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Massive Amounts (massive + amount)
Selected AbstractsMilitary pay and the economy of the early Islamic stateHISTORICAL RESEARCH, Issue 188 2002Hugh Kennedy This article examines the system of military payment in the early Islamic state (c. 650,900 A.D.) and its effect on the economy. It is argued that early Islamic armies were paid in cash salaries, rather than land grants or kind. This meant that a massive amount of coinage was put into circulation and spent by the soldiers in the markets of the developing towns of the Middle East. The system of military payment played an important part in creating the urban, cash based market economy of the early Islamic world which contrasts so sharply with the land and kind based economies of the contemporary Byzantine empire and Latin West. [source] Use of the molecular adsorbents recirculating system as a treatment for acute decompensated wilson diseaseLIVER TRANSPLANTATION, Issue 10 2008Alexander Chiu Acute decompensated Wilson disease presenting as fulminant liver failure is a life-threatening condition for which liver transplantation is the ultimate treatment. It is listed as a status 1 indication according to the United Network for Organ Sharing classification. A massive amount of copper released during the attack induces hemolytic anemia and acute renal failure. Conventional chelating therapy attempting to remove copper from the patient is not satisfactory because there is inadequate time for these drugs to take action and patients are usually oliguric. The Molecular Adsorbents Recirculating System (MARS) is a form of modified dialysis that removes putative albumin-bound toxins associated with liver failure. It is believed that extracorporeal albumin dialysate absorbs the circulating copper molecules that are trapped in the patient's circulation. We report 2 patients with acute decompensated Wilson disease treated with MARS. In the first case, the patient was started on MARS once conventional treatment failed. A significant amount of copper was removed from her circulatory system, and her condition stabilized afterwards. The treatment gained her extra time, and she was eventually bridged to liver transplantation. In the second case, the patient was started on MARS treatment early in the course of his illness, and his condition soon stabilized after the treatment. He was able to return to his home country for liver transplantation. In both cases, MARS was used as a means of preventing deterioration rather than salvaging devastation. In conclusion, MARS may confer benefits to patients with acute decompensated Wilson disease if it is started early in the course of illness. Liver Transpl 14:1512,1516, 2008. © 2008 AASLD. [source] Genome-wide association studies and the genetic dissection of complex traits,AMERICAN JOURNAL OF HEMATOLOGY, Issue 8 2009Paola Sebastiani The availability of affordable high throughput technology for parallel genotyping has opened the field of genetics to genome-wide association studies (GWAS), and in the last few years hundreds of articles reporting results of GWAS for a variety of heritable traits have been published. What do these results tell us? Although GWAS have discovered a few hundred reproducible associations, this number is underwhelming in relation to the huge amount of data produced, and challenges the conjecture that common variants may be the genetic causes of common diseases. We argue that the massive amount of genetic data that result from these studies remains largely unexplored and unexploited because of the challenge of mining and modeling enormous data sets, the difficulty of using nontraditional computational techniques and the focus of accepted statistical analyses on controlling the false positive rate rather than limiting the false negative rate. In this article, we will review the common approach to analysis of GWAS data and then discuss options to learn more from these data. We will use examples from our ongoing studies of sickle cell anemia and also GWAS in multigenic traits. Am. J. Hematol., 2009. © 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source] Recovering the Reptile Community after the Mine-Tailing Accident of Aznalcóllar (Southwestern Spain)RESTORATION ECOLOGY, Issue 5 2009Rocío Márquez-Ferrando Abstract Ecosystem restoration requires that habitat requirements of all species be considered. Among animal communities in Mediterranean ecosystems, reptiles, as ectothermic vertebrates, need refuges for avoidance of extreme environmental temperatures, concealment from predators, and oviposition sites. In 1998, a massive amount of tailings broke out of the holding pond of the Aznalcóllar mine (southwestern Spain) and polluted the Guadiamar river valley. After the accident, a soil- and vegetation restoration program began, and the Guadiamar Green Corridor was created to connect two huge natural areas, Doñana National Park and the Sierra Morena. Within this corridor, the reptile community remained dramatically impoverished, probably because of elimination of all natural refuges during the soil restoration program. To test this hypothesis, we set an array of artificial refuges (logs) in a large experimental plot. During the 5 years of the experiment (2002,2006), the area managed with artificial refuges exhibited a better and faster recovery of the reptile community in species richness and individual abundance than did the control area with no artificial refuges. Moreover, reptile colonization of the Guadiamar Green Corridor was transverse rather than lineal,that is, it did not act as a corridor for reptiles, at least in the first stages of colonization. This suggests that landscape restoration programs should not neglect refuge availability, a limiting resource for reptile species. [source] Parallel processing of remotely sensed hyperspectral imagery: full-pixel versus mixed-pixel classificationCONCURRENCY AND COMPUTATION: PRACTICE & EXPERIENCE, Issue 13 2008Antonio J. Plaza Abstract The rapid development of space and computer technologies allows for the possibility to store huge amounts of remotely sensed image data, collected using airborne and satellite instruments. In particular, NASA is continuously gathering high-dimensional image data with Earth observing hyperspectral sensors such as the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's airborne visible,infrared imaging spectrometer (AVIRIS), which measures reflected radiation in hundreds of narrow spectral bands at different wavelength channels for the same area on the surface of the Earth. The development of fast techniques for transforming massive amounts of hyperspectral data into scientific understanding is critical for space-based Earth science and planetary exploration. Despite the growing interest in hyperspectral imaging research, only a few efforts have been devoted to the design of parallel implementations in the literature, and detailed comparisons of standardized parallel hyperspectral algorithms are currently unavailable. This paper compares several existing and new parallel processing techniques for pure and mixed-pixel classification in hyperspectral imagery. The distinction of pure versus mixed-pixel analysis is linked to the considered application domain, and results from the very rich spectral information available from hyperspectral instruments. In some cases, such information allows image analysts to overcome the constraints imposed by limited spatial resolution. In most cases, however, the spectral bands collected by hyperspectral instruments have high statistical correlation, and efficient parallel techniques are required to reduce the dimensionality of the data while retaining the spectral information that allows for the separation of the classes. In order to address this issue, this paper also develops a new parallel feature extraction algorithm that integrates the spatial and spectral information. The proposed technique is evaluated (from the viewpoint of both classification accuracy and parallel performance) and compared with other parallel techniques for dimensionality reduction and classification in the context of three representative application case studies: urban characterization, land-cover classification in agriculture, and mapping of geological features, using AVIRIS data sets with detailed ground-truth. Parallel performance is assessed using Thunderhead, a massively parallel Beowulf cluster at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. The detailed cross-validation of parallel algorithms conducted in this work may specifically help image analysts in selection of parallel algorithms for specific applications. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Teaching & Learning Guide for: The Origins of the Civil WarHISTORY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 4 2007Nicole Etcheson Author's Introduction The author argues that slavery is the root cause of the Civil War even though historians have often posited other explanations. Some other interpretations have been ideological (i.e., about the morality of slavery), others have been economic, political, or cultural. Focus Questions 1If you were to make an argument for the causes of the Civil War, what evidence or types of evidence would you want to examine? 2In what ways can the different types of arguments (ideological, economic, political, and cultural), be combined to explain the causes of the Civil War? Do such arguments exclude or reinforce each other? In what ways? Author Recommends * E. L. Ayres, In the Presence of Mine Enemies: War in the Heart of America, 1859,1863 (New York, NY: Norton, 2003). A study of two counties, one north and one south, during the end of the sectional crisis and the early Civil War. While Potter, Walther, and Wilentz offer sweeping, often political, histories, Ayres offers a microhistory approach to the sectional conflict. Although Ayres writes within the tradition of seeing cultural differences between North and South, he concludes that slavery was the issue that drove the two sections apart. * M. A. Morrison, Slavery and the American West: The Eclipse of Manifest Destiny and the Coming of the Civil War (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1997). Views the development of the sectional crisis through the lens of Manifest Destiny. Territorial expansion drove hostility between the sections. Morrison concentrates on the political developments of the period connected to the acquisition and organization of the territories to show how the issue of slavery in the territories polarized the sections. * D. M. Potter, The Impending Crisis, 1848,1861 (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1976). The most comprehensive survey of the decade before the war. Potter traces the development of slavery as a political issue that North and South could not resolve. While it is a masterly and nuanced treatment of the political history, it does not incorporate social history and is more detailed than is useful for most undergraduates. E. H. Walther, The Shattering of the Union: America in the 1850s (Wilmington, Scholarly Resources, 2004) has recently supplanted Potter as a survey of the decade. It is an easier read for undergraduates and incorporates the new literature than has emerged since Potter wrote. * S. Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (New York, NY: Norton, 2005). A sweeping history of the United States from the constitutional era to the outbreak of the Civil War. Wilentz attempts to update Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.'s synthesis The Age of Jackson by returning to a focus on the evolution of democracy while at the same time incorporating the social history that emerged after Schlesinger wrote. Only the last third of this very long book covers the 1850s, but Wilentz argues that democracy had taken differing sectional forms by that period: a free-labor version in the North and a plantation version in the South. Online Materials 1. The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War (http://valley.vcdh.virginia.edu/) A prize-winning website that profiles Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania. Material from this website formed the basis of Ayres, In the Presence of Mine Enemies. Although the website primarily concentrates on the Civil War itself, it provides access to newspapers and letters and diaries from the 1850s that show the development of, and reaction to, the sectional crisis in those counties. It also shows students the types of materials (census, tax, and church records as well as newspapers and letters and diaries) with which historians work to build an argument. 2. American Memory from the Library of Congress (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html) Although not specifically devoted to the origins of the Civil War, the American Memory site provides access to the collections of the Library of Congress which contain massive amounts of primary materials for students and scholars. From the website, one can gain access to congressional documents, periodicals from the 1850s, nineteenth-century books, music, legal documents, memoirs by white and black southerners as well as slave narratives. Sample Syllabus Nicole Etcheson's ,Origins of the Civil War,' History Compass, 3/1 (2005), doi:10.1111/j.1478-0542.2005.00166.x can be used as a reading in any Civil War course. [source] Handling Mass Death by Integrating the Management of Disasters and Pandemics: Lessons from the Indian Ocean Tsunami, the Spanish Flu and Other IncidentsJOURNAL OF CONTINGENCIES AND CRISIS MANAGEMENT, Issue 2 2007Joseph Scanlon At first glance, there appear to be significant differences between mass death from disasters and catastrophes and mass death from pandemics. In a disaster or catastrophe the major problem is identifying the dead and, sometimes, determining cause of death. This can be very frustrating for next of kin. In a pandemic, the identity of the dead is usually known as is the cause of their death. There is an immediate certainty in pandemic death. Despite these major differences there are many similarities. Because it takes time to identify the dead after a disaster or catastrophe, there is a steady release of bodies for cremation or burial, just as in a pandemic. In both types of incidents, there tends to be a shortage of supplies and personnel and, therefore, a need for use of volunteers. There are also massive amounts of paper work. This would suggest a need in both cases for stockpiling and for training of volunteers. And, although this does not always happen, both types of incidents tend to strike harder among the poorer elements in cities yet both create serious economic problems. Despite these many similarities, planning for the first tends to be done by emergency agencies, especially the police; planning for the second by health agencies. Given the many similarities this separation makes no sense. Since both types of mass death incidents lead to similar problems, it would make sense to take an all-hazards approach to planning for dealing with mass death. [source] Evidence that channel catfish, Ictalurus punctatus (Rafinesque), mortality is not linked to ingestion of the hepatotoxin microcystin-LRJOURNAL OF FISH DISEASES, Issue 5 2002G S Snyder Catfish farms located in the south-eastern USA using brackish (3,5 g NaCl L,1) well water experience sporadic fish kills sometimes with high mortality. An investigation of three catastrophic losses occurring in this region identified no involvement of infectious diseases or traditional water quality problems, including oxygen, ammonia or nitrite. The high mortality and time course of the problem was indicative of exposure to a toxin. Attempts by other workers to explain the cause of this unique syndrome (high chloride associated toxicosis of catfish, HCTC), suggested that the losses might be because of microcystin-producing blooms of Microcystis aeruginosa, but our investigations failed to support this conclusion. We found that (1) the liver histology of catfish experimentally exposed to pure microcystin-LR is very different from that of catfish sampled during outbreaks of HCTC; (2) measurements of microcystin-LR concentrations in the three cases were far lower than the concentration required to kill catfish by experimental immersion; (3) the HCTC toxin appears to have a short half-life, whereas microcystin-LR does not; (4) experimental gavage of catfish with massive amounts of microcystin-LR does not cause the acute mortality typical of HCTC; (5) outbreaks of HCTC appear to be associated with heavy blooms of Anacystis marina, a halophytic cyanobacteria, not with blooms of M. aeruginosa. [source] USE OF SOIL AND WATER PROTECTION PRACTICES AMONG FARMERS IN THE NORTH CENTRAL REGION OF THE UNITED STATES,JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN WATER RESOURCES ASSOCIATION, Issue 4 2000Ted L. Napier ABSTRACT: Data were collected in the fall of 1998 and the winter of 1999 from 1,011 land owner-operators within three watersheds in the North Central Region of the United States to assess adoption of soil and water protection practices. Farm owner-operators were asked to indicate how frequently they used 18 different agricultural production practices. Many farmers within the three watersheds had adopted conservation protection practices. However, they also employed production practices that could negate many of the environmental benefits associated with conservation practices in use. Comparison of adoption behaviors used in the three watersheds revealed significant differences among the study groups. Respondents in the Iowa and Ohio watersheds reported greater use of conservation production systems than did farmers in Minnesota. However, there were no significant differences between Ohio and Iowa farmers in terms of use of conservation production practices. This was surprising, since farmers in the Ohio watershed had received massive amounts of public and private investments to motivate them to adopt and to continue using conservation production systems. These findings bring into serious question the use of traditional voluntary conservation programs such as those employed in the Ohio watershed. Study findings suggest that new policy approaches should be considered. It is argued that "whole farm planning" should be a significant component of new agricultural conservation policy. [source] Phonon instability in nanocrystalline silicon carbidePHYSICA STATUS SOLIDI (B) BASIC SOLID STATE PHYSICS, Issue 13 2006F. Cleri Abstract In recent experiments by a low-pressure, low-temperature technique, stable nanotubules of rocksalt SiC were synthetized in massive amounts. Ab-initio perturbative density-functional theory calculations in the bulk rocksalt phase provide evidence of drastic phonon softening at a critical pressure of about 2 GPa. To explain the exceptional persistence of the rocksalt structure at ambient conditions we propose that the high pressure induced by interfacial curvature may quench the phonon instability in the nanocrystals down to this minimum threshold, corresponding to the observed nanocrystal size of about 2 nm. Below such pressure the onset of mechanical instability forbids further growth and transformation to ordinary SiC. Nanocrystalline rocksalt SiC is a remarkable example of a material whose unstable, high-pressure phase is stabilized at ambient conditions upon reducing the grain size in the nanometre range. (© 2006 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim) [source] PLS: A versatile tool for industrial process improvement and optimizationAPPLIED STOCHASTIC MODELS IN BUSINESS AND INDUSTRY, Issue 6 2008Alberto Ferrer Abstract Modern industrial processes are characterized by acquiring massive amounts of highly collinear data. In this context, partial least-squares (PLS) regression, if wisely used, can become a strategic tool for process improvement and optimization. In this paper we illustrate the versatility of this technique through several real case studies that basically differ in the structure of the X matrix (process variables) and Y matrix (response parameters). By using the PLS approach, the results show that it is possible to build predictive models (soft sensors) for monitoring the performance of a wastewater treatment plant, to help in the diagnosis of a complex batch polymerization process, to develop an automatic classifier based on image data, or to assist in the empirical model building of a continuous polymerization process. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] | |||||||||||||