Molecular phylogeny and spore evolution of Entolomataceae

The phylogeny of the Entolomataceae was reconstructed using three loci (RPB2, LSU and mtSSU) and, in conjunction with spore morphology (using SEM and TEM), was used to address four main systematic issues: 1) the monophyly of the Entolomataceae; 2) inter-generic relationships within the Entolomataceae; 3) genus delimitation of Entolomataceae; and 4) spore evolution in the Entolomataceae. Results confirm that the Entolomataceae (Entoloma, Rhodocybe, Clitopilus, Richoniella and Rhodogaster) is monophyletic and that the combination of pinkish spore prints and spores having bumps and/or ridges formed by an epicorium is a synapomorphy for the family. The Entolomataceae is made up of two sister clades: one with Clitopilus nested within Rhodocybe and another with Richoniella and Rhodogaster nested within Entoloma. Entoloma is best retained as one genus. The smaller genera within Entoloma s.l. are either polyphyletic or make other genera paraphyletic. Spores of the clitopiloid type are derived from rhodocyboid spores. The ancestral spore type of the Entolomataceae was either rhodocyboid or entolomatoid. Taxonomic and nomenclatural changes are made including merging Rhodocybe into Clitopilus and transferring relevant species into Clitopilus and Entoloma

Jacobian Ensembles Improve Robustness Trade-offs to Adversarial Attacks

Deep neural networks have become an integral part of our software infrastructure and are being deployed in many widely-used and safety-critical applications. However, their integration into many systems also brings with it the vulnerability to test time attacks in the form of Universal Adversarial Perturbations (UAPs). UAPs are a class of perturbations that when applied to any input causes model misclassification. Although there is an ongoing effort to defend models against these adversarial attacks, it is often difficult to reconcile the trade-offs in model accuracy and robustness to adversarial attacks. Jacobian regularization has been shown to improve the robustness of models against UAPs, whilst model ensembles have been widely adopted to improve both predictive performance and model robustness. In this work, we propose a novel approach, Jacobian Ensembles-a combination of Jacobian regularization and model ensembles to significantly increase the robustness against UAPs whilst maintaining or improving model accuracy. Our results show that Jacobian Ensembles achieves previously unseen levels of accuracy and robustness, greatly improving over previous methods that tend to skew towards only either accuracy or robustness

Farming systems research in north east Thailand and the role of the Farming Systems Research Institute

At head of title : Australian Co-operation with the National Agricultural Research Project Thailand. The North-East region of Thailand occupies about 30 percent of the Kingdom. Within this region, crop production is the most important farming activity, accounting for 80 percent of farm income. The most important crop is rice, which occupies 75 percent of the total crop area. Farmers in the region are generally poor with per capita incomes only 65 percent of the national average

Editorial : environmental governance of urban and regional development – scales and sectors, conflict and cooperation

Recent years have continued to see a concern for the detrimental environmental impacts of human economic activities particularly in the form of enhanced global warming, sea level rise, land degradation and deforestation. Although it can be argued that economic development and growth remain the priority for governments at a variety of spatial scales or levels, these same governments also express a desire through a growing number of policy initiatives to make such development more sustainable and environmentally-friendly. A growing interest amongst policy makers has been in identifying the ways in which environmental protection measures can be made complementary to economic development aims. Rather than seeing the environment and the economy in opposition, there has been a focus on the growth potential from developing a green or low-carbon economy (OECD, 2011). At the urban and regional scale governments have increasingly begun to try and position themselves as destinations for new forms of green economy investments as a source of a new round of capital accumulation (GIBBS and O’NEILL, 2014). In total then, questions around the environment, climate change and sustainability look set to grow in importance for decision makers in cities and regions

A friend of the Seminole.

The fictional adventures of two boys in southwestern Florida and the Seminole Indian they befriend.https://stars.library.ucf.edu/floridaheritage/1036/thumbnail.jp

The tourist in Spain : Biscay and the Castiles

Copia Digital : Museo del Romanticismo, 2011Port. adicional grabadaReproducción de grabado

Towards an Economy of Higher Education

This paper draws a distinction between ways thinking and acting, and hence of policy and practice in higher education, in terms of different kinds of economy: economies of exchange and economies of excess. Crucial features of economies of exchange are outlined and their presence in prevailing conceptions of teaching and learning is illustrated. These are contrasted with other possible forms of practice, which in turn bring to light the nature of an economy of excess. In more philosophical terms, and to expand on the picture, economies of excess are elaborated with reference, first, to the understanding of alterity in the work of Emmanuel Levinas and, second, to the idea of Dionysian intensity that is to be found in Nietzsche. In the light of critical comment on some current directions in policy and practice, the implications of these ways of thinking for the administrator, the teacher and the student in higher education are explored

Biodesign Exhibition Catalog

Catalogue created on the occasion of Biodesign: From Inspiration to Integration, August 24 to September 27, 2018, an exhibition organized as part of RISD Nature Lab’s 80th anniversary celebrations at the Woods-Gerry Gallery, Providence, Rhode Island. Curated by William Myers, Lucia Monge, David Kim, Neal Overstrom, Julia van den Hout, and Peter Rogers