We present IVORY, a newly developed, platform-independent framework for physics-based visualization. IVORY is especially designed for information visualization applications and multidimensional graph layout. It is fully implemented in Java 1.1 and its architecture features client-server setup, which allows to run the visualization even on thin clients. In addition, VRML 2.0 exports can be viewe...

Two African states, Tanzania and Zambia, are seeking to change the ban on trade in ivory at the meeting next month of the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) in Qatar. But the countries face a battle, because other states, such as Kenya and Mali, are strongly opposed to any change and have been lobbying the EU in Brussels this month to support a block to any chan...

How does the CITES trade ban on international trade in elephant ivory affect the incentives to poach African elephants? In this commentary, the major effects of a trade ban on poaching incentives are captured in a simple static model of world ivory supply and demand. It is shown that a trade ban has ambiguous effects on poaching incentives. Although the ban reduces international ivory demand, o...

The unique chequered pattern of elephant ivory has made it a desired commodity for the production of various works of art. The demand however outstrips the supply and with soaring prices, illegal tusk harvesting is thriving on the African continent. Formal restrictions placed on trade in elephant products have been ineffective in reversing the rapid decline in elephant numbers. We are presently...

This study investigates to what extent West-African French accents can be distinguished, based on recordings made in Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Mali and Senegal. First, a perceptual experiment was conducted, suggesting that these accents are well identified by West-African listeners (especially the Senegal and Ivory Coast accents). Second, prosodic and segmental cues were studied by using speec...

Managing distributed state is a di cult challenge for building scalable, distributed, wide-area applications. This project presents the design of an infrastructure, called Ivory, to simplify construction of distributed applications by automatically caching and replicating data structures and code. We illustrate the use of our infrastructure in service caches that replicate Web service code and ...

An evaluation of reduced-size particle powdering methods for the recovery of usable fingermark ridge detail from elephant ivory is presented herein for the first time as a practical and cost-effective tool in forensic analysis. Of two reduced-size powder material types tested, powders with particle sizes ≤ 40 μm offered better chances of recovering ridge detail from unpolished ivory in comparis...

International trade in ivory is banned in order to protect the African elephant. The trade ban is supported by some range states, because it is seen as an effective means for protecting a ‘flagship’ species, but is opposed by states, mainly in southern Africa, because populations exceed the carrying capacity of local ecosystems. Issues concerning the ivory trade ban are addressed in this paper ...