YAKOV RAPOPORT, The doctors'plot, transl. Natina Perova and Raissa Bobrova, London, Fourth Estate, 1991, pp. xii, 280, illus., £17.95 (1-872180-13-2). On 13 January 1953, the astounded citizens of the USSR heard a massive "criminal conspiracy" denounced. Prominent Soviet physicians had conspired to kill the leaders of the country by medical means. A round of arrests followed involving high-rank...

Writers of statistics textbooks tend to copy other textooks rather than draw on experience. This leaves a serious ap: Techniques that are highly useful in practice are not aught. With this series of columns I am trying to fill that ap. The first column [1] pointed out that doing something imperfect) is better than doing nothing. The second [2] was bout the value of transforming your data. A thi...

We introduce a new visualization method for temporal data, Spiral Theme Plot, by combining ThemeRiver method, spiral patterns, and scatter plot technique. Similar to ThemeRiver, data in different categories (themes) are visualized in different bands, but also in a spiral pattern. Themes are stacked along a spiral curve, which represent the time axis. Individual data points are plotted within th...

Computer-assisted interactive visualization has become a valuable tool for discovering the underlying meaning of tabular data, including categorical tabular data. The capabilities of the more traditionally mundane kinds of pictures like scatter plots can be expanded to usefully depict categorical tabular data by incorporating annotations and transforms, and by integrating the extensions into an...

Large-diameter trees dominate the structure, dynamics and function of many temperate and tropical forests. However, their attendant contributions to forest heterogeneity are rarely addressed. We established the Wind River Forest Dynamics Plot, a 25.6 ha permanent plot within which we tagged and mapped all 30,973 woody stems ≥ 1 cm dbh, all 1,966 snags ≥ 10 cm dbh, and all shrub patches ≥ 2 m(2)...

Each year surface mining in Appalachia disrupts large areas of forested land. The Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act requires coal mine operators to establish a permanent vegetative cover after mining, and current practice emphasizes soil compaction and planting of competitive forage grasses to stabilize the site and control erosion. These practices hinder recolonization of native hardw...

Military installations provide important native habitat for songbirds, including many species that have experienced population declines in recent decades. As part of the Land Condition Trend Analysis (LCTA) program to monitor animal populations on military lands, we surveyed small (<250 g) breeding landbirds on 60 permanent plots on the Fort Riley Military Installation in northeastern Kansas fr...