Web based expert elicitation of uncertainties in environmental model inputs

When constructing and using environmental models, it is typical that many of the inputs to the models will not be known perfectly. In some cases, it will be possible to make observations, or occasionally physics-based uncertainty propagation, to ascertain the uncertainty on these inputs. However, such observations are often either not available or even possible, and another approach to characterising the uncertainty on the inputs must be sought. Even when observations are available, if the analysis is being carried out within a Bayesian framework then prior distributions will have to be specified. One option for gathering or at least estimating this information is to employ expert elicitation. Expert elicitation is well studied within statistics and psychology and involves the assessment of the beliefs of a group of experts about an uncertain quantity, (for example an input / parameter within a model), typically in terms of obtaining a probability distribution. One of the challenges in expert elicitation is to minimise the biases that might enter into the judgements made by the individual experts, and then to come to a consensus decision within the group of experts. Effort is made in the elicitation exercise to prevent biases clouding the judgements through well-devised questioning schemes. It is also important that, when reaching a consensus, the experts are exposed to the knowledge of the others in the group. Within the FP7 UncertWeb project (http://www.uncertweb.org/), there is a requirement to build a Webbased tool for expert elicitation. In this paper, we discuss some of the issues of building a Web-based elicitation system - both the technological aspects and the statistical and scientific issues. In particular, we demonstrate two tools: a Web-based system for the elicitation of continuous random variables and a system designed to elicit uncertainty about categorical random variables in the setting of landcover classification uncertainty. The first of these examples is a generic tool developed to elicit uncertainty about univariate continuous random variables. It is designed to be used within an application context and extends the existing SHELF method, adding a web interface and access to metadata. The tool is developed so that it can be readily integrated with environmental models exposed as web services. The second example was developed for the TREES-3 initiative which monitors tropical landcover change through ground-truthing at confluence points. It allows experts to validate the accuracy of automated landcover classifications using site-specific imagery and local knowledge. Experts may provide uncertainty information at various levels: from a general rating of their confidence in a site validation to a numerical ranking of the possible landcover types within a segment. A key challenge in the web based setting is the design of the user interface and the method of interacting between the problem owner and the problem experts. We show the workflow of the elicitation tool, and show how we can represent the final elicited distributions and confusion matrices using UncertML, ready for integration into uncertainty enabled workflows.We also show how the metadata associated with the elicitation exercise is captured and can be referenced from the elicited result, providing crucial lineage information and thus traceability in the decision making process.

An efficient screening method for computer experiments

Computer simulators of real-world processes are often computationally expensive and require many inputs. The problem of the computational expense can be handled using emulation technology; however, highly multidimensional input spaces may require more simulator runs to train and validate the emulator. We aim to reduce the dimensionality of the problem by screening the simulators inputs for nonlinear effects on the output rather than distinguishing between negligible and active effects. Our proposed method is built upon the elementary effects (EE) method for screening and uses a threshold value to separate the inputs with linear and nonlinear effects. The technique is simple to implement and acts in a sequential way to keep the number of simulator runs down to a minimum, while identifying the inputs that have nonlinear effects. The algorithm is applied on a set of simulated examples and a rabies disease simulator where we observe run savings ranging between 28% and 63% compared with the batch EE method. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.

An examination of Bernard Connor's The History of Poland (1698) and its depiction of the political, religious, and cultural history of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth

Connor was an Irish-born member of seventeenth-century English medical society who made an impact on medicine through his use of anatomy. This forward-thinking scientist also worked as a court physician for the Polish king John III Sobieski (1629- 1696) and published a history of that country. This thesis will examine Bernard Connor's 1698 publication The History of Poland to show that the Commonwealth was considered a vision of a progressive European parliamentary government that could serve as a model for a struggling English parliamentary government, thus supporting Larry Wolff and Maria Todorova's vision of the later eighteenth-century creation of the idea of a backward "eastern Europe."

Creating New Design-Build-Test Experiences as Outputs of Undergraduate Design-Build-Test Projects

This paper describes a methodology of using individual engineering undergraduate student projects as a means of effectively and efficiently developing new Design-Build-Test (DBT) learning experiences and challenges.
A key aspect of the rationale for this approach is that it benefits all parties. The student undertaking the individual project gets an authentic experience of producing a functional artefact, which has been the result of a design process that addresses conception, design, implementation and operation. The supervising faculty member benefits from live prototyping of new curriculum content and resources with a student who is at a similar level of knowledge and experience as the intended end users of the DBT outputs. The multiple students who ultimately undertake the DBT experiences / challenges benefit from the enhanced nature of a learning experience which has been “road tested” and optimised.
To demonstrate the methodology the paper will describe a case study example of an individual project completed in 2015. This resulted in a DBT design challenge with a theme of designing a catapult for throwing table tennis balls, the device being made from components laser cut from medium density fibreboard (MDF). Further three different modes of operation will be described which use the same resource materials but operate over different timescales and with different learning outcomes, from an icebreaker exercise focused on developing team dynamics through to full DBT where students get an opportunity to experience the full impact of their design decisions by competing against other students with a catapult they have designed and built themselves.

Starotestamentalny kontekst opisów cudownych uwolnień z Dziejów Apostolskich

Wydział Teologiczny

DOING MORE WITH SHORT PERIOD DATA: DETERMINING MAGNITUDES FROM CLIPPED AND OVER-RUN SEISMIC DATA AT MOUNT ST. HELENS

How can we calculate earthquake magnitudes when the signal is clipped and over-run? When a volcano is very active, the seismic record may saturate (i.e., the full amplitude of the signal is not recorded) or be over-run (i.e., the end of one event is covered by the start of a new event). The duration, and sometimes the amplitude, of an earthquake signal are necessary for determining event magnitudes; thus, it may be impossible to calculate earthquake magnitudes when a volcano is very active. This problem is most likely to occur at volcanoes with limited networks of short period seismometers. This study outlines two methods for calculating earthquake magnitudes when events are clipped and over-run. The first method entails modeling the shape of earthquake codas as a power law function and extrapolating duration from the decay of the function. The second method draws relations between clipped duration (i.e., the length of time a signal is clipped) and the full duration. These methods allow for magnitudes to be determined within 0.2 to 0.4 units of magnitude. This error is within the range of analyst hand-picks and is within the acceptable limits of uncertainty when quickly quantifying volcanic energy release during volcanic crises. Most importantly, these estimates can be made when data are clipped or over-run. These methods were developed with data from the initial stages of the 2004-2008 eruption at Mount St. Helens. Mount St. Helens is a well-studied volcano with many instruments placed at varying distances from the vent. This fact makes the 2004-2008 eruption a good place to calibrate and refine methodologies that can be applied to volcanoes with limited networks.

Enea Silvio Piccolomini en España. Con la edición del "Tratado de la miseria de los cortesanos", (Sevilla, Cromberger, 1520)

As it is well known, the Renaissance in Spain cannot be understood without a deep knowledge of the Italian quattrocento: art and thinking have an important debt with a culture that shaped a new society that can be named Modern Era. So, there are many intellectuals that are the main reference to our writers: Leonardo Bruni, Giannozzo Manetti, Bartolomeo Facio, Antonio Beccadelli, Poggio Bracciolini, Francesco Filelfo, Flavio Biondo, Lorenzo Valla, Vespasiano da Bisticci, Pier Candido Decembrio, Guarino da Verona, Pico della Mirandola, Marsilio Ficino, and a big number that includes necessarily the name of Enea Silvio Piccolomini (1405-1464). In effect, the creator that became Pope as Pío II is one outstanding figure of that Humanism that early putted down roots in Spain, a country in construction that produced very important fruits in those years. Under these circumstances, this study has as main objective to analyse the large work of the humanist Pope par excellence, and to establish the relationship between his writings and genres, works and authors in the Iberian peninsula that wrote under his influence. Furthermore, in the following pages can be found a edition of the translation, by Diego López de Cortegana, of one of Picolomini’s works, the Tratado de la miseria de los cortesanos, a work that can be taken as an example of the attention payed to his works by authors like Juan de Lucena, Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo, Cristóbal de Castillejo or fray Antonio de Guevara. After a brief introduction that points that the attention to Enea Silvio Piccolomini is not diminishing, that, on the contrary, is clearly alive if we consider modern editions and translations to different languages, I concentrate on the biography of Pío II. With this purpose I take as base the text that this humanist wrote with the aim of building an adequate imago vitae that related the achievements in the religious sphere (with a failed promotion of a last crusade against the Turk) and also his creative labour. I refer to the Commentarii rerum memorabilium quae temporibus suis contingerunt, an extensive autobiography that did not spare the self-praise and conceals some controversial author’s facts, such as the “reconciling” thesis that undermined the Popes authority and power. In addition, in that chapter can be found a study of the writing process of the titles that includes Piccolomini’s bibliography, since we can think that the author’s commentary is extremely relevant to inform about the moment of writing and its purpose...

Sites of the reserve phase: Pine Lawn Valley, western New Mexico / [by] Paul S. Martin [and] John B. Rinaldo.

v.38:no.3(1950)

Late Mogollon communities: four sites of the Tularosa phase, western New Mexico / [by] Paul S. Martin, John B. Rinaldo [and] Eloise R. Barter.

v.49:no.1(1957)

Turkey Foot Ridge site, a Mogollon village: Pine Lawn Valley, western New Mexico / [by] Paul S. Martin [and] John B. Rinaldo.

v.38:no.2(1950)

Cochise and Mogollon sites, Pine Lawn Valley, western New Mexico / Paul S. Martin, John B. Rinaldo [and] Ernst Antevs.

v.38:no.1(1949)

Mineral Creek site and Hooper Ranch Pueblo, eastern Arizona / Paul S. Martin, John B. Rinaldo [and] William A. Longacre.

v.52(1961)