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Although the trans-Atlantic cod trade linked North American and European socioeconomic spheres, few studies analyze both regions concurrently to understand the impact and extent of cod trade at a wider scale. We summarize new results of zooarchaeological analysis from Louisbourg, Nova Scotia, Canada, a major North American cod-trading port, and consider its role in the wider trans-Atlantic trade network by conducting a meta-analysis of the archaeological record of cod trade during the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries. We show that though cod remains are abundant in assemblages from the Northeast and Atlantic Canada where they were caught and processed, they are relatively rare in other North American assemblages, including Caribbean plantations where cod was imported in large quantities to support slave laborers. Furthermore, though North Atlantic cod have been identified isotopically in European assemblages, they are found primarily within the known habitat range of Atlantic cod at this time. Finally, by comparing European and North American datasets we demonstrate that length is unlikely to be reliable as a means of sourcing cod. This examination contributes to our understanding of cod's important economic role in the development of trans-Atlantic connections between North American and European trading ports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author argues for a strategic reconsideration of one major element of the US defense effort – the commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. He shows how major reforms in the implementation of US alliance commitments can save as much as $70 billion to $80 billion per year with little change in the risk to US interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International military relations are complexly determined by the strategic and political framework of cooperation, and by the dynamics of diplomatic relations within the volatile geostrategic and geopolitical context, with relevance and impact at the regional, European, and trans-Atlantic levels. In this context, the present paperwork aims to disseminate the most efficient methods and tools through which the military higher education institutions can contribute to the enrichment of international military cooperation policies, directly by stimulating the academic process of internationalization, which is extremely beneficial for promoting higher standards in the harmonized training of military personnel, in line with the updated technical, technological, and operational requirements at the European and international levels. For this purpose, the authors have considered the present importance of the Internationalization process of the Higher Education System, aiming to offer a strategic instrument for conceiving an operational framework in designing the qualitative and quantitative expressions of international actions, as part of the institutional strategic plan and medium and long run perspectives. The article represents in fact, the first step toward a wider research, where the authors are aiming to identify the way in which the internationalization process can bring a competitive advantage on the academic services sector. The examples are brought from the Military Higher Education System, where the academic, training and research services are connected to a higher level of international affairs and diplomacy, the present paperwork configuring the prior analysis of how the internationalization strategy could became a strong vector for international cooperation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The post-entry operation sustainability of airline routes directly affects their profitability. This paper investigates factors influencing the operating duration of airline routes based on a survival analysis modeling method. Key factors are selected from five aspects representing characteristics in terms of cost and supply, route and airport, market structure, airline cooperation type, and time heterogeneity. The transatlantic market between Europe and the US is chosen as the empirical study due to its high degree of liberalization. The research period ranges 19 years from 2003 to 2021. First, the single factor analysis is conducted by utilizing the Kaplan-Meier method. Second, a Weibull parameter survival model is constructed to quantitatively analyze the relationship between the chosen factors and the operating duration of airline routes. The results show that：(1) The average operating duration of the EU-US routes is five years, among which routes that were continuously operated for more than 10 years account for 16%；(2) the operating duration of airline routes is significantly influenced by distance, airline’s total capacity, route structure, endpoint airports type, route competition, airline type, and region as well as alliance；(3) both independent and interaction variables representing alliance and code-share characteristics have significant impacts on route operating duration. Routes operated by Star and SkyTeam members have a longer operating duration. For airlines in the same alliance, the route-exit risks between operating carriers and marketing carriers in code-sharing cooperation are significantly different. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An emergent consequence of climate change is its potential impacts on transatlantic flight routes and durations, with studies suggesting that future optimal paths will likely lead to decreased (increased) eastbound (westbound) journey times. However, these earlier works all rely on a class of flight planning algorithms (based on the so‐called 'shooting method') that are fundamentally different to those typically used by the aviation industry (based on the so‐called 'network method'). To help resolve any ambiguities associated with these differences and better align both the academic and operational communities, we have therefore conducted an evaluation of methods of estimating time‐optimal flight routes to relate the result obtained from the shooting method with the result obtained from the network method, using identical data from an ensemble of eight different climate models included within the CMIP5 project. Our findings suggest that, contrary to the existing literature, journey times will likely be shorter, irrespective of direction of travel and season, although the magnitude of this difference is negligible given the typical duration of transatlantic flights. Trajectory prediction (TP) results are largely dependent on the characteristics of the ensemble, their method of generation, the projected climate scenario and the temporal periods considered. Importantly, we conclude the choice of TP models is not a crucial factor in assessing the impact of climate change on flight durations—as long as this sample size (i.e., number of trajectories used in deriving statistics) is large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Recent development in positron emission tomography (PET) dramatically increased the effective sensitivity by increasing the geometric coverage leading to total-body PET imaging. This encouraging breakthrough brings the hope of ultra-low dose PET imaging equivalent to transatlantic flight with the assistance of deep learning (DL)-based methods. However, conventional DL approaches face limitations in addressing the heterogeneous domain of PET imaging. This study aims to develop a wavelet-based DL method capable of restoring high-quality imaging from ultra-low-dose PET scans.In contrast to conventional DL techniques that denoise images in the spatial domain, we introduce WaveNet, a novel approach that inputs wavelet-decomposed frequency components of PET imaging to perform denoising in the frequency domain. A dataset comprising total-body 18F -FDG PET images of 1447, acquired using total-body PET scanners including Biograph Vision Quadra (Siemens Healthineers) and uEXPLORER (United Imaging) in Bern and Shanghai, was utilized for developing and testing the proposed method. The quality of enhanced images was assessed using a customized scoring system, which incorporated weighted global physical metrics and local indices.Our proposed WaveNet consistently outperforms the baseline UNet model across all levels of dose reduction factors (DRF), with greater improvements observed as image quality decreases. Statistical analysis (p < 0.05) and visual inspection validated the superiority of WaveNet. Moreover, WaveNet demonstrated superior generalizability when applied to two cross-scanner datasets (p < 0.05).WaveNet developed with total-body PET scanners may offer a computational-friendly and robust approach to recover image quality from ultra-low-dose PET imaging. Its adoption may enhance the reliability and clinical acceptance of DL-based dose reduction techniques.Materials and methods: Recent development in positron emission tomography (PET) dramatically increased the effective sensitivity by increasing the geometric coverage leading to total-body PET imaging. This encouraging breakthrough brings the hope of ultra-low dose PET imaging equivalent to transatlantic flight with the assistance of deep learning (DL)-based methods. However, conventional DL approaches face limitations in addressing the heterogeneous domain of PET imaging. This study aims to develop a wavelet-based DL method capable of restoring high-quality imaging from ultra-low-dose PET scans.In contrast to conventional DL techniques that denoise images in the spatial domain, we introduce WaveNet, a novel approach that inputs wavelet-decomposed frequency components of PET imaging to perform denoising in the frequency domain. A dataset comprising total-body 18F -FDG PET images of 1447, acquired using total-body PET scanners including Biograph Vision Quadra (Siemens Healthineers) and uEXPLORER (United Imaging) in Bern and Shanghai, was utilized for developing and testing the proposed method. The quality of enhanced images was assessed using a customized scoring system, which incorporated weighted global physical metrics and local indices.Our proposed WaveNet consistently outperforms the baseline UNet model across all levels of dose reduction factors (DRF), with greater improvements observed as image quality decreases. Statistical analysis (p < 0.05) and visual inspection validated the superiority of WaveNet. Moreover, WaveNet demonstrated superior generalizability when applied to two cross-scanner datasets (p < 0.05).WaveNet developed with total-body PET scanners may offer a computational-friendly and robust approach to recover image quality from ultra-low-dose PET imaging. Its adoption may enhance the reliability and clinical acceptance of DL-based dose reduction techniques.Results: Recent development in positron emission tomography (PET) dramatically increased the effective sensitivity by increasing the geometric coverage leading to total-body PET imaging. This encouraging breakthrough brings the hope of ultra-low dose PET imaging equivalent to transatlantic flight with the assistance of deep learning (DL)-based methods. However, conventional DL approaches face limitations in addressing the heterogeneous domain of PET imaging. This study aims to develop a wavelet-based DL method capable of restoring high-quality imaging from ultra-low-dose PET scans.In contrast to conventional DL techniques that denoise images in the spatial domain, we introduce WaveNet, a novel approach that inputs wavelet-decomposed frequency components of PET imaging to perform denoising in the frequency domain. A dataset comprising total-body 18F -FDG PET images of 1447, acquired using total-body PET scanners including Biograph Vision Quadra (Siemens Healthineers) and uEXPLORER (United Imaging) in Bern and Shanghai, was utilized for developing and testing the proposed method. The quality of enhanced images was assessed using a customized scoring system, which incorporated weighted global physical metrics and local indices.Our proposed WaveNet consistently outperforms the baseline UNet model across all levels of dose reduction factors (DRF), with greater improvements observed as image quality decreases. Statistical analysis (p < 0.05) and visual inspection validated the superiority of WaveNet. Moreover, WaveNet demonstrated superior generalizability when applied to two cross-scanner datasets (p < 0.05).WaveNet developed with total-body PET scanners may offer a computational-friendly and robust approach to recover image quality from ultra-low-dose PET imaging. Its adoption may enhance the reliability and clinical acceptance of DL-based dose reduction techniques.Conclusion: Recent development in positron emission tomography (PET) dramatically increased the effective sensitivity by increasing the geometric coverage leading to total-body PET imaging. This encouraging breakthrough brings the hope of ultra-low dose PET imaging equivalent to transatlantic flight with the assistance of deep learning (DL)-based methods. However, conventional DL approaches face limitations in addressing the heterogeneous domain of PET imaging. This study aims to develop a wavelet-based DL method capable of restoring high-quality imaging from ultra-low-dose PET scans.In contrast to conventional DL techniques that denoise images in the spatial domain, we introduce WaveNet, a novel approach that inputs wavelet-decomposed frequency components of PET imaging to perform denoising in the frequency domain. A dataset comprising total-body 18F -FDG PET images of 1447, acquired using total-body PET scanners including Biograph Vision Quadra (Siemens Healthineers) and uEXPLORER (United Imaging) in Bern and Shanghai, was utilized for developing and testing the proposed method. The quality of enhanced images was assessed using a customized scoring system, which incorporated weighted global physical metrics and local indices.Our proposed WaveNet consistently outperforms the baseline UNet model across all levels of dose reduction factors (DRF), with greater improvements observed as image quality decreases. Statistical analysis (p < 0.05) and visual inspection validated the superiority of WaveNet. Moreover, WaveNet demonstrated superior generalizability when applied to two cross-scanner datasets (p < 0.05).WaveNet developed with total-body PET scanners may offer a computational-friendly and robust approach to recover image quality from ultra-low-dose PET imaging. Its adoption may enhance the reliability and clinical acceptance of DL-based dose reduction techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]