Environmental management perspectives of soil fluoride in New Zealand's agricultural soils : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master in Environmental Management at the Institute of Agriculture and Environment, Massey University, Palmerston North, Manawatu, New Zealand

The prolonged use of phosphate (P) fertilisers has inherited an accumulation of F in topsoils and it is considered to be building up in most of New Zealand’s (NZ) agricultural soils. New Zealand research into soil F has been hampered by the lack of a reliable and simple test for soil F. The accuracy of different methods to quantify the presence of F in analytical preparations is dependent on interfering elements such as the aluminium (Al) content of the sample. The conventional methodology of NaOH fusion with an ion-specific electrode method is considered to be time consuming, expensive and very dependent on the abilities of the operating technician, thus it is not ideal for environmental monitoring. To improve the traditional method, an alternative technique to the standard fusion protocol was developed by the Fertilizer & Lime Centre Research (FLRC), Massey University, and that found that simple extraction of soil with dilute sodium hydroxide four molar (NaOH 4M) consistently reported 80% of the total soil F across volcanic soils. The initial FLRC initial work was further examined in this research to confirm the repeatability of the NaOH extraction technique to quantify soil F in a range of NZ soil orders. Also, to assess the relative accuracy of the NaOH extraction technique across different NZ soil orders by comparing different NaOH concentrations. The main aim was to compare different methods and NaOH concentrations to determine total soil F on a representative range of soil orders collected from 13 agricultural sites with a longterm P fertiliser application background. The variability between soils orders was assessed as a function of soil properties. Furthermore, microbiological analyses were performed to assess the impacts of total F, as determined by NaOH extraction method, on soil microbial activity. This study also provides a discussion on the environmental management implications of the emerging F issue in the NZ pastoral land. The total soil F concentration across seven different soil orders ranged between 152 mg F kg-1 and 708 mg F kg-1. The NaOH extraction method showed significant correlation with the alkali fusion/ISE technique (r>0.92). The accuracy of the F determination is very dependent on interfering elements such as Al/Fe oxy-hydroxide content, and NaOH 10M extraction method showed the lowest variation within allophane-rich soils compared to the 4M and 16M extractions. Results suggest that the NaOH 10M method can be used for wide-scale environmental studies and monitoring programmes across a variety of New Zealand soils, particularly for Allophanic soils. A significant correlation was found between dehydrogenase enzyme activity (DHA) and the labile or total Al and Fe content (r>82), whereas the microbial biomass carbon (Cmic) was positively correlated with the non-labile Al and Fe fraction in soils (r>0.89). These findings indicate that these microbial parameters can be used for environmental monitoring programmes. The DHA can be used to assess the effects of the labile F to microorganisms and the Cmic variable could be used as an indicator of the total F effects to livestock

Automated Analysis of Synchronization in Human Full-body Expressive Movement

The research presented in this thesis is focused on the creation of computational models for the study of human full-body movement in order to investigate human behavior and non-verbal communication. In particular, the research concerns the analysis of synchronization of expressive movements and gestures. Synchronization can be computed both on a single user (intra-personal), e.g., to measure the degree of coordination between the joints\u2019 velocities of a dancer, and on multiple users (inter-personal), e.g., to detect the level of coordination between multiple users in a group. The thesis, through a set of experiments and results, contributes to the investigation of both intra-personal and inter-personal synchronization applied to support the study of movement expressivity, and improve the state-of-art of the available methods by presenting a new algorithm to perform the analysis of synchronization

Informing bowing and violin learning using movement analysis and machine learning

Violin performance is characterized by an intimate connection between the player and her instrument that allows her a continuous control of sound through a sophisticated bowing technique. A great importance in violin pedagogy is, then, given to techniques of the right hand, responsible of most of the sound produced. This study analyses the bowing trajectory in three different classical violin exercises from audio and motion capture recordings to classify, using machine learning techniques, the different kinds of bowing techniques used. Our results show that a clustering algorithm is able to appropriately group together the different shapes produced by the bow trajectories

A serious games platform for validating sonification of human full-body movement qualities

In this paper we describe a serious games platfrom for validating sonification of human full-body movement qualities. This platform supports the design and development of serious games aiming at validating (i) our techniques to measure expressive movement qualities, and (ii) the mapping strategies to translate such qualities in the auditory domain, by means of interactive sonification and active music experience. The platform is a part of a more general framework developed in the context of the EU ICT H2020 DANCE "Dancing in the dark" Project n.645553 that aims at enabling the perception of nonverbal artistic whole-body experiences to visual impaired people

Optimizing Gateway™ technology (Invitrogen) to construct Rhizobium leguminosarum deletion mutants

The study of the role of different genes in Rhizobium leguminosarum requires the generation of mutants by homologous recombination. In this communication we describe a novel approach to obtain deletion mutants of genes in Rhizobium using Gateway TM Cloning technology (Invitrogen) and a new vector (pK18-attR), both conjugative and Rhizobium specific, that carries the recombination tails of Gateway system. This tool is a new alternative to the classic approach based on cloning using restriction enzymes. The first step consists of designing directed oligonucleotides with specific tails for isolating recombination fragments and a resistance marker cassette to an antibiotic by PCR. The three inserts are cloned by homologous recombination in three specific vectors, in a single step. The last step consists of multisite-directed recombination of the three donor vectors to the pK18-attR destination vector. After recombination, this vector loses the ccdB gene, whose expression results in synthesis of a DNA gyrase that is lethal to carrier cells and thus guarantees the effectiveness in obtaining clones that carry the homologous construction to the subsequent recombination in Rhizobiu

Analysis of movement quality in full-body physical activities

Full-body human movement is characterized by fine-grain expressive qualities that humans are easily capable of exhibiting and recognizing in others' movement. In sports (e.g., martial arts) and performing arts (e.g., dance), the same sequence of movements can be performed in a wide range of ways characterized by different qualities, often in terms of subtle (spatial and temporal) perturbations of the movement. Even a non-expert observer can distinguish between a top-level and average performance by a dancer or martial artist. The difference is not in the performed movements-the same in both cases-but in the \u201cquality\u201d of their performance. In this article, we present a computational framework aimed at an automated approximate measure of movement quality in full-body physical activities. Starting from motion capture data, the framework computes low-level (e.g., a limb velocity) and high-level (e.g., synchronization between different limbs) movement features. Then, this vector of features is integrated to compute a value aimed at providing a quantitative assessment of movement quality approximating the evaluation that an external expert observer would give of the same sequence of movements. Next, a system representing a concrete implementation of the framework is proposed. Karate is adopted as a testbed. We selected two different katas (i.e., detailed choreographies of movements in karate) characterized by different overall attitudes and expressions (aggressiveness, meditation), and we asked seven athletes, having various levels of experience and age, to perform them. Motion capture data were collected from the performances and were analyzed with the system. The results of the automated analysis were compared with the scores given by 14 karate experts who rated the same performances. Results show that the movement-quality scores computed by the system and the ratings given by the human observers are highly correlated (Pearson's correlations r = 0.84, p = 0.001 and r = 0.75, p = 0.005)

Movement Fluidity Analysis Based on Performance and Perception

In this work we present a framework and an experimental approach to investigate human body movement qualities (i.e., the expressive components of non-verbal communication) in HCI. We first define a candidate movement quality conceptually, with the involvement of experts in the field (e.g., dancers, choreographers). Next, we collect a dataset of performances and we evaluate the perception of the chosen quality. Finally, we propose a computational model to detect the presence of the quality in a movement segment and we compare the outcomes of the model with the evaluation results. In the proposed on-going work, we apply this approach to a specific quality of movement: Fluidity. The proposed methods and models may have several applications, e.g., in emotion detection from full-body movement, interactive training of motor skills, rehabilitation

Analysis of intrapersonal synchronization in full-body movements displaying different expressive qualities

Intrapersonal synchronization of limb movements is a relevant feature for assessing coordination of motoric behavior. In this paper, we show that it can also distinguish between full-body movements performed with different expressive qualities, namely rigidity, uidity, and impulsivity. For this purpose, we collected a dataset of movements performed by professional dancers, and annotated the perceived movement qualities with the help of a group of experts in expressive movement analysis. We computed intra personal synchronization by applying the Event Synchronization algorithm to the time-series of the speed of arms and hands. Results show that movements performed with different qualities display a significantly different amount of intra personal synchronization: Impulsive movements are the most synchronized, the uid ones show the lowest values of synchronization, and the rigid ones lay in between

Analysis of the qualities of human movement in individual action

The project was organized as a preliminary study for Use Case #1 of the Horizon 2020 Research Project \u201cDance in the Dark\u201d (H2020 ICT Project n.645553 - http://dance.dibris.unige.it). The main objective of the DANCE project is to study and develop novel techniques and algorithms for the automated measuring of non-verbal bodily expression and the emotional qualities conveyed by human movement, in order to enable the perception of nonverbal artistic whole-body experiences to visual impaired people. In the framework of the eNTERFACE \u201915 Workshop we investigated methods for analyzing human movements in terms of expressive qualities. When analyzing an individual action we were mainly concentrating on the quality of motion and on elements suggesting different emotions. We developed a system to automatically extract several movement features and transfer them to the auditory domain through interactive sonification. We performed an experiment with 26 participants and collected a dataset made of video and audio recordings plus accelerometer data. Finally, we performed a perception study through questionnaires, in order to evaluate and validate the system. As real time application of our system we developed a game named \u201dMove in the Dark\u201d, which has been presented in the Mundaneum Museum of Mons, Belgium and Festival della Scienza, Genova, Italy (27 November 2015)