7,079 research outputs found

    An advanced deep learning models-based plant disease detection: A review of recent research

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    Plants play a crucial role in supplying food globally. Various environmental factors lead to plant diseases which results in significant production losses. However, manual detection of plant diseases is a time-consuming and error-prone process. It can be an unreliable method of identifying and preventing the spread of plant diseases. Adopting advanced technologies such as Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) can help to overcome these challenges by enabling early identification of plant diseases. In this paper, the recent advancements in the use of ML and DL techniques for the identification of plant diseases are explored. The research focuses on publications between 2015 and 2022, and the experiments discussed in this study demonstrate the effectiveness of using these techniques in improving the accuracy and efficiency of plant disease detection. This study also addresses the challenges and limitations associated with using ML and DL for plant disease identification, such as issues with data availability, imaging quality, and the differentiation between healthy and diseased plants. The research provides valuable insights for plant disease detection researchers, practitioners, and industry professionals by offering solutions to these challenges and limitations, providing a comprehensive understanding of the current state of research in this field, highlighting the benefits and limitations of these methods, and proposing potential solutions to overcome the challenges of their implementation

    Irish Ocean Climate and Ecosystem Status Report

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    Summary report for Irish Ocean Climate & Ecosystem Status Report also published here. This Irish Ocean Climate & Ecosystem Status Summary for Policymakers brings together the latest evidence of ocean change in Irish waters. The report is intended to summarise the current trends in atmospheric patterns, ocean warming, sea level rise, ocean acidification, plankton and fish distributions and abundance, and seabird population trends. The report represents a collaboration between marine researchers within the Marine Institute and others based in Ireland’s higher education institutes and public bodies. It includes authors from Met Éireann, Maynooth University, the University of Galway, the Atlantic Technological University, National Parks and Wildlife, Birdwatch Ireland, Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin, Inland Fisheries Ireland, The National Water Forum, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Dundalk Institute of Technology.This report is intended to summarise the current trends in Ireland’s ocean climate. Use has been made of archived marine data held by a range of organisations to elucidate some of the key trends observed in phenomena such as atmospheric changes, ocean warming, sea level rise, acidification, plankton and fish distributions and abundance, and seabirds. The report aims to summarise the key findings and recommendations in each of these areas as a guide to climate adaptation policy and for the public. It builds on the previous Ocean Climate & Ecosystem Status Report published in 2010. The report examines the recently published literature in each of the topic areas and combines this in many cases with analysis of new data sets including long-term time series to identify trends in essential ocean variables in Irish waters. In some cases, model projections of the likely future state of the atmosphere and ocean are presented under different climate emission scenarios.Marine Institut

    Sedimentary ancient DNA: a new paleogenomic tool for reconstructing the history of marine ecosystems

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    Sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA) offers a novel retrospective approach to reconstructing the history of marine ecosystems over geological timescales. Until now, the biological proxies used to reconstruct paleoceanographic and paleoecological conditions were limited to organisms whose remains are preserved in the fossil record. The development of ancient DNA analysis techniques substantially expands the range of studied taxa, providing a holistic overview of past biodiversity. Future development of marine sedaDNA research is expected to dramatically improve our understanding of how the marine biota responded to changing environmental conditions. However, as an emerging approach, marine sedaDNA holds many challenges, and its ability to recover reliable past biodiversity information needs to be carefully assessed. This review aims to highlight current advances in marine sedaDNA research and to discuss potential methodological pitfalls and limitations

    Endogenous measures for contextualising large-scale social phenomena: a corpus-based method for mediated public discourse

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    This work presents an interdisciplinary methodology for developing endogenous measures of group membership through analysis of pervasive linguistic patterns in public discourse. Focusing on political discourse, this work critiques the conventional approach to the study of political participation, which is premised on decontextualised, exogenous measures to characterise groups. Considering the theoretical and empirical weaknesses of decontextualised approaches to large-scale social phenomena, this work suggests that contextualisation using endogenous measures might provide a complementary perspective to mitigate such weaknesses. This work develops a sociomaterial perspective on political participation in mediated discourse as affiliatory action performed through language. While the affiliatory function of language is often performed consciously (such as statements of identity), this work is concerned with unconscious features (such as patterns in lexis and grammar). This work argues that pervasive patterns in such features that emerge through socialisation are resistant to change and manipulation, and thus might serve as endogenous measures of sociopolitical contexts, and thus of groups. In terms of method, the work takes a corpus-based approach to the analysis of data from the Twitter messaging service whereby patterns in users’ speech are examined statistically in order to trace potential community membership. The method is applied in the US state of Michigan during the second half of 2018—6 November having been the date of midterm (i.e. non-Presidential) elections in the United States. The corpus is assembled from the original posts of 5,889 users, who are nominally geolocalised to 417 municipalities. These users are clustered according to pervasive language features. Comparing the linguistic clusters according to the municipalities they represent finds that there are regular sociodemographic differentials across clusters. This is understood as an indication of social structure, suggesting that endogenous measures derived from pervasive patterns in language may indeed offer a complementary, contextualised perspective on large-scale social phenomena

    Religion, Education, and the ‘East’. Addressing Orientalism and Interculturality in Religious Education Through Japanese and East Asian Religions

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    This work addresses the theme of Japanese religions in order to rethink theories and practices pertaining to the field of Religious Education. Through an interdisciplinary framework that combines the study of religions, didactics and intercultural education, this book puts the case study of Religious Education in England in front of two ‘challenges’ in order to reveal hidden spots, tackle unquestioned assumptions and highlight problematic areas. These ‘challenges’, while focusing primarily on Japanese religions, are addressed within the wider contexts of other East Asian traditions and of the modern historical exchanges with the Euro-American societies. As result, a model for teaching Japanese and other East Asian religions is discussed and proposed in order to fruitfully engage issues such as orientalism, occidentalism, interculturality and critical thinking

    Feature Papers in Compounds

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    This book represents a collection of contributions in the field of the synthesis and characterization of chemical compounds, natural products, chemical reactivity, and computational chemistry. Among its contents, the reader will find high-quality, peer-reviewed research and review articles that were published in the open access journal Compounds by members of the Editorial Board and the authors invited by the Editorial Office and Editor-in-Chief

    Enhanced bioremediation of triclocarban-contaminated soil by Rhodococcus rhodochrous BX2 and Pseudomonas sp. LY-1 immobilized on biochar and microbial community response

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    Triclocarban (TCC), an emerging organic contaminant (EOC), has become a severe threat to soil microbial communities and ecological security. Here, the TCC-degrading strain Rhodococcus rhodochrous BX2 and DCA-degrading strain Pseudomonas sp. LY-1 (together referred to as TC1) were immobilized on biochar to remove TCC and its intermediates in TCC-contaminated soil. High-throughput sequencing was used to investigate the microbial community structure in TCC-contaminated soil. Analysis of co-occurrence networks was used to explore the mutual relationships among soil microbiome members. The results showed that the immobilized TC1 significantly increased the removal efficiency of TCC from 84.7 to 92.7% compared to CK (no TC1 cells on biochar) in 10 mg/L TCC liquid medium. The utilization of immobilized TC1 also significantly accelerated the removal of TCC from contaminated soil. Microbial community analysis revealed the crucial microorganisms and their functional enzymes participating in TCC degradation in soil. Moreover, the internal labor division patterns and connections of TCC-degrading microbes, with a focus on strains BX2 and LY-1, were unraveled by co-occurrence networks analysis. This work provides a promising strategy to facilitate the bioremediation of TCC in soil, which has potential application value for sustainable biobased economies

    Mitigating Greenwashing: The Role of Audit Committees and Internal Audits in ESG Reporting Assurance

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    Greenwashing refers to businesses making misleading ESG disclosures (Burbano, (2011). In response to rising expectations from regulators, investors, and the public, a growing number of businesses are under pressure to publish ESG reports. Financial losses, damaged brand reputation, and even corporate failure can result from greenwashing behaviour on the part of businesses if their ESG information is inaccurate. ESG reporting has been a significant area of development in corporate reporting over the last two decades with different names and scopes. However, ESG reporting assurance (hereafter ‘ESG assurance’) is a relatively new area of practice, and there is limited research and understanding of its effectiveness. Existing studies in this field have mainly focused on the external audit role in the assurance process. The aim of this study is to gain an understanding of how the audit committee and internal audit can assist the board in fulfilling its oversight role of mitigating greenwashing by ESG assurance, based on direct evidence from the assurance providers. To achieve this aim, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 47 participants from various countries, representing a diverse range of global perspectives. The interviews lasted an average of 60 minutes, were recorded and transcribed, and analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Results suggest that competent audit committees should play an active and important role in ESG assurance. Internal audit is perceived to play an important role in ESG assurance. Respondents identified greenwashing as a real and significant risk to both businesses and the environment. They further emphasized that ESG reporting must be credible and well supported in order to gain investors' and the public's trust and meet their sustainability expectations. Results also showed that ESG reporting governance is poorly defined, limiting assurance, and that most boards lack ESG expertise and may underestimate the importance of ESG assurance. This study provides empirical contributions on ESG assurance to mitigate greenwashing through direct engagement with boards, audit committees and assurance professionals. It also offers a framework to help better understanding some of the causes and consequences of greenwashing. In addition, it provides recommendations to boards, audit committees, internal audit, researchers and other assurance providers confronted with multiple challenges in this rapidly evolving domain

    Perspectiva de género e intervención socioeducativa con mujeres en las cárceles españolas

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    El origen de esta tesis doctoral se sitúa en el olvido tradicional en el que ha estado sumida la delincuencia femenina en la doctrina científica, especialmente en lo que concierne a la intervención socioeducativa que se desarrolla en prisión con las mujeres. Desde la aparición de la criminología feminista, se han publicado diversos estudios que apuntan a un perfil delictivo diferenciado y a unas necesidades de intervención que únicamente pueden ser abordadas desde un paradigma de género. Ahora bien, en España continúa siendo notorio el déficit de literatura en el ámbito. En este contexto, se plantea una investigación descriptiva cuyos objetivos residen en visibilizar la singularidad de la delincuencia femenina institucionalizada y examinar la perspectiva de género en la política penitenciaria. A tal fin, se emplearon dos cuestionarios, uno para internas y otro para profesionales, que buscan obtener información acerca de las características sociodelictivas de las mujeres y cómo se desarrolla en la intervención socioeducativa de las prisiones. Hemos realizado el trabajo de campo en los centros penitenciarios de Brieva, Madrid I - Mujeres, Alcalá de Guadaíra, Teixeiro, Pereiro de Aguiar, A Lama y Bonxe. Los resultados informan de perfiles diferenciados en función de la tipología delictiva y la presencia de necesidades criminógenas relacionadas con las experiencias traumáticas en la infancia o adolescencia, los problemas de salud derivados del consumo de drogas, y la victimización. También constatamos una alta participación de las mujeres en la intervención socioeducativa, si bien tanto ellas como los/as profesionales manifiestan la existencia de una serie de discriminaciones de género que tienen que ver con la falta de iniciativas específicamente diseñadas para ellas, el acceso a cursos y programas, así como con la feminización de la formación laboral y el empleo remunerado. Entre las conclusiones, destacamos la necesidad de desarrollar una programación sensible al género que atienda las necesidades que se derivan de los distintos perfiles sociodelictivos de las internas
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