Dwarf Elephant Facts and Figures

Dwarf Elephant Facts and Figures Name: Dwarf Elephant; genus names include Mammuthus, Elephas, and Stegodon. Habitat: Small islands of the Mediterranean Sea Historical Epoch: Pleistocene-Modern (2 million-10,000 years ago) Size and Weight: About six feet long and 500 pounds Diet: Plants Distinguishing Characteristics: Small size; long tusks About the Dwarf Elephant Few prehistoric mammals have been as baffling to paleontologists as the Dwarf Elephant, which didnt comprise just one genus of prehistoric elephant, but several: the various Dwarf Elephants that lived on various Mediterranean islands during the Pleistocene epoch were made up of stunted populations of Mammuthus (the genus that includes the Woolly Mammoth), Elephas (the genus that includes modern elephants), and Stegodon (an obscure genus that seems to have been an offshoot of Mammut, aka the Mastodon). Further complicating matters, its possible that these elephants were capable of interbreedingmeaning the Dwarf Elephants of Cyprus may have been 50 percent Mammuthus and 50 percent Stegodon, while those of Malta were a unique blend of all three genera. While the evolutionary relationships of Dwarf Elephants are a matter of dispute, the phenomenon of insular dwarfism is well understood. As soon as the first full-sized prehistoric elephants arrived on, lets say, the small island of Sardinia, their ancestors began evolving toward smaller sizes in response to limited natural resources (a colony of full-sized elephants eats thousands of pounds of food every day, much less so if the individuals are only one-tenth the size). The same phenomenon occurred with the dinosaurs of the Mesozoic Era; witness the shrimpy Magyarosaurus, which was only a fraction of the size of it continental titanosaur relatives. Adding to the mystery of the Dwarf Elephant, it hasnt yet been proved that the extinction of these 500-pound-beasts had anything to do with the early human settlement of the Mediterranean. However, there is a tantalizing theory that the skeletons of dwarf elephants were interpreted as Cyclopses (one-eyed monsters) by the early Greeks, who incorporated these long-gone beasts into their mythology thousands of years ago! (By the way, the Dwarf Elephant shouldnt be confused with the Pygmy Elephant, a smaller relative of African elephants that exists today in very limited numbers.)

Hyphenating More + Adjective

Hyphenating More + Adjective Hyphenating More + Adjective Hyphenating More + Adjective By Maeve Maddox A reader questions the standard advice that the adverb more should not be linked to an adjective by a hyphen: I find that most style guides do not favor hyphenating phrases starting with more (e.g., more honest). I find the following phrase in the manuscript that I am currently editing: â€Å"more explicit predictions.† This could mean predictions that are more explicit or more predictions that are explicit. From the context, I believe the author means the former. For clarity, shouldnt this be hyphenated as more-explicit predictions? Most style guides do advise against linking more to an adjective with a hyphen, but most also recognize that sometimes a hyphen may be necessary for clarity. For example, The Chicago Manual of Style prefers â€Å"a spare hyphenation style.† The guide provides numerous examples, but recognizes that writers will encounter punctuation puzzles for which they can find no examples or analogies. In that case, CMOS gives this common sense advice: if no suitable example or analogy can be found either in this section [7.85] or in the dictionary, hyphenate only if doing so will aid readability. Adding a hyphen is a quick solution, but not the only one. Another option is to rewrite the sentence with a qualifying clause: There is a need for predictions that are more explicit. The reader who posed the question rejects the clause solution as â€Å"rather stilted.† It does require more words, but calling it stilted is a matter of opinion. I see it as a practical solution. Another way to avoid ambiguity with more is to use a different word. Here are some synonyms for more: additional further added extra increased new other supplementary These words may or may not be appropriate substitutes for more in a specific context. Sometimes the only way to avoid ambiguity is to take the time to rethink the sentence. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Style category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:20 Computer Terms You Should KnowFlier vs. Flyer5 Keys to Better Sentence Flow

Hobbes (15 88-1679) on the right to all Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Hobbes (15 88-1679) on the right to all - Essay Example And therefore, as long as this natural right of every man to everything endureth, there can be no security to any man (how strong or wise so ever he be) of living out the time which nature ordinarily allowith men to live." (Leviathan, Chapter XIV). Hobbes supposes that liberty is a matter of political self-government. For Hobbes liberty and equality was connected with non-obstruction, and with some form of sell-mastery. Liberty and equality is described as that a personal reedom is a matter of the range of things a person may do without being stopped or punished by others. Hobbes supposes that "I find yet a greater equality amongst men than that of strength. For prudence is but experience, which equal time equally bestows on all men in those things they equally apply themselves unto (Leviathan, Chapter XIII). Someone who does not engage in elaborate calculations before acting may be said to be excessively irrational. Irrationality of value to the pursuit of self-interest is prudence, which is similarly a virtue that it is possible to have too much of. Each has the right to all because, according to Hobbes, there was nothing natural about the state; in the 'state of nature' men lived without law, without authority, and without any means of curbing one another's aggression. Each man is a self-governed and can do anything. In "Leviathan" Hobbes describes that it is irrational of anyone to lay down the means of his own preservation unless he can be sure others will do so too. The state of nature is also is the state of war which means absence of established agreement for peace. For Hobbes force is the main quality during war and people are foolish to expect anything better from foreign states. The state of nature is a social and developed state. It can be characterized as war of all against: "war...of every man, against every man" (Leviathan, Chapter XIV). Each will be an enemy to all the rest. Human beings as they were not equipped with speech, with reason, with a sense of time, with any morality; they were lonely. In the Chapter XIV Hobbes claims that there was one fundamental right of nature, and one equally fundamental law: the right was 'the Liberty each man hath, to use his own power, as he will himselfe, for the preservation of his own Nature', while the law was 'every man, ought to endeavour Peace, as farre as he has hope of obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it... he may seek, and use, all helps, and advantages of Warre' (Leviathan, Chapter XIV). The concept of subjectivism is closely connected with individuality. Hobbes emphases qualitative variation among uniqueness, a conception of the cumulative and permanent, but not predetermined, development of larger contexts as a source for development, and an insistence on the irrationally founded subjective designs of historically particularized human actors as the principal plane upon which variation and development take place (subjectivism). Knowledge of the reality must be concrete and descriptive hermeneutic, It will avoid the search for universal natural laws, and it will recognize itself as an historical occurrence. Also subjectivism for Hobbes means obligations in individuality. Hobbes supposes that Irrationality can be predicated in the first instance of human beings and of human beliefs and actions. Absence of rationality is taken to warrant a diminution of legal

Advancements in Molecular Imaging Research Paper

Advancements in Molecular Imaging - Research Paper Example r imaging involves many processes, hence, it encompasses many fields; target discovery, cell biology, chemistry, disease modeling, data processing, imaging and clinical research. The field is undergoing a lot of advancements that would enable it perform other tasks. Currently, further research efforts have been concentrated towards ensuring that the technology can bring about discovery of newer and more efficient ways to treat diseases and various pathologies in living organisms. With emergency of new tools, researchers are now able to solve problems that were previously difficult to solve. There are now different various molecular imaging tools that have enabled scientists to experiment on gene products in vivo. Notable technological advancements in this field include the discovery of new optical imaging techniques which is a forward step in molecular imaging in that, researchers are now able to work efficiently and proficiently (Baldwin, 2010). Some latest advancement in molecular imaging includes MRI, PET and optical imaging. Pet has ensured that there is an improvement in tumor detection so that tumors are treated and managed early and better. New MRI systems that have been developed have an improved field strength and enhanced radiofrequency. Tumor detection and management has also been made moirà © efficient through the technology of monoclonal antibody imaging. This is one of the latest discoveries in the field, and it has ensured that researchers of tumors are able to come up with better ways of discovering and treating tumor cases. This has revolutionalised clinical diagnosis of tumors (Baldwin, 2010). This is also referred to as radioimmunoscintigraphy (RIS) and it involves the use of laboratory developed molecules (monoclonal antibodies) that are able to attach themselves to particular cancer cells. From this, it is possible to visualize the pictures of the cancer cells inside the body. The monoclonal antibody is usually labeled with a radioactive atom

Proof reading Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Proof reading - Essay Example There are select set of questions to assess the teaching of the course. This term may refer to the form and completed survey or a summary of the response to questionnaires. They are meant to produce recommendations that are useful to teachers that schools can use to improve the quality of teaching and learning. The process (data collection) shows the impact of teaching and student learning. Analysis and interpretation of data, and the response and display are valuable for several reasons (David et al, 2005). They are useful because teachers can examine the different interpretations and how to improve teaching. This information is used by administrators with more input in summative decision making (e.g. decision support management of salary increases, awards etc.) (Dunegan et al., 2003). Generally, these assessments include the evaluation ofpeers, supervisor evaluation and student test scores to create an overview of effective teaching. The objective of the evaluation is to assess how successful and effective the program has been in achieving the claimed benefits and offers recommendations for future programs (Neil et al, 1994). 3. Economy: to promote the use of broad questionnaires that need to brief a number of small scales which are reliable and simple in terms of reviewing the study of large groups and with the aim to develop questionnaires that could be completed by a group of students in about fifteen minutes. 6. The ability to identify perceptions of students in different subjects, in other words, students should learn the same curriculum in the same format and meaning as a whole but recognition of courses may vary between courses. The instruments of course evaluation used in this experiment were a questionnaire, the rating scale with 5 levels, an open-ended form, and a closed-end form. Accoridn to Leonie (1989), there are 9 parts in the questionnaire. High scores indicate that students perceived the teaching staff in the

Face Recognition Using PCA Algorithm

Face Recognition Using PCA Algorithm Bollini Lokesh, Abhishek Nallamothu, Mr.S.Planiappan ABSTRACT Day by day technology is changing and way of securing and automation is also trending. Facial recognition (or face recognition) is a type of biometric software application that can identify a specific individual in a digital image by analyzing and comparing patterns. Facial recognition systems are commonly used for security purposes but are increasingly being used in a variety of other automation applications. In real time, face recognition algorithms deal with large data base. Execution of these face recognition algorithms take high computational power and time on large database. Our objective is to improve speed of face recognition on large data base by using PCA algorithm. The goal of our proposing PCA algorithm is to reduce the dimensionality of the data by mapping the data into a lower dimensionality subspace while retaining as much as possible of the variation present in the original dataset. We formally prove this algorithm on ORL face data base with best precision. Keywords: PCA: Principle Component Analysis, MATLAB: Matrix Laboratory, ORL: Olivetti Research Laboratory INTRODUCTION Facial recognition (or face recognition) is a type of biometric software application that can identify a specific individual in a digital image by analyzing and comparing patterns. Facial recognition systems are commonly used for security purposes but are increasingly being used in a variety of other applications. The Kinect motion gaming system, for example, uses facial recognition to differentiate among players. Currently, a lot of facial recognition development is focused on smartphone applications. Smartphone facial recognition capacities include image tagging and other social networking integration purposes as well as personalized marketing. A research team at Carnegie Mellon has developed a proof-of-concept iPhone app that can take a picture of an individual and within seconds return the individuals name, date of birth and social security number. Facebook uses facial recognition software to help automate user tagging in photographs. Here’s how facial recognition works in Facebook: Each time an individual is tagged in a photograph, the software application stores information about that person’s facial characteristics. When enough data has been collected about a person to identify them, the system uses that information to identify the same face in different photographs, and will subsequently suggest tagging those pictures with that person’s name. Facial recognition software also enhances marketing personalization. For example, billboards have been developed with integrated software that identifies the gender, ethnicity and approximate age of passersby to deliver targeted advertising. The main aim of this project is to improve the computational speed of face recognition by using PCA algorithm. This can be done by reducing the dimensionality of images, while doing computations on images in data base. We propose a PCA algorithm with reduced dimensionality in calculations, and we formally prove this algorithm on ORL face data base of ten different images of each of 40 distinct subjects with best precision. RELATED WORK The proposed face recognition system by using PCA algorithm overcomes certain limitations of the existing face recognition system. It is based on reduction of dimensionality and extracting the dominating features of a set of human faces stored in the database and performing mathematical operations on the values corresponding to them. Hence when a new image is fed into the system for recognition then it will reduce dimensionality of new image and extract the main features to compute and find the distance between the input image and the stored images. Thus, some variations in the new face image to be recognized can be tolerated. When the new image of a person differs from the images of that person stored in the database, the system will be able to recognize the new face and identify who the person is. The proposed system is better mainly due to the use of facial features rather than the entire face. Its advantages are in terms of: Recognition accuracy and better discriminatory power Computational cost because of reduction in dimensionality and removing of noise from data set Concentrating on main features require less processing to train the PCA. Because of the use of dominant features and hence can be used as an effective means of authentication Principle Component Analysis Principal Components Analysis (PCA) was invented by Karl Pearson in 1901 and is now used in many fields of science. It is a way of identifying patterns in data, and expressing the data in such a way as to highlight their similarities and differences. Since patterns in data can be hard to find in data of high dimension, where the luxury of graphical representation is not available, PCA is a powerful tool for analyzing data. The other main advantage of PCA is that once you have found these patterns in the data, and you compress the data, ie. by reducing the number of dimensions, without much loss of information. The main aim of this project is to improve the computational speed of face recognition by using PCA algorithm. This can be done by reducing the dimensionality of images, while doing computations on images in data base. We propose a PCA algorithm with reduced dimensionality in calculations, and we formally prove this algorithm on ORL face data base of ten different images of each of 40 distinct subjects with best precision. Actually issues arise once performing arts face recognition in a very high-dimensional area (curse of dimensionality). therefore we have a tendency to area unit managing spatiality issues in face recognition performance. important enhancements will be achieved by 1st mapping the information into a lower-dimensional sub-space. Mapping knowledge|of knowledge|of information} into lower dimensional data is feasible by PCA formula. In PCA formula, 1st itll convert all face pictures (N X N pixel) in knowledge base into face vector (N2X1 dimensionality).It hundreds of these face vectors into one matrix (N2X M matrix; here M=number of face pictures in database).It cipher average face vector(N2X1 dimensionality) by doing mean on all face vectors. It calculate normalized face vectors matrix (N2X M dimensionality) by subtracting average face vector from every face vector. It calculate variance matrix to search out out best Eigen|chemist}|chemist} vectors (best Eigen vectors represent best Eigen faces).It calculate signature of image and place it in( M X S dimensionality; here S=number of signatures). PCA converts input image (image for face recognition) into face vector, then it converts into normalized face vector and thereby it verify weight vector of input image. Finally it compare weight vectors and thereby it verify the person. Face recognition bioscience is that the science of programming a laptop to acknowledge a personalitys face. once someone is listed during a face recognition system, a video camera takes a series of snapshots of the face and so represents it by a singular holistic code. once somebody has their face verified by the pc, it captures their current look and compares it with the facial codes already hold on within the system. The faces match, the person receives authorization; otherwise, the person wont be known. the prevailing face recognition system identifies solely static face pictures that just about specifically match with one among the photographs hold on within the information. once this image captured nearly specifically matches with one among the photographs hold on then the person is known and granted access. once this image of someone is significantly totally different, say, in terms of facial features from the photographs of that person that area unit already hold on within the information the system doesnt acknowledge the person and thence access are denied. The existing or ancient face recognition system has some limitations which may  be overcome by adopting new ways of face recognition: The existing system cannot tolerate variations within the new face image. It needs the new image to be nearly specifically matching with one among the photographs within the information which can otherwise end in denial of access for the individual. The performance level of the prevailing system isnt considerable. CONCLUSION The PCA method is an unsupervised technique of learning that is mostly suitable for databases that contain images with no class labels. PCA improve speed of face recognition by mapping higher dimensionality of face image into lower dimensionality. PCA provides best precision in face recognition process. In future we are planning to implement automation in security and automation in attendance by using this algorithm. We will try to get more efficiency and precision by combining this algorithm with other algorithms. We are planning to implement this algorithm for recognizing multi faces by combining this algorithm with other face recognition algorithms. REFERENCES: [1] A.S Syed navaz, T. Dhevi sri Pratap mazumdar â€Å"Face recognition using principle component analysis and neural networks† International Journal of Computer Networking, Wireless and Mobile Communications (IJCNWMC) ISSN 2250-1568 Vol. 3, Issue 1, Mar 2013, 245-256 [2] Lindsay I Smith â€Å"A tutorial on Principal Components Analysis†February 26, 2002 [3] Sasan Karamizadeh, Shahidan M. Abdullah, Azizah A. Manaf, Mazdak Zamani, Alireza Hooman â€Å" An Overview of Principal Component Analysis† Journal of Signal and Information Processing 2013, 4, 173-175 [4] Toshiyuki Sakai, M. Nagao, Takeo Kanade, â€Å"Computer analysis and classification of photographs of human face,† First USA Japan Computer Conference, 1972 [5] Yuille, A. L., Cohen, D. S., and Hallinan, P. W., Feature extraction from faces using deformable templates, Proc. of CVPR, (1989).

Ancient Greek Beliefs Of Religion And Death Differs From Other Culture :: essays research papers

Ancient Greek Beliefs of Religion and Death Differs From Other Cultures   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  How does the Ancient Greek beliefs of religion and death differ with the view of other cultural groups? Death, the way it is represented in Homer's book, The Odyssey, is always caused by human error. Whether their death was caused by greed, selfishness, or just being curious, many people died in The Odyssey. Still, the question of what happens after we die remains. Many religions have different beliefs of religious ideas from the Ancient Greeks. Afterlife, is a belief where the comparisons among religions become extremely close. The Greek beliefs of gods and death are different from the modern day beliefs of other religions such as Judaism and Ancient Egyptian beliefs.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  For example, The Odyssey begins with a scene containing a conversation among the gods. The goddess Athena, goddess of war and wisdom, is discussing the matter of Odysseus with Zeus, the head god and god of sky (Homer 10). Of course these are not the only Greek gods and goddesses. Other examples of Greek gods and goddesses are Apollo, god of music, poetry, medicine, archery, and young unmarried men and Hestes, goddess of the home. As you can see, the Greeks believed in many gods unlike the people of the Jewish fate who believed in one god. The Jewish god does not have an emblem that which it is represented by. The belief is that the god is represented by everything. For example, members of the Jewish religion believe god is everywhere, in everything, and represented by everything they do. Another example of the religious differences is how Ancient Egyptians believed in idol gods which are gods represented in statues. Ancient Greek beliefs are different from those of other societies because of differences between how gods are represented in Judaism and Ancient Egyptian beliefs.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Equally important are the Ancient Greek views of death. Death caused by human error is widespread throughout the book. Human error is encountered in each one of Odysseus's adventures on his return home. The Kyklopes represented the greediness, selfishness, and uncilvilization of Odysseus's men. Odysseus fell asleep and his men unleashed a bag of bad winds, throwing them off path (Homer 315). Skylla and Kharybdis was a representation of death from nature when Odysseus's men stopped rowing and six of the men were killed. The Seirenes, with their beautiful singing voices represent suicide death. Hades, probably the most down to Earth adventure, represents time and fate. Many religions use time and fate as representations of why people die. Ancient Egyptians believed that when a person died, they were hand picked by god and therefore sacrificed.