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Animal tracking is a growing field in ecology and previous work has shown that simple speed filtering of tracking data is not sufficient and that improvement of tracking location estimates are possible. To date, this has required methods that are complicated and often time-consuming (state-space models), resulting in limited application of this technique and the potential for analysis errors due to poor understanding of the fundamental framework behind the approach. We describe and test an alternative and intuitive approach consisting of bootstrapping random walks biased by forward particles. The model uses recorded data accuracy estimates, and can assimilate other sources of data such as sea-surface temperature, bathymetry and/or physical boundaries. We tested our model using ARGOS and geolocation tracks of elephant seals that also carried GPS tags in addition to PTTs, enabling true validation. Among pinnipeds, elephant seals are extreme divers that spend little time at the surface, which considerably impact the quality of both ARGOS and light-based geolocation tracks. Despite such low overall quality tracks, our model provided location estimates within 4.0, 5.5 and 12.0 km of true location 50% of the time, and within 9, 10.5 and 20.0 km 90% of the time, for above, equal or below average elephant seal ARGOS track qualities, respectively. With geolocation data, 50% of errors were less than 104.8 km (<0.94°), and 90% were less than 199.8 km (<1.80°). Larger errors were due to lack of sea-surface temperature gradients. In addition we show that our model is flexible enough to solve the obstacle avoidance problem by assimilating high resolution coastline data. This reduced the number of invalid on-land location by almost an order of magnitude. The method is intuitive, flexible and efficient, promising extensive utilization in future research.
Citation: Tremblay Y, Robinson PW, Costa DP (2009) A Parsimonious Approach to Modeling Animal Movement Data. PLoS ONE 4(3): e4711. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0004711
Editor: Brendan John Godley, University of Exeter, Cornwall Campus, United Kingdom
Received: September 27, 2008; Accepted: January 29, 2009; Published: March 5, 2009
Copyright: © 2009 Tremblay et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Funding: This effort was funded by the Packard, Moore and Sloan foundations and from the Office of Naval Research and the Office of Polar Programs, NSF. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Monitoring the movement of animals is fundamental for investigating processes and patterns of animal distribution, habitat use and selection, habitat connectivity, recruitment, migrations, and foraging strategies. Movements of freely ranging animals are typically studied using some form of telemetry due to the difficulties of visually tracking individual animals in the wild. However, the various forms of telemetry come with certain limitations, such as limited spatial accuracy and low and/or uneven temporal resolution of recorded locations [1]–[6]. For example, satellite tracking using the ARGOS system yields location estimates that are categorized into six different quality classes (i.e. different errors), with uneven sampling due to the availability of the satellites overhead coupled with the animals' behavior and location [6], [7].
A variety of approaches have been developed to correct telemetry data by: 1) reducing spatial errors and 2) correcting for temporal lags and unevenness between data points. For the first process, filtering techniques are commonly applied to the data, based on the previous estimation of a maximum traveling speed of the animal [6], [8], [9], and eventually an additional angle filter [10]. Such filters remove unlikely locations, but they also increase the temporal gap between analyzed locations. For the second process, interpolation between known locations is performed to provide equally spaced locations for a given time interval [2]. These processes are appropriate for large scale studies, but they prevent us from using some potential positional information from discarded locations and the known spatial inaccuracy of the data is ignored [5]. Usually, 30% (+/−20%) of ARGOS locations are discarded by filters (Coyne, pers. com.) but this can reach up to ∼50–75% in some instances [1] (this work). However, these processes have the advantages of being intuitively easy to understand and generally quite simple to implement.
State-space modeling (or state-space models; SSM) is an alternative process that uses the error in the data as a source of information to infer the likelihood of the animal's position [5], [11]. In these models, a mechanistic model of movement is coupled to the data, and a probability of presence at a certain point is inferred based on the estimated state of the animal. The process model predicts the future state of an animal given its current state [12]. Observation errors are included in the probability calculations, as well as other information if they are available, such as sea-surface temperature [13]. These models are complicated to both understand and implement, often forcing ecologists researching animal movement to team up with statistical modelers for their development and analysis [12]. More importantly, SSM is not a uniform framework: state-space models can use "extended" or "unscented" Kalman filters [13], "hidden Markov" processes [14], "particle filters" [15], and discussion continues over which method to use [16]. Even more importantly, SSM are claimed to be robust [5] and better than classical techniques [12], but to our knowledge, their performances have never been objectively tested with tracking data from wild animals because by definition we only know where an animal is through the imperfect method used. However, a recent study has attempted to gain insight into SSM performances [17], and has revealed that like other methods SSM have some limitations (discussed later in this work). In addition, though rarely considered, SSM often require extremely long processing times (S. Jorgensen, H. Bailey, pers. comm.).
The aim of this paper is to propose a simpler, non-state-based random walk (RW) modeling approach that uses forward particle sampling as a parsimonious, intuitive, efficient and practical alternative to correcting and interpolating tracking data.
In developing this new methodology, we imposed several requirements:
- As in state-space models, we use estimates of spatial accuracy as a source of information to infer a probable animal position for a given time.
- Contrary to state-space models, we do not speculate on the unknown state of an animal to infer a subsequent position.
- The method must output a track with a custom fixed time interval, thus dealing with the corrective and interpolating processes in a single step.
- In many cases, other information independent from the tracking data can also be used in the modeling process, such as physical boundaries known to constrain dispersal or habitat characteristics known to provide more or less favorable habitat. For example, these can be forest or city limits in terrestrial environment, or coastlines in the marine environment. We must have a way to include these sources of information in the process.
- Each output estimate of the animal's position must come with a valid estimation of confidence.
- The method must be tested on real data in a way that performance can be validated.
- Each step must be intuitively easy to understand, i.e. as simple as possible. While this is subjective, it will be crucial in determining both the usefulness and probability that the method will become accepted and employed by the greater animal tracking community.
Materials, Methods and Results
Ethics Statement
All procedures used were approved by the UCSC CARC (IACUC) committee and permitted under NMFS marine mammal permits #786-1463 and #87-143.
Data Collection
Our focus here is on tracking data collected via the ARGOS satellite system and archival light-based geolocation telemetry, which are the two major techniques requiring post-processing of raw data. The general framework is, however, not restricted to these tracking techniques and can be adapted to any tracking data. Few studies have evaluated the performance of a model for tracking data because the true position of animals (at sea) has until recently been impossible to determine with better accuracy than with the actual tracking method used. To validate our method, we considered several movement pathways from marine animals, each bringing a possibility of evaluating the accuracy of the method and/or posing a particular analytical challenge, as detailed below:
- Dataset 1
The first data set was composed of 3 Argos tracks of adult female northern elephant seals, Mirounga angustirostris (Gill, 1866) during their post-breeding migrations. The tags used were ARGOS-linked GPS tags (SMRU GPS-SRDL, i.e. ARGOS+GPS). For battery management purposes, the tags were duty-cycled for the recording of GPS positions (1 day on, 3 days off) whereas ARGOS transmissions were continuously obtained. By nature, GPS data are much more accurate than ARGOS data (estimated unpublished errors: ∼5–60 m vs. ∼150–10000 m respectively), so we used these positions as our reference locations. The three tracks had distinct qualities (Table 1), so we were able to evaluate the effect of initial data quality on the performance of our model. For this dataset, the model was run using ARGOS data and the results were compared to the GPS data.
- Dataset 2
The second dataset is one ARGOS track from one adult female northern elephant seal. This animal was equipped with an ARGOS-only transmitter (SMRU SRDL). Although no GPS data were available for comparison, this track was chosen because the animal ventured into coastal waters of British Colombia (Canada), into a meander of fjords and islands. Elephant seals do not cross islands and do not haul-out during their migrations. Therefore, this track must be constrained by coastlines. We used this knowledge by assimilating the Global Self-consistent Hierarchical, High-resolution Shoreline database [18] in our model. This coastline dataset comes in 5 different resolutions from "crude" to "full". We used the "high" resolution dataset (Max. error = 200 m). For this dataset, the model was run using ARGOS data and assimilated coastline data and the results were visually compared to the distribution of land masses.
- Dataset 3
The third dataset is a track obtained from one of the three female elephant seals from Dataset I, but in this case her track was estimated using the geolocation method. Diurnal patterns of light levels measured via a time series are used to estimate one position per day [19]. This method is less accurate than either the ARGOS or the GPS technique (estimated error ∼50–700 km) and can be improved in marine environments by assimilating remotely-sensed sea-surface temperature grids [3], [13], [20]. A Time-Depth Recorder carried by the animal (TDR, MK9 Wildlife Computers, Redmond, USA) recorded hydrostatic pressure, water temperature and ambient light levels. The geolocation algorithm from Wildlife Computers (Software WC_GPE version 1.02.0005) was used to calculate geographic positions from the light level time series. The IKNOS-DIVE program (Tremblay, unpublished) was used to analyze diving behavior as well as to extract oceanographic parameters such as sea-surface temperature (SST) for each recorded dive. Only SST values were considered in this work. We assimilated the time series of known SST from the animal with matching daily remote-sensing SST 11 km-grids consisting of a blended product of merged SST information in order to reduce cloud cover error [21]. This remote-sensing dataset was produced by the NOAA CoastWatch Program, the NOAA NESDIS Office of Satellite Data Processing and Distribution, the NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and OceanColor Web (details: http://coastwatch.pfel.noaa.gov/infog/BA_ssta_las.html). The 11 km grain of these data is fine with respect to the geolocation accuracy (at least by a factor 10), and therefore they are appropriate for this analysis. This track was validated using the same GPS track described in Dataset 1. For this dataset, the model was run using geolocation data and assimilated sea-surface temperatures, and the resulting locations were compared to the GPS positions.
Field methodologies followed standard and approved procedures by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee at the University of California (Santa Cruz) and were described elsewhere (see [22]). All available ARGOS locations were used including class Z and secondary locations.
Basic principles of the model
Animal movement is best described as a time series of movement steps [23]. Each step is characterized by an azimuth (or bearing) and a distance between two distinct points in time, which in turn determines a speed value. The distributions of the azimuth and speed values in a series of steps will determine the type of movement of the animal, from a straight line to a Brownian (random) motion. This principle can be used to generate artificial tracks of known characteristics, by randomly selecting consecutive azimuth and speed values from distributions of controlled characteristics [17], [24], [25]. Similarly, our model recreates many possible tracks using distributions of speed and azimuth controlled by the raw data and their associated error distributions.
The model is illustrated in figures 1 and 2. Each recorded location (Fig. 1a, 2b) can be considered the geographic average of many possible positions spread around it, depending on spatial error characteristics (Fig. 1b, 2c). Each of these possible locations (or "particles") can then be weighted based on proper characteristics (i.e. matching recorded SST value or being on land) and/or external characteristics (i.e. feasibility of speed required to reach a particle from a given location) (Fig. 1c). We used these particles to generate the weighted distributions of azimuth and speed from which random steps were selected (Fig 1d). At each step, a new distribution of azimuth and speed is computed using the next x particles in the record, and one value of azimuth and speed is randomly selected and used to create the next position. If the spatial error is large, the azimuth and speed distributions widen and vice-versa (Fig. 1e, 2d). The output of our method is n time series (i.e. complete tracks), each corresponding to one bootstrapped track iteration. The "best track" can then be computed as the geographic average of the bootstrapped tracks. This leads to the possibility of estimating an error (or confidence) for each step of the average track using the dispersal of time-matching alternative positions (Fig. 1f, 2e).
Based on the raw data (A) and knowledge about their inaccuracy, the first step consists of generating a number of possible locations for each recorded point (B). The distribution of these particles follows a known or estimated error distribution for each point. Based on the likelihood of the speed required to get from a point to a given particle or any other known information if relevant, a weight is assigned to each particle (C). From a starting position, some forward particles will serve as attractors for constructing random walks. These forward particles define a distribution of speed and azimuth from which one random step is selected (D). The repetition of this process generates one random walk. This process is bootstrapped in order to generate many possible random walks (E). From this set of random walks, an average track is calculated. For each position of the average track, an error can be estimated from all of the corresponding locations of the set of random walks (F).
Panel A shows the whole track as obtained using a classical speed filter and the location of the inset panels (black rectangle). From the recorded raw data (B) a set of particles is generated (gray dots in C). Using these particles a number of random walks is computed (D), which allow the calculation of an average track (green line in E) and associated error footprint (gray area in E: the accumulation of all error circles for every steps in the model). Red circles in panel E are the location of highly accurate GPS location obtained on a duty cycle fashion for this track.
Model implementation, performance and effect of data quality (ARGOS, dataset 1)
To create the particles, we used estimated errors from our own static tests of ARGOS data [25] rather than errors given by the ARGOS system. Although the errors derived from static tests might not be the same as what would be obtained from deployed tags, we believed that they were the best estimate available. Each recorded location was resampled into 50 particles randomly selected using a bivariate normal distribution of distance (with μ = 0 and SD = error). The number of particles (here 50) was empirically fixed so that they produce a near-uniform circular distribution of azimuths around each recorded location.
With this dataset, particles were weighted according to a probability distribution of the local speeds estimated from the four prior and four following recorded points. From these locations, all combinations of speed were calculated, and only the likely ones (below a maximum speed threshold set by the user are kept, here 12.6 km/h in accordance with previous study [22]. A normal distribution with mean and standard deviation corresponding to these speeds was then used for weighting. Therefore, particles involving speeds often used by the animal (locally to each point) will have a relatively higher chance of being selected.
One characteristic of tracking data (including ARGOS) is that the error of recorded location is probabilistic. That is any location has a low probability of being very wrong, independently of its given error (i.e. errors are strongly non-gaussian [5]). This is why some presumably good ARGOS locations (with quality class of 1 for example) are sometimes found kilometers away from any reasonable position [1]. This implies that the model cannot blindly trust the accuracy of each point. In order to account for this, the azimuth and speed distributions used at each step were derived from the next 50×3 particles instead of being derived from the next 50 particles (arbitrarily). This process has a slight smoothing effect and helps the model overcome the problem of individual mistrust of recorded locations.
In our simulations, we generated random walks with steps every 30 minutes, which is close to the average duration of a dive in elephant seals [22].
Track quality is not easily defined because it is a combination of location quality and frequency in relation to the animal's speed, and it can be variable within a track record. In our case, reported location qualities were roughly similar in the three tracks (Table 1). Location frequency in recently obtained data in elephant seals are around three post-filtered locations per day on average [2], [26]. Therefore, the track qualities of track 1, 2 and 3 were above, equal and below average respectively (Table 1). This gives us the possibility of testing the effect of track quality on the accuracy of the model. In order to do so, we extracted all model locations that were within 2 minutes of a recorded GPS location. This yielded 41, 24 and 31 pairs of locations for the 3 tracks respectively. Fifty percent of the errors (i.e. distances between GPS locations and corresponding model-estimated locations) were below 4.0, 5.5 and 12.0 km and ninety percent of errors were less than 9.0, 10.5 and 20.0 km in track number 1, 2 and 3 respectively. Logically, errors increased with decreasing track quality (Fig. 3a).
Box plot depicts the 25th and 75th percentile around the median with whiskers extending to the last non-outlier value. Outliers are observations (dots) that lay over 1.5 times the inter-quartile range from the start or end of the 25th–75th percentile box. Panel B shows the relationship between the model estimate of confidence (99% confidence radius of the modeled positions) and the actual error. The relationship was only calculated using points within the 95% confidence ellipse.
In order to evaluate the difference between our model and classical methods, we applied a speed filter at 12.6 km/h on the raw data [22]. Filtered tracks were then interpolated every 30 minutes using a Bézier curve with mu = 0.1 [2]. A Bézier curve interpolant does not introduce additional error compared to linear interpolation, and it was shown to be a more realistic representation of movement in a fluid environment [2]. This interpolated track was compared to the GPS locations in the same way. Fifty percent of the errors were below 5.0, 13.0 and 19.5 km, and ninety percent of errors were less than 20.0, 20.5 and 41.0 km in track numbers 1, 2 and 3 respectively. Results confirm that the speed filter+interpolation method is also sensitive to the track quality [2] and show that our model reduced the positional errors by about 39% for the 50 percentile and about 52% for the 90 percentile.
Consistent with relatively low error locations, instantaneous speeds calculated from our model were positively related to the speed recorded with GPS for all locations that were less than 2 minutes apart (R = 0.638, P<0.001, N = 97). Such correlation at a small time scale is remarkable given the relative scarcity of ARGOS data. Smoothing the pattern of speed by taking into account the previous and subsequent 3 points in the record (using a moving average) permits to look at speed at a slightly coarser scale and shows further improvement of the fit, yielding a quasi one to one relationship (Fig. 4).
Smoothing was done using a moving average including the previous and next 3 points.
For each average location estimated with the model (i.e. each averaged step) we calculated the 99% confidence radius using the 30 location alternatives. This radius defines a circle that can be used as a standard measure of spatial dispersion. We showed that 75.6, 66.7, and 39.7% of the GPS positions fell within the circle in the 3 tracks respectively. By doubling the radius size, we found that 92.7, 91.7 and 87.1% of the GPS locations fell in the circle footprint. We therefore suggest that twice the 99% confidence radius calculated on the model output can be used as a valid estimate for the "real" 90% confidence error for each step. However, we found that the footprint made by the successive 99% confidence radii was usually larger than the footprint made by the random walks (Fig. 2e). This apparent contradiction was due to the fact that errors were larger along the animal path and smaller laterally (data not shown) suggesting that fitting an ellipse to the points could be a better (but more complicated) way to describe errors.
The 99% confidence radius was positively related to the actual distance between the model average location and the corresponding GPS location (Radius = 6.0+0.33×Distance, n = 87, R = 0.491, P<0.001, Fig. 3b).
We ran a sensitivity analysis to assess how many random walks were necessary to obtain a reliable and stable track estimate. Convergence was reached when the average standard deviations of latitude and longitude became stable, indicating that any additional track would not change the location or spatial extent of the track. This was achieved using between 15 and 20 track iterations (Fig. 5), thus the optimal ratio of computing time to track quality is achieved with about 20 iterations. The computing time required to run 20 random walks with one step every half an hour for one day (960 step calculations) required about 45 seconds of computing time, using Matlab and a laptop computer with a 2.16 Ghz dual core processor. This is about 20 times longer than "classical" speed filtering, but this is still a reasonable amount of time.
Coastline integration (Argos, dataset 2)
With Dataset 2 we confronted the problem of obstacle avoidance. In our case the seal obviously cannot cross over land, presenting a problem common in tracking studies involving coastal marine species. Solving the obstacle contouring problem in a bootstrapping context requires taking into account the compromise between a satisfactory result and the computing time needed to obtain it. Here, we added several intermediate particles to the track data in order to re-route the path when it cut through the obstacles. The geographic average of these added particles belonged to the convex Hull of the coastline polygon crossed, and were selected to achieve the shortest possible path. When several polygons were crossed, the various combinations of convex hull points were processed through Dijkstra's algorithm in order to find the shortest path between the different combinations of possible paths [27]. Each selected convex hull point was treated as a tracking point with an error arbitrarily fixed as the error of ARGOS class quality 0. Then, after re-sampling, all particles that were on land were removed (i.e. their weight = 0). With this process, some randomly generated steps can fall on land because they were not individually forced into being at sea. While this could be done, it would require considerably more computing time. However, in dataset 2, the average track from our model yields only 2.4% locations on land, whereas the speed filter+interpolation method yielded 22.6% invalid, on land locations. It is important to note that our example is an exceptionally complicated case because the spatial structure of the obstacles is both very dense and within or below the accuracy of our tracking method (Fig. 6).
Black line represents the track from the raw ARGOS data. Darker polygons represent land masses and light grey background represents water. Note that only the part of the track that was within the islands (British Colombia, North East Pacific, Canada) is shown.
Model applied to geolocation data with Sea Surface Temperature integration (dataset 3)
Due to differences in the characteristics of light-based geolocation, we treated these data differently. In particular, errors from geolocation data are much higher latitudinally than longitudinally. The geolocation solver produced estimates of errors with some south and north boundaries for each location. We randomly generated particles so that they lay in the ellipse delimited by these boundaries. Because geolocation errors are much larger than for ARGOS data, we generated 500 particles per record instead of 50 with ARGOS data (empirically). The frequency of geolocation data provide one location per day, and SST correction applies to these locations [3], [13], [20]. However, SST at the animal is often recorded at a much finer temporal scale. For example, the time-depth recorder carried by the seal produced a measure of SST for every dive (i.e. about every 20 minutes). In order to take advantage of more of the SST data recorded, we added to the raw data a set of particles every 4.8 hours. This allowed us to use five times more information from the SST data (5×4.8 = 24 h). These particles were added in an elliptic footprint centered at an interpolated position between recorded locations and with a semi-minor axis (longitudinally) of ∼111 km (1°) and a semi-major axis (latitudinally) of ∼889 km (8°), based on published range estimates of accuracy for light-based geolocation data [13], [20].
Fifty percent of the distances between modeled locations and the corresponding GPS locations (n = 41, locations less than 2 minutes apart) were less than 104.8 km (<0.94°) and 90% were less than 199.8 km (<1.80°). The average error was 108.4±66.8 km (0.98±0.60°). Careful examination of the track revealed that larger errors occurred at the end of the track, at locations where SST gradients were weak, and therefore SST correction had little effect (Fig. 7).
The black line and dots represent the light-based geolocation data and the blue line and crosses represent the result of the model applied to the ARGOS data instead of the geolocation data (used here as reference since it is much more accurate – see results for details). The background colors and color bar code for the sea-surface temperature (°C) grid at the day matching the position of the large red circle. At this time and place, the SST gradient was weak, so the SST correction had little effect, thus the larger deviation of the modeled track to the reference track. Note that the GPS data were not represented because of the coarse scale of the plot and the duty cycling of the GPS data.
Bootstrapping random walks generated using forward particles in tracking data is an intuitive, relatively fast and efficient way of handling the caveats associated with current tracking techniques. To our knowledge, this is the first time that a track improvement model technique has been directly validated with animals for which "true" positions are known. Although we have illustrated our approach using ARGOS and geolocation data, the technique is applicable for any remotely sensed movement data for which an estimate of accuracy can be made.
When selecting a method, one must define an acceptable tradeoff between performance and the complexity or computation time required. In the case of tracking data, deciding on acceptable performances also depends on what is usually expected with the type of tracking methodology used For example, methods can be referred to as "ARGOS" or "Geolocation" to imply common knowledge accuracy, but both methods may give track records of very different qualities depending on the type of animal tracked and the type of tracking device used, etc. For example, diving animals may provide decreased ARGOS and geolocation track qualities compared to non-diving animals [2], [28]. Further, the type of scientific questions posed may also change the definition of "acceptable performance". For example, long term tracking of animal migration over large scales can be accomplished with the lower accuracy geolocation method [29], [30]. Relevant to our model, the question is to know whether the gain from our method compared to classical methods is worth the effort.
Spatial accuracy with ARGOS data
In elephant seals, very long dive durations and very short surface intervals between dives leaves few opportunities for the ARGOS tag to transmit signals to overhead satellites, which produces the poorest ARGOS track qualities [2]. Nevertheless, we showed that our model reduced spatial errors by 40–50% compared to classic speed filter+interpolation methods, with a vast majority of latent (i.e. estimated but not directly recorded) locations being within 10 km of true position. One important consequence is that the overall shape of the track was greatly improved, with removal of sudden zigzags that typically remain with speed filters. Recent GPS tracking of elephant seals confirms that these zigzags are not realistic (Costa, unpublished). Therefore, any analysis involving track shape such as the search for Levy flights [31], [32] or ARS patterns [24], [25] would likely be considerably enhanced by our method since spatial errors reduce the ability to discern biological signals [33]. The relationship between the error distribution and the raw track quality suggests that our model may provide even better accuracy with tracks of higher quality. This relationship is logical and proves that the amount of data available directly affects the accuracy of the model. This is because if more locations are available the model has more occasions to adjust speed along the track and therefore to use a more accurate speed distribution for generating the random walk. Although we could not quantify precisely the improvement that we obtained by assimilating coastline data, visual inspection clearly showed significant improvement as well (Fig. 6).
Our approach is based on calculating a location from a cloud of weighted particles which can be manipulated as needed. This yields great flexibility, allowing us to apply corrections based on known constraints or data available. For example, if gaps in the data exist, some particles may be added in a wide footprint within the gap, thus allowing the random walks to disperse and increasing uncertainty (i.e. decreasing confidence) where data are absent.
Spatial accuracy with geolocation data
We showed that Sea Surface Temperature (SST) data can be assimilated into our model. To our knowledge, this is the first study reporting sub-degree average accuracy with SST-corrected geolocation data. The few studies that had assessed the accuracy of the SST-corrected geolocation method reported accuracies of 1.82°±1.54° (mean±SD) in albatrosses [3], and 1.28°±0.38° (mean±SD of means) in 4 species of fish [20]. It is important to note that these accuracies were calculated for recorded locations (i.e. in theory the best estimates) whereas our estimation of accuracy was made for latent locations. However, variance in errors is typically high because of the high variability in the quality of the light measurement and therefore comparison between studies is only vaguely informative. The take home message however is that using our model, sub-degree accuracy is achievable with latent locations if some SST gradient exists.
Interestingly, one study assimilated both SST and bathymetry in order to correct geolocation tracks of gray seals (Halichoerus grypus), and produced average errors of 0.85°±0.07° [28] which is slightly better than our estimates. The elephant seal that we use as an example ventured in very deep and unreachable ocean waters, and therefore, bathymetry could not possibly have improved our track. However, our method permits easy assimilation of bathymetry, by simply altering the weights attributed to each particle based on the comparison between known depth reached by the animal and the ocean bathymetry. This process is also not exclusive to SST or to any other parameter. Finally, a recently published algorithm [34] aimed at estimated positions based on light levels alone suggests that the raw data to input to our model could be substantially improved in the future, which in turn suggests that output from our model could be even further improved.
Confidence estimates of locations
Analyzing animals' behavior in relation to environmental characteristics may enable estimation of a confidence metric for each position, which is rarely available with recorded ARGOS data (ARGOS location of class A,B and Z for example) and not obtainable with the speed filter+interpolation methods. This confidence metric is essential for interpreting the behavior of the animal at an appropriate scale. For example, if the confidence radius is 10 km, it is probably inappropriate to interpret movements shorter than this distance. Similarly, the environment characteristics at a given location may be gathered within the location error footprint rather than under each average location, potentially reducing noise in the data and improving habitat model confidence and determination.
In this paper we used a circle to estimate confidence, but this could be done differently. For example, if the errors are systematically biased towards one direction (for example latitudinally as in the case of geolocation data), it would be straightforward to determine another metric based on the output from the random walks. For example, the standard deviation in latitude and longitude, or the maximum distance between the various positions and their average could be used as well. More complex methods such as the determination of an ellipse (as mentioned earlier) could be used to account for particular spatial structure that might occur in the error footprint. For example, this could allow us to discriminate between the error vectors occurring along the animal path to the error vectors occurring laterally to the animal path. Overall, this shows that our approach is not sealed to one scheme, but instead, it is very open to user input and experimentation.
Forward particle random walk model versus state-space model
For most applications a biased random walk approach like ours seems to be an excellent compromise between complexity, computation time, ease of implementation and effectiveness, especially when compared to state-space models (SSM). Some SSM users and developers have themselves considered the approach as a technically difficult statistical framework [12], [35]. Contrary to state-space models, we did not have to infer animal state, transition equation, measurement equation and switching model, nor did we rely upon Bayesian statistics (which is complicated for most users), and yet, we obtained very satisfactory results while preserving the possibility to use information from other sources of data, such as coastlines or SST. Other parameters, such as ocean depth, could be coupled with the animal diving depth in the same way. It is important to note that our approach cannot repeat earlier track patterns in a gap; indeed, SSM may artificially create patterns where data are sparse [17], which may be problematic for subsequent analysis.
A recent attempt to assess SSM accuracy was made using artificial tracks, and reported mean absolute errors to be at best one to two times larger than what we recorded in this study [17]. It is however unclear how our approach would compare to a state-space model approach because, to our knowledge, no state-space model application on animal movement data has been truly validated (compared to GPS locations). A direct comparison is therefore not strictly possible. What is certain is that the complexity and associated computing time is considerably reduced using our approach. A switching state-space model [36] would probably increase the computing time by a factor of 5 (Bailey, pers. comm.), which would amount for at least 5, 3 and 15 hours of computing to run our track numbers 1, 2 and 3 from our first dataset, respectively.
State-space models have the ability to produce an estimate of the animal's behavioral mode, and this can be seen as a major advantage over our method. The behavioral mode is usually characterized by a certain bearing (or turn) variability and a certain speed [14], [36]. It is indeed important to be able to distinguish between behavioral phases, and we believe that simple time-series analysis or other first passage time [24] or fractal landscape analysis [25] may accomplish this equally well. A priori there is no reason why track correction and delineation of behavioral mode must occur in the same step. In fact, it might even be simpler and more useful for researchers to compare and use several methodologies to identify behavioral states. However, this is not the topic of this work and this may require more investigations.
State-space models were presented as a way to use all available information in the tracking data without the need for filtering processes to be performed [37]. A recent study using state-space models suggested that pre-filtering of ARGOS data improves the model performance [16], and this seems to be confirmed by another recent study which used a classical speed filter prior to using the state-space model [38]. None of this is required with our approach, and at the opposite, we even used ARGOS secondary locations in addition to recorded primary locations in our model, in order to truly use the maximum information available.
Finally, it is important to note that the advantages or inconvenient of using a method or another might also depend on one's initial goals. By fitting a mechanistic model to the data, state-space models are by construction more predictive than our approach. This possibility might be of interest for comparing different mechanistic models of individual movement and therefore to explore the effects of different behavioral processes on the dispersal of individuals. This cannot be done directly with our approach, but as a second step, by comparing the output of our method to the output obtained under a given theoretical framework.
Our model uses particles, but it differs from particle sampling filters by the fact that particles are not generated using prior behavioral information [15], but instead, they are generated based on the recorded data.
Previous work has shown that simple filtering is wasteful and inefficient and that additional, valuable behavioral information can be extracted from tracking data. To date, this has required methods that are both complicated and time-consuming, resulting in limited application and the potential for analysis errors due to poor understanding. The particle filter model outlined here attempts to improve the quality of tracking data while operating by a framework that is both accessible and efficient. This method improves the accuracy of positions and assigns an estimate of spatial error, facilitating subsequent post-hoc behavioral analyses. In order to share this method with the research community, we will establish a dedicated website to provide source codes, examples, and a manual. The package will be known as the IKNOS-WALK program.
The authors are grateful to all field volunteers and assistants for their work in the field, in particular S. Simmons and J. Hassrick. We are grateful to the Año Nuevo state park for allowing access to the elephant seal colonies and for logistical support from the UC Natural Reserve System. Animal handling procedures were approved by the Chancellor's Animal Research Committee UC Santa Cruz.
Author Contributions
Conceived and designed the experiments: YT. Performed the experiments: YT PWR. Analyzed the data: YT. Wrote the paper: YT. Reviewed and edited manuscript: PWR DC. Obtained funding and permit: DC.
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- 24. Fauchald P, Tveraa T (2003) Using first-passage time in the analysis of area-restricted search and habitat selection. Ecology 84: 282–288.
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- 35. Jonsen ID (2003) Meta-analysis of aquatic and terrestrial animal movement using state-space models. Ecological Society of America Annual Meeting Abstracts 88: 173.
- 36. Jonsen ID, Myers AM, James MC (2007) Identifying leatherback turtle foraging behaviour from satellite telemetry using a switching state-space model. Marine Ecology Progress Series 337: 255–264.
- 37. Jonsen ID, Myers RA, Flemming JM (2003) Meta-analysis of animal movement using state-space models. Ecology 84: 3055–3063.
- 38. Johnson DS, London JM, Lea M-A, Durban JW (2008) Continuous-time correlated random walk model for animal telemetry data. Ecology 89: 1208–1215.


text:
Judge Stephanie Sautner, who presided over the trial that found Mel Gibson guilty of misdemeanor battery against girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva, had given the star a week to report to an El Segundo Police station for booking.
Last night, Gibson did just that.
Gibson had his mug shot taken was fingerprinted as part of the process, although Gibson will not be doing any jail time in connection with the battery charge.
U.S. & World
The booking took place the same night Jodie Foster's "The Beaver" premiered at the South-By-Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. In "Beaver," Gibson stars as a man who experiences a mental breakdown and begins communicating to the world through a hand puppet.
A lot of industry people expected Foster's film to be savaged, given Gibson's personal scandals and the movie's long and troubled production history. But so far, word out of SXSW has been mostly positive.
Foster recently gave an interview with The Hollywood Reporter where she declared her undying love and support for Gibson.
Selected Reading: TMZ, PopEater, The Hollywood Reporter

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Our Tuning Box Classic HSY201 chiptuning unit will upgrade the performances of your Deutz Agrotron. You will have more power (+23 hp) and more torque (+84 Nm) with this diesel chip. The power of your diesel K100 4.0 95 hp engine is increased by up to 118 hp* and its torque is boosted by up to 480 Nm*. Moreover, tuning the ECU with an electronic chip will cut your consumption off by -1L./100km*.
This performance chip especially developed for this diesel K100 4.0 95 HP engine works as a custom ECU remap. Thanks to the supplied AMP plugs, this tuning box can be easily connected and scrupulously respects the power reserves and engine protection systems of the german manufacturer.Read more
Tuning Box offers a 1-year engine warranty with this power box.
Great Service, keep as it is and no improvements needed
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My dad wanted it so I ordered from Japan. My dad told me that it works perfect and highly recommended. We live in Japan and have Range Rover Velar. Dad said it takes about only 3 mins.
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I've just started using a herbal cream and am quite amazed at the speed of its effects on stabilizing my moods. It's very easy to use and all I need to do is to apply it to certain areas of my body, such as my underarms, inner thighs, neck, and abdomen. Whilst this product is specially designed for skin delivery, but I couldn't help but wonder how easy it is for our skin to absorb what we apply on it.
Products engineered to penetrate our skin
Over and over again I read that our skin resists penetration of almost all chemicals as our lotions cannot be absorbed into our skin. It does make sense to me but I wonder what happens if the cream is technologically engineered to penetrate? This is already happening with some of our high-end skin care products and doesn't this mean that whatever is in the formulation gets absorbed into our skin and end up in our blood stream? So on one hand we want our products to do something for our skin by penetrating but on the other hand, we are inviting unwanted chemicals to get inside us? Well, I don't have the definite answers to this but I came across this very interesting article at Mail Online titled the 515 chemicals women put on their bodies every day. According to the article, rather than delivering on their potent 'anti-ageing' promise, many of these cosmetics are causing us to age faster.
Accumulated harm and toxicity through repeated usage
I find the figure too alarming but at the same time, exaggerating perhaps. In addition, I don't see how it is possible to avoid some of these ingredients entirely even in some of the natural and organic skin care products. However, I take the view that the harm and toxicity on our skin happens through repeated use. But that's not exactly the reason why I prefer to use natural or organic skin care products. My rationale is some of these chemical synthetics actually interferes with the delivery of the skin care benefits. However, with my recent experience using the herbal cream, I'm thinking twice again about the usage of products especially on my body as it appears to me that it's easier to absorb some of the ingredients via the lymph nodes.
Natural and organic formulations may still contain chemicals
Anyway, click through the link to read the article. It's quite informational to find out more what some of the common products contain and what sort of health hazards these ingredients can cause. And don't be surprised that an ingredient like polyethylene glycol is present in many of the natural and organic skin care products.


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Having watched the final Harry Potter movie, I find myself comparing the two franchises, as books, as movies and as adaptations. I think the two franchises are similar in many ways, and these similarities are what I want to discuss from an adaptation point of view.
Firstly, to look at the novels as series. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are set in the same world. Just about. Its a very uneasy marriage. The Middle Earth of The Hobbit is very different to that of Lord of the Rings. Much can be partially explained by the "Bilbo as Narrator" device, and the escalating danger as the War of the Ring approaches, but much simply has to be ignored. In The Hobbit we have a talking purse, Cockney Trolls who turn to stone in daylight, a talking thrush, a talking raven, a magic ring (of which there are many apparently), singing orcs, magic doors that only open at a certain time of the year under a certain moon (in other words practically useless except as a plot device), a magic arrow that never misses its mark, a were bear served by animal servants, including some who have been trained to walk on their hind legs and carry trays. In The Lord of the Rings, all of these are ignored, not mentioned or brushed under the carpet to serve the darker, more serious world. Early in Fellowship we get the sentient fox, but this feels almost like a mistake, an anachronism in the LotR. Bombadil also straddles the two worlds, having been brought in from another source and shoehorned into the story. As such Tolkien has to make an effort to explain him and his odd nature, fairly unsatisfactorily. We also have the disappearing Wargs in Hollin. However, by The Two Towers, we're in the "real" Middle Earth. The gritty one, where magic is subtle, where dangers are real and can't simply vanish with the dawn. Every reader of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings has had to make this mental bridge. Some still find the gap too far. Some go to extraordinary lengths to justify it. Most of us simply choose to ignore the seams.
The Harry Potter series was not written in the same fashion. J.K. Rowling states that she always intended it as a 7 book series, one for each of the years of school. But again, the Hogwarts of Philosopher's/Sorcerer's Stone and Chamber of Secrets is a very different world to that of the later novels. Students of Hogwarts sing the school anthem at the top of their voices to whatever tune they prefer, "Hoggy, Hoggy, Hogwarts" indeed. Harry has a magic cloak, but its just "really rare/expensive" and gets confiscated like a spud gun, not a unique item of all powerful wizardry. Most of the drama is around playing Quidditch and winning the House Cup rather than fighting evil incarnate. In this sense, the first two novels are more like Enid Blyton novels, simply kids outsmarting the adults and having a jolly good time, like a Famous Five for the new generation. With Prisoner of Azkaban and Goblet of Fire we move into a more serious phase, much as Fellowship sort of bridges the gap between The Hobbit and LotR "proper". Now we have death and torture, and the politics of Evil. By the end of the series we're in a very different world. "You know who" isn't just a childish inability by adults to speak their fears aloud, one that the plucky kids ignore, its a real fear caused by a summoning curse that attracts Deatheaters when Voldemort's name is mentioned. The Invisibility Cloak is one of the Deathly Hallows, and part of a triumvirate of items that will grant immortality to Voldemort. Dumbledore is not just a kindly old man, he has raised Harry like a lamb for slaughter. Its a much darker world.
Aside from the superficial similarities, probably the most obvious comparison is the Invisibility Cloak. Like Bilbo's ring, its an innocent item, one of many. Rare, yes, but nothing really special. However, in Deathly Hallows it becomes a unique item of great power, that the dark lord must possess if he is to live forever. As in LotR we have to wonder what the hell Gandalf/Dumbledore were playing at. We, the readers, knew nothing of this, but Gandalf and Dumbledore both knew that their charges had in their possession items of immense power, yet allowed them to treat them as playthings. Again, we must willingly suspend disbelief to accept the storyline proposed.
So how did the Harry Potter movies get away with this? In essence, they made the first couple of movies just a little bit more serious, to match the tone of the later movies more closely. Also, they simply didn't mention anything that they might have to explain away later. PJ and co obviously have the more difficult task. They need to move from the darker world back to the simpler, more light-hearted one. Because for The Hobbit, PJ can't simply pretend its the first movie. We've seen Middle Earth. We know the rules. We've seen Trolls in daylight. The Ring is all powerful and dangerous. Will PJ simply show the gap and let the audience ignore the seams? In some ways that's what happened in Harry Potter. No attempt was made to imbue the Invisibility Cloak with portentous symbolism. It remained a kids plaything until suddenly, it wasn't. Can PJ do that with the Ring?
I think its safe to say that, as with the first two Harry Potter movies, the really childish aspects will be excised. The talking purse will go the way of the Hogwarts Anthem. Where elements can be altered and retained, they will. Examples here would be the Trolls, the talking animals etc. These I could see being handled in a more realistic fashion, rather than a comical one. Use of telepathy/subtitles will show Bard understanding the thrush, and Balin understanding Roac, rather than actual spoken English in the case of Roac. However, its impossible to completely ignore the Ring. If the Ring had been introduced in the Hobbit movies first as it should have been, it could have been treated like the Invisibility cloak, and let its significance become clear over time. But we've seen the Wraith world. Putting on the Ring is a scary transportation to a world of dead kings and giant eyes of flame. Yes, I know Bilbo seemed to use it that first time in Fellowship with no worry, but for the Cinema goer this needs to be explained. Perhaps PJ and Co will start with a subtle effect that grows more pronounced as the movies progress, tying the wraith world effect of the Ring to the rise of Dol Guldor in some fashion. However, he still needs to make it innocuous enough that Gandalf does not seem foolish in leaving Bilbo to play with "One of the Great Rings, for clearly it was" for 60 years. Its a thorny problem, and I think, the most difficult one they will have to face.
Anyway, I've meandered a bit from topic to topic, but I hope there's enough here to merit discussion!


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Longtime Stevens Supporter to Receive Alumni Award
When Bob Thoelen graduated from Stevens in 1974 and landed his dream job with the Hamilton Standard division of United Technologies Corporation (UTC) in Connecticut, he never expected to return to his alma mater in a recruiting capacity. But Thoelen has done just that, faithfully returning to campus to help fit Stevens students and alumni with aerospace careers for more than 35 years.
Since the fall of 1995, Thoelen has been the recruiting lead for his employer, now called UTC Aerospace Systems (UTAS), when he returns to campus for recruiting events. Thoelen meets with dozens of students to see if a match can be made to UTAS. That first year when he assumed the lead role, two alumni from the Class of 1996 joined UTAS soon after their graduation; in 2002, UTAS recruited 12, their largest number. Two members of the Class of 2014 will be arriving at UTC soon. This brings the tally to 68 Stevens alumni that have joined UTC since 1996, and about 60 percent are still there. He admits the recruiting duty was one of those "outside of the field'' moments that happens to many people.
"I never thought this was something I would be doing,'' said the recently-retired project manager for UTAS' Space Systems business unit. "This aside to my engineering career has been equally fulfilling to me as I get to connect to the younger generation of engineers and I help students come UTC's way. This is my way of giving back to the company and to Stevens.''
Because of his dedication and service to Stevens, Thoelen has been selected to receive the Stevens Alumni Award to be presented at the Alumni Dinner Dance on Saturday, May 31.
Thoelen's career has spanned 40 years at UTAS, the only employer he has known. And it's not the exact career he originally set out to have.
This "kid'' from the Midwood section of Brooklyn, N.Y., dreamed of being an astronaut. Growing up in the 1960s, he listened intently as President Kennedy spoke about one day putting a man on the moon and the words ignited his own passion for space exploration. "I knew I had to be a part of it,'' he said. But, that path was not meant to be. He pointed to his eyeglasses and added that "these things put an end to that dream.'' But Thoelen discovered that being an astronaut was not the only career path and there was a way to be a part of that world, the world that President Kennedy aspired to, for someone with less-than-perfect vision. "I thought if I couldn't be an astronaut, well, I could be involved in the industry that supported the space effort,'' he said.
He was all set to go to Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, but an aunt in Weehawken, N.J. strongly encouraged him to look at Stevens. "This was pre-internet days; I had never even heard of Stevens,'' he confessed. And he commuted from his Brooklyn home all four years, taking two subway trains to Manhattan each day and then walking through the Twin Towers being erected in the early 1970s to catch the PATH train to Hoboken.
He started with then-Hamilton Standard (now UTAS), helping to develop, manufacture, and provide field support for the Space Shuttle's Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS) for nearly a decade. He later supported activities associated with the ECLSS for the International Space Station (ISS) and also served as the Space Systems Chief of Project Engineering for nearly six years. But over half his career was dedicated to supporting activities associated with the Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU), which is an astronaut's spacesuit and life support system. For the past decade, he has been the EMU Anomaly Resolution Manager, or, as he puts it, the one responsible if anything goes wrong.
"My career was all I hoped for and more,'' he said. His team worked on design, development, and life extension activities for the primary life support system (PLSS) of the EMU, making it robust, interchangeable and reusable. Small refinements made to the PLSS and the spacesuit softgoods by the early 1990s made it NASA's EMU of choice for building the International Space Station. "I enjoyed my job and it provided a lot of learning experiences for me. I got to learn the ins and outs from design concept all the way to fruition. I got to work on board some of the Shuttle vehicles and watched every launch. My ultimate customers were the astronauts and I got to rub shoulders with many of them throughout the years. The biggest compliment I received is when one of them would tell my colleagues and me that the spacesuit was like an ordinary suit – lightweight, comfortable and something you can forget about once it's on - it does what it's supposed to do. ''
And retirement? Thoelen isn't even sure what that word means. "I have four of my five children and seven of my eight grandchildren nearby, so I can keep busy very easily,'' he said with a smile. He's nicknamed 2014 "The Year of the House'' and plans to tackle some long-delayed home improvement projects. After that, travel is on the agenda.
It looks like he's not done exploring.


text:
I'm supposed to create the game rushhour with the program IntelliJ, but i'm totally stuck with it.
I'm very unskilled in programming since this is my first year.
There should be 4 difficulty levels: beginner, intermediate, advanced and expert.
I need to use an enum for the difficulty levels and also an enum for the driving direction for the cars.
For the board i should use an 2-dimensional array and showing the board should be done with the help of a toString method.
Also, the board should be read from an extern txt file. There should be an extern txt file for every board (I'm not sure i'm using the right word for it, but with board i mean the cart where u can see how the vehicles are presented).
I need to save the score in an txt file names score.txt.
The score is based on the amount of moves you needed to do to complete the board/cat.
In the score.txt file is for each board/card the best score saved together with the name of the player.
This is how it should goe:
- ask the user the disired level and cartnumber.
- show the gameboard.
- ask which care should be moved and in which direction.
- Check the input and when there is a problem tell the user what problem there is.
- move the car and show the changed playboard.
- ... keep doing this until the red car could leave the board.
- show the end score
I'm really sorry for my bad english and if anyone could help me i would be very happy and grateful.


text:
Allende, Isabel
Allende, Isabel, 1942–, Chilean novelist. Since the 1973 coup that deposed her cousin, President Salvador Allende Gossens , Isabel Allende, who is among the most notable contemporary Chilean writers, has lived abroad, for many years in California. Her fiction is distinguished by its fusion of traditional realism with both the fantastic and with political (including feminist) concerns. Her first and best-known novel, The House of Spirits (1982, tr. 1985), which reflects the influence of Gabriel García Márquez and the technique of magic realism (her work has been called
magical feminismby some critics), tells the story of a Chilean family over three generations. Allende's fiction also includes Of Love and Shadows (1984, tr. 1987); Eva Luna (1987, tr. 1988); The Infinite Plan (1991, tr. 1993), her first work set in the United States; Daughter of Fortune (1998, tr. 1999); Portrait in Sepia (2001); Inés of My Soul (2006), the fictionalized life of a 16th-century conquistadora; and Island beneath the Sea (2010), a tale of the 18th-century Haitian slave revolution.
See her memoirs, Paula (1994, tr. 1995), Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses (1997, tr. 1998), and My Invented Country (2003); J. Rodden, ed., Conversations with Isabel Allende (1999, repr. 2004); studies by W. Zinsser (1989), P. Hart (1989), S. R. Rojas and E. Aguirre, ed. (1991), R. G. Feal and Y. E. Miller, ed. (2002), L. G. Levine (2002), H. Bloom, ed. (2003), and K. C. Cox (2003).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: Latin American Literature: Biographies


text:
Meisterstück Solitaire Blue Hour Midsize Ballpoint Pen
Montblanc Meisterstück Blue Hour collection is inspired by the magical hour between daylight and night - the Blue Hour – when the city lights sparkle across the skyline as the sun sets. The luxury ballpoint features a cap and barrel with engraved hexagon pattern covered by translucent deep blue lacquer. The cap is crowned by the iconic white Montblanc emblem inlaid and three rings embossed with the Montblanc brand name.
- Clip
- Platinum-coated clip with individual serial number
- Barrel
- Engraved hexagon pattern, coated with blue lacquer
- Cap
- Engraved hexagon pattern, coated with blue lacquer, inlaid with Montblanc emblem
- Type
- Ballpoint Pen
- Montblanc Ink
- Lucky Orange, Mystery Black, Mystery Black, Mystery Black, Pacific Blue, Pacific Blue, Pacific Blue, Nightfire Red, Fortune Green, Amethyst Purple, Barbados Blue, Turquoise, Dark saffron, Psychedelic purple, Emerald Green, Orange, Grey, Blue, Red, Pink, Brown, Petrol Blue, Grey, Yellow, Irish Green, Royal blue, Royal blue, Royal blue, Modena Red, Cool Grey, Manganese Orange, Amethyst Purple
Writing System
- Weight (G)
- 44.15
- Dimensions
- 144.7 x 14.1 mm
Writing instruments from Montblanc stand out through their unmistakable elegance and exquisite workmanship. They accompany their owner for life. Over the course of its history, the characteristic Montblanc pen has become a timeless classic. The unmistakable Montblanc emblem decorates the cap of each writing instrument.
Delivery & Return
Montblanc customers benefit from free express shipping on all international orders. Our parcels are shipped via DHL.
We aim to dispatch all orders within 24 hours. Estimated delivery times are to be used as a guide only and commence from the date of dispatch. Montblanc is not responsible for any delays caused by destination customs clearance processes. We work closely with our shipping partner to minimize the potential impact of custom delays on our international customers.
Shipping timeframe
2-3 days for orders from the European Union + Norway
3-4 days for orders from Brunei, Indonesia, Macao, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand, United Arab Emirates
4 days for orders from New Zealand
3-5 days for orders from Russia
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Ron Paul is the only Republican presidential candidate not attending the Conservative Political Action Conference this weekend.
While he was asked to speak, he turned down the invitation due to "the travel constraints of his presidential campaign," according to a press release from the American Conservative Union.
Congressman Paul's press secretary, Gary Howard, confirmed that they won't be attending, stating, "We have too much campaigning to do across the country."
His son, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, will be speaking early Thursday evening, and participating in a book signing after.
"While we will miss Congressman Ron Paul, a perennial favorite among our attendees, we are honored to host Sen. Rand Paul, a leader of the next generation of committed constitutional conservatives, at CPAC 2012," said ACU Chairman Al Cardenas in the press release.
The Texas congressman won CPAC's presidential straw polls in 2011 and 2010. And while he was won numerous straw polls over the past few months, he still has not won a statewide primary or caucuses in the 2012 GOP presidential contest.


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2345 Bobcat Village Center Road
North Port, FL
Sarasota Memorial has created its free-standing North Port ER in the footprint of the hospital's main Emergency Care Center in Sarasota. Like the main hospital ER, our North Port ER is equipped with the most advanced medical equipment and staffed by the most qualified emergency medicine professionals in the region.
- Staffed 24/7 by Sarasota Memorial's Board-Certified Emergency Medicine Physicians
- 21 State-of-the-Art Treatment Rooms
- Specialized Treatment Rooms for Trauma, Gynecologic and Psychiatric Care
- Dedicated Ambulance: for transporting patients (who need to be admitted to a hospital) from the ER to Sarasota Memorial or the hospital of their choice.
- On-Site Pharmacy Services
- Family waiting area
- Electronic Medical Records for fast, accurate diagnosis
- Access to Sarasota Memorial's Unrivaled Network of Health Care Services
Designated Stroke Center
If you live in North Port or surrounding communities, treat stroke like the emergency it is and call 911 immediately. Based on your condition, emergency rescue workers will take you to the nearest hospital equipped to treat you.
For many, that will be Sarasota Memorial's freestanding ER off Toledo Blade Blvd. On Nov. 1, 2011, the North Port ER was officially recognized by the Joint Commission for offering the same caliber of care and protocols as Sarasota Memorial's main campus ER – the only state-designated Comprehensive Stroke Center between Tampa/St. Petersburg and Naples. As such, Sarasota Memorial's North Port ER offers stroke patients the most advanced for even the most complex strokes. Learn more >>
Comprehensive Outpatient Services at our North Port facility
- 24/7 Laboratory – most lab work completed on-site.
- 24/7 Radiology – most advanced MRI, CT, X-ray, ultrasound, bone density, and digital mammography technology. Only SMH board-certified radiologists interpret your results.
- Physical Therapy
- Pulmonary Rehabilitation
- Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation
- Home Health – professional home care services
You must have a physician order for outpatient services. Call 257-2800 for appointments (Walk-ins are welcome for all services.)
Sarasota Memorial's First Physicians Group
Backed by the strength and integrity of Sarasota Memorial Health Care System, First Physicians Group offers primary and specialty medical care in several locations. In North Port, our Internal Medicine and Pediatrics board-certified physicians provide continuing comprehensive health care for individuals and families, from pediatrics through geriatrics. For information or to schedule an appointment, please call (941) 257-2930
Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation
The Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation Program at Sarasota Memorial Hospital is designed to improve the health and quality of life of people living with heart, lung and vascular disease. The program helps patients manage their chronic diseases to lead active, productive lives. Whether you've had a heart attack, heart transplant, other cardiac event, and/or have asthma, emphysema, or another form of pulmonary disease, our team of cardiovascular and pulmonary specialists will review your personal and medical history and customize a program to meet your individual needs and personal health goals.
Both of our programs are certified by the American Association of Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Rehabilitation, a National Accrediting Organization.
Both programs consist of two or three 1-hour sessions per week. The length of the program can be anywhere from 1 to 4 months. The length of the program and benefit coverage is determined by your insurance. Our highly-skilled staff can help you with any of your insurance questions.
For more information call (941) 257-2850.
Parkinson's Rehabilitation
Sarasota Memorial has a special division of outpatient rehabilitation devoted to the treatment and management of Parkinson's disease and other movement disorders. Our comprehensive rehabilitation program includes Lee Silverman Voice Treatment (LSVT) therapy, nationally recognized for its benefits in the improvement of speech and mobility functions in patients with Parkinson's. We have a team of interdisciplinary, nationally certified LSVT therapists dedicated to offering the best to our patients.
We look forward to helping you better manage your Parkinson's disease through our excellent rehabilitation programs offered at 3 convenient locations: Sarasota Memorial Institute for Advanced Medicine, Sarasota Memorial Health Care Center at Heritage Harbour, and Sarasota Memorial HealthCare Center at North Port Medical Plaza Call us today (941) 257-2800 to learn more or to schedule your first appointment.
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Check Out Our Map of 50 States, 50 Beers We Love
We've been drinking a lot of beer. For work. (You too? It's tough, right?) Starting early last fall, the Drinks team started really buckling down, seeking out beer from all around the country, tasting hundreds of bottles and cans, old favorites and new releases, awesome saisons and Imperial stouts, pale ales and porters. The result: this map, sharing fifty of our favorites from the fifty states.
If you were to go on a dream road trip, stopping for a pint at the end of the day and collecting beer souvenirs and awesome bottles along the way, where would you go? What's your top beer in Alaska? California? Massachusetts? What's your favorite brew in Florida? We want to hear from you! Please share your picks in the comments below.
Check out the map »
All products linked here have been independently selected by our editors. We may earn a commission on purchases, as described in our affiliate policy.


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Seems to be that time again. That time when my music is getting a bit stale and so I figured it's time to bust out some new jams! Per usual I warn you of the you tube videos I've linked too or the lyrics of the songs. I just think they are upbeat and great running jams, but if you hear an f-bomb or see some booty shakin' in the videos, I'm not to blame. Here are my some of my new faves.
I Made It by Kevin Rudolf featuring Lil' Wayne, Birdman and Jay Sean aka the Cash Money Heroes
Rude Boy by Rhianna
Bulletproof by La Roux
According To You by Orianthi
All the Above by Mario and T-Pain (This is a fave! I love this song!)
Eenie Meenie by Justin Bieber featuring Sean Kingston (Obviously I love Bieber)
Hip To My Heart by The Band Perry
Young Forever by Jay-Z (love this one too)
Lemonade by Gucci Mane (I have a weird obsession with Gucci, even if he's in jail)
Smile by Uncle Kracker (<3)
Solo by LYAZ
Still by Tim McGraw (LOVE this song, great one by Tim)
OMG by Usher featuring Will.I.Am (this is such a great running beat)
Billionaire by Travis McCoy featuring Bruno Mars (I warm up to this one sometimes)
Just Breathe by Pearl Jam (for when I'm feeling a little emo and want to cry and run. ha ha)
Break Your Heart by Taio Cruz (another great beat to run to)
Fed Up by DJ Khaled featuring Usher, Rick Ross, Young Jeezy and Drake
I've posted other music posts under the links at the top of the page, you can check out the other posts under Reviews and Music. So pump up the jams and get out there! If these don't get you moving, I really don't know what will. I have been having a good week of working out and resting my legs from running so much. I am just starting to feel rested and it's a wonderful feeling for once.
It's finally April and though it's not my favorite month, I'm thankful for the people surrounding me, those who care about me and love me unconditionally and those who encourage me. Life is all about learning to love and learning to never forget. Memories are made daily, hold onto those memories for you'll never know when you'll need a smile.
PS If you haven't entered the iFitness belt giveaway, I'm picking a winner on Wednesday!


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Shoulder girdle sports traumatology mainly affects young (or young-at-heart), active patients and requires sophisticated diagnostics and innovative treatments, as both sporting and professional demands increase.
The Clinic and Department for Orthopaedics and Sports Orthopaedics has extensive experience in treating musculoskeletal disorders and specialises in a wide range of treatment. The clinic's new Medical Director, Professor Rüdiger von Eisenhart-Rothe, aims to continue expanding the current areas of expertise.
The HELIOS ENDO Hospital in Hamburg is Europe's largest specialist centre for bone, joint and spinal surgery. Every year the HELIOS ENDO medical staff help restore mobility to more than 6,700 people. All these patients, many of whom come from abroad, are happy to put their trust in the hospital's team of highly skilled doctors and nurses. Senior consultant Professor Thorsten Gehrke is a specialist in single-stage prosthesis replacements, a form of treatment recommended for cases of artifi cial joint infection.
Patients who need a hand or shoulder operation, have injured their spine or require surgery on their foot or knee will find specialists for every limb and spinal disorder – many of whom are internationally recognised experts – in the Centre for Musculoskeletal Surgery at the Vivantes Humboldt Hospital, Berlin. Doctors even use grafting techniques to rebuild nerves damaged in complicated injuries.
The Department of Special Orthopaedic Surgery and Traumatology at the Vivantes Auguste-Viktoria Hospital, Centre for Endoprosthetics, is a nationally and internationally renowned department for the replacement of artificial joints, in particular for the hip and knee.
Professor Hans-Christoph Pape is head of the Department of Orthopaedic Trauma and Reconstructive Surgery at Aachen University Hospital. He and his team of highly skilled, widely acclaimed specialists offer traumatology and reconstructive surgery at a leading university hospital.
The Charité University Medical Centre in Berlin, with its long-established tradition, has experience in diagnostics and therapy built up over a great many years. In the medical fields of trauma surgery and orthopaedics, many hospitals in Germany offer highly specialised treatment methods at a leading international level. The aim is to offer top-flight medical care in tandem with high-quality service for patients of all ages, regardless of their cultural background and whether they come from Germany or abroad.
endogap Joint Replacement Institute – the acclaimed specialist endoprosthetics clinic at Garmisch-Partenkirchen Hospital – implants more than 2,300 artificial hip and knee joints each year. The institute is one of the top five endoprosthetics clinics in Germany and the leader in this field in Bavaria.
두 가지 유용한 조합(브라우저 확대/축소):
다음 아이콘을 클릭하여 브라우저 공급자에서 기타 도움말을 받으십시오:


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As another school year begins, the Baylor Libraries are suggesting that students take advantage of a research paper planning tool that has proven to not only help keep projects on course, but also improve the quality of research.
The Research Paper Planner creates a timeline and breaks an assignment into 13 simple steps, from beginning to end. A few of the steps include understanding the assignment, designing a research strategy, finding sources, creating an outline and finalizing the paper.
This tool was created by adapting the University of Minnesota's Assignment Calculator to fit Baylor's academic community. Librarians divided the Research Paper Planner into two parts - the timeline and a research guide with suggestions and tools to successfully complete each step. Baylor's version added a 13th step to distinguish between the discovery of a research question and the development of a thesis statement.
"Although we introduced the Research Paper Planner quietly in the spring of 2012, the response was tremendous," Associate Librarian of Reference & Instruction Eileen Bentsen said. "Statistics for the guide indicate that from January through June of 2012 the guide was used over 2,400 times." Since that time its growth has continued.
The Research Paper Planner is likely more effective than a timeline students may create themselves because it is based on effective writing processes and time management research. In addition, students can set email reminders to avoid forgetting milestones related to the assignment.
A study found that students using a variation of this tool had essay grades six percent higher than those who didn't use the tool.
"We've heard back from Writing Center tutors and ENG 1304 Teaching Assistants that they have found it very helpful in getting students on the right track for their papers," Bentsen said.
Bentsen hopes the Research Paper Planner helps students think outside of the mindset that research papers can be created quickly or sources simply paraphrased, as this can lead to poor quality work. She is also hopeful the tool will help students see each part of the research process as a manageable step, instead of becoming overwhelmed by writing assignments.
By beginning assignments sooner, students have time to identify a specific topic and narrow down ideas, gather and present accurate resources, discuss the assignment with a professor, revise and edit drafts, avoid all-nighters, and feel more confident about the research and writing process.
"We hope it will be widely adopted and recommended by faculty and tutors so that using the Research Paper Planner will become second nature to Baylor students," Bentsen said. "The result will be a better paper with less stress."
To try out the Research Paper Planner, or for more information, visit: baylor.edu/lib/planner.


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The Lindenwood University School of Communications will host a professional media workshop from 6-8:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 17, in the university Cultural Center. Emmy Award-winning director and actor Bobby Miller and St. Louis-based casting director Joni Tackette will discuss the secret language actors share on-set, how to direct a scene, and more.
Miller has worked for more than 30 years as an actor, director, writer, and producer of films, television, radio, and theatre projects. He is a four-time Emmy Award winner and a 2008 Kevin Kline Award recipient. He is currently nominated for two 2010 Kevin Kline Awards in the categories of best director and best sound designer for his work on the theatrical production Brooklyn Boy.
Tackette is 1998 graduate of Lindenwood University who has achieved much success during her career as a casting director. She has worked on the HBO miniseries John Adams, as well as films such as Hanna Montana: The Movie, The Replacements, Meet Bill, Mr. 3000, and Glory Road. Most recently, she worked as the St. Louis location casting director for the critically acclaimed feature film Up in the Air.
The Lindenwood University Cultural Center is located at 400 N. Kingshighway, St. Charles, Missouri, 63301. The professional media workshop is free and open to the public.
For more information, please contact Lindenwood University Associate Professor of Communications and LUTV General Manager Peter Carlos at 636-949-4513 or at firstname.lastname@example.com.


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Passbook Feature in iOS6 Shows Future of Mobile Commerce
The event is finally over. Devotees and critics both had their comments on the new product announcements by Apple. There are lot of really interesting stuff announced by Apple. Siri, 3D maps, retina-display enabled MacBook Pro stands out from the lot. But they were mostly on the expected lines. You sort of saw them coming.
Passbook feature is different. It's a new app and with that Apple has planted a very powerful seed here.
From Apple website:
Your boarding passes, movie tickets, retail coupons, loyalty cards, and more are now all in one place. With Passbook, you can scan your iPhone or iPod touch to check in for a flight, get into a movie, and redeem a coupon. You can also see when your coupons expire, where your concert seats are, and the balance left on that all-important coffee bar card. Wake your iPhone or iPod touch, and passes appear on your Lock screen at the appropriate time and place — like when you reach the airport or walk into the store to redeem your gift card or coupon. And if your gate changes after you've checked in for your flight, Passbook will even alert you to make sure you're not relaxing in the wrong terminal.
Read between the lines – Passbook covers mobile commerce, service fulfillment AND customer support. And it's 'Time and Location Based' so that completes SoLoMo stack for you.
It will come with Apple's famous integrated experience. I hope it doesn't go down as Ping where Apple failed to generate sufficient jump start environment.
Something to look forward to.


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Mark leads the MySQL engineering team at Facebook. The team makes MySQL better for a large and critical deployment. The team writes about their work at MySQLatFacebook and publishes patches for MySQL at launchpad.
He previously lead the MySQL engineering team at Google. The team published a popular patch for MySQL that included semi-sync replication, user and table monitoring via SHOW TABLE_STATISTICS and USER_STATISTICS, SMP and IO performance patches for InnoDB, global transaction IDs for replication, row-change logging, transactional replication and many bug fixes.
Prior to Google Mark worked at Identity Engines, Oracle and Informix on database internals. Mark holds an M.S. degree in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He occasionally writes about MySQL at mysqlha.blogspot.com.
For information on exhibition and sponsorship opportunities at the conference, contact Yvonne Romaine at firstname.lastname@example.com
For media partnerships, contact mediapartners@ oreilly.com
For media-related inquiries, contact Maureen Jennings at firstname.lastname@example.com
To stay abreast of conference news and to receive email notification when registration opens, please sign up for the O'Reilly MySQL Conference Bulletin (login required).
View a complete list of O'Reilly MySQL Conference Contacts


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Watch Kharche video song online in high quality streaming at MX Player. Kharche is a Punjabi Pop song of the Kharche album.


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Study Highlights:
- Children with specific types of heart birth defects who are under 3 or who've had cardiac surgery within the last six months may face an elevated risk of heart infection.
- Parents of children with heart birth defects should discuss with their physicians how to prevent these potentially serious infections.
DALLAS — Children with certain heart birth defects may have an increased risk for bacterial infection of their heart's lining and valves, according to new research in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.
The risk for infection may also be increased in children with congenital heart defects who are under 3 or who've had cardiac surgery within the last six months.
Using a large Canadian database, researchers looked at the occurrence of infective endocarditis between 1988 and 2010 in 47,518 children with heart defects. On average the risk of infection by age 18 was 6.1 cases per 1,000 children with congenital heart defects and varied substantially by the type of defect. Compared to patients with atrial septal defect, a heart defect that usually has a low risk for infective endocarditis, the researchers found the risk was substantially higher in:
- those with heart defects associated with bluish skin (cyanosis) due to lack of oxygen in the blood;
- those with endocardial cushion defects;
- those with left-sided lesions.
"Consistent with the current American Heart Association guidelines, we found that children with lesions associated with cyanosis at birth and those who had undergone cardiac surgery in the previous six months were at significantly elevated risk of developing infective endocarditis. However, two patient groups — children with endocardial cushion defects and those with left-sided lesions — were also found to be at risk," said Ariane Marelli, M.D., M.P.H., study senior author and Professor of medicine at McGill University in Montreal and director of the McGill Adult Unit for Congenital Heart Disease.
While the new study did not assess the effectiveness of preventive treatment in stopping these serious bacterial infections, it does provide important information that may help policymakers determine who could benefit from preventive treatment, researchers said.
"Clinicians treating children with heart defects can help educate parents regarding infective endocarditis and its prevention, particularly in the highest risk groups identified in this study," said Dinela Rushani, co-author of the study from the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health at McGill University.
The researchers are looking at the growing population of adults with heart defects to determine which defects are associated with the highest rates of infection as well as serious complications or death when an infection occurs.
The research was funded by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research and the Canada Research Chairs program.
Co-authors are Dinela Rushani, M.Sc.; Jay S. Kaufman, Ph.D.; Raluca Ionescu-Ittu, Ph.D.; Andrew S. Mackie, M.D., S.M.; Louise Pilote, M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D.; and Judith Therrien, M.D.Author disclosures are on the manuscript.
Statements and conclusions of study authors published in American Heart Association scientific journals are solely those of the study authors and do not necessarily reflect the association's policy or position. The association makes no representation or guarantee as to their accuracy or reliability. The association receives funding primarily from individuals; foundations and corporations (including pharmaceutical, device manufacturers and other companies) also make donations and fund specific association programs and events. The association has strict policies to prevent these relationships from influencing the science content. Revenues from pharmaceutical and device corporations are available at www.heart.org/corporatefunding.


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In this exclusive excerpt from his forthcoming book, culture critic David Sirota explains how everything in our world - from the culture wars to political strife - can be traced back to the 1980s.
Click the pages to read Sirota's introduction to the book.
You can pre-order Sirota's book, which comes out from Random House in March 2011, right here!