Spectral analysis of civil conflict-induced forced migration on land-use/land-cover change: the case of a primate and lower-ranked cities in Sierra Leone

Involuntary migration triggered by war has the capacity to generate substantial socioeconomic and environmental changes in cities of developing countries, resulting in aberrant alterations to land use and land cover (LULC). This scenario has the potential to diminish the quality of life of inhabitants of a city and present administrative challenges for government and other officials. Gauging the scope and trajectory of urban LULC changes in a war-related environment is pivotal for urban and regional planning, the sustainability of natural resources, and information needs of policy makers. Scholarships that link remote sensing to social science mostly focus on a non-conflict environment, resulting in little or no information on the ramifications of conflict-induced forced migration on changes in LULC. As a result, the role of civil conflict-induced forced migration on the composition and configuration of urban landscape in developing countries remains elusive. This study employs a dense time stack of Landsat-5 Thematic Mapper (TM) images and a hybrid classification approach that integrates linear spectral unmixing and an ensemble decision-tree classifier to characterize LULC in a primate city and two lower-ranked cities in Sierra Leone. The study examined three time-steps which span 1986–1991, 1991–2002, and 2002–2010 with the overarching goal of elucidating changes in LULC conditioned by civil conflict. Image classification accuracy (overall accuracy) ranged between 84.0% and 90.2%. The study demonstrated that civil conflict has the capacity to trigger notable growth in urban agricultural land (37.4%) in a primate city, while the expansion of residential (112.7%) and industrial/commercial (18.7%) lands is more prominent in a lower-ranked city. The study further revealed that population expansion does not necessarily result in significant growth in residential area in a primate city that has experienced civil conflict.     

Boundary‐Aware Extinction Mapping

We introduce Boundary‐Aware Extinction Maps for interactive rendering of massive heterogeneous volumetric datasets. Our approach is based on the projection of the extinction along light rays into a boundary‐aware function space, focusing on the most relevant sections of the light paths. This technique also provides an alternative representation of the set of participating media, allowing scattering simulation methods to be applied on arbitrary volume representations. Combined with a simple out‐of‐core rendering framework, Boundary‐Aware Extinction Maps are valuable tools for interactive applications as well as production previsualization and rendering.     

Clinical Determination of Dry Body Weight

While nephrologists wait for the ideal, non invasive, inexpensive, precise, and reproducible tool to evaluate extracellular volume (ECV), they need to exert their clinical acumen in the quest of that holy grail, dry weight (DW). Estimation of DW using a clinical approach based on blood pressure (BP) and ECV is feasible and reliable as shown by successful experiences in various dialysis modes over more than three decades. But a need still exists to resolve difficulties associated with accurate assessment of BP (methods and circumstances of measurement, and the confounding effects of antihypertensive drugs) and ECV (evaluation of weight changes unrelated to ECV, lack of specificity and sensitivity of clinical symptoms, lag time, confusion in terminology). An essential point in clinical assessment of DW is that a normal BP is at the same time the target and the crucial index of DW achievement. For this reason, a trialand‐error “probe” process has to be used at intervals to make sure that the dry weight target point is correctly estimated. The various “non clinical” methods proposed for dry weight assessment increase the complexity and the cost of hemodialysis. They are, in the present state of things, more clinical research than practice tools. They do not replace clinical judgment.     

The resource-constrained activity insertion problem with minimum and maximum time lags

This paper considers the resource-constrained activity insertion problem with minimum and maximum time lags. The problem involves inserting a single activity in a partial schedule while preserving its structure represented through resource flow networks and minimizing the makespan increase caused by the insertion. In the general case, we show that finding a feasible insertion that minimizes the project duration is NP-hard. When only minimum time lags are considered and when activity durations are strictly positive, we show that the problem is polynomially solvable, generalizing previously established results on activity insertion for the standard resource-constrained project scheduling problem.     

Issues in preparing an edited volume in psychology.

Discusses the factors that should be considered when preparing to edit a high-quality, scholarly psychology book. The issues discussed include the book editor–publisher relationship, the book editor–chapter contributor relationship, and what makes a good final product. Three laws of editing are offered: (1) conceptualize clearly; (2) edit fiercely; and (3) edit for the reader, not the writer. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Use of volatile compound metabolic signatures in poultry liver to back-trace dietary exposure to rapidly metabolized xenobiotics

The study investigated the feasibility of using volatile compound signatures of liver tissues in poultry to detect previous dietary exposure to different types of xenobiotic. Six groups of broiler chickens were fed a similar diet either noncontaminated or contaminated with polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins/-furans (PCDD/Fs; 3.14 pg WHO-TEQ/g feed, 12% moisture), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs; 0.08 pg WHO-TEQ/g feed, 12% moisture), polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs; 1.63 ng/g feed, 12% moisture), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs; 0.72 μg/g fresh matter), or coccidiostats (0.5 mg/g feed, fresh matter). Each chicken liver was analyzed by solid-phase microextraction - mass spectrometry (SPME-MS) for volatile compound metabolic signature and by gas chromatography - high resolution mass spectrometry (GC-HRMS), gas chromatography - tandem mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS), and liquid chromatography - tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) to quantify xenobiotic residues. Volatile compound signature evidenced a liver metabolic response to PAH although these rapidly metabolized xenobiotics are undetectable in this organ by the reference methods. Similarly, the volatile compound metabolic signature enabled to differentiate the noncontaminated chickens from those contaminated with PBDEs or coccidiostats. In contrast, no clear signature was pointed out for slowly metabolized compounds such as PCDD/Fs and PCBs although their residues were found in liver at 50.93 (±6.71) and 0.67 (±0.1) pg WHO-TEQ/g fat, respectively.     

Syngas production at intermediate temperature through H2O and CO2 electrolysis with a Cu-based solid oxide electrolyzer cell

Solid Oxide Electrolyzer Cells (SOECs) are promising energy devices for the production of syngas (H₂/CO) by H₂O and/or CO₂ electrolysis. Here we developed a Cu–Ce_0.9Gd_0.1O_2−δ/Ce_0.8Gd_0.2O_2−δ/Ba_0.5Sr_0.5Co_0.8Fe_0.2O_3−δ-Ce_0.8Gd_0.2O_2−δ cell and performed H₂O and CO₂ electrolysis experiments in the intermediate temperature range (600°C–700 °C). As a baseline, the cell was first tested in fuel cell operation mode; the sample shows a maximum power density peak of 104 mW cm⁻² at 700 °C under pure hydrogen and air. H₂O electrolysis testing revealed a steady production of hydrogen with a Faraday's efficiency of 32% at 700 °C at an imposed current density of −78 mA cm⁻². CO production was observed during CO₂ electrolysis but higher cell voltages were required. A lower efficiency of about 4% was obtained at 700 °C at an imposed current density of −660 mA cm⁻². These results confirm that syngas production is feasible by water and carbon dioxide electrolysis but further improvements from both the manufacturing and the electrocatalytic aspects are needed to reach higher yields and efficiencies.     

Compact and localized distributed data structures

This survey concerns the role of data structures for compactly storing and representing various types of information in a localized and distributed fashion. Traditional approaches to data representation are based on global data structures, which require access to the entire structure even if the sought information involves only a small and local set of entities. In contrast, localized data representation schemes are based on breaking the information into small local pieces, or labels , selected in a way that allows one to infer information regarding a small set of entities directly from their labels, without using any additional (global) information. The survey concentrates mainly on combinatorial and algorithmic techniques, such as adjacency and distance labeling schemes and interval schemes for routing, and covers complexity results on various applications, focusing on compact localized schemes for message routing in communication networks.Received: August 2001, Accepted: May 2002, Supported in part by a grant from the Israel Science Foundation.     

The XTS-AES Disk Encryption Algorithm and the Security of Ciphertext Stealing

Abstract

This paper describes the importance of the XTS-AES encryption mode of operation and concludes with a new proof for the security of ciphertext stealing as used by XTS-AES. The XTS-AES mode is designed for encrypting data stored on hard disks where there is not additional space for an integrity field. Given this lack of space for an integrity field, XTS-AES builds on the security of AES by protecting the storage device from many dictionary and copy/paste attacks. The operation of the XTS mode of AES is defined in the IEEE 1619-2007 standard [3 IEEE Std 1619–2007 . April 18, 2008 . The XTS-AES Tweakable Block Cipher. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.  [Google Scholar]], and has been adopted by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as an approved mode of operation under FIPS 140-2 [2 Dworkin , M. December 2009 . NIST SP 800-38E, “Recommendation for Block Cipher Modes of Operation: The XTS-AES Mode for Confidentiality on Storage Devices”.  [Google Scholar]]. XTS-AES builds on the XEX (Xor-Encrypt-Xor) mode originally proposed by Rogaway [8 Rogaway , P. 2004 . Efficient Instantiations of Tweakable Block ciphers and Refinements to Modes OCB and PMAC. Advances in Cryptology–Asiacrypt 2004, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 3329, Springer-Verlag, pp. 16–31. Available at http://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/rogaway/papers/offsets.pdf (Accessed 6 January 2012) . [Google Scholar]].