The generative topographic mapping (GTM) has been proposed as a statistical model to represent high dimensional data by means of a sparse lattice of points in latent space, such that visualization, compression, and data inspection become possible. Original GTM is restricted to Euclidean data points in a vector space. Often, data are not explicitly embedded in a Euclidean vector space, rather pa...

Aim The flora of northern Mesoamerica conventionally has been thought to be derived from taxa that emigrated from South America, but this view has recently been challenged as too simple. The dominance of limestone substrata in much of northern Mesoamerica, and its rarity in the rest of the continental Neotropics, may be one cause of the complexity of northern Mesoamerican floristics. Furthermor...

SUMMARY We present a basic algorithm for optimal experimental design in distributed fibre-optic sensing. It is based on the fast random generation of cable layouts that can be tested their cost-benefit ratio. The accounts maximum available length, lets pass through pre-defined points interest, avoids obstacles must not traverse, permits adaptation geometric complexity different segments and all...

The initial establishment of topographic mapping within developing neural circuits is thought to be shaped by innate mechanisms and is primarily independent of experience. Additional refinement within topographic maps leads to precise matching between presynaptic and postsynaptic neurons and is thought to depend on experiential factors during specific sensitive periods in the animal's developme...

We have assessed the role of activity in the adult frog visual system in modulating two aspects of neuronal plasticity: neurotransmitter expression and topographic map maintenance. Chronic treatment of one tectal lobe with the non-NMDA receptor antagonist, 6-cyano-7-nitroquinoxaline-2,3-dione decreased the percentage of substance P-like immunoreactive (SP-IR) tectal cells in the untreated lobe ...

The Yupno of Papua New Guinea make extensive use of topographic terms—such as uphill and downhill—for conceptualizing spatial relations (Wassmann, 1994). Given the ubiquity of topographic distinctions in everyday Yupno language, an interesting question is whether such contrasts are also used when topographic landmarks are not available, such as within traditional houses. Yupno houses have flat,...

Many applications of geospatial data in coastal environments require knowledge of the nearshore topography and bathymetry. However, because existing topographic and bathymetric data have been collected independently for different purposes, it has been difficult to use them together at the land/water interface owing to differences in format, projection, resolution, accuracy, and datums. As a fir...

We address the problem of extending topographic maps to color images. A topographic map gives a morphological and a geometrical representation of the information contained in natural images. Two approaches are presented and discussed. The first one is new and consists in defining a total order in IR3 in accordance with the human visual perception of shapes. This allows to define color topograph...

In all mammals, much of the neocortex consists of orderly representations or maps of receptor surfaces that are typically topographic at a global level, while being modular at the local level. These representations appear to emerge in development as a result of a few interacting factors, and different aspects of brain maps may be developmentally linked. As a result, evolutionary selection for s...

The lacking of 1:50000 topographic maps in western China is inconvenient to the national economic development. The rapid development of space technology, computer technology and information technology provides technological support for the remote sensing application. In addition, the enhancement of ability of obtaining hyper-resolution data provides data for feature extraction of ground objects...