The eVects of plant defenses on herbivory can diVer among spatial scales. This may be particularly common with indirect defenses, such as extraXoral nectaries (EFNs), that attract predatory arthropods and are dependent on predator distribution, abundance, and behavior. We tested the defensive eVects of EFNs in quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides Michx.) against damage by a specialist herbivore, ...

Very little is known about alterations in microclimate when an herbivore feeds on host plant. Modifications of leaf transmittance properties induced by feeding activity of the leaf miner Phyllonorycter blancardella F. were measured using a spectrometer. Their effects on the herbivore's body temperature and respiration rate have been determined under controlled conditions and varying radiation l...

Some species have disproportionate influence on assemblage structure, given their numbers or biomass. Most examples of such "strong interactors" come from small-scale experiments or from observations of the effects of invasive species. There is evidence that entire avian assemblages in open woodlands can be influenced strongly by individual species over very large areas in eastern Australia, wi...

We describe two advanced video analysis techniques, including video-indexed by voice annotations (VIVA) and multi-media indexing and explorer (MINER). VIVA utilizes analyst call-outs (ACOs) in the form of chat messages (voice-to-text) to associate labels with video target tracks, to designate spatial-temporal activity boundaries and to augment video tracking in challenging scenarios. Challengin...

Real world datasets are sparse, dirty and contain hundreds of items. In such situations, discovering interesting rules (results) using traditional frequent itemset mining approach by specifying a user defined input support threshold is not appropriate. Since without any domain knowledge, setting support threshold small or large can output nothing or a large number of redundant uninteresting res...

We study the strategic considerations of miners participating in the bitcoin’s protocol. We formulate and study the stochastic game that underlies these strategic considerations. The miners collectively build a tree of blocks, and they are paid when they create (mine) a node which will end up in the path of the tree that is adopted by all. Since the miners can hide newly mined nodes, they play ...