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The article discusses the digitizing of microforms in library science. Researchers say that microforms are an optimal format due to the economic benefits of getting large research collections and space saving. Librarians say that a good microform collection plays an important part in providing students and faculty with research material. The article notes that many individuals have the access to research material in portable document format (pdf) file format to transform it into presentations.

Mobility of pastoralists in arid and semi-arid zones renders access to primary social services difficult. The experiences, local concepts and propositions of nomadic communities of Chad were essential to fill the information gaps on how to provide adapted health services to mobile communities. In Chad, we have taken an iterative, corkscrew-like research and action strategy: a better understanding of the determinants of health and communities' health priorities - obtained by interdisciplinary collaborations between medicine, anthropology, epidemiology, social geography and microbiology - were integrated in the participatory identification of intervention options out of a range of possible responses by the health and veterinary services. Recommendations from national stakeholder workshops paved the way for implementing and testing new interventions. All stakeholders reviewed outcomes of interventions periodically. The programme provided opportunities for participatory processes and actions that were defined in an open way at the beginning. An appropriate North-South research partnership framework and the long-term commitment of all partners have been crucial in the process of building stakeholders' ownership. University curricula rarely enable scientists to communicate with other disciplines, and researchers first needed to acquire skills in crossing the boundaries between human and natural sciences and between sectors. We describe here in a chronologic way the elements that led to innovative health and veterinary services for nomadic pastoralists of Chad; such as joint vaccination services of the public health and the livestock sectors and subsequent initiatives that were initiated by the nomadic communities once they began to trust the programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chapter 40 of the book "THE CLIMATE OF PAST INTERGLACIALS," edited by Frank Sirocko, Martin Claussen, María Fernanda Sánchez Goñi and Thomas Litt is presented. The chapter offers information regarding the topics discussed in the book, which is focused on interglacial and climate changes during Holocene period. It also presents statements of the authors of the papers presented in the book regarding considerations of climate changes.

A coupled ocean-atmosphere general circulation model was used to perform multicentennial climate simulations of the Eemian interglacial and the subsequent glacial inception. The simulations are performed as equilibrium experiments with orbital parameters and greenhouse gas concentrations set to values of 125 000 and 115 000 years before present (BP). These dates represent periods with enhanced and weakened seasonal cycles of insolation on the northern hemisphere. Significant changes in seasonal temperatures are simulated in particular for the continental areas of the northern hemisphere. Comparisons with pollen-based reconstructions of European temperatures show that the model simulates realistic spatial temperature patterns for the warm phase of the Eemian. For 115 000 years BP, the reduction in summer insolation leads to a perennial snow coverage over parts of North America, which is continuously expanding. Together with a continuous increase of Arctic sea ice volume, this results in a long-term cooling trend. Consistent with geological records, the snow accumulation starts in north-eastern Canada. In this region, southward winds transport cold Arctic air onto the continent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main insolation parameters are reviewed, in particular the energy received by the whole Earth over a full year and the 24-hour mean irradiance. Their spectral characteristics are underlined, and some remarks are made about the differences between insolation at the top of the atmosphere and at the Earth's surface, the caloric and the astronomical seasons, the insolations in the tropical and in the high latitudes, the mid-month and the calendar insolations. The insolations characterizing interglacials marine isotope stage (MIS) 1 to MIS 11 are described, and their common features are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Classifier ensembles aim at a more accurate classification than single classifiers. Different approaches to building classifier ensembles have been proposed in the statistical pattern recognition literature. However, in structural pattern recognition, classifier ensembles have been rarely used. In this paper we introduce a general methodology for creating structural classifier ensembles. Our representation formalism is based on graphs and includes strings and trees as special cases. In the proposed approach we make use of graph embedding in real vector spaces by means of prototype selection. Since we use randomized prototype selection, it is possible to generate n different vector sets out of the same underlying graph set. Thus, one can train an individual base classifier for each vector set und combine the results of the classifiers in an appropriate way. We use extended support vector machines for classification and combine them by means of three different methods. In experiments on semi-artificial and real data we show that it is possible to outperform the classification accuracy obtained by single classifier systems in the original graph domain as well as in the embedding vector spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the field of structural pattern recognition graphs constitute a very common and powerful way of representing patterns. In contrast to string representations, graphs allow us to describe relational information in the patterns under consideration. One of the main drawbacks of graph representations is that the computation of standard graph similarity measures is exponential in the number of involved nodes. Hence, such computations are feasible for rather small graphs only. One of the most flexible error-tolerant graph similarity measures is based on graph edit distance. In this paper we propose an approach for the efficient compuation of edit distance based on bipartite graph matching by means of Munkres' algorithm, sometimes referred to as the Hungarian algorithm. Our proposed algorithm runs in polynomial time, but provides only suboptimal edit distance results. The reason for its suboptimality is that implied edge operations are not considered during the process of finding the optimal node assignment. In experiments on semi-artificial and real data we demonstrate the speedup of our proposed method over a traditional tree search based algorithm for graph edit distance computation. Also we show that classification accuracy remains nearly unaffected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use exact orbit integration to investigate particle acceleration in a Gauss field proxy of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence. Regions where the electric current exceeds a critical threshold are declared to be ‘dissipative' and endowed with super-Dreicer electric field EΩ = ηj. In this environment, test particles (electrons) are traced and their acceleration to relativistic energies is studied. As a main result we find that acceleration mostly takes place within the dissipation regions, and that the momentum increments have heavy (non-Gaussian) tails, while the waiting times between the dissipation regions are approximately exponentially distributed with intensity proportional to the particle velocity. No correlation between the momentum increment and the momentum itself is found. Our numerical results suggest an acceleration scenario with ballistic transport between independent ‘black box' accelerators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The future customer service provided by call centres will be changed due to new web-based interactive multimedia technologies. Technical support will be offered in a completely new way by using advanced image processing technologies and natural representation of virtual humans. We present a prototype system of an animated avatar, which is steered by live body motion of the operator in a call centre. The hand and head motion is transferred directly to the avatar at the customer side in order to support a more natural representation of the virtual human. The system tracks the operators hands and the head motion quite robust in real-time without specific initialization based on a monocular camera. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the approval of funds for the development and construction of the new Solar Submm-wave Telescope, its design was reviewed, updated and manufacturers for the subsystems were selected. The principal characteristics of the system and the proposed research programs are described in this note. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emulsion polymerisation is of great technical and economical importance as well as a process with a lot of colloid chemical features. Two of these colloid features, namely particle nucleation and swelling of polymer particles with monomer, are considered in more detail. It is shown that the particle nucleation can be described with a model based on the classical nucleation theory. This consideration is able to predict the chain length of the nucleating oligomers which is mainly influenced by the water solubility of the oligomers. With increasing water solubility the chain length of the nucleating oligomers becomes longer in good accordance with experiemntal findings. The activation energy of nucleation turned out to be a crucial parameter for further theoretical developments on particle nucleation in emulsion polymerisation. In this sense the development of a set-up for experimental investigations of the nucleation process is of importance. With a new developed experimental set-up based on a combination of on-line tansmission and conductivity measurement with offline particle size analytic it is possible to investigate the nucleation period. The results obtained so far indicate a strong influence of the emulsifier concentration on the particle concentration time curves in the very early stages of an emulsion polymerisation. Swelling experiments have been performed with toluene and latexes carrying chemically different stabilising groups. The latexes have been cleaned very carefully by ultrafiltration before they have been used. The results prove the enormous influence of the nature of the particle water interface on the swelling cpabilityof the particles. It is to conclude that the Morton-Kaizerman-Altier equation cannot be applied for a complete be applied for a complete description of latex particle swelling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]