RAGBRAI Learn about the Land; Day 4, July 2009

Want to know what conditions to expect over the next stage of RAGBRAI? How hilly will it be, what towns and parks are between here and there, or what services are coming up in the next town?

RAGBRAI Learn about the Land; Day 5, July 2009

Want to know what conditions to expect over the next stage of RAGBRAI? How hilly will it be, what towns and parks are between here and there, or what services are coming up in the next town?

RAGBRAI Learn about the Land; Day 6, July 2009

Want to know what conditions to expect over the next stage of RAGBRAI? How hilly will it be, what towns and parks are between here and there, or what services are coming up in the next town?

RAGBRAI Learn about the Land; Day 7, July 2009

Want to know what conditions to expect over the next stage of RAGBRAI? How hilly will it be, what towns and parks are between here and there, or what services are coming up in the next town?

RAGBRAI Learn about the Land; Day 1 thru Day 7, July 2009

Want to know what conditions to expect over the next stage of RAGBRAI? How hilly will it be, what towns and parks are between here and there, or what services are coming up in the next town?

Flexible fuel vehicle registration report, February 1, 2011

Iowa Code section 452A.33(3) requires by Feb. 1 of each year the Iowa Department of transportation shall deliver a report to the governor and legislative services agency regarding flexible fuel vehicles registered in Iowa.

Population-based registration of phenotypic anatomic and familial data for melanoma: results from a Swiss multicentric study

CONTEXT AND OBJECTIVES: A multicentric study was set up to assess the feasibility for Swiss cancer registries of actively retrieving 3 additional variables of epidemiological and a etiological relevance for melanoma, and of potential use for the evaluation of prevention campaigns. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The skin type, family history of melanoma and precise anatomical site were retrieved for melanoma cases registered in 5 Swiss cantons (Neuchâtel, St-Gall and Appenzell, Vaud and Wallis) over 3 to 6 consecutive years (1995-2002). Data were obtained via a short questionnaire administered by the physicians - mostly dermatologists - who originally excised the lesions. As the detailed body site was routinely collected in Ticino, data from this Cancer Registry were included in the body site analysis. Relative melanoma density (RMD) was computed by the ratio of observed to expected numbers of melanomas allowing for body site surface areas, and further adjusted for site-specific melanocyte density. RESULTS: Of the 1,645 questionnaires sent, 1,420 (86.3%) were returned. The detailed cutaneous site and skin type were reliably obtained for 84.7% and 78.7% of questionnaires, and family history was known in 76% of instances. Prevalence of sun-sensitive subjects and patients with melanoma affected first-degree relatives, two target groups for early detection and surveillance campaigns were 54.1% and 3.4%, respectively. After translation into the 4th digit of the International Classification of Diseases for Oncology, the anatomical site codes from printed (original information) and pictorial support (body chart from the questionnaire) concurred for 94.6% of lesions. Discrepancies occurred mostly for lesions on the upper, outer part of the shoulder for which the clinician's textual description was "shoulder blade". This differential misclassification suggests under-estimation by about 10% of melanomas of the upper limbs and an over-estimation of 5% for truncal melanomas. Sites of highest melanoma risk were the face, the shoulder and the upper arm for sexes, the back for men and the leg for women. Three major features of this series were: (1) an unexpectedly high RMD for the face in women (6.2 vs 4.2 in men), (2) the absence of a male predominance for melanomas on the ears, and (3) for the upper limbs, a steady gradient of increasing melanoma density with increasing proximity to the trunk, regardless of sex. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: The feasibility of retrieving the skin type, the precise anatomical location and family history of melanoma in a reliable manner was demonstrated thanks to the collaboration of Swiss dermatologists. Use of a schematic body drawing improves the quality of the anatomical site data and facilitate the reporting task of doctors. Age and sex patterns of RMD paralleled general indicators of sun exposure and behaviour, except for the hand (RMD=0.2). These Swiss results support some site or sun exposure specificity in the aetiology of melanoma.

Report on a review of the Fuel Inspection Program administered by the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship for the period July 1, 2005 through June 30, 2009

Report on a review of the Fuel Inspection Program administered by the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship for the period July 1, 2005 through June 30, 2009

Recursos governatius. Doctrina de la Direcció General de Dret i Entitats Jurídiques (maig-setembre 2008)

Comentaris a les Resolucions de la Direcció General de Dret i Entitats Jurídiques de 5 de maig 2008, 16 de juliol 2008 i 29 de setembre 2008.

Recursos governatius. Doctrina de la Direcció General de Dret i Entitats Jurídiques IV

Comentaris a les Resolucions de la Direcció General de Dret i Entitats Jurídiques 22 de gener 2007, de 24 de gener 2007, de 15 de febrer 2007, de 16 de febrer 200 i de 19 de febrer 2007.

Recursos governatius. Doctrina de la Direcció General de Dret i Entitats Jurídiques (maig 2007-febrer 2008)

Comentaris a les Resolucions de la Direcció General de Dret i Entitats Jurídiques de 2 de maig 2007, de 10 de juliol 2007, d'11 de juliol 2007, de 16 de juliol 2007, de 17 de juliol 2007, de 22 d'octubre 2007, de 21 de desembre 2007 i 4 de febrer 2008.

Recursos governatius. Doctrina de la Direcció General de Dret i Entitats Jurídiques (febrer-abril 2008).

Comentaris a les Resolucions de la Direcció General de Dret i Entitats Jurídiques de 6 de febrer 2008, 8 de febrer 2008, 20 de febrer 2008, 2 d'abril 2008 i 18 d¿abril 2008.

Recursos governatius. Doctrina de la Direcció General de Dret i Entitats Jurídiques V

Comentaris a les Resolucions de la Direcció General de Dret i Entitats Jurídiques de 20 de març 2007, de 26 d'abril 2007, de 27 d'abril 2007 i de 30 d'abril 2007

Lobbying, political competition, and local land supply: recent evidence from Spain

We analyze whether local land supply is influenced by the degree of political competition, and interpret the findings as being indicative of the influence wielded by land development lobbies. We use a new database including both political and land supply data for more than 2,000 Spanish municipalities for the period 2003-2007. In Spain, land use policies are largely a local responsibility with municipalities having periodically to pass compre- hensive land use plans. The main policy variable in these plans, and the one analyzed here, is the amount of land classified for potential development. We measure local political competition as the margin of victory of the incumbent government. We instrument this variable using the number of votes obtained by parties represented in local government when standing at the first national legislative elections following the re-establishment of democracy, and the number of votes they actually obtained regionally at the national legislative elections. The results indicate that stiffer political competition does indeed reduce the amount of new land designated for development. This effect is found to be most marked in suburbs, in towns with a high percent of commuters and homeowners, and in municipalities governed by the left.

Domain Adaptation in remote sensing: increasing the portability of land-cover classifiers

Among the types of remote sensing acquisitions, optical images are certainly one of the most widely relied upon data sources for Earth observation. They provide detailed measurements of the electromagnetic radiation reflected or emitted by each pixel in the scene. Through a process termed supervised land-cover classification, this allows to automatically yet accurately distinguish objects at the surface of our planet. In this respect, when producing a land-cover map of the surveyed area, the availability of training examples representative of each thematic class is crucial for the success of the classification procedure. However, in real applications, due to several constraints on the sample collection process, labeled pixels are usually scarce. When analyzing an image for which those key samples are unavailable, a viable solution consists in resorting to the ground truth data of other previously acquired images. This option is attractive but several factors such as atmospheric, ground and acquisition conditions can cause radiometric differences between the images, hindering therefore the transfer of knowledge from one image to another. The goal of this Thesis is to supply remote sensing image analysts with suitable processing techniques to ensure a robust portability of the classification models across different images. The ultimate purpose is to map the land-cover classes over large spatial and temporal extents with minimal ground information. To overcome, or simply quantify, the observed shifts in the statistical distribution of the spectra of the materials, we study four approaches issued from the field of machine learning. First, we propose a strategy to intelligently sample the image of interest to collect the labels only in correspondence of the most useful pixels. This iterative routine is based on a constant evaluation of the pertinence to the new image of the initial training data actually belonging to a different image. Second, an approach to reduce the radiometric differences among the images by projecting the respective pixels in a common new data space is presented. We analyze a kernel-based feature extraction framework suited for such problems, showing that, after this relative normalization, the cross-image generalization abilities of a classifier are highly increased. Third, we test a new data-driven measure of distance between probability distributions to assess the distortions caused by differences in the acquisition geometry affecting series of multi-angle images. Also, we gauge the portability of classification models through the sequences. In both exercises, the efficacy of classic physically- and statistically-based normalization methods is discussed. Finally, we explore a new family of approaches based on sparse representations of the samples to reciprocally convert the data space of two images. The projection function bridging the images allows a synthesis of new pixels with more similar characteristics ultimately facilitating the land-cover mapping across images.