137 research outputs found
Economic Valuation of Mangrove Forest Ecosystem in Waidoba Island, South Kayoa District, South Halmahera Regency
Mangrove Forest ecosystems have distinctive characteristics and forms and have functions and benefits as development resources both as economic resources and ecological resources that have long been felt by the Indonesian people, especially for the people who live around that area. This research aims to identify the types of utilization of mangrove forest ecosystems and to analyze the total economic value of mangrove forest ecosystems in the area of Waidoba Island, South Kayoa District, South Halmahera Regency. The sampling method in this study used a purposive sampling method. Based on the results identification of the benefits and functions of the mangrove forest ecosystem in Waidoba Island area, Kayoa Selatan District, that there were (4) four types of mangrove forest ecosystem benefits, namely (1) direct benefits (2) indirect benefits, (3) optional benefits and (4) benefits of existence. While the results of costs and benefits of the total economic value of mangrove forest ecosystem in Waidoba Island area of South Kayoa District were obtained Rp. Rp.170.520.720.104/year or Rp.418.014.659,-/ha/year. This total economic value was the benefit value of mangrove forest ecosystem that utilized by the community covering an area of 407.93 Ha
Fast shot boundary detection based on separable moments and support vector machine
The large number of visual applications in multimedia sharing websites and social networks contribute to the increasing amounts of multimedia data in cyberspace. Video data is a rich source of information and considered the most demanding in terms of storage space. With the huge development of digital video production, video management becomes a challenging task. Video content analysis (VCA) aims to provide big data solutions by automating the video management. To this end, shot boundary detection (SBD) is considered an essential step in VCA. It aims to partition the video sequence into shots by detecting shot transitions. High computational cost in transition detection is considered a bottleneck for real-time applications. Thus, in this paper, a balance between detection accuracy and speed for SBD is addressed by presenting a new method for fast video processing. The proposed SBD framework is based on the concept of candidate segment selection with frame active area and separable moments. First, for each frame, the active area is selected such that only the informative content is considered. This leads to a reduction in the computational cost and disturbance factors. Second, for each active area, the moments are computed using orthogonal polynomials. Then, an adaptive threshold and inequality criteria are used to eliminate most of the non-transition frames and preserve candidate segments. For further elimination, two rounds of bisection comparisons are applied. As a result, the computational cost is reduced in the subsequent stages. Finally, machine learning statistics based on the support vector machine is implemented to detect the cut transitions. The enhancement of the proposed fast video processing method over existing methods in terms of computational complexity and accuracy is verified. The average improvements in terms of frame percentage and transition accuracy percentage are 1.63% and 2.05%, respectively. Moreover, for the proposed SBD algorithm, a comparative study is performed with state-of-the-art algorithms. The comparison results confirm the superiority of the proposed algorithm in computation time with improvement of over 38%
Pemanfaatan Buah Mangrove Rhizophora apiculata Sebagai Olahan Kopi Mangrove Dalam Upaya Peningkatan Ekonomi Masyarakat Di Desa Maitara Utara Kecamatan Tidore Utara
The use of mangrove fruit as food and beverage ingredients has never been carried out by the people of Maitara Island, Tidore City Islands. The problems faced by the community are: low public knowledge about the benefits of mangrove fruit as a food and beverage ingredient, lack of public knowledge about the diversification of processed mangrove fruit products as an ingredient in mangrove coffee drinks and low knowledge of good quality mangrove coffee powder processing techniques. The objectives of the PKM activities are: partners can find out about the benefits of mangrove fruit as food and beverage ingredients, apply appropriate technology in mangrove coffee powder processing techniques with good quality and get quality mangrove coffee variants and have high selling value to increase partner's economic income. The results of PKM activities are the diversification of Rhizophora apiculata processed mangrove fruit products as mangrove coffee drink ingredients that have a selling value so that they can improve people's welfare, the mangrove fruit calyx produces finer and denser coffee powder, coffee powder can be served in various variants, namely Sory (original soki ), SoSweet (sweet soki) and Pelakor (spice coffee customer) and all are liked by the public and organoleptic test results, all types of coffee variants are liked by researchers and the Pelakor variant is the variant that has a higher scoring value
Feasibility of a walking virtual reality system for rehabilitation: objective and subjective parameters
[EN] Background: Even though virtual reality (VR) is increasingly used in rehabilitation, the implementation of walking navigation in VR still poses a technological challenge for current motion tracking systems. Different metaphors simulate locomotion without involving real gait kinematics, which can affect presence, orientation, spatial memory and cognition, and even performance. All these factors can dissuade their use in rehabilitation. We hypothesize that a marker-based head tracking solution would allow walking in VR with high sense of presence and without causing sickness. The objectives of this study were to determine the accuracy, the jitter, and the lag of the tracking system and its elicited sickness and presence in comparison of a CAVE system.
Methods: The accuracy and the jitter around the working area at three different heights and the lag of the head tracking system were analyzed. In addition, 47 healthy subjects completed a search task that involved navigation in the walking VR system and in the CAVE system. Navigation was enabled by natural locomotion in the walking VR system and through a specific device in the CAVE system. An HMD was used as display in the walking VR system. After interacting with each system, subjects rated their sickness in a seven-point scale and their presence in the Slater-Usoh-Steed Questionnaire and a modified version of the Presence Questionnaire.
Results: Better performance was registered at higher heights, where accuracy was less than 0.6 cm and the jitter was about 6 mm. The lag of the system was 120 ms. Participants reported that both systems caused similar low levels of sickness (about 2.4 over 7). However, ratings showed that the walking VR system elicited higher sense of presence than the CAVE system in both the Slater-Usoh-Steed Questionnaire (17.6 +/- 0.3 vs 14.6 +/- 0.6 over 21, respectively) and the modified Presence Questionnaire (107.4 +/- 2.0 vs 93.5 +/- 3.2 over 147, respectively).
Conclusions: The marker-based solution provided accurate, robust, and fast head tracking to allow navigation in the VR system by walking without causing relevant sickness and promoting higher sense of presence than CAVE systems, thus enabling natural walking in full-scale environments, which can enhance the ecological validity of VR-based rehabilitation applications.The authors wish to thank the staff of LabHuman for their support in this project, especially JosĂ© Miguel MartĂnez and JosĂ© Roda for their assistance. This study was funded in part by Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad of Spain (Project NeuroVR, TIN2013-44741-R and Project REACT, TIN2014-61975-EXP), by Ministerio de Educacion y Ciencia of Spain (Project Consolider-C, SEJ2006-14301/PSIC), and by Universitat Politecnica de Valencia (Grant PAID-10-14).Borrego, A.; Latorre Grau, J.; Llorens RodrĂguez, R.; Alcañiz Raya, ML.; NoĂ©, E. (2016). 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Pathogen Specific, IRF3-Dependent Signaling and Innate Resistance to Human Kidney Infection
The mucosal immune system identifies and fights invading pathogens, while allowing non-pathogenic organisms to persist. Mechanisms of pathogen/non-pathogen discrimination are poorly understood, as is the contribution of human genetic variation in disease susceptibility. We describe here a new, IRF3-dependent signaling pathway that is critical for distinguishing pathogens from normal flora at the mucosal barrier. Following uropathogenic E. coli infection, Irf3â/â mice showed a pathogen-specific increase in acute mortality, bacterial burden, abscess formation and renal damage compared to wild type mice. TLR4 signaling was initiated after ceramide release from glycosphingolipid receptors, through TRAM, CREB, Fos and Jun phosphorylation and p38 MAPK-dependent mechanisms, resulting in nuclear translocation of IRF3 and activation of IRF3/IFNÎČ-dependent antibacterial effector mechanisms. This TLR4/IRF3 pathway of pathogen discrimination was activated by ceramide and by P-fimbriated E. coli, which use ceramide-anchored glycosphingolipid receptors. Relevance of this pathway for human disease was supported by polymorphic IRF3 promoter sequences, differing between children with severe, symptomatic kidney infection and children who were asymptomatic bacterial carriers. IRF3 promoter activity was reduced by the disease-associated genotype, consistent with the pathology in Irf3â/â mice. Host susceptibility to common infections like UTI may thus be strongly influenced by single gene modifications affecting the innate immune response
LKB1 and AMPK and the cancer-metabolism link - ten years after
The identification of a complex containing the tumor suppressor LKB1 as the critical upstream kinase required for the activation of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) by metabolic stress was reported in an article in Journal of Biology in 2003. This finding represented the first clear link between AMPK and cancer. Here we briefly discuss how this discovery came about, and describe some of the insights, especially into the role of AMPK in cancer, that have followed from it. In September 2003, our groups published a joint paper [1] in Journal of Biology (now BMC Biology) that identified the long-sought and elusive upstream kinase acting on AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) as a complex containing LKB1, a known tumor suppressor. Similar findings were reported at about the same time by David Carling and Marian Carlson [2] and by Reuben Shaw and Lew Cantley [3]; at the time of writing these three papers have received between them a total of over 2,000 citations. These findings provided a direct link between a protein kinase, AMPK, which at the time was mainly associated with regulation of metabolism, and another protein kinase, LKB1, which was known from genetic studies to be a tumor suppressor. While the idea that cancer is in part a metabolic disorder (first suggested by Warburg in the 1920s [4]) is well recognized today [5], this was not the case in 2003, and our paper perhaps contributed towards its renaissance. The aim of this short review is to recall how we made the original finding, and to discuss some of the directions that these findings have taken the field in the ensuing ten years
30-Day morbidity and mortality of bariatric metabolic surgery in adolescence during the COVID-19 pandemic â The GENEVA study
Background: Metabolic and bariatric surgery (MBS) is an effective treatment for adolescents with severe obesity. Objectives: This study examined the safety of MBS in adolescents during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Methods: This was a global, multicentre and observational cohort study of MBS performed between May 01, 2020, and October 10,2020, in 68 centres from 24 countries. Data collection included in-hospital and 30-day COVID-19 and surgery-specific morbidity/mortality. Results: One hundred and seventy adolescent patients (mean age: 17.75 ± 1.30 years), mostly females (n = 122, 71.8%), underwent MBS during the study period. The mean pre-operative weight and body mass index were 122.16 ± 15.92 kg and 43.7 ± 7.11 kg/m2, respectively. Although majority of patients had pre-operative testing for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) (n = 146; 85.9%), only 42.4% (n = 72) of the patients were asked to self-isolate pre-operatively. Two patients developed symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection post-operatively (1.2%). The overall complication rate was 5.3% (n = 9). There was no mortality in this cohort. Conclusions: MBS in adolescents with obesity is safe during the COVID-19 pandemic when performed within the context of local precautionary procedures (such as pre-operative testing). The 30-day morbidity rates were similar to those reported pre-pandemic. These data will help facilitate the safe re-introduction of MBS services for this group of patients
30-day morbidity and mortality of sleeve gastrectomy, Roux-en-Y gastric bypass and one anastomosis gastric bypass: a propensity score-matched analysis of the GENEVA data
Background: There is a paucity of data comparing 30-day morbidity and mortality of sleeve gastrectomy (SG), Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB), and one anastomosis gastric bypass (OAGB). This study aimed to compare the 30-day safety of SG, RYGB, and OAGB in propensity score-matched cohorts. Materials and methods: This analysis utilised data collected from the GENEVA study which was a multicentre observational cohort study of bariatric and metabolic surgery (BMS) in 185 centres across 42 countries between 01/05/2022 and 31/10/2020 during the Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. 30-day complications were categorised according to the ClavienâDindo classification. Patients receiving SG, RYGB, or OAGB were propensity-matched according to baseline characteristics and 30-day complications were compared between groups. Results: In total, 6770 patients (SG 3983; OAGB 702; RYGB 2085) were included in this analysis. Prior to matching, RYGB was associated with highest 30-day complication rate (SG 5.8%; OAGB 7.5%; RYGB 8.0% (p = 0.006)). On multivariate regression modelling, Insulin-dependent type 2 diabetes mellitus and hypercholesterolaemia were associated with increased 30-day complications. Being a non-smoker was associated with reduced complication rates. When compared to SG as a reference category, RYGB, but not OAGB, was associated with an increased rate of 30-day complications. A total of 702 pairs of SG and OAGB were propensity score-matched. The complication rate in the SG group was 7.3% (n = 51) as compared to 7.5% (n = 53) in the OAGB group (p = 0.68). Similarly, 2085 pairs of SG and RYGB were propensity score-matched. The complication rate in the SG group was 6.1% (n = 127) as compared to 7.9% (n = 166) in the RYGB group (p = 0.09). And, 702 pairs of OAGB and RYGB were matched. The complication rate in both groups was the same at 7.5 % (n = 53; p = 0.07). Conclusions: This global study found no significant difference in the 30-day morbidity and mortality of SG, RYGB, and OAGB in propensity score-matched cohorts
Nonlinearity and Topology
The interplay of nonlinearity and topology results in many novel and emergent
properties across a number of physical systems such as chiral magnets, nematic
liquid crystals, Bose-Einstein condensates, photonics, high energy physics,
etc. It also results in a wide variety of topological defects such as solitons,
vortices, skyrmions, merons, hopfions, monopoles to name just a few.
Interaction among and collision of these nontrivial defects itself is a topic
of great interest. Curvature and underlying geometry also affect the shape,
interaction and behavior of these defects. Such properties can be studied using
techniques such as, e.g. the Bogomolnyi decomposition. Some applications of
this interplay, e.g. in nonreciprocal photonics as well as topological
materials such as Dirac and Weyl semimetals, are also elucidated
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