Protection of roadless areas : hearing before the Subcommittee on Forests and Public Land Management of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, United States Senate, One Hundred Sixth Congress, first session, to receive testimony on the President's announcement to survey approximately 40 million acres for increased protection.

Shipping list no.: 2000-0219-P (pt. 1), 2000-0328-P (pt. 2), 2001-0124-P (pt. 3).

Approximately optimal experimental design for heteroscedastic Gaussian process models

This paper presents a greedy Bayesian experimental design criterion for heteroscedastic Gaussian process models. The criterion is based on the Fisher information and is optimal in the sense of minimizing parameter uncertainty for likelihood based estimators. We demonstrate the validity of the criterion under different noise regimes and present experimental results from a rabies simulator to demonstrate the effectiveness of the resulting approximately optimal designs.

On the Lp-Norm Regression Models for Estimating Value-at-Risk

Analysis of risk measures associated with price series data movements and its predictions are of strategic importance in the financial markets as well as to policy makers in particular for short- and longterm planning for setting up economic growth targets. For example, oilprice risk-management focuses primarily on when and how an organization can best prevent the costly exposure to price risk. Value-at-Risk (VaR) is the commonly practised instrument to measure risk and is evaluated by analysing the negative/positive tail of the probability distributions of the returns (profit or loss). In modelling applications, least-squares estimation (LSE)-based linear regression models are often employed for modeling and analyzing correlated data. These linear models are optimal and perform relatively well under conditions such as errors following normal or approximately normal distributions, being free of large size outliers and satisfying the Gauss-Markov assumptions. However, often in practical situations, the LSE-based linear regression models fail to provide optimal results, for instance, in non-Gaussian situations especially when the errors follow distributions with fat tails and error terms possess a finite variance. This is the situation in case of risk analysis which involves analyzing tail distributions. Thus, applications of the LSE-based regression models may be questioned for appropriateness and may have limited applicability. We have carried out the risk analysis of Iranian crude oil price data based on the Lp-norm regression models and have noted that the LSE-based models do not always perform the best. We discuss results from the L1, L2 and L∞-norm based linear regression models. ACM Computing Classification System (1998): B.1.2, F.1.3, F.2.3, G.3, J.2.

K-Theoretic Characterization of C*-Algebras with Approximately Inner Flip

The author is supported by an NSERC PDF.

K-Theoretic Characterization of C*-Algebras with Approximately Inner Flip

The author is supported by an NSERC PDF.

Musical commonplace book : manuscript, [approximately 1790-approximately 1810]

Contains songs, partly from English operas, and instrumental music.

Ah' quest'amplesso, o cara: scena e duetto nella Cleopatra / manuscript, [approximately 1800]

del Sig:re Sebastiano Nasolini :

CIL 6.1284-1285 – Metrical epitaph on a sarcophagus for Lucius Cornelius Scipio Barbatus

Photographs and translation

Análisis crítico-jurídico del proceso a la orden del Temple, 1309-1312 (prolegómenos, disolución y repercusiones posteriores)

El proceso contra la orden del Temple ha sido calificado por algunos autores como el juicio más conocido de la Edad Media y uno de los más famosos y escandalosos de la historia de la Humanidad, junto a otros procesos célebres, como el llevado a cabo en Atenas contra Sócrates en el siglo cuarto A.C. y el celebrado en Galilea contra Jesús de Nazaret en el siglo primero. Además, es el proceso más antiguo de cuya instrucción existe una detallada documentación. En esta obra no sólo se hace un concienzudo análisis del proceso ordenado por Clemente V contra la orden del Temple, sino que se analizan las causas reales y las ficticias de la persecución, la orden de detención indiscriminada emitida por Felipe IV, con la colaboración necesaria del gran inquisidor de Francia, los artículos de cargo formulados por el papa y las presiones y tormentos a los que se les sometió por orden del papa y del gran inquisidor. También se realiza un análisis más somero y sucinto de los procesos contra las personas de los templarios llevados a cabo en los diferentes países de la Cristiandad donde estaba implantada la Orden, análisis que pone de manifiesto las triviales y anodinas declaraciones, en todo caso exculpatorias, expresadas por los templarios en los países en que no fueron sometidos a tortura. La obra se completa con un primer capítulo en el que, a partir de textos históricos, se trata de fijar la fecha de fundación de la Orden y se analizan las motivaciones que dieron lugar a su nacimiento de la Orden en el primer cuarto del siglo XII, y a la aprobación de la Regla en el Concilio de Vienne en 1128, circunstancia que es aprovechada para llevar a cabo un análisis de la Regla de Edimburgo, décima de las que se conocen en la actualidad, sacada a la luz por nosotros de su letargo de siglos en las estanterías de la Biblioteca Nacional de Escocia, y con un tercer capítulo dedicado al análisis de las repercusiones posteriores a la disolución, en el que se hace un especial hincapié en el juicio y condena de los dignatarios y en la situación de los templarios sobrevivientes, completándose el capítulo con un estudio sobre la sucesión y eventual continuidad de la Orden. La estructura expositiva de cada capítulo es la misma y consiste en una parte en la que en varios epígrafes se recogen los hechos históricos a los que se refiere a partir de la bibliografía que consideramos más rigurosa sobre la época histórica a que se refiere y un epígrafe final en el que se realiza el análisis crítico jurídico de los hechos más relevantes. Por último se incluye un capítulo de conclusiones con las más relevantes que, a nuestro juicio, se ponen de manifiesto tras el análisis crítico-jurídico de cada capítulo.

In Situ Observation of the Thermal Decomposition of Weddelite by Heating Stage Environmental Scanning Electron Microscopy

The morphological and chemical changes occurring during the thermal decomposition of weddelite, CaC2O4·2H2O, have been followed in real time in a heating stage attached to an Environmental Scanning Electron Microscope operating at a pressure of 2 Torr, with a heating rate of 10 °C/min and an equilibration time of approximately 10 min. The dehydration step around 120 °C and the loss of CO around 425 °C do not involve changes in morphology, but changes in the composition were observed. The final reaction of CaCO3 to CaO while evolving CO2 around 600 °C involved the formation of chains of very small oxide particles pseudomorphic to the original oxalate crystals. The change in chemical composition could only be observed after cooling the sample to 350 °C because of the effects of thermal radiation.

Electrochemistry of Heteroleptic Tris(phthalocyaninato) Rare Earth(III) Complexes

The electrochemical characteristics of a series of heteroleptic tris(phthalocyaninato) complexes with identical rare earths or mixed rare earths (Pc)M(OOPc)M(OOPc) [M = Eu...Lu, Y; H2Pc = unsubstituted phthalocyanine, H2(OOPc) = 3,4,12,13,21,22,30,31-octakis(octyloxy)phthalocyanine] and (Pc)Eu(OOPc)Er(OOPc) have been recorded and studied comparatively by cyclic voltammetry (CV) and differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) in CH2Cl2 containing 0.1 M tetrabutylammonium perchlorate (TBAP). Up to five quasi-reversible one-electron oxidations and four one-electron reductions have been revealed. The half-wave potentials of the first, second and fifth oxidations depend on the size of the metal center, but the fifth changes in the opposite direction to that of the first two. Moreover, the difference in redox potentials of the first oxidation and first reduction for (Pc)M(OOPc)M(OOPc), 0.85−0.98 V, also decreases linearly along with decreasing rare earth ion radius, clearly showing the rare earth ion size effect and indicating enhanced π−π interactions in the triple-deckers connected by smaller lanthanides. This order follows the red-shift seen in the lowest energy band of triple-decker compounds. The electronic differences between the lanthanides and yttrium are more apparent for triple-decker sandwich complexes than for the analogous double-deckers. By comparing triple-decker, double-decker and mononuclear [ZnII] complexes containing the OOPc ligand, the HOMO−LUMO gap has been shown to contract approximately linearly with the number of stacked phthalocyanine ligands.

Synthesis and characterization of K2Ca5(SO4)6· H2O, the equivalent of görgeyite, a rare evaporite mineral

Görgeyite, K2Ca5(SO4)6··H2O, is a very rare monoclinic double salt found in evaporites related to the slightly more common mineral syngenite. At 1 atmosphere with increasing external temperature from 25 to 150 °C, the following succession of minerals was formed: first gypsum and K2O, followed at 100 °C by görgeyite. Changes in concentration at 150 °C due to evaporation resulted in the formation of syngenite and finally arcanite. Under hydrothermal conditions, the succession is syngenite at 50 °C, followed by görgyeite at 100 and 150 °C. Increasing the synthesis time at 100 °C and 1 atmosphere showed that initially gypsum was formed, later being replaced by görgeyite. Finally görgeyite was replaced by syngenite, indicating that görgeyite is a metastable phase under these conditions. Under hydrothermal conditions, syngenite plus a small amount of gypsum was formed, after two days being replaced by görgeyite. No further changes were observed with increasing time. Pure görgeyite showed elongated crystals approximately 500 to 1000 µ m in length. The infrared and Raman spectra are mainly showing the vibrational modes of the sulfate groups and the crystal water (structural water). Water is characterized by OH-stretching modes at 3526 and 3577 cm–1 , OH-bending modes at 1615 and 1647 cm–1 , and an OH-libration mode at 876 cm–1 . The sulfate 1 mode is weak in the infrared but showed strong bands at 1005 and 1013 cm–1 in the Raman spectrum. The 2 mode also showed strong bands in the Raman spectrum at 433, 440, 457, and 480 cm–1 . The 3 mode is characterized by a complex set of bands in both infrared and Raman spectra around 1150 cm–1 , whereas 4 is found at 650 cm–1.