A New Species of Diaphus Associated with Seamounts of the Emperor Chain, North-Western Pacific Ocean (Teleostei: Myctophiformes: Myctophidae)

A new species, Diaphus balanovi, is described based on 35 specimens collected over the Emperor Seamount Chain in the north-western Pacific Ocean. It belongs to the D. fulgens species complex and is most similar to D. kuroshio both morphologically and genetically. Nevertheless, the new species can be distinguished from D. kuroshio by its higher gill-rakers count, large luminous scale at PLO, large Dn, somewhat higher position of SAO3, otolith shape, and larger absolute size. The CO1 mtDNA sequence of D. balanovi differs by 16 substitutions from that of D. kuroshio. Diaphus balanovi may represent a benthopelagic derivate of D. kuroshio endemic to the Emperor Seamounts.

Climate Change Inaction and Meaning

Continuing growth, insofar as it increases human environmental impact, is in conflict with the environment. ‘Green growth’, if it increases the absolute size of the economy, is an oxymoron. Environmental limits are discountenanced, a pretence made possible because they are difficult to specify in advance. The consequent weakness in public discourse, both moral and intellectual, has worsened into contradiction as it has become ever more studiously unadmitted. It is obscured with language that is misleading or self-contradictory, and even issues from institutions that exist (and are relied upon) to respect correctness. At its most conforming it gives rise to overshoot, by which statements meant to sound authoritative are in fact open to ridicule. Such untruthfulness perpetuates climate change inaction, and in a kind of direct action those using such language, contrary to their public or professional duty, could be asked to justify themselves in plain English.

End-to-End Joint Multi-Object Detection and Tracking for Intelligent Transportation Systems

Environment perception is one of the most critical technology of intelligent transportation systems (ITS). Motion interaction between multiple vehicles in ITS makes it important to perform multi-object tracking (MOT). However, most existing MOT algorithms follow the tracking-by-detection framework, which separates detection and tracking into two independent segments and limit the global efficiency. Recently, a few algorithms have combined feature extraction into one network; however, the tracking portion continues to rely on data association, and requires complex post-processing for life cycle management. Those methods do not combine detection and tracking efficiently. This paper presents a novel network to realize joint multiobject detection and tracking in an end-to-end manner for ITS, named as global correlation network (GCNet). Unlike most object detection methods, GCNet introduces a global correlation layer for regression of absolute size and coordinates of bounding boxes, instead of offsetting predictions. The pipeline of detection and tracking in GCNet is conceptually simple, and does not require complicated tracking strategies such as non-maximum suppression and data association. GCNet was evaluated on a multi-vehicle tracking dataset, UA-DETRAC, demonstrating promising performance compared to state-of-the-art detectors and trackers.

Fluxes of 15N, soil nitrogen in sod-podzolic soil in spring wheat crops under inoculation with Rhyzoagrin

In a microfield experiment using a labeled nitrogen 15N fertilizer on sod-podzolic light loamy soil for 11 years during the cultivation of spring wheat and the use of a biological product based on a strain belonging to the genus Agrobakterium radiobakter (strain 204), nitrogen flows in the fertilizer – soil – plant system were studied. The utilization rate of spring wheat labeled with 15N ammonium nitrate averaged 40% of the amount applied. The absolute size of the immobilization in the structure of the labeled nitrogen balance of the mineral fertilizer was 27-30%. Inoculation with Rhyzoagrin does not significantly affect the nitrogen immobilization of the mineral fertilizer. The gaseous losses of labeled nitrogen of the mineral fertilizer were 33% of those applied to the background of the phosphorus and potash fertilizers and decreased with inoculation with Rhyzoagrin to 29%. The use of an integral assessment showed that the agroecosystem functioned in the resistance mode on sod-podzolic light-loamy soil when using mineral nitrogen fertilizer. The dependence of the indicator RI: M, % of the HTC (hydrothermal coefficient) expressed by the equation y = -24, 506x2 + 43,462 x + 15,251 at R2 = 0.7416 is established.

Relative skull size as one of the factors limiting skull shape variation in passerines

Despite a considerable interest of researchers to the issue of variation in skull shapes of birds and factors influencing it, some drivers associated with the design features of an entire bird body, which are important for both successful terrestrial locomotion and flight, are overlooked. One of such factors, in our opinion, is relative skull size (skull length in relation to body mass), which can affect the position of the body's center of gravity. We tested effects of relative skull size, allometry (i.e. absolute skull size), and diet on variation in skull shape. The study was conducted on 50 songbird species with a wide range of body mass (8.3g to 570g) and dietary preferences (granivores, insectivores/granivores, insectivores, omnivores). Skull shape was analyzed using 2D geometric morphometrics. We revealed that similar patterns of skull shape occur among passerines with different body sizes and diets. The relative skull size predicted skull shape to a similar extent and with a similar pattern as the absolute size. In our opinion, the effect of the relative skull size on skull shape variation is likely due to biomechanical constraints related to flight.

The first extinct species of <i>Acritus</i> LeConte, 1853 (Histeridae: Abraeinae) from Eocene Baltic amber: a microscopic beetle inclusion studied with X-ray micro-computed tomography

Acritus sutirca sp. nov. is described and illustrated from Eocene Baltic amber on the basis of one adult male specimen. As the first extinct member of the subfamily Abraeinae (Histeridae) and the smallest known fossil histerid specimen, this material was examined using a combination of light microscopy and X-ray micro-computed tomography (µCT). Internal features of the abdomen are well preserved, allowing us to study sclerotized parts of the aedeagus and illustrate these structures in detail. The current finding expands the range of known Histeridae diversity from the Eocene (48–34 Ma) “amber forests” of Europe. The absolute size limits and the probable average size for Baltic amber coleopteran inclusions are also briefly discussed (urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:A2B17479-8628-47C7-A8D4-3E0789BF088B).

The Financial Burden of Catastrophic Health Expenditure on Households with Chronic Diseases: Financial Ratio Analysis

Background: The financial status of households is vulnerable to chronic disease related to high medical expenses and income loss; The financial strain could be assessed by the five indicators. household surplus indicator, liquid asset/debt ratio, solvency indicator, and liquidity indicator.Purpose: We investigated the association between catastrophic health expenditure (CHE) and financial ratio indicators in households with chronic disease in South Korea. Methodology: To determine the financial strain, thresholds were applied to the financial ratios. We conducted multiple logistic regression to figure out whether CHE is associated with financial strain. Furthermore, we analyzed the effect of CHE on absolute finance size, which is basic financial indicators, by multiple linear regression.Results: When CHE occurred, all of the financial ratio indicators deteriorated. However, it was not due to decreases in the absolute size of wealth, income, but rather the relative balance between finances. Especially, the loss of the liquid assets was the major factor of deterioration. Also, all types of labor-related income deteriorated. Only the private transfer income increased.Conclusion: This study revealed that CHE in households with chronic disease negatively impacts the household's finances. It turned out that the financial coping strategies are only resource-consuming.

EnTrance: Exploration of Entropy Scaling Ball Cover Search in Protein Sequences

Biological sequence alignment using computational power has received increasing attention as technology develops. It is important to predict if a novel DNA sequence is potentially dangerous by determining its taxonomic identity and functional characteristics through sequence identification. This task can be facilitated by the rapidly increasing amounts of biological data in DNA and protein databases thanks to the corresponding increase in computational and storage costs. Unfortunately, the growth in biological databases has caused difficulty in exploiting this information. EnTrance presents an approach that can expedite the analysis of this large database by employing entropy scaling. This allows scaling with the amount of entropy in the database instead of scaling with the absolute size of the database. Since DNA and protein sequences are biologically meaningful, the space of biological sequences demonstrates the structure exploited by entropy scaling. As biological sequence databases grow, taking advantage of this structure can be extremely beneficial for reducing query times. EnTrance, the entropy scaling search algorithm introduced here, accelerates the biological sequence search exemplified by tools such as BLAST. EnTrance does this by utilizing a two step search approach. In this fashion, EnTrance quickly reduces the number of potential matches before more exhaustively searching the remaining sequences. Tests of EnTrance show that this approach can lead to improved query times. However, constructing the required entropy scaling indices beforehand can be challenging. To improve performance, EnTrance investigates several ideas for accelerating index build time that supports entropy scaling searches. In particular, EnTrance makes full use of the concurrency features of Go language greatly reducing the index build time. Our results identify key tradeoffs and demonstrate that there is potential in using these techniques for sequence similarity searches. Finally, EnTrance returns more matches and higher percentage identity matches when compared with existing tools.

EXPRESS: How the size of exogenous attentional cues alters visual performance: from response gain to contrast gain

The normalization model of attention (NMoA) predicts that the attention gain pattern is mediated by changes in the size of the attentional field and stimuli. However, existing studies have not measured gain patterns when the relative sizes of stimuli are changed. To investigate the NMoA, the present study manipulated the attentional field size, namely, the exogenous cue size. Moreover, we assessed whether the relative rather than the absolute size of the attentional field matters, either by holding the target size constant and changing the cue size (experiments 1-3) or by holding the cue size constant and changing the target size (experiment 4), in a spatial cueing paradigm of psychophysical procedures. The results show that the gain modulations changed from response gain to contrast gain when the precue size changed from small to large relative to the target size (experiments 1-3). Moreover, when the target size was once again made larger than the precue size, there was still a change in response gain (experiment 4). These results suggest that the size of exogenous cues plays an important role in adjusting the attentional field and that relative changes rather than absolute changes to exogenous cue size determine gain modulation. These results are consistent with the prediction of the NMoA and provide novel insights into gain modulations of visual selective attention.