The massive increase in information available via electronic networks is placing severe burdens on traditional methods of information sharing and retrieval. Matchmaking proposes an intelligent facilitation agent that accepts machine-readable requests and advertisements from information consumers and providers, and determines potential information sharing paths. Matchmaking permits large nmnbers...

The main goal of our work is initial preprocessing of dermoscopic images by hair removal. Dermoscopy is a basic technique in skin melanoma diagnostics. One of the main problems in dermoscopy images analysis are hairs objects in the image. Hairs partially shade the main region of interest that’s why it needs special treatment. We have developed a simple and fast hair removal algorithm based on b...

As part of the multidisciplinary National Fire and Fire Surrogate study, we used drift fences with pitfall traps from May to September 2003 and 2004 to determine how three fuel reduction techniques affected shrews in the Southern Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina. Grounddwelling macroarthropods also were collected from a subset of pitfall traps to assess relative prey availability among t...

The recent development of web-based services that combine spatial coordinates and indexes of online material allows any web user to conduct geographically referenced Internet searches. In this paper we characterize the resulting hybrid space as DigiPlaceöthat is, the use of information ranked and mapped in cyberspace to navigate and understand physical places. We review relevant theories of hyb...

This paper presents a comparison between L-band HH JERS-1 SAR and Landsat TM data for land cover assessment in an Amazonian test site. For this, a study area located in the south of Rondônia State, western Brazilian Amazonia, was selected. The Landsat TM data acquired on August 1 1997 were converted to vegetation, soil, and shade fraction images, using a Linear Spectral Mixing Model. These frac...

In tropical forests, light-gaps created from treefalls are a frequent source of habitat heterogeneity. The increase in productivity, through gap formation, can alter food quality, predation and their impact on insect herbivores. We hypothesized that in gaps, herbivores would be less resource-limited and more predator limited, whereas in the understory, we predicted the reverse. In this study, w...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the tooth whitening effects of various concentrations of carbamide peroxide (CP) gels and 6% hydrogen peroxide (HP) whitening strips used on an intrinsic, in vitro stain model in a simulated home-applied bleaching protocol. METHOD Extracted third molars were sectioned and stained to Vita shade C4 using a standardized tea solution. Stained specimens were then bleached ...

• Community ecologists often assume a hierarchy of environmental sieves to predict the impact of multiple stresses on species distribution. We tested whether this assumption corresponds to physiological responses using impact of water level and shade in wetland vegetation as a model. • Seedlings of four wetland species were grown under full light and simulated canopy shade, both in drained and ...

Our aim was to understand how protection from solar radiation influenced the behaviour and physiology of Holstein Friesian dairy cattle. We compared the behaviour and body temperature of pastured dairy cattle kept in 1of 4 treatments: no shade or free access to shade that blocked either 25, 50 or 99% of solar radiation (n = 3 groups per treatment, 3 animals/group). Within each group, cows were ...

As agents see more use as entry points to incxeasingly complex distributed information networks, agent communication technologies such as the Knowledge Query and Manipulation Language and the SHADE Matchmaker will play an important role. We describe our experiences with these technologies as applied to two applications: collaborative engineering and satellite image retrieval. Based on these exp...