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Global Information (global + information)
Selected AbstractsSARS, a shipwreck, a NATO attack, and September 11, 2001: Global information flows and Chinese responses to tragic news eventsAMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Issue 3 2007VANESSA L. FONG In this article, I examine how Chinese citizens in China and abroad used discourses of Chinese backwardness to make sense of tragic news events while simultaneously trying to avoid becoming identified with that backwardness. I focus on various interpretations of NATO's bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999; the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks; the sinking of a Chinese ferry in 1999; and the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic to explore how Chinese citizens negotiated between their own ambivalent loyalties and the contradictory official, unofficial, local, national, and international narratives in which these events were embedded. These negotiations suggest that global information flows are creating a transnational panopticon that increasingly enables neoliberal governmentality to operate on transnational levels. [source] In search of simplicity: a self-organizing group communication overlayCONCURRENCY AND COMPUTATION: PRACTICE & EXPERIENCE, Issue 7 2010Matei Ripeanu Abstract Group communication primitives have broad utility as building blocks for distributed applications. The challenge is to create and maintain the distributed structures that support these primitives while accounting for volatile end-nodes and variable network characteristics. Most solutions proposed to date rely on complex algorithms or on global information, thus limiting the scale of deployments and acceptance outside the academic realm. This article introduces a low-complexity, self-organizing solution for building and maintaining data dissemination trees, which we refer to as Unstructured Multi-source Overlay (UMO). UMO uses traditional distributed systems techniques: layering, soft-state, and passive data collection to adapt to the dynamics of the physical network and maintain data dissemination trees. The result is a simple, adaptive system with lower overheads than more complex alternatives. We implemented UMO and evaluated it on a 100-node PlanetLab testbed and on up to 1024-node emulated ModelNet networks. Extensive experimental evaluations demonstrate UMOs low overhead, efficient network usage compared with alternative solutions, and the ability to quickly adapt to network changes and to recover from failures. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Global Techniques for Characterizing Phase Transformations , A Tutorial ReviewADVANCED ENGINEERING MATERIALS, Issue 6 2010Michel Perez To characterize phase transformations, it is necessary to get both local and global information. No experimental technique alone is capable of providing these two types of information. Local techniques are very useful to get information on morphology and chemistry but fail to deal with global information like phase fraction and size distribution since the analyzed volume is very limited. This is why, it is important to use, in parallel, global experimental techniques, that investigate the response of the whole sample to a stimulus (electrical, thermal, mechanical,). The aim of this paper is not to give an exhaustive list of all global experimental techniques, but to focus on a few examples of recent studies dealing with the characterization of phase transformations, namely (i) the measurement of the solubility limit of copper in iron, (ii) the tempering of martensite, (iii) the control of the crystallinity degree of a ultra high molecular weight polyethylene and (iii) a precipitation sequence in aluminum alloys. Along these examples, it will be emphasized that any global technique requires a calibration stage and some modeling to connect the measured signal with the investigated information. [source] Hydrology as a policy-relevant scienceHYDROLOGICAL PROCESSES, Issue 16 2004Kuniyoshi Takeuchi Abstract Water is now a global political agenda and water science is part of it. The United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000, the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002, the 3rd World Water Forum and Ministerial Conference in Kyoto in 2003 and the G8 Summit in Evian in 2003 were all concerned about urgent global water issues and call for international scientific research collaboration. Hydrology is responding to such political commitments with various scientific initiatives that include the International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS) Predictions in Ungauged Basins (PUB), the Global Energy and Water Circulation Experiments (GEWEX) Coordinated Enhanced Observation Period (CEOP), and the Global Water Systems Project (GWSP). These initiatives will play key roles in the implementation of the new intergovernmental project, Global Earth Observing System of Systems, under preparation by Global Observation Summits from 2003 to 2005. In order to achieve the MDGs, hydrological science has to play a major role supporting policy makers by overcoming methodological obstacles and providing the necessary information. This paper emphasizes that: the availability of ground measurements is a limiting factor that prevents the full use of scientific knowledge; hydrology has to integrate and downscale the various global information into local-scale information useful for river basin management; as the availability of professional personnel is in critical short supply, in addition to funds needed, to achieve the MDGs any scientific research should always accompany capacity-building programmes to close the science divide between developed and developing nations. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] On open-set lattices and some of their applications in semanticsINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS, Issue 12 2003Mouw-Ching Tjiok In this article, we present the theory of Kripke semantics, along with the mathematical framework and applications of Kripke semantics. We take the Kripke-Sato approach to define the knowledge operator in relation to Hintikka's possible worlds model, which is an application of the semantics of intuitionistic logic and modal logic. The applications are interesting from the viewpoint of agent interactives and process interaction. We propose (i) an application of possible worlds semantics, which enables the evaluation of the truth value of a conditional sentence without explicitly defining the operator "," (implication), through clustering on the space of events (worlds) using the notion of neighborhood; and (ii) a semantical approach to treat discrete dynamic process using Kripke-Beth semantics. Starting from the topological approach, we define the measure-theoretical machinery, in particular, we adopt the methods developed in stochastic process,mainly the martingale,to our semantics; this involves some Boolean algebraic (BA) manipulations. The clustering on the space of events (worlds), using the notion of neighborhood, enables us to define an accessibility relation that is necessary for the evaluation of the conditional sentence. Our approach is by taking the neighborhood as an open set and looking at topological properties using metric space, in particular, the so-called ,-ball; then, we can perform the implication by computing Euclidean distance, whenever we introduce a certain enumerative scheme to transform the semantic objects into mathematical objects. Thus, this method provides an approach to quantify semantic notions. Combining with modal operators Ki operating on E set, it provides a more-computable way to recognize the "indistinguishability" in some applications, e.g., electronic catalogue. Because semantics used in this context is a local matter, we also propose the application of sheaf theory for passing local information to global information. By looking at Kripke interpretation as a function with values in an open-set lattice ,,U, which is formed by stepwise verification process, we obtain a topological space structure. Now, using the measure-theoretical approach by taking the Borel set and Borel function in defining measurable functions, this can be extended to treat the dynamical aspect of processes; from the stochastic process, considered as a family of random variables over a measure space (the probability space triple), we draw two strong parallels between Kripke semantics and stochastic process (mainly martingales): first, the strong affinity of Kripke-Beth path semantics and time path of the process; and second, the treatment of time as parametrization to the dynamic process using the technique of filtration, adapted process, and progressive process. The technique provides very effective manipulation of BA in the form of random variables and ,-subalgebra under the cover of measurable functions. This enables us to adopt the computational algorithms obtained for stochastic processes to path semantics. Besides, using the technique of measurable functions, we indeed obtain an intrinsic way to introduce the notion of time sequence. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source] Toxicogenomics: a pivotal piece in the puzzle of toxicological researchJOURNAL OF APPLIED TOXICOLOGY, Issue 4 2007Elisavet T. Gatzidou Abstract Toxicogenomics, resulting from the merge of conventional toxicology with functional genomics, being the scientific field studying the complex interactions between the cellular genome, toxic agents in the environment, organ dysfunction and disease state. When an organism is exposed to a toxic agent the cells respond by altering the pattern of gene expression. Genes are transcribed into mRNA, which in turn is translated into proteins that serve in a variety of cellular functions. Toxicogenomics through microarray technology, offers large-scale detection and quantification of mRNA transcripts, related to alterations in mRNA stability or gene regulation. This may prove advantageous in toxicological research. In the present review, the applications of toxicogenomics, especially to mechanistic and predictive toxicology are reported. The limitations arising from the use of this technology are also discussed. Additionally, a brief report of other approaches, using other -omic technologies (proteomics and metabonomics) that overcome limitations and give global information related to toxicity, is included. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Applying two-level reinforcement ranking in query-oriented multidocument summarizationJOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, Issue 10 2009Furu Wei Abstract Sentence ranking is the issue of most concern in document summarization today. While traditional feature-based approaches evaluate sentence significance and rank the sentences relying on the features that are particularly designed to characterize the different aspects of the individual sentences, the newly emerging graph-based ranking algorithms (such as the PageRank-like algorithms) recursively compute sentence significance using the global information in a text graph that links sentences together. In general, the existing PageRank-like algorithms can model well the phenomena that a sentence is important if it is linked by many other important sentences. Or they are capable of modeling the mutual reinforcement among the sentences in the text graph. However, when dealing with multidocument summarization these algorithms often assemble a set of documents into one large file. The document dimension is totally ignored. In this article we present a framework to model the two-level mutual reinforcement among sentences as well as documents. Under this framework we design and develop a novel ranking algorithm such that the document reinforcement is taken into account in the process of sentence ranking. The convergence issue is examined. We also explore an interesting and important property of the proposed algorithm. When evaluated on the DUC 2005 and 2006 query-oriented multidocument summarization datasets, significant results are achieved. [source] Gene therapy clinical trials worldwide to 2007,an updateTHE JOURNAL OF GENE MEDICINE, Issue 10 2007Michael L. Edelstein To date, over 1340 gene therapy clinical trials have been completed, are ongoing or have been approved worldwide. In 1997 we set up a database to bring together global information on gene therapy clinical trials as comprehensively as possible. The data are compiled and regularly updated from official agency sources, published literature, conference presentations and posters and from information kindly provided by investigators or trial sponsors themselves. This review updates our descriptive overview of the data in 2004 1, presenting our analysis of the clinical trials that, to the best of our knowledge, have been or are being performed worldwide. As of July 30 2007, we have stored entries on 1309 trials in 28 countries. We have analyzed the geographical distribution of trials, the disease indications (or other reasons) for trials, the proportions to which different vector types are used, and which genes have been transferred. Details of the analyses presented, and our interactive, searchable database can be found on The Journal of Gene Medicine Gene Therapy Clinical Trials Worldwide website at: http://www.wiley.co.uk/genmed/clinical. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] An Eye for Detail: An Event-Related Potential Study of the Rapid Processing of Fearful Facial Expressions in ChildrenCHILD DEVELOPMENT, Issue 4 2010Petra H. J. M. Vlamings There is converging evidence for the presence of a fast subcortical face-processing route that operates on global face characteristics in the mature brain. Until now, little has been known about the development of such a route, which is surprising given suggestions that this fast subcortical face-processing route might be affected in neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism. To address this, early visual event-related potentials to pictures of fearful and neutral faces containing detailed or global information in 3- to 4-year-old (n = 20), 5- to 6-year-old (n = 25), and 7- to 8-year-old (n = 25) children were compared. In children, emotional processing was driven by detailed information. Developmental effects are discussed in terms of maturation of the fast subcortical face-processing route as well as an increase in experience with facial expressions with age. [source] | ||||||||||