The role of spatial data and related technologies in disaster management has been well-known worldwide. One of the challenges concerned with such a role is access to and usage of reliable, accurate and up-to-date spatial data for disaster management. This is a very important aspect to disaster response as timely, up-to-date and accurate spatial data describing the current situation is paramount...

Germany 3 The successful implementation of Internet-based spatial data infrastructures (SDI) requires the adoption of a compatible suite of standards to enable interoperability. The proliferation of new standards and new versions of old standards raises issues of dependency and compatibility that may impede the implementation of SDI architectures. This article proposes a suite of geospatial sta...

The world as we know it is changing. Economies world wide are undergoing a process of profound and continuing structural change, and the global village is becoming a reality driven by IT and communication technologies. With this in mind, many countries believe that they can benefit both economically and environmentally from better management of their spatial data assets by taking a perspective ...

Road infrastructures contribute to a healthy economy throughout a sustainable distribution of goods and services. A road network requires timely programmed maintenance treatments in order to keep roads assets in good condition, providing maximum safety for road users under a cost-effective approach. Surface Distress is the key element to identify road condition and may be generated from many di...

Spatial scientific research has increasingly become multidisciplinary. The need for different disciplines to share thematic knowledge and information has increased. However, not many Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) have succeeded in facilitating the needs of these multidisciplinary research communities. This article provides a methodological framework for the development of a user-centric S...

AIMS In a time of controversy regarding the use of echocardiography for assessment of left ventricular (LV) dyssynchrony and prediction of response to cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT), this meta-analysis aimed to evaluate the feasibility and reliability of LV dyssynchrony assessment by three-dimensional echocardiography (3DE), determine clinically useful reference values in healthy subje...

The highly dynamic and complex nature of today’s metropolitans requires that any “service provision” of their municipality be fast, economical, and of high quality. This goal could only be reached through cooperating or interoperating applications. Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) are indispensable from this respect. Enabling Application-to-Application (A2A) integration, Services Oriented Arc...

BACKGROUND Sperm chromatin structure is often impaired; mainly due to oxidative damage. Antioxidant treatments do not consistently produce fertility improvements and, when given at high doses, they might block essential oxidative processes such as chromatin compaction. This study was intended to assess the effect on male sub-fertility of a pure one carbon cycle nutritional support without stron...

OBJECTIVE To examine if anaemia (and its severity) is associated with disease activity and damage accrual in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). METHODS Four thousand four-hundred study visits in 613 SLE patients enrolled in LUMINA were studied. Anaemia was expressed in four categories of haematocrit (Hct) as defined by the Systemic Lupus Activity Measure-Revised (SLAM-R): no anaemia (Hct >35...

We present VLT/NACO SDI images of the very nearby star SCR 1845-6357 (hereafter SCR 1845). SCR 1845 is a recently discovered (Hambly et al. 2004) M8.5 star just 3.5 pc from the sun (Deacon et al. 2005). Using the capabilities of the unique SDI device, we discovered a substellar companion to SCR 1845 at a separation of 4 AU (1.170”±0.003” on the sky, PA=170.20◦±0.13◦) and a ∆F1(1.575 μm) of 3.57...