A toolbox for animal call recognition

Monitoring the natural environment is increasingly important as habit degradation and climate change reduce theworld’s biodiversity.We have developed software tools and applications to assist ecologists with the collection and analysis of acoustic data at large spatial and temporal scales.One of our key objectives is automated animal call recognition, and our approach has three novel attributes. First, we work with raw environmental audio, contaminated by noise and artefacts and containing calls that vary greatly in volume depending on the animal’s proximity to the microphone. Second, initial experimentation suggested that no single recognizer could dealwith the enormous variety of calls. Therefore, we developed a toolbox of generic recognizers to extract invariant features for each call type. Third, many species are cryptic and offer little data with which to train a recognizer. Many popular machine learning methods require large volumes of training and validation data and considerable time and expertise to prepare. Consequently we adopt bootstrap techniques that can be initiated with little data and refined subsequently. In this paper, we describe our recognition tools and present results for real ecological problems

Alpha desynchronization during empathy for pain is modulated by racial group membership

Obwohl die Literatur der Sozialpsychologie diskutiert, dass rassistische Stereotype und Vorurteile in Verbindung stehen mit verminderter Empathie, gibt es wenige Studien im Bereich der Neuropsychologie, die diesen Zusammenhang untersuchen. 37 weiß-häutigen Verspersonen wurden Videos präsentiert, die weiß-häutige oder schwarz-häutige Hände zeigten, welche entweder von einer Nadel gestochen (Schmerz-Bedingung) oder von einem Q-tip berührt wurden (Kein-Schmerz-Bedingung), während die Desynchronisationen im Alpha Bereich (7-14 Hz) gemessen wurde. 32 Versuchspersonen sahen die gleichen Stimuli wie die anderen 37 Versuchspersonen, jedoch waren in dieser EEG-Session die Hände digital violett eingefärbt, um den Faktor der visuellen Familiarität mit den Stimuli zu kontrollieren. In Übereinstimmung mit dem Paradigma ‘Empathie für Schmerz’ löste die Schmerz-Bedingung eine größere Alpha Desynchronisation aus als die Kein-Schmerz-Bedingung in frontalen, zentralen, parietalen und okzipitalen Regionen. Diese ‘Empathie für Schmerz’-Antwort war signifikant niedriger für original gefärbte schwarze Stimuli als für original gefärbte weiße Stimuli in zentralen, parietalen und okzipitalen Regionen. Da die ‘Empathie für Schmerz’-Antwort in zentralen Regionen ähnlich war für original gefärbte weiße Stimuli, violett gefärbte weiße Stimuli und violett gefärbte schwarze Stimuli, aber niedriger für original gefärbte schwarze Stimuli, hatte der Faktor der visuellen Familiarität keinen Einfluss darauf, dass ‘Empathie für Schmerz’ von ethnischer Gruppenzugehörigkeit moduliert wird. Wir argumentieren, dass die von uns gemessene Alpha Desynchronisation als somatosensorische Alpha Desynchronisation interpretiert werden kann, da die Schmerzstimuli von sich aus somatosensorischer Natur sind, da die somatosensorische Desynchronisation vor allem in einem Zeitintervall gefunden wurde, in dem keine Bewegung in den Videos zu sehen war, und da andere Studien aus unserem Forschungsgebiet ebenfalls die Interpretation von somatosensorischen Oszillationen und somatosensorischer Desynchronisation verteidigen. Die ‘Empathie für Schmerz’-Antwort korrelierte mit Einschätzungen der Schmerzintensität und der Unannehmlichkeit bezüglich der EEG Stimuli, als auch mit einem explizit gemessenen Maß des persönlichen Disstresses. Der elektrophsyiologische Rassistische Bias für ‘Empathie für Schmerz’ korrelierte nicht mit impliziten oder expliziten Maßen des Rassistischen Bias. Jedoch korrelierte der auf Grund der Einschätzungen der Schmerzintensität und der Unannehmlichkeit bezüglich der EEG Stimuli berechnete Rassistische Bias mit dem Bevorzugen von weiß-häutigen Menschen und mit der Einstellung gegenüber schwarz-häutigen Menschen.Although social psychology argues that racial stereotypes and prejudice are related to less empathy, studies examining this relationship in the field of neuropsychology are rare. 37 White participants were presented videos showing White or Black hands being either penetrated by a needle (pain condition) or touched by a Q-tip (no pain condition) while we measured desynchronization of the alpha range (7-14 Hz) employing EEG. 32 participants were presented the same stimuli as the other 37 participants, with the difference that in this EEG session the hands were digitally colored violet in order to control for the factor of visual familiarity with the stimuli. In line with the paradigm ‘empathy for pain’, pain conditions elicited greater alpha desynchronization than did no pain conditions in the frontal, central, parietal and occipital area. This empathy for pain response was significantly lower for original colored Black stimuli than original colored White stimuli in the central, parietal and occipital area. Since in the central area this empathy for pain response was similar for original colored White, unfamiliar violet colored White and unfamiliar violet colored Black stimuli, but lower for original colored Black stimuli, the visual familiarity with the stimuli did not influence that empathy for pain was modulated by racial group membership. We argue that the alpha desynchronization we assess can be interpreted as somatosensory alpha desynchronization, because pain stimuli are somatosensory in their nature, because somatosensory desynchronization was mainly found in a time interval in which no motion is present in the videos and because other studies from our research field also defend interpretations of suppressed somatosensory oscillations and somatosensory desynchronization. The empathy for pain response correlated with painfulness and unpleasantness ratings of the EEG stimuli as well as with an explicit measurement of personal distress. The electrophysiological racial bias for empathy for pain did not correlate with implicit or explicit measurements of racial bias. However, a racial bias calculated based on painfulness and unpleasantness ratings of the EEG stimuli correlated with White preference and feelings towards Blacks

Complete Genome Sequence of the Livestock-Associated Methicillin-Resistant Strain Staphylococcus aureus subsp. aureus 08S00974 (Sequence Type 398)

We report here the complete genome sequence of the livestock-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus strain 08S00974 from sequence type 398 (ST398 LA-MRSA) isolated from a fatting pig at a farm in Germany

The Care of Elderly People in Vietnam

The population ageing as an unprecedented phenomenon in the history of the humanity was considered. It is slow, but persistent and, according to the opinion of the experts, it is irreversible, at least for the next hundred years. Population ageing has a profound impact on economic growth, investment and labor market, the welfare of every citizen of any country. Changes in the structure of the population in terms of aging concerns every person, society, country and the international community. The increase in the number of elderly people determines the necessity of working out new strategies for the stable development of each country in the world. Vietnam is no exception in this case. Population ageing is a contemporary challenge for the worldwide society. It requires the development of the effective strategic and tactic decisions and new systems of care for elder people, aimed at transformation of the population ageing challenges into opportunities, which provide people’s welfare. The main aim of the study is to determine the ways of perfection of the care system of the Vietnamese older people. The methods: system analysis of statistic data about the demographic structure of the Vietnamese population and the morbidity structure of the Vietnamese seniors; situation analyses. The results: specific features and conditions of the system of care of elderly people in Vietnam are studied. The analysis of the main factors that affect the system of care of the older people is conducted. The conclusions and proposals to enhance the system of care of the older people are drawn

Complete Genome Sequence of the Disinfectant Susceptibility Testing Reference Strain Staphylococcus aureus subsp. aureus ATCC 6538

We report here the complete genome sequence of the methicillin-sensitive Staphylococcus aureus subsp. aureus strain ATCC 6538 (FDA 209, DSM 799, WDCM 00032, and NCTC 10788)

Bichromatic Perfect Matchings with Crossings

We consider bichromatic point sets with $n$ red and $n$ blue points and study straight-line bichromatic perfect matchings on them. We show that every such point set in convex position admits a matching with at least $\frac{3n^2}{8}-\frac{n}{2}+c$ crossings, for some $-\frac{1}{2} \leq c \leq \frac{1}{8}$. This bound is tight since for any $k> \frac{3n^2}{8} -\frac{n}{2}+\frac{1}{8}$ there exist bichromatic point sets that do not admit any perfect matching with $k$ crossings.Comment: Appears in the Proceedings of the 31st International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2023

Retrospective evaluation of landslide susceptibility maps and review of validation practice

Despite the widespread application of landslide susceptibility analyses, there is hardly any information about whether or not the occurrence of recent landslide events was correctly predicted by the relevant susceptibility maps. Hence, the objective of this study is to evaluate four landslide susceptibility maps retrospectively in a landslide-prone area of the Swabian Alb (Germany). The predictive performance of each susceptibility map is evaluated based on a landslide event triggered by heavy rainfalls in the year 2013. The retrospective evaluation revealed significant variations in the predictive accuracy of the analyzed studies. Both completely erroneous as well as very precise predictions were observed. These differences are less attributed to the applied statistical method and more to the quality and comprehensiveness of the used input data. Furthermore, a literature review of 50 peer-reviewed articles showed that most landslide susceptibility analyses achieve very high validation scores. 73% of the analyzed studies achieved an area under curve (AUC) value of at least 80%. These high validation scores, however, do not reflect the high uncertainty in statistical susceptibility analysis. Thus, the quality assessment of landslide susceptibility maps should not only comprise an index-based, quantitative validation, but also an additional qualitative plausibility check considering local geomorphological characteristics and local landslide mechanisms. Finally, the proposed retrospective evaluation approach cannot only help to assess the quality of susceptibility maps and demonstrate the reliability of such statistical methods, but also identify issues that will enable the susceptibility maps to be improved in the future