https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/grand-canyon-school-rediological-study.htm

The Ikes Fire is being utilized to fulfill its natural role within a fire-dependent ecosystem while providing for point protection of identified sensitive natural and cultural resources. Resource objectives include reducing hazardous fuels, promoting forest regeneration, improving wildlife habitat, and restoring more open forest understory. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/ikes-fire-ecological-benefits-20190814.htm

Over the past 7 years, a strong collaboration has emerged between the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest ecosystem research group and the Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word, an independently funded program for nature writing based in the Department of Philosophy, Oregon State University. The program is called Long-Term Ecological Reflections and it brings together scientists, creative writers, and environmental philosophers to consider new ways to conceptualize and communicate views of long-term ecological change in forests and watersheds and the participation of humans in that change. The program is designed to parallel the Long-Term Ecological Research program, a national science program initiated in 1980 and involving the Andrews Forest. Both programs focus on primary inquiry and have 200-year planning horizons, which have resulted in some uniquely farsighted perspectives and astute ecological observations.

Participatory (collaborative, multiparty, citizen, volunteer) monitoring is a process that has been increasing in popularity and use in both developing and industrialized societies over the last several decades. It reflects the understanding that natural resource decisions are more effective and less controversial when stakeholders who have an interest in the results are involved in the process. An adequate number of such projects have now been organized, tried, and evaluated such that sufficient information exists to recommend a comprehensive approach to implementing such processes. This handbook was written for managers and scientists in the United States who are contemplating a participatory approach to monitoring biological resources, especially biodiversity. It is designed as a how-to manual with discussions of relevant topics, checklists of important considerations to address, and resources for further information. Worksheets for developing, implementing, and evaluating a monitoring plan are posted on a companion Web site. The subject matter is divided into 3 stages of a monitoring project encompassing a total of 22 topical modules. These modules can be used in any sequence on an ongoing basis. Stages and modules include (1) planning-documentation, goals, indicators, collaboration, decisions, context, organization, participants, communication, incentives, design, and resources; (2) implementation-training, safety, fieldwork, sampling, data, and quality; and (3) followthrough-analysis, reporting, evaluation, and celebrations. Collaboration always involves colearning, so documenting choices, plans, and activities with the Web site worksheets is integral to the manual's effectiveness.

This paper synthesizes the existing literature about traditional and local ecological knowledge relating to biodiversity in Pacific Northwest forests in order to assess what is needed to apply this knowledge to forest biodiversity conservation efforts. We address four topics: (1) views and values people have relating to biodiversity, (2) the resource use and management practices of local forest users and their effects on biodiversity, (3) methods and models for integrating traditional and local ecological knowledge into biodiversity conservation on public and private lands, and (4) challenges to applying traditional and local ecological knowledge for biodiversity conservation. We focus on the ecological knowledge of three groups who inhabit the region: American Indians, family forest owners, and commercial nontimber forest product (NTFP) harvesters.

Old growth revisited: integrating social, economic, and ecological perspectives.

This synthesis provides an ecological foundation for management of the diverse ecosystems and fire regimes of North America, based on scientific principles of fire interactions with vegetation, fuels, and biophysical processes. Although a large amount of scientific data on fire exists, most of those data have been collected at small spatial and temporal scales. Thus, it is challenging to develop consistent science-based plans for large spatial and temporal scales where most fire management and planning occur. Understanding the regional geographic context of fire regimes is critical for developing appropriate and sustainable management strategies and policy. The degree to which human intervention has modified fire frequency, intensity, and severity varies greatly among different ecosystems, and must be considered when planning to alter fuel loads or implement restorative treatments. Detailed discussion of six ecosystems--ponderosa pine forest (western North America), chaparral (California), boreal forest (Alaska and Canada), Great Basin sagebrush (intermountain West), pine and pine-hardwood forests (Southern Appalachian Mountains), and longleaf pine (Southeastern United States)--illustrates the complexity of fire regimes and that fire management requires a clear regional focus that recognizes where conflicts might exist between fire hazard reduction and resource needs. In some systems, such as ponderosa pine, treatments are usually compatible with both fuel reduction and resource needs, whereas in others, such as chaparral, the potential exists for conflicts that need to be closely evaluated. Managing fire regimes in a changing climate and social environment requires a strong scientific basis for developing fire management and policy.

Indigenous populations are projected to face disproportionate impacts as a result of climate change in comparison to nonindigenous populations. For this reason, many American Indian and Alaska Native tribes are identifying and implementing culturally appropriate strategies to assess climate impacts and adapt to projected changes. Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), as the indigenous knowledge system is called, has the potential to play a central role in both indigenous and nonindigenous climate change initiatives. The detection of environmental changes, the development of strategies to adapt to these changes, and the implementation of sustainable land-management principles are all important climate action items that can be informed by TEK. Although there is a significant body of literature on traditional knowledge, this synthesis examines literature that specifically explores the relationship between TEK and climate change. The synthesis describes the potential role of TEK in climate change assessment and adaptation efforts. It also identifies some of the challenges and benefits associated with merging TEK with Western science, and reviews the way in which federal policies and administrative practices facilitate or challenge the incorporation of TEK in climate change initiatives. The synthesis highlights examples of how tribes and others are including TEK into climate research, education, and resource planning and explores strategies to incorporate TEK into climate change policy, assessments, and adaptation efforts at national, regional, and local levels.​

The Integrated Landscape Assessment Project (ILAP) was a multiyear effort to produce information, maps, and models to help land managers, policymakers, and others conduct mid- to broad-scale (e.g., watersheds to states and larger areas) prioritization of land management actions, perform landscape assessments, and estimate cumulative effects of management actions for planning and other purposes.

Sustaining the health, diversity, and productivity of national forests and grasslands is the mission of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service.

The 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens produced a massive landslide and consequent pyroclastic currents, deposits of which blocked the outlet to Spirit Lake. Without an outlet, the lake began to rise, threatening a breaching of the blockage and release of a massive volume of water. To mitigate the hazard posed by the rising lake and provide an outlet, in 1984–1985 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers bored a 2.6-km (8,500-ft) long tunnel through a bedrock ridge on the western edge of the lake.

Transportation corridors (notably roads) affect wildlife habitat, populations, and entire ecosystems. Considerable effort has been expended to quantify direct effects of roads on wildlife populations and ecological communities and processes. Much less effort has been expended toward quantifying indirect effects. In this report, we provide a comprehensive review of road/transportation corridor ecology; in particular, how this new field of ecology has advanced worldwide. Further, we discuss how research thus far has shaped our understanding and views of the ecological implications of transportation infrastructures, and, in turn, how this has led to the current guidance, policies, and management options. We learned that the impacts of transportation infrastructures are a global issue, with the potential to affect a wide variety of taxonomically diverse species and ecosystems. Because the majority of research to date has focused on the direct and more aesthetic and anthropocentric implications of transportation corridors, mainly wildlife-vehicle collisions, it is a fairly standard practice to incorporate underpasses, green bridges (i.e., overpasses), fencing, and barriers into road corridors to alleviate such impacts. Few studies, however, have been able to demonstrate the efficiency of these structures. Furthermore, it is becoming increasingly evident that the indirect implications of transportation infrastructures (i.e., behavioral responses of wildlife individuals to roads) may be more pervasive, at least from the standpoint of biological diversity. Understanding how road corridors influence the functional connectivity of landscapes is crucial if we are to effectively manage species of concern. With these issues in mind, we propose a program of study that addresses the indirect and cumulative implications of transportation infrastructure on species distributions, community structure and ecosystem function

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) can have lifelong and dynamic effects on health and wellbeing. Research on the longterm consequences emphasises that, for many patients, TBI should be conceptualised as a chronic health condition. Evidence suggests that functional outcomes after TBI can show improvement or deterioration up to two decades after injury, and rates of all-cause mortality remain elevated for many years. Furthermore, TBI represents a risk factor for a variety of neurological illnesses, including epilepsy, stroke, and neurodegenerative disease. With respect to neurodegeneration after TBI, post-mortem studies on the long-term neuropathology after injury have identified complex persisting and evolving abnormalities best described as polypathology, which includes chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Despite growing awareness of the lifelong consequences of TBI, substantial gaps in research exist. Improvements are therefore needed in understanding chronic pathologies and their implications for survivors of TBI, which could inform long-term health management in this sizeable patient population.

A topological dynamical system $(X,f)$ induces two natural systems, one is on the probability measure spaces and other one is on the hyperspace.

We introduce a concept for these two spaces, which is called entropy order, and prove that it coincides with topological entropy of $(X,f)$. We also consider the entropy order of an invariant measure and a variational principle is established.

In this paper, we provide some topological criteria for the Poisson Dixmier-Moeglin equivalence for $A$ in terms of the poset $({ m P. spec A}, subseteq)$ and the symplectic leaf or core stratification on its maximal spectrum. In particular, we prove that the Zariski topology of the Poisson prime spectrum and of each symplectic leaf or core can detect the Poisson Dixmier-Moeglin equivalence for any complex affine Poisson algebra. Moreover, we generalize the weaker version of the Poisson Dixmier-Moeglin equivalence for a complex affine Poisson algebra proved in [J. Bell, S. Launois, O.L. S'anchez, and B. Moosa, Poisson algebras via model theory and differential algebraic geometry, J. Eur. Math. Soc. (JEMS), 19(2017), no. 7, 2019-2049] to the general context of a commutative differential algebra.

Given spherically symmetric characteristic initial data for the Einstein-scalar field system with a positive cosmological constant, we provide a criterion, in terms of the dimensionless size and dimensionless renormalized mass content of an annular region of the data, for the formation of a future trapped surface. This corresponds to an extension of Christodoulou's classical criterion by the inclusion of the cosmological term.

We construct a 2-equivalence $mathfrak{CohTheory}^ ext{op} simeq mathfrak{TypeSpaceFunc}$. Here $mathfrak{CohTheory}$ is the 2-category of positive theories and $mathfrak{TypeSpaceFunc}$ is the 2-category of type space functors. We give a precise definition of interpretations for positive logic, which will be the 1-cells in $mathfrak{CohTheory}$. The 2-cells are definable homomorphisms. The 2-equivalence restricts to a duality of categories, making precise the philosophy that a theory is `the same' as the collection of its type spaces (i.e. its type space functor).

In characterising those functors that arise as type space functors, we find that they are specific instances of (coherent) hyperdoctrines. This connects two different schools of thought on the logical structure of a theory.

The key ingredient, the Deligne completeness theorem, arises from topos theory, where positive theories have been studied under the name of coherent theories.

The characterization of phase dynamics in coupled oscillators offers insights into fundamental phenomena in complex systems. To describe the collective dynamics in the oscillatory system, order parameters are often used but are insufficient for identifying more specific behaviors. We therefore propose a topological approach that constructs quantitative features describing the phase evolution of oscillators. Here, the phase data are mapped into a high-dimensional space at each time point, and topological features describing the shape of the data are subsequently extracted from the mapped points. We extend these features to time-variant topological features by considering the evolution time, which serves as an additional dimension in the topological-feature space. The resulting time-variant features provide crucial insights into the time evolution of phase dynamics. We combine these features with the machine learning kernel method to characterize the multicluster synchronized dynamics at a very early stage of the evolution. Furthermore, we demonstrate the usefulness of our method for qualitatively explaining chimera states, which are states of stably coexisting coherent and incoherent groups in systems of identical phase oscillators. The experimental results show that our method is generally better than those using order parameters, especially if only data on the early-stage dynamics are available.

Given a standard graded polynomial ring over a commutative Noetherian ring $A$, we prove that the cohomological dimension and the height of the ideals defining any of its Veronese subrings are equal. This result is due to Ogus when $A$ is a field of characteristic zero, and follows from a result of Peskine and Szpiro when $A$ is a field of positive characteristic; our result applies, for example, when $A$ is the ring of integers.

In this work we study the dynamical behavior Tonelli Lagrangian systems defined on the tangent bundle of the torus $mathbb{T}^2=mathbb{R}^2 / mathbb{Z}^2$. We prove that the Lagrangian flow restricted to a high energy level $ E_L^{-1}(c)$ (i.e $ c> c_0(L)$) has positive topological entropy if the flow satisfies the Kupka-Smale propriety in $ E_L^{-1}(c)$ (i.e, all closed orbit with energy $c$ are hyperbolic or elliptic and all heteroclinic intersections are transverse on $E_L^{-1}(c)$). The proof requires the use of well-known results in Aubry-Mather's Theory.

We address the problem of handling provenance information in ELHr ontologies. We consider a setting recently introduced for ontology-based data access, based on semirings and extending classical data provenance, in which ontology axioms are annotated with provenance tokens. A consequence inherits the provenance of the axioms involved in deriving it, yielding a provenance polynomial as an annotation. We analyse the semantics for the ELHr case and show that the presence of conjunctions poses various difficulties for handling provenance, some of which are mitigated by assuming multiplicative idempotency of the semiring. Under this assumption, we study three problems: ontology completion with provenance, computing the set of relevant axioms for a consequence, and query answering.

Histopathology is a reflection of the molecular changes and provides prognostic phenotypes representing the disease progression. In this study, we introduced feature scores generated from hematoxylin and eosin histology images based on deep learning (DL) models developed for prostate pathology. We demonstrated that these feature scores were significantly prognostic for time to event endpoints (biochemical recurrence and cancer-specific survival) and had simultaneously molecular biologic associations to relevant genomic alterations and molecular subtypes using already trained DL models that were not previously exposed to the datasets of the current study. Further, we discussed the potential of such feature scores to improve the current tumor grading system and the challenges that are associated with tumor heterogeneity and the development of prognostic models from histology images. Our findings uncover the potential of feature scores from histology images as digital biomarkers in precision medicine and as an expanding utility for digital pathology.

We develop a supervised machine learning algorithm that is able to learn topological phases for finite condensed matter systems from bulk data in real lattice space. The algorithm employs diagonalization in real space together with any supervised learning algorithm to learn topological phases through an eigenvector ensembling procedure. We combine our algorithm with decision trees and random forests to successfully recover topological phase diagrams of Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) models from bulk lattice data in real space and show how the Shannon information entropy of ensembles of lattice eigenvectors can be used to retrieve a signal detailing how topological information is distributed in the bulk. The discovery of Shannon information entropy signals associated with topological phase transitions from the analysis of data from several thousand SSH systems illustrates how model explainability in machine learning can advance the research of exotic quantum materials with properties that may power future technological applications such as qubit engineering for quantum computing.

Domain of mathematical logic in computers is dominated by automated theorem provers (ATP) and interactive theorem provers (ITP). Both of these are hard to access by AI from the human-imitation approach: ATPs often use human-unfriendly logical foundations while ITPs are meant for formalizing existing proofs rather than problem solving. We aim to create a simple human-friendly logical system for mathematical problem solving. We picked the case study of Euclidean geometry as it can be easily visualized, has simple logic, and yet potentially offers many high-school problems of various difficulty levels. To make the environment user friendly, we abandoned strict logic required by ITPs, allowing to infer topological facts from pictures. We present our system for Euclidean geometry, together with a graphical application GeoLogic, similar to GeoGebra, which allows users to interactively study and prove properties about the geometrical setup.

Similarity measure, also called information measure, is a concept used to distinguish different objects. It has been studied from different contexts by employing mathematical, psychological, and fuzzy approaches. Image steganography is the art of hiding secret data into an image in such a way that it cannot be detected by an intruder. In image steganography, hiding secret data in the plain or non-edge regions of the image is significant due to the high similarity and redundancy of the pixels in their neighborhood. However, the similarity measure of the neighboring pixels, i.e., their proximity in color space, is perceptual rather than mathematical. This paper proposes an interval type 2 fuzzy logic system (IT2 FLS) to determine the similarity between the neighboring pixels by involving an instinctive human perception through a rule-based approach. The pixels of the image having high similarity values, calculated using the proposed IT2 FLS similarity measure, are selected for embedding via the least significant bit (LSB) method. We term the proposed procedure of steganography as IT2 FLS LSB method. Moreover, we have developed two more methods, namely, type 1 fuzzy logic system based least significant bits (T1FLS LSB) and Euclidean distance based similarity measures for least significant bit (SM LSB) steganographic methods. Experimental simulations were conducted for a collection of images and quality index metrics, such as PSNR, UQI, and SSIM are used. All the three steganographic methods are applied on datasets and the quality metrics are calculated. The obtained stego images and results are shown and thoroughly compared to determine the efficacy of the IT2 FLS LSB method. Finally, we have done a comparative analysis of the proposed approach with the existing well-known steganographic methods to show the effectiveness of our proposed steganographic method.

Neural networks have opened up many new opportunities to utilize remotely sensed images in meteorology. Common applications include image classification, e.g., to determine whether an image contains a tropical cyclone, and image translation, e.g., to emulate radar imagery for satellites that only have passive channels. However, there are yet many open questions regarding the use of neural networks in meteorology, such as best practices for evaluation, tuning and interpretation. This article highlights several strategies and practical considerations for neural network development that have not yet received much attention in the meteorological community, such as the concept of effective receptive fields, underutilized meteorological performance measures, and methods for NN interpretation, such as synthetic experiments and layer-wise relevance propagation. We also consider the process of neural network interpretation as a whole, recognizing it as an iterative scientist-driven discovery process, and breaking it down into individual steps that researchers can take. Finally, while most work on neural network interpretation in meteorology has so far focused on networks for image classification tasks, we expand the focus to also include networks for image translation.

[IMAGE-1] First of all: No. Why would a suddenly single dad to traumatized young children leave said shocked and distressed kids with his new fiancée, who is also the sole survivor of her own massive childhood trauma?…

Growing up, Luke Parker played sports.…

A method, system and computer program product for generating answers to questions. In one embodiment, the method comprises receiving an input query, decomposing the input query into a plurality of different subqueries, and conducting a search in one or more data sources to identify at least one candidate answer to each of the subqueries. A ranking function is applied to each of the candidate answers to determine a ranking for each of these candidate answers; and for each of the subqueries, one of the candidate answers to the subquery is selected based on this ranking. A logical synthesis component is applied to synthesize a candidate answer for the input query from the selected the candidate answers to the subqueries. In one embodiment, the procedure applied by the logical synthesis component to synthesize the candidate answer for the input query is determined from the input query.

Disclosed are soft, high refractive index, acrylic device materials. The materials contain a copolymeric additive for glistening resistance.

The invention in particular has as an object detecting incompatibility between equipment items of a on-board system. A logic interface associated with one equipment item comprises at least one input while a logic interface associated with another equipment item comprises at least one output. The input and the output are connected. After a minimal data definition level associated with the input and a data definition level associated with the output have been obtained (505), the said minimal data definition level associated with the input is compared (515) with the said data definition level associated with the output. Following this comparison, if the said minimal data definition level associated with the input is lower than the said data definition level associated with the output, an alarm indicating an incompatibility of these two equipment items is generated (545).

A logical operations functional block for an execution unit of a processor includes a first input data link for a first operand and a second input data link for a second operand. The execution unit includes a register connected to an error correction code detection unit. The logical operations functional block includes a look-up table configured to receive an error correction code syndrome from the error correction code detection unit. The logical operations functional block also includes a multiplexer configured to receive an output signal from the look-up table at a first input and the first operand at a second input, wherein an output of the multiplexer is coupled to the first input data link of a logical functional unit.

A sine wave generator for a Direct Digital Synthesizer (DDS) converts a digital phase input into a digital sine wave output. Sine values and slopes are stored in read-only memory (ROM) for coarse upper phase bits in a first quadrant. A quadrant folder and phase splitter reflects and inverts values from the first quadrant to generate amplitudes for all four quadrants. Each sine value and slope is stored for a range of lower phase bits. A Delta bit separates upper and lower phase bits. Delta conditionally inverts the lower phase bits, the sine value, and the final polarity. A reduced AND logic array multiplies the slope by the conditionally inverted lower phase bits. A reconstructed ADD logic array then adds the conditionally inverted sine value. The conditionally inverted polarity is added to generate the final sine value. Sine generation logic is streamlined with conditional inversion based on the Delta bit.

A data collection unit obtains physiological data from a subject interface on a subject. The subject interface can be connected to the data collection unit. When the subject interface is connected to the data collection unit, subject interface contacts on the subject interface make contact with data collection unit contacts on the data collection unit. Some of the data collection unit contacts are for communicating physiological data from the subject interface to the data collection unit. Some of the contacts are for powering the data collection unit upon the subject interface being connected to the data collection unit and for powering down the data collection unit upon the subject interface being disconnected from the data collection unit.

A method and apparatus for including in a processor instructions for performing logical-comparison and branch support operations on packed or unpacked data. In one embodiment, instruction decode logic decodes instructions for an execution unit to operate on packed data elements including logical comparisons. A register file including 128-bit packed data registers stores packed single-precision floating point (SPFP) and packed integer data elements. The logical comparisons may include comparison of SPFP data elements and comparison of integer data elements and setting at least one bit to indicate the results. Based on these comparisons, branch support actions are taken. Such branch support actions may include setting the at least one bit, which in turn may be utilized by a branching unit in response to a branch instruction. Alternatively, the branch support actions may include branching to an indicated target code location.

A method and apparatus for including in a processor instructions for performing logical-comparison and branch support operations on packed or unpacked data. In one embodiment, instruction decode logic decodes instructions for an execution unit to operate on packed data elements including logical comparisons. A register file including 128-bit packed data registers stores packed single-precision floating point (SPFP) and packed integer data elements. The logical comparisons may include comparison of SPFP data elements and comparison of integer data elements and setting at least one bit to indicate the results. Based on these comparisons, branch support actions are taken. Such branch support actions may include setting the at least one bit, which in turn may be utilized by a branching unit in response to a branch instruction. Alternatively, the branch support actions may include branching to an indicated target code location.

A method and apparatus for including in a processor instructions for performing logical-comparison and branch support operations on packed or unpacked data. In one embodiment, instruction decode logic decodes instructions for an execution unit to operate on packed data elements including logical comparisons. A register file including 128-bit packed data registers stores packed single-precision floating point (SPFP) and packed integer data elements. The logical comparisons may include comparison of SPFP data elements and comparison of integer data elements and setting at least one bit to indicate the results. Based on these comparisons, branch support actions are taken. Such branch support actions may include setting the at least one bit, which in turn may be utilized by a branching unit in response to a branch instruction. Alternatively, the branch support actions may include branching to an indicated target code location.

A computing section is provided with a plurality of computing units and correlatively stores entries of configuration information that describes configurations of the plurality of computing units with physical configuration numbers that represent the entries of configuration information and executes a computation in a configuration corresponding to a designated physical configuration number. A status management section designates a physical configuration number corresponding to a status to which the computing section needs to advance the next time for the computing section and outputs the status to which the computing section needs to advance the next time as a logical status number that uniquely identifies the status to which the computing section needs to advance the next time in an object code. A determination section determines whether or not the computing section has stored an entry of configuration information corresponding to the status to which the computing section needs to advance the next time based on the logical status number that is output from the status management section. A rewriting section correlatively stores the entry of the configuration information and a physical configuration number corresponding to the entry of the configuration information in the computing section when the determination section determines that the computing section has not stored the entry of configuration information corresponding to the status to which the computing section needs to advance the next time.

A hypervisor and one or more guest operating systems resident in a data processing system and hosted by the hypervisor are configured to selectively enable or disable branch prediction logic through separate hypervisor-mode and guest-mode instructions. By doing so, different branch prediction strategies may be employed for different operating systems and user applications hosted thereby to provide finer grained optimization of the branch prediction logic for different operating scenarios.

In a computer system that includes multiple nodes and multiple logical partitions, a dynamic partition manager computes current memory affinity and potential memory affinity to help determine whether a reallocation of resources between nodes may improve memory affinity for a logical partition or for the computer system. If so, the reallocation of resources is performed so memory affinity for the logical partition or computer system is improved. Memory affinity is computed relative to the physical layout of the resources according to a hardware domain hierarchy that includes a plurality of primary domains and a plurality of secondary domains.

Various systems and methods are described for configuring a logical data storage container. In one embodiment, an instruction to perform an operation to modify an attribute of the logical data storage container that is an abstraction of a plurality of pertinent storage containers is received. A translated instruction to perform a sub-operation associated with the operation is transmitted to each of a number of the plurality of pertinent storage containers. A level of success of the performing of the operation on the logical data storage container is detected based on a comparison of a threshold value to a level of success of the performing of the sub-operation on each of the number of the plurality of pertinent storage containers. A report of the detected level of success is communicated.

An apparatus and method for determining a signal quality of an input signal representing a repetitious phenomena derived from at least one sensor connected to a patient is provided. A detector receives the input signal and determines data representing the repetitious phenomena from the input signal for use in determining at least one patient parameter. A measurement processor is electrically coupled to the detector that determines a first signal quality value by identifying at least one feature of the repetitious phenomena data and compares the at least one feature of a first set of the determined repetitious phenomena data with a second set of the determined repetitious phenomena data to determine a feature variability value and using the feature variability value to determine a stability value representative of the quality of the input signal.

A method and system are provided for determining a condition of a selected region of epithelial and stromal tissue in the human breast. A plurality of measuring electrodes are used to measure the tissue and transepithelial electropotential of breast tissue. Surface electropotential and impedance are also measured at one or more locations. An agent may be introduced into the region of tissue to enhance electrophysiological characteristics. The condition of the tissue is determined based on the electropotential and impedance profile at different depths of the epithelium, stroma, tissue, or organ, together with an estimate of the functional changes in the epithelium due to altered ion transport and electrophysiological properties of the tissue. Devices for practicing the disclosed methods are also provided.

A method for providing a biological logic gate comprising the following steps: subjecting a bistable autoregulatory gene network (GRN) to a noisy background; identifying adjustable parameters of the GRN; using logical stochastic resonance to determine values of the GRN parameters which result in the GRN performing different logic gate functions; and setting the parameter values of the GRN such that the GRN performs a first logic gate function.

A method for controlling a centrifuge blood component separation system for separating components of a blood product, the separation system comprising a centrifuge and a separation bag and at least one transfer bag. The method comprises selecting a nominal hematocrit value such that an actual hematocrit value is expected to be less than said nominal hematocrit; centrifuging a separation bag containing a volume of composite liquid so as to cause the sedimentation of at least a first component and a second component; transferring some of the first component to a first transfer bag; detecting time of passage of a red blood cell interface at a pre-selected location in the separation bag; and adjusting a predicted processing time based on the time of passage of the red blood cell interface.

A gripper unit for handling a vessel for receiving biological material is proposed, inter alia. The vessel has a lid which can assume an open position and a closed position. The gripper unit comprises a gripper for gripping and releasing the vessel, and a lid holder, for holding a lid in a defined position in relation to the vessel. The defined position is an open position of the lid.

Techniques are described for implementing one or more logical routers within a single physical routing device. These logical routers, as referred to herein, are logically isolated in the sense that they achieve operational and organizational isolation within the routing device without requiring the use of additional or redundant hardware, e.g., additional hardware-based routing controllers. The routing device may, for example, include a computing platform, and a plurality of software process executing within the computing platform, wherein the software processes operate as logical routers. The routing device may include a forwarding component shared by the logical routers to forward network packets received from a network in accordance with the forwarding tables.

A device for the collection and processing of information relating to the exposure of one or more persons to one or more products of chemical or biological origin has: at least one coded sensor for automatic or semi-automatic identification of a person likely to be exposed to at least one product,at least one coded sensor for the collection of information relating to the handling of at least one product by the person likely to be exposed to the product,at least one sensor for validating the information collected by the identification and collection sensors,at least one module for reading at least one coded sensor, anda module for processing information collected by the sensors.

An apparatus for sampling and storing biological fluids from a human or animal subject is provided. In one embodiment of the present disclosure, the apparatus includes a main body, lancet carrier or hub, lancet, lancet trigger, capillary tube, and sample compartments for collecting and storing dried blood and other bodily fluids. The lancet hub supports a lancet and provides for moving the lancet longitudinally between a first retracted position and a second extended position. The device includes a capillary tube having an internal diameter sized to draw and retain fluid from a contacted source using capillary action. The main body of the apparatus further includes a sample compartment for holding sampling and storage materials. In at least one embodiment of the present disclosure, the sample compartment can be accessed by lifting sample compartment lid. Also included is a new “fan” or “daisy” shaped collection material format for use in collecting and preserving samples.

A system and method for mounting a section onto a substrate, the system comprising: a fluid channel including: a fluid channel inlet that receives the section, processed from a bulk embedded sample by a sample sectioning module positioned proximal the fluid channel inlet, a section-mounting region downstream of the fluid channel inlet, and a fluid channel outlet downstream of the section-mounting region; a reservoir in fluid communication with the fluid channel outlet; and a manifold, fluidly coupled to the reservoir, that delivers fluid from the reservoir to the fluid channel inlet, thereby transmitting fluid flow that drives delivery of the section from the fluid channel inlet toward the section-mounting region.