With the fast booming of online music repositories, there is a need for content-based automatic indexing which will help users to find their favorite music objects in real time. Recently, numerous successful approaches on musical data feature extraction and selection have been proposed for instrument recognition in monophonic sounds. Unfortunately, none of these methods can be successfully appl...

Market-based instruments such as payments, auctions or tradable permits have been proposed as exible and coste ective instruments for biodiversity conservation on private lands. Trading the service of conservation requires one to de ne a metric that determines the extent to which a conserved site adds to the regional conservation objective. Yet, while markets for conservation are widely discuss...

The Mediterranean region is of fundamental importance to Europe given its strategic position. The responsibility for its overall ecosystem integrity is shared by European Union Member States (EU-MS) and other Mediterranean countries. A juxtaposition of overlapping governance instruments occurred recently in the region, with the implementation of both the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSF...

WAMPA (for Wide Area MicroProbe Analyser) represents a new scientific instrument concept for planetary exploration. WAMPA builds on recently published research such as sensor webs and distributed microsensors [1][2] but adds new sensor and localisation concepts. WAMPA is driven by the recurrent theme in spacecraft and sensor design to achieve smaller, lighter and lower cost systems. The essenti...

Market based instruments such as payments, auctions or tradable permits have been proposed as exible and cost-e ective instruments for biodiversity conservation on private lands. Trading the service of conservation requires to de ne a metric that determines to which extent a conserved site adds to the regional conservation objective. Yet, while markets for conservation are widely discussed and ...

After its investigation of cross-contamination from arthroscopic shavers, the US Food and Drug Administration issued an alert to hospitals about medical device reprocessing methods. In response to this, a team of risk management and instrument room personnel at a university hospital undertook a project that tested the manufacturer's recommended cleaning methods for surgical instruments with the...

Many radiologists are not familiar with the names of various instruments, surgical sponges, and needles that may be seen on intraoperative and postoperative radiographs. These devices may be intentionally placed for localization or therapeutic intervention, discovered on radiographs obtained to evaluate incorrect sponge or needle counts, or incidentally encountered on postoperative radiographs....

Our recent issue on “Equipment for eye care” (number 73, September 2010) addressed the importance of equipment in the delivery of eye care and covered maintenance, repair, training, purchasing, and donations. This issue (number 76) addresses similar concerns around surgical instruments and consumables. For an eye unit to function, instruments must be carefully managed so that they remain in goo...

BACKGROUND The cleaning stage of the instrument decontamination process has come under increased scrutiny due to the increasing complexity of surgical instruments and the adverse affects of residual protein contamination on surgical instruments. Instruments used in the podiatry field have a complex surface topography and are exposed to a wide range of biological contamination. Currently, podiat...

I n 1609, while exploring the lake that now bears his name, Samuel de Champlain looked to the east and exclaimed, “Voila les vert monts.” The Green Mountain State was an inhospitable place at that time; few dared to settle there until after the end of the French and Indian War, in 1763. By 1771, the population of Vermont was 4667 people. They led a difficult existence, and the earliest surgeons...