Physical oceanography

The physical oceanography component of the AMLR program provides information on the hydrography of the upper water column with the objective of assessing its influence on the observed distribution of krill (Euphausia superba). By making closely spaced CTD/rosette casts, the water masses of the Elephant Island region can be identified, and the mean current flow deduced. This component also records the meteorological and sea surface conditions continuously while the Surveyor is in the study region to study the effect of atmospheric conditions on the upper-water-layer structure. AMLR 1992 is the third field season for the collaboration of physical measurements with biological studies.Marine Scienc

Impact of adversarial examples on deep learning models for biomedical image segmentation

Deep learning models, which are increasingly being used in the field of medical image analysis, come with a major security risk, namely, their vulnerability to adversarial examples. Adversarial examples are carefully crafted samples that force machine learning models to make mistakes during testing time. These malicious samples have been shown to be highly effective in misguiding classification tasks. However, research on the influence of adversarial examples on segmentation is significantly lacking. Given that a large portion of medical imaging problems are effectively segmentation problems, we analyze the impact of adversarial examples on deep learning-based image segmentation models. Specifically, we expose the vulnerability of these models to adversarial examples by proposing the Adaptive Segmentation Mask Attack (ASMA). This novel algorithm makes it possible to craft targeted adversarial examples that come with (1) high intersection-over-union rates between the target adversarial mask and the prediction and (2) with perturbation that is, for the most part, invisible to the bare eye. We lay out experimental and visual evidence by showing results obtained for the ISIC skin lesion segmentation challenge and the problem of glaucoma optic disc segmentation. An implementation of this algorithm and additional examples can be found at https://github.com/utkuozbulak/adaptive-segmentation-mask-attack

Access to financial services and the financial inclusion agenda around the world : a cross-country analysis with a new data set

Recent empirical evidence highlights that access to basic financial services can make a substantial positive difference in improving poor people's lives. Accordingly, financial sector reforms that promote financial inclusion are increasingly at the core of policymakers’ agendas. The Consultative Group to Assist the Poor and the World Bank Group, in response, launched the Financial Access project, including a cross-country database on financial inclusion topics and an annual report to inform the policy debate. Using this database, this paper (i) counts the number of unbanked adults around the world at 56 percent, (ii) analyzes the state of access to deposit and loan services as well as the extent of retail networks, and (iii) discusses the state of financial inclusion mandates around the world.Access to Finance,Financial Literacy,Banks&Banking Reform,Debt Markets,Emerging Markets

Tomko Michael , British Romanticism and the Catholic Question: Religion, History and National Identity, 1778–1829, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, pp. xi + 224, £52.50, ISBN: 978-0-230-27951-3. [Book Review]

Michael Tomko uses this book to argue that the ‘Catholic question’ which plagued British politics at the end of the eighteenth century has been largely elided from our understanding of romantic-era culture, a mistake which he hopes to rectify here. Tomko provides a reading of the romantic writers which shows that the Catholic question fundamentally permeated romantic-era literature, challenging writers to engage with ideas of British national and religious identity. This book claims that the perceived dangers of Catholicism to “Britishness” (even by pro-emancipation writers such as Byron and Shelley), led to attempts to articulate a via media between religious enthusiasm and superstition