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animals "see" it, and how animal color and its perception have co-evolved to produce the complex and diverse palette of colors we see in the world today. The exhibit features |
a wide array of mammals, reptiles, amphibians, mollusks, and insect specimens that illustrate colors used to camouflage, startle predators, mimic other animals, attract a mate, or intimidate a rival. Harvard |
The NIDCD award will provide $300,000 over the next three years to fund the project, titled “Auditory masking effects on speech fluency in aphasia and apraxia of speech.” In many adults who survive stroke, damage to speech regions of the brain results in a distorted, effortful, and halting pattern of speech, a conditio... |
what they want to say and have intact muscle strength, they have difficulty programming the movements for speech. They are able to hear their speech errors, and the typical treatment program focuses on identifying these errors and correcting them. For most people, focusing on these mistakes results in little improvemen... |
Jacks and his colleagues (Katarina Haley, PhD, DAHS, DSHS; Heidi Roth, MD, Department of Neurology) are studying the effects of preventing the person with apraxia of speech from hearing the errors in their speech, by playing loud noise through earphones. This approach is based on the premise that people with this speec... |
them from speaking fluently. The same phenomenon has been known for decades to help people who stutter to speak fluently, as demonstrated in the popular film The King's Speech. In the proposed research, Dr. Jacks and his colleagues seek to identify stroke survivors who respond positively to listening to noise by increa... |
disfluencies (pauses, filler words, repetitions). Since not all people are expected to show a change in speech while listening to noise, the team also will study individual characteristics to determine what differentiates those who improve from those who do not. In particular, behavioral profiles (type of speech and la... |
between positive responders and non-responders to determine whether a positive response can be predicted from routine clinical data. In preliminary work, over half of the participants tested spoke more quickly and with fewer disfluencies while listening to noise. Although this is a temporary effect and does not persist... |
may cause the person's brain to activate in a different way than it does when he or she is speaking disfluently. If the preliminary results are borne out in the completed study, Dr. Jacks and his team believe that the procedure may be further developed into a useful therapeutic technique that can result in lasting spee... |
Scientists have revealed that new treatments for the incurable nerve disease known as Lou Gehrig's disease or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) could be developed via a long-used anti-cancer drug. Their research showing how the drug prevents clumping of an enzyme linked to ALS appears in the Journal of the American C... |
loss of muscle control as the nerves that control body movements wither and die. Patients become weak and have difficulty swallowing and breathing, and most die within three to five years of diagnosis. Although some ALS cases are hereditary and run in families, about 90 percent are "sporadic," with the cause unknown. S... |
hSOD1. The authors explored whether cisplatin, a chemotherapy drug used since the 1960s that is known to interact with some of the enzyme's amino acids, has any effect on hSOD1 clusters. The scientists found that in laboratory tests, the anti-cancer drug cisplatin bound readily to the enzyme, preventing hSOD1 from aggr... |
after the enzyme loses the atom of copper it normally carries. The scientists note that cisplatin does not prevent the enzyme from performing its normal functions. "From this work it appears that cisplatin is a promising lead compound for the rational design of ALS treatments," the authors say. |
The following information was extracted from the publication "Threatened" produced by BNZ in cooperation with the Department of Conservation and Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society. The Predation Threat In 1987, a dog was on the loose in Waitangi State forest in the Bay of Islands. For six weeks it rampaged throug... |
was found, perhaps as many as 500 of the 1000 kiwi living there had been slaughtered. This carnage at Waitangi illustrates just how vulnerable the kiwi is to predators and the speed at which seemingly healthy populations can fail. Other predators introduced to New Zealand by humans may cause similar havoc. The main thr... |
feral (wild) cats who steal eggs and kill young. Larger predators include pigs and dogs. Young kiwi leave the nest at just three weeks of age, weighing only 200g. Small and slow, they are easy prey. Very few survive this precarious journey from birth to 12 months, when they reach the critical size that enables them to ... |
through destroying forests and introducing predators in the first place, pose the single greatest threat to the kiwi. Ironically, we are also their greatest hope. The kiwi is a one-off evolutionary design, holding all sorts of biological records. New Zealand's ancient isolation and lack of mammals allowed it to occupy ... |
a mammal. Whereas birds traditionally depend on sight, the kiwi is one of the few birds with a highly developed sense of smell. You can sometimes hear them sniffing around in the dark. Alarm them during the day and they will run off. Then, at a distance, just like a wolf or other mammal, they'll stick their bill (nose)... |
see if they are safe from pursuit. Other reasons the kiwi could pass for a mammal is its loose, hair-like feathers, its long whiskers, the fact it can't fly and that it burrows in the ground. Other kiwi curiosities include: Being the only known bird to have external nostrils at the end of its bill. It literally sniffs ... |
the surface. It's huge eggs. The kiwi has one of the largest egg-to-body weight ratio of any bird. The mature egg averages 20% of the female's body weight. Compare that to 2% for an ostrich! Being the smallest living member of the ratite family (which includes ostriches and emus). They live in pairs — as monogamous cou... |
their lives. Sex role reversal: The female is bigger and dominates the male. In some varieties, the male does most of the incubating of the eggs. The eggs take an exceedingly long time to hatch — up to 80 days. Kiwi tend to live in pairs, forming monogamous couples. These bonds are generally till death and have been kn... |
About every third day, the pair will shelter in the same burrow together. The relationship tends to be quite volatile and physical, the female generally calling the shots over her smaller partner. During the night, as they are out foraging for food or patrolling their territory, they will perform duets, calling to each... |
From the outside, it doesn't appear that kiwi domestic life is bliss. But the bond is long-lasting. There are few surprises in the kiwi diet. It's mostly earthworms, spiders, fallen fruits and seeds, larvae of beetles and cicada and a mixture of forest invertebrates. But they will also take large food items like freshw... |
out of a pond, subdued them with a few thuds and eaten them. Kiwi are extremely territorial birds, They protect their patch — which can be as much as 40 hectares — by calling or, if that fails, by chasing the intruder kiwi and giving it a good booting over. Very occasionally, kiwi kill each other fighting for territory... |
will often engage in calling duels. If a bird is intruding into another's space, it will rush back at full speed into its own space before returning a neighbour's call. A gathering of kiwi is a rarity. However, on Stewart Island, they do live in small, mixed aged family groupings. Kiwi Nests, er, Burrows! Kiwi are burr... |
the end of a night's work, crash there during the day and then move on to a new burrow the next day. Great Spotted Kiwi prefer dens. Unlike the Little Spotted Kiwi and the Brown Kiwi, who tends towards simple one-entrance burrows, the Great Spotted will put the time and effort into constructing a labyrinth of tunnels s... |
exit. Common Kiwi Myths Kiwi experts are keen to dispel myths surrounding the kiwi — particularly that they are half-blind and bumbling. Here are a few common ones: Myth: "Kiwi fight with their beaks." To use their beaks to fight would be like head-butting someone with your nose. At the end of the beak are the kiwi's e... |
detecting a few parts per million of scent, the beak, when probing the ground, can detect worms and other food. Myth: "Kiwi are cute, gentle little creatures." They are actually super-strong and often extremely bad tempered. The adults can look after themselves using their razor sharp claws as weapons. A couple of slas... |
putting their hands down kiwi burrows. Because they are so aggressive, DOC staff can attract them simply by imitating their call. Incensed that another kiwi is on their turf, the response is instant and dramatic: "It's amazing to hear them coming to kick the intruder out. They sound like a deer charging, almost explodi... |
it's part of the threat display." "Pete" is a Great Spotted Kiwi in West Northland. "We've just got to walk into his territory and he comes catapulting in for a hit-and-run. He belts you in the leg and then runs off into the undergrowth. I think he views us as super-big kiwi. He's probably given some trampers a helluva... |
bit thick." According to Conservation Officers who know them best, they are capable of learning quickly and altering behaviour in the light of experience. Myth: "Kiwi move slowly." Superbly adapted to their natural habitat, the kiwi is extremely agile and quick moving. A kiwi can cover his territory — possibly the size... |
three valley streams and all sorts of obstacles. Myth: "Kiwi and half-blind." The notion of their being half-blind probably stems from their being nocturnal and having small eyes. In fact, as Conservation Officers can testify, if you chase them at night, they can run very fast, swerving around trees and expertly naviga... |
a Maori Perspective The Maori people have a very personal interest in seeing the kiwi survive and flourish. According to many Maori traditions, the kiwi is the oldest of all Tanemahuta's bird family. It was Tane, the god of the forest who, with different wives, created much of the natural world, including birds, trees,... |
elder siblings. And, like a good older brother or sister, they are very protective of us. That's partly why they patrol the forests nightly. Kiwi -- Six Unique Varieties There are six identified varieties of kiwi. The Little Spotted Kiwi The smallest (about the size of a bantam) and most endangered species, the "Little... |
suffered terrible that the hands of possums, stoats, cats and larger predators. Now extinct on mainland New Zealand, the largest remaining population is on Kapiti Island where 1000 birds occupy some 1900 ha of mixed forest, scrub and grassland. Sensitive management by DoC and the Maori Trustees of private land on Kapit... |
island. The Great Spotted Kiwi The rugged mountaineer of the kiwi — found primarily in the high, often harsh hill country — the Great Spotted has forged a strange deal with evolution. The same harsh environment that makes it struggle from one day to the next also makes it tough going for the pigs, dogs and stoats that ... |
it. Big bold and handsome, it is found only in the South Island, mainly in North West Nelson, Central Westland and Eastern Canterbury. The North Island Brown Kiwi Bug noses and short tempers is one way to sum up the Brown Kiwi. They are little toughies ... and have to be to survive against humans, introduced predators ... |
harsh bush existence. The North Island Brown Kiwi is found only in the upper two-thirds of the North Island. They are widespread in Northland in a diverse range of vegetation types including exotic forests and rough farm land. Okarito Brown Kiwi In one sense, the new kid on the block. It was only in 1993 that the Okari... |
north of Franz Josef was identified as a distinct variety of kiwi. Tell-tale signs are its slightly greyish plumage sometimes accompanied by white facial feathers. Squat and round and bigger than their northern Brown Kiwi cousins, they can grow to almost the same size as Great Spotted Kiwi. The Southern Tokoeka are fou... |
of the somewhat reclusive kiwi. The Haast Tokoeka, found in the rugged mountains behind Haast, was also identified as a distant variety of Kiwi in 1993. They spend their summers in the high sub alpine tussock grasslands but probably retreat to the lowland forests in winter. Kiwi Sightings -- Where You Can See Kiwi Few ... |
The Civics merit badge was one of the original 57 merit badges issued by the Boy Scouts of America in 1911. Civics is a discontinued merit badge. It was one of the original 1911 merit badges, but was renamed Citizenship by the 1948 revision to the Boy Scout Handbook. That badge was then replaced by Citizenship in the N... |
in 1951 and Citizenship in the Community and Citizenship in the Home in 1952 (later renamed as the Family Life merit badge). At the same time, the World Brotherhood merit badge was introduced, and these four badges constituted the "Citizenship Group" of merit badges, any two of which were required for Eagle. In 1972, t... |
badge replaced World Brotherhood. Civics requirements at inception - State the principal citizenship requirements of an elector in his state. - Know the principal features of the naturalization laws of the United States. - Know how President, Vice-President, senators, and congressmen of the United States are elected an... |
Supreme Court of the United States, how appointed, and their term of office. - Know the various administrative departments of government, as represented in the President's Cabinet. - Know how the governor, lieutenant-governor, senators, representatives, or assemblymen of his state are elected, and their terms of office... |
appointed or elected, and the length of their terms. - Know how the principal officers in his town or city are elected and for what terms. - Know the duties of the various city departments, such as fire, police, board of health, etc. - Draw a map of the town or city in which he lives, giving location of the |
principal public buildings and points of special interest. - Give satisfactory evidence that he is familiar with the provisions and history of the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution of the United States. || The official source for the information shown in this article or section is:| Boy Scout Handbook, ... |
My Beef With Meat If it has a face, it probably gobbles up global resources along with its grass By Stett Holbrook Last month, the federal government released a much-anticipated |
report on global climate change. It paints a chilling picture of what will happen if global warming continues unabated. "This report is a game-changer," said the new director of the |
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Jane Lubchenco, at a press conference last week. "I think that much of the foot-dragging in addressing climate change is a reflection of the perception |
that climate change is way down the road, it's in the future and it only affects certain parts of the country. This report demonstrates in concrete scientific information that climate |
change is happening now, and it's happening in our back yards." The report, issued by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, compiles work from 13 different government agencies. In a |
refreshing break from the science-averse Bush administration, the report states unequivocally that climate change is human caused. The report details changes scientists are already seeing and predicts how the climate |
will change if greenhouse-gas emissions aren't curtailed. The report also discusses how decisive policies can roll back the impending doom. (Read the report at globalchange.gov.) Here are two of the |
key findings: • Climate changes are under way in the United States and are projected to grow. These include increases in heavy downpours, rising temperature and sea level, rapidly retreating |
glaciers, thawing permafrost, lengthening growing seasons, lengthening ice-free seasons in the ocean and on lakes and rivers, earlier snowmelt and alterations in river flows. • Agriculture is considered one of |
the sectors most adaptable to changes in climate, but increased heat, pests, water stress, diseases and weather extremes will pose adaptation challenges for crop and livestock production. There have been |
many reports on global warming and dire predictions from respected scientists. So far not much has changed. I hope that President Obama uses the power of his position to spur |
the dramatic and speedy action needed to reduce the profound impacts of the crisis. The challenge Obama faces is convincing people that the time to change our ways is today, |
not tomorrow. The trouble is, we don't usually realize we're in trouble until the roof starts caving in. For example, only when we faced global financial meltdown did world leaders |
act. A global recession is real and painful, but compared to the apocalyptic effects of unchecked global warming, it's but a pinprick. What does all this have to do with |
food? Well, while the U.S. government appears to be finally getting serious about acting against global warming, we the people need to do as much as we can. Food strikes |
me as particularly target-rich as we seek to reduce global warming. I see reducing our consumption of meat as the single most important action we can take as individuals. I've |
come to view a double bacon cheeseburger as the culinary equivalent of dumping dirty motor oil into a clear mountain lake. If eating burgers was only detrimental to those who |
eat them that would be one thing, but the production of meat and dairy across the world is an environmental catastrophe. I'm a firm believer in spending more for quality, |
food included. But eating well shouldn't be prohibitively expensive. I guess it's all in how one defines "eating well." For me, that means little or no processed food and plenty |
of fresh produce in season. Food is of course a necessary expense, but there's a lot of discretion on how to spend your food dollar. But the ironic thing about |
food when you buy fresh, unprocessed ingredients and cook for yourself rather than opening a can or box, eating well generally costs less. At least that's my belief. According to |
the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), livestock production generates nearly a fifth of the world's greenhouse gases, more than transportation. Animal agriculture is the leading source of methane |
and nitrous oxide emissions, which--combined with carbon dioxide--are the primary causes of global warming. Livestock production accounts for more than 8 percent of global human water use, the FAO says. |
Evidence suggests that it is also the largest source of water pollution thanks to animal wastes, antibiotics, hormones, fertilizers and pesticides used for feed crops, and sediments from eroded pastures. |
An estimated 30 percent of the Earth's ice-free land is involved in livestock production. Approximately 70 percent of previously forested land in the Amazon is used as pasture, and feed |
crops cover a large part of what's left. Eating organically raised, grass-feed beef is a far better option than the factory-farmed garbage that most of us eat. But organically raised |
or not, livestock still sucks up scarce natural resources and contributes to global warming. I'm not saying we should give up meat entirely. Just eat less of it. Given the |
severity of the climate crisis, reducing our consumption of meat is a painless step everyone can take. What if President Obama declared he was willing to go without meat a |
few days a week for the sake of the planet? I'm not holding my breath for that one, but more often than not I'm going to hold off on eating |
Increasing Local Contrast The previous section showed adjustments to the brightness and contrast of the entire image. The adjustment changes every pixel of original brightness value A to the same final brightness value B, regardless of the pixel’s neighbors. Another class of operations increases the visibility of local... |
pixels, by suppressing the longer-range variations. These neighborhood functions use a moving neighborhood, usually a small circle, that compares or combines the central pixel and the neighbors to produce a new value that is assigned to the central pixel to construct a new image. Then the neighborhood shifts to the |
next pixel and the process is repeated. These calculations are applied to the pixel brightness values in a color coordinate system such as HSI or LAB that leaves the color values unchanged. For instance, local equalization functions just like the histogram equalization procedure, except that it takes place within a |
moving circular neighborhood and assigns a new value only to the central pixel. The result makes a pixel that is slightly brighter than its surroundings brighter still, and vice-versa, enhancing local contrast. The result is usually added back in some proportion to the original image to produce a more visually |
pleasing result, as shown in the Local Equalization interactive Java tutorial. Sharpening of images to increase local contrast is almost universally applied by publishers to counter the visual blurring effect of halftoning images in the printing process. This is usually done by a convolution using a kernel of weights, ... |
as the Gaussian smoothing function shown above. But in this application, some of those weights will have negative values. For instance, the Laplacian sharpening filter in Table 1 combines each pixel with its eight adjacent neighbors as shown in the Laplacian Sharpening interactive Java tutorial. A more flexible extensi... |
this basic idea is the widely used (and as often misused) unsharp mask. The name derives from a century-old darkroom procedure that required printing the original image at 1:1 magnification but out of focus onto another piece of film (this was the unsharp mask), and then placing the two films |
together to print the final result. Where the original negative was dense, the mask was not (and vice versa) so that little light was transmitted, except near detail and edges where the mask was out of focus. The same effect can be produced in the computer by applying a Gaussian |
blur to a duplicate of the original and then subtracting it from the original. The difference between the two images is just the detail and edges removed by the blurring. The original image is then added back to the difference to increase the visibility of the details while suppressing the |
overall image contrast. In the Unsharp Masking interactive Java tutorial, the result image is automatically scaled to the range of the display so that negative values that can result from the calculation are not lost. One of the characteristics of the unsharp mask is the formation of bright and dark |
“haloes” adjacent to the dark and bright borders (respectively) of structure in the image. This increases their visibility, but can hide other nearby information. A related approach using neighborhood ranking rather than Gaussian blurring alleviates this problem. The method applies a median filter to remove fine detail... |
the original to isolate the detail, and then adds the original image back to enhance the visibility as shown in the Rank Masking interactive Java tutorial. This method is called a rank mask, but is sometimes (incorrectly) referred to as a top hat filter (the real top hat is shown |
below). Note that all of these local enhancement methods are very noise sensitive, because both random speckle and shot noise produce pixels that are different from their local neighborhood. Image noise must be removed before enhancement is attempted, or the visibility of the noise will be increased as shown in |
the Comparison of Local Contrast Enhancement Methods interactive Java tutorial. The top hat filter is also a based on neighborhood ranking, but unlike the procedure above it uses the ranked value from two different size regions. The brightest value in a circular interior region is compared to the brightest value |
in a surrounding annular region. If the brightness difference exceeds a threshold level, it is kept (otherwise it is erased). The Top Hat Filter interactive Java tutorial shows the filter’s operation. If the interior and annular regions are drawn as shown in the diagram in Figure 1, the reason for |
the filter name becomes apparent. The interior region is the crown and the threshold is its height, while the surrounding annulus is the brim of the hat. This operation is particularly well suited for finding the spikes in Fourier transform power spectra, as illustrated previously. The top hat is also |
good for locating any features of a known size by adjusting the radius of the crown. Objects too large to fit into the crown of the hat are selectively removed. Reversing the logic to use the darkest values in both regions enables the same procedure to isolate dust or other |
dark features. By replacing the interior value by the mean of the surroundings, the dust can be selectively removed. In this application, shown in the Rolling Ball Filter interactive Java tutorial, the method is called a rolling ball filter. John C. Russ - Materials Science and Engineering Dept., North Carolina |
State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, 27695. Matthew Parry-Hill and Michael W. Davidson - National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, 1800 East Paul Dirac Dr., The Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, 32310. Questions or comments? Send us an email. © 1998-2009 by Michael W. Davidson, John Russ, Olympus Ame... |
Florida State University. All Rights Reserved. No images, graphics, scripts, or applets may be reproduced or used in any manner without permission from the copyright holders. Use of this website means you agree to all of the Legal Terms and Conditions set forth by the owners. This website is maintained |
of the Giant Squid scientifically known as Architeuthis dux, is the largest of all invertebrates. Scientists believe it can be as long as 18 metres (60 feet). This specimen was collected by Dr Gordon Williamson who worked as the resident ships biologist for the whaling company Salvesons. He examined the |
Air pollution health alert and advisory issued through Wednesday, March 10 The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) has issued an air pollution health ALERT for today and tomorrow, March 8 and 9 and an air pollution health ADVISORY for Wednesday, March 10 for the Twin Cities and Rochester area. The |
Air Quality Index values (AQI) in the Twin Cities exceeds the level considered unhealthy for sensitive groups. Dense fog overnight, which aids in fine particle production, and calm winds, have allowed fine particle concentrations to build to levels considered unhealthy for sensitive groups. Fine particle levels are exp... |
fall this afternoon as the fog dissipates. However, calm winds and high relative humidity will continue to trap pollutants, keeping air quality conditions unhealthy for sensitive groups. Weather conditions are supposed to improve the air quality to good AQI levels by Thursday, March 11. Those who have respiratory or ca... |
problems, young children, the elderly, and individuals whom are physically active are considered especially sensitive to elevated levels of air pollution. Be prepared to postpone or reduce vigorous activity. Ozone and fine particles can be drawn deeply into the lungs, so reduce activities that lead to deep or accelerat... |
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