LifeCLEF 2016: Multimedia Life Species Identification Challenges

International audienceUsing multimedia identification tools is considered as one of the most promising solutions to help bridge the taxonomic gap and build accurate knowledge of the identity, the geographic distribution and the evolution of living species. Large and structured communities of nature observers (e.g., iSpot, Xeno-canto, Tela Botanica, etc.) as well as big monitoring equipment have actually started to produce outstanding collections of multimedia records. Unfortunately, the performance of the state-of-the-art analysis techniques on such data is still not well understood and is far from reaching real world requirements. The LifeCLEF lab proposes to evaluate these challenges around 3 tasks related to multimedia information retrieval and fine-grained classification problems in 3 domains. Each task is based on large volumes of real-world data and the measured challenges are defined in collaboration with biologists and environmental stakeholders to reflect realistic usage scenarios. For each task, we report the methodology, the data sets as well as the results and the main outcom

Expression of antisense or sense RNA of an ankyrin repeat-containing gene blocks chloroplast differentiation in arabidopsis.

The Arabidopsis AKR gene that encodes a protein with four ankyrin repeats (a 33-amino acid motif that appears in the 89K domain of the human protein ankyrin) was isolated and characterized. A short sequence outside the ankyrin repeats is similar to that of the protein of the Drosophila muscle segment homeobox (msh) gene. The expression of the AKR gene is light dependent, and transgenic Arabidopsis plants with two or more copies of an antisense or sense AKR construct became chlorotic in a developmentally regulated manner. The chlorotic phenotype was genetically transmitted to the next generation, although most chlorotic plants produced much less seed. Reduced presence of thylakoid membranes and loss of grana are found in the plastids of chlorotic leaves, indicating that antisense or sense AKR has blocked chloroplast differentiation. This study indicates the importance of ankyrin repeat-containing proteins, not only in yeast and animals, but in plants as well

Tectonic and magmatic controls on hydrothermal activity in the Woodlark Basin

The Woodlark Basin is one of the rare places on earth where the transition from continental breakup to seafloor spreading can be observed. The potential juxtaposition of continental rocks, a large magmatic heat source, crustal-scale faulting, and hydrothermal circulation has made the Woodlark Basin a prime target for seafloor mineral exploration. However, over the past 20 years, only two locations of active hydrothermalism had been found. In 2009 we surveyed 435 km of the spreading axis for the presence of hydrothermal plumes. Only one additional plume was found, bringing the total number of plumes known over 520 km of ridge axis to only 3, much less than at ridges with similar spreading rates globally. Particularly the western half of the basin (280 km of axis) is apparently devoid of high temperature plumes despite having thick crust and a presumably high magmatic budget. This paucity of hydrothermal activity may be related to the peculiar tectonic setting at Woodlark, where repeated ridge jumps and a re-location of the rotation pole both lead to axial magmatism being more widely distributed than at many other, more mature and stable mid-ocean ridges. These factors could inhibit the development of both a stable magmatic heat source and the deeply penetrating faults needed to create long-lived hydrothermal systems. We conclude that large seafloor massive sulfide deposits, potential targets for seafloor mineral exploration, will probably not be present along the spreading axis of the Woodlark Basin, especially in its younger, western portion

Solar radiative transfer simulations in Saharan dust plumes: particle shapes and 3-D effect

Radiative fields of three-dimensional inhomogeneous Saharan dust clouds have been calculated at solar wavelength (0.6 μm) by means of a Monte Carlo radiative transfer model. Scattering properties are taken from measurements in the SAMUM campaigns, from light scattering calculations for spheroids based on the MIESCHKA code, from Mie theory for spheres and from the geometric optics method assuming irregular shaped particles. Optical properties of different projected area equivalent shapes are compared. Large differences in optical properties are found especially in the phase functions. Results of radiative transfer calculations based on the Monte Carlo method are shown exemplarily for one dust cloud simulated by the cloud resolving atmospheric circulation model LM-MUSCAT-DES. Shape-induced differences in the radiation fluxes are pronounced, for example, the domain averaged normalized radiance is about 30% lower in the case of a dust plume consisting of spheroids or irregular particles compared to spheres. The effect of net horizontal photon transport (3-D effect) on the reflected radiance fields is only notable at the largest gradients in optical thickness. For example, the reflectance at low sun position differs locally about 15% when horizontal photon transport is accounted for. ‘Sharp edges' due to 1-D calculations are smoothed out in the 3-D case

Affective Man-Machine Interface: Unveiling human emotions through biosignals

As is known for centuries, humans exhibit an electrical profile. This profile is altered through various psychological and physiological processes, which can be measured through biosignals; e.g., electromyography (EMG) and electrodermal activity (EDA). These biosignals can reveal our emotions and, as such, can serve as an advanced man-machine interface (MMI) for empathic consumer products. However, such a MMI requires the correct classification of biosignals to emotion classes. This chapter starts with an introduction on biosignals for emotion detection. Next, a state-of-the-art review is presented on automatic emotion classification. Moreover, guidelines are presented for affective MMI. Subsequently, a research is presented that explores the use of EDA and three facial EMG signals to determine neutral, positive, negative, and mixed emotions, using recordings of 21 people. A range of techniques is tested, which resulted in a generic framework for automated emotion classification with up to 61.31% correct classification of the four emotion classes, without the need of personal profiles. Among various other directives for future research, the results emphasize the need for parallel processing of multiple biosignals

Erratum to: 36th International Symposium on Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1186/s13054-016-1208-6.]

Report on the BTAS 2016 Video Person Recognition Evaluation

© 2016 IEEE. This report presents results from the Video Person Recognition Evaluation held in conjunction with the 8th IEEE International Conference on Biometrics: Theory, Applications, and Systems (BTAS). Two experiments required algorithms to recognize people in videos from the Point-and-Shoot Face Recognition Challenge Problem (PaSC). The first consisted of videos from a tripod mounted high quality video camera. The second contained videos acquired from 5 different handheld video cameras. There were 1,401 videos in each experiment of 265 subjects. The subjects, the scenes, and the actions carried out by the people are the same in both experiments. An additional experiment required algorithms to recognize people in videos from the Video Database of Moving Faces and People (VDMFP). There were 958 videos in this experiment of 297 subjects. Four groups from around the world participated in the evaluation. The top verification rate for PaSC from this evaluation is 0.98 at a false accept rate of 0.01 - a remarkable advancement in performance from the competition held at FG 2015

Navigational infrastructure at the East Pacific Rise 9°50′N area following the 2005–2006 eruption : seafloor benchmarks and near-bottom multibeam surveys

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2008. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geochemistry Geophysics Geosystems 9 (2008):Q11T04, doi:10.1029/2008GC002070.Four seafloor benchmarks were deployed with ROV Jason2 at frequently visited areas along the northern East Pacific Rise (NEPR) ridge crest near 9°50′N, within the Ridge2000 EPR integrated study site (ISS) bull's eye. When used in concert with established deep-ocean acoustic positioning techniques, these benchmarks provide navigational infrastructure to facilitate the integration of near-bottom data at this site by allowing efficient and quantitative coregistration of data and observations collected on multiple dives and over multiple cruises. High-resolution, near-bottom multibeam bathymetric surveys also were conducted along and across the ridge crest to provide a morphological and geological context for the benchmark areas. We describe the navigation and data processing techniques used to constrain the benchmark positions and outline operational details to effectively use benchmarks at this and other deep-ocean sites where multidisciplinary time series studies are conducted. The well-constrained positions of the benchmarks provide a consistent geospatial framework that can be used to limit navigational uncertainties during seafloor sampling and mapping programs and enable accurate spatial coregistration and integration of observations. These data are important to test a range of multidisciplinary hypotheses that seek to link geological, chemical, and biological processes associated with crustal accretion and energy transfer from the mantle to the hydrosphere at mid-ocean ridges