Series Of Time Slices Research Articles

Dynamics and Emerging Trends in Genodermatology: A Scientometric Analysis

Dynamics and Emerging Trends in Genodermatology: A Scientometric Analysis

A multi-criteria detection scheme of collusive fraud organization for reputation aggregation in social networks

In social networks, reputation aggregation is an effective approach for recognizing malicious behaviors and individuals. However, organized collusive fraud to obtain a high reputation is the most common and most harmful type of widespread network attack. Therefore, countering the collusion in reputation aggregation systems and further detecting the collusive fraud organizations (CFO) is a significant challenge. In this study, we propose a multi-criteria detection scheme of collusive fraud organization, named MD-CFO, to identify CFO in social networks. This scheme is based on a new universal reputation aggregation method, which includes the calculation of a reputation score and a universal factor. Moreover, five detection criteria and their corresponding factors, i.e., the rating difference fraud factor, rating frequency fraud factor, collaborative behavior fraud factor, suspicious relationship fraud factor, and CFO factor, are used to evaluate the likelihood of being a colluder. Furthermore, we propose three algorithms for detecting CFO and colluders. To prevent false-positive detection results, a correction mechanism called time slice verification (TSV) is used to certify a node’s likelihood of suspicion or fraud in a series of time slices, thereby excluding honest nodes from CFO detection. Finally, empirical simulations are used to test the feasibility and effectiveness of our scheme.

Scientific evolutionary pathways: Identifying and visualizing relationships for scientific topics

Whereas traditional science maps emphasize citation statistics and static relationships, this paper presents a term‐based method to identify and visualize the evolutionary pathways of scientific topics in a series of time slices. First, we create a data preprocessing model for accurate term cleaning, consolidating, and clustering. Then we construct a simulated data streaming function and introduce a learning process to train a relationship identification function to adapt to changing environments in real time, where relationships of topic evolution, fusion, death, and novelty are identified. The main result of the method is a map of scientific evolutionary pathways. The visual routines provide a way to indicate the interactions among scientific subjects and a version in a series of time slices helps further illustrate such evolutionary pathways in detail. The detailed outline offers sufficient statistical information to delve into scientific topics and routines and then helps address meaningful insights with the assistance of expert knowledge. This empirical study focuses on scientific proposals granted by the United States National Science Foundation, and demonstrates the feasibility and reliability. Our method could be widely applied to a range of science, technology, and innovation policy research, and offer insight into the evolutionary pathways of scientific activities.

Modelling Monnikerede. The Topographical Reconstruction of a Deserted Medieval Outport near Bruges

Since the middle of the thirteenth century, the small outport of Monnikerede was part of the portuary system of the later medieval international market of Bruges, which used the Zwin tidal inlet as its gateway to overseas markets. During the sixteenth century, when the political, economic and environmental conditions in the Zwin harbours deteriorated, Monnikerede slowly became depopulated and eventually disappeared from the landscape. In order to analyse the morphology of this deserted harbour, an interdisciplinary research scheme was initiated aimed at integrating historical, cartographic, archaeological, and geophysical data. Through a GIS-based methodology, this integration of complementary sources enabled a topographical reconstruction up to the level of individual parcels and allowed for the discernment of a socio-economic topography. The decline of the city could be visualised through a series of time slices between 1450 and 1850, indicating that Monnikerede’s misfortunes are reflected in the disintegration of the urban fabric. Historical and cartographic data are indispensable in laying the spatio-temporal framework of such reconstructions, whereas the archaeological data provide a more detailed insight in the intra-parcellar occupation and material culture of a site.

Rating knowledge sharing in cross-domain collaborative filtering.

Cross-domain collaborative filtering (CF) aims to share common rating knowledge across multiple related CF domains to boost the CF performance. In this paper, we view CF domains as a 2-D site-time coordinate system, on which multiple related domains, such as similar recommender sites or successive time-slices, can share group-level rating patterns. We propose a unified framework for cross-domain CF over the site-time coordinate system by sharing group-level rating patterns and imposing user/item dependence across domains. A generative model, say ratings over site-time (ROST), which can generate and predict ratings for multiple related CF domains, is developed as the basic model for the framework. We further introduce cross-domain user/item dependence into ROST and extend it to two real-world cross-domain CF scenarios: 1) ROST (sites) for alleviating rating sparsity in the target domain, where multiple similar sites are viewed as related CF domains and some items in the target domain depend on their correspondences in the related ones; and 2) ROST (time) for modeling user-interest drift over time, where a series of time-slices are viewed as related CF domains and a user at current time-slice depends on herself in the previous time-slice. All these ROST models are instances of the proposed unified framework. The experimental results show that ROST (sites) can effectively alleviate the sparsity problem to improve rating prediction performance and ROST (time) can clearly track and visualize user-interest drift over time.

About this title ‐ Early Palaeozoic Biogeography and Palaeogeography

The Early Palaeozoic was a critical interval in the evolution of marine life on our planet. Through a window of some 120 million years, the Cambrian Explosion, Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event, End Ordovician Extinction and the subsequent Silurian Recovery established a steep trajectory of increasing marine biodiversity that started in the Late Proterozoic and continued into the Devonian. Biogeography is a key property of virtually all organisms; their distributional ranges, mapped out on a mosaic of changing palaeogeography, have played important roles in modulating the diversity and evolution of marine life. This Memoir first introduces the content, some of the concepts involved in describing and interpreting palaeobiogeography, and the changing Early Palaeozoic geography is illustrated through a series of time slices. The subsequent 26 chapters, compiled by some 130 authors from over 20 countries, describe and analyse distributional and in many cases diversity data for all the major biotic groups plotted on current palaeogeographic maps. Nearly a quarter of a century after the publication of the ‘Green Book’ (Geological Society, London, Memoir 12, edited by McKerrow and Scotese), improved stratigraphic and taxonomic data together with more accurate, digitized palaeogeographic maps, have confirmed the central role of palaeobiogeography in understanding the evolution of Early Palaeozoic ecosystems and their biotas.

Testing coevolutionary hypotheses over geological timescales: interactions between Cretaceous dinosaurs and plants

Testing coevolutionary scenarios over extended geological timescales is fraught with difficulties. Most tests rely on comparisons of temporal variations in taxonomic diversity for the groups of interest: however, this approach typically excludes spatiotemporal data. Here, we apply a quantitative method that incorporates the spatiotemporal distributions of the proposed coevolving groups using a Geographical Information System. Distributional data for Cretaceous dinosaur and plant groups were mapped onto palaeogeographical reconstructions in a series of time-slices. Within each time-slice, palaeocontinental surfaces were divided into a series of grids, each of which was scored as present, absent or inapplicable (unsampled) for each group. Distributions were compared statistically to determine whether the putative coevolving groups co-occurred within grid squares more or less frequently than expected by chance. Pairwise comparisons were made between herbivorous dinosaur clades and major plant groups (e.g. cycads, angiosperms) on a global scale. Only three nonrepeated associations of marginal significance were recovered, demonstrating that, in general, current knowledge of the spatiotemporal distributions of these groups provides little support for coevolutionary hypotheses. The Geographical Information System methods used are readily applicable to many other questions whose answers are reliant on a detailed knowledge of organismal distributions in time and space. © 2010 The Linnean Society of London, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2010, 100, 1–15.

Reconstructing the geomorphic history of Liang Bua, Flores, Indonesia: a stratigraphic interpretation of the occupational environment

Liang Bua, in Flores, Indonesia, was formed as a subterranean chamber over 600 ka. From this time to the present, a series of geomorphic events influenced the structure of the cave and cave deposits, creating a complex stratigraphy. Within these deposits, nine main sedimentary units have been identified. The stratigraphic relationships between these units provide the evidence needed to reconstruct the geomorphic history of the cave. This history was dominated by water action, including slope wash processes, channel formation, pooling of water, and flowstone precipitation, which created waterfalls, cut-and-fill stratigraphy, large pools of water, and extensive flowstone cappings. The reconstructed sequence of events over the last 190 k.yr. has been summarized by a series of time slices that demonstrate the nature of the occupational environment in Liang Bua. The earliest artifacts at the site, dated to ∼190 ka, testify to hominin presence in the area, but the reconstructions suggest that occupation of the cave itself may not have been possible until after ∼100 ka. At ∼95 ka, channel erosion of a basal unit, which displays evidence of deposition in a pond environment, created a greater relief on the cave floor, and formed remanent areas of higher ground that later became a focus for hominin occupation from 74–61 ka by the west wall and in the center of the cave, and from ∼18–17 ka by the east wall. These zones have been identified according to the sloping nature of the stratigraphy and the distribution of artifacts, and their locations have implications for the archaeological interpretation of the site.

Visual interrogation of gyrokinetic particle simulations

Gyrokinetic particle simulations are critical to the study of anomalous energy transport associated with plasma microturbulence in magnetic confinement fusion experiments. The simulations are conducted on massively parallel computers and produce large quantities of particles, variables, and time steps, thus presenting a formidable challenge to data analysis tasks. We present two new visualization techniques for scientists to improve their understanding of the time-varying, multivariate particle data. One technique allows scientists to examine correlations in multivariate particle data with tightly coupled views of the data in both physical space and variable space, and to visually identify and track features of interest. The second technique, built into SCIRun, allows scientists to perform range-based queries over a series of time slices and visualize the resulting particles using glyphs. The ability to navigate the multiple dimensions of the particle data, as well as query individual or a collection of particles, enables scientists to not only validate their simulations but also discover new phenomena in their data.

Cretaceous to Holocene structural and stratigraphic development in south Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela, inferred from well and three-dimensional seismic data

The subsurface of the southern part of the Maracaibo Basin has been studied in much less detail than the central and northern basin because hydrocarbon-rich rocks of Cretaceous and Paleogene age are deeply buried to a depth of 4.5 km (2.7 mi) by a thick Neogene clastic section eroded off of surrounding mountain ranges. In this article, we describe the results of the interpretation of 1600-km2 (617-mi2) three-dimensional (3-D) seismic reflection data centered on this horizontal to monoclinally southwestward-dipping middle Cretaceous to Holocene section adjacent to a zone of northwestward overthrusting along the mountain front of the Mrida Andes. To establish the structural and stratigraphic history of the 3-D seismic study area, a series of time slices were constructed at key horizons through the 3-D seismic volume. The ages of units in these time slices were correlated to stratigraphic formations known from outcrops at the basin edges, well data from the 3-D seismic study area, and subsurface correlation with better studied areas in the northern basin. The type and orientations of structures along each time horizon were mapped to constrain the successive structural and stratigraphic events that affected the different tectonosequences in the southern Maracaibo Basin. The main tectonic events recorded both by structures and unconformity-bound tectonosequences include the following events from youngest to oldest: (1) Pliocene–Holocene shortening produced by the uplift of the Mrida Andes and overthrusting at the mountain front has produced an approximately 6-km (3.7-mi)-deep localized foredeep basin; the axial traces of these folds trend northeast-southwest and parallel the strike of a set of normal faults; all structural features are consistent with regional northwest-southeast shortening. A low-angle thrust fault responsible for the formation of the main northeast-southwest fold is inferred to continue downdip as a flat-lying thrust that may be continuous with low-angle thrust faults observed along the northern Mrida Andes mountain front. The level of thrust detachment occurs at the Cretaceous Coln shale and accommodates a negligible amount of shortening (500 m; 1640 ft). (2) Late Miocene–Pliocene shortening caused by uplift of the Sierra de Perij and the Mrida Andes produced an inversion of north-south–striking normal faults and folds in a parallel orientation. The axial traces of these folds and the trend of inverted structures coincide with the trends of the most prolific Eocene sandstone reservoirs in the central and northern Lake Maracaibo areas. (3) Late Paleocene–middle Eocene formation of a foreland basin is related to the southward overthrusting at the northeastern margin of the basin; normal faults with an average trend of S37E record flexure of the basin during this event; faults also include the southern splayed termination of the left-lateral Icotea strike-slip fault. (4) The termination of the Icotea fault in the south lake area is consistent with the small amount of left-lateral strike-slip displacement previously inferred from the geometry of the Eocene Icotea pull-apart basin in central Lake Maracaibo.

Ground‐penetrating radar time‐slices from North Ballachulish Moss

AbstractIn the late 1990s ground‐penetrating radar (GPR) was used to map the underlying topography of North Ballachulish Moss as part of an archaeological evaluation of the area that was under threat of development. In the process a series of radar anomalies were identified. These were confirmed subsequently by sediment coring and trial excavation to correspond to a buried prehistoric surface with associated man‐made artefacts. These GPR data have now been used to develop horizontal time‐slices. The series of time‐slices is presented showing the development of discrete surfaces and their relationship to an adjacent headland. The orientation of the site and its proximity to the location of a buried prehistoric wooden figure suggest ritual importance. Although comparable data in similar locations are lacking, the possibility exists to shed further light on the Ballachulish evidence without destroying wetland resources if further GPR investigation can be carried out on other wetland sites of recognized ritual significance. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Gamma‐Ray Lines from Asymmetric Supernovae

We present 3-dimensional SPH simulations of supernova explosions from 100 seconds to 1 year after core-bounce. By extending our modelling efforts to a 3-dimensional hydrodynamics treatment, we are able to investigate the effects of explosion asymmetries on mixing and gamma-ray line emergence in supernovae. A series of initial explosion conditions are implemented, including jet-like and equatorial asymmetries of varying degree. For comparison, symmetric explosion models are also calculated. A series of time slices from the explosion evolution are further analyzed using a 3-dimensional Monte Carlo gamma-ray transport code. The emergent hard X- and gamma-ray spectra are calculated as a function of both viewing angle and time, including trends in the gamma-ray line profiles. We find significant differences in the velocity distribution of radioactive nickel between the symmetric and asymmetric explosion models. The effects of this spatial distribution change are reflected in the overall high energy spectrum, as well as in the individual gamma-ray line profiles.

Molecular movements in contracting muscle: Towards “muscle - the movie”

The recent publication of the crystal structures of G-actin and of myosin subfragment-1, together with analysis of a time-resolved series of well sampled low-angle 2D X-ray diffraction patterns from bony fish muscle permits the study of the molecular movements in muscle that are associated with generation and regulation of contractile force. Here it is shown that even though low-angle (i.e. low resolution) X-ray diffraction patterns are being used, these patterns are sensitive, for example, to sub-domain movements of as little as 3 Å or 4° within the actin monomers of actin filaments. Actin filament diffraction patterns from whole muscle are being used to define actin domain and tropomyosin movements involved in regulation. Myosin and actin filament diffraction patterns are being used together to start to show how the complete “quasi-crystalline” unit cell in the bony fish muscle A-band can be modelled as a series of time-slices through a typical tetanic contraction of the muscle. In this way, the time sequence of images can be used to create “muscle - the movie”.

Jurassic thermal doming and deflation in the North Sea: implications of the sequence stratigraphic evidence

Although the ‘Mid-Cimmerian event’ or unconformity has been recognized over much of Europe, its exact stratigraphic relations and causal mechanism have remained unclear. Application of a genetic sequence stratigraphic approach (using 17 marine condensed sections and maximum flooding surfaces) to Jurassic sequences across NW Europe allows the stratigraphic succession to be subdivided into a series of time-slices (genetic stratigraphic sequences) and allows the true nature of the unconformity to be determined. They indicate that the main event’s correlative conformity falls in the Aalenian near the break between the opalinum and murchisonae ammonite biochronozones. Further study of the associated spatial and temporal variation indicates that systematic truncation of stratigraphy occurred throughout the North Sea domain (the oldest stratigraphies subcrop in areas adjacent to the triple junction) with subsequent progressive onlap towards the same area. When integrated with igneous evidence, these observations are interpreted to confirm regional (Toarcian–Aalenian) domal uplift, resulting from the impingement of a broad-based (> 1250 km diameter), transient plume head or ‘blob’ at the base of the lithosphere. Progressive pre-rift, Aalenian–early Bathonian marine onlap records differential subsidence in response to the initial deflation of the dome while central regions may have continued to rise. Subsequent subsidence post-dated Bathonian–Callovian volcanism but still pre-dated the timing of most significant (Kimmeridgian–Volgian) rifting. Such temporal relations demonstrate that North Sea volcanism is inconsistent with a classic ‘passive’ rift model. Instead, it seems more appropriate to equate Mid–Late Jurassic North Sea development with an ‘active’ rift model following mantle-driven thermal doming. Integration of sedimentation patterns with basin development suggests that the early Toarcian–early Kimmeridgian succession records a long-term, second-order regressive–transgressive episode related to regional tectonism. Comparison with the current chart of coastal onlap and global sea-level change highlights the correlation of the Intra-Aalenian event with one of the most significant regressions (the 177 Ma event separating the Absaroka and Zuni first-order megacycles). The knowledge that this part of the curve appears to be based exclusively on sections from Dorset and Yorkshire, within and adjacent to the region affected by regional doming, suggests that there remains a need to test this part of the chart using sections from outside the uplifted area and emphasizes the impracticality of using just two relatively closely spaced sections in trying to define a truly global signal. Clearly, sections should be taken from several areas and preferably from different plates as tectonically uncoupled as possible. Until then, the worry will remain that regional tectonic events could overprint any global signal and be erroneously interpreted as abrupt changes in global eustasy. The fact that doubts such as these can be cast upon parts of the eustatic sea-level chart suggests that it is still someway off being a valid global standard with true predictive capabilities.

Late Quaternary evolution of the Burullus lagoon region, north-central Nile delta, Egypt

The evolution of late Quaternary stratigraphic sequences in the Burullus lagoon region of the north-central Nile delta, Egypt is determined by petrological analysis of radiocarbon-dated sediment borings. Shallow marine, lagoonal and fluvial deposits accumulated during the late Pleistocene, and delta plain to coastal facies during the Holocene (since about 7500 yrs B.P.). The latter sequence is characterized primarily by an irregular succession of delta plain deposits, i.e. distributary channel fill, marsh and lagoon. Complete coarsening upward sequences, formed by prodelta to coastal units and previously defined in the northeastern Nile delta, are not observed in this region. Long-term sediment accumulation rates for Holocene facies during the build-up of the delta range from about 100 to 300 cm 1000 yrs . The location and ages of three Nile distributary channel systems are recognized by means of cores, from east to west: Sebennitic, Saitic, and Bolbitine/Rosetta. The mouth of the Sebennitic, which is oldest of the three, was located on what is now the inner to middle shelf. This would explain the absence of prodelta and delta-front sequences and a presence of a belt of medium- to coarse-grained sands extending seaward of the coast. The distribution in time and space of the Holocene facies is interpreted in terms of the interplay of factors controlling sedimentation, i.e. eustatic sea-level oscillations, climatic changes and land subsidence (minor in this region: 0.04 cm/yr). Of the three, sea-level changes dominate. Paleogeographic maps show, through a series of time slices, the changing configuration of this region during the past 30,000 years. Maps indicate the shifting channel systems and the major displacement of associated marshes and lagoons. This study suggests that, without the emplacement of coastal protection barriers and containment structures, an expansion of Burullus lagoon may be expected in the near future.