Response to Heethoff,Norton, and Raspotnig: Ant and Mite Diversity Drives Toxin Variation in the Little Devil Poison Frog and Erratum

Our recent publication titled “Ant and Mite Diversity Drives Toxin Variation in the Little Devil Poison Frog” aimed to describe how variation in diet contributes to population differences in toxin profiles of poison frogs. Some poison frogs (Family Dendrobatidae) sequester alkaloid toxins from their arthropod diet, which is composed mainly of ants and mites. Our publication demonstrated that arthropods from the stomach contents of three different frog populations were diverse in both chemistry and species composition. To make progress towards understanding this trophic relationship, our main goal was to identify alkaloids that are found in either ants or mites. With the remaining samples that were not used for chemical analysis, we attempted to identify the arthropods using DNA barcoding of cytochrome oxidase 1 (CO1). The critique of Heethoff, Norton, and Raspotnig refers to the genetic analysis of a small number of mites. Here, we respond to the general argument of the critique as well as other minor issues detailed by Heethoff, Norton, and Raspotnig.     

A query-by-example music retrieval system using feature and decision fusion

Multimedia Tools and Applications - An attractive topic of Music Information Retrieval (MIR) is focused on query-by-example (QBE), which receives a user-provided query and aims to find the target...     

Defect structures in silicon merged epitaxial lateral overgrowth

Merging of two epitaxial lateral overgrowth fronts has been achieved to produce thin silicon-on-insulator (SOI) structures. The electronic quality of the material is generally of high quality; however, at the merger interface are defects associated with improper merging. Defects at the oxide/silicon interface and the merging interface were characterized using transmission electron microscopy. Device performance indicated the need for a process modification to improve the material quality for potential electronic applications.     

Distribution of radioactive octacosanol in response to exercise in rats

To study the mechanism of action of octacosanol in rats the biodistribution of radioactivity of octacosanol was investigated in response to exercise. The amount of voluntary exercise was significantly higher in octacosanol fed rats than in the control. After ingestion of ¹⁴C-octacosanol, the accumulation of radioactivity of octacosanol in the muscle of exercised group given octacosanol was significantly higher in comparison with that of the exercised control group given no octacosanol and also the non-exercised groups irrespective of whether they were given octacosanol or not. The muscle thus seemed to be able to store a considerable amount of octacosanol in response to exercise. Although the exact mechanism of increase in physical exercise caused by octacosanol is not known, it is possible that octacosanol increases the mobilization of free fatty acids from fat cells within muscle. The results indicate that octacosanol possesses an adipokinetic activity, which might affect the lipolysis process of muscle.     

A generalized Navier's approach for solution of clamped moderately-thick cross-ply plates

A novel generalization of Navier's approach to obtain a unique boundary-continuous analytical or strong (differential) form of solution to the hitherto unsolved problem of bending of a moderately-thick rectangular cross-ply clamped plate is presented. The five highly coupled linear second-order partial differential equations with constant coef-ficients, that arise out of the utilization of first-order shear deformation theory (FSDT) into the formulation, are solved using boundary-continuous double Fourier series, that satisfy the prescribed C4-type clamped boundary conditions a priori. Convergence characteristics of transverse displacement (deflection) and bending moment have been numerically established. Other numerical results presented include: (i) comparison with the available boundary-discontinuous analytical solutions based on classical lamination theory (CLT), (ii) variation of displacements and moments with the length-to-thickness and length-to-width ratios, and (iii) spatial variation of these response quantities.     

Analysis of Bed Load Equations and River Bed Level Variations Using Basin-Scale Process-Based Modelling Approach

Bed load transport is a key process in maintaining the dynamically stable channel geometry for restoring the form and function of river ecosystems. Bed load consists of relatively large sediment particles that are moved along the streambed by rolling, sliding or saltation. Currently, various empirical correlations are used to estimate bed load transport rates since no single procedure, whether theoretical or empirical, has yet to be universally accepted as completely satisfactory in this aspect. Bed load particles are primarily sourced from river bed materials or banks. The amount of bed load and its spatial distribution contributes significantly to river bed level changes. Hillslope sediment contribution, mostly available to the river in the form of suspended load, also plays an important role in river bed level changes. This study aims to analyse different bed load equations and the resultant computations of river bed level variations using a process-based sediment dynamic model. Analyses have revealed that different bed load equations were mainly deduced from the concept of relating bed shear stresses to their critical values which are highly factored by the slope gradient, water discharge and particle sizes. In this study, river bed level variations are calculated by estimating total surplus or deficit sediment loads (suspended loads and bed loads) in a channel section. This paper describes the application of different widely used bed load equations, and evaluation of their various parameters and relative performances for a case study area (Abukuma River Basin, Japan) using a basin-scale process-based modelling approach. Relative performances of river bed level simulations obtained by using different bed load equations are also presented. This paper elaborates on the modelling approaches for river bed load and bed level simulations. Although verifications were not done due to unavailability of field data for bed load, qualitative evaluations were conducted vis-à-vis field data on flow and suspended sediment loads as well as the bed loads presented in different past studies.     

Text image super resolution using within-scale repetition of characters and strokes

In text images, there are some frequently used characters repeating more than others. Likewise, some characters have common strokes. This characteristic is used in this paper for machine-printed text-image super resolution. After segmenting the input low-resolution image into text lines and characters, 1) the characters are clustered and the clusters with large number of members, corresponding to the frequent characters, are detected. 2) A text-specific multiple-image super resolution is applied to the members of each large cluster and the result is verified by the recognition confidence of an OCR system. 3) A training example set is then constructed by extracting patches from the low-resolution frequent characters and their verified super resolution. Using this example set, infrequent characters are super resolved through the neighbor embedding SR algorithm. By placing all the super-resolved characters on their corresponding positions in the high-resolution grid, the final high-resolution image is generated. Our method achieves significant improvements in visual image quality and OCR character accuracy compared to related SR methods.