Search results for "551"
showing 10 items of 71 documents
The evolution of metazoan α-carbonic anhydrases and their roles in calcium carbonate biomineralization
2014
The carbonic anhydrase (CA; EC 4.2.1.1) superfamily is a class of ubiquitous metallo-enzymes that catalyse the reversible hydration of carbon dioxide. The ?-CA family, present in all metazoan clades, is a key enzyme involved in a wide range of physiological functions including pH regulation, respiration, photosynthesis, and biocalcification. This paper reviews the evolution of the ?-CA family, with an emphasis on metazoan ?-CA members involved in biocalcification. Phylogenetic analyses reveal a complex evolutionary history of ?-CAs, and suggest ?-CA was independently co-opted into a variety of skeleton forming roles (e.g. as a provider of HCO3? ions, a structural protein, a nucleation activ…
Sedimentology of a Late Quaternary lacustrine record from the south-eastern Carpathian Basin
2021
The Upper Pleistocene geoarchives in the south‐eastern Carpathian Basin are represented predominantly by loess–palaeosol records. In 2015, a 10 m sediment core composed of clay‐rich lacustrine sediments was recovered by vibracoring a dry lake basin located between the Vršac Mountains (Serbia) and the Banat Sands in the south‐eastern Carpathian Basin; a location relevant for placing regional archaeological results in a palaeoenvironmental context. Here, we present results from geoelectrical prospection and a lithostratigraphic interpretation of this sequence supported by a detailed granulometric study supplemented by ostracod analysis. An age model based on luminescence dating is discussed a…
Observed and Simulated Variability of Droplet Spectral Dispersion in Convective Clouds Over the Amazon
2021
In this study, the variability of the spectral dispersion of droplet size distributions (DSDs) in convective clouds is investigated. Analyses are based on aircraft measurements of growing cumuli near the Amazon basin, and on numerical simulations of an idealized ice‐free cumulus. In cleaner clouds, the relative dispersion ϵ, defined as the ratio of the standard deviation to the mean value of the droplet diameter, is negatively correlated with the ratio of the cloud water content (qc) to the adiabatic liquid water content (qa), while no strong correlation between ϵ and qc/qa is seen in polluted clouds. Bin microphysics numerical simulations suggest that these contrasting behaviors are associ…
Packet Aggregation in TelosB WSNs: Design, Implementation and Experiments
2016
Master's thesis in Information- and communication technology IKT590 - University of Agder 2016 WSN is an extensive field of research and a core technology which is adopted for monitoring and data assembling, used in various applications. Traditionally in a WSN, communication is performed in the fashion of single packet per transmission which produces high energy consumption and longer delay. Therefore, we introduce a novel approach by designing a system which applies packet aggregation in TelosB sensor motes using Contiki platform. In this approach, we assemble multiple packets together and send them in an aggregated frame towards the sink which can reduce the number of transmissions, energ…
The Dreaming Variational Autoencoder for Reinforcement Learning Environments
2018
Reinforcement learning has shown great potential in generalizing over raw sensory data using only a single neural network for value optimization. There are several challenges in the current state-of-the-art reinforcement learning algorithms that prevent them from converging towards the global optima. It is likely that the solution to these problems lies in short- and long-term planning, exploration and memory management for reinforcement learning algorithms. Games are often used to benchmark reinforcement learning algorithms as they provide a flexible, reproducible, and easy to control environment. Regardless, few games feature a state-space where results in exploration, memory, and plannin…
A two-armed bandit collective for hierarchical examplar based mining of frequent itemsets with applications to intrusion detection
2014
Published version of a chapter in the book: Transactions on Computational Collective Intelligence XIV. Also available from the publisher at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44509-9_1 In this paper we address the above problem by posing frequent item-set mining as a collection of interrelated two-armed bandit problems. We seek to find itemsets that frequently appear as subsets in a stream of itemsets, with the frequency being constrained to support granularity requirements. Starting from a randomly or manually selected examplar itemset, a collective of Tsetlin automata based two-armed bandit players - one automaton for each item in the examplar - learns which items should be included in …
Supporting fine-grained generative model-driven evolution
2010
Published version of an article in the journal: Software and Systems Modeling. Also available on SpringerLink:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10270-009-0144-1 In the standard generative Model-driven Architecture (MDA), adapting the models of an existing system requires re-generation and restarting of that system. This is due to a strong separation between the modeling environment and the runtime environment. Certain current approaches remove this separation, allowing a system to be changed smoothly when the model changes. These approaches are, however, based on interpretation of modeling information rather than on generation, as in MDA. This paper describes an architecture that supports fine-gra…
Is spectral domain optical coherence tomography useful in improving the contour line with the heidelberg retina tomograph?
2012
Purpose: To compare the measurements of the optic disc in glaucoma patients and glaucoma suspects with spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) and confocal scanning laser ophthalmoscopy (HRT) before and after adjustment of the contour line with the help of the OCT.Methods: In 109 consecutive patients (109 eyes), optic disc parameters were compared prospectively between the 2 devices before and after adjustment of the optic disc area (ODA) on the HRT3 with ODA obtained with the Cirrus SD-OCT as a reference. Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) and the 95% limits of agreement (LoA) with Bland-Altman plots were used to compare the agreement of the pre and post-adjustment mea…
NanoSr - A New Carbonate Microanalytical Reference Material for In Situ Strontium Isotope Analysis
2019
The in situ measurement of Sr isotopes in carbonates by MC‐ICP‐MS is limited by the availability of suitable microanalytical reference materials (RMs), which match the samples of interest. Whereas several well‐characterised carbonate reference materials for Sr mass fractions > 1000 µg g−1 are available, there is a lack of well‐characterised carbonate microanalytical RMs with lower Sr mass fractions. Here, we present a new synthetic carbonate nanopowder RM with a Sr mass fraction of ca. 500 µg g−1 suitable for microanalytical Sr isotope research (‘NanoSr’). NanoSr was analysed by both solution‐based and in situ techniques. Element mass fractions were determined using EPMA (Ca mass fraction),…
Poleward range expansion without a southern contraction in the ground beetle Agonum viridicupreum (Coleoptera, Carabidae)
2011
We investigated the extent of poleward shifts in the distribution range of Agonum viridicupreum due to climate change in the western Palaearctic. Species' records were obtained from extensive literature sources as well as from collections, and consistent amateur entomologists' recordings. Within the general geographic range of the species, we analyzed in detail two parts of both, the northern and southern distribution range boundaries: (1 and 2) north-western Germany (leading or high-latitude edge), (3) Israel and (4) southern Italy (rear or low-latitude edge). Temporal changes in the occurrence data of the species indicated a northward shift of the leading edge of a minimum of 100 km withi…