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    Artificial Intelligence-Enabled DDoS Detection for Blockchain-Based Smart Transport Systems.
    (MDPI (Basel, Switzerland), 2021-12-22) Liu T; Sabrina F; Jang-Jaccard J; Xu W; Wei Y
    A smart public transport system is expected to be an integral part of our human lives to improve our mobility and reduce the effect of our carbon footprint. The safety and ongoing maintenance of the smart public transport system from cyberattacks are vitally important. To provide more comprehensive protection against potential cyberattacks, we propose a novel approach that combines blockchain technology and a deep learning method that can better protect the smart public transport system. By the creation of signed and verified blockchain blocks and chaining of hashed blocks, the blockchain in our proposal can withstand unauthorized integrity attack that tries to forge sensitive transport maintenance data and transactions associated with it. A hybrid deep learning-based method, which combines autoencoder (AE) and multi-layer perceptron (MLP), in our proposal can effectively detect distributed denial of service (DDoS) attempts that can halt or block the urgent and critical exchange of transport maintenance data across the stakeholders. The experimental results of the hybrid deep learning evaluated on three different datasets (i.e., CICDDoS2019, CIC-IDS2017, and BoT-IoT) show that our deep learning model is effective to detect a wide range of DDoS attacks achieving more than 95% F1-score across all three datasets in average. The comparison of our approach with other similar methods confirms that our approach covers a more comprehensive range of security properties for the smart public transport system.
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    ‘Not One More Bloody Acre’: Land Restitution and the Treaty of Waitangi Settlement Process in Aotearoa New Zealand
    (MDPI (Basel, Switzerland), 2019-10-31) Wynyard M
    Te Tiriti o Waitangi, signed between Māori rangatira (chiefs) and the British Crown in 1840 guaranteed to Māori the ‘full, exclusive and undisturbed possession of their lands’. In the decades that followed, Māori were systematically dispossessed of all but a fraction of their land through a variety of mechanisms, including raupatu (confiscation), the individualisation of title, excessive Crown purchasing and the compulsory acquisition of land for public works. Māori, who have deep cultural and whakapapa (genealogical) connections to the land, were left culturally, materially and spiritually impoverished. Land loss has long been a central grievance for many Māori and the return of land has been a guiding motivation for whānau (extended family), hapū (sub-tribe) and iwi (tribe) seeking redress from the Crown. Since the 1990s, many groups have entered into negotiations to settle their historical grievances with the Crown and while land loss and the deep yearning for its return are central to many Māori claims, precious little land is typically returned to Māori through the settlement process. This paper seeks to critically examine the Treaty settlement process in light of land restitution policies enacted elsewhere and argues that one of the many flaws in the process is the paucity of land returned to Māori.
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    First confirmed records of white-coat pups of the Endangered Caspian seal Pusa caspica on the coast of Iran
    (Cambridge University Press, 2023-04-26) Shirazi ASEA; Chilvers B
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    Effects of biochar in combination with varied N inputs on grain yield, N uptake, NH3 volatilization, and N2O emission in paddy soil
    (Frontiers Media, 12/05/2023) Yi Z; Jeyakumar P; Yin C; Sun H
    Biochar application can improve crop yield, reduce ammonia (NH3) volatilization and nitrous oxide (N2O) emission from farmland. We here conducted a pot experiment to compare the effects of biochar application on rice yield, nitrogen (N) uptake, NH3 and N2O losses in paddy soil with low, medium, and high N inputs at 160 kg/ha, 200 kg/ha and 240 kg/ha, respectively. The results showed that: (1) Biochar significantly increased the rice grain yield at medium (200 kg/ha) and high (240 kg/ha) N inputs by 56.4 and 70.5%, respectively. The way to increase yield was to increase the rice N uptake, rice panicle number per pot and 1,000 grain weight by 78.5–96.5%, 6–16% and 4.4–6.1%, respectively; (2) Under low (160 kg/ha) N input, adding biochar effectively reduced the NH3 volatilization by 31.6% in rice season. The decreases of pH value and NH4+-N content in surface water, and the increases of the abundance of NH4+-N oxidizing archaea and bacteria (AOA and AOB) communities contributed to the reduction of NH3 volatilization following the biochar application; (3) Under same N input levels, the total N2O emission in rice season decreased by 43.3–73.9% after biochar addition. The decreases of nirK and nirS gene abundances but the increases of nosZ gene abundance are the main mechanisms for biochar application to reduce N2O emissions. Based on the results of the current study, adding biochar at medium (200 kg/ha) N level (N200 + BC) is the best treatment to synchronically reduce NH3 and N2O losses, improve grain yield, and reduce fertilizer application in rice production system.
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    Static Hand Gesture Recognition Using Capacitive Sensing and Machine Learning
    (MDPI AG, 24/03/2023) Noble F; Xu M; Alam F
    Automated hand gesture recognition is a key enabler of Human-to-Machine Interfaces (HMIs) and smart living. This paper reports the development and testing of a static hand gesture recognition system using capacitive sensing. Our system consists of a 6×18 array of capacitive sensors that captured five gestures-Palm, Fist, Middle, OK, and Index-of five participants to create a dataset of gesture images. The dataset was used to train Decision Tree, Naïve Bayes, Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) neural network, and Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) classifiers. Each classifier was trained five times; each time, the classifier was trained using four different participants' gestures and tested with one different participant's gestures. The MLP classifier performed the best, achieving an average accuracy of 96.87% and an average F1 score of 92.16%. This demonstrates that the proposed system can accurately recognize hand gestures and that capacitive sensing is a viable method for implementing a non-contact, static hand gesture recognition system.
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    The Effect of Age of Dam and Birth Rank on the Reproductive Performance of Ewes as One- and Two-Year-Olds.
    (10/03/2021) Pettigrew E; Hickson R; Morris S; Kenyon P; Corner-Thomas R; Haslin E; Blair H
    Currently, 30-43% of New Zealand sheep farmers breed their ewe lambs, but few retain the offspring as replacements for their flock. No difference in lamb production as a yearling among singletons and twins born to ewe lambs and twins born to mature ewes has been reported, provided the ewe lambs had reached the 60-65% of their likely mature weight prior to breeding at seven to eight months of age. The aim of this experiment was to determine the lamb production from singletons and twins born to ewe lambs and twins born to mature ewes during their first two years of lambing. The experiment included 8-month-old ewes born as twins to mature ewes (M2, n = 135), singletons born to ewe lambs (L1, n = 135), and twins born to ewe lambs (L2, n = 88), bred during the same period to the same rams, over two years. The efficiency of lamb production (total litter weight at weaning divided by the pre-breeding weight of the ewe, for all ewes presented for breeding) after two years of production was not significantly different (p > 0.05) among the groups (0.40 ± 0.02, 0.39 ± 0.02, and 0.39 ± 0.03, for M2, L1, and L2, respectively).
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    Occluded Grape Cluster Detection and Vine Canopy Visualisation Using an Ultrasonic Phased Array
    (MDPI (Basel, Switzerland), 20/03/2021) Parr B; Legg M; Bradley S; Alam F
    Grape yield estimation has traditionally been performed using manual techniques. However, these tend to be labour intensive and can be inaccurate. Computer vision techniques have therefore been developed for automated grape yield estimation. However, errors occur when grapes are occluded by leaves, other bunches, etc. Synthetic aperture radar has been investigated to allow imaging through leaves to detect occluded grapes. However, such equipment can be expensive. This paper investigates the potential for using ultrasound to image through leaves and identify occluded grapes. A highly directional low frequency ultrasonic array composed of ultrasonic air-coupled transducers and microphones is used to image grapes through leaves. A fan is used to help differentiate between ultrasonic reflections from grapes and leaves. Improved resolution and detail are achieved with chirp excitation waveforms and near-field focusing of the array. The overestimation in grape volume estimation using ultrasound reduced from 222% to 112% compared to the 3D scan obtained using photogrammetry or from 56% to 2.5% compared to a convex hull of this 3D scan. This also has the added benefit of producing more accurate canopy volume estimations which are important for common precision viticulture management processes such as variable rate applications.
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    A sequence analysis of behaviors in immersive virtual reality for indoor earthquake and post-earthquake evacuation
    (1/06/2022) Feng Z; González VA; Spearpoint M; Thomas J; Trotter M; Cabrera-Guerrero G; Paes D
    Behavioral sequence analysis (BSA) gives insights to understand and model individual behaviors. The present study uses BSA for a virtual earthquake. The virtual earthquake drill was facilitated by a head-mounted display (HMD)-based immersive virtual reality (IVR) system. Eighty-three participants experienced a full earthquake and post-earthquake evacuation in a virtual hospital building. Concurrent verbal protocol analysis (VPA) and retrospective video analysis of the footage of participants’ in-IVR behaviors have been conducted to identify the behavioral sequence of participants. As a result, behavioral transition diagrams are generated, showing the progression of behaviors exhibited in the virtual earthquake drill. A variety of behavioral paths for each individual participant is presented using a visual analytics approach. The behavioral transition diagrams and behavioral paths expose the full picture of human behaviors in an earthquake emergency, which are vital to developing behavior-oriented strategies for earthquake emergencies.
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    Analysis of Failure to Finish a Race in a Cohort of Thoroughbred Racehorses in New Zealand.
    (25/05/2016) Tanner J; Rogers C; Bolwell C; Cogger N; Gee E; Mcllwraith W
    The objective was to describe the incidence of failure to finish a race in flat-racing Thoroughbreds in New Zealand as these are summary indicators of falls, injuries and poor performance. Retrospective data on six complete flat racing seasons (n = 188,615 race starts) of all Thoroughbred flat race starts from 1 August 2005 to 31 July 2011 were obtained. The incidence of failure to finish events and binomial exact 95% confidence intervals were calculated per 1000 horse starts. The association between horse-, rider- and race-level variables with the outcomes failure to finish, pulled-up/fell and lost rider were examined with a mixed effects Poisson regression model. A total of 544 horses failed to finish in 188,615 race starts with an overall incidence of 2.88 per 1000 horse starts (95% CI 2.64-3.12). The incidence of failure to finish horses across each race year showed little variability. In the univariable analysis race distance, larger field size, season, and ratings bands showed association with failing to finish a race. The overall failure to finish outcome was associated with season, race distance and ratings bands (horse experience and success ranking criteria). In the multivariable analysis, race distance and ratings bands were associated with horses that pulled-up/fell; season, apprentice allowances and ratings bands were associated with the outcome lost rider. The failure to finish rate was lower than international figures for race day catastrophic injury. Racing and environmental variables were associated with failure to finish a race highlighting the multifactorial nature of race-day events. Further investigation of risk factors for failure to finish is required to better understand the reasons for a low failure to finish rate in Thoroughbred flat races in New Zealand.
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    Growth and Body Composition of Artificially-Reared Lambs Exposed to Three Different Rearing Regimens.
    (24/11/2021) Herath HMGP; Pain SJ; Kenyon PR; Blair HT; Morel PCH
    This study was designed to investigate the influence of pellet fibre level, milk replacer composition and age at weaning on growth and body composition of lambs reared artificially. Romney ram lambs were randomly allocated to one of three rearing treatments; HFP57: commercial milk replacer to 57 days of age, and high fibre concentrate pellets; HFP42: commercial milk replacer with early weaning at 42 days of age, and high fibre concentrate pellets; LFP42: high protein milk replacer from 2-16 days of age followed by commercial milk replacer with early weaning at 42 days of age, and low fibre concentrate pellets. Lambs were slaughtered at 57 days of age. Overall average daily liveweight gain of lambs did not differ (p > 0.05) between treatments. Dressing out percentage, carcass weight, empty small intestine and omental fat were higher (p < 0.05) in HFP57 than in both HFP42 and LFP42 lambs. HFP42 and LFP42 lambs had heavier (p < 0.05) empty rumen weights. Whole body protein content was higher (p < 0.05) in HFP42 lambs compared to both HFP57 and LFP42 lambs. Fat content and daily fat deposition were greater (p < 0.05) in HFP57 lambs than HFP42 and LFP42 lambs. Weaning lambs at 42 days of age with provision of either low or high fibre concentrate pellets, resulted in similar growth rates, reduced whole body fat deposition and was a more cost-effective rearing regimen.