graphical techniques. These indicated that a reduction in sulphate concentrations in stream water is occurring, consistent with declining levels of atmospheric deposition. This may be matched by increases in pH and declining calcium concentrations, though available evidence is inconclusive. Other parameters, such as chloride, total organic carbon and zinc, reveal somewhat random patterns, probably reflecting irregular variations in climatic factors and/or atmospheric deposition. Previous studies have shown that the stream invertebrate communities have remained stable over this period (i.e. no significant linear trends) and show no evidence of acid-related impoverishment. Thus, over longer timescales invertebrates in these streams appear robust to the short-term (seasonal and inter-annual) environmental variability and long-term (decadal) chemical changes identified.</p> <p style='line-height: 20px;'><b>Keywords: </b>hydrochemistry, hydrology, trends, macroinvertebrates, uplands, Cairngorms, acidificatio

Space station integrated wall design and penetration damage control

The analysis code BUMPER executes a numerical solution to the problem of calculating the probability of no penetration (PNP) of a spacecraft subject to man-made orbital debris or meteoroid impact. The codes were developed on a DEC VAX 11/780 computer that uses the Virtual Memory System (VMS) operating system, which is written in FORTRAN 77 with no VAX extensions. To help illustrate the steps involved, a single sample analysis is performed. The example used is the space station reference configuration. The finite element model (FEM) of this configuration is relatively complex but demonstrates many BUMPER features. The computer tools and guidelines are described for constructing a FEM for the space station under consideration. The methods used to analyze the sensitivity of PNP to variations in design, are described. Ways are suggested for developing contour plots of the sensitivity study data. Additional BUMPER analysis examples are provided, including FEMs, command inputs, and data outputs. The mathematical theory used as the basis for the code is described, and illustrates the data flow within the analysis

Space station integrated wall design and penetration damage control

A methodology was developed to allow a designer to optimize the pressure wall, insulation, and meteoroid/debris shield system of a manned spacecraft for a given spacecraft configuration and threat environment. The threat environment consists of meteoroids and orbital debris, as specified for an arbitrary orbit and expected lifetime. An overall probability of no penetration is calculated, as well as contours of equal threat that take into account spacecraft geometry and orientation. Techniques, tools, and procedures for repairing an impacted and penetrated pressure wall were developed and tested. These techniques are applied from the spacecraft interior and account for the possibility of performing the repair in a vacuum. Hypervelocity impact testing was conducted to: (1) develop and refine appropriate penetration functions, and (2) determine the internal effects of a penetration on personnel and equipment

Energy-Aware Streaming Multimedia Adaptation: An Educational Perspective

As mobile devices are getting more powerful and more affordable the use of online educational multimedia is also getting very prevalent. Limited battery power is nevertheless, a major restricting factor as streaming multimedia drains battery power quickly. Many battery efficient multimedia adaptation techniques have been proposed that achieve battery efficiency by lowering presentation quality of entire multimedia. Adaptation is usually done without considering any impact on the information contents of multimedia. In this paper, based on the results of an experimental study, we argue that without considering any negative impact on information contents of multimedia the adaptation may negatively impact the learning process. Some portions of the multimedia that require a higher visual quality for conveying learning information may lose their learning effectiveness in the adapted lowered quality. We report results of our experimental study that indicate that different parts of the same learning multimedia do not have same minimum acceptable quality. This strengthens the position that power-saving adaptation techniques for educational multimedia must be developed that lower the quality of multimedia based on the needs of its individual fragments for successfully conveying learning informatio

CS AKTive Space or how we stopped worrying and learned to love the Semantic Web

The mission of the Advanced Knowledge Technologies (AKT) project is to investigate how to operationalize the knowledge management mantra of "getting the right content to the right place at the right time and in the right form." A significant result of the first three years of this six year project is CS AKTive Space (CAS), a Semantic Web application that won the 2003 Semantic Web Challenge. The challenge criteria included having to use geographically distributed, real world data that would have to be used in a context distinct from which that original data had been designed to serve. CAS is an application that, in meeting this criteria, seeks to provide the experience of an integrated information overview that allows a user to determine quickly who is doing what where in computer science research in the UK. In developing the application we have engaged a number of core Semantic Web challenges: content acquisition, ontology development to mediate heterogeneous data sources, scalable RDF storage and query facilities, and semantically directed interaction design. From our work on CAS we have begun to look at how the approaches for CAS can be generalized for the deployment of AKTive Space applications, dynamically generated from an ontology and set of services

Image annotation with Photocopain

Photo annotation is a resource-intensive task, yet is increasingly essential as image archives and personal photo collections grow in size. There is an inherent conflict in the process of describing and archiving personal experiences, because casual users are generally unwilling to expend large amounts of effort on creating the annotations which are required to organise their collections so that they can make best use of them. This paper describes the Photocopain system, a semi-automatic image annotation system which combines information about the context in which a photograph was captured with information from other readily available sources in order to generate outline annotations for that photograph that the user may further extend or amend

Availability analysis of post-combustion carbon capture systems: minimum work input

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Application of Structure-from-Motion photogrammetry to river restoration

This research is funded by the Environment Agency and United Utilities whose support is gratefully acknowledged. Some of the methods employed in this work have been tested on the background of the results obtained in MorphSed (www.morphsed.es), a research project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competiveness and the European Regional Development Fund Scheme (FEDER; CGL2012-36394). The second author is funded by a Ramon y Cajal Fellowship (RYC-2010-06264). Authors acknowledge the support from the Economy and Knowledge Department of the Catalan Government through the Consolidated Research Group ‘Fluvial Dynamics Research Group’ (2014 SGR 645). The authors thank Manel Llena from the University of Lleida for his help and contribution to the camera calibration experiments. We are also grateful to the three anonymous reviewers and the editors for their comments that greatly improved the manuscript.Peer reviewedPostprin