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This article offers announcements for April 2007 concerning the American Finance Association, publishers of the periodical "The Journal of Finance." Topics of discussion include the results of the organization's 2006 elections, in which Jeremy Stein was voted president-elect and Darrell Duffie was voted vice president, and information regarding the 2008 annual meeting, to be held in New Orleans, Louisiana in January. The article also offers computer network resource information for further announcements, and offers information on the organization's worldwide directory of finance faculty.

The article offers information on a website located at Academia.edu for academics in the U.S. to share research papers.

This article presents information pertaining to the periodical, its parent body, the American Finance Association, and the publisher, Blackwell Publishing. Most importantly, contact information is provided along with computer network resources, information regarding potential advertisements, and a listing of articles that appear in the current issue. The article also discusses prizes awarded by the American Finance Association for research papers, including the Smith-Breeden Prizes for 2006 and the Brattle Awards for 2007.

This paper investigates the production technology facing computerized credit unions in Canada. A full system of translog cost equations is estimated in order to test for economies of scale, economies of scope, and other production characteristics in a multiproduct context. The regression results indicate that most of the credit unions in our sample experience significant increasing returns to scale as they expand their level of output. There is also evidence of cost complementarity or economies of scope in their mortgage and other lending activities. As a result, legislation which limits the ability of credit unions to grow and diversify will likely raise the operating costs of this important group of financial institutions. Additional structural tests of the most general translog specification suggest that none of the restrictive production conditions commonly imposed by other researchers using Cobb-Douglas and CES specifications provide a valid representation of credit union technology. The results of many earlier studies are therefore open to question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Mark Twain Project Online (MTPO) was launched in October 2007 and, in this first phase, digitally published several thousand of Twain's letters, almost 100 facsimiles of original documents, and over 28,000 records of other correspondence. The partners involved in the building of MTPO – the Mark Twain Papers, the California Digital Library, and University of California Press – created the site on the premise that Web-accessible versions of this content, enhanced by innovative design and site architecture and a suite of research tools, would greatly improve scholars' ability to discover and work with this unique material. Anecdotal feedback supports this premise. Early data analysis confirms the usefulness of facsimiles and browsing functionality. Users tend to prefer simple keyword over complex searches; however, those conducting advanced searches are using the tool flexibly, as we had hoped. Further analysis is expected to improve our understanding of how researchers use these tools in combination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how the Internet has changed the work of academic researchers and addresses the question of how expanded Internet usage has affected Journal of Risk and Insurance ( JRI) and Journal of Finance ( JF) articles, including the shift to empirical research, joint authorship, and new authorship. Internet availability significantly increased joint authorship overall (more for JF than for JRI), shifting upwards a strong secular trend toward working with other researchers. Another big impact of the Internet has been to increase the number of new authors (more for JRI than for JF). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One-way delay variation (OWDV) has become increasingly of interest to researchers as a way to evaluate network state and service quality, especially for real-time and streaming services such as voice-over-Internet-protocol (VoIP) and video. Many schemes for OWDV measurement require clock synchronization through the global-positioning system (GPS) or network time protocol. In clock-synchronized approaches, the accuracy of OWDV measurement depends on the accuracy of the clock synchronization. GPS provides highly accurate clock synchronization. However, the deployment of GPS on legacy network equipment might be slow and costly. This paper proposes a method for measuring OWDV that dispenses with clock synchronization. The clock synchronization problem is mainly caused by clock skew. The proposed approach is based on the measurement of inter-packet delay and accumulated OWDV. This paper shows the performance of the proposed scheme via simulations and through experiments in a VoIP network. The presented simulation and measurement results indicate that clock skew can be efficiently measured and removed and that OWDV can be measured without requiring clock synchronization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Authentication is an important service in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) for an unattended environment. Recently, Das proposed a hash-based authentication protocol for WSNs, which provides more security against the masquerade, stolen-verifier, replay, and guessing attacks and avoids the threat which comes with having many logged-in users with the same login-id. In this paper, we point out one security weakness of Das' protocol in mutual authentication for WSN's preservation between users, gateway-node, and sensor nodes. To remedy the problem, this paper provides a secrecy improvement over Das' protocol to ensure that a legal user can exercise a WSN in an insecure environment. Furthermore, by presenting the comparisons of security, computation and communication costs, and performances with the related protocols, the proposed protocol is shown to be suitable for higher security WSNs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Web-based peer-review systems are ubiquitous within scholarly publishing today, providing valuable efficiencies for authors, editors, and referees. These systems are the result of a general evolution from paper-based workflows to electronic processes that began in the 1970s. DOS-based systems paved the way for Windows desktop systems and, in the mid-1990s, Web-based peer review. Governmental, academic, and commercial stakeholders all participated in advancing the state of peer review by experimenting with different technologies, workflows, and features. These experiments have coalesced into a new steady state in which Web-based peer-review systems are the norm, and in which continued evolution tends to focus on incremental improvements to traditional workflow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'Journal of Finance' Web site disseminates research expediently to a broad audience. Papers were downloaded 284,170 times from November 1997 to November 1999. The average paper receives 85 downloads per month and is available 10 months before publication. Articles are downloaded more than shorter papers. Lead articles are downloaded more than other articles because they are of greater interest, and they receive an endorsement as the lead. Downloads are positively correlated with citations and may be a useful measure of research impact. Finally, placing forthcoming articles online does not adversely affect subscriptions and may increase the SSCI impact factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In space-time adaptive processing (STAP), the required interference covariance matrix is commonly estimated from homogeneous samples. However, the real interference environments are often heterogeneous, which is induced by the fact that the training samples do not share the same interference property with the cell under test (CUT), and thus the interference covariance matrix estimated from the training samples is mismatched with the real one. To improve the performance of STAP in heterogeneous interference environments, this paper proposes a robust training samples selection algorithm which is based on the spectral similarity of the interference. The spectrums of samples are estimated firstly, which are then utilised to calculate the similarity between the interference of the CUT and those of the training samples. Then, the samples whose interference spectrums are similar to that of the CUT are selected as the final training samples, such that the performance of the interference covariance matrix estimated from these samples can be improved significantly. Besides, to avoid the target self-nulling effect, a simple technique is adopted to exclude the samples which are contaminated by target signal. The proposed method is applied to real radar data, and experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on Distinguished Fellow Award 2017 given to the people in various categories, the preview of the 47th Australian Conference of Economists to be held on July 19-21 in 2018, and a website review on the Australian Macro Database.

Recent theoretical developments in astronomical aperture synthesis have revealed the existence of integer-ambiguity prob-lems. Those problems, which appear in the self-calibration procedures of radio imaging, have been shown to be similar to the nearest-lattice point (NLP) problems encountered in high-precision geodetic positioning and in global navigation satellite systems. In this paper we analyse the theoretical aspects of the matter and propose new methods for solving those NLP problems. The related optimization aspects concern both the preconditioning stage, and the discrete-search stage in which the integer ambiguities are finally fixed. Our algorithms, which are described in an explicit manner, can easily be implemented. They lead to substantial gains in the processing time of both stages. Their efficiency was shown via intensive numerical tests. (© 2014 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of computer technology to support medical decisions is now widespread and pervasive across a broad range of medical areas. Accordingly, computer-aided diagnosis has become an increasingly important area for intelligent computational systems. This paper describes a competitive/collaborative neural computing system designed to support the medical decision process using medical imaging databases. A concrete example concerning an application to support the differential diagnosis of chronic pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer is also provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To date, much of the work that uses Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to study human geographies applies a social science paradigm to quantitative data. There is a growing recognition of the need, however, to test whether GIS can be used to map out the qualitative 'data' provided by the articulation of subjective spatial experiences. This paper expands the conceptual possibilities opened up by the use of GIS technology through an exploration of the theoretical potentiality of literary GIS. Drawing on work carried out as part of an interdisciplinary project, 'Mapping the Lakes', the paper focuses on the ways in which GIS can be used to explore the spatial relationships between two textual accounts of tours of the English Lake District: the proto-Picturesque journey undertaken by the poet, Thomas Gray, in the autumn of 1769; and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's self-consciously post-Picturesque 'circumcursion' of August 1802. Alongside this text-specific focus, the paper also draws on recent spatial literary criticism to reflect, more generally, on the critical possibilities and problems associated with the digital mapping of space and place in literature. Ultimately, the paper seeks to open up methodological and critical space for the ongoing development of literary GIS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scalable video coding (SVC) has been standardized as an extension of the H.264/AVC standard. This paper proposes a practical real-time transport protocol (RTP) packetization scheme to transport SVC video over IP networks. In combined scalability of SVC, a coded picture of a base or scalable enhancement layer is produced as one or more video layers consisting of network abstraction layer (NAL) units. The SVC NAL unit header contains a (DID, TID, QID) field to identify the association of each SVC NAL unit with its scalable enhancement layer without parsing the payload part of the SVC NAL unit. In this paper, we utilize the (DID, TID, QID) information to derive hierarchical spatio-temporal relationship of the SVC NAL units. Based on the derivation using the (DID, TID, QID) field, we propose a practical RTP packetization scheme for generating single RTP sessions in unicast and multicast transport of SVC video. The experimental results indicate that the proposed packetization scheme can be efficiently applied to transport SVC video over IP networks with little induced delay, jitter, and computational load. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an introduction to articles published within this edition of the journal focusing on medical decision support systems and automated diagnostic systems. These include "Augmentation of a nearest neighbour clustering algorithm with a partial supervision strategy for biomedical data classification," by Salem et al, "Comparison of different classifer algorithms for diagnosing macular and optic nerve diseases," by Polat et al, and "Electromyography signal analysis using wavelet tranform and higher order statistics to determine muscle contraction," by Hussain et al.

Problem: A series of long-term field experiments is described, with particular reference to monitoring and quality control. This paper addresses problems in data-management of particular importance for long-term studies, including data manipulation, archiving, quality assessment, and flexible retrieval for analysis. Method: The problems were addressed using a purpose-built database system, using commercial software and running under Microsoft Windows. Conclusion: The database system brings many advantages compared to available software, including significantly improved quality checking and access. The query system allows for easy access to data sets thus improving the efficiency of analysis. Quality assessments of the initial dataset demonstrated that the database system can also provide general insight into types and magnitudes of error in data-sets. Finally, the system can be generalised to include data from a number of different projects, thus simplifying data manipulation for meta-analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the emerging debate about the value of on-line research. Drawing on the experience of an Internet-based Cyberparents project, it explores the possibilities and limitations of web-based questionnaire surveys and on-line synchronous interviews. It discusses some of the implications of conducting research in the virtual arena, with particular emphasis on sampling, on-line interactions and computer-mediated conversations. Although on-line research holds promise, its potential should not be exaggerated: many of the issues and problems of conventional research still apply in the virtual venue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a systemic intervention approach as a means to overcome the methodological challenges involved in research into computer-supported collaborative learning applied to the promotion of mathematical problem-solving (CSCL-MPS) skills in schools. These challenges include how to develop an integrated analysis of several aspects of the learning process; and how to reflect on learning purposes, the context of application and participants' identities. The focus of systemic intervention is on processes for thinking through whose views and what issues and values should be considered pertinent in an analysis. Systemic intervention also advocates mixing methods from different traditions to address the purposes of multiple stakeholders. Consequently, a design for CSCL-MPS research is presented that includes several methods. This methodological design is used to analyse and reflect upon both a CSCL-MPS project with Colombian schools, and the identities of the participants in that project. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting from a critical analysis of the US intervention in Afghanistan in response to the 11 September 2001 events, this paper seeks to propose a different approach to terrorism/counterterrorism analysis consisting in putting at the forefront the discursive dimension of the phenomenon through the lens of critical discourse analysis and in grounding it in a system thinking approach. The main argument is that 'terrorism' cannot be understood outside a context, language and culture, and that to be fully grasped as a dynamic phenomenon, it has to be framed in a systems perspective. Among the key elements of system thinking that can enhance the understanding of terrorism are boundary definition, casual loops and feedbacks, delays, emergent properties and overshoot-and-collapse. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the April 2014 issue of the journal related to the international plant science. It states that the issue features commentaries from authors, article reviews, and research papers related to plant science. It notes that the journal aims to offer rapid publication of high quality and original research in plant science. It mentions that the journal is available online at Wiley Online Library and on the website located at www.newphytologist.com.

The principal idea of the Virtual Observatory is to achieve real transparency for astronomical data, similar to transparency for all the world's documents in the World Wide Web. In the Virtual Observatory, all the world's astronomical data is available from one's desktop. All archives understand the same query language, can be accessed through a uniform interface, and diverse data can be analyzed with the same tools. In particular, facilities of the Virtual Observatory allow users to make a fast and correct analysis of objects from various surveys. It yields multi-photometry data on registered objects and makes it possible to determine stellar parameters. Methods of astronomical data analysis as well as their application to various areas of stellar astronomy are discussed in this paper. (© 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to increased security concerns, biometrics is becoming more focused on overcoming or complementing conventional knowledge and possession-based authentication. However, biometric authentication requires special care since the loss of biometric data is irrecoverable. In this paper, we present a biometric authentication framework, where several novel techniques are applied to provide security and privacy. First, a biometric template is saved in a transformed form. This makes it possible for a template to be canceled upon its loss while the original biometric information is not revealed. Second, when a user is registered with a server, a biometric template is stored in a special form, named a 'soft vault'. This technique prevents impersonation attacks even if data in a server is disclosed to an attacker. Finally, a one-time template technique is applied in order to prevent replay attacks against templates transmitted over networks. In addition, the whole scheme keeps decision equivalence with conventional face authentication, and thus it does not decrease biometric recognition performance. As a result, the proposed techniques construct a secure face authentication framework in open networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

E-textile technology has earned a great deal of interest in many fields; however, existing wearable network protocols are not optimized for use with conductive yarn. In this paper, some of the basic properties of conductive textiles and requirements on wearable personal area networks (PANs) are reviewed. Then, we present a wearable personal network (WPN), which is a four-layered wearable PAN using bus topology. We have designed the WPN to be a lightweight protocol to work with a variety of microcontrollers. The profile layer is provided to make the application development process easy. The data link layer exchanges frames in a master-slave manner in either the reliable or best-effort mode. The lower part of the data link layer and the physical layer of WPN are made of a fabric serial-bus interface which is capable of measuring bus signal properties and adapting to medium variation. After a formal verification of operation and performances of WPN, we implemented WPN communication modules (WCMs) on small flexible printed circuit boards. In order to demonstrate the behavior of our WPN on a textile, we designed a WPN tutorial shirt prototype using implemented WCMs and conductive yarn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate the possible security threats to downloadable conditional access system (DCAS) host devices. We then propose a DCAS secure micro (SM) and transport processor (TP) security protocol that counters identified security threats using a secure key establishment and pairing management scheme. The proposed protocol not only resists disclosed SM ID and TP ID threats and indirect connection between TA and TP threats, but also meets some desirable security attributes such as known key secrecy, perfect forward secrecy, key compromised impersonation, unknown key-share, and key control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a novel approach to implementation of a medical diagnosis expert system that can assist physicians with their daily practices. Differential artificial intelligence techniques are incorporated into a multi-stage expert system to best represent the various phases of the patient diagnosis process. A weighted scoring system is used to represent the subjective analysis stage, while a rule-based fuzzy expert system is employed to both interpret laboratory tests and imaging findings and suggest the final diagnosis. A model of various patient flow scenarios is presented to demonstrate the functionality of the proposed expert system. An actual example of patient walkthrough is used to demonstrate various computation steps from recording the patient chief complaint to arriving at the final diagnosis. It is shown that the conclusion arrived at by using the proposed system is consistent with a common diagnosis of a third party specialist who is asked to evaluate the performance of the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The state reformation that took place in the 1990s and the technological explosion have led governments to reframe their way of working so as to be able to offer new and better services for citizens. To achieve this goal, major obstacles must be overcome, such as the problem of semantic heterogeneity that leads to more difficult recovery and integration of information from different government sectors. Although in the private sector solutions to this problem through the building of ontologies have already been set out, the characteristics of government itself have led the direct application of these practices to fail. This paper presents a process for building a domain ontology in the public sector from scratch. In addition, it presents the application of this process for building an ontology for the Budgetary Domain of Santa Fe Province (Argentina). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a mathematical model designed for computers for use in financial decision making. The multivariate forecasting model simulates the impact of changing assumptions regarding such variables as sales, operating ratios, price/earnings ratios, retention rates, and debt-to-equity ratios. The computer model considers how potential environmental changes can affect the performance of businesses. The model considers various aspects of corporate financing decisions upon the value of securities.

The author reflects on the transition of scientific publishing to online-only format and the impact this will have on "Clinical & Translational Science" (CTS). He states that the conversion to creating online-only journals has been caused by the adverse financial environment and the cost of printing and distributing. He states that the development of the journal "PLos One" by the Public Library of Sciences (PLos) to an online-only publication was criticized for publishing too many articles without a strict quality assessment process. He concludes by explaining how CTS will approach their own transition to online-only.

Key pointsThe debate about open access has until now focused on the gold (journals) versus the green route (manuscript self‐archival).Recently an even more disruptive form of OA has emerged, in the form of illegal article copies retrievable from academic social networks or pirate sites.Illegal, or “black open access”, provides access to a large part of the pay‐walled article output which cannot be found in repositories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital journals have been widely adopted by academic researchers and have nearly replaced printed journals in many contexts. The adoption of digital books is accelerating. The transition to digital information has changed information workflows of researchers by transforming the methods they use to find, store, retrieve, and use information from monographs, journals, and other sources. It has also changed the needs and expectations of scholars in relation to research information. To investigate these changes, 45 researchers in science, medicine, engineering, social sciences, and humanities at Stanford University were interviewed regarding information workflow and preferences. Results are compared with the findings of the e-Journal User Study (eJUSt), completed in 2002. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the criteria for manuscripts to be submitted and published within the journal "Philosophy & Public Affairs." Manuscripts should be double-spaced throughout wherein the word count should be indicated and notes gathered included. It can be sent by email attachment at papa@princeton.edu provided that one printed copy should also be send by mail to the address 130 Corwin Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey.

The Internet presents a unique environment in which to study adoption. This is because of its composition of autonomous entities that are otherwise strongly interrelated. Our model of Internet standards adoption (ISA) combines diffusion of innovation and economics of adoption literature to present an integrative model. This model proposes that the adoption of Internet-based standards is dependent upon two dimensions: the usefulness of the features to the potential adopter, and the conduciveness of the environment to adoption of the standard. This model accounts for not only the traditional dichotomous view of adoption, but also includes the notion of ‘partial adoption’, where both old and new standards can coexist for extended periods of time. As a demonstration, we apply the ISA model to the next generation Internet protocol Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6). Despite its ostensible superiority, IPv6 has not been widely adopted. In this paper we discuss the reasons why this might be the case. Our analysis also draws wider conclusions about the adoption of Internet standards: in particular, the importance of transitional technologies between the old and new standards and the need for co-ordinated government polices which encourage adoption. Our analysis also indicates that geopolitical boundaries may have a considerable impact on the adoption of Internet standards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the use of the online social media network Twitter at the 2011 and 2013 meetings of the International Congress for Conservation Biology (ICCB). The presenters, delegates and organizers at the ICCB events used Twitter in sharing conservation science research, sharing thoughts about the proceedings and propagating conservation ideas. The online network assumes the role of a facilitator for debates among stakeholders in nature conservation.

The article reports that "Economic History Review" is offering a new web-based submission process for authors and reviewers entitled Manuscript Central. Not only will the system be more convenient for authors and peer reviewers, it will also enable the periodical's editors to reduce the time they take to make a decision on a manuscript. The system can be accessed at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/EHR and requires little more than access to a computer with an Internet connection and a web-browser to make a submission.

The article discusses the Department of Human Services and MAYA Design Inc.'s development of a distributed database system in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. The system allows social service professionals to access and update information across a decentralized data storage collection. Meanwhile, it describes how an open system architecture and universally unique identifiers (UUIDs) aid users' construction of new tools in a collaborative manner. It also demonstrates the support given by a solid information architecture methodology on a responsive and an innovative solution.

The article discusses aspects of optimal accounting information systems for unidentified users. The conditions required for such optimality involve the concept of a sufficient information system a concept relating to the statistical properties of information. Analysts say that for a set of alternative information systems a system is optimal for an unidentified user if and only if it is sufficient with respect to each of the alternatives. A decision model is presented comprised of a decision structure and a corresponding search problem. The decision structure is suggested to comprise a resource space, a state space, an outcome set, a transformation function, and a payoff function.

The author stress the importance of online databases containing QT interval studies for future research on the subject. Topics discussed include the impact of QT interval studies on the pharmaceutical industry in terms of research costs, the lack of proofs on the negative effects of drugs and chemicals on QT interval, and the advantage of curated database containing QT interval studies.

Objective: To explore and understand approaches to user engagement through investigating the range of ways in which health care workers and organizations accommodated the introduction of computerized physician order entry (CPOE) and computerized decision support (CDS) for hospital prescribing.Study Setting: Six hospitals in England, United Kingdom.Study Design: Qualitative case study.Data Collection: We undertook qualitative semi-structured interviews, non-participant observations of meetings and system use, and collected organizational documents over three time periods from six hospitals. Thematic analysis was initially undertaken within individual cases, followed by cross-case comparisons.Findings: We conducted 173 interviews, conducted 24 observations, and collected 17 documents between 2011 and 2015. We found that perceived individual and safety benefits among different user groups tended to facilitate engagement in some, while other less engaged groups developed resistance and unsanctioned workarounds if systems were perceived to be inadequate. We identified both the opportunity and need for sustained engagement across user groups around system enhancement (e.g., through customizing software) and the development of user competencies and effective use.Conclusions: There is an urgent need to move away from an episodic view of engagement focused on the preimplementation phase, to more continuous holistic attempts to engage with and respond to end-users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modeling the stochastic evolution of a large-scale fleet or network generally proves to be challenging. This difficulty may be compounded through complex relationships between various assets in the network. Although a great number of probabilistic graph-based models (e.g., Bayesian networks) have been developed recently to describe the behavior of single assets, one can find significantly fewer approaches addressing a fully integrated network. It is proposed an extension to the standard dynamic Bayesian network (DBN) by introducing an additional dimension for multiple elements. These elements are then linked through a set of covariates that translate the probabilistic dependencies. A Markov chain is utilized to model the elements and develop a distribution-free mathematical framework to parameterize the transition probabilities without previous data. This is achieved by borrowing from Cooke's method for structured expert judgment and also applied to the quantification of the covariate relationships. Some metrics are also presented for evaluating the sensitivity of information inserted into the covariate DBN where the focus is given on two specific types of configurations. The model is applied to a real-world example of steel bridge network in the Netherlands. Numerical examples highlight the inference mechanism and show the sensitivity of information inserted in various ways. It is shown that information is most valuable very early and decreases substantially over time. Resulting observations entail the reduction of inference combinations and by extension a computational gain to select the most sensitive pieces of information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the website Forest visitor map, located at www.fs.fed.us/r5/forestvisitormaps from the U.S Forest Service Pacific Southwest Region.

The article reviews the new PlantingScience.org website and offers details about the hiring of new science mentors.

Many systems of interests in practices can be represented as complex networks. For biological systems, biomolecules do not perform their functions alone but interact with each other to form so-called biomolecular networks. A system is said to be controllable if it can be steered from any initial state to any other final state in finite time. The network controllability has become essential to study the dynamics of the networks and understand the importance of individual nodes in the networks. Some interesting biological phenomena have been discovered in terms of the structural controllability of biomolecular networks. Most of current studies investigate the structural controllability of networks in notion of the minimum driver node sets (MDSs). In this study, the authors analyse the network structural controllability in notion of the minimum steering node sets (MSSs). They first develop a graphtheoretic algorithm to identify the MSS for a given network and then apply it to several biomolecular networks. Application results show that biomolecules identified in the MSSs play essential roles in corresponding biological processes. Furthermore, the application results indicate that the MSSs can reflect the network dynamics and node importance in controlling the networks better than the MDSs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the International Society of Neuropathology (ISN). Topics discussed include travel grants to be provided by ISN to neuropathology trainees of developing countries travelling to neuropathology centres of excellence, awards for attending internationally recognized neuropathology courses and the ISN website which provides information on ISN events. Other topics include members and presidents of national societies.

Traditionally, a per-song-purchased base recommendation system is used on most music websites, but this method produces unsatisfactory results under various situational practices. This study proposes a hybrid procedure that includes both an expert-attributes selection capability and a mood/situation-attributes categorization functionality. This procedure fosters the development of a so-called MoMusic model as an unlimited online streaming service to replace current systems and artfully provide music to interested parties. This study employs a dataset consisting of 821 songs from the 2005-2010 annual music rankings as well as songs from the top artists from 2009 to 2010 from Taiwan's popular KKBOX music streaming service. The experimental dataset was assessed and coded by domain experts, and the expert-attributes selections and mood/situation-attributes categorizations were used to produce recommendation lists. These recommendation lists were then paired with questionnaire-derived music preferences from experienced users. The experimental results conclusively show that the MoMusic model is approximately twice as accurate as the random selection-based lists and the KKBOX-like recommendation lists and performs better than the two listed recommendation systems. The MoMusic model scores 0.889 on the usefulness evaluation, whereas the system satisfaction is 0.96. The MoMusic model has the advantages of intuitive use and high performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In global positioning system modernisation, a new civil signal namely L2C signal has been broadcast since 2005. Compared with the widely used C/A code signal, although the new signal provides lots of advantages such as better acquisition and tracking performances, the used civil moderate (CM) code and civil long code have much longer periods than C/A code and they make L2C signal acquisition challengeable. Although previous acquisition methods are effective, their computational complexities are still high. To this end, in the study, a composite CM (CCM) code structure is developed by reconstructing the previous return-to-zero CM (RZCM) code through the previous folding technique. Then the CCM code is comprehensively assessed. Compared with the RZCM code, the developed CCM code has following advantages. It can be implemented by small scale FFT block, which is desirable for resource-limited L2C receivers; it is more robust against navigation data and carrier Doppler, and performs more reliable detection performance; for normally received L2C signal, which is usually not <42 dBHz, it spends less time on acquisition. Theoretical and simulation results demonstrate the advantages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study considers the design of optimal receive filter under similarity constraint in coloured noise and compares it with signal design methods and conventional schemes. Similarity constraint restricts the sought-after filter to be close to the transmit waveform to control the output sequence envelope, avoiding potential risks of poor range solution and high sidelobes of whitening filter (WF) in severe coloured noise. The detailed solution to this constrained optimisation problem is provided. Then, the authors compare the filter design (FD) with the schemes of conventional or designing signal based on the matched/whitening filter. Five schemes are analysed on their performances of output signal-to-noise ratio, sequence control and requirements for practical applications. The merits of five schemes are concluded. In simulations, comparison between the designed filter and whitening filter illustrates the necessity of similarity constraint. FD under similarity constraint is regarded as a robust scheme for output sequence envelope control, easy to implement for coloured noise suppression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]