New evidence for the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition interval in the Danube Gorges of the Balkans

Over the past few years, new investigations in northern Bulgaria at the site of Bacho Kiro have revived the likelihood that the "Danube corridor" route served as a primary axis for the dispersal of modern humans into Europe. The association of modern humans with material remains of Protoaurignacian and Aurignacian provenance and/or transitional industries, would push the start of the dispersal across this region to 47 ka. Furthermore, fossil remains from the cave site of Peștera cu Oase in the Romanian hinterland of the Danube Gorges area of the north-central Balkans provide genetic evidence of admixtures between Neanderthal and modern human populations that might have taken place precisely along this transitory corridor. Yet, there is still relatively little in the way of evidence about, on the one hand, the last Middle Palaeolithic, and by proxy Neanderthal, and, on the other hand, the Initial and Early Upper Palaeolithic, and by proxy modern human, settlement of the region. Our recent investigations in the Danube Gorges area have brought to light two new sites, Tabula Traiana Cave and Dubočka-Kozja Cave, with Middle to Upper Palaeolithic deposits. The application of modern standards of recovery and recording have enabled us to apply a suite of cutting edge and state-of-the-art methodologies backed by extensive radiometric dating of these sites’ deposits. In this paper, we will present most recently obtained radiocarbon accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) measurements, which allow us to discuss the chronological attribution of different levels of the two sites with more certainty. We will also offer further details regarding the knapped stone assemblages, including the results of use-wear analyses on a select number of artefacts. Finally, this evidence is integrated with the results obtained through the analyses of the faunal assemblages and by characterizing taphonomic factors that impacted their formation. Complementary data come from a relatively large pool of unidentifiable bone samples analyzed through the application of proteomic fingerprinting known as the Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS), which has allowed us to better characterize the animal taxa composition of the faunal assemblages from the two sites and identify agents of bone accumulation. The results indicate a late continuation of the Middle Palaeolithic presence characterized by a Levallois-derived lithic industry at one of the two sites and the broadly contemporaneous appearance of the Early Upper Palaeolithic tools in the lithic assemblage of the other site. We discuss how the locations of the two sites in this specific landscape zone along the Danube might have influenced their respective uses

COST292 experimental framework for TRECVID 2006

In this paper we give an overview of the four TRECVID tasks submitted by COST292, European network of institutions in the area of semantic multimodal analysis and retrieval of digital video media. Initially, we present shot boundary evaluation method based on results merged using a confidence measure. The two SB detectors user here are presented, one of the Technical University of Delft and one of the LaBRI, University of Bordeaux 1, followed by the description of the merging algorithm. The high-level feature extraction task comprises three separate systems. The first system, developed by the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) utilises a set of MPEG-7 low-level descriptors and Latent Semantic Analysis to detect the features. The second system, developed by Bilkent University, uses a Bayesian classifier trained with a "bag of subregions" for each keyframe. The third system by the Middle East Technical University (METU) exploits textual information in the video using character recognition methodology. The system submitted to the search task is an interactive retrieval application developed by Queen Mary, University of London, University of Zilina and ITI from Thessaloniki, combining basic retrieval functionalities in various modalities (i.e. visual, audio, textual) with a user interface supporting the submission of queries using any combination of the available retrieval tools and the accumulation of relevant retrieval results over all queries submitted by a single user during a specified time interval. Finally, the rushes task submission comprises a video summarisation and browsing system specifically designed to intuitively and efficiently presents rushes material in video production environment. This system is a result of joint work of University of Bristol, Technical University of Delft and LaBRI, University of Bordeaux 1

Recent landform evolution in Serbia

Serbia can be divided into two major geographical units: the Vojvodina Plain and the southern hills and mountains. In the plain fluvial and aeolian processes and landforms on loess are typical, while south of the Sava and Danube rivers, sheet and gully erosion, mass movements, fluvial, karstic, and fluvio-karstic landform evolution are most influential in shaping the present topography. Among the now inactive geomorphic processes tectonic movements, volcanic activity, coastal, glacial, and aeolian evolution have left behind traces still detectable in modern topography. Some examples of rapid topographic change resulting in the most spectacular landforms (landslides, rockfalls, natural bridges, and rock pinnacles) are presented and described in detail from various regions of Serbia

Structural rehabilitations with Ultra High Performance Fibre Reinforced concretes

This study was designed to examine Allium schoenoprasum tissue culture organs antioxidant and scavenging activity and to make a comparison between Allium schoenoprasum cultivated plant and Allium schoenoprasum tissue culture organs antioxidant activity. This study reports the results on the root, stalk and leaf antioxidant enzyme activities (superoxide dismutase, catalase, guaiacol peroxidase and glutathione peroxidase), reduced glutathione quantity, flavonoids and soluble protein contents and quantities of malonyldialdehyde and. OH radical. In Allium schoenoprasum tissue culture organs the total antioxidant capacity was determined by the FRAP method and scavenger activity by the DPPH method. The present results indicated that the crude extract of Allium schoenoprasum tissue culture exhibited antioxidant and scavenging abilities in all investigated plant parts, especially in the roots. According to our results, the tissue culture plants exhibited the highest activities in the roots in contrast to the cultivated plants where highest activities were observed in the leaves. Copyright (C) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.nul

COST292 experimental framework for TRECVID 2006

In this paper we give an overview of the four TRECVID tasks submitted by COST292, European network of institutions in the area of semantic multimodal analysis and retrieval of digital video media. Initially, we present shot boundary evaluation method based on results merged using a confidence measure. The two SB detectors user here are presented, one of the Technical University of Delft and one of the LaBRI, University of Bordeaux 1, followed by the description of the merging algorithm. The high-level feature extraction task comprises three separate systems. The first system, developed by the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) utilises a set of MPEG-7 low-level descriptors and Latent Semantic Analysis to detect the features. The second system, developed by Bilkent University, uses a Bayesian classifier trained with a "bag of subregions" for each keyframe. The third system by the Middle East Technical University (METU) exploits textual information in the video using character recognition methodology. The system submitted to the search task is an interactive retrieval application developed by Queen Mary, University of London, University of Zilina and ITI from Thessaloniki, combining basic retrieval functionalities in various modalities (i.e. visual, audio, textual) with a user interface supporting the submission of queries using any combination of the available retrieval tools and the accumulation of relevant retrieval results over all queries submitted by a single user during a specified time interval. Finally, the rushes task submission comprises a video summarisation and browsing system specifically designed to intuitively and efficiently presents rushes material in video production environment. This system is a result of joint work of University of Bristol, Technical University of Delft and LaBRI, University of Bordeaux 1

Adaptive delivery of immersive 3D multi-view video over the Internet

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11042-016-3475-2.The increase in Internet bandwidth and the developments in 3D video technology have paved the way for the delivery of 3D Multi-View Video (MVV) over the Internet. However, large amounts of data and dynamic network conditions result in frequent network congestion, which may prevent video packets from being delivered on time. As a consequence, the 3D video experience may well be degraded unless content-aware precautionary mechanisms and adaptation methods are deployed. In this work, a novel adaptive MVV streaming method is introduced which addresses the future generation 3D immersive MVV experiences with multi-view displays. When the user experiences network congestion, making it necessary to perform adaptation, the rate-distortion optimum set of views that are pre-determined by the server, are truncated from the delivered MVV streams. In order to maintain high Quality of Experience (QoE) service during the frequent network congestion, the proposed method involves the calculation of low-overhead additional metadata that is delivered to the client. The proposed adaptive 3D MVV streaming solution is tested using the MPEG Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (MPEG-DASH) standard. Both extensive objective and subjective evaluations are presented, showing that the proposed method provides significant quality enhancement under the adverse network conditions

Local adaptation (mostly) remains local: reassessing environmental associations of climate-related candidate SNPs in Arabidopsis halleri

NoNumerous landscape genomic studies have identified single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and genes potentially involved in local adaptation. Rarely, it has been explicitly evaluated whether these environmental associations also hold true beyond the populations studied. We tested whether putatively adaptive SNPs in Arabidopsis halleri (Brassicaceae), characterized in a previous study investigating local adaptation to a highly heterogeneous environment, show the same environmental associations in an independent, geographically enlarged set of 18 populations. We analysed new SNP data of 444 plants with the same methodology (partial Mantel tests, PMTs) as in the original study and additionally with a latent factor mixed model (LFMM) approach. Of the 74 candidate SNPs, 41% (PMTs) and 51% (LFMM) were associated with environmental factors in the independent data set. However, only 5% (PMTs) and 15% (LFMM) of the associations showed the same environment-allele relationships as in the original study. In total, we found 11 genes (31%) containing the same association in the original and independent data set. These can be considered prime candidate genes for environmental adaptation at a broader geographical scale. Our results suggest that selection pressures in highly heterogeneous alpine environments vary locally and signatures of selection are likely to be population-specific. Thus, genotype-by-environment interactions underlying adaptation are more heterogeneous and complex than is often assumed, which might represent a problem when testing for adaptation at specific loci

A meta-analysis of molecular marker genetic datasets for eastern Africa trees supports the utility of potential natural vegetation maps for planning climate-smart restoration initiatives

Forest and woodland landscape restoration is a key undertaking of renewed interest for forestry and conservation practitioners, but is hampered by the lack of information on the distributions of tree species and of patterns of intra-specific genetic variation. Through the first meta-analysis of its type, we here tested the utility of a high-resolution potential natural vegetation (PNV) map for eastern Africa (vegetationmap4africa) for supporting restoration activities by comparison with 20 molecular marker genetic datasets, identified through literature review and other sources, for ten indigenous tree species. Our analysis indicated that site suitability and stability values from PNV-based ecological niche modelling involving current and past climate scenarios were positively related to population genetic diversity values revealed by molecular markers, supporting the value of PNV maps for the practical planning of restoration activities accounting for anthropogenic climate change. Furthermore, population pairwise genetic divergence was strongly positively correlated with population pairwise geographic distances for most datasets, indicating generalizable sampling implications for tree genetic resource conservation in the region. Population pairwise genetic divergence was however not well explained by sampling across PNV and wider physiognomic types, possibly due to molecular markers’ adaptive neutrality and high rates of recombination in trees, among other factors. Patterns of neutral molecular marker variation are thus no substitute for trials of adaptive variation for confirming or refuting the utility of vegetation boundaries in defining tree planting zonesPeer Revie