Let E be a torsion-free sheaf on P. We give an effective method which uses the Hilbert function of E to construct a weak version of the Harder-Narasimhan filtration of a torsionfree sheaf on P subject only to the condition that E be sufficiently general among sheaves with that Hilbert function. This algorithm uses on a generalization of Davis’ decomposition lemma to higher rank. Consider the fo...

These are notes for a lecture given at Ohio University on June 3, 2006. An important topic in commutative algebra is the Rees algebra of an ideal in a commutative ring. The Rees algebra encodes a lot of information about the ideal and corresponds geometrically to a blow-up. One can represent the Rees algebra as the quotient of a polynomial ring by an ideal. This ideal is generated by the defini...

‘‘If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?’’ and, paraphrasing the proverbial philosophy question, if a company has a strong CSR commitment but nobody recognizes it, does it produce any benefits? Business returns from corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices, such as customers loyalty and company reputation, depend heavily on how stakeholders p...

Materialized views, especially views involving aggregation, are often used in environments such as data warehouses to speed up the evaluation of complex queries. Because the views can be quite complex, as changes are made to the underlying base data it is usually better to incrementally maintain a view by propagating changes to base data onto the view than to recompute the view from scratch. Gr...

Lysophosphatidic acid (LPA), a growth factor-like phospholipid, regulates numerous physiological functions, including cell proliferation and differentiation. In a previous study, we have demonstrated that LPA activates erythropoiesis by activating the LPA 3 receptor subtype (LPA3) under erythropoietin (EPO) induction. In the present study, we applied a pharmacological approach to further elucid...

Glaucoma as a neurodegeneration of the optic nerve is one of the most common causes of blindness. Because revitalization of the degenerated nerve fibers of the optic nerve is impossible early detection of the disease is essential. This can be supported by a robust and automated mass-screening. We propose a novel automated glaucoma detection system that operates on inexpensive to acquire and wid...

A technique for monitoring healthcare via the processing of routinely collected narrative documentation is presented. A checklist of important details of asthma management in use in the Glasgow Royal Infirmary (GRI) was translated into SQL queries and applied to a database of 59 GRI discharge summaries analyzed by the New York University Linguistic String Project medical language processor. Tab...

Data from the 1999-2000 Annual Survey of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children and Youth (GRI Annual Survey; Gallaudet Research Institute, 2000) are systematically compared with those summarized by the U.S. Department of Education (2001, 2002) in the Annual Report to Congress on the Implementation of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) to estimate the degree to which findings bas...