An advanced virtual dance performance evaluator

The ever increasing availability of high speed Internet access has led to a leap in technologies that support real-time realistic interaction between humans in online virtual environments. In the context of this work, we wish to realise the vision of an online dance studio where a dance class is to be provided by an expert dance teacher and to be delivered to online students via the web. In this paper we study some of the technical issues that need to be addressed in this challenging scenario. In particular, we describe an automatic dance analysis tool that would be used to evaluate a student's performance and provide him/her with meaningful feedback to aid improvement

Floodplain Meadows: Beauty and Utility - A Technical Handbook

Floodplain meadows are beautiful, ancient and fascinating places rich in wildlife and history. Throughout the spring and early summer, they are awash with wildflowers and waving grasses, humming with insects and the birds that depend on them. They provide a vibrant and beautiful spectacle that has now all but disappeared from the UK. Floodplain meadows evolved over many hundreds of years through the need to store the summer grass crop as hay to sustain cattle, sheep and especially horses over the winter months. The system of allowing the vegetation to grow up in the spring, taking a hay crop in midsummer and then grazing the re-growth prevented taller, coarser species from becoming dominant and created the diverse flower-rich sward we see today. Once valued primarily for their key role in commercial agriculture, the few remaining species-rich floodplain meadows are now valued for a wider set of attributes. Floodplain meadows: * generate a sustainable and prized hay crop; * provide an important nectar source for pollinating insects such as bumblebees and hoverflies; * support rare plant communities and are vital sources of seed for the restoration of meadows; * provide flood-storage areas, trap sediment and store carbon, and will be increasingly valued for these functions as the climate changes; and provide a link with the past, a living reminder of the traditional, rural landscapes and the ways of life that created them. A more detailed discussion of the value and history of floodplain meadows is found in Chapter 3. More information on the distribution and conservation of floodplain meadows in the UK can be found in Chapter 4

Inflation, money supply and the equity risk premium : a respecification

This thesis establishes the impact of inflation on the equity risk premium in North America by empirical modeling of time series data (econometric models). The equity risk premium is a monetary value that people require in order to change their investment behavior, in particular to switch investment funds from risk free vehicles to risky equity securities. The specific macroeconomic variable of interest is inflation

Trees are important conduits for emission of methane from temperate and tropical wetlands

Methane produced in wetland soil generally is thought to be emitted to the atmosphere primarily via diffusion through pore water, release of gas bubbles (i.e., ebullition), and gas phase diffusion through the aerenchyma of herbaceous plants. The role of trees as a conduit for methane export from soil to the atmosphere has received limited attention despite evidence from mesocosm experiments showing that seedlings and saplings of wetland trees have a significant capacity to transport soil-produced gases. Notably ~60% of global wetlands are forested. We present in situ measurements of methane flux from a temperate carr (swamp) composed of alder (Alnus glutinosa) and birch (Betula pubescens) situated in the United Kingdom and a tropical forested peat swamp located in Borneo. The in situ data are complemented by a mesocosm experiment in which methane emissions were measured from alder saplings subjected to two water-regime treatments. In both the in situ and mesocosm studies, emissions from trees are compared to methane flux from the ground surface, the latter occurring via pore water diffusion, ebullition or the aerenchyma of herbaceous plants. We show that tree stem emissions are controlled by a number of factors including tree species, soil pore-water concentration and stem lenticel density. Our results demonstrate that the omission of tree-mediated methane fluxes from measurement campaigns conducted in forested wetland can significantly underestimate total ecosystem flux of methane

Meadows and more: a botanical journal of five days on the Uists, Benbecula and Eriskay

In the first week of July 2018, the Floodplain Meadows Partnership (FMP) held its annual steering group meeting with field excursions on the Outer Hebrides. The aim of the field part of our meeting was to familiarise ourselves with wet meadows (including those on machair) of the Uists and Benbecula, and compare their composition and ecology with related habitats further south in the UK. However, a chance for us to explore the other habitats of these islands was too good an opportunity to miss. Hence five of us arrived on the islands a few days before the main group and roamed more extensively, looking at a wide range of habitats in addition to meadows. The lead author’s role in this botanical journal was to note incidental observations made in addition to the formal study of the meadows. Hilary Wallace directed the quadrat recording in wet meadows, and the overall programme of work was coordinated by David Gowing and Emma Rothero of the Open University. Even during the FMP field excursions, we could not ignore other habitats entirely and Stewart Clarke (National Trust Freshwaters and Estuaries Specialist) paid special attention to the aquatic flora

Meadows and more: a botanical journal of five days on the Uists, Benbecula and Eriskay

In the first week of July 2018, the Floodplain Meadows Partnership (FMP) held its annual steering group meeting with field excursions on the Outer Hebrides. The aim of the field part of our meeting was to familiarise ourselves with wet meadows (including those on machair) of the Uists and Benbecula, and compare their composition and ecology with related habitats further south in the UK. However, a chance for us to explore the other habitats of these islands was too good an opportunity to miss. Hence five of us arrived on the islands a few days before the main group and roamed more extensively, looking at a wide range of habitats in addition to meadows. The lead author’s role in this botanical journal was to note incidental observations made in addition to the formal study of the meadows. Hilary Wallace directed the quadrat recording in wet meadows, and the overall programme of work was coordinated by David Gowing and Emma Rothero of the Open University. Even during the FMP field excursions, we could not ignore other habitats entirely and Stewart Clarke (National Trust Freshwaters and Estuaries Specialist) paid special attention to the aquatic flora

Experimental investigation of the origin of fynbos plant community structure after fire

Background and aims Species in plant communities segregate along fine-scale hydrological gradients. Although this phenomenon is not unique to fynbos, this community regenerates after fire and therefore provides an opportunity to study the ecological genesis of hydrological niche segregation. Methods Following wildfires at two field sites where we had previously mapped the vegetation and monitored the hydrology, seeds were moved experimentally in >2500 intact soil cores up and down soil-moisture gradients to test the hypothesis that hydrological niche segregation is established during the seedling phase of the life cycle. Seedling numbers and growth were then monitored and they were identified using DNA bar-coding, the first use of this technology for an experiment of this kind. Key Results At the site where niche segregation among Restionaceae had previously been found, the size of seedlings was significantly greater, the wetter the location into which they were moved, regardless of the soil moisture status of their location of origin, or of the species. Seedling weight was also significantly greater in a competition treatment where the roots of other species were excluded. No such effects were detected at the control site where niche segregation among Restionaceae was previously found to be absent. Conclusions The finding that seedling growth on hydrological gradients in the field is affected by soil moisture status and by root competition shows that hydrological niche segregation could potentially originate in the seedling stage. The methodology, applied at a larger scale and followed-through for a longer period, could be used to determine whether species are differently affected by soil moistur

Recovering lost hay meadows: An overview of floodplain-meadow restoration projects in England and Wales

Restoration of natural habitats plays an important role in nature conservation. After 30 years of efforts to restore species-rich floodplain meadows, most of which had been lost to alternative land uses during the preceding half century, the extent and level of restoration success in the UK remained unknown. A three-year survey of floodplain meadow-restoration projects across England and Wales was completed from 2016 to 2018. It allowed evaluation of restoration progress on 163 sites nationwide. Restoration success was measured by floristic composition, species richness and balance of functional types in plant communities. To identify factors affecting restoration success, their state prior to restoration, restoration technique, site ownership and quality of ongoing management were analysed. The survey revealed that 25 % of restoration sites demonstrated expected success, achieved mainly by private landowners. Restoration failed or showed very poor progress on another 15 % of sites, managed predominantly by public or charitable organisations. The remaining sixty percent of the sites showed some signs of improvement. The degree of restoration success showed no significant correlation to the state of the site prior to restoration, or to the restoration method applied. Ownership of the site and site management both influenced restoration success. The degree of success appeared to depend on the consistency and sufficiency of the restoration management

Depleting soil nutrients through frequency and timing of hay cutting on floodplain meadows for habitat restoration and nutrient neutrality

Floodplain meadows support a high level of botanical diversity because the nutrient inputs from flood sediments are balanced by nutrient offtake via an annual hay harvest, leading to nutrient neutrality. This prevents a build-up of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) and depletes excess nutrients, which mitigates eutrophication in catchment areas and prevents reductions of biodiversity through competitive exclusion. A replicated field trial was undertaken in floodplain meadows in central England, with the aim of comparing the nutrient offtake potential throughout the growing season with a single or a double-cut system, and determining when haymaking should occur to maximise nutrient offtake and nutritional value of the hay. Additionally, farmer perspectives were gathered to investigate the practicality of implementing a second hay cut. The results revealed that a single summer hay cut may be sufficient to balance nutrient inputs. However, a double-cut, where a second harvest replaces autumn grazing, has the potential to actively lower N and P levels, removing 8.69 g m−2 N and 0.80 g m−2 P. Maximising time between cuts in a double-cut system provides the greatest opportunity for nutrient removal. Temperature is a key driver of plant growth. The relationship between accumulated thermal time and calendar date in central England has advanced by around two weeks between 1961–1990 and 1991–2020. Delayed hay cutting under agri-environment scheme restrictions may be increasingly detrimental to botanical diversity with advancing seasons, due to lower nutrient removal under a single-cut system, and increased competitive exclusion. Taking a first cut at the mid-summer peak in offtake potential, currently 20–30 June in central England, and a second cut in the autumn offers an opportunity to deplete excess nutrients. Whilst farmers identify practical and financial concerns that may make a second cut prohibitive in some cases, this could be overcome by, e.g., demonstrating the higher-than-expected nutritional value of hay from a second cut

Kinect vs. low-cost inertial sensing For gesture recognition

In this paper, we investigate efficient recognition of human gestures / movements from multimedia and multimodal data, including the Microsoft Kinect and translational and rotational acceleration and velocity from wearable inertial sensors. We firstly present a system that automatically classifies a large range of activities (17 different gestures) using a random forest decision tree. Our system can achieve near real time recognition by appropriately selecting the sensors that led to the greatest contributing factor for a particular task. Features extracted from multimodal sensor data were used to train and evaluate a customized classifier. This novel technique is capable of successfully classifying var- ious gestures with up to 91 % overall accuracy on a publicly available data set. Secondly we investigate a wide range of different motion capture modalities and compare their results in terms of gesture recognition accu- racy using our proposed approach. We conclude that gesture recognition can be effectively performed by considering an approach that overcomes many of the limitations associated with the Kinect and potentially paves the way for low-cost gesture recognition in unconstrained environments