Automated Visual Fin Identification of Individual Great White Sharks

This paper discusses the automated visual identification of individual great white sharks from dorsal fin imagery. We propose a computer vision photo ID system and report recognition results over a database of thousands of unconstrained fin images. To the best of our knowledge this line of work establishes the first fully automated contour-based visual ID system in the field of animal biometrics. The approach put forward appreciates shark fins as textureless, flexible and partially occluded objects with an individually characteristic shape. In order to recover animal identities from an image we first introduce an open contour stroke model, which extends multi-scale region segmentation to achieve robust fin detection. Secondly, we show that combinatorial, scale-space selective fingerprinting can successfully encode fin individuality. We then measure the species-specific distribution of visual individuality along the fin contour via an embedding into a global `fin space'. Exploiting this domain, we finally propose a non-linear model for individual animal recognition and combine all approaches into a fine-grained multi-instance framework. We provide a system evaluation, compare results to prior work, and report performance and properties in detail.Comment: 17 pages, 16 figures. To be published in IJCV. Article replaced to update first author contact details and to correct a Figure reference on page

Australian threshold quantities for ‘drug trafficking’: are they placing drug users at risk of unjustified sanction?

This study uses data on patterns of drug user consumption and purchasing to evaluate Australian legal threshold quantities to see whether Australian drug users are at risk of exceeding the thresholds for personal use alone. Introduction Drug trafficking in Australia is deemed a very serious offence, one for which legislators and courts have ruled general deterrence is paramount and ‘little mercy’ should be shown. A principal challenge has been how to effectively differentiate and sanction participants in the drug trade—particularly how to differentiate ‘traffickers’ from those who consume or purchase illicit drugs for personal use alone. To assist in this endeavour, all Australian states and territories have adopted legal thresholds that specify quantities of drugs over which offenders are either presumed to have possessed the drugs ‘for the purposes of supply’ and liable to sanction as ‘drug traffickers’ (up to 15 years imprisonment in most states), or in the case of Queensland, liable to sanctions equivalent to drug traffickers (up to 25 years imprisonment). Yet, in spite of known risks from adopting such thresholds, particularly of an unjustified conviction of a user as a trafficker, the capacity of Australian legal thresholds to deliver proportional sanctioning has been subject to limited research to date. This paper summarises key findings from a Criminology Research Grant funded project. The broader project examined this issue in two different ways—whether the thresholds are designed to filter traffickers from users and whether they enable appropriate sanctioning of traffickers of different controlled drugs. Herein, the focus is on the former—to what extent Australian legal thresholds unwittingly place users at risk of unjustified and disproportionate charge or sanction as traffickers

The Measurement of the Impact of Well-being Resources on Moral Distress and Burnout following the COVID-19 Pandemic in Front-Line Nurse Leaders

Background: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there is significant burnout among front-line nursing staff. Little literature has been published about the measurement of burnout among front-line nursing leaders, such as nurse managers and directors, nor the interventions used to help with this ever-growing issue among this group. Since the pandemic began, there have been many resources identified to help front-line staff members with burnout, but none specifically looking at what has worked or been utilized by front-line nursing leaders. Purpose: The purpose of this project was to describe what well-being resources were identified as being effective in decreasing moral distress and burnout in front-line nurse leaders during the COVID-19 pandemic. Conceptual Framework: The conceptual framework used to guide this research project was Dorothea E. Orem’s Self Care Deficit nursing theory. This theory supports not only nurses teaching and creating an environment for patients to care for one’s self, but also for nurses to be prepared to care for themselves as a professional nurse. Methods: This study employed a mixed method design. Phase I applied a quasi-experimental pre-test/post-test design using The Professional Quality of Life Scale version 5 (ProQOL) scale. Phase II used a qualitative design in which front-line leaders were asked two open ended questions focused on well-being resources and interventions used by front-line nursing leaders to decrease burnout. Results: The results of phase I showed high burnout rates in assistant nurse managers (pre-intervention M=50.11 vs. post-intervention M=50.44) and nurse managers (pre-intervention M=52.49 vs. post-intervention M=52.30) prior to and after the intervention. The phase II results demonstrated that themes such as exercise, mental distraction, and clinical interventions, such as meeting with a licensed healthcare professional, may be useful to reduce burnout in front-line nursing leaders. Conclusion: The findings from this study suggest that there is significant burnout in front-line nursing leaders. Specific interventions need to be evaluated further, and if found to be effective, these interventions should be reinforced in an effort to reduce burnout in nursing leaders

Review of The Forgotten Front: The Eastern Theater of World War I, 1914-1915 edited by Gerhard P. Gross

Review of The Forgotten Front: The Eastern Theater of World War I, 1914-1915 edited by Gerhard P. Gros

The impracticality of a universal drought definition

This paper demonstrates the impracticality of a comprehensive mathematical definition of the term `drought' which formalises the general qualitative definition that drought is `a deficit of water relative to normal conditions'. Starting from the local water balance, it is shown that a universal description of drought requires reference to water supply, demand and management. The influence of human intervention through water management is shown to be intrinsic to the definition of drought in the universal sense and can only be eliminated in the case of purely meteorological drought. The state of `drought' is shown to be predicated on the existence of climatological norms for a multitude of process specific terms. In general these norms are either difficult to obtain or even non-existent in the non-stationary context of climate change. Such climatological considerations, in conjunction with the difficulty of quantifying human influence, lead to the conclusion that we cannot reasonably expect the existence of any workable generalised objective definition of drought

Mechanisms of Subtype-Specific Inhibition of N-methyl-D-aspartate Receptors by Ethanol

Alcoholism is a debilitating and costly disease with rates of prevalence totaling nearly 6% worldwide. Treating this disease has proven expensive and in many cases ineffective due in large part to significant gaps in our knowledge of the molecular determinants that drive the pathogenesis of the disorder. Recently, the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor has emerged as a candidate site for the primary inhibitory actions of ethanol on nervous system function. This receptor is an ion channel highly expressed in the nervous system that is activated by the excitatory neurotransmitter glutamate and has been implicated in the induction of a number of cellular phenomena including the molecular underpinnings of learning and memory. Understanding how ethanol affects the function of this channel both acutely and chronically is crucial to understanding the manifestation and progression of alcohol use disorders. By employing site-directed mutagenesis and patch-clamp electrophysiology with recombinant cell-expression of mutant and wild type NMDA receptor subunit cDNAs, my research has identified a number of novel interacting sites of ethanol with the NMDA receptor complex. Additionally, this work has highlighted essential differences in both ethanol sensitivity and gating mechanics of different NMDA receptor subtypes, GluN2A- and GluN2B-containing in particular. Furthermore, by exploiting the phenomenon of bioluminescence resonance energy transfer (BRET) my work has also demonstrated that GluN2A- and GluN2B-containing NMDA receptor subtypes will co-assemble into novel receptor complexes. Further teasing the differential activity of ethanol on these NMDA receptor subtypes could lead not only to the development of novel and effective therapeutics for alcohol use disorders, but as well engender a better understanding of the molecular mechanisms that underlie learning and memory

Assisted Viewpoint Interaction for 3D Visualization

Many three-dimensional visualizations are characterized by the use of a mobile viewpoint that offers multiple perspectives on a set of visual information. To effectively control the viewpoint, the viewer must simultaneously manage the cognitive tasks of understanding the layout of the environment, and knowing where to look to find relevant information, along with mastering the physical interaction required to position the viewpoint in meaningful locations. Numerous systems attempt to address these problems by catering to two extremes: simplified controls or direct presentation. This research attempts to promote hybrid interfaces that offer a supportive, yet unscripted exploration of a virtual environment.Attentive navigation is a specific technique designed to actively redirect viewers' attention while accommodating their independence. User-evaluation shows that this technique effectively facilitates several visualization tasks including landmark recognition, survey knowledge acquisition, and search sensitivity. Unfortunately, it also proves to be excessively intrusive, leading viewers to occasionally struggle for control of the viewpoint. Additional design iterations suggest that formalized coordination protocols between the viewer and the automation can mute the shortcomings and enhance the effectiveness of the initial attentive navigation design.The implications of this research generalize to inform the broader requirements for Human-Automation interaction through the visual channel. Potential applications span a number of fields, including visual representations of abstract information, 3D modeling, virtual environments, and teleoperation experiences