Acoustic feature extraction using perceptual wavelet packet decomposition for frog call classification

Frog protection has become increasingly essential due to the rapid decline of its biodiversity. Therefore, it is valuable to develop new methods for studying this biodiversity. In this paper, a novel feature extraction method is proposed based on perceptual wavelet packet decomposition for classifying frog calls in noisy environments. Pre-processing and syllable segmentation are first applied to the frog call. Then, a spectral peak track is extracted from each syllable if possible. Track duration, dominant frequency and oscillation rate are directly extracted from the track. With k-means clustering algorithm, the calculated dominant frequency of all frog species is clustered into k parts, which produce a frequency scale for wavelet packet decomposition. Based on the adaptive frequency scale, wavelet packet decomposition is applied to the frog calls. Using the wavelet packet decomposition coefficients, a new feature set named perceptual wavelet packet decomposition sub-band cepstral coefficients is extracted. Finally, a k-nearest neighbour (k-NN) classifier is used for the classification. The experiment results show that the proposed features can achieve an average classification accuracy of 97.45% which outperforms syllable features (86.87%) and Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs) feature (90.80%).

Pacific Journalism Review : Twenty years on the front line of regional identity and freedom

Pacific Journalism Review has consistently, at a good standard, honoured its 1994 founding goal: to be a credible peer-reviewed journal in the Asia-Pacific region, probing developments in journalism and media, and supporting journalism education. Global, it considers new media and social movements; ‘regional’, it promotes vernacular media, human freedoms and sustainable development. Asking how it developed, the method for this article was to research the archive, noting authors, subject matter, themes. The article concludes that one answer is the journal’s collegiate approach; hundreds of academics, journalists and others, have been invited to contribute. Second has been the dedication of its one principal editor, Professor David Robie, always somehow providing resources—at Port Moresby, Suva, and now Auckland—with a consistent editorial stance. Eclectic, not partisan, it has nevertheless been vigilant over rights, such as monitoring the Fiji coups d’etat. Watching through a media lens, it follows a ‘Pacific way’, handling hard information through understanding and consensus. It has 237 subscriptions indexed to seven databases. Open source, it receives more than 1000 site visits weekly. With ‘clientele’ mostly in Australia, New Zealand and ‘Oceania’, it extends much further afield. From 1994 to 2014, 701 articles and reviews were published, now more than 24 scholarly articles each year.

Semi-supervised document clustering via loci

Document clustering is one of the prominent methods for mining important information from the vast amount of data available on the web. However, document clustering generally suffers from the curse of dimensionality. Providentially in high dimensional space, data points tend to be more concentrated in some areas of clusters. We take advantage of this phenomenon by introducing a novel concept of dynamic cluster representation named as loci. Clusters’ loci are efficiently calculated using documents’ ranking scores generated from a search engine. We propose a fast loci-based semi-supervised document clustering algorithm that uses clusters’ loci instead of conventional centroids for assigning documents to clusters. Empirical analysis on real-world datasets shows that the proposed method produces cluster solutions with promising quality and is substantially faster than several benchmarked centroid-based semi-supervised document clustering methods.

Vanadium Catalysis in Bromoperoxidation Reaction

Peroxidative bromination of phenol red to its tetrabromo derivative, bromophenol blue, required vanadate in addition to H2O2 when carried out in the pH range of 5-7. Excess H2O2, with ratio of H2O2:vanadate of 2:1 and above, prevented the reaction. Diperoxovanadate, known to be formed in such reaction mixtures, was ineffective by itself and needed uncomplexed vanadate (V-v) or vanadyl (V-iv) to support bromination. Bromide-assisted reduction of the excess vanadate to vanadyl appeared to be an essential secondary reaction. In the absence of phenol red oxygen was released, and concomitantly bromide was oxidized to a form competent to brominate phenol red added after termination of oxygen release. These findings indicated participation of reactions leading to an intermediate derived from vanadyl and diperoxovanadate, previously described from this laboratory (Arch. Biochem. Biophys. 316, 319-326, 1995). Continuous bromination of phenol red occurred when glucose oxidase-glucose system was used as a source of continuous flow of H2O2. A scheme of reactions involving peroxovanadates (mono-, di-, mu-, and bromo-) is proposed for the formation and utilization of an active brominating species and for the recycling of the product, mono-peroxovanadate, by H2O2, which explains the catalytic role of vanadium in the bromoperoxidation reaction.

Supporting the development and deployment of sustainable energy technologies through targeted scientific training

Sustainable energy technologies rely heavily on advanced materials and modern engineering controls. These promising new technologies cannot be reliably deployed without ensuring that there is a sufficient “capacity,” i.e., trained technical personnel with the expertise to implement, monitor, and maintain the energy infrastructure. This same capacity is critical to the local development of new technologies, especially those that respond directly to regional priorities, strengths, and needs. One way to build capacity is through targeted programs that integrate the training and development of locals at an advanced technical level. In practical terms, these programs usually produce a small number of highly educated individuals with skills in science and engineering. The goal of Part VI of this book is to highlight contributing factors in successfully operating capacity building programs.

Working group report: Dictionary of Large Hadron Collider signatures

We report on a plan to establish a `Dictionary of LHC Signatures', an initiative that started at the WHEPP-X workshop in Chennai, January 2008. This study aims at the strategy of distinguishing 3 classes of dark matter motivated scenarios such as R-parity conserved supersymmetry, little Higgs models with T-parity conservation and universal extra dimensions with KK-parity for generic cases of their realization in a wide range of the model space. Discriminating signatures are tabulated and will need a further detailed analysis.

Requirement Of A Diperoxovanadate-Derived Intermediate for the Interdependent Oxidation Of Vanadyl And Nadh

Oxygen release accompanying oxidation of vanadyl by diperoxovanadate was suppressed on addition of NADH. The added NADH was rapidly oxidized, oxygen in the medium was consumed, and the reaction terminated on exhaustion of either NADH or vanadyl. The consumption of oxygen and disappearance of NADH needed small concentrations of diperoxovanadate to initiate and increased with increase in the concentration of vanadyl and NADH or decrease of pH. The products of the reaction were found to be NAD(+) from NADH and vanadate oligomers from vanadyl and oxygen. The reaction was insensitive to catalase and was not dependent on H2O2. The reaction was inhibited by superoxide dismutase, cytochrome c, EDTA, Mn2+, histidine, and DMPO, but not by hydroxyl radical scavengers such as ethanol and benzoate, The ESR spectrum of the reaction mixture showed the presence of the 1:2:2:1 quartet signal typical of a DMPO-OH adduct, but this was not modified by ethanol, This oxygen radical species, possibly of (OV)-O-. type derived from diperoxovanadate, is proposed to have a role in the reactions of oxygen release and NADH oxidation

Ultrafast Raman loss spectroscopy

This paper deals with a new form of nonlinear Raman spectroscopy called `ultrafast Raman loss spectroscopy (URLS)'. URLS is analogous to stimulated Raman spectroscopy (SRS) but is much more sensitive than SRS. The signals are background (noise) free unlike in coherent anti-Stokes Raman spectroscopy (CARS) and it provides natural fluorescence rejection, which is a major problem in Raman spectroscopy. In addition, being a self-phase matching process, the URLS experiment is much easier than CARS, which requires specific phase matching of the laser pulses. URLS is expected to be alternative if not competitive to CARS microscopy, which has become a popular technique in applications to materials, biology and medicine.

Exploring university-community partnerships in arts-based service learning with Australian First Peoples and Arts Organizations

In this chapter we focus on the importance of partnerships in arts-based service learning with Australian First Peoples and community arts organizations. Drawing on six years of our own partnership and a wide body of literature, this chapter aims to act as a trigger for further reflection on ways to engage in meaningful partnerships with First Peoples and arts organizations. In particular, the continuum between transactional and transformational types of relationships provides a useful means for understanding our work and for positioning the various benefits and challenges associated with university-community partnerships more broadly.

Has the Crab Pulsar Magnetic-Field Grown After its Birth

We investigate the evolution of rotation period and spindown age of a pulsar whose surface magnetic field undergoes a phase of growth. Application of these results to the Crab pulsar strongly indicates that its parameters cannot be accounted for by the field growth theories.

Gibbs Energy of Formation of Cobalt Divanadium Tetroxide

The Gibbs energy of formation of V2O3-saturated spinel CoV2O4 has been measured in the temperature range 900–1700 K using a solid state galvanic cell, which can be represented as Pt, Co + CoV2O4 + V2O3/(CaO) ZrO2/Co + CoO, Pt. The standard free energy of formation of cobalt vanadite from component oxides can be represented as CoO (rs) + V2O3 (cor) → CoV2O4 (sp), ΔG° = −30,125 − 5.06T (± 150) J mole−1. Cation mixing on crystallographically nonequivalent sites of the spinel is responsible for the decrease in free energy with increasing temperature. A correlation between “second law” entropies of formation of cubic 2–3 spinels from component oxides with rock salt and corundum structures and cation distribution is presented. Based on the information obtained in this study and trends in the stability of aluminate and chromite spinels, it can be deduced that copper vanadite is unstable.

Studies in terpenoids. Part 42. Synthesis of 3-(2-hydroxyisopropyl)5,8-dimethyl-1,2-naphthoquinone (emmotin-H)

Emmotin-H, a naturally occurring sesquiterpenoid 1,2-naphthoquinone pigment (1) has been synthesised in a four step sequence starting from the known 5,8-dimethyl-4-oxotetralin-2-carboxylic acid (3a). Selenium dioxide oxidation of its methyl ester (3b) gives 3-methoxycarbonyl-5,8-dimethyl-1,2-naphthoquinone (4) which on reductive acetylation affords the corresponding diacetoxynaphthalene ester (5). Its reaction with excess of methylmagnesium iodide is accompanied by aerial oxidation during work-up and furnishes emmotin-H (1).

Thermal conductivity of a new carbon nanotube analog: The diamond nanothread

Based on the non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations, we have studied the thermal conductivities of a novel ultra-thin one-dimensional carbon nanomaterial - diamond nanothread (DNT). Unlike single-wall carbon nanotube (CNT), the existence of the Stone-Wales transformations in DNT endows it with richer thermal transport characteristics. There is a transition from wave-dominated to particle-dominated transport region, which depends on the length of poly-benzene rings. However, independent of the transport region, strong length dependence in thermal conductivity is observed in DNTs with different lengths of poly-benzene ring. The distinctive SW characteristic in DNT provides more degrees of freedom to tune the thermal conductivity not found in the homogeneous structure of CNT. Therefore, DNT is an ideal platform to investigate various thermal transport mechanisms at the nanoscale. Its high tunability raises the potential to design DNTs for different applications, such as thermal connection and temperature management.

Flow of metal into the flash gap in the last stages of a plane-strain closed-die forging operation

In closed-die forging the flash geometry should be such as to ensure that the cavity is completely filled just as the two dies come into contact at the parting plane. If metal is caused to extrude through the flash gap as the dies approach the point of contact — a practice generally resorted to as a means of ensuring complete filling — dies are unnecessarily stressed in a high-stress regime (as the flash is quite thin and possibly cooled by then), which reduces the die life and unnecessarily increases the energy requirement of the operation. It is therefore necessary to carefully determine the dimensions of the flash land and flash thickness — the two parameters, apart from friction at the land, which control the lateral flow. The dimensions should be such that the flow into the longitudinal cavity is controlled throughout the operation, ensuring complete filling just as the dies touch at the parting plane. The design of the flash must be related to the shape and size of the forging cavity as the control of flow has to be exercised throughout the operation: it is possible to do this if the mechanics of how the lateral extrusion into the flash takes place is understood for specific cavity shapes and sizes. The work reported here is part of an ongoing programme investigating flow in closed-die forging. A simple closed shape (no longitudinal flow) which may correspond to the last stages of a real forging operation is analysed using the stress equilibrium approach. Metal from the cavity (flange) flows into the flash by shearing in the cavity in one of the three modes considered here: for a given cavity the mode with the least energy requirement is assumed to be the most realistic. On this basis a map has been developed which, given the depth and width of the cavity as well as the flash thickness, will tell the designer of the most likely mode (of the three modes considered) in which metal in the cavity will shear and then flow into the flash gap. The results of limited set of experiments, reported herein, validate this method of selecting the optimum model of flow into the flash gap.