GPS控制的航空摄影测量

ＧＰＳ卫星全球定位系统与航空摄影测量的结合使得为地形测图目的而建立大地控制的效率有了提高。本文的目的旨在讨论ＧＰＳ控制的航空摄影测量的概念，理论基础以及到目前为止所获得的一些试验结果。试验表明，在无地面控制的情况下，ＧＰＳ控制的航空摄影测量所能达到的平面精度优于０．０４ｍ。最后，本文对一些问题进行了讨论，特别是针对大比例尺测图作业的情况，这些问题必须引起重视，以确保在实践中有条不紊地朝这一新技术过     

Honduras: Caribbean Coast

The coast of Honduras, Central America, represents the southern end of the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System, although its marine resources are less extensive and studied than nearby Belize and Mexico. However, the coastal zone contains mainland reef formations, mangroves, wetlands, seagrass beds and extensive fringing reefs around its offshore islands, and has a key role in the economy of the country. Like most tropical areas, this complex of benthic habitats experiences limited annual variation in climatic and oceanographic conditions but seasonal and occasional conditions, particularly coral bleaching and hurricanes, are important influences. The effects of stochastic factors on the country's coral reefs were clearly demonstrated during 1998 when Honduras experienced a major hurricane and bleaching event. Any natural or anthropogenic impacts on reef health will inevitably affect other countries in Latin America, and vice versa, since the marine resources are linked via currents and the functioning of the system transcends political boundaries. Much further work on, for example, movement of larvae and transfer of pollutants is required to delineate the full extent of these links.

Anthropogenic impacts, largely driven by the increasing population and proportion of people living in coastal areas, are numerous and include key factors such as agricultural run-off, over-fishing, urban and industrial pollution (particularly sewage) and infrastructure development. Many of these threats act synergistically and, for example, poor watershed management via shifting cultivation, increases sedimentation and pesticide run-off onto coral reefs, which increases stress to corals already affected by decreasing water quality and coral bleaching. Threats from agriculture and fishing are particularly significant because of the size of both industries. The desire to generate urgently required revenue within Honduras has also led to increased tourism which provides an over-arching stress to marine resources since most tourists spend time in the coastal zone. Hence the last decade has seen a dramatic increase in coastal development, a greater requirement for sewage treatment and more demand for freshwater, particularly in the Bay Islands.

Although coastal zone management is relatively recent in Honduras, it is gaining momentum from both large-scale initiatives, such as the Ministry of Tourism's ‘Bay Islands Environmental Management Project', and national and international NGO projects. For example, a series of marine protected areas and legislative regulations have been established, but management capacity, enforcement and monitoring are limited by funding, expertise and training. Existing and future initiatives, supported by increased political will and environmental awareness of stakeholders, are vital for the long-term economic development of the country.     

Population of the Scattered Kuiper Belt

We study how the internal structure of dark halos is affected if cold dark matter particles are assumed to have a large cross section for elastic collisions. We identify a cluster halo in a large cosmological N-body simulation and resimulate its formation with progressively increasing resolution. We compare the structure found in the two cases in which dark matter is treated as collisionless or as a fluid. For the collisionless case, the overall ellipticity of the cluster, the central density cusp, and the amount of surviving substructure are all similar to those found in earlier high-resolution simulations. Collisional dark matter results in a cluster that is more nearly spherical at all radii, has a steeper central density cusp, and has less-but still substantial-surviving substructure. As in the collisionless case, these results for a "fluid" cluster halo are expected to carry over approximately to smaller mass systems. The observed rotation curves of dwarf galaxies then argue that self-interacting dark matter can only be viable if intermediate cross sections produce structure that does not lie between the extremes we have simulated.     

Resolving mechanisms of toxicity while pursuing ecotoxicological relevance?

In this age of modern biology, aquatic toxicological research has pursued mechanisms of action of toxicants. This has provided potential tools for ecotoxicologic investigations. However, problems of biocomplexity and issues at higher levels of biological organization remain a challenge. In the 1980s and 1990s and continuing to a lesser extent today, organisms residing in highly contaminated field sites or exposed in the laboratory to calibrated concentrations of individual compounds were carefully analyzed for their responses to priority pollutants. Correlation of biochemical and structural analyses in cultured cells and tissues, as well as the in vivo exposures led to the production and application of biomarkers of exposure and effect and to our awareness of genotoxicity and its chronic manifestations, such as neoplasms, in wild fishes. To gain acceptance of these findings in the greater environmental toxicology community, “validation of the model” versus other, better-established often rodent models, was necessary and became a major focus. Resultant biomarkers were applied to heavily contaminated and reference field sites as part of effects assessment and with investigations following large-scale disasters such as oil spills or industrial accidents.

Over the past 15 years, in the laboratory, small aquarium fish models such as medaka (Oryzias latipes), zebrafish (Danio rerio), platyfish (Xiphophorus species), fathead minnow (Pimephales promelas), and sheepshead minnow (Cyprinodon variegatus) were increasingly used establishing mechanisms of toxicants. Today, the same organisms provide reliable information at higher levels of biological organization relevant to ecotoxicology. We review studies resolving mechanisms of toxicity and discuss ways to address biocomplexity, mixtures of contaminants, and the need to relate individual level responses to populations and communities.     

Geomasking sensitive health data and privacy protection: an evaluation using an E911 database

Geomasking is used to provide privacy protection for individual address information while maintaining spatial resolution for mapping purposes. Donut geomasking and other random perturbation geomasking algorithms rely on the assumption of a homogeneously distributed population to calculate displacement distances, leading to possible under-protection of individuals when this condition is not met. Using household data from 2007, we evaluated the performance of donut geomasking in Orange County, North Carolina. We calculated the estimated k-anonymity for every household based on the assumption of uniform household distribution. We then determined the actual k-anonymity by revealing household locations contained in the county E911 database. Census block groups in mixed-use areas with high population distribution heterogeneity were the most likely to have privacy protection below selected criteria. For heterogeneous populations, we suggest tripling the minimum displacement area in the donut to protect privacy with a less than 1% error rate.