Historical Gardens as an Inspiration for the Future of Urban Horticultural Gardens

Throughout the history people incorporated designed gardens in their closest living environment. They shaped their environment in such a way as to make it more useful, pleasing, and nicer. The old ancient civilization already created gardens that amazed anyone visiting the city—a good example are the great cities of Mesopotamia with hanging gardens and city entrance gardens dedicated to flowers, shrubs, and trees, creating a feeling of being in paradise. Renaissance gardens brought a great diversity of new garden motifs and innovations, while Baroque gardens presented the whole city in themselves, creating green walls and green architecture. The nineteenth century with its industrial revolution offered new technologies, new ways of designing and adjusting the nature to man’s need. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries brought to us various ways to include green elements ranging from small to large-scale in our living environment, (from greenhouses in the parks to green walls inside the buildings). Through different motifs of historical gardens, we can find possibilities for today’s and future urban horticultural gardens

Effect of Insulin, Epinephrine, Hydrocortisone and ACTH on the Catheptic Activity of Rat Spleen

In our experiments under in vivo conditions we followed ·the response of spleen on injected insulin, epinephrine, hydrocortisone and ACTH. Insulin caused a decrease in spleen weight, a decrease of protein nitrogen and an increase of catheptic activity 30 min. after application. Afterwards catheptic activity was significantly above control value in 60 min. (expressed in E. U./g. tissue) although· decreasing tendency was observed. 30 and 60 min. after epinephrine application spleen weight and protein nitrogen were increased whereas catheptic activity remained under the control value (expressed in E. U./mg.N). After 3 hrs the spleen weight was reduced (reduced protein nitrogen) whereas catheptic activity was significantly increased, specially if expressed in E. U./g. tissue. Hydrocortisone caused a decrease in spleen weight and protein nitrogen. Catheptic activity was significantly above control value 30 min. and 3 hrs after application, if expressed in enzyme unit per gram tissue. Two hours after ACTH administration protein nitrogen was increased, whereas catheptic activity was under the control value (expressed in E. U.jmg. N)

Assessing Bias in Face Image Quality Assessment

Face image quality assessment (FIQA) attempts to improve face recognition (FR) performance by providing additional information about sample quality. Because FIQA methods attempt to estimate the utility of a sample for face recognition, it is reasonable to assume that these methods are heavily influenced by the underlying face recognition system. Although modern face recognition systems are known to perform well, several studies have found that such systems often exhibit problems with demographic bias. It is therefore likely that such problems are also present with FIQA techniques. To investigate the demographic biases associated with FIQA approaches, this paper presents a comprehensive study involving a variety of quality assessment methods (general-purpose image quality assessment, supervised face quality assessment, and unsupervised face quality assessment methods) and three diverse state-of-theart FR models. Our analysis on the Balanced Faces in the Wild (BFW) dataset shows that all techniques considered are affected more by variations in race than sex. While the general-purpose image quality assessment methods appear to be less biased with respect to the two demographic factors considered, the supervised and unsupervised face image quality assessment methods both show strong bias with a tendency to favor white individuals (of either sex). In addition, we found that methods that are less racially biased perform worse overall. This suggests that the observed bias in FIQA methods is to a significant extent related to the underlying face recognition system.Comment: The content of this paper was published in EUSIPCO 202

Effect of Insulin, Epinephrine, Hydrocortisone and ACTH on the Catheptic Activity of Rat Spleen

In our experiments under in vivo conditions we followed ·the response of spleen on injected insulin, epinephrine, hydrocortisone and ACTH. Insulin caused a decrease in spleen weight, a decrease of protein nitrogen and an increase of catheptic activity 30 min. after application. Afterwards catheptic activity was significantly above control value in 60 min. (expressed in E. U./g. tissue) although· decreasing tendency was observed. 30 and 60 min. after epinephrine application spleen weight and protein nitrogen were increased whereas catheptic activity remained under the control value (expressed in E. U./mg.N). After 3 hrs the spleen weight was reduced (reduced protein nitrogen) whereas catheptic activity was significantly increased, specially if expressed in E. U./g. tissue. Hydrocortisone caused a decrease in spleen weight and protein nitrogen. Catheptic activity was significantly above control value 30 min. and 3 hrs after application, if expressed in enzyme unit per gram tissue. Two hours after ACTH administration protein nitrogen was increased, whereas catheptic activity was under the control value (expressed in E. U.jmg. N)

NAPOVEDOVANJE KEMIČNE SESTAVE IN ENERGIJSKE VREDNOSTI TRAVNE SILAŽE Z BLIŽNJO INFRARDEČO REFLEKSIJSKO SPEKTROSKOPIJO

One hundred and eighteen grass silage samples with known chemical composition and in vitro determined concentration of net energy for lactation (NEL) were scanned over the wavelength range from 1100 to 2500 nm at 8 nm intervals. Calibration equations for the prediction of crude protein (CP), crude fi bre (CF), crude fat (F), crude ash (A), dry matter of air-dried samples (DM) and NEL were developed by the use of principal component analysis (PCA) and modifi ed partial least squares regression technique (mPLS). NIRS demonstrated high predictive ability for CP (R2 = 0.97), CF (R2 = 0.96) and A (R2 = 0.94). Moderate accuracy was characteristic for F and DM (R2 = 0.81 and 0.79). Crude protein, F and DM deviations from reference methods were comparable to those which are expected by the use of the same reference methods in different laboratories. The determination coeffi cient for in vitro assessed NEL concentration was 0.76. Seventy-seven percent of samples lied within acceptable limits of ± 0.3 MJ NEL kg-1DM. Suboptimal sample distribution, i.e. small number of samples in classes below 4.6 and above 6.0 MJ NEL kg-1DM was observed. It seems that deviations of NIRS predicted values from the reference values were related to the concentration of NEL. It was concluded that NIRS shows the potential for reliable determination of chemical composition and energy value of grass silage.Stoosemnajstim vzorcem travne silaže z znano kemično sestavo in in vitro določeno vsebnostjo neto energije za laktacijo (NEL) smo v valovnem območju med 1100 in 2500 nm na vsakih 8 nm izmerili spektre odbite bližnje infrardeče svetlobe. S pomočjo analize glavnih komponent (PCA) in regresijske metode modifi ciranih delnih najmanjših kvadratov (mPLS) smo razvili umeritvene enačbe za napovedovanje vsebnosti surovih beljakovin (SB), surove vlaknine (SVl), surovih maščob (M), surovega pepela (P), suhe snovi zračno suhih vzorcev (DM) in NEL. Metoda NIRS je bila zelo dobra pri napovedovanju SB (R2 = 0,97), SVl (R2 = 0,96) in A (R2 = 0,94). Za M in DM je bila značilna zmerna točnost (R2 = 0,81 in 0,79). Pri SB, M in DM so bila odstopanja od referenčnih metod primerljiva z odstopanji, ki jih lahko pričakujemo pri izvajanju istih referenčnih metod v različnih laboratorijih. Determinacijski koeficient za in vitro ocenjeno koncentracijo NEL je znašal 0,76. Sedeminsedemdeset odstotkov vzorcev je ležalo znotraj sprejemljivih meja ± 0,3 MJ NEL kg-1SS. Za vzorce travnih silaž je bila značilna ne-optimalna porazdelitev vzorcev, t.j. majhno število vzorcev v razredih pod 4,6 in nad 6,0 MJ NEL kg-1SS. Izgleda, da so odstopanja med NIRS ocenjenimi vrednostmi in referenčnimi vrednostmi povezana z vsebnostjo NEL. Sklenili smo, da je z NIRS metodo mogoče zanesljivo oceniti kemično sestavo in energijsko vrednost travne silaže