University of Haifa

About: University of Haifa is a education organization based out in Haifa, Israel. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Poison control. The organization has 7558 authors who have published 27141 publications receiving 711629 citations. The organization is also known as: Haifa University & Universiṭat Ḥefah.

Interactions Between Mosquito Larvae and Species that Share the Same Trophic Level

Abstract: Ecological theory predicts, and empirical research shows, that species sharing the same trophic level as a target species (hereafter controphic species) can have large direct and indirect effects on the target species by sharing resources and/or by serving as alternative prey to predators. Yet, the roles of controphic species of mosquito larvae in affecting mosquito populations have received little attention. Published empirical evidence, although scarce, suggests that controphic species such as zooplankton and anuran larvae compete with mosquito larvae, can positively affect mosquito larvae by consuming bacteria that are pathogenic to mosquito larvae, reduce predation on mosquito larvae by serving as alternative prey, and ultimately cause increased predation on mosquito larvae by causing a numerical response in the predator. We conclude that more extensive theoretical and empirical studies in elucidating the roles of controphic species will better allow us to predict mosquito population dynamics and allow for better management of mosquitoes.

Compulsive buying behavior

Abstract: Consumer compulsive buying is an important area of inquiry in consumer behavior research. The importance of studying compulsive buying, stems, in part, from its nature as a negative aspect of consumer behavior. Specifically, exploring negative consumption phenomena could provide modified or new perspectives for the study of positive consumption behaviors. Moreover, research on negative facets of consumption is useful because it can potentially contribute to society’s wellbeing, an important criterion for usefulness of any research. This paper builds on earlier papers to propose a model of compulsivity antecedents. Gender, consumers’ tendency to make unplanned purchases, and their tendency to buy products not on shopping lists, serve to predict compulsive tendencies in a sample of Israeli consumers. The findings suggest that these antecedents affect compulsive tendencies.

Inventing a "Mid Level" to Make Ends Meet: Reasoning between the Levels of Complexity

Abstract: There has been a body of emerging research describing students' understanding of complex systems. This research has primarily studied students understanding of complex phenomena in science. However, complex phenomena are also pervasive in everyday life. Children observe and participate in them daily. How do they reason about such ordinary complex phenomena? In this study, we investigate students' reasoning about everyday complex phenomena. We report on interviews and a classroom participatory simulation with ten sixth-grade students about ordinary events that could be construed as emergent, such as social situations in which the social pattern emerges from the participating students' individual actions. We have observed a widespread student-initiated strategy for making sense of complex phenomena. We call this strategy “mid level construction,” the formation of small groups of individuals. Students form these mid-level groups either by aggregating individuals or by subdividing the whole group. We describe...

Shadow Removal Using Intensity Surfaces and Texture Anchor Points

Abstract: Removal of shadows from a single image is a challenging problem. Producing a high-quality shadow-free image which is indistinguishable from a reproduction of a true shadow-free scene is even more difficult. Shadows in images are typically affected by several phenomena in the scene, including physical phenomena such as lighting conditions, type and behavior of shadowed surfaces, occluding objects, etc. Additionally, shadow regions may undergo postacquisition image processing transformations, e.g., contrast enhancement, which may introduce noticeable artifacts in the shadow-free images. We argue that the assumptions introduced in most studies arise from the complexity of the problem of shadow removal from a single image and limit the class of shadow images which can be handled by these methods. The purpose of this paper is twofold: First, it provides a comprehensive survey of the problems and challenges which may occur when removing shadows from a single image. In the second part of the paper, we present our framework for shadow removal, in which we attempt to overcome some of the fundamental problems described in the first part of the paper. Experimental results demonstrating the capabilities of our algorithm are presented.