The biochemistry and physiology of different hybrid and grafted eggplants in response to NaCL salinity in soil and hydroponic systems

The major problem of salinity n regions of intensive cultivations such as Ierapetra, has started to affect the crop production. This project was designed to study the effects of salinity on several biochemical and physiological parameters in two hybrids of eggplant as grafted and non-grafted. The two hybrids were the Solanum melongena L hybrid Habana and Solanum melongena L hybrid Vernina. The concentrations that were chosen (12.5 25, 50, 100, 150 and 200mM) represent a scale of salt concentration and were cultivated as self rooted plants in soil, hydroponically and hydroponically as grafted. Grafting also seems to play an important role for salinity tolerance. To corroborate the different parameters were used as indicators of salinity affection and quantified. Plant height and number of leaves were affected in all three experiments and for all plant types whether grafted or not. Similar were the results for the dry and fresh weight of stem leaves and fruits. For the physiological function of the plants factors such as chlorophyll fluorescence and photosynthetic rate were affected especially at higher concentrations of NaCL. The chlorophyll content in the leaves, which was also measured, was negatively affected in all hybrids. Biochemical measurements the K and Na concentrations in dry leaves and the enzyme activity of APX, GPX and SOD were also made. The K and Na ion concentrations were similar with other studies presenting a reduction of K and raise of Na as the concentration of salt was rising. Unfortunately the enzyme activity was not affected at the specific experiment so it was not able to find exactly how the salinity affects this factor. Overall the results of grafted plants were better than as self rooted and the Solano torvum plant used as rootstock is more tolerant than the Tomato Resistar also used as rootstock

Lymphocite segmentation using mixture of Gaussians and the transferable belief model.

International audienceIn the context of several pathologies, the presence of lym- phocytes has been correlated with disease outcome. The ability to au- tomatically detect lymphocyte nuclei on histopathology imagery could potentially result in the development of an image based prognostic tool. In this paper we present a method based on the estimation of a mixture of Gaussians for determining the probability distribution of the princi- pal image component. Then, a post-processing stage eliminates regions, whose shape is not similar to the nuclei searched. Finally, the Transfer- able Belief Model is used to detect the lymphocyte nuclei, and a shape based algorithm possibly splits them under an equal area and an eccen- tricity constraint principle

Belief Scheduler based on model failure detection in the TBM framework. Application to human activity recognition.

International audienceA tool called Belief Scheduler is proposed for state sequence recognition in the Transferable Belief Model (TBM) framework. This tool makes noisy temporal belief functions smoother using a Temporal Evidential Filter (TEF). The Belief Scheduler makes belief on states smoother, separates the states (assumed to be true or false) and synchronizes them in order to infer the sequence. A criterion is also provided to assess the appropriateness between observed belief functions and a given sequence model. This criterion is based on the conflict information appearing explicitly in the TBM when combining observed belief functions with predictions. The Belief Scheduler is part of a generic architecture developed for on-line and automatic human action and activity recognition in videos of athletics taken with a moving camera. In experiments, the system is assessed on a database composed of 69 real athletics video sequences. The goal is to automatically recognize running, jumping, falling and standing-up actions as well as high jump, pole vault, triple jump and {long jump activities of an athlete. A comparison with Hidden Markov Models for video classification is also provided

Segmentation and sampling of moving object trajectories based on representativeness.

International audienceMoving Object Databases (MOD), although ubiquitous, still call for methods that will be able to understand, search, analyze, and browse their spatiotemporal content. In this paper, we propose a method for trajectory segmentation and sampling based on the representativeness of the (sub-)trajectories in the MOD. In order to find the most representative sub-trajectories, the following methodology is proposed. First, a novel global voting algorithm is performed, based on local density and trajectory similarity information. This method is applied for each segment of the trajectory, forming a local trajectory descriptor that represents line segment representativeness. The sequence of this descriptor over a trajectory gives the voting signal of the trajectory, where high values correspond to the most representative parts. Then, a novel segmentation algorithm is applied on this signal that automatically estimates the number of partitions and the partition borders, identifying homogenous partitions concerning their representativeness. Finally, a sampling method over the resulting segments yields the most representative sub-trajectories in the MOD. Our experimental results in synthetic and real MOD verify the effectiveness of the proposed scheme, also in comparison with other sampling techniques

Rise of ultra right as a result of social-economic crisis in Greece

Nakon svetske finansijsko-kreditne krize 2008. godine, koja je potresla svetsku ekonomiju, Evropa nije uspela da uhvati korak i evrozona je dovedena do dužničke krize. Grčka kriza, koja je usledila, pre svega usled hronične fiskalne krize, a koja je prethodila dužničkoj krizi, izazvala je očekivano reagovanje njenih partnera, koje se nije promenilo čak i kada su se sa problemom ekonomske krize suočile i Irska, Portugalija i Španija. Odluka evropskih vlada je bila jednoglasna: da bi se odbili napadi finansijskih tržista, treba izolovati „inficirani“ deo evrozone, neophodna je primena fiskalne štednje i unutrašnje devalvacije u deficitarnim zemljama, pre svega pomoću smanjenja ličnih dohodaka i penzija. Prema njihovom mišljenju, to bi bilo „idealno rešenje“ da se Grčka „fiskalno oporavi“ i da potom njena privreda stupi na put ekonomskog usklađivanja. Pa ipak, ovaj recept je propao i za to nije potreban drugi dokaz do činjenice da u Evropskoj uniji još uvek postoji dužnička kriza. Početna procena vodeće evropske elite, da su za krizu odgovorne antiproduktivne i neštedljive zemlje evropske periferije, je srušena, pa i pored toga, recept je ostao isti. U Grčkoj, pogođenoj snažno nametanjem štednje i dugogodišnjom recesijom, te ogromnom nezaposlenošću, društvo je sravnjeno, a grčki narod se iscrpljuje svakodnevno, žrtvovan za jednu bezizlaznu politiku neprestanih kreditnih Memoranduma. U tom pesimističkom ambijentu se zapaža fenomen izrazitog jačanja i skoka popularnosti neonacističke partije, Zlatne zore. Treba staviti akcenat i na činjenicu da se ekstremna nacionalistička retorika, bilo da je sistematski ili izolovano izražavana, proširila i reprodukovala, bez da bude okarakterisana kao takva. To je i razlog što suočavanje sa ekstremizmom i nasiljem nije lako, niti je uopšte sigurno da će oni biti iskorenjeni, čak i ukoliko Zlatna zora bude totalno raskrinkana. Uostalom, poslednji izborni rezultati pokazuju da i pored niza otkrića o njenim kriminalnim aktivnostima i neskrivenog neonacističkog karaktera, koja su usledila nakon hapšenja njenih poslanika i članova, te njihovog upućivanja pred lice pravde, izborni procenti Zlatne zore jesu umanjeni, ali zbog manje izborne izlaznosti birača na birališta, što ukazuje da ona nije slomljenaAfter the global financial crisis in 2008, which shook the world economy, Europe did not manage to get back on track, leading the Euro zone to a debt crisis. The Greek crisis that followed, mainly as a result of the widespread financial crisis preceding the debt crisis, triggered an anticipated reaction from its partners, which did not change course even as Ireland, Portugal and Spain joined the club of countries in trouble. The verdict of European governments was unanimous: in order to hold back attacks by financial markets to isolate the 'infected' areas of the euro, what is required is the implementation of fiscal austerity and internal devaluation in member-states with deficits, chiefly by way of wage and pension cuts. This was, according to their view, the "ideal solution" for "fiscal recovery" so that the Greek economy could then be put on track towards economic adjustment. This formula has however failed miserably, and no further evidence is needed beyond the fact that the debt crisis is still here with us in the EU. The initial assumptions of the ruling European elites, that regional counter-productive and wasteful countries are responsible for the crisis, have tumbled, but the remedy formula has remained the same. In Greece, heavily beaten by austerity measures, the long recession and increasing unemployment, there is social collapse and the Greek people are being impoverishes daily, sacrificed on the altar of dead-end policies of successive Memoranda. In this grim and pessimistic environment, we witness the exceptional growth and rise of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party. It needs to be emphasized that either by "word fragments" or more bluntly and systematically, extreme nationalist discourse is widespread and sometimes reproduced without being identified as such. And it is for this reason that tackling extremism and violence, fueled by intense nationalism, is not easy, nor is it certain that it will disappear even if Golden Dawn is utterly crushed. Besides, recent electoral results indicate that despite the barrage of revelations regarding its criminal activities, its blatant neo-Nazi characteristics, the arrests of its MPs and party cadres and consequent trials, their numbers were only slightly reduced, far from collapse

Human Shape-Motion Analysis In Athletics Videos for Coarse To Fine Action/Activity Recognition Using Transferable BeliefModel

We present an automatic human shape-motion analysis method based on a fusion architecture for human action and activity recognition in athletic videos. Robust shape and motion features are extracted from human detection and tracking. The features are combined within the Transferable Belief Model (TBM framework for two levels of recognition. The TBM-based modelling of the fusion process allows to take into account imprecision, uncertainty and conflict inherent to the features. First, in a coarse step, actions are roughly recognized. Then, in a fine step, an action sequence recognition method is used to discriminate activities. Belief on actions are made smooth by a Temporal Credal Filter and action sequences, i.e. activities, are recognized using a state machine, called belief scheduler, based on TBM. The belief scheduler is also exploited for feedback information extraction in order to improve tracking results. The system is tested on real videos of athletics meetings to recognize four types of actions (running, jumping, falling and standing) and four types of activities (high jump, pole vault, triple jump and long jump). Results on actions, activities and feedback demonstrate the relevance of the proposed features and as well the efficiency of the proposed recognition approach based on TBM

Biomechanical analysis of ankle ligamentous sprain injury cases from televised basketball games: Understanding when, how and why ligament failure occurs

OBJECTIVES: Ankle sprains due to landing on an opponent's foot are common in basketball. There is no analysis to date that provides a quantification of this injury mechanism. The aim of this study was to quantify the kinematics of this specific injury mechanism and relate this to lateral ankle ligament biomechanics. DESIGN: Case series. METHODS: The model-based image-matching technique was used to quantify calcaneo-fibular-talar kinematics during four ankle inversion sprain injury incidents in televised NBA basketball games. The four incidents follow the same injury pattern in which the players of interest step onto an opponent's foot with significant inversion and a diagnosed ankle injury. A geometric analysis was performed to calculate the in vivo ligament strains and strain rates for the anterior talofibular ligament (ATFL) and the calcaneofibular ligament (CFL). RESULTS: Despite the controlled selection of cases, the results show that there are two distinct injury mechanisms: sudden inversion and internal rotation with low levels of plantarflexion; and a similar mechanism without internal rotation. The first of these mechanisms results in high ATFL and CFL strains, whereas the second of these strains the CFL in isolation. CONCLUSIONS: The injury mechanism combined with measures of the ligament injury in terms of percentage of strain to failure correlate directly with the severity of the injury quantified by return-to-sport. The opportunity to control excessive internal rotation through proprioceptive training and/or prophylactic footwear or bracing could be utilised to reduce the severity of common ankle injuries in basketball