Recent Developments in Criminal Law in Nova Scotia

Judicial examination of the criminal process in Canada generally, and Nova Scotia in particular continues to grow. The consequent explosion of technical law, which some would regard as an implosion, places the academic writer on the horns of a dilemma when faced with the task of reviewing recent developments in the Nova Scotia criminal process. On the one hand, the writer may compress and omit detail in order to cover adequately developments in such widely disparate areas as murder and power to arrest. On the other hand, coverage may be sacrificed to detailed discussion of the law and its implications in a smaller number of selected areas. We have chosen the latter course. We do not, however, intend to imply that the topics discussed hereunder were selected at random. We have chosen to focus on three areas of recent development which in our view, will significantly affect the future course of criminal law. They are the struggle to develop a rational sentencing policy, the right to counsel in breathalyzer cases, and ignorance of law as a mitigation, if not outright defence, to certain offences. We join, of course, many people in selecting sentencing law. It is a dynamic area of law currently undergoing reexamination all across the country

First record of Essigella californica (Essig, 1909) (Hemiptera: Aphididae) in Argentina

Una búsqueda de pulgones sobre especies de Pinus se realizó en diferentes provincias de la Argentina. La identificación del material colectado permite citar por primera vez para este país Essigella californica (Essig), hallado en cinco provincias. Se presentan aspectos biológicos y morfológicos que permiten separar los tres géneros de la tribu Eulachnini (subfamilia Lachninae) presentes ahora en la Argentina: Cinara, Eulachnus y EssigellaAphids were sampled on several Pinus species in some localities of Argentina. Essigella californica was caught for the first time in Argentina, in five provinces. Aspects of its biology and distribution are presented. Biological and morphologic aspects that allow to separate three genera of the tribe Eulachnini (subfamily Lachninae) present now in Argentina: Cinara, Eulachnus and Essigella) are provided.Fil: Ortego, Jaime. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (Argentina). Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Mendoza.Fil: Mier Durante, M. Pilar. Universidad de León. Departamento de Biodiversidad y Gestión Ambienta

Efficient Transport Protocol for Networked Haptics Applications

The performance of haptic application is highly sensitive to communication delays and losses of data. It implies several constraints in developing networked haptic applications. This paper describes a new internet protocol called Efficient Transport Protocol (ETP), which aims at developing distributed interactive applications. TCP and UDP are transport protocols commonly used in any kind of networked communication, but they are not focused on real time application. This new protocol is focused on reducing roundtrip time (RTT) and inter packet gap (IPG). ETP is, therefore, optimized for interactive applications which are based on processes that are continuously exchanging data.ETP protocol is based on a state machine that decides the best strategies for optimizing RTT and IPG. Experiments have been carried out in order to compare this new protocol and UDP

First record in Argentina of Drepanosiphum oregonense Granovsky (Hemiptera: Aphididae) found on maples (Sapindaceae)

Se informa del hallazgo del áfido Drepanosiphum oregonense Granovsky (Hemiptera: Aphididae) sobre árboles de Acer pseudoplatanus y A. campestre (Sapindaceae) en Argentina lo que constituye el primer registro de la especie y del género Drepanosiphum Koch en Argentina y el segundo en Sudamérica.The finding in Argentina of the aphid Drepanosiphum oregonense on "maple tree" Acer pseudoplatanus and A. campestre is reported. This report constitutes the first record of this species and of the genus Drepanosiphum Koch from Argentina and the second one from South America.Fil: Ortego, Jaime. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (Argentina). Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Mendoza.Fil: Olave, Anabel. Universidad Nacional del Comahue. Facultad de Ciencias AgrariasFil: Mier Durante, M. Pilar. Universidad de León. Departamento de Biodiversidad y Gestión Ambienta

Hierarchical improvement of foreground segmentation masks in background subtraction

A plethora of algorithms have been defined for foreground segmentation, a fundamental stage for many computer vision applications. In this work, we propose a post-processing framework to improve foreground segmentation performance of background subtraction algorithms. We define a hierarchical framework for extending segmented foreground pixels to undetected foreground object areas and for removing erroneously segmented foreground. Firstly, we create a motion-aware hierarchical image segmentation of each frame that prevents merging foreground and background image regions. Then, we estimate the quality of the foreground mask through the fitness of the binary regions in the mask and the hierarchy of segmented regions. Finally, the improved foreground mask is obtained as an optimal labeling by jointly exploiting foreground quality and spatial color relations in a pixel-wise fully-connected Conditional Random Field. Experiments are conducted over four large and heterogeneous datasets with varied challenges (CDNET2014, LASIESTA, SABS and BMC) demonstrating the capability of the proposed framework to improve background subtraction resultsThis work was partially supported by the Spanish Government (HAVideo, TEC2014-53176-R

Long-Term Stationary Object Detection Based on Spatio-Temporal Change Detection

Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. D. Ortego, J. C. SanMiguel and J. M. Martínez, "Long-Term Stationary Object Detection Based on Spatio-Temporal Change Detection," in IEEE Signal Processing Letters, vol. 22, no. 12, pp. 2368-2372, Dec. 2015. doi: 10.1109/LSP.2015.2482598We present a block-wise approach to detect stationary objects based on spatio-Temporal change detection. First, block candidates are extracted by filtering out consecutive blocks containing moving objects. Then, an online clustering approach groups similar blocks at each spatial location over time via statistical variation of pixel ratios. The stability changes are identified by analyzing the relationships between the most repeated clusters at regular sampling instants. Finally, stationary objects are detected as those stability changes that exceed an alarm time and have not been visualized before. Unlike previous approaches making use of Background Subtraction, the proposed approach does not require foreground segmentation and provides robustness to illumination changes, crowds and intermittent object motion. The experiments over an heterogeneous dataset demonstrate the ability of the proposed approach for short-and long-Term operation while overcoming challenging issues.This work was partially supported by the Spanish Government (HA-Video TEC2014-5317-R) and by the TEC department (UAM)

Rejection based multipath reconstruction for background estimation in video sequences with stationary objects

This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Computer Vision and Image Understanding. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Computer Vision and Image Understanding, VOL147 (2016) DOI 10.1016/j.cviu.2016.03.012Background estimation in video consists in extracting a foreground-free image from a set of training frames. Moving and stationary objects may affect the background visibility, thus invalidating the assumption of many related literature where background is the temporal dominant data. In this paper, we present a temporal-spatial block-level approach for background estimation in video to cope with moving and stationary objects. First, a Temporal Analysis module obtains a compact representation of the training data by motion filtering and dimensionality reduction. Then, a threshold-free hierarchical clustering determines a set of candidates to represent the background for each spatial location (block). Second, a Spatial Analysis module iteratively reconstructs the background using these candidates. For each spatial location, multiple reconstruction hypotheses (paths) are explored to obtain its neighboring locations by enforcing inter-block similarities and intra-block homogeneity constraints in terms of color discontinuity, color dissimilarity and variability. The experimental results show that the proposed approach outperforms the related state-of-the-art over challenging video sequences in presence of moving and stationary objects.This work was partially supported by the Spanish Government (HAVideo, TEC2014-53176-R) and by the TEC department (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)

Aphis prima sp. n. (Hemiptera, Aphididae), de Argentina y Chile, primera especie de áfido colectada en el Mundo sobre Schoepfiaceae (Santalales)

The study of the first samples of aphids collected on Schoepfiaceae (Santalales) is presented. Aphis prima sp. n. is described from viviparous females collected in the Argentina provinces of Neuquén, Río Negro and Santa Cruz and in Chilean region of Maule on plants of genera Quinchamalium and Arjona, which are endemic to South America. The new species is characterized by the presence of marginal tubercles on 5 or 6 abdominal segments, tibiae homogeneously pigmented and triangular cauda in both apterae and alatae, secondary sensoria on antennal segment III in apterae, and once-branched forewing media in alatae. This last is a very rare characteristic in subfamily Aphidinae. urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:4D8F988D-9D9E-4E67-BA41-037C954C3F20Se presenta el estudio de las primeras muestras de pulgones recolectadas en Schoepfiaceae (Santalales). Aphis prima sp. n. se describe a partir de hembras vivíparas colectadas en localidades de las provincias argentinas de Neuquén, Río Negro y Santa Cruz y en la región chilena del Maule sobre plantas de los géneros Quinchamalium y Arjona, que son endémicos de América del Sur. La nueva especie se caracteriza por la presencia de papilas marginales en 5 o 6 segmentos abdominales, tibias pigmentadas homogéneamente y cauda triangular tanto en ápteras como en aladas, de sensorios secundarios en el segmento antenal III en ápteras y de la vena medial de las alas anteriores ramificada una sola vez en aladas. El último carácter de los mencionados es muy raro en la subfamilia Aphidinae

Dos nuevas especies de Uroleucon Mordvilko, 1914 (Hemiptera, Aphididae) de la región de Aysén del General Carlos Ibáñez del Campo (Chile)

Two species of Uroleucon (Hem., Aphididae, Aphidinae, Macrosiphini) are described from specimens collected on South American indigenous composites in the Aysén del General Carlos Ibáñez del Campo region (Chile), which is located between parallels 43º 38’ 22” S and 49º 09’ 50” S. Uroleucon chiliotrichi sp. n. is described from apterous viviparous females found on Chiliotrichum diffusum. Uroleucon amigoi sp. n. is described from apterous and alate viviparous females and oviparous females found on Adenocaulon chilense. Differences between these and morphologically similar South American species are presented. urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:980349B5-EDBA-4FBC-8308-1ECE0215825CSe describen dos especies de Uroleucon (Hem. Aphididae, Aphidinae, Macrosiphini) a partir de especímenes colectados sobre compuestas indígenas sudamericanas en la región de Aysén del General Carlos Ibáñez del Campo (Chile), la cual está situada entre los paralelos 43º 38’ 22” S y 49º 09’ 50” S. Uroleucon chiliotrichi sp. n. se describe a partir de hembras vivíparas ápteras recogidas sobre Chiliotrichum diffusum. Uroleucon amigoi sp. n. se describe a partir de hembras vivíparas ápteras y aladas y de hembras ovíparas recogidas sobre Adenocaulon chilense. Se exponen las diferencias de ambas nuevas especies con las especies sudamericanas de Uroleucon más parecidas a ellas