Adaptive frequency scaled wavelet packet decomposition for frog call classification

Environmental changes have put great pressure on biological systems leading to the rapid decline of biodiversity. To monitor this change and protect biodiversity, animal vocalizations have been widely explored by the aid of deploying acoustic sensors in the field. Consequently, large volumes of acoustic data are collected. However, traditional manual methods that require ecologists to physically visit sites to collect biodiversity data are both costly and time consuming. Therefore it is essential to develop new semi-automated and automated methods to identify species in automated audio recordings. In this study, a novel feature extraction method based on wavelet packet decomposition is proposed for frog call classification. After syllable segmentation, the advertisement call of each frog syllable is represented by a spectral peak track, from which track duration, dominant frequency and oscillation rate are calculated. Then, a k-means clustering algorithm is applied to the dominant frequency, and the centroids of clustering results are used to generate the frequency scale for wavelet packet decomposition (WPD). Next, a new feature set named adaptive frequency scaled wavelet packet decomposition sub-band cepstral coefficients is extracted by performing WPD on the windowed frog calls. Furthermore, the statistics of all feature vectors over each windowed signal are calculated for producing the final feature set. Finally, two well-known classifiers, a k-nearest neighbour classifier and a support vector machine classifier, are used for classification. In our experiments, we use two different datasets from Queensland, Australia (18 frog species from commercial recordings and field recordings of 8 frog species from James Cook University recordings). The weighted classification accuracy with our proposed method is 99.5% and 97.4% for 18 frog species and 8 frog species respectively, which outperforms all other comparable methods.

Changes in energy efficiency in Australia: A decomposition of aggregate energy intensity using logarithmic mean Divisia approach

This paper provides an empirical estimation of energy efficiency and other proximate factors that explain energy intensity in Australia for the period 1978-2009. The analysis is performed by decomposing the changes in energy intensity by means of energy efficiency, fuel mix and structural changes using sectoral and sub-sectoral levels of data. The results show that the driving forces behind the decrease in energy intensity in Australia are efficiency effect and sectoral composition effect, where the former is found to be more prominent than the latter. Moreover, the favourable impact of the composition effect has slowed consistently in recent years. A perfect positive association characterizes the relationship between energy intensity and carbon intensity in Australia. The decomposition results indicate that Australia needs to improve energy efficiency further to reduce energy intensity and carbon emissions. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd.

Decomposition of energy-related CO2 emissions in Australia: Challenges and policy implications

Changes in energy-related CO2 emissions aggregate intensity, total CO2 emissions and per-capita CO2 emissions in Australia are decomposed by using a Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) method for the period 1978-2010. Results indicate improvements in energy efficiency played a dominant role in the measured 17% reduction in CO2 emissions aggregate intensity in Australia over the period. Structural changes in the economy, such as changes in the relative importance of the services sector vis-à-vis manufacturing, have also played a major role in achieving this outcome. Results also suggest that, without these mitigating factors, income per capita and population effects could well have produced an increase in total emissions of more than 50% higher than actually occurred over the period. Perhaps most starkly, the results indicate that, without these mitigating factors, the growth in CO2 emissions per capita could have been over 150% higher than actually observed. Notwithstanding this, the study suggests that, for Australia to meet its Copenhagen commitment, the relative average per annum effectiveness of these mitigating factors during 2010-2020 probably needs to be almost three times what it was in the 2005-2010 period-a very daunting challenge indeed for Australia's policymakers.

Changes in CO2 emissions over business cycle recessions and expansions in the United States: A decomposition analysis

This paper examines the asymmetry of changes in CO2 emissions over business cycle recessions and expansions using yearly data from 1949 and monthly data from 1973 for the United States (US). In addition, decomposition analysis is applied to investigate the relative roles of various proximate contributing factors to observed changes in total and per capita CO2 emissions and emissions intensity, over business cycle phases. The results suggest, inter alia, that aggregate emissions and emissions intensity reduce much faster in contractions than they increase in expansions. In addition, unlike the three previous expansions, in the most recent post-GFC US expansion, emissions per capita have continued to decline, and at a rate very similar to the rate of reduction in preceding contractions. This suggests the real possibility that the most recent contraction may have had an ongoing impact on the path of per capita emissions well beyond the immediate impact experienced during the contraction itself.

Higher-resolution structure of the human insulin receptor ectodomain: Multi-modal inclusion of the insert domain

Insulin receptor (IR) signaling is critical to controlling nutrient uptake and metabolism. However, only a low-resolution (3.8 Å) structure currently exists for the IR ectodomain, with some segments ill-defined or unmodeled due to disorder. Here, we revise this structure using new diffraction data to 3.3 Å resolution that allow improved modeling of the N-linked glycans, the first and third fibronectin type III domains, and the insert domain. A novel haptic interactive molecular dynamics strategy was used to aid fitting to low-resolution electron density maps. The resulting model provides a foundation for investigation of structural transitions in IR upon ligand binding.

Decomposition analysis to examine Australia’s 2030 GHGs emissions target: How hard will it be to achieve?

The Australian government has recently pledged a reduction in GHGs emissions of 26–28% below the 2005 level by 2030. How big is the challenge for the country to achieve this target in terms of its present emissions profile, recent historical trends, and the contributions to those trends from key proximate factors contributing to emissions? In this paper, we attempt a quantitative judgement of the challenge by using decomposition analysis. Based on the analysis it appears the announced target will be quite challenging to achieve if the average annual mitigating effects from economic restructuring, energy efficiency improvements and movement towards less emissions-intensive energy sources in evidence over 2002–2013 continued through to 2030; however, if the contribution from these mitigating sources in evidence over 2006–2013 can be sustained, achievement of the target will be much less challenging. The challenge for government then will be to provide a policy framework to ensure the more pronounced beneficial impacts of the mitigating factors evidenced during 2006–2013 can be maintained over the years to 2030.