Quantification of plasma carnitine and acylcarnitines by high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry using online solid-phase extraction

Carnitine is an amino acid derivative that plays a key role in energy metabolism. Endogenous carnitine is found in its free form or esterified with acyl groups of several chain lengths. Quantification of carnitine and acylcarnitines is of particular interest for screening for research and metabolic disorders. We developed a method with online solid-phase extraction coupled to high-performance liquid chromatography and tandem mass spectrometry to quantify carnitine and three acylcarnitines with different polarity (acetylcarnitine, octanoylcarnitine, and palmitoylcarnitine). Plasma samples were deproteinized with methanol, loaded on a cation exchange trapping column and separated on a reversed-phase C8 column using heptafluorobutyric acid as an ion-pairing reagent. Considering the endogenous nature of the analytes, we quantified with the standard addition method and with external deuterated standards. Solid-phase extraction and separation were achieved within 8 min. Recoveries of carnitine and acylcarnitines were between 98 and 105 %. Both quantification methods were equally accurate (all values within 84 to 116 % of target concentrations) and precise (day-to-day variation of less than 18 %) for all carnitine species and concentrations analyzed. The method was used successfully for determination of carnitine and acylcarnitines in different human samples. In conclusion, we present a method for simultaneous quantification of carnitine and acylcarnitines with a rapid sample work-up. This approach requires small sample volumes and a short analysis time, and it can be applied for the determination of other acylcarnitines than the acylcarnitines tested. The method is useful for applications in research and clinical routine.

Factors Influencing Spatial Variability in Nitrogen Processing in Nitrogen-Saturated Soils

Nitrogen (N) saturation is an environmental concern for forests in the eastern U.S. Although several watersheds of the Fernow Experimental Forest (FEF), West Virginia exhibit symptoms of Nsaturation, many watersheds display a high degree of spatial variability in soil N processing. This study examined the effects of temperature on net N mineralization and nitrification in N-saturatedsoils from FEF, and how these effects varied between high N-processing vs. low N-processingsoils collected from two watersheds, WS3 (fertilized with [NH4]2SO4) and WS4 (untreated control). Samples of forest floor material (O2 horizon) and mineral soil (to a 5-cm depth) were taken from three subplots within each of four plots that represented the extremes of highest and lowest ratesof net N mineralization and nitrification (hereafter, high N and low N, respectively) of untreated WS4 and N-treated WS3: control/low N, control/high N, N-treated/low N, N-treated/high N. Forest floor material was analyzed for carbon (C), lignin,and N. Subsamples of mineral soil were extractedimmediately with 1 N KCl and analyzed for NH4+and NO3– to determine preincubation levels. Extracts were also analyzed for Mg, Ca, Al, and pH. To test the hypothesis that the lack of net nitrification observed in field incubations on the untreated/low N plot was the result of absence ofnitrifier populations, we characterized the bacterial community involved in N cycling by amplification of amoA genes. Remaining soil was incubated for 28 d at three temperatures (10, 20, and30°C), followed by 1 N KCl extraction and analysis for NH4+ and NO3–. Net nitrification was essentially 100% of net N mineralization for all samples combined. Nitrification rates from lab incubation sat all temperatures supported earlier observations based on field incubations. At 30°C, rates from N- t reated/high N were three times those of N-treated/low N. Highest rates were found for untreated/high N (two times greater than those of N-treated/high N), whereas untreated/low N exhibited no net nitrification. However, soils exhibitingno net nitrification tested positive for presence of nitrifying bacteria, causing us to reject our initial hypothesis. We hypothesize that nitrifier populations in such soil are being inhibited by a combination of low Ca:Al ratios in mineral soil and allelopathic interactions with mycorrhizae of ericaceous species in the herbaceous layer.

Increasing Realism and Supporting Content Planning for Dynamic Scenes in a Mixed Reality System incorporating a Time-of-Flight Camera

For broadcasting purposes MIXED REALITY, the combination of real and virtual scene content, has become ubiquitous nowadays. Mixed Reality recording still requires expensive studio setups and is often limited to simple color keying. We present a system for Mixed Reality applications which uses depth keying and provides threedimensional mixing of real and artificial content. It features enhanced realism through automatic shadow computation which we consider a core issue to obtain realism and a convincing visual perception, besides the correct alignment of the two modalities and correct occlusion handling. Furthermore we present a possibility to support placement of virtual content in the scene. Core feature of our system is the incorporation of a TIME-OF-FLIGHT (TOF)-camera device. This device delivers real-time depth images of the environment at a reasonable resolution and quality. This camera is used to build a static environment model and it also allows correct handling of mutual occlusions between real and virtual content, shadow computation and enhanced content planning. The presented system is inexpensive, compact, mobile, flexible and provides convenient calibration procedures. Chroma-keying is replaced by depth-keying which is efficiently performed on the GRAPHICS PROCESSING UNIT (GPU) by the usage of an environment model and the current ToF-camera image. Automatic extraction and tracking of dynamic scene content is herewith performed and this information is used for planning and alignment of virtual content. An additional sustainable feature is that depth maps of the mixed content are available in real-time, which makes the approach suitable for future 3DTV productions. The presented paper gives an overview of the whole system approach including camera calibration, environment model generation, real-time keying and mixing of virtual and real content, shadowing for virtual content and dynamic object tracking for content planning.

Class II treatment by extraction of maxillary first molars or Herbst appliance: dentoskeletal and soft tissue effects in comparison

AIM To compare dentoskeletal and soft tissue treatment effects of two alternative Class II division 1 treatment modalities (maxillary first permanent molar extraction versus Herbst appliance). METHODS One-hundred-fifty-four Class II division 1 patients that had either been treated with extractions of the upper first molars and a lightwire multibracket (MB) appliance (n = 79; 38 girls, 41 boys) or non-extraction by means of a Herbst-MB appliance (n = 75; 35 girls, 40 boys). The groups were matched on age and sex. The average age at the start of treatment was 12.7 years for the extraction and for 13.0 years for the Herbst group. Pretreatment (T1) and posttreatment (T2) lateral cephalograms were retrospectively analyzed using a standard cephalometric analysis and the sagittal occlusal analysis according to Pancherz. RESULTS The SNA decrease was 1.10° (p = 0.001) more pronounced in the extraction group, the SNB angle increased 1.49° more in the Herbst group (p = 0.000). In the extraction group, a decrease in SNB angle (0.49°) was observed. The soft tissue profile convexity (N-Sn-Pog) decreased in both groups, which was 0.78° more (n. s.) pronounced in the Herbst group. The nasolabial angle increased significantly more (+ 2.33°, p = 0.025) in the extraction group. The mechanism of overjet correction in the extraction group was predominantly dental (65% dental and 35% skeletal changes), while in the Herbst group it was predominantly skeletal (58% skeletal and 42% dental changes) in origin. CONCLUSION Both treatment methods were successful and led to a correction of the Class II division 1 malocclusion. Whereas for upper first molar extraction treatment more dental and maxillary effects can be expected, in case of Herbst treatment skeletal and mandibular effects prevail.

Influence of sample matrix on the alkaline extraction of Cr(VI) in soils and industrial materials

An accurate and efficient determination of the highly toxic Cr(VI) in solid materials is important to determine the total Cr(VI) inventory of contaminated sites and the Cr(VI) release potential from such sites into the environment. Most commonly, total Cr(VI) is extracted from solid materials following a hot alkaline extraction procedure (US EPA method 3060A) where a complete release of water-extractable and sparingly soluble Cr(VI) phase is achieved. This work presents an evaluation of matrix effects that may occur during the hot alkaline extraction and in the determination of the total Cr(VI) inventory of variably composed contaminated soils and industrial materials (cement, fly ash) and is compared to water-extractable Cr(VI) results. Method validation including multiple extractions and matrix spiking along with chemical and mineralogical characterization showed satisfying results for total Cr(VI) contents for most of the tested materials. However, unreliable results were obtained by applying method 3060A to anoxic soils due to the degradation of organic material and/or reactions with Fe2+-bearing mineral phases. In addition, in certain samples discrepant spike recoveries have to be also attributed to sample heterogeneity. Separation of possible extracted Cr(III) by applying cation-exchange cartridges prior to solution analysis further shows that under the hot alkaline extraction conditions only Cr(VI) is present in solution in measurable amounts, whereas Cr(III) gets precipitated as amorphous Cr(OH)3(am). It is concluded that prior to routine application of method 3060A to a new material type, spiking tests are recommended for the identification of matrix effects. In addition, the mass of extracted solid material should to be well adjusted to the heterogeneity of the Cr(VI) distribution in the material in question.

MIRACLE at Ad-Hoc CLEF 2005: Merging and Combining Without Using a Single Approach

This paper presents the 2005 Miracle’s team approach to the Ad-Hoc Information Retrieval tasks. The goal for the experiments this year was twofold: to continue testing the effect of combination approaches on information retrieval tasks, and improving our basic processing and indexing tools, adapting them to new languages with strange encoding schemes. The starting point was a set of basic components: stemming, transforming, filtering, proper nouns extraction, paragraph extraction, and pseudo-relevance feedback. Some of these basic components were used in different combinations and order of application for document indexing and for query processing. Second-order combinations were also tested, by averaging or selective combination of the documents retrieved by different approaches for a particular query. In the multilingual track, we concentrated our work on the merging process of the results of monolingual runs to get the overall multilingual result, relying on available translations. In both cross-lingual tracks, we have used available translation resources, and in some cases we have used a combination approach.

Diseño de una Metodología de Política Pública de I+D+i para el Desarrollo de la Capacidad de la Innovación en el Sector PYMIS del estado Bolívar, Venezuela

El estado Bolívar con una superficie de 238.000 Km2 se encuentra ubicado al SE de Venezuela y su capital es Ciudad Bolívar. Ocupa el 26,24% de la superficie del territorio nacional. Ciudad Guayana es la principal región del desarrollo económico del estado siendo sede de las empresas básicas de los sectores siderúrgicos y del aluminio que se encargan de la extracción, procesamiento y transformación del mineral de hierro y de la transformación de la bauxita en aluminio primario. Además, cuenta con un gran potencial hidroeléctrico, garantizando el suministro de energía eléctrica para el funcionamiento de las empresas básicas, para el parque industrial de la región, así como para el desarrollo industrial, económico y social de la nación. Con relación al sector de la industria del mineral de hierro y del aluminio, las empresas destinan más del 60 por ciento de su producción al mercado internacional. A pesar de que el sector de las Pequeñas y Medianas Industrias (PYMIS) del estado Bolívar cuenta con un mercado cercano y seguro, no se le ha propiciado un desarrollo integral en términos de orientar sus esfuerzos en innovar en nuevos productos o mejoras de procesos. Debido a la falta del personal de investigación calificado, la escasa vinculación con centros de investigación, la baja inversión en investigación, desarrollo tecnológico e innovación (I+D+i), la ausencia de la aplicación de una política pública de I+D+i y la desarticulación de los miembros del Sistema Regional de Innovación (SRI), constituyen los principales obstáculos para generar bienes y servicios con un alto valor agregado. Esta situación desequilibra y hace ineficiente el funcionamiento del SRI. La baja capacidad de las PYMIS del estado Bolívar en I+D+i, es una situación que impide generar por si sola nuevos productos o procesos para satisfacer las demandas del mercado regional. Por lo tanto, se requiere de la intervención y participación activa de la institución gubernamental responsable del diseño y aplicación de una política pública de I+D+i para dinamizar la capacidad de innovación en las PYMIS, en su articulación y vinculación con los miembros del SRI. xiii El presente proyecto se planteó como objetivo diseñar una metodología de política pública de I+D+i para liderar, coordinar y direccionar el SRI del estado Bolívar, para el desarrollo de la capacidad de innovación en el sector industrial y específicamente en las PYMIS. La presente tesis representa una investigación no experimental de tipo proyectivo que analiza la situación actual del Sistema Regional de Innovación del estado Bolívar. El análisis de los resultados se ha dividido en tres fases. En la primera se realizan diagnósticos por medio de encuestas de las PYMIS en materia de I+D+i, de los centros y laboratorios de investigación pertenecientes a las universidades de la región en el área de Materiales y de los sectores financieros público y privado. En dichas encuestas se evalúa el nivel de integración con los entes gubernamentales que definen y administran la política pública de I+D+i. En la segunda fase, con el diagnóstico y procesamiento de los resultados de la primera fase, se procede a desarrollar un análisis de las fortalezas, oportunidades, debilidades y amenazas (FODA) del Sistema Regional de Innovación, permitiendo comprender la situación actual de la relación y vinculación de las PYMIS con los centros de investigación, instituciones financieras y entes gubernamentales. Con la problemática detectada, resultó necesario el diseño de estrategias y un modelo de gestión de política pública de I+D+i para la articulación de los miembros del SRI, para el apoyo de las PYMIS. En la tercera fase se diseña la metodología de política pública de I+D+i para fortalecer la innovación en las PYMIS. La metodología se representa a través de un modelo propuesto que se relaciona con las teorías de los procesos de innovación, con los modelos de sistemas de innovación y con las reflexiones y recomendaciones hechas por diferentes investigadores e instituciones de cooperación internacional referentes a la aplicación de políticas públicas de I+D+i para dinamizar la capacidad de innovación en el sector industrial. La metodología diseñada es comparada con diferentes modelos de aplicación de política pública de I+D+i. Cada modelo se representa en una figura y se analiza su xiv situación presente y la función que desempeña el ente gubernamental en la aplicación del enfoque de política pública de I+D+i. El diseño de la metodología de política pública de I+D+i propuesta aportará nuevos conocimientos y podrá ser aplicado para apoyar el progreso de la I+D+i en las PYMIS de la región, como caso de estudio, con el fin de impulsar una economía más competitiva y reducir el grado de dependencia tecnológica. La metodología una vez evaluada podrá ser empleada en el contexto de la gran industria y en otras regiones de Venezuela y además, puede aplicarse en otros países con características similares en su tejido industrial. En la tesis doctoral se concluye que el desarrollo de la capacidad de innovación en las PYMIS depende del diseño y aplicación de la política pública de I+D+i como elemento dinamizador y articulador del SRI del estado Bolívar. xv ABSTRACT The Bolivar state with an area of 238,000 km2 is located in the SE of Venezuela and its capital is Ciudad Bolivar. It occupies a surface which is 26.24% of the national territory. Ciudad Guayana is the main area of the state's economic development and the location of the corporate headquarters of the basic steel and aluminum sectors that are responsible for the extraction, processing and transformation of iron ore and bauxite processing for primary aluminum. It also has a great hydroelectric potential, ensuring the supply of electricity for the operation of enterprises, for the regional industrial park as well as for the industrial, economic and social development of the nation. With regard to the iron ore and aluminum industry, companies allocate more than 60 percent of their production to the international market. Although the sector of Small and Medium Industries (SMIs) of the Bolivar state has a secure market, it has not been led to an integral development in terms of targeting its efforts on innovating new products or improving processes. Due to the lack of qualified research staff, poor links with research centers, low investment in research, technological development and innovation (R & D & I), the absence of the implementation of a public policy for R & D & I and the dismantling of the members of the Regional Innovation System (RIS), are the main obstacles to generate goods and services with high added value. This situation makes the RIS unbalanced and inefficient. The low capacity of Bolivar state’s SMIs in R & D & I, is a situation that cannot generate by itself new products or processes to meet regional market demands. Therefore, it requires the active involvement and participation of the government institution responsible for the design and implementation of R & D & I public policy to boost the innovation capacity in SMIs, through the connection and integration with members of the RIS. This project is intended to design a methodology aimed at public policy for R & D & I to lead, coordinate and direct the RIS of Bolivar state, for the development of innovation capacity in the industrial sector and specifically in the SMIs. xvi This thesis is an experimental investigation of projective type which analyzes the current situation of the Regional Innovation System of the Bolivar state. The analysis of the results is divided into three phases. In the first one, a diagnosis is performed through surveys of SMIs in R & D & I centers and research laboratories belonging to the universities of the region in the area of materials and public and private financial sectors. In such surveys the level of integration with government agencies that define and manage the public policy of R & D & I is assessed. In the second phase, with the diagnosis and processing of the results of the first phase, we proceed to develop an analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) of the Regional Innovation System, allowing the comprehension of the current status of the relationship of SMIs with research centers, financial institutions and government agencies. With the problems identified it was necessary to design strategies and a model of public policy management of R & D & I for the articulation of the members of the RIS, to support the SMIs. In the third phase a public policy methodology for R & D & I is designed in order to strengthen innovation in SMIs. The methodology is shown through a proposed model that relates to the theories of the innovation process, with models of innovation systems and with the discussions and recommendations made by different researchers and institutions of international cooperation concerning the implementation of policies public for R & D & I to boost innovation capacity in the industrial sector. The methodology designed is compared with different models of public policy implementation for R & D & I. Each model is represented in a figure and its current situation and the role of the government agency in the implementation of the public policy approach to R & D & I is analyzed. The design of the proposed public policy methodology for R & D & I will provide new knowledge and can be applied to support the progress of R & D & I in the region’s SMIs, as a case study, in order to boost a more competitive economy and reduce the degree of technological dependence. After being evaluated the methodology can be used in the context of big industry and in other regions of Venezuela and can also be applied in other countries with similar characteristics in their industrial structure. xvii The thesis concludes that the development of the innovation capacity in SMIs depends on the design and implementation of the public policy for R & D & I as a catalyst and coordination mechanism of the Regional Innovation System of the Bolivar state.

Processing and validation of JEFF3-3.1.2 Cross-section Library into Various Formats: ACE, PENDF, GENDF, MATXSR and BOXER.

Following the processing and validation of JEFF-3.1 performed in 2006 and presented in ND2007, and as a consequence of the latest updated of this library (JEFF-3.1.2) in February 2012, a new processing and validation of JEFF-3.1.2 cross section library is presented in this paper. The processed library in ACE format at ten different temperatures was generated with NJOY-99.364 nuclear data processing system. In addition, NJOY-99 inputs are provided to generate PENDF, GENDF, MATXSR and BOXER formats. The library has undergone strict QA procedures, being compared with other available libraries (e.g. ENDF/B-VII.1) and processing codes as PREPRO-2000 codes. A set of 119 criticality benchmark experiments taken from ICSBEP-2010 has been used for validation purposes.

Evolution of microstructure, macrotexture and mechanical properties of commercially pure Ti during ECAP-conform processing and drawing

Long-length ultrafine-grained (UFG) Ti rods are produced by equal-channel angular pressing via the conform scheme (ECAP-C) at 200 °C, which is followed by drawing at 200 °C. The evolution of microstructure, macrotexture, and mechanical properties (yield strength, ultimate tensile strength, failure stress, uniform elongation, elongation to failure) of pure Ti during this thermo-mechanical processing is studied. Special attention is also paid to the effect of microstructure on the mechanical behavior of the material after macrolocalization of plastic flow. The number of ECAP-C passes varies in the range of 1–10. The microstructure is more refined with increasing number of ECAP-C passes. Formation of homogeneous microstructure with a grain/subgrain size of 200 nm and its saturation after 6 ECAP-C passes are observed. Strength properties increase with increasing number of ECAP passes and saturate after 6 ECAP-C passes to a yield strength of 973 MPa, an ultimate tensile strength of 1035 MPa, and a true failure stress of 1400 MPa (from 625, 750, and 1150 MPa in the as-received condition). The true strain at failure failure decreases after ECAP-C processing. The reduction of area and true strain to failure values do not decrease after ECAP-C processing. The sample after 6 ECAP-C passes is subjected to drawing at 200¯C resulting in reduction of a grain/subgrain size to 150 nm, formation of (10 1¯0) fiber texture with respect to the rod axis, and further increase of the yield strength up to 1190 MPa, the ultimate tensile strength up to 1230 MPa and the true failure stress up to 1600 MPa. It is demonstrated that UFG CP Ti has low resistance to macrolocalization of plastic deformation and high resistance to crack formation after necking.

A machine learning approach to identify clinical trials involving nanodrugs and nanodevices from ClinicalTrials.gov

BACKGROUND: Clinical Trials (CTs) are essential for bridging the gap between experimental research on new drugs and their clinical application. Just like CTs for traditional drugs and biologics have helped accelerate the translation of biomedical findings into medical practice, CTs for nanodrugs and nanodevices could advance novel nanomaterials as agents for diagnosis and therapy. Although there is publicly available information about nanomedicine-related CTs, the online archiving of this information is carried out without adhering to criteria that discriminate between studies involving nanomaterials or nanotechnology-based processes (nano), and CTs that do not involve nanotechnology (non-nano). Finding out whether nanodrugs and nanodevices were involved in a study from CT summaries alone is a challenging task. At the time of writing, CTs archived in the well-known online registry ClinicalTrials.gov are not easily told apart as to whether they are nano or non-nano CTs-even when performed by domain experts, due to the lack of both a common definition for nanotechnology and of standards for reporting nanomedical experiments and results. METHODS: We propose a supervised learning approach for classifying CT summaries from ClinicalTrials.gov according to whether they fall into the nano or the non-nano categories. Our method involves several stages: i) extraction and manual annotation of CTs as nano vs. non-nano, ii) pre-processing and automatic classification, and iii) performance evaluation using several state-of-the-art classifiers under different transformations of the original dataset. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: The performance of the best automated classifier closely matches that of experts (AUC over 0.95), suggesting that it is feasible to automatically detect the presence of nanotechnology products in CT summaries with a high degree of accuracy. This can significantly speed up the process of finding whether reports on ClinicalTrials.gov might be relevant to a particular nanoparticle or nanodevice, which is essential to discover any precedents for nanotoxicity events or advantages for targeted drug therapy.

Voice-processing technologies--their application in telecommunications.

As the telecommunications industry evolves over the next decade to provide the products and services that people will desire, several key technologies will become commonplace. Two of these, automatic speech recognition and text-to-speech synthesis, will provide users with more freedom on when, where, and how they access information. While these technologies are currently in their infancy, their capabilities are rapidly increasing and their deployment in today's telephone network is expanding. The economic impact of just one application, the automation of operator services, is well over $100 million per year. Yet there still are many technical challenges that must be resolved before these technologies can be deployed ubiquitously in products and services throughout the worldwide telephone network. These challenges include: (i) High level of accuracy. The technology must be perceived by the user as highly accurate, robust, and reliable. (ii) Easy to use. Speech is only one of several possible input/output modalities for conveying information between a human and a machine, much like a computer terminal or Touch-Tone pad on a telephone. It is not the final product. Therefore, speech technologies must be hidden from the user. That is, the burden of using the technology must be on the technology itself. (iii) Quick prototyping and development of new products and services. The technology must support the creation of new products and services based on speech in an efficient and timely fashion. In this paper I present a vision of the voice-processing industry with a focus on the areas with the broadest base of user penetration: speech recognition, text-to-speech synthesis, natural language processing, and speaker recognition technologies. The current and future applications of these technologies in the telecommunications industry will be examined in terms of their strengths, limitations, and the degree to which user needs have been or have yet to be met. Although noteworthy gains have been made in areas with potentially small user bases and in the more mature speech-coding technologies, these subjects are outside the scope of this paper.

Automatic extraction of syntactic semantic patterns for multilingual resources

In this paper we present an automatic system for the extraction of syntactic semantic patterns applied to the development of multilingual processing tools. In order to achieve optimum methods for the automatic treatment of more than one language, we propose the use of syntactic semantic patterns. These patterns are formed by a verbal head and the main arguments, and they are aligned among languages. In this paper we present an automatic system for the extraction and alignment of syntactic semantic patterns from two manually annotated corpora, and evaluate the main linguistic problems that we must deal with in the alignment process.

DSC study of transitions involved in thermal treatment of foamable mixtures of PE and EVA copolymer with azodicarbonamide

The transitions and reactions involved in the thermal processing of binary mixtures of polyethylene and poly(ethylene-co-vinyl acetate) copolymers with different concentrations of a foaming agent (azodicarbonamide) were studied using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The effect of ZnO as a kicker also was discussed. The temperature at the maximum rate and the heat evolved were measured for all the processes—melting, transitions, and reactions—all the mixtures prepared were measured and compared. Azodicarbonamide decomposed differently depending on the polymeric matrix. These data can be very useful for the plastic processing industry.

Real-time 3D semi-local surface patch extraction using GPGPU

Feature vectors can be anything from simple surface normals to more complex feature descriptors. Feature extraction is important to solve various computer vision problems: e.g. registration, object recognition and scene understanding. Most of these techniques cannot be computed online due to their complexity and the context where they are applied. Therefore, computing these features in real-time for many points in the scene is impossible. In this work, a hardware-based implementation of 3D feature extraction and 3D object recognition is proposed to accelerate these methods and therefore the entire pipeline of RGBD based computer vision systems where such features are typically used. The use of a GPU as a general purpose processor can achieve considerable speed-ups compared with a CPU implementation. In this work, advantageous results are obtained using the GPU to accelerate the computation of a 3D descriptor based on the calculation of 3D semi-local surface patches of partial views. This allows descriptor computation at several points of a scene in real-time. Benefits of the accelerated descriptor have been demonstrated in object recognition tasks. Source code will be made publicly available as contribution to the Open Source Point Cloud Library.

Global 2009 1km MODIS (MOD35/MOD09) cloud frequency and MOD35 processing path

Identifying cloud interference in satellite-derived data is a critical step toward developing useful remotely sensed products. Most MODIS land products use a combination of the MODIS (MOD35) cloud mask and the 'internal' cloud mask of the surface reflectance product (MOD09) to mask clouds, but there has been little discussion of how these masks differ globally. We calculated global mean cloud frequency for both products, for 2009, and found that inflated proportions of observations were flagged as cloudy in the Collection 5 MOD35 product. These erroneously categorized areas were spatially and environmentally non-random and usually occurred over high-albedo land-cover types (such as grassland and savanna) in several regions around the world. Additionally, we found that spatial variability in the processing path applied in the Collection 5 MOD35 algorithm affects the likelihood of a cloudy observation by up to 20% in some areas. These factors result in abrupt transitions in recorded cloud frequency across landcover and processing-path boundaries impeding their use for fine-scale spatially contiguous modeling applications. We show that together, these artifacts have resulted in significantly decreased and spatially biased data availability for Collection 5 MOD35-derived composite MODIS land products such as land surface temperature (MOD11) and net primary productivity (MOD17). Finally, we compare our results to mean cloud frequency in the new Collection 6 MOD35 product, and find that landcover artifacts have been reduced but not eliminated. Collection 6 thus increases data availability for some regions and land cover types in MOD35-derived products but practitioners need to consider how the remaining artifacts might affect their analysis.