Validation of \u3ci\u3eChrysina valentini\u3c/i\u3e Zubov and Ivshin, 2019 (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Rutelinae) by morphometric and cuticular reflectance analyses

Micromorphometric analyses of genital capsules and comparison of adult cuticular reflectance of two species of Chrysina Kirby (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Rutelinae) support the status of C. valentini Zubov and Ivshin, 2019 as a valid species. Compared with its closest relative C. optima (Bates, 1888), capsules of C. valentini are proportionately wider at the base of the parameres than those of C. optima, and taper toward the apex more abruptly. Reflectance of C. valentini under natural light appears slightly greenish while C. optima is uniformly reddish. The number of teeth on the protibia and the shape of the mesosternal process, characters cited by Zubov et al. (2019) to distinguish the two species, did not prove reliable. Resumen. Los análisis micromorfométricos de cápsulas genitales y la comparación de la reflectancia cuti­cular adulta de dos especies de Chrysina Kirby (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Rutelinae) apoyan a C. valentini Zubov e Ivshin, 2019 como especies válidas. En comparación con su pariente más cercano C. optima (Bates, 1888), las cápsulas de C. valentini son proporcionalmente más anchas en la base de los parameres que las de C. optima, y se estrechan hacia el ápice más abruptamente. La reflectancia de C. valentini bajo luz natural apa­rece ligeramente verdosa mientras que C. optima es uniformemente rojiza. Número de dientes en la tibia de la pata delantera y forma de la apófisis mesoesternal, caracteres citados por Zubov et al. (2019) para distinguir las dos especies, no resultó confiable

Validation of \u3ci\u3eChrysina valentini\u3c/i\u3e Zubov and Ivshin, 2019 (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Rutelinae) by morphometric and cuticular reflectance analyses

Micromorphometric analyses of genital capsules and comparison of adult cuticular reflectance of two species of Chrysina Kirby (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Rutelinae) support the status of C. valentini Zubov and Ivshin, 2019 as a valid species. Compared with its closest relative C. optima (Bates, 1888), capsules of C. valentini are proportionately wider at the base of the parameres than those of C. optima, and taper toward the apex more abruptly. Reflectance of C. valentini under natural light appears slightly greenish while C. optima is uniformly reddish. The number of teeth on the protibia and the shape of the mesosternal process, characters cited by Zubov et al. (2019) to distinguish the two species, did not prove reliable. Resumen. Los análisis micromorfométricos de cápsulas genitales y la comparación de la reflectancia cuti­cular adulta de dos especies de Chrysina Kirby (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Rutelinae) apoyan a C. valentini Zubov e Ivshin, 2019 como especies válidas. En comparación con su pariente más cercano C. optima (Bates, 1888), las cápsulas de C. valentini son proporcionalmente más anchas en la base de los parameres que las de C. optima, y se estrechan hacia el ápice más abruptamente. La reflectancia de C. valentini bajo luz natural apa­rece ligeramente verdosa mientras que C. optima es uniformemente rojiza. Número de dientes en la tibia de la pata delantera y forma de la apófisis mesoesternal, caracteres citados por Zubov et al. (2019) para distinguir las dos especies, no resultó confiable

Randomized trial of polychromatic blue-enriched light for circadian phase shifting, melatonin suppression, and alerting responses.

Wavelength comparisons have indicated that circadian phase-shifting and enhancement of subjective and EEG-correlates of alertness have a higher sensitivity to short wavelength visible light. The aim of the current study was to test whether polychromatic light enriched in the blue portion of the spectrum (17,000 K) has increased efficacy for melatonin suppression, circadian phase-shifting, and alertness as compared to an equal photon density exposure to a standard white polychromatic light (4000 K). Twenty healthy participants were studied in a time-free environment for 7 days. The protocol included two baseline days followed by a 26-h constant routine (CR1) to assess initial circadian phase. Following CR1, participants were exposed to a full-field fluorescent light (1 × 10 14 photons/cm 2 /s, 4000 K or 17,000 K, n = 10/condition) for 6.5 h during the biological night. Following an 8 h recovery sleep, a second 30-h CR was performed. Melatonin suppression was assessed from the difference during the light exposure and the corresponding clock time 24 h earlier during CR1. Phase-shifts were calculated from the clock time difference in dim light melatonin onset time (DLMO) between CR1 and CR2. Blue-enriched light caused significantly greater suppression of melatonin than standard light ((mean ± SD) 70.9 ± 19.6% and 42.8 ± 29.1%, respectively, p \u3c 0.05). There was no significant difference in the magnitude of phase delay shifts. Blue-enriched light significantly improved subjective alertness (p \u3c 0.05) but no differences were found for objective alertness. These data contribute to the optimization of the short wavelength-enriched spectra and intensities needed for circadian, neuroendocrine and neurobehavioral regulation

Linking phytoplankton community metabolism to the individual size distribution

This is the final version of the article. Available from the publisher via the DOI in this recordQuantifying variation in ecosystem metabolism is critical to predicting the impacts of environmental change on the carbon cycle. We used a metabolic scaling framework to investigate how body size and temperature influence phytoplankton community metabolism. We tested this framework using phytoplankton sampled from an outdoor mesocosm experiment, where communities had been either experimentally warmed (+ 4 °C) for 10 years or left at ambient temperature. Warmed and ambient phytoplankton communities differed substantially in their taxonomic composition and size structure. Despite this, the response of primary production and community respiration to long- and short-term warming could be estimated using a model that accounted for the size- and temperature dependence of individual metabolism, and the community abundance-body size distribution. This work demonstrates that the key metabolic fluxes that determine the carbon balance of planktonic ecosystems can be approximated using metabolic scaling theory, with knowledge of the individual size distribution and environmental temperature.NERC. Grant Number: PASW06

DoctorEye: A clinically driven multifunctional platform, for accurate processing of tumors in medical images

Copyright @ Skounakis et al.This paper presents a novel, open access interactive platform for 3D medical image analysis, simulation and visualization, focusing in oncology images. The platform was developed through constant interaction and feedback from expert clinicians integrating a thorough analysis of their requirements while having an ultimate goal of assisting in accurately delineating tumors. It allows clinicians not only to work with a large number of 3D tomographic datasets but also to efficiently annotate multiple regions of interest in the same session. Manual and semi-automatic segmentation techniques combined with integrated correction tools assist in the quick and refined delineation of tumors while different users can add different components related to oncology such as tumor growth and simulation algorithms for improving therapy planning. The platform has been tested by different users and over large number of heterogeneous tomographic datasets to ensure stability, usability, extensibility and robustness with promising results. AVAILABILITY: THE PLATFORM, A MANUAL AND TUTORIAL VIDEOS ARE AVAILABLE AT: http://biomodeling.ics.forth.gr. It is free to use under the GNU General Public License

The valuation of European financial firms

We extend the recent literature concerning accounting based valuation models to investigate financial firms from six European countries with substantial financial sectors: France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Switzerland and the UK. Not only are these crucial industries worthy of study in their own right, but unusual accounting practices, and inter-country differences in those accounting practices, provide valuable insights into the accounting-value relationship. Our sample consists of 7,714 financial firm/years observations from 1,140 companies drawn from 1989-2000. Sub-samples include 1,309 firm/years for banks, 650 for insurance companies, 1,705 for real estate firms, and 3,239 for investment companies. In most countries we find that the valuation models work as well or better in explaining cross-sectional variations in the market-to-book ratio for financial firms as they do for industrial and commercial firms in the same countries, although Switzerland is an exception to this generalization. As expected, the results are sensitive to industrial differences, accounting regulation and accounting practices. In particular, marking assets to market value reduces the relevance of earnings figures and increases that of equity

Automated template-based brain localization and extraction for fetal brain MRI reconstruction.

Most fetal brain MRI reconstruction algorithms rely only on brain tissue-relevant voxels of low-resolution (LR) images to enhance the quality of inter-slice motion correction and image reconstruction. Consequently the fetal brain needs to be localized and extracted as a first step, which is usually a laborious and time consuming manual or semi-automatic task. We have proposed in this work to use age-matched template images as prior knowledge to automatize brain localization and extraction. This has been achieved through a novel automatic brain localization and extraction method based on robust template-to-slice block matching and deformable slice-to-template registration. Our template-based approach has also enabled the reconstruction of fetal brain images in standard radiological anatomical planes in a common coordinate space. We have integrated this approach into our new reconstruction pipeline that involves intensity normalization, inter-slice motion correction, and super-resolution (SR) reconstruction. To this end we have adopted a novel approach based on projection of every slice of the LR brain masks into the template space using a fusion strategy. This has enabled the refinement of brain masks in the LR images at each motion correction iteration. The overall brain localization and extraction algorithm has shown to produce brain masks that are very close to manually drawn brain masks, showing an average Dice overlap measure of 94.5%. We have also demonstrated that adopting a slice-to-template registration and propagation of the brain mask slice-by-slice leads to a significant improvement in brain extraction performance compared to global rigid brain extraction and consequently in the quality of the final reconstructed images. Ratings performed by two expert observers show that the proposed pipeline can achieve similar reconstruction quality to reference reconstruction based on manual slice-by-slice brain extraction. The proposed brain mask refinement and reconstruction method has shown to provide promising results in automatic fetal brain MRI segmentation and volumetry in 26 fetuses with gestational age range of 23 to 38 weeks

Block public access: Trust safety verification of access control policies

© 2020 Owner/Author. Data stored in cloud services is highly sensitive and so access to it is controlled via policies written in domain-specific languages (DSLs). The expressiveness of these DSLs provides users flexibility to cover a wide variety of uses cases, however, unintended misconfigurations can lead to potential security issues. We introduce Block Public Access, a tool that formally verifies policies to ensure that they only allow access to trusted principals, i.e. that they prohibit access to the general public. To this end, we formalize the notion of Trust Safety that formally characterizes whether or not a policy allows unconstrained (public) access. Next, we present a method to compile the policy down to a logical formula whose unsatisfiability can be (1) checked by SMT and (2) ensures Trust Safety. The constructs of the policy DSLs render unsatisfiability checking PSPACE-complete, which precludes verifying the millions of requests per second seen at cloud scale. Hence, we present an approach that leverages the structure of the policy DSL to compute a much smaller residual policy that corresponds only to untrusted accesses. Our approach allows Block Public Access to, in the common case, syntactically verify Trust Safety without having to query the SMT solver. We have implemented Block Public Access and present an evaluation showing how the above optimization yields a low-latency policy verifier that the S3 team at AWS has integrated into their authorization system, where it is currently in production, analyzing millions of policies everyday to ensure that client buckets do not grant unintended public access

She’s so vain? A Q Study of Selfies and the curation of an online self.

Selfie posting is now a well-established practice, particularly for young women. However, it is nevertheless much maligned in popular discourses. As a counterpoint to digital narcissism, selfie posting is also constituted as relational. This Q methodological study explored how young women make sense of selfie practices. Twenty-seven young women aged 18-23 sorted a set of statements about selfies into a quasi-normal grid. These sorts were factor analysed to identify shared patterns. Four factors were identified which were subsequently analysed qualitatively, producing a narrative for each. These included, (1) ‘Presenting…Me!’ (2) ‘I am what I am’, (3) ‘Sharing is caring’ and (4) ‘The In-crowd – beautiful and popular’. The complexity of identity curation evidenced in this study highlights the importance of moving beyond both polarised characterisations and the pathologisation of young women selfie takers in order to explicate the interplay between normative femininities and the digital self

Effects of optical blurring, size, and pre-exposure on the Strauss tachistoscopic test

Effects of optical blurring, size, and pre-exposure on the Strauss tachistoscopic tes