Original record of deposited skins of hedgehogs (Erinaceidae) at red fox den

From 2015 to 2018, a total of 60 dens of red fox Vulpes vulpes have been visited in three sites of southern Tunisia. In this arid habitat, we recorded deposited skins of hedgehogs in front of 34 dens, an uncommon behaviour to our knowledge. These sightings suggest that red fox can be the main predator of hedgehogs in arid zones of North Africa.

Digital Archives Relying on Blockchain: Overcoming the Limitations of Data Immutability

Archives, both analogue and digital, are primarily concerned with preserving records as originals. Because of this, immutable data as used in a blockchain data structure seem a logical choice when designing such systems. At the same time, archives maintain records which may need to change over the long term. It is a requirement of archival preservation to be able to update records’ metadata in order not only to guarantee authenticity after digital preservation actions but also to ensure that relationships to other records, which might be created after an original record has entered the archive (and has been registered in a blockchain), can be maintained. The need to maintain an archival bond, which represents a network of relationships between aggregation of records, i.e., the relationship connecting previous and subsequent records belonging to the same activity, is a prime example of this requirement. This paper explores realisation of the archival bond in the context of blockchain-based archival system by proposing a supporting database system which enables metadata to be changed as required but also significantly simplifies searching compared to searching on-chain information, while keeping the immutability characteristic of blockchain.

Practical Federated Gradient Boosting Decision Trees

Gradient Boosting Decision Trees (GBDTs) have become very successful in recent years, with many awards in machine learning and data mining competitions. There have been several recent studies on how to train GBDTs in the federated learning setting. In this paper, we focus on horizontal federated learning, where data samples with the same features are distributed among multiple parties. However, existing studies are not efficient or effective enough for practical use. They suffer either from the inefficiency due to the usage of costly data transformations such as secure sharing and homomorphic encryption, or from the low model accuracy due to differential privacy designs. In this paper, we study a practical federated environment with relaxed privacy constraints. In this environment, a dishonest party might obtain some information about the other parties' data, but it is still impossible for the dishonest party to derive the actual raw data of other parties. Specifically, each party boosts a number of trees by exploiting similarity information based on locality-sensitive hashing. We prove that our framework is secure without exposing the original record to other parties, while the computation overhead in the training process is kept low. Our experimental studies show that, compared with normal training with the local data of each party, our approach can significantly improve the predictive accuracy, and achieve comparable accuracy to the original GBDT with the data from all parties.

Digital Resources: Online Finding Aid for the Archivo General de Centro América

The Online Finding Aid for the Archivo General de Centro América will provide increased ways for researchers to identify documents of interest in a widely distributed microfilm copy of this primary resource for the history of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Chiapas (Mexico). The original archive, located in Guatemala, houses approximately 147,000 registered document collections from the colonial period, ranging in date from the 16th century to independence from Spain in 1821. The microfilm copy, composed of almost 4,000 reels of microfilm, is organized according to basic keywords designating the original province in colonial Guatemala, a year, and a subject-matter keyword. Also associated in the basic records of the finding aid (which are already available online) are the reference number assigned each document in the original archive, and the specific reel(s) on which it is found. With funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, enhanced records are being created for documents dating between 1700 and 1821 identified as associated with Guatemala, the administrative heart of the colony, for which there are no published indices. Enhanced records add names of people and places not recorded in the original record, opening up the microfilm collection, and through it, the original archive, to broader social history including studies of the roles of women, indigenous people, and African-descendant people.

Secure Storage and Transmission of Healthcare Records

Telemedicine has become a common method for transmission of medical images and patient data across long distances. With the growth of computer networks and the latest advances in digital technologies, large amount of digital data gets exchanged over various types of insecure networks - wired or wireless. Modern Healthcare Management Systems need to change to accommodate these new advances. There is an urgent need to protect the confidentiality of health care records that are stored in common databases and transmitted over public insecure channels. This chapter outlines DNA sequence based cryptography which is easy to implement and is robust against cryptanalytic attack as there is insignificant correlation between the original record and the encrypted image for the secure storage and transmission of health records.

Morphological and molecular description of Rhadinorhynchus laterospinosus Amin, Heckmann & Ha, 2011 (Acanthocephala, Rhadinorhynchidae) from marine fish off the Pacific coast of Vietnam

Rhadinorhynchus laterospinosus Amin, Heckmann & Ha, 2011 (Rhadinorhynchidae) was described from a single female collected from a trigger fish, Balistes sp. (Balistidae) from the northern Pacific coast of Vietnam in Halong Bay, Gulf of Tonkin. More recent collections of fishes in 2016 and 2017 revealed wider host and geographical distributions. We report this Acanthocephala from nine species of fish representing six families (including the original record from Balistes sp.) along the whole Pacific coast of Vietnam. The fish species are Alectis ciliaris (Carangidae), Auxis rochei (Scombridae), Auxis thazard (Scombridae), Leiognathus equulus (Leiognathidae), Lutjanus bitaeniatus (Lutjanidae), Megalaspis cordyla (Carangidae), Nuchequula flavaxilla (Leiognathidae), and Tylosurus sp. (Belonidae). We provide a complete description of males and females of R. laterospinosus, discuss its hook metal microanalysis using EDAX, and its micropores. Specimens of this species characteristically have lateral trunk spines bridging the anterior ring of spines with posterior field of ventral spines and a proboscis with 15–19 longitudinal alternating rows of 21–26 hooks each varying with host species. We demonstrate the effect of host species on the distribution and size of the trunk, proboscis, proboscis hooks, trunk spines, and reproductive structures. The molecular profile of this acanthocephalan, based on 18S rDNA and cox1 genes, groups with other Rhadinorhynchus species and further seems to confirm the paraphyly of the genus, which is discussed.

Work of the International Air Commission of the USSR, the USA, Great Britain in September 1941: Records of the Negotiations

The publication introduces into scientific use and analyses a unique document on the work of the international aviation commission (Moscow, September 1941) that worked at the conference of representatives of the USSR, the USA, and England on the issue of military deliveries to the Soviet Union. The published document has been found when preparing ‘History of creation and development of the defense industry complex of Russia and the USSR. 1900–1963. Documents and materials.’ Presently the fifth volume of the series covering the period of the Great Patriotic War is being prepared. The document published here precedes the publication of that volume. The question of military lend-lease deliveries of planes to the Soviet Union considered by the commission was of great importance to Soviet aviation industry. Evacuation of aircraft manufacturing facilities led to a decrease in production. For a time the aircraft industry continued to work on mobilization stocks and lend-lease deliveries. The aviation commission of the Soviet Union was to secure the necessary quantity of warplanes from the USA and England, which for that end had to curtail their own arms contracts. The published document shows the process of negotiations and its result – how fully the Soviet delegation managed to solve the tasks set before it. In the introduction, the situation in Soviet and American aviation industry at the start of negotiations is analyzed. The published document is stored in the fonds of the Russian State Archive of Economy. It is a typewritten original record of negotiations of even date. It expands source base on lend-lease, shows how the Soviet delegation tried to obtain newest American and English military aircraft equipment, and allows to understand the nuances of interactions of the allies, to analyze their positions and approaches to negotiations.

Evaluation of design flood estimates – a case study for Norway

The aim of this study was to evaluate the predictive fit of probability distributions to annual maximum flood data, and in particular to evaluate (1) which combination of distribution and estimation method gives the best fit and (2) whether the answer to (1) depends on record length. These aims were achieved by assessing the sensitivity to record length of the predictive performance of several probability distributions. A bootstrapping approach was used by resampling (with replacement) record lengths of 30 to 90 years (50 resamples for each record length) from the original record and fitting distributions to these subsamples. Subsequently, the fits were evaluated according to several goodness-of-fit measures and to the variability of the predicted flood quantiles. Our initial hypothesis that shorter records favor two-parameter distributions was not clearly supported. The ordinary moments method was the most stable while providing equivalent goodness-of-fit.

Redescriptions of four Palaeotropical species of the cestode genus Notopentorchis Burt, 1938 (Cyclophyllidea: Paruterinidae)

The genus Notopentorchis includes cestode parasites from swifts (Aves: Apodiformes: Apodidae and Hemiprocnidae). The following species are redescribed: N. micropus, previously known only from its original record from Apus affinis (Apodidae) in India, redescribed on the basis of specimens from the same host species in Gabon (new geographical record); N. vesiculigera, a widespread parasite of Palaearctic swifts, redescribed from A. affinis in Gabon (new host and geographical record); N. javanica and N. bovieni, both redescribed on the basis of their type series from Hemiprocne longipennis (Apodiformes: Hemiprocnidae) from Indonesia. Sphaeruterina caffrapi from Apus caffer from the Republic of South Africa, previously considered a synonym of N. javanica, is validated and transferred to Notopentorchis as N. caffrapi n. comb. Currently, Notopentorchis includes 8 species, all occurring in the Old World. An identification key to the species of Notopentorchis is presented.