Nephroma orvoi (Nephromatoideae, Peltigeraceae) – a new lichen species for Russia

The lichen species Nephroma orvoi is reported as new to Russia from two localities in Murmansk Region. Description and colour illustrations of the material studied are provided. The species was previously known from Norway, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Canada (Alberta and British Columbia), USA (Washington), and Greenland. In Russia, it grows on rock outcrops in open habitat along the shore of a Paz River (Pasvik Nature Reserve) and in the bed of a small unnamed stream (neighborhood of Fedorova Tundra Mt.). The specimens were identified by the morphology (mostly laminal, brown, corticate soredia; faveolate, wrinkle-ridged lobes; lower side with short pseudotomentum in middle and inner part) and the identification was confirmed by lichen substances (a series of specific triterpenoids).

The report on secret activity in the territory of the Trans-Baikal Region in the early XX century

The main mission of the Imperial government in the early XX century consisted in ensuring foreign policy security of the eastern trans-border region. The construction of Trans-Siberian Railway, defeat in the Russo-Japanese War, and the beginning of the World War I in 1914 severely affected the geopolitical situation in Trans-Baikal Region. Thus, in the conditions of the outbreak of the World War I, the question of uninterrupted supply of weapons, food, etc. along the railway line from the east to the center of the country was critical. All this turned Trans-Baikal Region into a special zone for the foreign intelligence agents. Leaning on the materials of the State Archive of Irkutsk Region, description is given to the system of obtaining information from various sources on the attempts of creating secret network, alleged military espionage, and sabotage attempts in the territory of Trans-Baikal Railway. The article also reveals the interaction of command levels in the region and their activity in the event of manifestation of the persuasive threat to foreign policy security. No actual sabotage attempts are detected according to the archival sources. This may be due to absence of such data in the civil archive. However, the archive stores an array of information on the alleged attempts of creating secrent network in the territory of Trans-Baikal Region.

Review of free-living predatory cheyletid mites (Acari: Cheyletidae) of Western Siberia, Russia

Investigation of diversity of free-living predatory mites of the family Cheyletidae in Western Siberia, Russia, undertaken for the first time, has recorded 10 species, of which eight species are new for this region. Description of a new species Eutogenes bicornis sp. nov. includes all active stages; a male of Cheletomimus (Hemicheyletia) recki (Volgin, 1966) comb. nov. is redescribed and its remanining active stages are described for the first time; Cheyletus rashtiensis Salarzehi et al. 2018 is recorded from Russia for the first time, and its female is redescribed, and tritonymph is described for the first time; Chelacheles apanaskevichi Bochkov and Abramov, 2016, Cheletacarus raptor Volgin, 1961, Paracheyletia pyriformis (Banks, 1904), Cunliffella whartoni (Baker, 1949), and Bothrocheyla pavlovskyi (Volgin, 1964) are recorded from Western Siberia for the first time. Nomenclature of some setal structures of legs is discussed.

TAXONOMIC CONTRIBUTION TO THE KNOWLEDGE OF GALUMNA (ACARI, ORIBATIDA, GALUMNIDAE) OF THE NEOTROPICAL REGION: DESCRIPTION OF A NEW SPECIES FROM BOLIVIA AND A KEY TO KNOWN SPECIES OF THE GENUS

A new species of Galumna (Oribatida, Galumnidae) is described from Bolivian rainforest leaf litter. Galumna parareticulata sp. n. differs from Galumna reticulata Hammer, 1958 in longer body, pointed rostrum, the presence of a median rostral ridge, longer lamellar seta, and slightly developed head of bothridial seta. The species Galumna lyrica is transferred from the subgenus Galumna to Neogalumna: Galumna (Neogalumna) lyrica (Jacot, 1935) comb. nov. An identification key to the known species/subspecies of the genus from the Neotropical region is presented.

NICE: Superpixel Segmentation Using Non-Iterative Clustering with Efficiency

Superpixels intuitively over-segment an image into small compact regions with homogeneity. Owing to its outstanding performance on region description, superpixels have been widely used in various computer vision tasks as the substitution for pixels. Therefore, efficient algorithms for generating superpixels are still important for advanced visual tasks. In this work, two strategies are presented on conventional simple non-iterative clustering (SNIC) framework, aiming to improve the computational efficiency as well as segmentation performance. Firstly, inter-pixel correlation is introduced to eliminate the redundant inspection of neighboring elements. In addition, it strengthens the color identity in complicated texture regions, thus providing a desirable trade-off between runtime and accuracy. As a result, superpixel centroids are evolved more efficiently and accurately. For further accelerating the framework, a recursive batch processing strategy is proposed to eliminate unnecessary sorting operations. Therefore, a large number of neighboring elements can be assigned directly. Finally, the two strategies result in a novel synergetic non-iterative clustering with efficiency (NICE) method based on SNIC. Experimental results verify that it works 40% faster than conventional framework, while generating comparable superpixels for several quantitative metrics—sometimes even better.

HOMPC: A Local Feature Descriptor Based on the Combination of Magnitude and Phase Congruency Information for Multi-Sensor Remote Sensing Images

Local region description of multi-sensor images remains a challenging task in remote sensing image analysis and applications due to the non-linear radiation variations between images. This paper presents a novel descriptor based on the combination of the magnitude and phase congruency information of local regions to capture the common features of images with non-linear radiation changes. We first propose oriented phase congruency maps (PCMs) and oriented magnitude binary maps (MBMs) using the multi-oriented phase congruency and magnitude information of log-Gabor filters. The two feature vectors are then quickly constructed based on the convolved PCMs and MBMs. Finally, a dense descriptor named the histograms of oriented magnitude and phase congruency (HOMPC) is developed by combining the histograms of oriented phase congruency (HPC) and the histograms of oriented magnitude (HOM) to capture the structure and shape properties of local regions. HOMPC was evaluated with three datasets composed of multi-sensor remote sensing images obtained from unmanned ground vehicle, unmanned aerial vehicle, and satellite platforms. The descriptor performance was evaluated by recall, precision, F1-measure, and area under the precision-recall curve. The experimental results showed the advantages of the HOM and HPC combination and confirmed that HOMPC is far superior to the current state-of-the-art local feature descriptors.

Phlebopus beniensis (Boletinellaceae, Boletales) in the Brazilian Cerrado biome

The Brazilian Cerrado is a highly diverse ecosystem, harboring a great variety of organisms; however, the mycodiversity is still poorly documented. In this study, we record for the first time the bolete Phlebopus beniensis from the Cerrado biome in the state of Goiás, located in Brazil’s Central-West Region. Description, macroscopic images, line drawings and comments, as well as the geographic distribution of the genus for Brazil are presented herein.

TO THE EXPERIENCE OF THE BIBLIOGRAPHICAL RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CATALOG I.D. POPKO

Reviewed research publication dedicated to the reconstruction of the bibliographic catalogue of the personal library of one of the famous in the North Caucasus, historical figures, Lieutenant-General of the Kuban Cossack army which has made a great contribution to the history and culture of the region. Description personal libraries occupies an intermediate position between bibliographic AIDS and reference buildings. Creation of a catalog of the personal library, in most cases, it is the result of joint efforts of bibliographers and specialists from the relevant scientific fields. Descriptions of personal libraries is bibliographic AIDS, which are different from the personal markers. They are very valuable because they give information about the features (owned features) book collections, including such as: autographs, inscriptions, bookplates, traces of reading publications, etc. Also describe the personal libraries provide information as about the content of publications and information about the owner, about how he treated read how to use a particular edition. Give such descriptions and information about the fate of the book, the facts of the biography and creativity. This, in turn, allows professionals to use the catalogues of personal libraries as the primary sources directly, even without going to the books included in the scientific revolution. Of great interest to bibliographers present description and as a source of bibliographic and factual search.