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  • September 1, 2010
  • 08:41 PM
  • 29 views

New land for agriculture coming mainly at the expense of tropical ecosystems

by Phil Camill in Global Change: Intersection of Nature and Culture


There have traditionally been two ways to produce more food for an increasing population:  Convert native ecosystems like forests and grasslands into agricultural fields (what we call “extensification”) or make the yields on existing croplands go up, through the use of things like machinery, fertilizers, irrigation, pesticides, and GMOs (what we call “intensification”).
Historically, these processes [...]... Read more »

H. K. Gibbs, A. S. Ruesch, F. Achard, M. K. Clayton, P. Holmgrene, N. Ramankutty, and J. A. Foley. (2010) Tropical forests were the primary sources of new agricultural land in the 1980s and 1990s. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. info:/

  • September 1, 2010
  • 02:05 AM
  • 26 views

Segmenting Supply Chain Strategies

by Daniel Stengel in SCRM Blog - Supply Chain Risk Management


For researchers and practitioners alike it is important to differentiate supply chain strategies.

Introduction
Not only Fisher (1997) showed, that there is no one-fits-all supply chain. But what are the criteria for should be used for supply chain segmentation?
Fisher focusses on on the product only, and he concludes, that a standard/functional product should be processed by a lean supply chain and innovative products by agile supply chains.
Continue reading "Segmenting Supply Chain Strategies"
... Read more »

Fischer, Marshall L. (1997) What is the Right Supply Chain for Your Product?. Harvard Business Review, 105-116. info:/

  • August 31, 2010
  • 12:30 PM
  • 23 views

Genomic analysis can be powerful – in the right hands

by Rachel Bernstein in Berkeley Science Review Blog

You may have heard about the controversial genetics study connecting a set of 150 genetic markers to “exceptional longevity” (people living past 100). Everybody’s interested in living longer, so it’s not surprising that the work, published by Boston University researchers in July in the journal Science, was covered with much fanfare in many main-stream news outlets (for example, in the NY Times and Scientific American). Science even hosted a media teleconference to promote the story. Continue reading →... Read more »

Teslovich TM, Musunuru K, Smith AV, Edmondson AC, Stylianou IM, Koseki M, Pirruccello JP, Ripatti S, Chasman DI, Willer CJ.... (2010) Biological, clinical and population relevance of 95 loci for blood lipids. Nature, 466(7307), 707-13. PMID: 20686565  

  • August 30, 2010
  • 02:37 AM
  • 22 views

Supply Chain Risk Management Dissertations (No. 1)

by Daniel Stengel in SCRM Blog - Supply Chain Risk Management


Today I start an irregular series on doctoral dissertations on Supply Chain Risk Management. An immense effort and dedication is spent on these works only to find the results hidden in libraries. So the goal is raise interest in their research.

Author / Topic
The first dissertation was written by Ingo Schneider in 2009 as his doctoral thesis at the Helmut Schmidt University in Hamburg, Germany. It was published by Shaker, Aachen and can be ordered here from amazon.de or your local library. The title translates in:
Risk as Strategic Part of the Supply Chain Design: Analysis and Case Study in the German Automobile Industry Continue reading "Supply Chain Risk Management Dissertations (No. 1)"
... Read more »

Schneider, Ingo. (2009) Die Risikobetrachtung in der Beschaffung als strategische Komponente im Supply-Chain-Design : eine Analyse am Beispiel Karosserieblechteile in der Automobilindustrie. Shaker, Aachen. info:/

  • August 25, 2010
  • 08:00 AM
  • 42 views

Resolving conflicts to make finding a job easier

by David Bradley in Sciencetext

Politicians might tell you that, “the ongoing evaluation of global joblessness data can be represented by a negative slope on the current employment hysteresis”. Unemployment is on the rise, in other words. So, it’s rather timely that a powerful “meta job search” engine is being developed by Austrian and UK computer scientists. Tabbasum Naz of [...]Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech TalkResolving conflicts to make finding a job easier
... Read more »

Tabbasum Naz, Jürgen Dorn, & Alexandra Poulovassilis. (2010) Configurable meta-search in the job domain. Int. J. Web Engineering and Technology, 6(1), 33-57. info:/

  • August 24, 2010
  • 11:01 AM
  • 48 views

Tauromaquia Today

by Bécquer Medak-Seguín in Hispanic Studies Forum

A recent story of a bull leaping into the stands and injuring 40 during a bullfight in the town of Tafalla (in Navarra) rekindled memories of seeing the Museo del Prado's exhibition of Goya's La tauromaquia nearly a decade ago (roughly 2002) in Madrid. The image to your right, titled "Desgracias acaecidas en el tendido" ["Tragedies occurring in the stands."], was part of the exhibition of 33 etchings and impacted me at the time because, in a sense, it contrasted starkly with the rest of a collection that featured toreros gracefully ushering the bulls through their capes, young men pole vaulting over bulls (called el salto de la garrocha), and, even, one depicting a man standing on a table, facing the bull, during the last moments before he becomes airborne.The series of etchings, as I would find out later, were not coherent according to the interpretations of many art critics and several academic debates sparked out of perceived inconsistencies among Goya's pieces. According to an article by Nigel Glendinning published some time ago, critics always inclined to the opinion that the artist's conception varied in the course of the work. And although it was originally agreed that Goya's prime intention was to describe the Spanish national sport accurately and realistically - in the manner of the latter nineteenth century costumbristas in Spain - it was early noticed that there were elements in some of the plates which did not fit in with the supposed documentary approach.My hunch is that the piece above is the source for the dispute over the coherence of Goya's La tauromaquia. In 1815 - the time, roughly, when the piece was crafted - it was somewhat unfathomable to the Spanish audience that a bull possessed the physical ability to leap into the stands and wreak havoc among the bullfighting spectators. In these times, however, it seems that Goya's paintings show that the use of the callejón - a staging area where the bullfighters prepare, within the two concentric circles of the plaza - was not very prevalent and that the spectators were much closer to the action than they are today. The piece above, then, might appear more realistic than some scholars previously thought and goes to show that, even today, spectator safety in bullrings (let's not even start with the bullfighters, banderilleros, or picadores) has a long way to go, as demonstrated, in the most unfortunate manner, by the tragic event in Navarra.Returning to Goya's work, La tauromaquia sways violently between tragedy and glee, undermining the opinion of those conditioned by the artist's previous (and, at times, contemporary) work in The Disaster's of War or by his subsequent work in the Black Paintings. These represented coherence in the sense that they were misanthropic critiques of the mercurial, post-Napoleonic War Spanish government. In La tauromaquia, the critiques of Spain were certainly there, however, they were masked by the culture itself which experienced a bullfighting renaissance around the time when Goya crafted the etchings. Goya seemed to perceive a tension in Spanish culture between tragedy and spectacle that still persists to this day. Nigel Glendinning (1961). A New View of Goya's Tauromaquia Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 24 (1/2), 120-127... Read more »

Nigel Glendinning. (1961) A New View of Goya's Tauromaquia. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 24(1/2), 120-127. info:other/

  • August 24, 2010
  • 07:35 AM
  • 56 views

Perceptual Warping of Colour

by Sean Roberts in The Adventures of Auck

There is evidence that categorisations can influence perception, which has been identified as a crucial argument for Relativism. In this post, the idea of perceptual warping is explained and applied to colour categorisation.... Read more »

DEBOER, B. (2000) Self-organization in vowel systems. Journal of Phonetics, 28(4), 441-465. DOI: 10.1006/jpho.2000.0125  

Goldstone, R. (1994) Influences of categorization on perceptual discrimination. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 123(2), 178-200. DOI: 10.1037//0096-3445.123.2.178  

Miyawaki, K., Strange, W., Verbrugge, R. R., Liberman, A. M., Jenkins, J. J., & Fujimura, O. (1975) An effect of linguistic experience: The discrimination of (r) and (l) by native speakers of Japanese and English . Perception and Psychophysics, 331-340. info:/

  • August 24, 2010
  • 05:00 AM
  • 34 views

Evolution of Colour Terms: 8 Embodied Relationships

by Sean Roberts in A Replicated Typo 2.0

In a series of  posts, I’ve been discussing constraints on the evolution of colour terms.  In the last post, I discussed Perceptual Warping.  Here, a further adjustment to the assumptions about perceptual space is suggested.
The assumption that all perceptual spaces are the same may be unrealistic and may favour Universalism (see Levinson, 2000).  To begin with, . . . → Read More: Evolution of Colour Terms: 8 Embodied Relationships... Read more »

Levinson, S. (2000) Yeli Dnye and the Theory of Basic Color Terms. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 10(1), 3-55. DOI: 10.1525/jlin.2000.10.1.3  

Bornstein, M., Kessen, W., & Weiskopf, S. (1976) Color vision and hue categorization in young human infants. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 2(1), 115-129. DOI: 10.1037/0096-1523.2.1.115  

Roberson, D., Davidoff, J., Davies, I., & Shapiro, L. (2004) The Development of Color Categories in Two Languages: A Longitudinal Study. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133(4), 554-571. DOI: 10.1037/0096-3445.133.4.554  

  • August 24, 2010
  • 03:00 AM
  • 49 views

Synthetic ‘cradle’ boosts hope of stem cell therapies

by Wellcome Trust in Wellcome Trust Blog

Stem cells – with their famed ability to change into any type of cell – hold tremendous promise for medicine, but growing them is a challenging task. “For therapeutics, you need millions and millions of cells,” says Dr Krishanu Saha from the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. “If we can make it easier for the cells [...]... Read more »

Mei, Y., Saha, K., Bogatyrev, S., Yang, J., Hook, A., Kalcioglu, Z., Cho, S., Mitalipova, M., Pyzocha, N., Rojas, F.... (2010) Combinatorial development of biomaterials for clonal growth of human pluripotent stem cells. Nature Materials, 768-778. DOI: 10.1038/nmat2812  

  • August 23, 2010
  • 02:46 AM
  • 33 views

Measuring the Bullwhip Effect in Supply Chains

by Daniel Stengel in SCRM Blog - Supply Chain Risk Management


The bullwhip effect in supply chains has been around for some time now. The term "bullwhip effect" originated at Procter & Gamble, and is defined as: demand amplification across echelons within a supply chain. This describes the effect that end customer demand may be very static (as for "Pampers" by Procter & Gamble), but the demand experienced by the manufacturer or supplier shows amplified demand variations. (Fransoo and Wouters (2000))

Causes of the Bullwhip Effect
Lee et al. (1997) first analyzed the causes of the bullwhip effect:Demand forecast updatingDemand forecast usually are based on the orders of the preceding echelon and not on the actual customer demandOrder batchingOrders are usually aggregated to batches to save cost.Price fluctuationsPromotions and other effects can lead to price fluctuations of the product. When the price is perceived to be lower, orders go up and vis-versa.Rationing and shortage gamingFor some products (eg. new iPhone) which may be short in supply, game theory suggests that it might be rational to order more than actually needed, since the number of delivered products usually is a percentage of the number of products ordered.

Continue reading "Measuring the Bullwhip Effect in Supply Chains"
... Read more »

Fransoo, J., & Wouters, M. (2000) Measuring the bullwhip effect in the supply chain. Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, 5(2), 78-89. DOI: 10.1108/13598540010319993  

  • August 21, 2010
  • 08:42 AM
  • 94 views

Myrmecomorphy

by Kevin Zelnio in The Online Laboratory of Kevin Zelnio

I absolutely adore the theory of evolution. It has a divine predictive, the results so wondrous in and of themselves. During my studies into symbiosis I have seen alot of strange and unusual adaptations, but the deeper I dig they more they keep getting stranger and stranger. The word this week is:
Myrmecomorphy
Top: [...]... Read more »

  • August 20, 2010
  • 10:00 AM
  • 19 views

Exploring Information Interaction ‘Context’ with Tefko Saracevic at #IIIX2010

by Anatoliy Gruzd in Social Media Lab

I am writing from the ‘Information Interaction in Context Symposium‘ in New Brunswick (the one in New Jersey, not the one in Canada), the home of Rutgers University. Usually I would wait until a conference is over and the dust is settled before blogging about an event, but in this case I’ll make an exception. Specifically, I would like to share some of the highlights from the keynote speaker while it’s still fresh in my mind.... Read more »

Saracevic, T. (2010) The Notion of Context in "Information Interaction in Context.". Inivited keynote at the conference Information Interaction in Context. info:/

  • August 20, 2010
  • 04:26 AM
  • 54 views

What’s the point of the semantic web?

by sciencebase in Sciencebase Science Blog

I was scanning journal tables of contents as usual this week and it occurred to me that there must be a better way to find relevant and timely research information that would be of interest to Sciencebase readers…and, of course, out pops the following title: Technically approaching the semantic web bottleneck Sounded, perfect…kind of…but what’s [...]What’s the point of the semantic web? is a post from: Sciencebase Science Blog
... Read more »

Nikolaos Konstantinou, Dimitrios-Emmanuel Spanos, Periklis Stavrou, & Nikolas Mitrou. (2010) Technically approaching the semantic web bottleneck. Int. J. Web Engineering and Technology, 6(1), 83-111. info:/

  • August 19, 2010
  • 11:30 AM
  • 42 views

Cleaning up emissions

by sciencebase in Sciencebase Science Blog

Emissions trading is an economic workaround, a fudge if you will, to reducing one’s pollution levels by buying off the emissions credits of others who are polluting less. Emissions trading (also known as cap and trade) is a market-based approach used to control pollution by providing economic incentives for achieving reductions in the emissions of [...]Cleaning up emissions is a post from: Sciencebase Science Blog
... Read more »

  • August 19, 2010
  • 08:17 AM
  • 40 views

Jumping Spiders Prefer Vegetated Corridors

by Kevin Zelnio in The Online Laboratory of Kevin Zelnio


Barriers to dispersal come in all shapes and sizes and not all are obvious. Baker conducted experiments with jumping spiders, Phidippus princeps (Salticidae) in which he manipulated corridors connecting patches of old growth fields (clover and alfalfa). Patches were either not connected (bare corridors), all connected, or partly connected by vegetated corridors (see schema [...]... Read more »

  • August 19, 2010
  • 06:00 AM
  • 33 views

Evolution of Colour Terms: 3 Perceptual Constraints

by Sean Roberts in A Replicated Typo 2.0

Continuing my series on the Evolution of Colour terms, this post reviews evidence for perceptual constraints on colour terms. For the full dissertation and for references, go here.

The perceptual space that results from the processing of opponent colours is non-uniform (see Figure below), meaning that there are optimal ways to describe it (Jameson & D’Andrade, . . . → Read More: Evolution of Colour Terms: 3 Perceptual Constraints... Read more »

  • August 18, 2010
  • 12:13 PM
  • 48 views

Borgesian Numerology

by Bécquer Medak-Seguín in Hispanic Studies Forum

Nadine Bornholt, a graduate student at Yale, has an interesting article on numbers in Jorge Luis Borges's "Death and the Compass" (1944) in the December issue of CiberLetras.Toward the onset of the article, Bornholt references the role that the work of Edgar Allen Poe played in Borges's thought, indicating that, for him, "Poe invented a new type of reader, the reader of the detective story, who doubts everything present in a literary work and whose attitude toward the text is one of suspicion." Interestingly, Borges returns to this strand of thought five years later, in a piece in La nación titled "Edgar Allen Poe."There, he suggests that the "literature of skepticism" Poe developed has more to do with a particular ontologically-driven Weltanschauung than with a socio-historically informed perspective."Inaugurated by Baudelaire, and not designed by Shaw, there exists the unfaithful custom of admiring Poe against the United States, of judging the poet as mislaid angel, for its evil, in that cold and avid inferno. The truth is that Poe would have suffered in any country. No one, otherwise, admires Baudelaire against France or Coleridge against England."To this brief list, I would certainly add the work of William Faulkner. (I'm still debating whether to add Joyce.)In any case, Bornholt seems to suggest, albeit indirectly, that the "constant oscillation between three and four" generates in the reader of Borges's short story a high level of suspicion, which the story solidifies in its final lines as the reader discovers, via Scharlach, that Yarmolinsky was, in fact, killed by mistake.Bornholt argues, much more directly, that the numbers three and four are "one aspect of the unity created in the story" and that "both three and four can be read as Biblical symbols of unity." As I noted above, reading Borges's short story as a Barthesian writerly text offers another fundamental aspect of unity, constructing a suspicious reader and locating "the reader as a site of the production of meaning." The unity in this case is a non-Biblical hermeneutic one.Hermeneutics was one of Borges's literary preoccupations for much of his life. Borges, as evidenced by "Death and the Compass," seeks to construct a certain kind of reader that has access to the many layers of his texts, including its multilingual, Biblical, and intertextual aspects. Though Bornholt's reading of this particular short story is exceptionally narrow, it provides an excellent framework - a "kabbalistic way of reading texts" that "focuses on deciphering every single word contained in a text, as every single aspect of the text potentially bears an important meaning" - for reading Borges's many, many other beautiful narratives.You can find Borges's short story, "La muerte y la brújula" (1944), here.Nadine Bornholt (2009). Numbers in Jorge Luis Borges’ “Death and the Compass” CiberLetras: Journal of Literary Criticism and Culture, 22... Read more »

Nadine Bornholt. (2009) Numbers in Jorge Luis Borges’ “Death and the Compass”. CiberLetras: Journal of Literary Criticism and Culture. info:other/

  • August 18, 2010
  • 06:15 AM
  • 53 views

Environmental Constraints on Colour Term Evolution

by Sean Roberts in A Replicated Typo 2.0

Continuing my series on the Evolution of Colour terms, this post reviews evidence for environmental constraints on colour perception.... Read more »

Regan, B., Julliot, C., Simmen, B., Vienot, F., Charles-Dominique, P., & Mollon, J. (2001) Fruits, foliage and the evolution of primate colour vision. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 356(1407), 229-283. DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2000.0773  

Clarke, B.C. (1979) The evolution of genetic diversity. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, 453-474. info:/

Webster, M., Webster, S., Bharadwaj, S., Verma, R., Jaikumar, J., Madan, G., & Vaithilingham, E. (2002) Variations in normal color vision. III. Unique hues in Indian and United States observers. Journal of the Optical Society of America A, 19(10), 1951. DOI: 10.1364/JOSAA.19.001951  

LAENG, B., BRENNEN, T., ELDEN, A., GAAREPAULSEN, H., BANERJEE, A., & LIPTON, R. (2007) Latitude-of-birth and season-of-birth effects on human color vision in the Arctic. Vision Research, 47(12), 1595-1607. DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2007.03.011  

Dowman, M. (2007) Explaining Color Term Typology With an Evolutionary Model. Cognitive Science: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 30(1), 99-132. DOI: 10.1207/s15516709cog3101_4  

Griffin LD. (2006) Optimality of the basic colour categories for classification. Journal of the Royal Society, Interface / the Royal Society, 3(6), 71-85. PMID: 16849219  

  • August 17, 2010
  • 03:42 PM
  • 46 views

Picking Winners?

by Shaun Hendy in A Measure of Science






It seems to have become received wisdom recently that New Zealand must pick winners with its public science investment.  In this post, I argue that this is not new:  we picked our winners a long time ago, with a strong focus on agricultural and environmental sciences.  So what are the pros and cons of backing [...]... Read more »

  • August 17, 2010
  • 05:08 AM
  • 51 views

Genetic Constraints on Colour Terms

by Sean Roberts in A Replicated Typo 2.0

Continuing my series on the Evolution of Colour terms, this post reviews the evidence for genetic constrains on colour perception.... Read more »

Hardy, J., Frederick, C., Kay, P., & Werner, J. (2004) Color naming and lens brunescence. Journal of Vision, 4(8), 56-56. DOI: 10.1167/4.8.56  

Regier T, & Kay P. (2004) Color naming and sunlight: commentary on Lindsey and Brown (2002). Psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society / APS, 15(4), 289. PMID: 15043652  

Jameson KA, & Komarova NL. (2009) Evolutionary models of color categorization. II. Realistic observer models and population heterogeneity. Journal of the Optical Society of America. A, Optics, image science, and vision, 26(6), 1424-36. PMID: 19488182  

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