A Structural Based Feature Extraction for Detecting the Relation of Hidden Substructures in Coral Reef Images

In this paper, we present an efficient approach to extract local structural color texture features for classifying coral reef images. Two local texture descriptors are derived from this approach. The first one, based on Median Robust Extended Local Binary Pattern (MRELBP), is called Color MRELBP (CMRELBP). CMRELBP is very accurate and can capture the structural information from color texture images. To reduce the dimensionality of the feature vector, the second descriptor, co-occurrence CMRELBP (CCMRELBP) is introduced. It is constructed by applying the Integrative Co-occurrence Matrix (ICM) on the Color MRELBP images. This way we can detect and extract the relative relations between structural texture patterns. Moreover, we propose a multiscale LBP based approach with these two schemes to capture microstructure and macrostructure texture information. The experimental results on coral reef (EILAT, EILAT2, RSMAS, and MLC) and four well-known texture datasets (OUTEX, KTH-TIPS, CURET, and UIUCTEX) show that the proposed scheme is quite effective in designing an accurate, robust to noise, rotation and illumination invariant texture classification system. Moreover, it makes an admissible tradeoff between accuracy and number of features

Deep learning for internet of underwater things and ocean data analytics

The Internet of Underwater Things (IoUT) is an emerging technological ecosystem developed for connecting objects in maritime and underwater environments. IoUT technologies are empowered by an extreme number of deployed sensors and actuators. In this thesis, multiple IoUT sensory data are augmented with machine intelligence for forecasting purposes

Internet of Underwater Things and Big Marine Data Analytics -- A Comprehensive Survey

The Internet of Underwater Things (IoUT) is an emerging communication ecosystem developed for connecting underwater objects in maritime and underwater environments. The IoUT technology is intricately linked with intelligent boats and ships, smart shores and oceans, automatic marine transportations, positioning and navigation, underwater exploration, disaster prediction and prevention, as well as with intelligent monitoring and security. The IoUT has an influence at various scales ranging from a small scientific observatory, to a midsized harbor, and to covering global oceanic trade. The network architecture of IoUT is intrinsically heterogeneous and should be sufficiently resilient to operate in harsh environments. This creates major challenges in terms of underwater communications, whilst relying on limited energy resources. Additionally, the volume, velocity, and variety of data produced by sensors, hydrophones, and cameras in IoUT is enormous, giving rise to the concept of Big Marine Data (BMD), which has its own processing challenges. Hence, conventional data processing techniques will falter, and bespoke Machine Learning (ML) solutions have to be employed for automatically learning the specific BMD behavior and features facilitating knowledge extraction and decision support. The motivation of this paper is to comprehensively survey the IoUT, BMD, and their synthesis. It also aims for exploring the nexus of BMD with ML. We set out from underwater data collection and then discuss the family of IoUT data communication techniques with an emphasis on the state-of-the-art research challenges. We then review the suite of ML solutions suitable for BMD handling and analytics. We treat the subject deductively from an educational perspective, critically appraising the material surveyed.Comment: 54 pages, 11 figures, 19 tables, IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, peer-reviewed academic journa

Clamp-assisted retractor advancement for lower eyelid involutional entropion

Scientific Poster 144PURPOSE: To describe a novel approach to internal repair of lower lid entropion using the Putterman clamp. METHODS: Retrospective, consecutive case series of patients with entropion who underwent retractor advancement using the clamp. RESULTS: Seven eyes of 6 patients (average age: 80; 4 women and 2 men) were analyzed. Complete resolution was achieved in 5 of the 6 patients (83.3%). The 1 patient with recurrence had 2 previous entropion surgeries on each eye over the past 4 years; there was lid laxity, and horizontal tightening was needed. No severe adverse events occurred in the patients. CONCLUSION: Clamp-assisted lower lid retractor advancement offers a safe and effective, minimally invasive approach to involutional entropion. Further study is needed to assess its role in recurrent entropion.postprin

Risk-Informed Sustainable Development in the Rural Tropics

Many people live in rural areas in tropical regions. Rural development is not merely a contribution to the growth of individual countries. It can be a way to reduce poverty and to increase access to water, health care, and education. Sustainable rural development can also help stop deforestation and reduce live-stock, which generate most of the greenhouse gas emissions. However, eorts to achieve a sustainable rural development are often thwarted by oods, drought, heat waves, and hurricanes, which local communities are not very prepared to tackle. Agricultural practices and local planning are still not very risk-informed. These deciencies are particularly acute in tropical regions, where many Least Developed Countries are located and where there is, however, great potential for rural development. This Special Issue contains 22 studies on best practices for risk awareness; on local risk reduction; on several cases of soil depletion, water pollution, and sustainable access to safe water; and on agronomy, earth sciences, ecology, economy, environmental engineering, geomatics, materials science, and spatial and regional planning in 12 tropical countries

Japan's aid diplomacy and the South Pacific

This thesis is a study of the factors that influence and shape Japan’s official development assistance to the Pacific island countries. It is a case study of Japan’s aid diplomacy and contributes to the broader debate about what drives Japan’s aid program and how to interpret Japan’s role as an aid donor. The thesis argues that the issue of access to the region’s fisheries resources has profoundly influenced and politicised Japan’s aid relations with the Pacific island countries. But other political and strategic agendas have also shaped Japan’s aid diplomacy with the region. These motivated the Kuranari Doctrine, Japan’s major statement of principles underlying its foreign policy with the Pacific islands. Through analysis of Japan’s fisheries aid diplomacy, the Kuranari Doctrine and Japan’s approach to multilateral aid policy frameworks, the thesis shows how, over time, policies may be driven by competing interests and objectives. The study demonstrates how different aid policies may be formulated by different parts of the aid bureaucracy, often without close coordination. This analysis builds on perspectives of Japan’s aid administration, especially the bureaucratic politics approach and the ‘modified strong state paradigm’. While the former emphasises inter-ministry conflicts and rivalry, the latter stresses coordination between government and private sector interests in ODA policy. This study suggests that neither perspective, on its own, provides an adequate explanation of the economic, political and bureaucratic factors shaping Japan’s aid policies to the Pacific island countries, and the way these have changed over time. While there is close coordination between government and private sector actors in order to advance strategic economic interests, coordination within the aid administration is more problematic. The thesis challenges assumptions, implicit in much of the literature on Japan’s ODA, that there is a coherent set of aid policies and that Japan’s ODA program has evolved in a rational way from a narrow economic focus to encompass broader diplomatic and political considerations. It suggests, instead, that there are tensions within the aid program, especially between economic and political objectives. The study highlights the way the Pacific island countries have challenged Japan’s economic dominance through a combination of collective diplomacy, alliance building and exploiting international regimes (the Law of the Sea Convention). The Pacific islands case is of interest in that it shows how extreme disparities between Japan and aid recipients may be balanced, to some extent, by both bureaucratic and diplomatic factors. The study shows how Japan’s aid diplomacy has reacted to challenges and threats in the regional context, but argues that external pressures and domestic political processes may pull Japan in different directions and give rise to a disjointed, ad hoc set of aid policies

Island Biodiversity and Human Palaeoecology in the Philippines: A zooarchaeological study of Late Quaternary faunas

This thesis is a zooarchaeological analysis of Late Quaternary faunal assemblages from the Philippines, ca. 25,000 to 2,000 years ago. The research utilises several approaches within a broad ecological framework. The first element of the ecological approach is informed by zooarchaeology’s niche in palaeoecology and its application to modern biodiversity conservation. This approach is crucial for a tropical faunal region known for its exceptionally high levels of biodiversity and endemism but that also has a relative paucity of fossil studies. In this regard, the thesis aims to investigate the evolutionary and biogeographic history of these faunas. The second element of the framework uses the faunal subsistence record to explore human palaeoecology in the Philippines and its relevance to understanding indigenous ecological knowledge systems in the past. Using archaeofaunal material from Luzon and Palawan Islands, the study presents important fossil discoveries and palaeoecological insights into the dynamics of faunal change in the Philippines. The faunal analyses also allow the first attempt to construct Late Quaternary biostratigraphic sequences for the archipelago. For Palawan Island, the thesis presents an MIS-2 (25,000-20,000 cal BP) faunal record based on the re-excavation and re-dating of Pilanduk Cave. This record provides evidence for the presence of the tiger on Palawan during the Last Glacial Maximum and morphological confirmation of the presence of two locally extinct deer taxa. For Luzon Island, the study presents evidence from Minori and Musang Caves for previously unknown and extinct endemic giant cloud rats, as well as for the human translocation of macaques and palm civets. In line with the second element of the framework, the zooarchaeological analyses also provide foraging histories of local human populations in tropical island environments. The subsistence data present the responses and possible roles of humans in observed faunal and environmental changes. Human impacts are possibly implicated in the Late Holocene extirpation of the hog deer of Palawan and two endemic cloud rat species on Luzon. The subsistence records also present island-specific strategies for tropical rainforest foraging across the Holocene. Taken together, the findings offer diachronic perspectives on indigenous ecological knowledge systems as manifested in these changing local settings