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A review of the literature on seed fate in whitebark pine and the life history traits of Clark's nutcracker and pine squirrels

Whitebark pine is a critical component of subalpine ecosystems in western North America, where it contributes to biodiversity and ecosystem function and in some communities is considered a keystone species. Whitebark pine is undergoing rangewide population declines attributed to the combined effects of mountain pine beetle, white pine blister rust, and fire suppression. The restoration and maintenance of whitebark pine populations require an understanding of all aspects of seed fate. In this paper, we review the literature on seed dispersal in whitebark pine. Clark's nutcracker, pine squirrels, and scatter-hoarding rodents are all known to influence whitebark pine seed fate and ultimately affect the ability of whitebark pine populations to regenerate. We also provide a general overview of the natural histories of the most influential species involved with whitebark pine seed fate: Clark's nutcracker and the pine squirrel.




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Cordwood energy systems for community heating in Alaska--an overview.

Wood has become an important energy alternative in Alaska, particularly in rural areas where liquid fuel costs can be substantial. In some cases, wood fuel is readily available to communities, increasing the attractiveness of wood energy. Wood energy systems in rural Alaska can also lead to employment gains as well as benefits to local cash economies. Many Alaska villages are now considering wood as a fuel source for community heating, several have completed feasibility studies, and others are moving forward with design and construction activities. Cordwood is readily available in many regions of Alaska, although not always in commercial quantities. However, for many small-scale applications, efficient cordwood systems could be a viable energy option. In this paper, we provide a qualitative review of factors such as wood fuel availability, cordwood system size, wood fuel cost, wood quality, labor, fuel drying, and underground piping. Other general observations are noted, based on case studies of operating cordwood systems in Alaska.




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Ecosystem services as a framework for forest stewardship: Deschutes National Forest overview.

The concept of ecosystem services has emerged as a way of framing and describing the comprehensive set of benefits that people receive from nature. These include commonly recognized goods like timber and fresh water, as well as processes like climate regulation and water purification, and aesthetic, spiritual, and cultural benefits. The USDA Forest Service has been exploring use of the framework of ecosystem services as a way to describe goods and services provided by federal lands and attract and build partnerships with stakeholders and nongovernmental organizations. More recently, the agency has sought place-based example applications of the ecosystem service framework to explore its possible use as a tool to guide forest management, and better illustrate the concept for policymakers, managers, and potential national forest partners.




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Overview and example application of the Landscape Treatment Designer

The Landscape Treatment Designer (LTD) is a multicriteria spatial prioritization and optimization system to help design and explore landscape fuel treatment scenarios. The program fills a gap between fire model programs such as FlamMap, and planning systems such as ArcFuels, in the fuel treatment planning process. The LTD uses inputs on spatial treatment objectives, activity constraints, and treatment thresholds, and then identifies optimal fuel treatment locations with respect to the input parameters.




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Gathering in the city: an annotated bibliography and review of the literature about human-plant interactions in urban ecosystems

The past decade has seen resurgence in interest in gathering wild plants and fungi in cities. In addition to gathering by individuals, dozens of groups have emerged in U.S., Canadian, and European cities to facilitate access to nontimber forest products (NTFPs), particularly fruits and nuts, in public and private spaces. Recent efforts within cities to encourage public orchards and food forests, and to incorporate more fruit and nut trees into street tree planting programs indicate a growing recognition among planners that gathering is an important urban activity.




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ArcFuels10 system overview

Fire behavior modeling and geospatial analyses can provide tremendous insight for land managers as they grapple with the complex problems frequently encountered in wildfire risk assessments and fire and fuels management planning. Fuel management often is a particularly complicated process in which the benefits and potential impacts of fuel treatments need to be demonstrated in the context of land management goals and public expectations. The fuel treatment planning process is complicated by the lack of data assimilation among fire behavior models and weak linkages to geographic information systems (GIS), corporate data, and desktop office software. ArcFuels10 is a streamlined fuel management planning and wildfire risk assessment system that creates a trans-scale (stand to large landscape) interface to apply various forest growth and fire behavior models within an ArcGIS platform to design and test fuel treatment alternatives. The new version of ArcFuels has been implemented on Citrix at the Forest Service Enterprise Production Data Center, eliminating the need for desktop GIS, improving connectivity to the corporate geospatial databases housed at the data centers, and enabling sharing of information among Forest Service employees. This overview introduces ArcFuels10 and the tools available within the system.




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Leading Mount St. Helens ecologist available at volcano for media interviews on May 16

On Wednesday, May 16, research ecologist Charlie Crisafulli will be available for field-based media interviews at Mount St. Helens, the volcano that erupted catastrophically 38 years ago this month.




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Gogglebox star slammed by viewers over 'racist' impression

Gogglebox star Mary Killen has been slammed by some viewers over her impression of the North Korean accent




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MIT Sloan Management Review

MIT Sloan Management Review leads the discourse among academic researchers, business executives and other influential thought leaders about advances in management practice that are transforming how people lead and innovate. MIT SMR disseminates new management research and innovative ideas so...




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FDA review of e-cigarettes is as critical as ever – any delay related to COVID-19 must be brief

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 1, 2020 – After years of harmful delays by the FDA, a federal judge last July set a May 12, 2020, deadline for e-cigarette manufacturers to apply to the FDA and demonstrate a public health benefit in order to keep their products...




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Astra Pro with Gutenberg Review – Practical Application

At 3.7 Designs we have an array of strategies we use to solve business problems. For example, when it comes to redesigning a website we might recommend recommend a completely custom design that starts with a design discovery engagement. Typically this process can take three to six months with ample time upfront to research the […]

The post Astra Pro with Gutenberg Review – Practical Application appeared first on Psychology of Web Design | 3.7 Blog.




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Traumatic brain injury in homeless and marginally housed individuals: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Homelessness is a global public health concern, and traumatic brain injury (TBI) could represent an underappreciated factor in the health trajectories of homeless and marginally housed individuals. We aimed to evaluate the lifetime prevalence of TBI in this population, and to summarise findings on TBI incidence and the association between TBI and health-related or functioning-related outcomes.




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UNI football position preview: Will McElvain entrenched as No. 1 quarterback

CEDAR FALLS — A four-way quarterback competition dominated the preseason headlines for Northern Iowa last August. Walk-on redshirt freshman Will McElvain emerged as the competition’s...




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Iowa State 2020 position preview: QB Brock Purdy has NFL Draft hype

AMES — Brock Purdy has rocketed to the top of the all-time best quarterbacks list at Iowa State. And he hasn’t even started his junior season. Purdy set 18 game, season and career...



  • Iowa State Cyclones

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Book review: Orientation & Identity

Interviews and background stories covered in this book: Orientation & Identity by Erwin K. Bauer.




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Book Review: The Cheese Monkeys

The Cheese Monkeys is the coming of age story of a teen boy (who we only know by his nickname, “Happy”.) As he enters a midwest state school to study art in the late 50’s. First off, I’ll admit that I’m a fan of coming of age stories. All the good ones usually follow a protagonist who […]




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View Mac Calendar from Command Line

As someone that loves using UI tools, I do pride myself in learning how to accomplish the same feats from command line. Don’t believe me? Check out my Command Line tutorials section — I guarantee you’ll learn quite a bit. Recently I learned that you can view basic calendars from command line with the cal […]

The post View Mac Calendar from Command Line appeared first on David Walsh Blog.




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Why Buy? Canon m50: A Real Review

Have you dreamed of a simple yet feature-rich portable camera? Something that’s a step up from compact cameras but still small enough to carry around in your day bag? A camera that will deliver the image quality of an entry-level DSLR without the bulk? Oh, and still be affordable? The Canon m50 mirrorless camera just might be your dream come Continue Reading

The post Why Buy? Canon m50: A Real Review appeared first on Photodoto.




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HTC One Review: Top Of The Premium Pops?

UPDATE: After spending an extensive amount of time with the HTC One we have added our thoughts regarding the handset’s battery life. Click here to find out what we reckon. The HTC One is the latest Android handset from the Taiwanese manufacturer and is aimed firmly at the flagship end of the market, featuring a … Continue reading HTC One Review: Top Of The Premium Pops?




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Book Review: Love You Hard by Abby Maslin

This book packs a lot of wisdom. You’ll learn about aphasia; you’ll understand ambiguous loss; you’ll follow Abby down dark hallways and into sunlit rooms and learn what it means to own a life built on raw truth.





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2010 – 2019: Decade in Review

As the decade comes to a close, I thought it would be interesting to look back on the past 10 years. So, rather than posting my regular year in review, here’s an abbreviated trip through the past 10 years of my life, both personal and professional. 2010 The decade started for me in an almost […]

The post 2010 – 2019: Decade in Review appeared first on MOR10.




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The Chart Guide v4.0 - Interview & Giveaway

Michiel Dullaert, data visualization expert and trainer from the Netherlands, has updated his Chart Guide poster to version 4! A free PDF is available for download from his website, and introduces a new category, 19 new charts and 4 extra design tips. You can also purchase a full-size printed poster version.

As the November 2019 Giveaway, I have a pair of Chart Guide posters, that will be shipped to one lucky winner. That way you get one for yourself, and one you can give to a friend or coworker.

Register HERE by November 30, 2019 at 11:59pm CT, and the winner will be randomly chosen on December 1st!

This poster shows 84 charts to choose from and includes 16 chart design tips to help you make the Perfect Chart. The poster is available as a big poster or you can download the PDF file for free. Let this ChartGuide poster help you choose and design your Perfect Chart.

You can see his complete write-up about the new version HERE. I was able to ask Michiel a few interview questions about developing the posters:

Cool Infographics: What’s your background and how did you get into visualizing data?

Michiel Dullaert: Years ago I have been working in the boardgame and puzzle industry. Part of my work was discovering new boardgames and puzzles and introduce them to the market. I was working for two different companies, both at the time that a new product of theirs really changed the market. For the boardgame industry I worked for the company that introduced a new type of boardgame (the game of Catan) that made playing boardgames a popular hobby. After that, I worked for a company that created puzzle magazines at the time the Sudoku puzzles was introduced. And here the same happened again, a new type of puzzle that changed the way people would puzzle and talk about puzzles. Both were very nice jobs, with a lot of enthusiastic conversations with customers about new products.

In both companies I was working in the product development. I always had a large personal interest in the data behind the products. So it felt logic to do more with data, and I changed careers. I started working for a large company as an analyst. And it was not long that I found out that my colleagues were not interested in my reports. Although the reports contained interesting information it was shown in large tables and busy charts. People seemed to be not interested and if the looked into the numbers, they did not seem to understand them. My work did not seem to matter. The contrast between my previous jobs and the work as an analyst could not have been bigger. At that time I decided I would try to find a way to make people as enthusiastic about data as they were about boardgames and Sudoku puzzles. 

The first step was reading books on the topic of data visualization. Because I was working in the business intelligence field, the most logic choice were the books of Stephen Few. I bought them all and a whole new world opened for me. When Few was in the Netherlands to give a course I felt very lucky I could join. The workshops inspired me to learn more on this topic. So I bought more books and the next year I joined a class of Alberto Caïro. This gave me multiple perspectives on the same topic. The things I learned were applied to my work, and I was getting more and more responses on my visualizations. People actually started to read and understand them. 

My manager asked me to explain my choices in visualizations to my colleagues, so they could learn from me. And then I discovered how great it is to teach about data visualisation. I met a couple of UX designers and they inspired me learn more about that topic and to get an UX certification. The knowledge I gained in learning UX helped me in developing my own perspective on good data visualization. And in my workshop I try to inspire others to create such. For these workshops I wanted an overview of charts. Although there were already some great overviews, none of them had the point of view I was teaching in class. So I decided to design my own. That’s how Chart.Guide started. 

Cool Infographics: Who is the Chart Guide poster intended for?

Michiel Dullaert: The website and the posters are intended for everyone who makes charts. For me it does not matter if you are working as a data-journalist or a data scientist, a infographic designer, project manager or a financial analyst. As long as you need help or inspiration when making charts or tables, Chart.Guide can help you. Online in the form of the website and offline in the form of the poster. Because I want to inspire as many people as possible I made the PDF of the poster free to download. I know that the poster is used in business departments, newsrooms and in school classrooms.

Cool Infographics: What was your design process for the poster?

Michiel Dullaert: The main source for updates to the poster or website, is the conversations I have with people I teach or work with. If they have a need for certain chart types, or make design mistakes, I try to add that topic. 

DPG Chart Chooser

The first poster edition (picture DPG Chart Chooser) was just a collection of charts I created for my students. For each chart a few words on when to use the chart and, more important, it gave advice on what charts were not recommended. On the second edition (the first under the Chart.Guide brand) I added chart design tips.  The reason, I saw people choose a good chart but then mess up the design. Last year, I got questions about maps, so I decided to add them on poster edition 4. 

Rearranging the layout of the Chart Guide

The design process starts with insight I get from conversations I am having. Next step is cutting the old poster and rearranging everything. (see picture ChartGuide rearrange) now, will lead to more insights on the poster in the future. Although it make take some time to transform everything to the screen or paper. I still need to find some time to explain on the website why some charts are “not recommended”. 

Cool Infographics: You asked your followers to help choose the design of the new poster. How did that go?

Michiel Dullaert: The poster is made to help people. So it seems to be logic to give them a role in the design process. As a UX designer I like to test my designs before releasing them. Most of these tests are done in class, because I like to observe the users in how they use the new design. The online voting was suggestion of a student. It did give me a lot of useful feedback. Especially when people wrote a lot of text explaining their choice. For future editions I will do the same.

Cool Infographics: How can people follow you for updates?

Michiel Dullaert: People who have downloaded the PDF will get an email when a new poster is available, or when something interesting is added to the website. For this and more chart related inspiration, they can follow me on Twitter: @Chart_Guide or on facebook: /ChartGuide1.

This helpful reference guide is one of over 25 FREE data visualization guides I maintain links to in the Cool Infographics Tools pages. See them all on the DataViz Reference Guides page, and let me know if I’m missing any.




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10 Things To Do Before Any Video Interview

We’re all working from home, and that include job interviews, news interviews, class lectures, webinars, presentations to customers and even just business meetings. The 10 Things to Do Before Any Video Interview infographic from Kickresume is a great last-minute checklist before you turn on your webcam!

In the end, you can take this infographic as a checklist. You can use it to prepare for your job interview or any other video conference call.

And, oh boy, are we going to make many more of those. Sure, it took a global pandemic for companies to recognize the value of working from home but now there’s no going back. Video conference calls are here to stay. (I personally hate it but even I should probably get used to it. Damn.)

Anyway, good luck at your job interview!

I would have preferred more visual elements, but I like that this is a tightly focused infographic with a clear, useful message to a broad audience. This is one of the best uses for an infographic: an informative topic, related to the industry of the publishing company, with a popular, trending topic. This design checks all the boxes.

Designers have to remember that the infographic image file will often be shared by itself, so it always helps to include a few more thins in the footer:

  • The Infographic Landing Page URL (not just the company home page). This will help readers find the full infographic and the article that went along with it. Don’t make people search for it on your website.

  • A copyright or Creative Commons statement is always a good idea when you publishing an infographic




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Astra Pro with Gutenberg Review – Practical Application

At 3.7 Designs we have an array of strategies we use to solve business problems. For example, when it comes to redesigning a website we might recommend recommend a completely custom design that starts with a design discovery engagement. Typically this process can take three to six months with ample time upfront to research the […]

The post Astra Pro with Gutenberg Review – Practical Application appeared first on Psychology of Web Design | 3.7 Blog.




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Abelardo Morell, Camera Obscura: Early Morning View of the East Side of Midtown Manhattan

Abelardo Morell
Camera Obscura: Early Morning View of the East Side of Midtown Manhattan, , 2014
Website - AbelardoMorell.net

Abelardo Morell was born in Havana, Cuba in 1948. He immigrated to the United States with his parents in 1962. Morell received his undergraduate degree in 1977 from Bowdoin College and an MFA from The Yale University School of Art in 1981. In 1997 he received an honorary degree from Bowdoin College.

His publications include a photographic illustration of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1998) by Dutton Children’s Books, A Camera in a Room (1995) by Smithsonian Press, A Book of Books (2002) and Camera Obscura (2004) by Bulfinch Press and Abelardo Morell (2005), published by Phaidon Press. Recent publications include a limited edition book by The Museum of Modern Art in New York of his Cliché Verre images with a text by Oliver Sacks.

His work has been collected and shown in many galleries, institutions and museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Art Museum in New York, The Chicago Art Institute, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Houston Museum of Art, The Boston Museum of Fine Art, The Victoria & Albert Museum and over seventy other museums in the United States and abroad. A retrospective of his work organized jointly by the Art Institute of Chicago, The Getty in Los Angeles and The High Museum in Atlanta closed in May 2014 after a year of travel. Abelardo will be having his first show at the Edwynn Houk Gallery in New York opening October 23, 2014 and will run until December 20, 2014 featuring a selection of new pictures.





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Review: Alberto Cairo, How Charts Lie

Alberto Cairo’s new book, How Charts Lie, takes readers on a tour of how charts are used and misused, and teaches them how to not be misled. It’s a useful book for both makers and consumers of charts, in the news, business, and pretty much anywhere else. When Alberto started talking about the title on […]




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Poisson Dixmier-Moeglin equivalence from a topological point of view. (arXiv:1908.06542v2 [math.RA] UPDATED)

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.




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A Chance Constraint Predictive Control and Estimation Framework for Spacecraft Descent with Field Of View Constraints. (arXiv:2005.03245v1 [math.OC])

Recent studies of optimization methods and GNC of spacecraft near small bodies focusing on descent, landing, rendezvous, etc., with key safety constraints such as line-of-sight conic zones and soft landings have shown promising results; this paper considers descent missions to an asteroid surface with a constraint that consists of an onboard camera and asteroid surface markers while using a stochastic convex MPC law. An undermodeled asteroid gravity and spacecraft technology inspired measurement model is established to develop the constraint. Then a computationally light stochastic Linear Quadratic MPC strategy is presented to keep the spacecraft in satisfactory field of view of the surface markers while trajectory tracking, employing chance based constraints and up-to-date estimation uncertainty from navigation. The estimation uncertainty giving rise to the tightened constraints is particularly addressed. Results suggest robust tracking performance across a variety of trajectories.




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Transfer Learning for EEG-Based Brain-Computer Interfaces: A Review of Progress Made Since 2016. (arXiv:2004.06286v3 [cs.HC] UPDATED)

A brain-computer interface (BCI) enables a user to communicate with a computer directly using brain signals. Electroencephalograms (EEGs) used in BCIs are weak, easily contaminated by interference and noise, non-stationary for the same subject, and varying across different subjects and sessions. Therefore, it is difficult to build a generic pattern recognition model in an EEG-based BCI system that is optimal for different subjects, during different sessions, for different devices and tasks. Usually, a calibration session is needed to collect some training data for a new subject, which is time consuming and user unfriendly. Transfer learning (TL), which utilizes data or knowledge from similar or relevant subjects/sessions/devices/tasks to facilitate learning for a new subject/session/device/task, is frequently used to reduce the amount of calibration effort. This paper reviews journal publications on TL approaches in EEG-based BCIs in the last few years, i.e., since 2016. Six paradigms and applications -- motor imagery, event-related potentials, steady-state visual evoked potentials, affective BCIs, regression problems, and adversarial attacks -- are considered. For each paradigm/application, we group the TL approaches into cross-subject/session, cross-device, and cross-task settings and review them separately. Observations and conclusions are made at the end of the paper, which may point to future research directions.




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A Review of Computer Vision Methods in Network Security. (arXiv:2005.03318v1 [cs.NI])

Network security has become an area of significant importance more than ever as highlighted by the eye-opening numbers of data breaches, attacks on critical infrastructure, and malware/ransomware/cryptojacker attacks that are reported almost every day. Increasingly, we are relying on networked infrastructure and with the advent of IoT, billions of devices will be connected to the internet, providing attackers with more opportunities to exploit. Traditional machine learning methods have been frequently used in the context of network security. However, such methods are more based on statistical features extracted from sources such as binaries, emails, and packet flows.

On the other hand, recent years witnessed a phenomenal growth in computer vision mainly driven by the advances in the area of convolutional neural networks. At a glance, it is not trivial to see how computer vision methods are related to network security. Nonetheless, there is a significant amount of work that highlighted how methods from computer vision can be applied in network security for detecting attacks or building security solutions. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey of such work under three topics; i) phishing attempt detection, ii) malware detection, and iii) traffic anomaly detection. Next, we review a set of such commercial products for which public information is available and explore how computer vision methods are effectively used in those products. Finally, we discuss existing research gaps and future research directions, especially focusing on how network security research community and the industry can leverage the exponential growth of computer vision methods to build much secure networked systems.




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Encoding in the Dark Grand Challenge: An Overview. (arXiv:2005.03315v1 [eess.IV])

A big part of the video content we consume from video providers consists of genres featuring low-light aesthetics. Low light sequences have special characteristics, such as spatio-temporal varying acquisition noise and light flickering, that make the encoding process challenging. To deal with the spatio-temporal incoherent noise, higher bitrates are used to achieve high objective quality. Additionally, the quality assessment metrics and methods have not been designed, trained or tested for this type of content. This has inspired us to trigger research in that area and propose a Grand Challenge on encoding low-light video sequences. In this paper, we present an overview of the proposed challenge, and test state-of-the-art methods that will be part of the benchmark methods at the stage of the participants' deliverable assessment. From this exploration, our results show that VVC already achieves a high performance compared to simply denoising the video source prior to encoding. Moreover, the quality of the video streams can be further improved by employing a post-processing image enhancement method.




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Multi-view data capture using edge-synchronised mobiles. (arXiv:2005.03286v1 [cs.MM])

Multi-view data capture permits free-viewpoint video (FVV) content creation. To this end, several users must capture video streams, calibrated in both time and pose, framing the same object/scene, from different viewpoints. New-generation network architectures (e.g. 5G) promise lower latency and larger bandwidth connections supported by powerful edge computing, properties that seem ideal for reliable FVV capture. We have explored this possibility, aiming to remove the need for bespoke synchronisation hardware when capturing a scene from multiple viewpoints, making it possible through off-the-shelf mobiles. We propose a novel and scalable data capture architecture that exploits edge resources to synchronise and harvest frame captures. We have designed an edge computing unit that supervises the relaying of timing triggers to and from multiple mobiles, in addition to synchronising frame harvesting. We empirically show the benefits of our edge computing unit by analysing latencies and show the quality of 3D reconstruction outputs against an alternative and popular centralised solution based on Unity3D.




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Diagnosis of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) with Structured Latent Multi-View Representation Learning. (arXiv:2005.03227v1 [eess.IV])

Recently, the outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has spread rapidly across the world. Due to the large number of affected patients and heavy labor for doctors, computer-aided diagnosis with machine learning algorithm is urgently needed, and could largely reduce the efforts of clinicians and accelerate the diagnosis process. Chest computed tomography (CT) has been recognized as an informative tool for diagnosis of the disease. In this study, we propose to conduct the diagnosis of COVID-19 with a series of features extracted from CT images. To fully explore multiple features describing CT images from different views, a unified latent representation is learned which can completely encode information from different aspects of features and is endowed with promising class structure for separability. Specifically, the completeness is guaranteed with a group of backward neural networks (each for one type of features), while by using class labels the representation is enforced to be compact within COVID-19/community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) and also a large margin is guaranteed between different types of pneumonia. In this way, our model can well avoid overfitting compared to the case of directly projecting highdimensional features into classes. Extensive experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms all comparison methods, and rather stable performances are observed when varying the numbers of training data.




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Overview of Surgical Simulation. (arXiv:2005.03011v1 [cs.HC])

Motivated by the current demand of clinical governance, surgical simulation is now a well-established modality for basic skills training and assessment. The practical deployment of the technique is a multi-disciplinary venture encompassing areas in engineering, medicine and psychology. This paper provides an overview of the key topics involved in surgical simulation and associated technical challenges. The paper discusses the clinical motivation for surgical simulation, the use of virtual environments for surgical training, model acquisition and simplification, deformable models, collision detection, tissue property measurement, haptic rendering and image synthesis. Additional topics include surgical skill training and assessment metrics as well as challenges facing the incorporation of surgical simulation into medical education curricula.




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What’s New With Node? Interview With Bethany Griggs, Node.js Technical Steering Committee

Node.js 14 is available now. We wanted to get more context and details about the state of Node, and why developers should care about Node.js 14. We talked with Bethany Griggs, Node.js Technical Steering Committee member and Open-source Engineer at IBM, to find out more. 

Bethany has been a Node Core Collaborator for over two years. She contributes to the open-source Node.js runtime and is a member of the Node.js Release Working Group where she is involved with auditing commits for the long-term support (LTS) release lines and the creation of releases. 




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2019 year in review

It has been a whirlwind of a year. Looking back at where I ended 2018 and started 2019, I was not fully prepared for everything that happened. The big items from 2019 were: Yours truly turned 35. Shut down the business side of Theme…




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REVIEW: The Commodores' funky, fun night at Northern Quest

One great thing about seeing "oldies" acts on tour is the vivid reminder you get that groups in the old days really knew how to serve their fans. Take the Commodores, for example, a group with a 52-year-history that swung by Northern Quest Resort & Casino Thursday night.…



  • Music/Music News

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CONCERT REVIEW: Tool's same ol' sound still bursts to creative new highs live at Spokane Arena

Tool's music is not only not for everyone, it's such a challenging polyglot of oft-derided musical styles that it risks not being for anyone. And yet, the quartet's blend of prog-rock, art-rock, metal and performance art has become a genre unto itself over the course of 30 years, and it's a genre that has proved remarkably commercial.…



  • Music/Music News

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Configurable viewcube controller

A method, apparatus, system, and computer program product provide the ability to display representative properties of a three-dimensional scene view. A 3D scene and a 3D representation of a coordinate system of the 3D scene are displayed. Different faces of the 3D representation represent and correspond to different viewpoints of the 3D scene. Different statistics for features of the 3D scene are reflected on the different faces of the 3D representation based on the viewpoint corresponding to each face. Manipulation of the 3D representation identifies and selects a different viewpoint of the 3D scene which is then reoriented accordingly.




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Graphical display for sorting and filtering a list in a space-constrained view

Techniques for sorting and filtering a list in a space-constrained viewing area are described. A filter widget and a list of items are displayed in a view of an electronic display screen. In response to user input selecting the filter widget, and without changing to a different view, a filter category overlay is displayed in the view to provide various selectable filter categories. In response to selection of a filter category, a visual depiction of the selected filter category is displayed in the view. The list of items is filtered according to the selected filter category and displayed in the view without changing to any other view. Subsequently added visual depictions are linearly stacked in the view. Further, a filter modification overlay, which provides selectable filtering attributes, is displayed upon selection of a visual depiction.




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Altering a view of a document on a display of a computing device

A document authoring program provides different views of a document opened by a user. In the editing view, the user can view the document contents and edit the contents in using a menu bar. In the semantic zoom view, the user is presented with a heading pane and a thumbnail pane and the menu bar is removed. The user can toggle from the editing view to the semantic zoom view by zooming out past a defined threshold using various user interface controls. Once the threshold is exceeded, the semantic view is presented. The editing view is returned to by selecting a heading or a thumbnail page, which respectively returns the user the page incorporating the selected heading or to the page incorporating the selected heading. This page will be displayed in the editing view at the same zoom level prior to toggling to the semantic zoom view.




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View selection in a vehicle-to-vehicle network

In V2V or other networks in which multiple video cameras can share video data, a network participant ordinarily has the option of selecting a particular video data stream (either generated by local cameras or received from other network participants. To facilitate the process of selecting a video data stream for presentation, the user's vehicle (in a V2V network) receives video data streams generated by other network participants along with identifiers indicating the video data stream actually being presented to the sender. The receiving system identifies the received video data stream by the greatest number of network participants and displays the identified video data stream on the user's in-vehicle video display.




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Slice view

A method, apparatus, article of manufacture, and computer program product display multiple slices of a three-dimensional body in a computer drawing application. A first view of a 3D body is displayed. One or more slice sketches are defined on the first view. A single slice view of the three dimensional body is displayed. The single slice view simultaneously depicts all of the slices with a zero-depth representation of each slice.




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Inline message composing with visible list view

A compose form for drafting a message is presented inline within a window along with a message list. For example, instead of overlaying the message application's user interface (UI) with a new window for composing a message, the compose form is displayed within a portion of the window reserved for viewing content of messages. While composing the message using the compose form, the rest of the message application's UI remains visible and accessible to the user. For example, the user may navigate to another folder and/or move to another message/conversation by interacting with the tree view/message list view. A draft of the message being composed may be automatically saved when the user navigates away from the compose form (e.g. by selecting another conversation in the list view).




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Graphical view sidebar for a process control system

A secondary or “sidebar” display within a process control environment may provide several small applications to allow business managers, engineers, maintenance personnel, or other non-operator personnel to organize and manage process control system information and to display selected diagnostics and summary information or “key operating parameters” for the process control system. Further, sidebar applications may communicate with other applications that are executing on a non-operator user's workstation to, thereby, retrieve information related to tasks that the user is currently completing. The sidebar application may then determine whether certain process control information may be useful for the main task the user is completing and display that process control information within the sidebar.




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Fantasy sport auction draft application roster preview grid

Methods and system for presenting a plurality of attributes of a plurality of players from a plurality of teams that are part of a league includes obtaining a plurality of attributes of the plurality of players and the plurality of teams. The plurality of attributes of the plurality of the players and of the teams is populated in one or more databases along with any updates to these attributes. The databases are queried to retrieve updated plurality of attributes of the plurality of players and the plurality of teams. A roster grid is generated for the plurality of teams for rendering at a client in substantial real time. The roster grid displays the updated status of the plurality of attributes of the plurality of players and the plurality of teams simultaneously in a clean, concise and effective manner.




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Viewfinder and imaging apparatus including the same

A viewfinder 3 includes a finder optical system S2 including first and second lens groups L1, L2; a zoom frame 6 provided with first and second cam grooves 63, 64 configured to rotate about an optical axis A2 to move the first and second lens groups L1, L2 in the optical axis direction in accordance with the shapes of the first and second cam grooves 63, 64; and a diopter adjuster 9 configured to adjust the diopter of the finder optical system S2. The diopter adjuster 9 changes the position of the zoom frame 6 in the optical axis direction to adjust the diopter of the finder optical system S2, and adjusts, during rotation of the zoom frame 6, the position of the zoom frame 6 in the optical axis direction such that the diopter of the finder optical system S2 is maintained.




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Liquid crystal display having wide viewing angle

Apertures are formed in the common electrode or in the pixel electrode of a liquid crystal display to form a fringe field. Storage capacitor electrodes are formed at the position corresponding to the apertures to prevent the light leakage due to the disclination caused by the fringe field. The apertures extend horizontally, vertically or obliquely. The apertures in adjacent pixel regions may have different directions to widen the viewing angle.