Abundance of day-flying Lepidoptera along an air pollution gradient in the northern boreal forest zone¹

Day-active lepidopterans were counted in the summers of 1991-1993 on transects of 5 x 100 min 12 localities representing five zones of pollutioninduced forest deterioration in the Kola Peninsula, northwestern Russia. A total of 671 specimens representing 19 species was observed during 696 counts. Two butterflies (Clossiana euphrosyne, Vacciniina optilete) and three day-active moths (Rheumaptera subhastata, Ematurga atomaria, Sympistis heliophila) were used in the analysis; the remaining 14 butterfly species were too scarce for the statistical treatment. At early stages of pollution-induced forest damage (mean annual SO2 concentrations 20-40 µg/m3 ), the densities of the monitored species increased by a factor of 1.5 to 5, but then declined with increase in pollution. Since the host plants of the monitored species, except that of C. euphrosyne, were found in all localities surveyed, the decline could be attributed to the SO2 toxicity rather than to the lack of larval food. Although transect counts did produce valuable information about the impact of pollution on subarctic forest ecosystems, the method is poorly suited for routine bioindication of pollution in northern regions

Population densities and diversity of Noctuidae (Lepidoptera) along an air pollution gradient on the Kola Peninsula, Russia¹

The noctuid moths were monitored by means of bait traps from 1991 to 1993 in the area polluted by the Severonikel smelter on the Kola Peninsula. The total catch was 869 specimens belonging to 21 species. The catches peaked in sites representing the earlier stages of forest decline, being about two times as large as in the unpolluted area. The noctuid moths were heterogeneous in their response to pollution impact: (1) Xestia rhaetica, X. speciosa and Eurois occultus showed a clinal decline towards the emission source, (2) Diarsia mendica peaked at slightly polluted sites, (3) Acronicta auricoma, Hyppa rectilinea, Apamea maillardi and Xestia alpicola were most abundant in moderately polluted areas, (4) a mountain tundra species, Polia conspicua, was collected in heavily polluted sites only. However, neither species richness nor diversity of Noctuidae were affected by pollution

On deep speaker embeddings for text-independent speaker recognition

We investigate deep neural network performance in the textindependent speaker recognition task. We demonstrate that using angular softmax activation at the last classification layer of a classification neural network instead of a simple softmax activation allows to train a more generalized discriminative speaker embedding extractor. Cosine similarity is an effective metric for speaker verification in this embedding space. We also address the problem of choosing an architecture for the extractor. We found that deep networks with residual frame level connections outperform wide but relatively shallow architectures. This paper also proposes several improvements for previous DNN-based extractor systems to increase the speaker recognition accuracy. We show that the discriminatively trained similarity metric learning approach outperforms the standard LDA-PLDA method as an embedding backend. The results obtained on Speakers in the Wild and NIST SRE 2016 evaluation sets demonstrate robustness of the proposed systems when dealing with close to real-life conditions.Comment: Submitted to Odyssey 201

Production of hemo- and immunoregulatory cytokines by erythroblast antigen(+ )and glycophorin A(+ )cells from human bone marrow

BACKGROUND: Erythroid nuclear cells (ENC) of the bone marrow (BM) have not previously been considered as important producers of wide spectrum of haemo- and immunoregulatory cytokines. The aim of the current work was to confirm the production of the main hemo- and immunoregulatory cytokines in human ENC from BM. RESULTS: We used native human BM ENC in our experiments. We for the first time have shown, that the unstimulated erythroblasts (Gl A(+ )or AG-EB(+)) produced a wide spectrum of immunoregulatory cytokines. Human BM ENC produce cytokines such as interleukn (IL)-1β, IL-2, IL-4, IL-6, interferon (IFN)-γ, transforming growth factor (TGF)-β1, tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α and IL-10. They can be sub-divided into glycophorin A positive (Gl A(+)) and erythroblast antigen positive (AG-EB(+)) cells. To study potential differences in cytokine expression between these subsets, ENC were isolated and purified using specific antibodies to Gl A and AG-EB and the separated cells were cultivated for 24 hours. The cytokine contents of the supernatant were measured by electrochemiluminescence immunoassay. Quantitative differences in TGF-β1 and TNF-α production were found between Gl A(+ )and AG-EB(+ )BM ENC. Furthermore, in vitro addition of erythropoietin (EPO) reduced IFN-γ and IL-2 production specifically by the AG-EB(+ )ENC. Thus, Gl A(+ )and AG-EB(+ )ENC produce IL-1β, IL-2, IL-4, IL-6, IFN-γ, TGF-β1 and TNF-α. Gl A(+ )ENC also produce IL-10. CONCLUSION: Cytokine production by erythroid nuclear cells suggests that these cells might be involved in regulating the proliferation and differentiation of hematopoietic and immunocompetent cells in human BM

Development of a Monitoring System for Maintenance and Repair of High-Tech Equipment

The article presents a system for monitoring high-tech equipment, uses methods of system analysis and decision theory to optimize organizational tasks in the maintenance of high-tech equipment. The possibility of optimizing service channels based on the parameters set by the requirements for performing a certain type of work is considered. The monitoring system of high-tech equipment (MSHTE) is presented in the form of blocks that take into account all types of high-tech equipment, components and assemblies of each of them, technical characteristics, operating parameters, a list of the composition of engineering teams that perform the corresponding maintenance work

Оцінка енергоресурсного забезпечення регіону

This paper considers the task of ensuring the energy and environmental security of regions under the conditions of shortage of traditional energy resources. The method of expert assessments has been applied to justify the choice of types of acceptable energy resources that provide an increase in the relative energy supply of the territories of the regions. A list of factors from 6 groups has been devised and compiled that includes 27 indicators characterizing the technological, environmental, and other consumer characteristics of energy resources available for use. The maximum and minimum values of the indicator scores, the permissible intervals for their change, and the weighting coefficients that assess the importance of the indicator in the list have been determined. The method of expert assessments is supplemented by a random number generator for the formation of an information field on the values of the characteristics of energy resources and statistical processing of data on acceptable energy resources under the conditions of the considered regions. A quantitative comparative analysis of available energy resources and technologies based on them was carried out. It is proposed to use the acceptability index and the environmental conservation index as a criterion for the preference of a resource. Index values equal to or greater than 1 indicate resource preference. It is shown that for the base region under consideration, such resources are nuclear, solar, wind, and hydropower. The method of expert assessments makes it possible to get an objective idea of the acceptability of using a certain energy resource to ensure energy security, taking into consideration its environmental impact in a particular region of the country. A quantitative comparative analysis of the state of the existing structure of energy resources in the region and their availability has been carried out. To conduct a comparative analysis of acceptability by indicators and types of resources, a graphical and analytical methodology was used. The reliability of the results obtained was assessed using a concordance coefficient. The results could be useful for devising projects for the development and ensuring the energy security of the regions in the context of reformsРозглянуто проблему забезпечення енергетичної та екологічної безпеки регіонів в умовах дефіциту традиційних енергоресурсів. Застосовано метод експертних оцінок для обґрунтування вибору видів прийнятних енергоресурсів, які забезпечують підвищення відносної енергозабезпеченості територій регіонів. Розроблено та сформовано перелік факторів із 6 груп, що включають 27 індикаторів, що характеризують технологічні, екологічні та інші споживчі характеристики доступних для застосування енергоресурсів. Визначено максимальні та мінімальні значення бальних оцінок індикаторів, допустимі інтервали їх зміни та вагові коефіцієнти, що оцінюють важливість показника у переліку. Метод експертних оцінок доповнений генератором випадкових чисел для формування інформаційного поля про значення характеристик енергоресурсів та статистичної обробки даних прийнятних енергоресурсів в умовах регіонів, що розглядаються. Виконано кількісний порівняльний аналіз доступних енергоресурсів та технологій на їх основі. Запропоновано як критерій переваги ресурсу використовувати індекс прийнятності та індекс збереження середовища. Значення індексів рівних або перевищують 1 свідчить про перевагу ресурсу. Показано, що для базового регіону такими ресурсами є ядерна, сонячна, вітрова і гідроенергія. Метод експертних оцінок дозволяє скласти об'єктивне уявлення про прийнятність застосування певного енергоресурсу для забезпечення енергобезпеки з урахуванням його екологічного впливу в конкретному регіоні країни. Проведено кількісний порівняльний аналіз стану існуючої в регіоні структури енергоресурсів та їхньої доступності. Для проведення порівняльного аналізу прийнятності за показниками та видами ресурсів використано графічно-аналітичну методику. Достовірність отриманих результатів оцінили за допомогою коефіцієнта конкордації. Результати корисні для розробки проектів розвитку та забезпечення енергобезпеки регіонів за умов проведення рефор

Magnesium Porphine Supermolecules and Two-Dimensional Nanoaggregates Formed Using the Langmuir–Schaefer Technique

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